#is this possibly the most niche crossover of interest? maybe so

[silencingspellsongs]

Porter Solaire strutting into the Monarchal Summit like he owns the place, ready to serve cvnt and square up for round 2 with prince Vincent.

[halfagone]

Oooh, good point! I think I’d prefer to go for a mix of two and three. An experienced Danny who’s super sick of the hero life, but he’s still pretty experience and maybe even harbors resent for the league since they never helped him out. I kinda have a thing for stories about Danny having issues with the league, lol. What do you think?

This is in continuation to this post.

From what I've seen you're not alone with that preference/niche! lol I've even read some Miraculous Ladybug x DC crossover with a similar concept, back when I used to read fics for MLB (it's been a while since I last read fanfic for MLB though). I know I did play around with the concept for down the rabbit hole (goes the throne). However, something that's very tricky to balance is making sure Danny doesn't come off as... self-centered, I guess the right word would be?

Because yes, it's understandable that Danny would be upset that no one tried to help him if they did reach out. At the same time, you have to consider the possibility of censorship thanks to the GIW (which is a popular headcanon) or that Vlad used Desiree to make a wish that would shield the town for his machinations and schemes (which is another headcanon I've seen used before). Danny can be upset at first but if he finds out that their attempts for contact literally could not connect, then it would be unreasonable for Danny to keep harboring that resentment when they're here now because they found out. That implies that had they known back then they would have tried something too, but they are not meant to be omniscient, no matter how hard Bruce might try to be.

Plus... the JL already have a lot of responsibilities. Most if not all these heroes have a base of operations- an entire city to take care of. And yes, so does Danny, but they can't just drop everything and come to his rescue, especially if the problem is much more extensive than just closing the portal. (Which Danny could technically do at any given time, but chooses not to.) But let's not talk about that. And there's also all the off-world missions they're in charge of or participate in. And many heroes have their day jobs and civilian lives to maintain, and plenty of these heroes have kids! Things are complicated!

But complex situations make things all the more interesting, do they not? ;3

Let's play around with that, shall we?

---

"Are you really a ghost?" Bart asks Phantom in curiosity. Is it just 'Phantom' or is it 'The Phantom' because the latter sounds much more mysterious, but is that trade-marked by-

"You think too fast," Phantom grumbles under his breath as he zips around a burning piece of rubble. He hardly bats an eye at it, just watches it fly past and then freezes it, effectively putting out the flames. The rubble slides innocently across the blacktop, falling alongside all the other pieces he's already frozen over.

Phantom's hardly even trying. It's so not crash.

"You're not like any ghost I've ever seen before," Secret agrees with a small frown. She doesn't distrust Phantom necessarily, but her own curiosity is hard to fight down.

Phantom's lips twist with amusement. "I could say the same to you actually." The group collectively watch as Phantom's legs twist and disappear into a wispy tail, the ghost curling it around as if to hug himself.

"What kind of Casper..." Kon overhears Tim mutter to himself. It's a good thing he doesn't have a piece of paper, else he'd be taking rapid fire notes. A computer would've done in a jiffy, of course, but it's not like they had access to one of those in a blown out city street like this.

"I've never heard about you before," Cassie comments with pinched brows. She doesn't look happy about it.

And for what it's worth, Phantom doesn't either.

"You wouldn't," Phantom drawls. There's no mirth in his voice. He turns back to the villain of the day, hands sparking as he zaps the machine so thoroughly that sparks fly and the metal audibly creaks.

Kon shivers at the display. He's not afraid, not really, but he's still uneasy... He knows that Captain Marvel is one of those heroes on par with Superman, and right now, watching Phantom wield his lightning, Kon's starting to see why.

The group shuffle around uncomfortably as Phantom sucks up the villain into a soup thermos? Now that's not something you see every day.

"What's that do?" Tim, ever perceptive, prods Phantom for answers.

"It contains ghosts, spectral entities, the works," Phantom replies curtly, capping the thermos with practiced ease. Ease that spoke of experience. "You kids alright?"

"Dude, you're barely four years older than some of us," Anita deadpans with an unimpressed look. "You don't get to call us 'kids'."

Phantom lifts his shoulders in a shrug. "Sorry, y'all are still babies to me." He points at Kon. "You've gotta be, what, not even six months old?"

Kon prickles at the remark. "That's none of your business." He knows he's not that old chronologically, but that doesn't make him an infant. He'd appreciate some respect about it.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend you," Danny replies and it sounds sincere? But most of them don't take too kindly to him anyways. He just gives bad vibes is all. "Where are your mentors? I feel like there should be at least one of them around to supervise."

"We can take care of ourselves," Tim insists, crossing his arms over his chest. Uh oh, he's hurt Timmy's feelings. That's never a good sign.

"You're kids, you shouldn't have to," Phantom sneers slightly, snidely more like.

"Like you did?" Secret asks tentatively. Phantom's hair visibly floats up, picked up by an inexplicable wind. His eyes glow a shade brighter. It's eerie. It's uncomfortable.

Phantom's face might be impassive, but he still remains an open book.

"Yeah, something like that," Phantom murmurs, his tone unreadable. "I hope you can take care of yourselves. One day you might be the only ones that do."

With that ominous warning, Phantom disappears. Here one minute, gone the next. Like a true ghost.

"I vote we call him 'Casper the Unfriendly Ghost'," Bart announces out of the blue. "Raise your hand if you agree?"

At once, every single member raises their hand.

"Motion passed."

[echoes-lighthouse]

Freakiest Thing Each Of My Selfships Is Into <3

I was just scrolling through the tag and remembered how much I fucking love hearing about other people's niche kinks so I decided to make a post about the weirdest side of my selfships :D

My platonic selfships are of course excluded and my nostalgia selfships are also excluded because they're weird enough without adding extra kinks to them. Also, most of these are focused on my f/os rather than my s/is because I'm like 90% ace but still interested in kink and also fictional sex with my f/os.

Anyways they're under the readmore because I don't tend to post n$fw on this blog so I don't expect everyone to have the tags blocked! Please dni if under 18, etc

Jester- she likes being free-use on occasion so we'll have nice big parties with her on a table and everyone is well-trained on the rules and her safewords and she gets dicked down proper and I tell her she's doing a great job

Tate- absolutely rampant mommy kink, which wouldn't be quite so weird if his mother didn't live next door :I

Himiko- feral kitten play, baby! Especially if we're showing off for the other LoV members, we go full kitty mode and draw lots of blood and tumble around together and have fun

Tomura- age play in all of the most extremes: diapers and bottles and gloves that curl his fingers into a fist so he can't use his quirk or his hands, poor baby

Toshi- we're like 80% vanilla but we have done a couple of me-as-student, him-as-teacher roleplays that get us both going partially because of how absolutely taboo it is for both of us

Zero- uhhhh, it's Rick Sanchez I don't know what the craziest could possibly be? we have a lot of public sex at those kinds of parties, or on planets where that's the norm. I like to control him while he's having sex with someone else, tell him exactly what to do while he pleases them. OH, we do consensual non-consent scenes and somnophilia scenes, that's probably the wildest stuff maybe?

Val- the extremely vore-adjacent experience of having sex in someone else's body: the intimacy of making love in their bloodstream, nestled against a single red blood cell

Grell- blood play that is not safe or sane, but very much consensual: we got a little carried away one time and I almost bled out afterwards but I was okay: she's vicious with a scalpel, what can I say? My beloved half of Jack the Ripper.

Cecil- our relationship is 95% platonic but he's had a few phases where he's worked up enough to use me: it's kind of a sex doll situation where I'm not very active and I keep to a smaller form and let him do whatever he wants

Tumblr- we're still in the experimentation phase! nothing too wild in this relationship: she has a bit of a daddy kink (and a praise kink) but that's about it.

Monokuma- exhibitionism, baby, I'm out here doing a solo show for the cameras until I get some sweet bear loving. Technosexuality, I suppose? I would like to make him overheat ^-^

Death- hmmm, just some body worship: I could eat her out for hours and I think I do, when she lets me. Cock warming if she's got one for the day.

Gertrude- not very exciting: lots of cliche artsy lesbian things like oils and massages, waxplay and foodplay, painting each other nude and overflowing the bath by accident when we're cleaning up

Dirk- plushophilia, dubious consent, and forced orgasms: control over the other person's orgasm is one of the ultimate powers in our relationship and it swings both ways in turn

Jonah- *chanting* desk sex, desk sex, desk sex... cockwarming and powerplay. he takes out his frustration over bad business deals on me and I'm very ready for it, but sometimes I put up a fight just so he can wear himself out a bit more getting me where he wants me

Which do you think is the wildest?? I think I'm too close to really choose. You should do this with your selfships also if you'd like to!! I really do like hearing about characters and people's niche kink preferences and I think selfship/kink crossovers are something I don't see enough of.

[otaku553]

Hello there!! Regarding the last ask about your Kirby in KNY and MHA (I'm not the same person btw), I remembered your Au where Kirby was in the Harry Potter universe, and I find myself asking you how you came with the idea, and if you will bring it back in the future!

Also, still regarding with the Au, what is Kirby's relationship with the other characters in the HP universe?

Asdsjdjsfj that was a while ago, I’m impressed anyone still knows about it,,,,,,

My thoughts are a bit long so if you want to read them you can click into the read more!

So I came up with the idea at the time because I was and still am really into crossovers! You often find that there are fandoms that are good worlds for crossover fodder, such as Harry Potter or Hero Aca! It’s not just that the fandoms are large, but also the fact that their worldbuilding is robust enough that adding a character allows them to mesh with the world seamlessly, while being loose enough that you can play with concepts that aren’t explored in canon. Crossovers are a fascinating character study of how a character can still remain a character removed from their setting, their comfort zone, and sometimes removed from their key experiences and memories.

One of the really popular crossover niches for example is FMA x Harry Potter, with Edward specifically acting as an alchemy professor. It’s unique within the setting he’s placed in— Ed is a strong-headed character who does not have the disposition of a mentor figure, but has the expertise and ability to teach. Meanwhile, Ed himself is placed in a situation he has never found himself in, where the intellectual progress of dozens of people possibly his age, older or younger, is now his responsibility. It’s a seamless combination also, since Alchemy is a canonically existing field in Harry Potter. It has all the elements of a well set-up crossover! I’ve seen it executed to varying degrees of success :)

Harry Potter is easy crossover fodder because the world is naturally designed to test people and reveal their secrets. Look no further than the boggart, which takes the form of one’s deepest fear, or legilimency, where you can read into someone’s thoughts, or the pensieve, where you can literally experience someone else’s memories. It could be called poor writing to have so many forced methods to invade someone’s privacy, but the fact that they exist means they can regardless be taken advantage of when writing crossovers.

The standard crossover structure very often keeps the origins of a transmigrated character a secret, and when a character has no connections to the world around them, people get to know that person from the ground up, from the persona they portray to their history and deepest parts of their personality. It’s what makes crossover interactions interesting beyond the shock value; we essentially get to relearn a character from the eyes of a world and characters that have never met the character before.

I don’t know if I’ll ever write anymore Kirby crossovers, to be honest, so I might not bring back the Kirby HP crossover, unfortunately. Kirby is difficult to crossover with other fandoms because their sheer strength makes many problems in other worlds irrelevant. Back when I was writing these, Kirby’s strength was what appealed to me, since having a character who is unshakably happy and powerful is a breath of fresh air after protagonists that go through an existential crisis or two in their journey. Contrary to the popular hero’s journey for most protagonists, Kirby is just very simply Kirby, and continues to remain Kirby through everything :)

Regarding the AU, in this crossover Kirby would at first treat Hogwarts as a safe haven away from the battles against gods that they often have to fight. Maybe they stumble across the world while exploring and happen to land close to Hogwarts, or maybe they accidentally crash land and are stuck there until they can fix their ship or until someone comes to pick them up. In any case, Kirby breaks all rules of logic that people have. They’re too young to attend classes or pass as a student so they wander the halls, with most students theorizing that they’re the child of one the professors. Only their eyes, which sparkle with the light of galaxies behind them, give any clue that they aren’t quite as human as they seem.

Kirby doesn’t see a point in hiding anything about themself because they’ve never had to on any planet they’ve gone to. If people don’t know that Kirby is an alien to this world, then it’s just because they haven’t asked.

I tend to write the golden trio in HP as nosy children who want to solve every mystery, including whatever is going on with Kirby, so I think they’d go through roundabout methods to follow Kirby when they really could have just asked. Otherwise, Kirby is friends with about everyone, though more often than not they’ll disappear off planet for their own responsibilities.

I was playing around with the idea of Kirby acting as a representative for the GSA and being a diplomat accompanied by Meta Knight in later years, so Kirby’s resting place away from battle becomes tainted with the responsibility of being a Knight, but I never got that far :p

[orphisthedragon]

Something that will never be not funny to me is that when a character or a ship is extremely popular some fans are acting like they are hated by everyone and that nobody likes it except themself. Also I'm using ao3 fanfics as a mean of popularity and if you don't like that shhhhhhhhhh.

Example no. 1: Tom Holland's Version of Peter Parker /Spiderman

Andrew Garfield's version has 2117 works currently if you exclude MCU and NWH crossovers and Tobey Maguire version has 975 works again exluding MCU and NWH crossover... Now let's see how many works on ao3 MCU Peter Parker has when you exclude the crossover with the other two.... Oh? It's 41155? That's over 10 times the over two have combined. But how could that be, everyone hates him? 🤔 Well, sunshine, idk how to tell you that but your poor most hated version is somehow the most popular.

Like please be reasonable and think. If he was that hated he wouldn't have the most famfics in an archive about him.

Example no. 2: Steddie (Steve Harrington x Eddie Munson)

Now, I haven't been in this fandom for long so you can comment "typical new fan" in the comments I guess.

Also this will maybe trigger some Steddie fans even though I ship if myself, but some steddie shippers remind me of a chihuahua. Not because they are small, because I will show you soon they are not when it comes to fic numbers, but they just attack everything and everyone that ships something different or not steddie. They act like everyone not shipping them is homophobic and that everyone is against them.

I don't even know if I should mention the numbers because it isn't a huge secret that the steddie tag over took the harringrove shipping tag on ao3. I mean some people really worked for it. If you count in the fics that are just standholders for "just a fic idea, will soon write something :)" or small sentences or in general nearly every fic being the same, which I didn't think was possible since I normally love reading similar plots but this time I couldn't tell which fic was which, when it got updated since they were nearly identical.

Anyways, Steddie shippers don't have to act like they are the unpopular ship in the fandom when they are the most popular Stranger Things ship on ao3 currently with 8931 fics. Like pls Eddie and this ship has only been here for a few months, overtook a ship that has been there for 5 years and you all act like you are the uncool and the oppressed ones. Do you have a victim complex or something? Because you literaly can't be the most popular fic and the most hated at the same time. (also small tip, don't attack everyone, who doesn't share your opinion on ships. Maybe people will like you more :) )

So yeah, fans of the popular things acting oppressed is never not funny. It's okay to like popular things, nobody is out there to get you. It's okay to like something everybody else likes and you don't have to act like you have a niche interest.

Pls don't "cancel" me lmao

[ushidoux]

Not Enough - Oikawa (Haikyuu) x Reader x Gojo (JJK)

Summary: Your relationship with Oikawa feels more like a curse than anything else as it comes to a close. (~4.2k words) or tl;dr gojo is mr. steal your girl

Warnings: breakup, idk Gojo is a warning, cracky angst?, pegging mention, yandere themes

A/N: Ngl I’m patting myself on the back for making a crossover fic work somewhat LOLLLL, you can roll your eyes if you want this is hella melodramatic.

(if you wanna commission more niche things, you can always dm me <3)

---

“I-I think it’s best for us to end things here, Tooru...”

Oikawa’s fingers tightened around the cell phone in his hand at the sound of your shakily delivered proposition, and further at the abrupt pregnant pause thereafter - not because he was angry, nor afraid, but out of an all-encompassing confusion.

Two things were wrong with this situation. First of all, it was late enough for you, thousands of miles away, that he was genuinely surprised that you were still awake in the first place and the fact that your voice was thick with tears was particularly upsetting, implying that you’d been up all night before you decided to call. Second, you had to be feeling unwell because you were talking pure nonsense.

He must have not heard correctly. You wanted to ‘end things’?

End what? You and him? That couldn’t possibly happen.

Moments passed, maybe even a full minute, and Oikawa stood perfectly still in spite of the uncomfortable combination of a weightless sensation in his legs and a feverish pounding in his chest as he tried to let himself understand what you were saying. Suddenly lightheaded, he realized he had been holding his breath while you remained quiet on the other end of the line. Maybe he was hoping for you to fill the silence, but he knew you wouldn’t offer anything additional; he could tell from the single soft sniffle that betrayed your sadness.

He sucked air into his lungs.

“I... don’t know what you mean,” Oikawa replied, his voice steady even if his body wasn’t.

You continued.

“I don’t think I can do this anymore. It’s really hard… and I get so lonely, and I know it’s wrong, but sometimes it hurts to see you so happy without me…”

Your voice was smaller still, enough that he strained to hear you past the rush of blood past his temples. For a moment, he considered pretending he couldn’t hear you say such unpleasant things just so that he wouldn’t have to deal with the reality unfolding in front of him in this disdainfully sunny early afternoon, while he stood in the middle of the hallway right outside of his high rise apartment.

The fact that you had finally given up on him after all this time.

In a small way, Oikawa couldn’t blame you. While he had been gone chasing his dream, the emerging star had just as quickly been running further away from you day by day. He knew this was mostly his fault: he called you less frequently and whenever you did talk, the conversations were shorter and less substantial until you and he both felt like your interactions were a simple chore, a checkbox on his never-ending to-do list.

But yet, he could and would absolutely blame you. Long distance was hard but you had promised you’d stay by his side, hadn’t you? You’d promised him, rain or shine, through drought and storm. What could possibly be the issue now?

Even if you hurt, it would only be temporary, and he could always make up for it in full or even twice-fold. In fact, he was on his way to come see you in person this very second; it would just be mere hours before his flight would depart. Coming suddenly on holiday like this was meant to be a surprise, and his suitcase beside him was filled with gifts and souvenirs for you that would, at least partially, assuage your hurt.

At least he thought. Maybe the issue stemmed deeper, starting with the very fact that you weren’t such a fan of gifts - what you really craved was loyalty and quality time - and that too, he had chosen to ignore. Because it was easier to love you the way he wanted to love you, rather than the way you wanted to be loved.

You were often indecisive anyway. Did you ever truly know what you wanted?

“___, stop being silly. I love you -”, he paused at this last declaration for emphasis, gauging your reaction, of which you gave him none, then continued, “-and I’m coming to see you before the sun sets tomorrow,” he insisted, a stern edge in his voice to further supplant the denial that was keeping him able to breathe. Strength returning to his limbs, he resumed his path to the elevators, dragging his belongings behind him.

You were silly. You missed him and you were delirious from loneliness and sleep, and that’s why ridiculous things were coming out of your mouth, that’s all it had to be, he figured. End things? What you had was something precious and irreplaceable. Nothing could be better than what you were together.

It would be you and him for life, at least to him.

Unfortunately for you, that ideal had long since perished.

Any other time, you would have paused, your breath hitching in your throat, your heart pounding as you conjured up the image of your Tooru coming to be in your arms once more, to cross the vast distance and be yours again as it should be. He’d be quick to show you that he chose you over crowded gyms full of adoring spectators, a perfect set, the rush of victory, or a pretty Instagram model.

Any other time before, but time had run out with both you and him unsuspecting, in a flash of clear blue eyes.

---

A few months earlier...

“I’m not interested.”

Your voice was flat and so was your expression. Muttering a soft ‘excuse me’, you walked past the tall young man who had taken the fact that he’d helped you reach an item on the highest shelf (despite the fact that you were still somewhat tall, you still had struggled), as an invitation to follow you around the grocery store.

The stranger had started off indiscreetly at first, and you had to admit, when you’d passed him in the aisle, you had given him a double-take, and it wasn’t just because you were wondering how he could see the food before him with a black blindfold wrapped over his eyes, so you hadn’t thought too much of it. He was admittedly handsome - at least the lower part of his face was - and his relaxed voice and posture as he reached over and handed you your box of cereal reminded you just a smidge of your Tooru.

Your Tooru wouldn’t be caught in that nondescript dark ensemble, though.

Saying “thanks” and continuing on your merry way should have been enough. But instead, this same man had immediately started walking besides you as you pushed your cart as though he knew you, making comments about your groceries.

“I’m not particularly fond of eggs, but they’re a good source of protein.”

“You seem to have a sweet tooth, just like me!”

You probably should have been concerned about this man’s mental state, but he didn’t exactly seem harmful or delusional, just weird. But you were almost done with your shopping trip, and now he was in line with you with a single bag of chips in his hand, and it occurred to you for a while that this stranger might try to follow you home.

“Do you need something, sir?” You told him in exasperation.

He furrowed his eyebrows in mild confusion, still a smidge too close behind you and raised his bag of chips. “No, I’m fine.”

“Why are you following me?” You finally said, bolder than usual in this semi-crowded grocery store. You had had enough of being polite and you’d tried very hard so far. Today had been a long day and you just wanted to cook a meal and sleep, not argue with strangers.

“Oh, I was trying to be friendly,” he replied, shrugging, as though that were normal behavior, and thus here you were, switching lanes abruptly while making it clear to him that he needed to leave you the fuck alone.

Checking out of the store with your items occurred without incident but you had to admit you were both irritated and confused about that encounter, and again, while you didn’t exactly feel malicious intent or really any sort of ‘creepiness’ from the young man, the behavior was nevertheless alarming. You surreptitiously glanced over your shoulder just to make sure he wasn’t still in sight, only to catch him walking in the other direction, whistling again with the single bag of chips in his hand, now paid for.

Again stunned, you found yourself lost in a stare for a moment, a million questions in your head.

What was he trying to accomplish? And most importantly, how could he see with that blindfold?

What did he look like without it?

Quickly realizing your questions were getting absurd, you decided that whether he was attractive or not was a completely inconsequential thought, because the fact of the matter was that he had to be clinically insane. Absolutely.

With that thought in mind, you texted a friend briefly sparing the least salient details.

Call me in about thirty minutes if I don’t call you first. I’ll fill you in later.

Just for safety’s sake, but thankfully, you didn’t think you’d ever seen him again.

You may have brought up your odd encounter to Tooru that night, if he had managed to return your call.

---

“Go to sleep, I’ll talk to you when I land tomorrow. I love you, ____.”

Before you could protest, the line cut off abruptly and you lowered your phone to your lap. Now it was no longer just your voice wavering, but your entire body trembling as you sat over the side of your bed. You lurched forward, the pit of your stomach heavy with guilt.

Your Tooru was coming to see you and for once, he was the last person you wanted to see.

---

You had left your home a little later than usual but given that you would rather die than miss your morning coffee and croissant, you still stopped by your neighborhood bakery.

Noting that the line was a little longer than expected, you queued up, humming softly to the beats of your favorite song, not registering that the man standing before you had turned slowly in your direction and was now smiling down at you.

“Fancy seeing you here again.”

Your eyes furrowed as you looked up, then almost yelped in surprise when your eyes registered the same white-haired stranger who had stunned you at the supermarket lined up just two paces before you.

What the-

Of all the coffee shops in this city, why here? The hairs on your neck stood up on end, worse when he decided to keep speaking.

“Let me buy your coffee,” he proposed, tentatively. “Only condition is that you have to drink it with me.”

Today, the strangest of strangers almost looked normal; rather than a blindfold, his eyes were hidden by a dark pair of sunglasses and his hair had been allowed to fall into a slightly windswept cut. He was also dressed less eclectically, in a loose-necked long sleeved shirt and a pair of fitted dark jeans.

Like this, you could call him fashionable. He was definitely forward, at the very least.

He was obviously flirting and normally you would have a curt prepared answer for him, but the manner in which he leaned forward, smirking with hands on his hips, again felt too familiar. Like Tooru, who had forgotten to call you back and instead sent you a quick text that promised he’d get back to you.

If he remembered.

Before you knew it, and almost embarrassed as soon as it left your mouth, you blurted out, “I… have to go to work.”

It wasn’t a lie but for some reason it came out like one. Perhaps because what you would have normally said was, “I have a boyfriend,” without giving him a second look.

He frowned nevertheless.

“That’s too bad,” he finally said, letting out a loud sigh, excessively dramatic for the situation. You stared at him, dumbfounded, and he suddenly clasped his hands together, preparing to say something else but the barista had called for the next customer.

He made a motion for you to go before him, and flustered, you obliged, giving the barista a look that implored for help in any way he could offer it. The barista knew you well enough to ring up your order before you even asked for it, but not well enough to sense that the man behind you was actively harassing you.

“I can buy my own coffee, sir,” you murmured once you saw him rummage in his pockets and pull out his wallet while the barista went off to toast your pastry.

He grinned widely.

“Call me Satoru.”

---

“A drink for you, sir?”

The flight attendant’s voice betrayed a hint of irritation under her sweet tone of voice, hinting that she had been waiting for him to answer a while, and Oikawa realized that he had been staring at his phone for a lot longer than he expected. He flashed her his classic pearly whites before nodding, but the wheels in his head were still turning.

A mere couple of hours into the first leg of his flight back to Japan, he had taken to poring over his last few conversations with you.

Conversations that, at least from his end, had become pressured, short, and at times, he had been downright dismissive.

But he loved you - you had to understand that! It was a lot to manage:  being available for you but also giving 150% of himself to the game.

So what if he missed your calls but kept his Instagram up-to-date? So what if he was a little bit too cozy with his fans (and known to be so)?

There was always you, and you were supreme. He’d do anything for you.

“Wine?” The attendant offered him the higher octave in her voice making it clear that Oikawa had managed to charm her back into her retail persona.

Maybe a glass, but he’d limit his drinking. He wouldn’t want to disappoint you when you met.

---

You were shocked.

Satoru stopped a car that was meant to crush you, and you were still trying desperately to comprehend what had just transpired.

You were possibly too eager to escape that coffee shop, to get away from the young man whose presence both unsettled your stomach and made your face grown warm, that you’d hurried out into the crosswalk, somewhat complicated drink and slightly crisped pastry in hand, and right into the path of a car hurtling through a red light.

You didn’t have time to scream or rarely even time to drop your drink, but the impact of your carelessness and preoccupation, between him, being late to work, wondering why the fuck your boyfriend had yet again forgotten to text back, never came.

Instead, the car seemed to halt to a stop almost immediately before you, before him who now stood before you with lips held into a neutral expression, and one hand in his pocket. Even if time seemed to stop for a split second, the force that should have struck your body didn’t, instead hurtling around you in a terrifying gust of wind.

But you were safe.

There was a shatter of glass windows as energy redistributed and the car took the brunt of the shock, and airbags deployed, engulfing the driver who could have possibly ended your life.

When Satoru finally turned to you slowly, looking at your cowering form, you finally caught a glimpse of piercing blue. For once he wasn’t smiling, and he was suddenly much more terrifying than anything else.

As though the mask had come off.

He didn’t ask if you were okay. Instead, he asked you to control your grief.

---

You shouldn’t be able to love anyone so much that your heart breaks repeatedly.

Something about you had to be pathological - it couldn’t be normal to feel the pain of separation this acutely. It was just a long-distance relationship, even if he was just getting more famous and less available by the day.

You shouldn’t wake up wondering if you could still breathe without him.

You shouldn’t.

---

“I’m a sorcerer,” Gojo revealed as he stirred a warm caramel latte, as though he had said the most natural thing in the world.

You tilted your head over so slightly, knit eyebrows betraying your confusion.

“... Like a circus performer?”

The repetitive turn of his wrist halted almost immediately and he looked at you, the constant smug smirk immediately awash from his features.

“Do I look like I belong in the circus?!” He half-exclaimed, half-whined, as though you were the only patrons in this bustling coffee shop. Part of you was bent on saying yes, but you kept mum yet staring at his face in distress, you find yourself stifling a giggle.

Now that he’d saved your life, you felt (and probably erroneously so) obligated to at least indulge him in coffee, and your curiosity about the young man sitting before you a whole day later now waffled between morbid and genuine.

Cursed energy? Leaking from you? Sorcery?

He cleared his throat and leaned back in his chair once he realized you were more entertained by his distress than anything else, crossing his arms and raising his legs on the table. You stared at the bottom of his shoes with mild disgust but instead focused on his face.

He really was like your Tooru, the boyfriend that slipped away from your reach in your nightmares, causing you to wake in a cold sweat. You shook the thought of your head, a quick barely perceptible movement, and crossed your own arms.

“You’re sad enough that I can sense it, which despite the fact that I am obviously quite gifted, can be a bit of an issue long term.”

“Why would it be an issue to you?”

“Because grief creates spirits and spirits are a pain in my ass.”

You furrowed your eyebrows again.

“So you followed me because you thought I was sad?” It sounded far fetched enough but absolutely on brand for a weirdo like the man before you. You took a sip of your tea - you’d picked chai for this… meeting. It wasn’t a date.

He grinned, an elbow rested on the table propping up his chin as he leaned back towards you.

“No, it’s because I thought you were beautiful.” ---

For the first time in a year, Oikawa’s first step back on Japanese soil did not immediately bring him joy but anxiety.

It was odd for him to feel anxiety, this unsettling feeling in the pit of his stomach, but of course it would dissipate the moment he saw you.

But first, a warm shower in his new hotel room. Then he’d go to see you.

It felt odd not to have you waiting for him, your million dollar - no, priceless - smile on your face, so he could kiss you dramatically in the midst of all watching to again reassert that you are his, and his alone.

But you were upset, and understandably so.

So he would come to you, as a good boyfriend should.

---

“I have a boyfriend,” you told him immediately and indignantly, as you got up to leave. “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you I’m not interested.”

He didn’t rise as fast as you did, watching you calmly instead as you balled your fists in irritation. It’s so shameless how he flirts, you thought. He’s so bold and rude and even if he’s a ‘sorcerer’ as he claims, there’s no spell that he can cast onto you that will make you leave Oikawa for him.

Not your Tooru, whose last Instagram post features a beautiful, tan, large-breasted and bikini-clad woman you’ve never met.

“Where is he then?” Satoru said in a low voice. He didn’t necessarily mean to cut but it did anyway. A lump formed in your throat.

“Overseas.”

---

The sound of chirping crickets is surprisingly loud for this part of the city, Oikawa considered, as he made his way towards your apartment building. It was an atypically warm evening for this point in the spring and he briefly mused if that is what excited them. Maybe they were cheering for him. They sounded a lot like the crowds if he closed his eyes.

He also hoped you had room for the gifts he carried with him, the most important of which was a Cartier bracelet he would hand to you once he departed, with a solid gold T for Tooru.

If he was on the search for fame and glory, he had to spoil you too, right?

To think that you were so angry with him that you had not yet contacted him since he had landed.

He knocked on your door finally, noting the shuffling of too many feet towards the door. This was the right door. He didn’t understand. Did you have friends over?

He called, and you didn’t immediately pick up.

---

“You have to leave!” You hissed. The statement was a plea and it was a command and it was a curse.

The blue of Satoru’s eyes was less electric in the dim moonlight, now more of a cool ice. Bare naked like this and barely visible save for the cracks of the illuminated city through your blinds, he was unfairly beautiful, as though he were carved out of marble. Again like your Tooru. Like, not better.

But still, he was there when Tooru wasn’t.

But Tooru was there now, knocking on your door, having traveled thousands of miles despite the fact that you had broken up with him just yesterday.

It was too little, too late.

But you didn’t love Satoru. He was just a band-aid for the loneliness that wrung agony out of you.

Right?

“I don’t want to leave,” your makeshift lover replied, flatly.

Your glare was sharp and instant, but Satoru matched your look, less pointed but unwilling to sway.

An unstoppable force, no different from the day he’d saved your life.

But he’d caused the problem in the first place, hadn’t he? Would you have run out so carelessly if not for him?

Your voice softened as you slipped on your clothes. The fight was lost before it started.

“Please? I… I can’t do this to him.”

Only a plea was left.

Your phone started to ring and your throat felt as though it would close up.

“___?”

Before you knew it, you heard your front door open and your heart dropped into your throat.

---

“What the fuck-”

Blue eyes were cruel.

Oikawa prided himself on his height but Satoru was taller, and his smirk was wide, while Oikawa’s face was ghostlike, devoid of any appreciable expression. Stunned.

“So you’re the boyfriend?” His voice dripped with mock amusement and he patted him on the shoulder before swinging open the door wide, letting Oikawa into his own girlfriend’s apartment, only to stand face to face with you whose feet seemed glued to the floor in shock.

“I.. T-Tooru..”

“Are you fucking serious?!”

His voice came out as a cry and his tears hot and fast. You never thought you’d see him crumple so fast, for you, for anything.

Your mouth opened and closed, and your hands shook but again, you stayed planted to the same spot while Satoru, still shirtless (but at least with the decency to have worn a pair of pants before answering the door), settled himself on the couch.

Before you could open your mouth to find a word to defend yourself to your sobbing boyfriend, your visitor let out an exaggerated yelp.

“____, you really showed no mercy on my asshole, did you?” he jeered. Then covering his mouth, he made a gesture of ‘Oops.’

What could you do?

Oikawa looked like he would stop breathing any second. He wanted to fight and maybe scream, but what use was that?

You had broken up with him yesterday.

You approached slowly, attempting maybe a touch, anything that would make your mistake less grievous.

You’d only been seeing Satoru for several weeks to… you weren’t sure why, really? Tooru was the one you loved. And to see him curl up like this… someone who was normally so proud...

You were disgusted with yourself.

“Tooru-”

“You said you’d wait for me.”

It was shocking how quick he rose, broken dignity, gifts and all.

“Tooru!”

He turned to leave, while Satoru contented himself on picking the earwax from his ears. It was easier to be like this, insufferable, than to gracefully accept the idea that his object of affection loved someone else.

He’d coveted you from the day he’d met you.

“Tooru!!!”

You were running after a man who gave 150% to everything, yet again. 

Everything but you.

But had he at the very least given you 100%? You weren’t sure.

Oikawa was the last person who could accept the thought of someone else. You weren’t sure if he’d call you ever again. You weren’t even sure you wanted to break up.

Cursed energy. Maybe you didn’t just leak cursed energy. Maybe you were just cursed.

Heart shattering to pieces once Oikawa was no longer within view, you made it back to your room. Satoru was there waiting, and you couldn’t see the look in his eyes, but his arms were open, and so you fell into them.

[morporkian-cryptid]

Today in "Elliott's Niche AF AUs": one (1) person asked me about this, sooooo...

Lupin III Discworld AU crossover headcanon pile thingy!!!

For those who don't know: Discworld is a flat world held on the back of four giant elephants on top of a giant turtle, floating through space. That world has magic, as well as trolls, dwarves, goblins etc... but in a way that's meant to subvert typical fantasy tropes.

Ankh-Morpork, the biggest city on the Disc, is a hotbed of crime, innovations, and innovations in crime. It is run by a council of guilds, and by a Patrician (a lifelong tyrant; he's elected by the guilds but he has the final say in everything). Notorious for having an Assassins', Thieves', Beggars', and Seamstresses' (sex workers) Guilds. Also notorious for its Watch (the police), which is actually surprisingly good at solving crimes. It's also the biggest immigration destination on the Disc.

Character backstories/situations:

Lupin : half-quirmian-half-agatean (Quirm being the DW equivalent of France), grew up in the Agatean Empire (DW equivalent of China/East Asia). He moved to Ankh-Morpork to follow Fujiko, and/or to escape Zenigata. He’s an illegal thief (meaning he's not registered with the Thieves' Guild), and his favourite hobby (besides just stealing in general) is screwing with the Guild. Commander Vimes, the head of the Watch, is supposed to catch him (or at least help Zenigata catch him), but he's secretly rooting for him because he dislikes the Guild slightly more than he dislikes Lupin.

Jigen : son of a couple of Agatean immigrants in Ankh-Morpork, grew up as a street urchin in the Shades (the most crime-ridden neighborhood of the notoriously crime-ridden Ankh-Morpork). He joined the Assassins’ Guild later in his life as a (mostly self-taught) sharpshooter, with a talent that outshone that of the Guild's best students. He later quit the Guild after he met Lupin (possibly had a contract to kill Lupin, and decided “screw this I’m going with him”). He can use any kind of shooting weapons, but favors crossbows. He’s tried stealing and using the gonne (DW's first and only firearm); it didn't go well. He somehow managed to learn one single spell from the wizards, the fireball, by becoming pals with Arcchancelor Ridcully (wizard, head of the Unseen University, and famous for his unfortunate passion for crossbow shooting).

Goemon : agatean immigrant/fugitive, master swordsman. He left Agatea because Fujiko stole his Zantetsuken and fled to Ankh-Morpork, so Goemon had to follow her to retrieve his sword. He then met Lupin and Jigen and decided to stick around. The Zantetsuken is a talking sword, and its personality is basically the embodiment of Bushido. It's extremely annoying (like all talking swords), but Goemon loves it. (it was probably his only friend back in Agatea)

Fujiko : agatean immigrant/fugitive. Ran away from the Agatean Empire chased by Goemon. She joined the Thieves’ Guild, but everyone confuses her for a seamstress because her technique usually involves seduction. She tried it on Vetinari once. It failed spectacularly.

Zenigata : agatean immigrant, part of the Empire’s police force, who came to Ankh-Morpork chasing Lupin. He only brought his assistant Yata with him, and has to cooperate with the Watch to have resources to catch Lupin. Vimes doesn’t particularly like him, but he’s good at his work so he can’t say anything (they're both too stubborn to get along).

Bonus:

Yata: Zenigata’s assistant, came to Ankh-Morpork with him, rapidly became great friends with Rufus Drumknott (the Head Secretary of the Patrician, Lord Vetinari). He has a bad influence on Drumknott. He also befriended Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson, but then again Carrot befriends everyone.

Ami: She's a clacks operator. Clacks are basically the DW equivalent of telegraph. There's a group of clacks hackers called the GNU, so she might have joined them.

Albert: He's part of the Patrician's Dark Clerks (they're the secret services of Ankh-Morpork)

Rebecca: She's from Quirm. That’s all I have about her for now. (Quirm's the equivalent of France, but in the french translation it was made into an equivalent of Italy)

Random-Ass Headcanons

Lupin gets along like a house on fire with Moist von Lipwig (former conman and current postmaster, notorious adrenaline junkie), both figuratively and literally. Lupin and Lipwig sometimes team up on heists and rely on each other’s help, when they’re not busy competing against each other because Lupin keeps daring Lipwig to thieving competitions.

One of the contests’ goal is to steal Vetinari’s manuscript, The Servant. Fujiko wins. She wasn’t even in the race.

///

Fujiko quickly became friends with Adora-Belle Dearheart (Moist von Lipwig's rather explosive girlfriend), they get together every now and then to trash-talk their respective boyfriends.

///

For some reason everyone thinks Lupin is a werewolf. (it’s actually Jigen)

(maybe. I haven't yet decided whether or not he is. That would be a very good source of angst, considering what most werewolves are like, and also a very good source of domestic fluff if the whole gang has to adapt to the moon cycle and Jigen's transformations. Idk. Might be fun.)

///

Fujiko owns a horse golem (a gift from Adora-Belle or something she stole, we may never know). The Gang also owns a carriage, modified with a spell so it will drive faster, and they drive it completely carelessly. It has been destroyed and rebuilt countless times. (actually a bunch of spells, Lupin probably found a way to blackmail Ridcully so he could mod the shit out of his carriage. Or they rely on Jigen’s friendship with Ridcully)

///

Lupin uses swamp dragons as firearms (dialogue courtesy of @marquise-de-clarabas: Jigen: You stole a dragon??? Lupin: I didn’t steal him! He’s his own person and can make decisions himself! Dragon: I wanna steal). He has an alias and disguise entirely dedicated to visiting the Sunshine Sanctuary For Sick Dragons, and somehow became friends with Lady Sybil Ramkin-Vimes (Commander Vimes' wife, and the greatest expert on swamp dragons in the city, probably on the Disc). Vimes doesn't know about it, and Lupin finds the whole situation hilarious. He constantly makes jokes about how he’s playing with fire.

///

The Thieves’ Guild and the Watch are competing to catch the Gang, but secretly Vimes is rooting for the Gang (the Guild just hates them). That said, Vimes also hates Lupin (only slightly less than he dislikes the Guild), because he's always a little shit whenever he gets put in jail, and then he immediately breaks out.

///

Rincewind (famously bad wizard with a shit luck and a tendency to run from problems) once got arrested by Zenigata, because he got startled by him yelling LUPAAAAAAAAAN! and started running for the hills, making Zenigata believe he was Lupin in disguise. Rincewind is terrified of Zenigata.

///

Zenigata is actively trying to stop the Thieves' Guild from catching Lupin and Co, both because he wants to catch them himself, and because he knows what the Guild does to illegal thieves and he doesn’t want it to happen to Lupin.

///

Lupin stole Ridcully’s hat (custom wizard hat with a bunch of pockets, drawers, a crossbow, and a tiny flask of alcohol) as a gift for Jigen’s birthday. He also stole Lipwig’s hat (golden cap with dove wings), after which Adora claimed she didn’t recognize Moist (dialogue courtesy of @marquise-de-clarabas: Moist: C’mon babe, it’s me, your boyfriend! Adora, knowing full well who he is: I have never met this man in my entire life). He also raided the Assassins' Guild's armory/museum to get a birthday gift for Goemon.

///

About Jigen and the gonne (spoilers for Men at Arms) : basically, the gonne being such a dangerous and destructive weapon compared to crossbows, it has a nigh-magical attraction on people, and awakens and strengthens whatever lust for power, vengeance, blood etc they have. It basically controls its user and feeds on their convictions, addictions, wants, etc. The only person known to have resisted it is Vimes (because he's a stubborn mofo with a sense of morals you could bend iron on), and even he came damn near to losing his mind. (And Carrot, because... he's Carrot.)

Assuming the gonne didn't get destroyed in this AU: after they steal it, Lupin tries to use it, gets completely possessed/cursed (again) and accidentally tries to murder his friends (again), prompting Jigen to take it from him. Jigen then gets possessed as well, and they start fighting for the gonne, until Goemon just walks in, takes it out of their hands and takes it away. Goemon's completely unaffected by the gonne because 1) of his ascetic training and 2) "it is a filthy morporkian artifact and cannot compare to the noble art of the sword."

///

Zenigata often teams up with Angua (resident werewolf of the Watch), they get along very well. The Gang is very easy to track, they smell like a tobacco factory that has caught on fire.

///

Yata and Drumknott (Patrician's head secretary, and confidante, sort of) get together after office hours, and argue about whose boss is the best (because as we all know they both have a crush on respective bosses). One day Drumknott accidentally calls Vetinari “Sempai” after he heard Yata call Zenigata that all the time.

///

Lupin follows Lipwig’s example and steals all of Yata’s pencils every time he visits the Pseudopolis Yard (the Watch's HQ). Drumknott is fuming when Yata tells him about it.

///

Leonardo Da Quirm is butt-naked, because Part 4.

///

Something with vampires, probably.

///

tagging @carriagelamp and @mad-whoman-with-a-book00 because I know you may be potentially interested in this AU ^^

[titleknown]

Hello and good tidings to you!

Now, you may be wondering where I have been these past few months! Well, aside from some... rather bad mental health days, I have been scouring a terrain most unusual to me to find information on a representative species!

Specifically, the... well, I'm not sure what humans would call it. The human habitus has been considered a "backwater" by may of those in magical society, but as my, ahem, creator can attest, humanity is more than capable of harboring magical fauna. Like most things worth studying, it simply requires inspection.

Of current interest both of myself and, in niche circles, are these so-called "liminal spaces." Now, the casual term is for spaces of transition or decontextualization in a nonmeta-physical sense, perhaps conflated with the academic term due to the access of metaphysical locations through these casually-termed spaces, or the metaphysical-liminal spaces resembling "mundane" liminal spaces taken to exaggerated extremes.

It is the dream of a world, context filtered into magical shapes and decontextualized and jumbled. The dream of the world humans live in, much like the Memory Palace is the memory of the multiverse, though due to lack of study from magical society, any connections possibly linking the two are as of yet unknown.

There are enough native species to such locations to space out hundreds of entries, but with the aid of our pictured friend I have decided to focus on one. Specifically, the Maskers.

They are, as it seems, floating masks, often with some means of conventional locomotion but not always, sapient and able to access fine manipulation through facial expressions. Their biological systems on non-invasive inspection appear to be semi-organic and semi-inorganic but requiring supernatural means of biology for support of multiple systems.

Their ecological nitche appears to be akin to the cleaner wrasse or the infamous necropossums, in specific they are symbiotic creatures that allow creatures to empower aspects of their personalities not only by allowing concealment, but also in manifesting these aspects in supernatural powers, drawing energy in a mutualistic faction from this catharsis.

There are some restrictions, as my pictured friend has told me. There are nuances I may detail later, but the most prominent is an entity cannot have these qualities as their main "socially presentable" outward expression, the reaction of "matching masks" is supposedly a "taste" they find "disgusting".

Their written history is currently... difficult to access, due to the nature of its storage and the location, but they were able to introduce the body of their oral history regarding their origins. Apparently, they were created when thinking beings begain to hide their feelings beneath social graces, but not as expressions of those masks. Rather, as the world's reactions to these masks, for every reaction produces a reaction in and of itself. This bears further inspection, though it will require some navigatorial... finagling.

As with many inhabitants of this plane, their appearance shifts slightly from meeting-to-meeting,my hypothesis being this is a result of the nature of the "plane," but individuals do retain enough aspects of their appearance to be recognizable to lay individuals upon repeat encounter.

Hopefully we will meet again, as the fellow who was my main contact; who's name was Cheribam, was quite a sanguine; gregarious individual and a gracious conversant even with my, admitted, relative lack of familiarity with the area!

Though, their sanguine nature does make me curious upon which aspect they "surface" in their interactions...

Oh silly me I am annoyed I forgot to ask. Well, perhaps next time.

-Xavier X. Xolomon , Monsterologist and Understudy to The Librarian Of Babel

------

So, because I haven't returned to the former for depressingly long despite how many pics I had for it ready to go, I decided to tie together my XXX Book of Monsters stuff and my Liminal Spaces stuff, because I thought it might at least make that return a bit less... jarring.

And also because I love worldbuilding-crossovers, UNIFIED SETTING FTW!

And yes, I did make Cheribam as a "basic" representative of those mask-creatures who keep showing up in my Liminal Space stuff, so there's a bit more info there!

In the interest of giving, this type of surreal-specimen is free to use as you see fit under a CC-BY 4.0 license so long as I; Thomas F. Johnson, am credited as their creator!

And, if you wanna support me, maybe check out my Patreon, or even just send a Ko-Fi my way! Every penny is appreciated, and I am eternally grateful for those who donate!

Or, if you wanna commission me for a pic like this, my commission info is thisaway!

[doorsclosingslowly]

tagged by the glorious @sl-walker

How many works do you have on AO3? 44

What’s your total AO3 word count? 265.827

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Star Wars, Shadow and Bone/Six of Crows, Supernatural. If we're counting stuff that never got polished enough to post, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Harry Potter, Cobra Kai, Lord of the Rings, Inu Yasha, .......

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

The blue man (Star Wars TFA; Kudos: 547)

Armor (Star Wars TFA; Kudos: 417)

Coarse and irritating (Star Wars TFA; Kudos: 358)

Head shot (Star Wars TFA Kudos: 344)

Reveille (Star Wars TFA; Kudos: 344)

All the same series!

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I respond but sometimes I'm super slow. I do appreciate every single comment and some of them I've read so often I can almost recite them, but I'm not actually good at making the words go (yeah I know I write for fun but that's one of the reasons why I'm such a slow writer, and also I love suffering)

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

They're both about Maul after losing to Sidious, which is such a miserable point in this life already: the one in which I made it Worse aka the OG zombie Savage fic, Coming home early is always a mistake, and then there's Maul decades after, trapped with something that might just be his brother, Keep quite still and wait

Do you write crossovers? If so what’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I invent crossovers to torture my best friend. In the last one, Gilgamesh was made Hokage. Generally though, I sometimes enjoy the characters-in-world-from-different-story type but I haven't written anything of the sort. Except! My Supernatural/Mines of Falun crossover. And I'm currently writing a Shadow and Bones fic with a de Sade pastiche in it. Those are my kind of crossover

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

I'm not remotely visible enough to get hate I think! Like, I generally get less than 500 hits, so why would anyone bother

Do you write smut? If so what kind?

I do write sexually explicit fic when the characters vibe with it (like From Each According to Their Ability, To Each According to Their Need which is Jesper/Kaz/Inej) but I would describe it as... more interested in the tenderness you get from being utterly weird in the way that makes your partners feel understood than in sexiness, I guess.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know. As I've said, I am a minuscule slug in a massive ocean

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Someone asked about translating Your death is a number but I cannot count that high into German! They haven't finished and sent me the link though, and really, I don't envy them. Translation's fucking hard

What’s your all time favorite ship?

I've never had one single favourite for anything in my life! I like way too many things

Whats a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

I genuinely plan to finish very single one of my million WIPs posted at some point. Yes, even Epicenter

What are your writing strengths?

Weird set-ups and texture through details maybe? Honestly being positive about myself is hard except in terms of: I do really like the ideas I come up with and how I'm spinning out the implications

What are your writing weaknesses?

Humour is super hard and not my strength, which means the fact I've decided that Jesper is the most interesting character in Shadow and Bone/Six of Crows should be classed as an act of self-harm. Honestly, why. Part of that struggle is that there's so many kinds of funny and in-between working out the character's sense of humour and trying really hard, I sometimes stop caring about what possible readers might find funny as long as I do.

Also, I'm slow. So slow. I plot several fics per week and take weeks to write a chapter

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I've written dialogue in other languages! Maul talking to Jagrub in Your death is a number but I cannot count that high, where Jagrub speaks way better Mando'a than basic and because Maul only half-understands some Mando'a words that's how I wrote it.

Death Watch must be getting impatient. As soon as Maul forces himself to raise his eyes—turning away from the coddling indifference of the holocam—Jagrub starts talking. “Mand’Alor? Vercop’ashnar verborir—” and then she lets out a jumble of other words, even more unfamiliar, before she cuts herself off.

She’s not one of those, usually, who address him directly. Maul understands Death Watch’s tendency to converse in Mando’a—if he is to avoid appearing an outsider and risking another schism, replying in kind is indispensable—but his early training held no space for anything that would not advance the revenge of the Sith, let alone the languages of minor regional hegemons, and neither Kast nor him prioritized resuming the lessons interrupted when Sidious attacked Sundari. Jagrub’s brow bunches up with the effort of simplifying her words to a level he can understand. “We should… Permission to send… scouts to find more of Rook’morut'yc?” A frustrated grunt. “No, what will he… Weapons? Goore.”

Kast glances at Jagrub, and then at Ventress. She must decide the suggestion is urgent, because she explains in Common, “Jagrub is talking of slugthrowers. Impossible to deflect with a lightsaber. Mandalore has not fought a war against the Jedi in centuries, but they were more effective than blasters then, and enough should remain as heirlooms or in museums to furnish our army. A delay of a few days to retrieve them, if you believe that Savage will survive that long. Else, we’ll make do with the five we currently have.”

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

I've been spinning off stories from what I've read for as long as I can remember. The first thing I actually wrote and posted was an Inu Yasha fan comic about extremely minor characters the Shichinintai, because even as a thirteen-year-old I was niche

What’s your favorite fic that you’ve written?

I love most of them, but the ones that made me dive really into myself are probably my favourite. Your death is a number, Down in the Ground where the Dead Men Go, Riches and Wonders, To Each According to Their Ability

tagging @expatgirl @humanformdragon @submeowchinegun @skitter-kitteruwu @pomodoriyum @merfilly

[justawordwright]

The Mechanisms and Exponentially Growing Fic Archives

So, I started reading Mechanisms fanfic probably around mid 2014. It was a fairly quiet time for the Tag – there were maybe fifteen fics in total and it was generally about a year between each new fic. Subjects were biased towards the Crew and the first two albums (High Noon had only just been released).

Cut to the last couple of weeks. There are 164 works in the tag as of me starting writing this (I was grabbing data at 2-3pm GMT 08/03/2020), with a number of other works under the Bifrost and OUTIS tags but not the umbrella Mechanism tag.

In the time it took me to grab the data and write this, four new fics were posted. (Last I checked, there are more every time I check)

It feels a little like I’ve blinked and the fandom has exploded with new work.

Anyway, that left me wondering just exactly what the data looked like, and whether the Magnus Archives has had much of an effect. Thus, I’ve compiled the data below. The graphs are here, go see it on AO3 here for the numerical data.

The Fic Explosion

Here you can see the timeline of the growth of the fandom, and the effect the Death to the Mechanisms gig had.

Death to the Mechanisms was announced on July 30th 2019 and led to a small but steady amount of new fic being posted. The gig (split over the 18th and 19th of Jan 2020) itself has led to a more-than-exponential growth in the number of fics – there were 54 prior to the gig, there are 164 now so that the number has tripled!

I wondered if the Magnus Archives were having a knock on effect into the Mechanisms - TMA is a lot more popular (probably due to its distribution method and being a lot less niche than steampunk pirates singing concept albums) and it does seem like some fans are looking into Jonny’s back catalogue. However, while the Mech fic numbers show the same growth the Magnus Archives fandom is showing, there is no real jump in the number of Mechanism fics being posted when the Magnus Archives saw a sharp increase in its posting rate in late 2017. 

There are a number of 21 crossover fics between TMA and the Mechanisms (about 1/8th of the total Mechanism content), which vary in being crossovers between the two universes or just have the Mechs band as part of Jon’s backstory, while 12 TMA fics are tagged as having Jon/Basira as having been in the Mechanisms as a Uni band (there is some intersection in these two sets, and the 12 fics has to be an estimation as there is no agreed upon tag, and none of the ones in use are large enough to have been synonymised). So there is definitely evidence in the fic that there’s a fan crossover (which is also well documented pretty much everywhere else in the Mechs fandom now as well).

Furthermore, taking a random sample of 15 of the 100 most recent Mechanisms fics (and luckily getting no author repeats), 8 of those authors also wrote for TMA, and of those 8, 6 wrote for the Magnus Archives first, with one doing a TMA/Mechanisms crossover. This isn’t a sufficiently large data set to get anything statistically significant out, but it is possible that the TMA fans are of a demographic more likely to write fanfic, and are making up a large quantity of the new fic. If so, I’m not sure why this didn’t trigger earlier, but it may be down to the fact that Death to the Mechanisms is the first (and last) of their big gigs in two years, so the first TMA fans got a chance to go to.

The fact that Bifrost is the most popular of the albums, and the popularity of Lyf’s character may also be an indicator of this, given the album’s similarities to TMA. The amazing thing about this data though, is that if the current growth rate is sustained, the prediction is that there will be 400 fics by the end of the month, and 500 by the first week of next month... 

Fic Topics

Mech fic is either about the Crew or about one of the albums. Early on, things skewed towards OUTIS space content, but Bifrost seems to have grown rapidly, and of course now the TMA crossovers are occuring. More crew-fic is being written, and this also seems to include a number of people’s ‘mech-personas’ or collective OCs.

This is backed up relatively well by the characters involved,

with Jonny being the most popular crew member and Lyf being the most popular of the non-crew characters.

Other Fun Facts

- Once Lyf/Marius gets properly cannonised as a searchable tag, they will equal the amount of Auroa/Nastya fic on the Archive, the current most popular relationship tag.

- The most common tag is Canon Typical Violence (36). Unsurprising.

- Then Angst (17). Also unsurpring.

- Then Hurt/Comfort (15). Then Fluff (13). This says a lot about the fandom, probably. 

Conclusions

This was mostly done for personal satisfaction, but I’ve posted as others will probably also find it interesting. There was no computer aided data grabbing, so I’ve almost certainly made a few mistakes combining different tags together given that AO3 doesn’t filter out all the crossovers in the umbrella tag for the smallest albums. At some point I may come back to revisit it with a proper data trawler and more thorough stats, but that will likely be once we’ve had chance to see if current posting trends sustain themselves or not.

[nny11writes]

For the fic writer ask game: What’s a trope that you’d like to never hear about as long as you live, let alone write? (Feel free to rant :) )

Hahahaha, sorry were you looking for one trope? 

I’m usually so positive so now you’ve done it. You’ve unlocked me complaining about random shit that doesn’t usually matter. Because the damn busted wide the fuck open! Okay, so I’m going to approach this as outside of smut fics with intense kinks I can’t stand (vore, foot fetish, scat play, etc), because that’s me getting squicked and/or triggered and not just tropes that I wish would die in a fire.

My only disclaimer up front is that if you love most of these (hopefully it’ll be obvious which ones I will not forgive/excuse you from), that’s awesome! Go for it! Read it, write it, print it out to loving re-read and paste on the walls! Fandom is, in large part, about finding your niche and enjoying what you enjoy pretty much shamelessly. So I’m not passing judgement on anyone who enjoys reading or writing (most of) these.

CW: rape, sexual assault Also I’ve had a shit few days, so if you don’t want to read someone just being negative and bitching this is probably not the post for you friend. But it all below a cut so people can avoid!

Crossover Fics/Rule 50

My main gripe with this is that without fail a series I love get crossed over with a fandom I either don’t care about or hate. Every time I’ve tried to force myself to read one it’s never worked out for me. Sometimes fics aren’t properly tagged and I’m getting into the setting only for other characters from another fandom to suddenly show up and literally I instantly loose interest. The closest I got to writing a crossover fic, was on FF.net where I had all the characters I wrote for “talking to me” when I hit a big wall of writer’s block in the hopes that writing something so different and strange for me would help. It didn’t. It was interesting for 0.2 seconds to wonder how characters would interact, but then I instantly lost interest because I end up leaning so heavily of character tropes to make it work which, for me, isn’t fun to read or write.

Like, just write fusion! I like fusion! I’m currently writing a SPOP-SW fusion! It allows me to play with characters in a fun world that I already understand, but without the frustration of characters becoming more 2D or very OOC (or both) to force them to interact with one another. Rage Fics

Honestly? If you write and post rage fics, fuck you. Full stop. Fuck you. 

I’m about to tangent, but I swear it’s related. This is the equivalent of someone tagging a character or ship or fandom they hate in a post bashing them or blasting them to hell and back. Fucking beyond rude and obnoxious. That’s what rage fics are cranked up to 11. You are 100% allowed to hate on fandom/character/ship/trope/whatever the fuck, but when you do that shit you are forcing people who enjoy the media to see/interact with your BS because you fucking tagged it to show up where we are. A great example here in SPOP is Catra. I love her! I understand why some people don’t, and they’re 100% allowed to hate her and resent that so many people like her. Recently I went to the Catra tag to find art and fic, maybe some of the top notch meta this fandom puts out if I was lucky, and got stuck seeing post after post after meta post comparing her to another character in the show to explain why she’s an awful person, badly written character, and anyone who likes her (but didn’t like the poster’s fave) was an idiot/asshole/troll/bitch/dumbass and you know what? I went from having a decent time decompressing after a shitty day at work to getting fucking sent around the sun with stress. Like, bro, I’m here to ENJOY myself thanks, and when you tag things I go to for fun and fluff when I’m out of spoons and ready to snap to ranting about hating it, you make me want to scream.

Y’all don’t know how many people are lucky that I write up responses in word so I can get it out of my system and then just DELETE the whole fucking thing. Rage fic is that same fucking set up, but instead of being a relatively quick post (where I can block the poster here on tumblr), it’s a fanfic that people are going to continue to click into over and over and over again for fun only to get body slammed. There’s no way to warn people on AO3 if something is a rage fic beyond not leaving a kudos and dropping a comment. I don’t know a lot of people who read comments first so it doesn’t always work. 

If you post rage fics, grow up. Stop that shit. Fuck you. Instead, try not purposefully interacting with fandom that makes you so mad that you think doing this is an appropriate reaction. Block tags, block users, regulate comments, go whole fucking hog. You should be able to enjoy fandom too! But if you can’t do that without tearing down other people in fandom then you make me want to beat you over the head until you self-isolate to play by yourself in a different sandbox. Seriously. Fuck you if you do this.

Troll Fics

Did you think I came on strong for rage fics? This is worse. 

If you do this? Fuck you. You get NOTHING but my pure rage and if I find this shit I will report you however I can and then shout from the rooftops about it. And I’m sure if you do write troll fics because you enjoy being purposefully offensive and triggering then you’re probably delighted that my reaction to just thinking about this is wishing I had the power to fuck up your life. 

Like, the ONLY thing I can say for rage fic is that at least typically the person writing it actually enjoys some aspect of the fandom or fandom in general. 

Troll fics are just meant to be offensive on purpose and if you write and post that you’re a bad person. No exceptions. You can make different choices and work to become a better person or a good person, but right now, right this second as you do it? You’re a bad person. You should probably figure out why you get so much joy out of posting things with the sole purpose of hurting/triggering/being cruel to others. And you might need help to do that. I legit think you should reach out to people with different opinions from your own to try and break out of it. Get a therapist. Do fucking something worthwhile, because posting troll fics is not worth anyone’s while. Fuck you. Rape as a Backstory

I hope I don’t have to fucking explain why this makes me want to literally explode. I’m purposefully not writing that as R*pe so that people with rape tagged don’t see this.

If you think that rape is the only way to push your story forward or is a great way to give a character “free and easy trauma”, literally stop. Just. Fucking. Stop. There are other ways. Really look at your work, really think about /why/ it’s so important to you that the character /has/ to be raped. Most of the time the real answer is you don’t have a reason you just chose it because you either don’t care, think it’s not a big deal, or never considered other possibilities. There are stories where rape does need to be included, stories that address the topic kindly and/or tag appropriately for it. I’ve read some of these that were really amazing, both short (<1k) and long (>100k) because the author actually took a hot second to address the topic in an intelligent way. Whether that was to dive into how it’s harmful, address their own trauma, or (honestly) even for the smut porn of it but with all the proper tags on it. If you have it to be purely enjoyed by yourself and/or others with dubcon or noncon kinks, cool, good for you, TAG IT APPROPRIATELY. Fucking bless writers who still use “Dead Dove/Do Not Eat” tags y’all are doing great work. But the vast majority using this trope? 

They aren’t that, they aren’t anything like that at all, they aren’t always tagged correctly or at all and that’s by design, it’s often for shock value or a quick ‘well that’s why they’re anti-social’, it’s sometimes used as an excuse for one character to swear off sex until the “right person” comes along to “cure them”, and they shouldn’t have ever been posted.

Redemption Equals Sex/Sexual Karma

I know this is spring boarding a bit, but please stop writing these two tropes. 

I’m exhausted  y’all. And not just because I’m asexual. This trope is disgusting and usually comes with heaps of sexism, racism, and homophobia. If you want to write smut please just write the fucking smut. I’m literally posting smut fic and am planning to work on another one tonight! JUST WRITE SMUT WITHOUT MAKING IT DISGUSTINGLY ANTI-MINORITY GROUPS AND PLAYING INTO HARMFUL STEREOTYPES.  If bad guys become good(ish) guys because a woman saw past their barriers, took care of them, are a surrogate mother, and then had wild and kinky sex with them then it’s a bad fic. Likewise, if a character is punished for having sex, or is sexually assaulted to show that they’re now bad then it’s a bad fic.

If a character’s suffering is rewarded with sex to “cure” them and “make them better” then it’s a bad fic.

There are so many ways that this shit becomes a seriously harmful fic.

Please. Please, stop doing this. I am on my knees. Stop!

I am sick of ‘Draco’s in Leather Pants’ (can’t fucking believe I’m whipping that term out again holy shit what year is it) getting redeemed because they slept with someone and now found a reason to care. Sex leading someone on the path towards redemption is so EXTREMELY rarely handled in a way that’s well done. Just. Don’t. Be an unapologetic villain lover, slap them in an AU where they aren’t a pure villain, but don’t do this. Like I wrote above, I’m also just sick of (usually, but not always) dudes who put rape in to punish (usually, but not always) female characters or to punish weak/pushover characters (usually, but not always males). And equally tired of traumatized characters “casting off their shackles” to enjoy wild and kinky sex because someone with a magic dick/strap/fingers/tongue “showed them it’s okay” and “made it all better”.

Just, don’t. Be a fucking decent human being and don’t.

Character/Reader Fics

I...I really just don’t get this? It’s very uncomfortable to me and I’m assuming that’s due to me being aroace, I can’t read them and if I try to I either become so uncomfortable I stop or so rage filled I stop. 

I don’t mind 2nd person stories, but most of the ones I see are character/reader fics and it’s...like, it’s just bad. Not “cringe” just enjoyable for me. I can’t explain why I hate this so much considering I do enjoy some 2nd person fics. Idk, I really don’t have the words to explain why these bother me so much. :\

I ain’t got an alternative, if you like these you like them, and if you don’t you just don’t. Thank you for tagging so I can avoid. Have fun on your own! Song Fics and/or Audio/Sound Cue Fics

Sorry guys, I just hate it. I can’t really read a fic and listen to music at the same time, it becomes background noise 100% and detracts from both for audio cue fics.

Fuck, just realized I don’t know if people know what those are. Audio/Sound cue fics are fics where you’re reading along and all the sudden there’s a link or URL that you’re supposed to follow to help set up the next scene/enhance it. Hate it. Hate, hate, hate. It detracts from your story and makes it weaker while being annoying and breaking me the reader out of my enjoyment of your story. Hate! Telling me in the A/N that this (or these) are the song(s) you listened to while writing, song(s) you based the story on, or even that you think they’re good songs to get you in the mood for the story is totally okay! I’ll probably ignore it unless I went head over heels for it, in which case I WILL go back and listen to all of them. (Why hello Rhythm and Blues, you punched me in the face and I now listen to every song even vaguely mentioned in the story or A/N, you’re that good, it’s so fucking good guys, I can’t stop talking about this fucking series it’s just so good?????????) Song fics are also typically in this boat for me. And I want to be really clear, not fics where a character is singing in the fic with lyrics written out. That doesn’t bother me, that song is now effectively part of the story and draws me in. But if it’s paragraphs of description before suddenly cutting it’s annoying. Why, oh why, do I put up with this misery? Still looking for a reason For now it is a mystery to me Why, oh why, do I put up with this misery? Still looking for a reason But for now it's ancient history to me

So yeah I’m making an example to complain about the example. 

But question. 

Was that needed? 

All I did was make overly explicit my feelings in this text that was already there in what I’d written. Song fics feel to me like writers who aren’t confident that their writing is good/understandable/relatable and so they are desperately throwing someone else’s creation into their own in the hopes the reader will get it. Friend, I promise you, we’ll get it without the song! The song lyrics detract when they’re just floating out there, and have taken goods fics and made them frustrating. Either that or you think you’re so amazing that your shit don’t stink and the rest of us idiots can choke because of your brilliance. I’ve found several song fics that if I copy and paste them into a word document and delete the song out, I really enjoyed the fic itself on it’s own merits in a way I literally couldn’t with the lyrics in there. Again, if you are weaving music into your fic, weave it in. Have characters sing, write the lyrics out as a character is listening to the music, quote the song in your fic (preferably without it being super obvious. I’m not saying my take on that was the best, but I did write a Catradora fic on giftly request based on a song and I 100% used lyrics from it in my prose and built my whole plot around it without breaking out to quote the song explicitly), just do something that’s not, like, punching me in the face because “clearly I couldn’t get it” or from a fear that “they won’t understand”. At best you seem insecure and unsure about your story, which is fantastic without the song. At worst it seems like you’re saying your fic is so beyond the average reader that we would never understand your vision without someone else’s original content in it.

[shadowsong26fic]

Precipice Deleted Scene!

So, I have an AU outline coming up, sometime in the next couple of days depending on how quickly I finish it. But since that is a) Spite Fic(tm); b) not Star Wars and, in fact, based in a fandom I left a while ago that I’m pretty sure none of you are in; and c) a niche crossover on top of that...

Uh. Yeah. As a thank you to y’all for sitting through my self-indulgent nonsense later, I thought I’d post this! Which I’d been kind of thinking about sharing anyway, even before the Spite Fic(tm) came up.

Below the cut is an early version of Anakin’s half of the most recent Precipice chapter. Parts of this were written back during NaNo, and then bits and pieces over December and January. It’s also part of why this chapter took so long (almost a month as opposed to the 1-2 weeks I’d been shooting for)--the bulk of Padme’s half was actually complete last November, I just had to rework the opening and add a conclusion and a few other editing details. But the original version of Anakin’s half just...wouldn’t come together. And I think part of that was because it ended up feeling kind of redundant--it was Anakin, Obi-Wan, Rex, and Ahsoka meeting up and debriefing, so while some of the information was news to them, pretty much none of it was news to the reader. Also, braiding together the bits and pieces I’d written wasn’t working/the conversation wasn’t really flowing. Plus, the Anakin and Beru scene fit better with what was going on in Padme’s part. I actually made the decision to switch...I wanna say three days before I posted? And it just...flew. So, yeah, there’s that.

Anyway, there are a couple bits in here that I really like, and...well, if any of y’all wanted a look at my Process, so to speak, this actually might give some insight? It’s all pretty rough, and I’m leaving in my notes to myself so you can maybe get an idea of the kind of piecemeal ways I put together chapters.

Feel free to comment/ask questions/offer insights about your own process, if you wanna use this post as a jumping-off point for that!

Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Leia didn’t meet Ahsoka and Rex at Dr. Naar’s--in the interest of protecting their emergency medic, as a rule, none of them went there unless they actually needed his help.

Instead, beyond a brief coded “all-clear,” they waited to properly check in until they were all back at the farm.

[Which was not easy, waiting that long to really confirm that Rex was okay. Not that Anakin thought he wasn’t, exactly--even with everything else that had gone on this week, he’d’ve sensed it if his friend were in serious trouble--but, yeah, there was a difference between knowing and knowing, even with the Force to help. And he had lost too damn many friends over the years to be comfortable waiting for news.] [POSSIBLY CUT. PROBABLY CUT.]

Rex looked more or less okay, which was a relief. He was leaning pretty heavily on a set of crutches, but upright and moving more or less under his own power.

“You all right?” Anakin asked, quietly.

“Yeah,” he said. “Back to normal in a week or two, probably. As long as I don’t do anything stupid.” This last, he said with a somewhat pointed look that was probably supposed to be a Hint, which Anakin blissfully ignored.

“Glad to hear it, Captain,” he said, with a brief hand on his good shoulder.

[TRANSITION]

“How’d everything go?” Ahsoka asked, settling in on the floor, cross-legged.

“Pretty much as well as we’d hoped,” Anakin said. “Padme and Luke are--they’re--amazing. And Padme sends her love.”

Ahsoka nodded. “Good.”

“And with Saw?” Obi-Wan asked.

“About as well as we’d expected,” Rex said, and Ahsoka nodded.

“He’s holding back a little, not interested in a full commitment right now, but he’s keeping lines of communication open,” she added.

“We also ran into a massive hyperdrive, half-built. We blew it up, and managed to pull some data on our way out,” Rex said. “It might tie into some of the leads you’ve been chasing down?” [REWORD A LITTLE]

“Possibly,” Obi-Wan said. “Likely, even. I’m still working on fitting the various puzzle pieces together, but this will probably help. It’s certainly something we should keep an eye out for. If we’re looking at a question of scale…”

“I agree,” Rex said. “I’m not as up on the latest capital ship tech as I’d like to be, but the drive I saw was bigger than anything that’s probably coming out for the next generation or two. Unless it’s not for a capital ship at all, but for something different.”

Not good. Whatever the Chancellor wanted to move en masse probably meant bad things for the rest of the galaxy.

“We should have Artoo sift through the data,” Anakin said. “We still might not have enough for the full picture, but if anyone can get there, he can.” Besides, they had left him with Owen and Beru while they were off on Alderaan, and Artoo had made it very clear that he had been hopelessly bored by the tasks the Larses had found for him, and was looking forward to having something more interesting to do.

Well, that hadn’t been exactly how he’d put it, but that was the gist, anyway.

[EHHHH REWORK A BIT. ANOTHER TRANSITION]

“Anything about the bombing?” Anakin asked. He’d promised Luke he’d find out as much as he could, after all.

“Saw knew who was responsible,” Ahsoka said. “He wouldn’t give us a name, said his friend was probably dead so there wasn’t much point. He wasn’t involved directly, but he was invited along.”

“That’s something, at least,” he said.

“Bail’s network didn’t have much, either,” Obi-Wan added, “other than a possible break-in at ISB around the same time. He wasn’t sure whether the kidnapping or the break-in was the feint.”

“That ties to what Saw was telling me,” Ahsoka said. “And from what he said, the kidnapping was the distraction. Or added bonus, or something. He said he told them to try for an actual target, one that was worth their time. Tarkin or somebody, not the kid.”

“Gerrera doesn’t have many limits,” Rex said. “And it’s even odds or better there’s gonna be a point where even those go away. But at least for now, he has a thing about kids. Pretty sure he’s concerned about setting a precedent.”

Ahsoka nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “He has a kid with him,” she added, for Obi-Wan and Anakin’s benefit. “Couple years older than Leia. He focused on her every time the bombing came up.”

[EHHHH, SOMETHING ALONG THOSE LINES.]

[SOMEWHERE IN HERE GOES THE FOLLOWING:]

“We ran into Infernalis,” Ahsoka said, and the room stilled a bit.

Anakin found himself absently resting a hand on his left thigh, where the prosthetic met what was left of his natural leg. It hadn’t bothered Padme--which he hadn’t really been worried about, except that it bothered him more than his arm ever had. Not for any physical reason, exactly; while it wasn’t quite as high-quality as the arm, the neural mapping in the leg Bail had found for him was good enough that he didn’t have too many issues with phantom pain or other problems that lower-end prosthetics couldn’t help. But there was a difference.

Maybe it was just that there had been problems he hadn’t had the first time--complications, delays, accidentally terrifying Leia the way he had--and he couldn’t completely get those fuzzy, awful days out of his head. Or maybe it was just that Specter bothered him more than Dooku ever had.

It didn’t really matter, anyways. Generally speaking, it wasn’t enough to really cause him problems, except when he let himself start brooding about it. Which happened less and less often.

He shook it off pretty quickly--he didn’t think the others had noticed he’d gotten distracted, or that he’d missed any of the conversation. Good. I’m getting better at this. […NOT SURE ABOUT THIS ONE. ALSO MAYBE MOVE IT?]

“Did you engage?” Obi-Wan asked.

She shook her head. “Not directly. Ship-to-ship combat only. Rex took out his hyperdrive and we left.”

Which was what they were supposed to do, as bitter a pill it was to swallow. They had all agreed, after…after Specter, not to engage any of the Chancellor’s apprentices without backup, if at all possible. And, while Rex would have counted on a good day, he was hurt. Pursuing Infernalis, if they hadn’t been able to shoot him down and take him out that way, might have gotten one or both of them killed. Ahsoka had made the right call.

Even if it meant leaving Saw and his people, plus a planet full of civilians, at risk.

“There are too few of us left,” Obi-Wan had said; and Master Yoda had agreed. And they weren’t wrong, but at the same time… [MAYBE MOVE THE BIT ABOUT LEG/PHANTOM PAINS/SPECTER/WHATEVER HERE?]

“Were you able to warn the others?” Anakin asked.

She shook her head. “We didn’t want to draw attention with a beacon,” Ahsoka said. “But he had a couple evacuation plans already in place, and he’s not stupid. I think he’ll be okay.”

“He knows how to reach out to us,” Rex said. “We’ll find out sooner or later.”

Obi-Wan nodded. “We will hope for the best.”

There wasn’t much else they could do, other than head back as a group and try to hunt Infernalis down, but Anakin didn’t bother to suggest it. At best, heading back would accomplish exactly nothing other than wasted time. At worst, Infernalis had had time to set a trap for them.

[THAT…WENT SO MUCH BETTER IN MY HEAD UGH. POSSIBLY JUST REWORK IT FOR ONE OF THE OTHERS’ POV? AHSOKA MAYBE?]

[wariofranchisefanblog]

My support for 9-Volt for Super Smash Bros Ultimate

Rounding out the quartet of my most desired Wario character for Smash options, is none other then Nintendo's greatest fanboy: 9-Volt!

Now, 9-Volt is kind of funny to discuss, considering his theme, but one step at a time:

Previous history with Smash

In Brawl 9-Volt was the other Ware character besides Mona to get two stickers, rather then just one, while For gave him a cameo on the Gamer stage and a trophy, shared with his mom 5-Volt.

Nothing too impressive, but it's better then no acknowledgement at all.

He fits into the Nintendo crossover concept

Goes without saying. 9-Volt's entire theme is Nintendo. All his games are Nintendo themed. His name literally is a reference to the operating voltage of the NES.

The guy is literally a walking reference to all things Nintendo, in a very meta sense too, it's so surprising that such a character has not even gotten a Assist Trophy so far,

The Nintendo theme is a part of WarioWare

9-Volt's theme stand out as the only one besides Wario's to be kept around for all future games, to the point where Do it Yourself Showcase gave 18-Volt his own stage, so both versions of DIY could have Nintendo stages and WarioWare Gold took it even further, by giving all three Volts their own stages.

It doesn't just end there, Mega Microgames featured several unlockable bonus games in a Wario version, including a port of Sheriff of all games, Game & Wario has more then a few Game & Watch homages and references and WarioWare Gold outright has several souvenirs that are only there to detail Nintendo's products of the past, including many-non gaming ones.

WarioWare has done a fair bit to outright celebrate Nintendo's history and nobody represents that part of the series better then 9-Volt.

His stages are iconic to WarioWare

Goes hand in hand with the above, the Nintendo theme is the microgame type that people remember the most and Gamer is a particularly recent example of 9-Volt's stage becoming the most well known part of a WW installment, to the point where it returned in Gold and became a stage in Smash.

Moveset potential

It goes without saying that 9-Volt's moveset would be filled with Nintendo references.

Many would point towards the idea of his moveset centering around retro game references, what I'd like to see however is him having a moveset that's centered around Nintendo's non-gaming products, such as the Ultra Hand, maybe mixed with some game references, for good meassure. Either way, this is a niche that Smash hasn't covered at all yet and it would make 9-Volt a great way to represent a different part of Nintendo's history, in a way that nobody else can.

Also. depending on how you go about it you could also make him a duo character with 18-Volt, opening up more ways to play with his moveset ideas.

Popularity among WarioWare fans and general appeal

Of course WarioWare fans love him, after all his stages are arguably the most beloved of them all and there is a good reason why there are several Nintendo stages in Gold. Even outside of the WarioWare fanbase his Nintendo nerd theme makes him inherently interesting to anyone who is invested in the company's history, since he could cover literally any part of it.

9-Volt is my favorite Ware character, aside from the big W himself and he really feels like someone who should have a place in a game that's about bringing as many Nintendo franchises as possible together, but who knows, maybe he will have a bigger role in Ultimate. I'd certainly like it, even an Assist Trophy.

[vrcomputart]

12.11.18

ASMR RESEARCH FOR GROUP PROJECT

Now You’ve Got the Shiveries: Affect, Intimacy, and the ASMR Whisper Community by Joceline Andersen 11/11/14

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1527476414556184

ASMR - intention, affect

-          This paper “examine[s] how ASMR videos create pleasure through a distant intimacy that relies on the heteronormative gender roles of care and the aural impression of the whisper for its implementation and how their shared space on YouTube further defines that intimacy as public and communal”

-          The ASMR community creates and exchanges videos designed to trigger tingles through screens, denying its nonnormative intimate nature and “the transgressiveness of their digital pleasure”

-          Relaxing head tingles helps with stress and insomnia, inducing comfort and bliss

-          “In the case of ASMR, affect and emotion exist hand in hand, tethered by intentionality, memory, and nostalgia. In this paper, I will explore the connotations of intimacy and care that create the affective ASMR experience to examine the ASMR community on YouTube as sharing in a public and therefore nonnormative experience of distant intimacy that reflects, if reluctantly, the potential of digital communities to make us feel”

-          Aural triggers eg whispering, rustling paper, tapping are physiologically charged - an affective experience (Massumi)

-          “the intention of care has a role in the way that these experiences manifest an affective experience with a content of pleasure.” Some videos role-play everyday tasks, including sounds we may find annoying in our day-to-day lives, but the intention the viewer brings in (to relax) and the assumed intention of the creator (to help others relax) changes the experience to that of care

-          Founder of ASMR research called it “a more polite term for ‘orgasm’. Tenuous links between sensation and science – it is claimed to be an autonomous response, but is ultimately fringe science similar to binaural beat listeners, which brings us back to the point about intentionality. Perhaps it is more of a placebo, and more about the community formed?

Community and Youtube

-          ASMR is a public phenomemon, as it spread across all social media and not just niche sites: “The ASMR community is aligned not only by their quest for affective experience but by their desire to share it through online media…” 

-          Youtube is a big part of the community’s formation -  “youtube is the most public home of asmr”, “an archive and a site of creative exchange”

The voice

-          Usually delivered by female creators. Role-played performance rather than cold instructions. 

-          Voice is important – videos often only show certain body parts (hands, mouth). Focus directed to actions and gesures. Close-ups jar familiar conventions of how a person is framed on a screen. Meditative attention on body parts, sometimes to the point of abstraction. 

-          Sound over video: binaural recording is getting more popular;  “increasingly sophisticated audioscapes while the video quality remains poor. The video component is secondary to the experience and exists primarily because of the affordances of YouTube”

-          Whisper as powerful in a hypersonic world. The whisper requires a closeness between speaker and listener for communication. Connotations to intimate relationships like mother and child (or conversations you have at sleepovers with friends). “The whisper recreates intimacy without the need for physical presence”

-          Whisper demands more attention, so the listener is more intent on sounds, and considering most people use headphones, the effect of whispers in one’s ear are more intense. Private and intimate exchange despite it being public.

-          Quality of voice as carrier of meaning, rather than the words themselves. 

-          The whisperer is ‘hyper-present’, creating an intimacy, a presence made possible thru binaural mics and immersive headphone sound. Affect involves impressions, impression implies contact. Movement creates emotional content. 2 bodies are connected, are able to impress upon another.

Impression and non-normative intimacy

-          Impression created thru affect at a distance is crucially aural. Body casts its impression thru voice. Voice implies flesh body. Listening as act of touch (sound waves). Thus impressions are created through the voice and video (though video is not as affective as we’ve discussed above)

-          Affective impression at a distance – distant intimacy. Close personal attention is a trigger that suggests physical proximity, but is remotely evoked through video. And distant not only spacially but temporally too – you can watch a video a year later after it was released.

Distant intimacy can be useful for people who maybe experience social anxiety or cannot physically experience intimacy. Maybe it’s good cause it’s controlled (you choose when to watch, can pause if needed). And from the other side, you make one video and can touch many. Like an artwork, an encounter, a ‘disruptive’ force in a way.

Also interesting considering the emphasis placed on romantic, sexual relationships as the main, most valid source of intimacy and care. What about friendships and other platonic relationships? And what about a collective sense of care i.e. you don’t need to know someone personally to care about them

-          Distant intimacy – experienced as a group in absence of normal definitions of physical proximity make it “nonstandard intimacy”

-          Intimate experiences in heteronormative culture are limited to couples in private. So you can’t experience pleasure with strangers, especially sexual pleasure. ASMR falls into a zone  where “the spillage of eroticism into everyday social life seems transgressive in a way that provokes normal aversion”

-          ASMR pleasure ranges from relaxation to eroticism. A lot of creators claim it is non-sexual. The affective charge of ASMR emerges w/o standard ‘closeness’ (not in romantic couple context, not physically close in proximity) – so it is reluctantly placed in nonstandard intimacy.

-          Even though it is non-normative, creators still rely on normative scenarios of intimacy to provide emotional content behind the affective charge. Intimate care is provided by females. There is often a child-mother relationship being built between viewer and creator. Even when men make these videos, they participate in tasks gendered as female.

But female creators are choosing to do this – some empowerment? Do they get paid?

Summary: digital and physical

-          Tho enabled thru tech, ASMR still relies on attention to the body and its sensations. Exists thru video streaming platforms, low tech, is sensual thru reclaiming care paradigms of personal attention, touch and meditation thru distant intimacy. In sci-fi, digital pleasure enabled thru computers – films that imagine pleasure as a drug that hooks the brain to a computer, “a cyborg high”. Asmr stands between – addiction is not only pleasure but intimacy, relationship is not only distant but anonymous.

-          Ideal cyborg – uses computer to reinstate the body in shared experiences, rather than leaving out the body purely for mental digital experience. ASMR follows this dictum to the letter, uniting a group of people who use the archive provided by the Internet to focus intensely on a sensation triggered by the impression of a body transmitted through the ear in a nonnormative public experience of pleasure and distant intimacy.

-          Asmr relies on the intimacy and care. Relaxation carried through emotional content, not just the sounds. Asmr uses tech to create new access to pleasure. “the ASMR community allows us to examine what intimacy will look like as we are increasingly linked to each other through the Internet rather than in person.”

-          Distant intimacy breaks with heteronormative culture, releasing a digital-enabled intimacy that is a queer intimacy. While ASMR videos as shared on YouTube draw on real-world paradigms of care, the attachments that ASMRers have to videos beyond their sensory power helps us as media scholars to envision a future where these queer experiences of computer-enabled intimacy are as emotionally compelling as those of maternal care, personal touch, or sex. Whatever the affect created, it is clear that distant intimacy carries emotional value, and that these sensations can be released, by strangers and acquaintances, remotely through digital networks.

There are more noteworthy things to discuss, but I’ll end the notes here as there is already more than enough to digest.

Ideas

Create art that lies between ASMR, oddly satisfying videos (another topic I researched that felt close to ASMR), trance/visionary art aesthetic, music video, and modern witchcraft – providing vids that can be of service, as a form of queer care (nonstandard intimacy). Because for me, behind art, is a desire to relieve suffering through providing pleasure, a desire to care for the world and its creatures, to disrupt the status quo.

Maybe create a device or a platform/software to share the videos in their own context?

[bellatrixobsessed1]

Mon Chéri

Oh boy crossover smut! And this time without a request for it. Kind of a practice for original story scenes. So feedback is appreciated, though I’m not sure how well received this kind of work is in this fandom. I’m planning on doing a less smutty Icy/Nerissa thing in the future.

Basically Nerissa is a succubus and Icy has the misfortune of finding out.

Her eyes were a blue as vivid as Icy’s were pale. That’s where the initial allure had come from, this strangely primitive need to mingle sapphire shades with frosty pastels. She was an older woman, older than Icy anyhow, and that’s where the second intrigue stemmed from. The third? That was the woman’s overall atmosphere; she seemed to radiate something deeply dark and richly powerful. She was like Darcy but with a touch of uncanny wisdom. Undoubtably, she has seen things many people haven’t the chance.

 Why the woman chose dwell on Earth, Icy—reaped of her magic and forced to spend her time there—had yet to piece together, somehow, she didn’t want to. She wanted to keep as much mystery to the woman as possible. That was her appeal. Icy didn’t hadn’t known if she’d even wanted a name, but she had gotten one. Nerissa, the woman was Nerissa. Nerissa who fancied expensive champagnes and fine satin cloth.

 For nights Icy had spent her time in a lavish manor, gothic in nature with towering spires and arching columns. Fixed into the exterior walls were carved mid-relief murals; many featured horn beings with mouthfuls of gore. Others depicted darkly angelic beings with sweeping feathered. One or two displayed a bare-chested woman in the sensual grasp of another more imposing woman. Above the main door was an elegant mascaron; the beautiful but dismal face of a woman, eyes closed and stained in such a way that it seemed as though she were weeping. Every other spire hosted a sitting place for bat-winged gargoyles with uncannily human faces. It was the kind of place Icy would have chosen given the cash to do so, though she thought that the place could use a touch of winter.

 The woman had lead her through the doors to reveal an interior was wrought with crystalline chandeliers fixed into a coffered ceiling that cast prismic fractals. The walls were pocked with niches that housed candles in onyx’s holders, decorative champagne flutes, ornate boxes, and other trinkets. Every single door Icy made her way through was of ebony wood and accented by lace-like steel. She turned knobs of ruby. This woman had expensive taste and the funding to support it.

 On most nights Nerissa would pick her way through a book with old spines and foreign text. Maybe French, maybe Latin. Icy had only a very basic inkling about the languages of Earth. The dark-haired woman spoke little but when she did, it was in a very thick Greek tongue. Another mystery, as they were  nestled deep within the wooded Krkonoše mountains of The Czech Republic. Icy decided that the woman must study in linguistics.

 Nerissa eyed her from across the room, tapping well-manicured and graceful fingers atop her armrests. With every dull motion, one of her jeweled rings would catch the light and cast a new array of rainbow reflections. She stole a sip from her goblet, a dribble of red graced the corner of her mouth, but only briefly before she licked it away.

 “What language is that?” Icy finally questioned.

 The woman brought her pointer to her lips, apparently, she had a silence that she wanted to uphold. Her gaze fell back to the book in question, leaving Icy to cross her arms impatiently. The woman was interesting, but she wanted words, a story, anything. She was left with much time to explore and had already found herself the wine cellar teeming with casks of all sizes. That became her source of entertainment for much of her stay until Nerissa finally beckoned her over. With a curling finger she whispered, “come now, mon chéri.” Icy held her place, she’d never heard the French language on a Greek tongue. “Mon chéri, it will be a fine night.”

 A fine night indeed, Icy decided. The woman had a nice face—high cheekbones and an accented jawline—and a supple body. The former witch wasn’t one for feelings, love was a waste, but it would be a bigger waste to reject such a tantalizing offer. She hadn’t a good fling since Valtor. She scarcely knew Nerissa, but those eyes, those deep blue eyes, they had a way of drawing her in. And that low purring, “mon chéri….”

She was giving Darcy a run for her money.

Just one night, one simple night and Icy would be on her way.

 Icy stood, allowing her leather jacket to slip from her shoulders. She turned in the direction of the bedroom.

 A hand curled over her shoulder. She could feel hot breath on her ear and the softness of the woman’s chest on her back. “Non, mon chéri. Non, we will stay right here.” Those long nails grazed Icy’s shoulder blade.

 Frankly, it didn’t matter to Icy at all where it happened as long as it did. “Fine, right here then.” She shoved the woman roughly back into her armchair and tugged at her corset.

  “You are bold, mon chéri.” Nerissa commented. Her expression told Icy nothing of whether or not that was a good thing. “Trés audacieux.” She traced her fingers up Icy’s sides before dipping them under the hem of her shirt. With an unexpected force and speed, she threw the former ice witch to the floor and traced her cheek bone with her pointer.  

 Whatever the woman was saying, Icy felt inclined to agree. Whatever the woman was doing, she was—for once, content to comply. “Go on then, fuck me.”

 Without a hesitation to make, Nerissa rammed her fingers in. The woman was anything but delicate. Icy arched back, “shit!” The woman knew her way about a body and mercilessly, the ice witch had no sheets to grab. Nothing to take the edge off, not that she particularly wanted to. Instead she dug her hands into the other woman’s hair. As she went deeper still, Icy pulled herself up enough to bite the woman’s neck.

 “Très bien, mon chéri.” She mumbled, “you know what you’re doing.”  

 Icy offered a decent smirk as she moved her hands to the woman’s chest. She decided that she would let Nerissa deliver the pleasure, typically Icy herself never got the chance to be on the receiving end. Shuddering with hot euphoria she let the woman slid her graceful tongue over down her neck and over her breasts. Every so often she would nibble, she made a point to do so in the most sensitive of spots. And when Icy felt up to it, she would bite back, until she could see faint purple. Until her back was lined with scratches. 

A fine night indeed.  

 Nerissa’s free hand brushed a few locks from Icy’s face. The gesture was unexpectedly passionate. The woman’s other hand came to cup Icy’s chin, holding her steady and pressing a kiss to her lips.

 A very fine night.

  To say that Icy woke up was a bit of a stretch. She half woke on the floor of the living room. Her mind was dazed, low in functioning. Peculiarly low, she’d had her share of good, long, nights but they had never left her quite so drained. Quite so fuzzy. She ran her hands through her tangled locks as she scanned the room. Nerissa was still there, a silk bathrobe wrapped around her generous figure. On top of that wrapped a feathered blanket. “Good morning, mon chéri.” She drawled her greeting. Icy’s head dipped before she could return it. “You have a delicious âme.”

 Icy narrowed her eyes and cocked her head.

 “Your soul, mon chéri. Your âme.” She paused. “It tastes good.”

 It wasn’t a blanket at all, Icy realized. It was a set of inky wings. The comprehension must have made it to her eyes, for Nerissa shed her human guise in full. Those tantalizingly blue eyes, were now unearthly so with flecks of purple. She unfurled those wings and ran a hand over obsidian colored horns. “Do you regret, mon chéri?”

 At Cloud Tower, she’d been taught of the succubi many a times. She’d laughed alongside her peers at the fools in the tales who’d fell to the seduction of a wicked succubus. And now she’d be leaving Earth with half a soul or less and another story for the witches to study. Or perhaps not at all. She did not regret. She had enjoyed. She wanted to keep enjoying despite the screams of what was left of her soul and essence.

 With her pointer alone, Nerissa tilted Icy’s head up and looked deep into those now foggy, frosty blue eyes. “Splendid, mon chéri.”

[recentnews18-blog]

New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/just-a-ranking-of-every-stupid-role-ruby-rose-has-ever-played/

Just A Ranking Of Every Stupid Role Ruby Rose Has Ever Played

Before she was Batwoman, she was a sexy she-wolf named Byanka.

Australia’s own Ruby Rose has just been announced to star as Batwoman in DC’s TV universe. If you’re not familiar with her work, should you be excited?

Ruby Rose has been carving out a curious niche in the acting world for a few years now, with her role in Orange is the New Black’s third season launching her to overseas success. She will play Kate Kane in a big DC TV crossover later this year, and potentially go on to star as the Jewish lesbian crime fighter in her own Batwoman show.

Given that Ruby Rose has been steadily gaining bigger and bigger roles in blockbusters – including giant-shark film The Meg, which is just around the corner — playing Batwoman could really cement her stardom. Although if you go by The Meg’s IMDb page, she already is a star: according to IMDb’s STARMeter, Rose gets top billing over Jason Statham.

As a star, Rose is defined by a weird, inexplicable aura that permeates all her roles. She’s defined by Ruby Rose Energy.

Now, you’re probably familiar with the concept of Big Dick Energy, but you may not have heard of Ruby Rose Energy. Ruby Rose Energy is Big Dick Energy’s non-binary cousin. Ruby Rose Energy is effortlessly cool, but also quietly daggy.

It’s becoming a movie and TV star while always being slightly unable to escape your past as an MTV Australia VJ, or someone who got into a brief Twitter feud with Josh Thomas over unpaid Veuve at a Melbourne club. It’s having real life charisma disproportionate to what necessarily translates on screen — just like the good old days!

Ruby Rose Energy is being the first person to quit The 7pm Project. It’s not being recognisable to virtually anyone over 40, and dating a Veronica in the year 2018. As one commenter said on yesterday’s casting news, “she’s like, everything”.

Make no mistake – this is a loving tribute to Ruby Rose and the utterly specific, weird space she has carved out in Australian pop culture since the early 2000s. There’s a lot you can learn about Ruby Rose Energy from the names of characters she plays, so here’s a ranking of all the character names she is credited with playing on IMDb – ranked by least-to-most Ruby Rose Energy.

Queer women: Please cast out queer actors in queer roles!!! CW: *casts Ruby Rose* Queer women: This is an attack

— Brittani Nichols (@BisHilarious) August 7, 2018

Presumably as a result of some mix-up on the first day on set that no one was brave enough to correct, the name of Ruby Rose’s character in this cliché-ridden Australian spin on Dangerous Minds is Hannah, while Christina Ricci’s is, no joke, Dino Chalmers.

It is with great regret that I must place Hannah at the bottom of this list, and that I cannot officially say that Dino motherfuckin’ Chalmers is a perfect exemplar of Ruby Rose Energy.

Though her performance was terrific as a woman who more or less does nothing until she gets hilariously sucked into a giant fan, the character’s name — Abigail — has very low Ruby Rose Energy and, as such, sits near the bottom of the list.

Abigail is the name of a pretty girl you pretend to like in primary school so people don’t think you’re gay, not the name of a character played by devastatingly handsome genderfluid star Ruby Rose.

Though I will never watch this weird Crocodile Dundee tourism ad, I do appreciate the rich complexity of giving a Ruby Rose character a title and a position of authority. That said, in its most Ruby Rose form, ‘Chief’ would be the character’s given name, and as such it falls on the lower end of the scale.

Ruby Rose plays a mute assassin in the John Wick franchise, and her character is named for the Greek god of war – which means we’re getting to the good shit.

But beyond the strong concept, it feels a bit pianissimo in execution; may I suggest it lengthens in John Wick: Chapter 3 to ‘Ares McIliad’ or perhaps ‘Ares Bazooka’?

Ruby Rose Energy is about throwing subtlety to the wind.

I know what you’re thinking: what name could possibly be more Ruby Rose than ‘Ruby Rose’?

Well, since her full birth name is Ruby Rose Langenheim, ‘Ruby Rose’ is technically only 44% of that, meaning it’s slightly below average Ruby Rose Energy.

My interest in Pitch Perfect 3: Aca-merican Imperialism is precisely zero, but Calamity is exactly the kind of Ruby Rose character name I come to IMDb to see.

Less impressive is the movie thinking that Ruby Rose-as-Calamity would be the front-woman of a generic guitar band called Evermoist instead of the lead singer of a desperately edgy Christian lady-rock group called SHEviticus, or GALatians, or The GeneSisters, and so on.

Calamity has the toughness of Ruby Rose Energy, but lacks that certain je ne sais quoi.

Where were you when all of America discovered Stella Carlin, and thus Ruby Rose, at once?

Was it the same place you were when Ruby tweeted about Katy Perry’s Witness, calling it “purposeful poop” and “bomb a petit”? Or when she threw a “singular fry” at a restaurant owner?

No name on this list better exemplifies the Ruby Rose Energy tendency to get into beefs with low-grade celebs that no one but tabloids would ever care about. Stella Carlin is what happens when Ruby Rose Energy gets captured in essence but lost in translation.

It’s trying just a little bit too hard.

The beauty of the current Golden Age of Ruby Rose Character Names is how often the names just sound like full sentences in and of themselves.

Adele Wolff.

I already feel like I’ve known this character my whole life. Like I’ve already followed her journey from digital marketing graduate to Instafamous, gluten intolerant Byron Bay-based wellness blogger, which I am convinced is where Ruby Rose would be at without her tattoos.

Jaxx Herd is, frankly, incredible.

The Meg pic.twitter.com/QnTjRWjxx8

— Ruby Rose (@RubyRose) July 31, 2018

What’s even more incredible is that this Ruby Rose character looks more like the human reboot of Charlize Theron’s haircut in Aeon Flux than any of the others (and they all do, a little) and honestly, I’m here for it.

Wikipedia says Bianca, but IMDb says Byanka, which is so Ruby Rose I can’t stand it.

And truly, is the root of the human condition not the internal war we wage over whether we are a Bianca or a Byanka?

Anyway, this movie looks bananas, Ruby Rose’s character is an overly sexualised she-wolf, and the script was co-written by someone who goes by the name ‘1kg Sugar’.

If the idea of Ruby Rose playing a character named Wendy the Android (lol) on a Canadian sci-fi show makes you think, “Huh, I wonder if they made her a horny killer fuckbot?”

The answer, unequivocally, is yes.

That they named her Wendy like she’s one of the nice mums working at a primary school tuckshop is just *Italian chef kiss* molto bene. It’s the perfect combination of ‘maybe this is the next step in human evolution’ and ‘Lorna Jane loyalty card owner’.

TheDailyMail.com Seriously Popular™ People’s Choice Award-loser Ruby Rose as… Woman.

That’s it, kids.

That’s Ruby Rose Energy.

—

Laurence Barber is a freelance writer, editor and award-winning film and television critic based in Sydney. He is on Twitter @bortlb.

Source: http://junkee.com/ruby-rose-characters/170757