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pahrak-the-sinnoh-slizer · 7 months

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Game Night: Cassette Beasts

Pokémon fans threatening to find a new monster taming series is like Americans threatening to move to Canada: we’ve all said it at some point, and for completely valid reasons, but the reality is that it just isn’t that easy to pick up and go. For me at least, it’s hard to pin down exactly what it is about Pokémon that’s central to my interest in it, so I’m not quite sure what to look for in other monster tamers. At the very least, when something like Palworld rolls around I can easily tell that it’s not that. The last several Pokémon games have been some of my favorites, but I’ve remained curious about the genre at large; unfortunately these games are innately a rather large commitment, which doesn’t pair well with my indecisive uncertainty. All this to say, while I was definitely intrigued by Cassette Beasts when I first heard about it years ago, that intrigue never actually went anywhere…until now.

I believe I recently heard someone toss it out as a recommendation on a stream I was watching, which is why it stuck out when I was browsing the Games Done Quick channel on YouTube. Out of curiosity, I wound up watching the speedrun. I then poked around the official wiki a bit and came to realize this game could be very appealing to me specifically. And BOY was I right about that!

Before we get into it, spoiler-free tl;dr: Cassette Beasts both wears its inspiration proudly on its sleeve and iterates upon it in many truly fascinating ways, with an atmosphere that switches effortlessly between delightfully cozy and creepy cool. I have some gripes, but I have been thoroughly entertained and downright mesmerized playing this game. If you have any interest in monster tamers, pixel art indie RPGs, and/or cosmic horror, I highly recommend checking Cassette Beasts out.

>PLAY

The game first asks you to customize your character, sans outfit—that comes later so you’re not entirely overwhelmed right away. There’s also an option for pronouns, including he/him, she/her, and they/them, which is lovely to see. You are then dropped onto the shore of a mysterious island, and are found by a girl who tells you that you’ve landed in a different dimension. So, yes, technically an isekai. But this is a limbo-esque world that only has humans because they keep falling into it from time to time—every single character is either from another world, or was born to parents who are stuck here. That, combined with making your character’s explicit goal “find a way home”, excellently avoids the most common pitfalls of the genre and lets you assess it without preconceived notions. What’s really interesting about this is that people are pulled from many different worlds, and from various points in the timeline: you have characters talking about the Mars landing of 1969 and the 20th century peace treaty with the elves, and also famous Greek philosophers and Karl Marx. I love how eclectic it is, and it’s frequently used in really funny ways. (You all remember Diogenes, right? Guess what traits are shared by all the monsters he uses.) The people brought here have all banded together in a mutually supportive community, with everyone contributing what they can and materials like wood and metal being traded for goods as opposed to using money. Why do we want to go home again? This sounds like a nice place to live!

But anyway, we’re here for the monsters. And in-game they are just called “monsters”, never “Cassette Beasts”. Which strikes me as odd. But the monsters have been in this world way longer than the cassette tapes, which are actually a relatively recent arrival courtesy of an isekai’d shopping mall. Rather than catching a monster, you record them on a blank tape, meaning that even if you are successful you’ll still need to defeat the monster or flee to end the battle. You then use your tape and cassette player to take on the form and powers of the recorded monster, and fight your battles first-hand! Pokémon briefly flirted with this idea in a spin-off manga (Pokémon ReBURST), but here it’s fully embraced; this sort of approach can be seen in other aspects too, as we’ll see later. After learning the basics, you’re given a few major questlines and then set free into the open world of New Wirral, tackling whatever catches your attention as you romp around. There is some level-scaling, though I’m not sure of the specifics. Regardless, both it and enemy AI can be adjusted via Settings, and you can also turn off the glitch effects that show up if those are impacting your experience. In battle you control both your avatar and one of several recruitable partners, and can carry up to six tapes at a time—essentially Doubles format, with all the complexity and chaos that entails. One very interesting wrinkle in the formula is that in addition to the tapes/monsters having health bars, the humans also have their own health bar, hidden under that of their tape as if the tape’s HP was a shield meter. If attacks overkill your tape, the excess damage is dealt to your own HP, and if you lose all of your HP then you’re done regardless of how many tapes you have left. It’s an important extra resource to keep in mind, and the same is true for (most) NPC cassette-users: if you deal enough damage to their own health bar you can defeat them without having to get through all of their tapes. Until the late/post-game, that is, where your human foes are invulnerable beneath their tapes while you very much are not, and that feels very unfair. I also find it strange that there’s no item for restoring your human HP—campfires to rest at are fairly plentiful, but it’s still somewhat odd.

Each monster has one type, and rather than limited uses for each of its moves, both characters generate AP every turn they can then spend on certain attacks. Moves also each have a type, but while there is a same type attack bonus (STAB), it’s not as significant as it is in Pokémon. Naturally, each type has advantages and disadvantages over other types, but! Weakness and resistance is also toned way down, and is not your primary goal when using type advantage. Type interaction is far, far more nuanced in this game, involving the entire spectrum of ailments and buffs and debuffs, and even changing the target’s type. For example: Water extinguishes Fire, temporarily reducing its attack power. Using Fire on Water creates steam, which heals Water over the next few turns. Fire also melts Ice, changing it to a Water type for a few turns. And this is all just barely scratching the surface! A chart showing these interactions is given to you in-game, which is nice; more than that, whenever you discover a new interaction for the first time, a tutorial box pops up and elaborates on the effects, as well as providing an explanation of why (extinguish, steam, melt, etc) that goes a long way in keeping track of them all. While a fantastic feature, it can get repetitive at times: the mystical Astral type has identical interactions with all four classical elements, and despite all 4 being mentioned the first time, you’ll still get that same text box explaining that interaction 4 times. Types range from the usual suspects (Fire, Water, Air) to some very…surprising choices (Glass, Plastic, Glitter), plus Typeless moves that take on the type of the monster using them. Moves are treated as stickers applied to your tapes, and can be peeled and moved at your discretion; you obtain them either from leveling up a tape, or from shops and chests and drops. Leveling up monsters (from 0 to 5 stars) also increases their max AP and how many move slots they have, and I think slightly increases their stats? Your human characters, though, have their own stats which increase as you level them up from 1 to…well I’m not sure exactly but it exceeds 100 at least. I couldn’t tell you the exact mathematical way the two sets of stats interact, but it’s a neat idea, strengthening yourself as well as the tapes you collect. Your partners gain experience even if they’re not with you, and thank God they do, otherwise it’d be a pain to spend proper time with each and every one of them.

There’s one other major battle mechanic unlocked at the end of the tutorial segment: Fusion. After filling up a meter, your avatar and partner can fuse their monster forms together to unleash hell upon your enemies. Monster sprites were made modular so that the game could automatically generate fusions on its own, meaning that there are in fact over 16000 different fusions you can make, and your bestiary will keep a list of them all. (Thank God there are absolutely no incentives for filling that list!) Fusing will also cause whatever music track is playing to gain vocals, which is a fun way to up the presentation factor. Your relationship with your partner is key to Fusion: its measured from 0 to 5 hearts, and you need at least 1 to be able to perform Fusion at all. At 2 hearts, you gain a super move. Every level gained increases the stats of your fusion as well. It’s a fun mechanic to mess around with, even if a lot of the fusions can look a bit derpy—small price for the sheer flexibility of the system. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that Pokémon fans have been enamored with fusion since at least B2W2; I doubt it’s coincidence that Cassette Beasts chose to implement it as a Mega Evolution-esque gimmick. Once you get to the late/post-game, the NPC fights also gain access to Fusion, giving you a chance to figure out ways to play around the feature from the other side.

Like I said before, this game greatly expands upon a number of fan-favorite concepts from Pokémon, and I’m pleased to say that extends all the way to Shinies. Every monster has a small chance to be a “bootleg”, with not only a different color scheme, but a different type. There are a total of 14 types in the game. Do you see where this is going? Every single monster has 14 variants with different types and color palettes (even their original type, weirdly enough?). And every single one has a page in their bestiary dedicated solely to tracking how many of these variants you’ve found. Probably nightmarish for a completionist, but holy shit is that insanely cool! Multiple palettes to choose from instead of being stuck with just one that might suck! And they have mechanical differences to incentivize recording them beyond simply collector’s value! Fantastic! There are also various ways to increase your odds, all the way up to 20% in specific cases, which I imagine will entice quite a few players into the hobby of bootleg hunting.

Let’s see, what other mechanical topics can I cover before moving onto more story-related stuff? Field moves are a thing—you obtain them by recording a specific monster, and in the case of some like the glide you’ll partially transform when it’s activated. I think it strikes a nice balance: it’s dependent on what you yourself have actually recorded, but doesn’t ask you to dedicate move or party slots to it. Their approach to evolution feels simplified: when you rest after getting a tape to 5 stars, you’ll be prompted to “remaster” it if applicable, rather than having to guess which level you should be aiming for. There are a few wrinkles when it comes to branching evolutions, but only a few, and mostly come down to either having a certain move on the monster to change its remaster, or, after choosing to remaster, being given two options right there. Those options can be a bit vague, though; I looked into it ahead of time, and if I had gone with the option my gut opted for when remastering my starter, I would have gotten the less cool-looking monster. I also want to mention the loading screens; you know how The Sims lists random stuff on its loading screens? They do something similar here, except they’re all related to one of the monsters: “Directing Traffikrab”, “Tuning Kittelly”, “Sharpening Ripterra’s knifeclaws”. It’s a little thing but I find it charming, and perhaps a bit devious in making players curious to track down these various monsters being teased. Oh, and selecting the Flee option will tell you your percent chance to flee, and even if you fail you can still choose to blackout if you really just want to get out of there. There’s also a Mystery Gift analogue that’s been used to distribute various bootlegs, and things I haven’t even tried like the “Gym Pass” to customize your player character's stats. Beating the game also unlocks customization options for future playthroughs like randomizers and permadeath. There’s a LOT. It’s a very packed game.

Right then, story. There are two BIG big questlines, one of which being a setup similar to collecting Gym Badges: there are 12 special NPCs all over the map who give you a stamp when you defeat them, but rather than specializing in a certain type, they tend to have a favorite tactic they employ in battle. One of the easiest to find specializes in moves that create defensive walls; one particularly annoying one prioritizes controlling accuracy and evasion; there’s even one who specializes in just one particular monster with an elaborate signature move. It’s perhaps not an enormous difference, but again, it’s nuanced. There is also a “Champion” fight at the end, but I won’t get into that. More importantly, the questline that the game is largely centered around and leads to the end credits, is the hunt for hidden subway stations that house powerful, eldritch boss monsters known as Archangels. Apparently, when humans first wound up in New Wirral, they didn’t know what to make of the monsters and tended to refer to them as angels or demons. That fell out of fashion as the community came to understand monsters better. The Archangels, however, cannot be understood by human minds. Each one is drawn/animated in its own style that clashes with the world around them—your partners all say that it hurts just to look at them, and just being in the stations makes them feel uneasy. A personal favorite is the claymation skeleton with a vertical mouth, to give you some idea of what to expect. These fights have their own unique mechanics, and the Archangels tend to hit very, very hard; if you do survive, some floating guy in a red coat with a 3D rendered reflective triangle for a head shows up and absorbs the boss (concerning), and you’re given part of a riddle that will eventually lead you to the final dungeon. The vibes are incredibly at odds with the typical overworld gameplay, and I mean that in THE best possible way. The Archangels were a real highlight for me.

In addition to those, every partner you can recruit has their own questline, which can range from a single fight all the way to finding 6 hidden locations around the map with their own substantial battles to win. The girl who finds you at the start of the game, Kayleigh, is your first partner, first having a quest that’s essentially “finish the tutorial” before switching to a more personal quest that involves dealing with an actual cult. You’re also very early on pushed in the direction of Eugene, who has that long, long quest finding hidden locations all over the map. Slow-going as it is, though, it’s about fighting off a horde of capitalist vampires who are trying to establish a housing market, so. That’s fucking hilarious. But it has stiff competition in Felix’s quest, where you follow his middle school OC brought to life as she journeys to four sacred altars to slay their guardians. That’s right, Felix’s edgy anime OC, an angel demon catgirl ninja named Kuneko, is also up and about in New Wirral and he is mortified by this discovery. Excellent questline, no notes. Another partner you’ll run into fairly early is Meredith; her quest involves navigating a dungeon you probably won’t get to for a good while, though it’s a solid dungeon when you do get to it. There’s also Viola, the character from Twelfth Night by William fucking Shakespeare, whose search for her brother takes her into a haunted shipwreck to face a villain from a different Shakespeare story. New Wirral is very eclectic. But perhaps least expected of all is Barkley the dog. One of your playable partners is a dog. His quest is the shortest and an utterly fucking brutal punch to the emotional gut. Anyway I like all these folks, they’ve got personality and endearing character development that touches on some personally relevant topics. Aside from Barkley, you can romance any partner after maxing out your relationship level, and that was a tough choice to make. The Gym Leader analogues are sufficiently quirky for their role, and you meet a handful of other perfectly fine recurring characters—including a few who are only encountered in post-game quests. If I’m really being strict here, I don’t think I’d say any of this game’s characters have jumped the ranks to new blorbo status, but take that as you will.

The post-game has an interesting structure to it. You don’t unlock any new areas, not really, but after engaging with the newly-unlocked sidequest board for a bit, you gain access to a few longer questlines. There are two that eventually come together which each feature their own new characters, one following the direct consequences of actions you took earlier in the story, and one that’s about someone new being dropped onto New Wirral, showing that the world keeps turning even if your particular story is over. There’s also another questline which delves even deeper into the background lore of the game, and that’s something I’ll never get enough of. The repeating sidequests are brief and rewarding enough to from a satisfying gameplay loop to disguise the grind, and I’m only just now considering an extended break after nearly 70 hours total gameplay (which I would guess is around half post-game).

Oh, I should also talk more about the bestiary and completing it! Each monster has the standard flavor text and habitat listing, plus that page that tracks bootlegs, and a list of how many you’ve encountered/defeated. However, when you raise a tape to 5 star level, you also unlock an additional page of flavor text, usually something related to the inspiration for the monster’s design. While heavily scaled back, having this sort of progression in the bestiary reminds me of doing research in Pokémon Legends Arceus, and I very much appreciate that. Going that far is optional, of course—really, doing anything involving the bestiary is optional. But the game does nudge you in that direction and reward you several times along the way. When you first encounter the “professor” character, he gives you a series of quests that just ask you to record one of the monsters found in the central region of the map. Easy! From there, he gives you a handful of resources and tapes every time you hit a new milestone of 10 monsters recorded. In the post-game you can also randomly get quests asking you to get a certain monster to 5 star, or perform a specific fusion, or use a specific monster to fight the professor’s assistant, all slowly, slowly nudging you in the direction of completion. But what’s really interesting is that you don’t necessarily have to fully complete the bestiary to get the grand prize (this game’s equivalent to the Master Ball). Cassette Beasts originally had 120 monsters. A later update raised that to 128, and some time after that, they released a DLC that added a handful of unnumbered monsters. You get the Master Tape by recording 128 monster species. So, if you record a bunch of the DLC monsters, you can “complete” the bestiary without tracking down every last monster in the base game. If you do go beyond that, the completion percentage will actually go over 100%, which is so weird to see, but in a cool way. It seems the intention was specifically to not make completion increasingly difficult as new updates are added, which is honestly pretty rad! And, again, though I appreciate the bestiary remembering all of your fusions, I’m so glad there’s nothing incentivizing you to from every last one of them. Same goes for bootlegs. So, does this mean future updates/DLC with even more monsters are on the way? No clue. But they are working on a multiplayer update expected to release soon! (I don’t have Switch Online so I won’t be able to do much with that lol.)

I did purchase the DLC right away; I was confident I would enjoy the game enough I would want it eventually, and buying them both together was slightly cheaper than buying them separately. (The bundle also comes with a cosmetics pack but it’s nothing that interests me personally.) After progressing through the main quest enough that you become able to access the final dungeon, a small boat washes ashore, and you’re able to ride it to a dock in the middle of the ocean housing some sort of carnival. The ringmistress asks you to explore the three major attractions and beat their power sources, the “Infernal Engines”, into submission. Despite being a small area it’s still just as open-ended as New Wirral, an effort I appreciate. You can tackle the attractions in any order you want, even leave in the middle of one to go do another if you prefer. The place is also populated by several new monsters to record, including one of my personal favorites, a ghostly book monster named Hauntome. It’s a few mini-dungeons, some solid bosses capping them off, and then one last boss, with a loose story in the background that has some connections to the main story but isn’t anything essential. I don’t know if I’d go as far as to call it a must-buy, but it is fun, and inexpensive, and more Cassette Beasts. Up to you.

There are two major themes I picked up on during my playthrough: community and art. The people who’ve ended up in New Wirral, in spite of coming from countless different dimensions, have all banded together to support each other and however many newcomers show up; they don’t even ask for anything in return, they just value life and want to be sure people are cared for. The theme that plays in Harbourtown is transparent about this: “we’re all in the same ship […] but at least we’re together […] I don’t know you but we’ll make the most of / wherever we are now”. Fusion is about literally joining with someone to create something stronger than either of you could do on your own. There are even some genuinely scary twisted manifestations of this idea, like the Mournington cult and the truth behind the Landkeepers—people crave community, and there are some who will use that to their own advantage. It’s baked into the motivations of all your partners, and, switching gears, most of them are heavily connected to art too! Felix is an artist learning he doesn’t need to be ashamed of his past, less “polished” work. Kayleigh, after addressing her regrets with Mournington, reconnects with her old hobby of playing guitar. Meredith actually takes things in a different direction: she used to spend all of her time consuming vast quantities of art to the point that it cut her off from her community, showing that you still need to exercise moderation when it comes to art. Viola is a character from another, pre-existing work of art! The Archangels play into this as well: one of the biggest things setting them apart is the way they clash with the rest of the game’s art style, and their nature as incarnations of humankind’s ideas is a delightfully malevolent spin on the whole thing.

Taking these two themes together, Cassette Beasts presents a thesis on our responsibility to our fellow people and how we can all find our own way to fulfill it, with a particular focus on art and how it broadly conveys our ideas and inspires change. The final boss fight punctuates this beautifully when, after Aleph destroys your cassette player, Morgante awakens and tells you that you don’t truly need the cassettes. “THE ABILITY TO MANIFEST YOUR WILL TO ALTER REALITY…TO CHANGE YOUR WORLD, AND YOURSELVES...THAT LIES WITHIN YOU.” Then she and ALL of your partners fuse with your avatar, and through your combined might, you strike down the malevolent forces in your way, secure a path home, and bring a huge, fundamental change to New Wirral as its inhabitants now have the option to decide if they should stay or go. It’s an extremely satisfying ending, even if it does see you and your partners going their separate ways. But, who knows? Given a few tidbits from the post-game, it sounds like we just might get to meet them again someday.

Again, I had a really, really great time with Cassette Beasts and highly recommend it. It’s charming, its fun, and it’s only $20! Maybe don’t get it on Switch, though, not if you can’t stand frequent load times.

And, just to brag about my bootlegs a little:

-The random free bootleg from Harbourtown was a Glass-type Dandylion for me

-The freebie Ritual Candle netted me a Water-type Glaistain!

-The post-game bootleg starter, I got a Poison-type Candevil

-Was able to use the mailbox to get a Fire-type Undyin

-And obviously there’s Barkley’s Ice-type Pombomb

-The first one I encountered purely by chance was an Astral-type Jellyton

-Air-type Jellyton

-Ice-type Carniviper

-Astral-type Carniviper

-Fire-type Traffikrab

-Plant-type Squirey

-Ice-type Boltam

-Lightning-type Snoopin

-Poison-type Kirikuri

-Glass-type Scubalrus

-Glass-type Spooki-onna

-Lightning-type Dominoth

-A Fire-type Piksie

-A Glitter-type Picksie

#Cassette Beasts #Game Night

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encrucijada · 5 months

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PÍA RAMBLES #8

you might have seen this post or this wip intro. i'm here to talk about this book because i think it's really cool @teddywriting and i wrote almost 40k words by simply playing dolls with our ocs.

(yes i will be using screencaps of before sunrise, 1995 for any and all subsequent updates regarding this project thank you very much)

what's weird about this book in particular is that, despite maripaz and theo taking up way too much space in my brain, it's also incredibly hard to talk about them?? i know every single detail about them down to what they might order to eat at a mcdonald's, and yet i feel no one outside from teddy and i really knows these characters. their lore is weird and a bit convoluted and explaining it feels like i'm trying to explain the plot of a television show with like 18 seasons of character development you just had to be there to witness to understand even a fraction of it.

but first some basics about the actual book

title: babylon boy (book 1 of the home habitat duology)

genre: literary fiction

category: i say adult because there will be no censoring of topics but in this first installment our protagonists are around eighteen years old. you might consider that ya but i wouldn't

a small summary: having independently run away from home for their own reasons, theo and maripaz meet while homeless on the streets and form an alliance of convenience to survive. while theo vehemently denies the drug addiction he’s nursing, maripaz tries to deal with the way both want and revulsion seem to exist in her at the same time. falling in love is probably the easiest thing they do.

teddy and i are co-authoring, as in we both write the words. they will be primarily working on theo's chapters and i will be primarily working on maripaz's chapters but we'll both be involved in fully crafting this story.

talking about your book is hard when all that happens in it is character work so even whether someone gets sick at one point feels like a spoiler you want people to be surprised by.

we created mari and theo in 2020 on a whim. i can't even remember what prompted it exactly. we wanted a new pair of characters to play with and we decided to make two assholes to bicker and be mean to each other. this iteration saw three reincarnations before we put the characters on the shelf and almost resigned ourselves to them being a miss... if not for one important detail... i really, really believed they should have kissed. this first version of them would eventually be known as the homeless au.

looking back it's Wild thinking about how different mari and theo used to be. we moved onto new aus to play around with, landing on a superhero-type beat that became their new canon for a while. we had fantasy and sci-fi and musicians and hadestown and the raven cycle (that last one did so much for us it's insane). every new thing we tried shaped them more and more until they were unrecognisable from their original versions. one day i really want to go through their threads from start to finish and look at that change in real time.

there was a new thesis to their characters and it was no longer "what if two awful guys with issues were forced together and tried to bite each other's heads off". instead we were looking at two characters that through every new incarnation became more sincere and gentle. they had meta-narrative character development.

(every new au also gave us more characters to populate the world including but not limited to theo's twin sister, maripaz's seven siblings, alex, philip, a whole lot of parental figures, a quirky cast of friends... but i'll talk about them some other time)

then i did it again. in the 2.0 version of the homeless au there was one scene i loved beyond words where an argument between our two protagonists resulted in maripaz punching theo right on the mouth. when she tried to swing a second time he stopped her hand and warned her that if she wanted to hit him he would hit back. they fought and the scene ended. i said to teddy: they should have kissed. we laughed and imagined how homeless au would go now that their characters had changed so much. we started thinking about it more and more until we were moving the pieces of their cinematic universe around to fit this new idea... and suddenly we had plot for a book that would revamp that original homeless au... and a sequel too! (but more on that second one another time)

teddy started a rp thread of what came right after the opening scene of babylon boy, where theo and maripaz would shoplift and he would steal the angel necklace she wore (<- this is important)... and we just kept going... and going. we'd already had a few keys scenes to work towards, one those being that punching scene that started it all, as well as the ending. teddy added two new scenes we began calling the halo scene and the church scene, and we moved something we called the pool scene into this book from another au. we just had to fill in the blanks... fill in the blanks we did.

these right here are the names i gave each individual thread of the roleplay-ification of babylon boy. their purpose is not so much to be chapter titles but to make specific scenes easy to find for future reference. though obviously i had to be a bit artistic about it.

i don't know if babylon boy will have chapter titles, and if they will have some sort of theme going on (usually i like just putting two words together to create some imagery). "angel face" is probably what i would title chapter 1, but i also hesitate on that decision because i think i would like to save angel for later.

these threads are less of a draft and more the skeleton of a draft, that's why i called it a draft 0. its purpose is to give teddy and i direction and reading through them i already know how i want to shift the timeline and how i'd rewrite some of the scenes to make them a lot better, but it did give us a great cause and effect look of things. the way teddy and i approach our roleplay threads is more loose than what i do with @on-the-river-lethe (with whom i'm currently roleplaying draft 1 of our book lupine trail and also a giant hunger games au). fluffy and i write responses between 1k-4k words, they are basically chapters. teddy and i instead do a quick call and response, mostly focused on dialogue, we build on top of each other and neither of us really knows where a thread will go when we start.

there are no actual non-roleplay words written for babylon boy thus far. teddy is in charge of chapter 1 as we open with theo's pov but we are both busy or focused on other things. right now we're enjoying the playing around stage of the process (which i don't see going away even once we start seriously writing, i know for a fact we'll probably do various roleplay-type passes to babylon boy).

you've probably noticed the christian imagery is rampant here. it happened kind of by accident and the already mentioned halo scene is entirely to blame for it. like i said, teddy and i have this very "yes, and," approach to storytelling together where we kinda build on top of what the other puts down. teddy gave me the description of one (1) scene where theo sees a halo of light around maripaz's head and i decided "well, this is now i thing that is here to stay". church scene really brought it all together and there is a scene in book 2 adeptly nicknamed the angel scene that is kind of the culmination of this.

the imagery is almost exclusive to theo's pov as mari is more the subject of the imagery than the one pushing it forward. teddy and i will be doing our most to fill this book with visuals: characters lined with stained glass windows, lights shaped like hearts, signs and graffiti that say meaningful stuff.

babylon boy, as the title suggests, is more theo's book. both he and maripaz have meaningful arcs but theo's is really at the core of it, mari takes centre stage in book 2 (titled gossamer girl). i think i talked about this somewhere before but the titles just kind of... happened. gossamer was relevant for that superhero au and it's just a word i really adore so i wanted to use it on the title. you can't go wrong with alliteration so gossamer girl it is. and because i love when books in a series match i had to do something with boy. like gossamer i adore babylon for some reason, and so we got babylon boy. i wasn't sure about that one because while gossamer girl made sense with the theme, what did "babylon boy" even mean, exactly? teddy came in clutch and analysed the title for me. they connected it to theo's drug addiction and now i can't think of any two titles that are more perfect for this series.

like i said, there are no actual words written for this book so sadly i cannot share any excerpts. but i will share

Festival was very much the result of teddy and i having just watched before sunrise, 1995

we watched before sunrise, 1995 because the mannerisms of the two leads reek of maripaz and theo

"until a miracle happens" became a recurring thing said in the draft and it wrecked me

Our Fears is probably my favourite thread both thematically and visually. followed closely by Church Angels, though that one is mostly visually

The Pool is the longest thread with about 90 responses and all of it is beautiful. i would probably consider it the companion to Our Fears

"mutual pining they're both just idiots"

the closing image is probably my favourite one of the book

the core themes are very much trust, love, and communal help. we've got such an array of npcs who simply... help. i love the human race.

i'll probably do another update before we start properly writing talking about maripaz and theo as characters specifically. a bit of a crash course on who they are, really.

anyway. i'm giving you a golden star if you read all of that ⭐ do ask me or teddy about this story!! we'd be happy to talk about it. or even just about the characters.

cheers, pía

#pia rambles #( wip ) bb&gg

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felassan · 2 years

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New BioWare Blog post.

🔊 BIOWARE COMMUNITY UPDATE: WRITING OUR WORLDS

by BioWare on September 29 2022

"Hello, everyone! And welcome back to another BioWare™ Community Update. It’s been a little while since we last spoke, but our work continues—as does the storytelling.

So far, years of effort have gone into our next game, Dragon Age: Dreadwolf™, with hundreds of people working to bring this shared vision to life. We’ve been quietly building it behind the scenes for a while now, so we wanted to give you a look at some stuff we’ve been working on! But let’s start with a little recap for those who might be new around here.

Dragon Age is a series that puts you in the heart of a magical world, but what happens while you’re there—who lives and dies, who rises and falls, who loves and loses—that’s up to you. There are no right choices… only those you make.

At the heart of every one of our games are our stories and characters. Each tale is told by the people who live in them—companions who fight at your side and foes who challenge your every move. This is core to the experiences we craft and is what we believe makes a “BioWare RPG” what it is.

Each character has their own motivations and goals that influence how the story plays out, but so do you. The Hero of Ferelden. The Champion of Kirkwall. The Herald of Andraste. Each of them marked their legacy in the annals of history, but time marches forward and the age of these heroes cannot last forever. As a friend of ours once said, “it’s time for a new hero.”

Making a game that carries forth the stories that came before it while still being a starting point for someone brand-new can be tough—deep lore can seem daunting to new players—but it’s also an exciting challenge! The development process is iterative and dynamic. Ideas get concepted, tested, thrown out, brought back, and changed constantly during early stages, all in the pursuit of getting things just right. And it’s very collaborative, too! Everyone helps each other to build something we hope will excite you.

So, let’s talk about that.

As we said, storytelling is at the core of what we do. Our writers helm the creation of your narrative experiences and work as part of a talented team with editors, producers, and quality verifiers to build out the story, characters, dialogue, and more. And that’s not even getting into the other teams who work so closely with them to bring these tales to life!

But what does working on the writing and editing teams entail? And how are we going about writing for Dreadwolf? It’s not like writing a book where everyone has the same experience on the page. Each player interacts with the team’s work differently based on the choices they make, how much of the game they interact with, and the kind of character they want to play. Here’s how our team is thinking about that, but first…

Please enjoy this sneak peek at writing for Dreadwolf, directly from the game’s codex!

(Codex assets are not representative of in-game format.)

Written by Sylvia Feketekuty; edited by Cameron Harris

Hey! Care to do us the honor of introducing yourselves and telling our community a little bit about what you do?

Ryan Cormier: Hello! I’m one of three narrative editors on Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. Our job is to ensure BioWare’s stories are told with clarity, consistency, and accuracy. That might mean correcting comma splices in a codex entry, deciding if a hero’s dramatic speech carries on one line too long, reviewing plot points, or helping a writer choose which scene to tweak without impacting the overall arc. Somewhere in between, we’re spell-checking some ridiculously long elven word or standardizing a character’s voice.

Sylvia Feketekuty: Hi, I’m a senior writer on Dreadwolf. I wrote of one of the codex entries here, “Misconceptions about the Necropolis” (as well as the character who “penned” the entry). These codices are just a tiny snippet of the game, but we wanted to share them as a springboard for talking about our writing and editing process.

Sometimes, when I tell people I write for games, they politely try to figure out how to ask, "But writing dialogue doesn’t take up your entire day every day, does it?" Truthfully, no. I'm responsible for coming up with plots, characters, and dialogue, but also for designing missions with our level designers. I work with them on pacing, information flow, and addressing many, many revisions as feedback comes in.

We're also responsible for a lot of non-voiced text: codex entries, notes in the world, item descriptions, weapon names, etc. A huge part of my job is just explaining the narrative needs of my characters and missions to other departments and coordinating it all with them.

It sounds like you two do more than the average person might expect an editor or writer to do. How do you two work together, then?

Sylvia: Way early on during the concepting stages, the editing team gives their feedback with the rest of the narrative team on high-level stuff like the new characters, plot, and themes. Once first-draft writing for a character or major mission is complete, we also have editors give us their formal feedback during our big peer reviews.

Ryan: At this stage, as we near preproduction, editors talk with writers about big-picture topics like characters, lore, and themes. These elements need the most time. Editing starts broadly and becomes detailed later in the process because it doesn’t help a writer to hear, “This is a run-on sentence,” when we’re still five drafts away from final. We save line edits for last. Until then, editors try to hold their tongues on grammar and punctuation.

Sylvia: After the peer review, when revisions are done and we’re in a position to start recording voiced dialogue, I work more closely with the editing team. Editors will suggest better ways to make one sentence flow into the next, spot inconsistencies, and point out when I’ve written something nonsensical. Every editor also “owns” certain character voices, just like writers do, and I’ll often go to them to hash out something for a particular character or to get a second opinion.

Ryan: Here, in the final drafts, no edit is too picky. This is where editors tweak the writing with changes to grammar, punctuation, and flow and where the passive voice dies a swift death. We read lines aloud at our desks while examining lore, tone, voice, and other details that change how a line reads in the recording booth or appears in the subtitles. Voice-recording notes and plot summaries are finalized, too. All this fine-tuning involves close work between a writer and editor while we pass edits back and forth, fix this, change that, change it back, debate, agree, and finally send it off for recording and translation.

So from the very beginning to the very end, our editors and writers are in lockstep with each other. What about the rest of the devs and other teams?

Ryan: Editors are the bridge between the writers and out-of-studio partners like actors and localizers. Once final drafts are complete, our game dialogue is sent to our in-house performance team, voice actors, and translators, all working in numerous languages. Editors work with those teams daily and are the troubleshooters when technical or cultural concerns arise. Sometimes, an English joke just doesn’t land in the localized copy, or maybe we learn that a name we chose for an idyllic village in Thedas has an inappropriate meaning in another language.

Sylvia: One of the best Dragon Age: Inquisition™ translator questions I ever saw was from a German translator who wanted to know what one character meant when he talked about “dancers with tassels.”

I mentioned this above, but most of my cross-team work is keeping up communication. Does the audio team have all the context they need? Does Character Art know a plot point requires an alternate character outfit? People often compare narrative games to movies, but a lot of them are nothing like movies, structurally speaking. RPGs the size of ours are more like a full season of a bizarrely nonlinear television series with so many mutable, moving parts.

That definitely paints quite the picture. You mentioned your work on DA:I just then, too. What about on Dreadwolf? What’s it like writing for the next game?

Sylvia: It’s been eight years since our last DA game came out. I’ve seen a lot of adults fondly reminiscing about how they played it as teens! Dragon Age: Dreadwolf has been a balance of providing answers to long-standing questions for veteran fans while making a game that new players, or someone who only played DA:I years ago, can also get into.

Ryan: Unlike the vast galaxies we explore in our other franchises, Dragon Age: Dreadwolf returns us to Thedas, where we can revisit friends and places that are familiar. Some fans haven’t spent time with Dragon Age since the 2014 release of Inquisition, while others have read every comic and story published since. Others never played a Dragon Age game at all and have no idea who the bald guy is (he’s Solas).

It’s a varied audience, and development for Dreadwolf has included conversations about how the team can simultaneously reward our returning fans and welcome new ones.

Sylvia: There are other things, of course, but we can’t really get into that until the game comes out.

Well, we’ll see what the future holds, then. If you were speaking to a fan, new or old, what would you tell them makes a Dragon Age game unique?

Sylvia: To me, BioWare has always carried the old-school D&D legacy in its veins. I try to inject some of what I love about tabletop roleplaying into my work: bizarre encounters, prideful villains, adventurers thrust together, arcs with big stakes that retain a sense of playfulness or adventure. It’s everything I’ve liked in the best fantasy tabletop games I’ve played in.

Ryan: For me, it's the characters. A Dragon Age story is full of heroes you want to visit a Kirkwall tavern with, or at a stylish Antivan party; travelling with friends whose witty banter makes the time fly by. The greatest compliment fans give our characters is the years of art, cosplay, and fan fiction that Dragon Age has inspired. That’s a sincere connection between our audience and our creations. And a villain who makes people want to spit on the ground at the mention of their name? Even better.

Though we can’t yet show our community our characters acting in-game, dialogue isn’t our only option. What about these codex entries? Is that something you could talk about?

Ryan: Yes! Codex entries are valuable because they provide information that might otherwise disrupt the flow of the game. For example, players might want details about the Grand Necropolis in Nevarra, but characters shouldn’t sound like tour guides. Before any writing, the narrative team discusses which entries are required and which aren’t. It’s crucial to properly time codex unlocks with player progression. No one wants a dozen entries only ten minutes into the game, but interested players shouldn’t have to wait long to learn more about the people, places, and concepts introduced. Does a codex unlock when something’s first mentioned? When a related character appears? Is the entry only required if they actually interact with said thing?

Sylvia: Making all our codex entries “in-world” (letters, books, notes, etc.) gives us ways to play with information. I chose the “Misconceptions about the Necropolis” codex to show everyone because it was really fun to write. I wanted the in-game author to be frustrated with Brother Genitivi’s portrayal of the Necropolis while also trying to deny the depth of his irritation with said world-famous scholar. It’s a diary, yet we see the author still feels obligated to exercise a measure of decorum in his private writing. And the micro-revelation at the end is that it’s someone he knows in real life, not far-off Genitivi, who is needling the poor guy about Nevarra’s death rituals.

It’s fun to layer things like this, and players are savvy about those layers. They pick up (and I think appreciate) the character coming through. It’s also a collaborative creative process. My Necropolis codex entry, like many others, was edited by Cameron Harris, another of our editors. In this case, Cameron caught that I had set file information incorrectly and also adjusted the overall stylization for consistency

Here are a couple more codex entries for you. Let us know what you think of them!

Visnomer entry written by Patrick Weekes | Dowager entry written by Lukas Kristjanson Both edited by Ryan Cormier

We hope you enjoyed this first discussion about how our writing and editing teams are thinking about Dreadwolf! Every step of the way, we’re working together as a team, even in ways you might not imagine. From integrating written materials into the engine itself to our devs doing placeholder dialogue for characters, it’s a process that evolves over time.

But your efforts never stop, either! Naturally, when Solas shows up, so do many of you, and with incredible creations, no less. So in honor of the Dread Wolf himself, we wanted to showcase some amazing pieces we’ve seen. [please see source link for these] Oh, and we absolutely could not leave out Handsome Solas.

Every day, the game gets one step closer to our next big development milestone—and one step closer to where it’s going to be when you play it. But these changes don’t just happen. They’re being worked on by the teams of people shaping this next adventure for you—carrying the vision together on our road to launch.

We want to keep showing you what we’re up to, so let us know if you like what you’re seeing! We have some fun stuff planned, so be sure to keep an eye out for our upcoming BCUs, one of which will include a look at what our designers are working on!

Until next then, may the Dread Wolf take you.

—The BioWare Team"

[source and full post, tweet source, tweet source 2]

#dragon age: dreadwolf #dragon age 4 #the dread wolf rises #da4 #video games #long post #longpost #solas

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shark-myths · 10 months

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20 Questions for Fic Writers

Thank you so much for the tag ((and drag)) @carbonbased000! this was very fun and thoughtful to do.

who is writing things right now? i never remember. i will tag a wide and perhaps not terribly relevant range of: @toorational @just-about-nothing @27-royal-teas @leyley09 @alienfuckeronmain @stereostatic @setting-in-a-honeymoon and anyone else so inclined!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

968,103, but as i’ve said before, i have orphaned a lotta fic as well

3. What fandoms do you write for?

pretty much just Fall Out Boy, but i will occasionally dabble in something random! this includes tony stark femslash (not sorry, will not apologize), cobra kai, and anything about girls or characters who could compellingly be made into girls.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

The Difference Between Real Love and the Love on TV

Stranger Danger

Boys Next Door / Assholes

From Russia With Love (this is one of those random sidesteps, a MCU femslash epistolary)

Jet Black Crow

(As an aside, it is so wild to me that older fics have so many more kudos than newer ones—you can really tell that fob went 5 years between albums! imo this is NOT a list of my best fic.)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

for years, I responded to every single one! then at some point i fell behind because of my high standards for trying to put the same thought and effort into my responses as all you lovely people put into the comments, then i became overwhelmed, then i stopped. I AM SO SORRY IF I OWE YOU RETURN COMMENTS, i read them and i treasured them and you are a huge part of the reason i keep writing. love u all!!!

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I only write happy endings, man! I stopped writing tragedies a long time ago. My angstiest fics are red and unafraid of living and In Every Universe. the end of Made One Way (Cobra Kai) is ambiguous and potentially brutal, depending on how you take it.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

um, every single other one! I’m a big fan of the gory fairy tale ending of The Boys Time Can’t Capture, and transmuting the hiatus into an act of mutual care and love in Sell Out Girl meant so much to me.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

not since my first fandom and god, don’t

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

yes, a bit, could probably write a little less about feelings and a little more about feelings if u know what i mean. I’m super into sex as a person so i almost never write about intense romantic connections without bringing smut into it somehow; they feel really tightly linked for me, and i think i also crave media with HOT and INTIMATE connections between queer people. In terms of kind, i guess i’d have to say it’s largely rushed vanilla emotion-and-orgasm driven scenes. not a very flattering oeuvre i've created here.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

mash-ups are my favorite thing to do! I especially like ripping off movie and fairy tale plots and making them stranger, or else taking a really specific constrained timeline from someone’s life or a piece of media and transforming it somehow. best sandbox ever. my craziest one is probably the coyote ugly / beauty in the beast peterick fic, Wolves Dressed As Wolves. and i love this type of transformation in everything, whether it's the weirdo gender shit i just learned duchamp was doing or katherine addison's destructively beautiful 'sherlock holmes except there're ANGELS' novel or the buenos aires re-imagining version of vivaldi's four seasons by piazzolla, my life and taste keeps taking me into the various ways we fold and refract and remake the same experiences over and over again through different lenses or angles or selves. to quote some author whose identity i forgot years ago, though the quote remains: "there are no new stories." all art is iterative, and the most interesting thing we can do as creators is deviate in new, unexpected ways.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

yeah, a million years ago on deviantart

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

yes! I have had a few translations and a podfic. I love it when people want to interact with my stories in their own way, all interpretations are welcome.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

one day i hope to be domesticated enough that @carbonbased000 can write with me. I used to co-write by passing the laptop back and forth with my bestie in high school; we wrote self-insert x-men fanfiction based on the comic books in like 2004 and it was an absolute blast; but generally i am considered impossible to work with, by both myself and others.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

i feel completely unqualified to answer this question. i have been driven insane by any number of pairings in my life. when i was younger, i was more interested in internalized homophobia themes in ships, because that's where WE were culturally in the early 2000s and where i was in relationship to myself, and i think each change and growth and greater empowerment and self-possession in my own life is mirrored in what i am interested in. i feel the most drawn in by dynamics between people that are creative and give me a new way to access and explore interesting ideas and themes; i’m a real sucker for shared art products and touring bands as unique and agonizing ways to connect people. there are so many different ways to express that someone is your soulmate and you'll never convince me throwing away all trappings of a traditional life in order to rove the earth and make art with your friends isn't one of them.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

do you not just block out your WIPs from your mind so that you can live in moment-to-moment freedom?? I am a finisher in general, i have a few peterick drafts lurking around in my gdocs but if they remain untouched, it’s generally because there are only a couple thousand words to them and i’m not very excited about the possibilities of the fic. there is a sequel to a meticulously historically accurate pirate fic i wrote long ago called Providence, i got to about 30k and then lost all of my extremely painstaking notes and research in a software update. I’m still very interested in and excited by the idea, but i lost the notes and felt too traumatized to continue with the project genuinely a decade ago, so the idea that i will return and finish the fic seems fairly unlikely. Providence is one of my greatest pieces of writing ever, though, so hope springs eternal, i guess!

16. What are your writing strengths?

lyrical prose and conveying humor via unusual sentence construction. i was recently told i write arguments well and feel tough as a result, like, watch out! you don’t want to fight me!

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

i am lazy and easily distractible, i don’t plot in advance, i barely edit because i get really rigid and have trouble seeing any other way to say something than how i’ve already said it, i have an unwillingness to delete and rewrite even when that’s the only way forward (see: my eternally 90% finished age swap peterick au), i use up all my emotional energy elsewhere and then neglect my craft for weeks at a time.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

sometimes i’ll use pet names in another language if it makes sense for the character, but i avoid this in general as i’m not fluent in anything other than english. I would, have, and do sound like a duolingo lesson.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

afi bandom, when we used to call it slash, when i thought i had invented it with my friend at summer camp, when i was 13 and sent her kidfic stories i wrote out by hand in pink envelopes.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

genuinely i almost always write things i personally want to read, so i love them all! except the fucking fixed stars of heaven, everyone knows that fic tortured me to within an inch of my sanity. My most personal and personally meaningful fic is Girl Out Boy. i have a tattoo of it on my arm.

#writing #fic #tags #about me #a humble shark #thank you so much love #this was so fun

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msfbgraves · 1 year

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I looked at the very first thing you wrote down for Knights and Pawns and god, you can really feel how very young and frightened Daniel is in this. Terry controls the entire situation in the room to his liking. Daniel seems little more than a sold child. I get the impression that he not only grew up a lot those first couple years of marriage with Terry (even while having puppies!!) but also that Terry…not exactly molds him into the grown-up spouse he wants from the “little” boy that he married, but rather…sharpens the mob-side of Daniel like one would a slightly rusty knife. While at the same time making him embrace even more of his natural Omega side, and become even softer and sweeter year by year. An eternal brat and the perfect little housewife. The duality! Terry, Terry. I bet he loved that Danny was only 18 and had never been with an Alpha—and therefore was easier to cultivate.

He didn't set out to fall in love with the boy, but in the three miliseconds that took (again I keep thinking how in the film Terry is fascinated by Daniel's dancing silhouette!), yes, he would have set up a whole perfect life in his mind's eye. But this is not just a courtship, this is a payoff, a victory, and Terry is mean enough to want to enjoy and relish that, because at that point, he doesn't know this boy, this prize. He wants his due.

And Daniel regresses somewhat in his fear around this poweful, dangerous, and as he can immediately sense, wounded man. But as Terry gets him with pup so fast, he snaps out of that real quick, and becomes more like that sweet boy we know with someone to care for. Also because he has Terry whipped within a day. The way that boy can love - and I don't mean fuck, but launch himself straight into your soul - Terry didn't stand a chance. Yes, Terry will bring out his mob-side, if only out of necessity. But the utter sincerity of Daniel's love throws him. It's not manipulation, it's what that boy does and it strips you naked. It does drive him crazy and he wants to control it and he can't and then he blows everything up. And Daniel of course is not a saint, he has that shrewd side that you're right, Terry "sharpens like you would a slightly rusty knife"... Still this is Terry Silver, that man can obliterate you with a look! Sometimes Daniel prefers to melt into it all, let himself be overpowered. But especially with his pups, he's so sincere and warm and sweetly fierce Terry wants to melt into a puddle. At times he's shocked at how much he loves him, and keeps loving him, every iteration of his mate it doesn't lessen. He only loves him differently through every change. Maybe I'm having a case of wishful thinking but with these two, it wrecks them but it never dulls.

#thank you very much #What a lovely ask #Knights and pawns #omegaverse #silverusso #mob au #meta

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soulsilv · 5 months

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CRINGE RANT ALERT‼️TURN BACK NOW‼️

What I love so much about these characters (pokemon btw) is just how many iterations of them there can be between different people. When I say “iterations” I mean in the sense that, at least when it comes to protagonists, practically every person has their own distinct take on them as a character and their relation to the story and other characters. Like for example I HC Lyra being the champion of Johto, and another person (the majority of ppl probably) HC Ethan as the champion. I know that Lyra and Kris being related was a popular HC at one point (a HC that I also share). It goes on and on.

Anyways I wanted to make this post because I really wanted to ramble about the made up nuances and headcanons that I gave to Lyra and Silver in my head lol. I also can’t help but view them more as “muses” of inspiration—I find myself creating or thinking of stories generally unrelated to pokemon entirely when it comes to them at this point. It’s more about wanting to tell the story about them and what their interactions spark and what other interesting messages can be explored through them in different contexts—like they’re the channel for me to explore stories creatively in that way.

I think most Silver fans are aware of his issues so I won’t go into detail on him (no promises), which is why I wanted to talk more about Lyra, and interesting aspects of her character (that I made up lol).

I think with Silver being the way he is, it’s interesting to have someone close to him practically be a foil of him. I picture Lyra having perhaps “clingy” tendencies—not often but it’s there. This contrasts Silver’s flighty tendencies. Lyra is bubbly, (usually) self assured, while Silver is standoffish, and deep down has quite poor self esteem (pokemas practically confirms this). Lyra has a savior complex, and Silver has abandonment issues (these aren’t necessarily foils in this case, but I view these aspects of their characters to be their biggest social/psychological obstacles for their growth).

I remember when I was first thinking more deeply about these characters (years ago at this point) and their characterization, I pictured Lyra as constantly being emotionally aware of herself and others. But there is nothing human about that. That also falls into the “therapist partner” trope to me, where it’s just Lyra fixing all of Silver’s problems which 1) is kind of boring if Silver doesn’t help himself through that and 2) unrealistic and borderline unhealthy for both of them lol

Anyways, that’s where the exploration of Lyra having a savior complex stems from. She isn’t emotionally aware of everyone constantly, let alone herself. She doesn’t understand why she needs to feel needed in some way in order to matter to people or herself. She maybe doesn’t even interpret herself as having a savior complex until it’s explicitly pointed out to her by Ethan maybe or if she says/thinks something that was previously so deeply rooted in her psyche that she just can’t even deny it at that point.

I think what keeps her savior complex from bubbling up and making itself explicitly known to her for so long is due to the fact that she is such a successful trainer (in the pokemon universe in this case). She is constantly praised for the truly hard workload she’s been bearing since childhood—she is adored by the public.

It’s Silver that triggers it to the breaking point.

Silver is such an enigma to Lyra for a multitude of reasons—they’re so completely different, and she has no idea where he came from or… why he is the way that he is.

It’s her desire to know him and understand him that I think ultimately brings them closer—as rivals, then friends. But it isn’t all one-way; I feel that Silver wouldn’t exactly let on, but there are things about Lyra that he questions or wonders greatly about as well. What is it that motivates her?

Anyways, despite knowing each other for years, there’s a certain barrier in him that Lyra is just unable to crack. And I think the biggest problem is Silver’s fear of vulnerability and his abandonment issues. If he doesn’t let anyone in then it can’t hurt when they leave (but that’s total bunk, even though he refuses to acknowledge it). This push and pull is what drives Lyra even further towards being The One™️ to get through to him—because in some twisted sense she would feel useful or necessary to Silver if he finally opened up to her about himself. She would feel warranted.

And I think it would culminate into a big moment between the two of them—a tipping point.

Anyways rant over I’m tired lol

#cable speaks #no fandom tags on this one #we don’t want it to breach containment

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lilshocker8 · 1 year

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Refuge Rulers Masterlist

Somewhere to keep links to all my stories and story ideas for this world!

Main Series The main, multi-chaptered fics focused on the titular Refuge Rulers and the people around them.

Summer, 1899

In July of 1899 there is a Newsboys Strike in Lower Manhattan in every iteration of every universe. The people involved and the outcomes change, but there is always a Strike, and there is always a story surrounding it.

This is just one.

COMPLETE

The Solitary Situation

The Strike is won and Snyder is arrested. Unfortunately for the Newsies, arrested doesn’t mean sentenced, and they have a long year ahead of them making sure the man called Spider actually stays behind bars where he can’t hurt anyone else.

Somehow, this is the least stressful part of the year.

COMPLETE

5 to 1 (Never Tell Me the Odds)

Race always assumed that when he was older he’d marry some nice girl, have a couple of kids, and live happily ever after.

That is not what happens.

(Or: Life rarely goes the way you're expecting)

PLANNING

Intercuts Stories that take a look at events in the main series from a different perspective, or which occur during the events of the stories but off-screen.

You Jump Or You’re Screwed

Crutchie is dragged off to the Refuge, and he accidentally learns a bit more about the brothers that have been tormenting him.

COMPLETE

For Every Working Kid

The Crusade is a brilliant idea, if Katherine says so herself, but as with most great ideas it can't be done alone. Luckily Katherine is very good at recruitment - even people she never meant to recruit in the first place.

COMPLETE

Ain’t We the Hoi Polloi

With the strike settled and their father finally able to get a job again, Davey and Les no longer have to sell papes. Davey finds it harder than expected to step away, and he ends up bringing some of his new family home to his old one.

NOT STARTED

Where Better to Escape Trouble

When Jack brings her a boy looking for a job, surprised is the least of what Medda is feeling. But she’s never been one to turn away a child in need – even if that child is Oscar Delancey.

NOT STARTED

Backstories Exactly what it sounds like.

Bonds Beyond Bridges

When Mush is released from The Refuge he goes to Brooklyn, because that’s what you do to stay out of Snyder’s clutches. However, he finds himself drawn back across the bridge when he meets a Lower Manhattan Newsie who makes him feel like a person again.

COMPLETE

Proud to be Part of Your Revolution

Bill had never thought about how different his life was from that of his best friend until he nearly gets the other boy killed.

COMPLETE

This Is Entertaining

Darcy Reid can’t remember a time in his life that Katherine Pulitzer wasn’t present, and, as stressful as she’s made his life, he wouldn’t trade a minute.

NOT STARTED

Guess He Didn't Take Care of Me

He doesn’t do family, never has. It’s never done him any good, after all, and caring about people only ever hurts in the end.

COMPLETED

Terrible

The worst parts of life don't seem so bad if you have someone to come home to at the end of the day.

NOT STARTED

Future Fics Stories that look towards what happens in the years and decades after the strike is settled. (Mostly intercuts for 5 to 1)

What Was Ours

When she first met Jack, Katherine found him cute and vaguely amusing, but she never dreamed it would go farther than that. Now she can’t picture a life without him.

NOT STARTED

Hello Beautiful

Specs and Romeo are far from a perfect couple, but they’ve always made things work. But this may be what finally tears them apart.

NOT STARTED

No Use for Moonlight

Annie Cohen has a plan. It's a good plan. A great plan, even. One that's going perfectly right up until she accidentally falls in love with the completely wrong person.

NOT STARTED

#Refuge Rulers #newsies #masterlist

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goddesspharo · 2 years

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director's cut? any and all insights into 'move it to the exits' and 'living in a rhythm where the minute's working overtime', please!

There are brilliant people who exist who have well thought out plots and intricate outlines laid out before they actually start writing. I am not one of those people. (David Fincher, I am not!) I tried outlining a very convoluted fic once with three different concurrent timelines, color-coordinated the thing, wrote 20k, and then gave it up. My process - if one can even call it that - is that usually I will get one line of dialogue or narration stuck in my mind like an incessant earworm until I have no choice but to do something with it. So a lot of times, the scene is built around that one line or the entire story is in the service of getting to that one particular moment. It'll be like 20k of words just because I couldn't get the image of someone leaning out of my head. There's an entire graveyard of unfinished google docs that occasionally get cannibalized into parts of other things that started off with one stupid thought incepting my brain.

living in a rhythm where the minute’s working overtime (The Batman; Bruce/Selina): I was back on my Bruce/Selina bullshit after The Batman. (To be fair, when am I ever NOT about them? I love them in almost all iterations! And having Bruce Wayne be a sad weirdo who smears on grease paint while overidentifying with Kurt Cobain? While Selina Kyle is objectively rad and played by Zoe Kravitz who can actually pull off calling a dude wearing bat ears "baby" every other line? Excellent choices!) It got me to write fic again after a billion years! The line that started this one off was "Think of how guilty you'll feel if I die without knowing you are," but I think originally I had pictured it as happening on a rooftop in the context of Selina having already figured out Batman's secret identity (I was - maybe still am - obsessed with that scene where she asks if he's hideously scarred under the mask) and trying to get him to admit it, but then it morphed into her milking a fairly benign injury to score a trip to the batcave instead and the rest is history. I think this one had room to be a longer thing, but I wrote it on the heels of having already written a 16k and 14k fic about these two idiots already (when historically I rarely used to cross 10k) and needed a break. move it to the exits (Roswell New Mexico; Kyle/Isobel): I really loved the idea of a drunk Kyle wrapping Isobel in his herringbone coat as the snow started to gently fall around them. In the back of my mind, that imagery was part of a very long-form story with them secretly dating but Isobel trying to hide it from her well-meaning mother because she doesn't want Ann Evans to get invested in case it didn't work out. In true Isobel fashion, she makes sure Kyle is on call when Ann comes to visit that weekend. In true Michael fashion, he accidentally lets it slip to Kyle that his girlfriend's mother is in town and it would be a great idea to surprise them at dinner. The dinner, already stressful because Ann is meeting Liz for the first time, is of course a disaster that starts with Isobel introducing Kyle as Liz's ex-boyfriend (which he thinks is kind of weird) and only gets worse from there. Ann Evans keeps trying to get Kyle to arrange a meet-cute between Isobel and a hot doctor in his hospital (which he thinks is really weird). And Max keeps choking on his wine because he's laughing so hard. And then Ann Evans finally asks Kyle why someone who is such a catch doesn't have a girlfriend and he finally gets that Isobel has been lying to her mother for six months when he convinced his own mother to invite her over for dinner even though she kept referring to Isobel "Max's sister with the sex toys" when he first told her they were dating. Naturally, Kyle's anger manifests as him punching Jordan Bernhardt in the parking lot of The Crashdown after he fakes a stat page from the hospital to get out of the dinner from hell, which leads to where this starts off.

#ask me things #we can pretend there is a thought process behind any of this #batman #catwoman #roswell new mexico

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shah-writes · 3 years

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an artificially intelligent curse

so i read this article about a man who uses AI to speak with his dead fiancee and i simply cannot stop thinking about it. there’s no MCD in this! but you can find my thoughts at the bottom.

tldr; think AI + Inception + Drarry

“Draco’s dying.”

Ron is Harry’s best friend in the whole world but sometimes he can be a bit daft.

“No, he’s not,” Harry replies serenely. He’s not. Draco is in the kitchen, wearing the light blue sweater Harry gave him last Christmas and a rosy flush Harry gave him two minutes ago.

“They think you can help him.” Ron is staring at a point above Harry’s shoulder. Harry shifts slightly to follow Ron’s gaze and finds Draco standing there, levitating three steaming mugs of tea onto the table.

Except. Except, Draco doesn’t drink tea. He drinks cheap, Instant coffee, a consequence of his time spent working in America. Harry teases him about it all the time.

There’s a slight thud as two mugs hit the table, the third has vanished.

Draco settles into a chair. “No tea for me,” he says playfully. There’s a small Statue of Liberty trinket on the bookshelf behind Ron. Harry relaxes.

“Ron was just telling me a story,” Harry shares.

Draco smiles and leans forward expectantly on the table. It’s a set they thrifted last weekend: one Walnut table and four Cherry chairs— one ingredient away from a meal, Draco had joked.

“It’s a curse, Harry. ‘Mione figured it out. It’s preying on your memories.”

Harry gives Ron a conciliatory nod and reaches out to brush a dark curl away from Draco’s forehead. Draco has platinum hair, he remembers, as an afterthought.

The strands shift to a blinding white immediately. Or were they always white? They must have been, Draco would never dye his hair.

“It’s you, Harry. You’re teaching it how to trap you.”

Harry reluctantly turns back toward Ron.

“What makes us human?” Ron asks. “Harry, I know you can hear me, you just have to listen. What makes us human?”

“I… I don’t know,” Harry mumbles.

“Instinct, Harry. Emotion and instinct.”

Ron is sitting on a cushioned armchair and Harry wonders absently where he got it. All Harry has are four Cherry chairs. He nearly expects to see Ron’s chair transform into dark wood. It doesn’t.

“You can’t teach humanity,” Ron continues. “You can teach a Thing how to learn, how to adapt. You can force it to consume everything around it until it knows right from wrong. Until it becomes as intelligent as any of us, but you can never teach it instinct. Look around, Harry, use your instinct.”

There’s a portrait on the wall. Four people. Harry and Draco. An older woman with almond-shaped green eyes and freckles over her nose; an older man with dark skin and Harry’s own unruly hair.

“Hermione’s calling it an AI-Curse. Artificial Intelligence. It sweeps through your mind quickly and puts together a scenario where you feel comfortable. It’ll get things wrong, of course. It doesn’t know which memories are relevant, which are wrong, which are just daydreams. That’s where you come in. You tell It when it’s wrong and you reward It when it’s right.”

Draco’s sitting still at the table. Harry beckons him over.

“I love that picture of us,” Draco says happily, laying his head on Harry’s shoulder.

“What is this?”

“Us and your parents, silly.”

“Draco, my parents are dead. They’ve been dead for 27 years.”

Draco blinks. “I know. Do you miss them?”

Harry snaps back to the portrait. His parents have disintegrated out of the frame.

Ron’s still sitting at the table in his armchair. “Malfoy’s condition is deteriorating. He’s succumbing to the curse. Once he’s given up all of his memories, he’ll die trapped in a fake world of his own design.”

“Stop,” Harry says; and then, “STOP,” louder, facing Ron. Ron doesn’t hear him. Because… because Ron’s not here. Ron and his stubborn, incongruous armchair aren’t here. Harry can hear the humming of Mungo’s Stasis charms echoing somewhere in his mind, the quiet bustle of the hallway, the frantic whispering.

The only person here is Draco. Draco, who barely ever comes over to Harry’s flat. Draco, who flirts with him over lunches but flinches away when Harry reaches out to sweep his blonde hair off his forehead.

There’s a rosy flush on Draco’s cheeks except Harry’s not the one that gave it to him. Harry’s never kissed Draco; they’re partners and friends and maybe something that transcends description, but not this. Not yet.

“Draco, why are you here?”

“What do you mean?” Draco’s smiling at him, eyes soft. It’s a daydream. Harry swallows down the grief of the realization.

“We’re not dating, we’re not anything, why are you in my flat?”

Draco freezes.

“No, no, no, please, no,” Harry’s grasping at him desperately but there’s nothing there. Just pixels floating away from each other, dissolving into the air.

“NO!” Harry’s kneeling, face hidden in his hands. “No, I can’t do this alone, I can’t, come back… please come back.” He knows it’s impossible; you can’t teach humanity, Ron had said. AI doesn’t understand emotions, won’t bring him back now that it knows he doesn’t belong.

“They want to Obliviate you,” Ron continues, speaking at Harry’s bedside at Mungo’s, imitated in Harry’s subconscious.

“What?” Harry turns and scrambles toward Ron.

“Hermione had a near conniption,” he chuckles. “But it’s the logical solution. The curse absorbs everything you show it and gives it back to you, better and smarter. If there’s no data for it to learn from, then you’re free.”

Harry collapses into the chair beside Ron, mind whirling. The room twists around them. They’re in the Gryffindor Common Room now, Ginny and Hermione near the fireplace, no more Walnut table and Cherry chairs. Except, Molly Weasley’s washing dishes in the corner. No.

Obediently, Molly Weasley pops away. And then, the room is shifting again.

“Without memories, the curse will implode into the simplest version of itself: a basic mind trap. Straightforward, simple. The kind that Aurors learn in training.”

“JUST TELL ME WHAT TO DO, RON,” Harry bellows.

The Burrow. Except, there are two Georges. No. The room glitches and restarts.

“They won’t try Obliviation with Malfoy. Healers think it’s too late, that he’s too weak even to break out of the simplest version.”

The office and Draco… he’s back. He’s back and alive and leaning back in his chair, feet propped up on his desk, inspecting a takeout box. Yes.

The room fills in further, encouraged. Case files pile up on Harry’s desk; Draco’s Statue of Liberty trinket is back, in the right place this time; an evidence board on the wall, newspaper clippings, Draco’s neat, white notes, Harry’s scrawl.

“It’s unethical to deprive him of his memories now.” Ron says.

Harry inspects the board closely. 7 people dead over 2 months. Inconsistencies in their deaths, but clearly perpetrated by the same actor. A pale blue envelope mailed to each victim. It explodes within minutes of delivery, enveloping its target into a coma.

Seemingly random victims. A middle-aged mother, an elderly school teacher, a teenager days away from his 15th birthday. Muggles, Purebloods, Half-Bloods, and a Squib. Varying races, different financials.

“Weird, isn’t it?” Draco’s staring at him. “Almost as if they chose the most diverse targets on purpose.”

Harry turns to him slowly, “Why?”

Draco tosses him an egg roll and shrugs, “Make sure we can’t trace them?” Draco joins him at the board, looks over the victim list.

The first had taken one month to die, slowly incapacitated. The second had taken only half that time, he had perished within two weeks. Faster and faster after that. The latest victim, a five-year old girl, was gone in three days.

It was the first time, in five years of working together, that Harry saw Draco break down. Crouched outside her Mungo’s room, shivering, quiet; Harry had pulled him up and deposited him home. He came back to work two days later, his clenched jaw and fierce determination lodging itself into Harry’s heart.

Draco’s written a note under her picture: The curse is learning.

“What is this?”

“You didn’t see the Mungo’s report? They think it’s targeting memories. With each iteration, it’s getting faster and killing quicker. Hermione was telling me about this thing…”

“Artificial Intelligence.”

“Exactly,” Draco smiles, surprised, “it absorbs huge amounts of data until it learns how to adapt to every condition.”

“The diverse victims— someone is teaching it how to learn, adapt to every condition,” Harry repeats. Draco’s standing near his desk again, illuminated by the soft light of his lamp. Soft blonde locks fall into his eyes as he looks over a case file. Harry wonders if this version will flinch away if he reaches out. Wonders if the curse has learned this detail yet. He hopes it hasn’t.

“They’re going to let him die in his own fake world. A peaceful death, they called it.” Ron is still sitting in the corner of the office, in a cushioned armchair.

Harry shakes his head, silently, frantically. There’s a pale blue envelope on Draco’s desk.

“Draco, what is that?”

Draco looks at the envelope and back at Harry, nonchalant. Then, his face morphs into fear, mirroring Harry’s own expression. It’s the curse, it’s learning. Harry’s teaching it.

“The curse was targeting Malfoy. You were hit since you were in such close proximity, but it's a much weaker variant. You can make it out, Harry. You can help Malfoy navigate out.” Ron says from his corner.

“Harry,” Draco whispers. “What do I do?”

Harry strides forward, takes Draco’s shoulders in his hands. This is real now; Harry remembers this morning. “I’ll come for you, okay? We know what it is now, we’ll figure out how to stop it. Draco, you’ll be fine.”

Draco’s falling now. His eyes are shut, he’s laying on the floor, head tilted toward Harry.

Draco’s dying.

“RON, WHAT DO I DO? TELL ME WHAT TO DO!”

Ron’s not in his corner anymore. He’s gone, and so is his armchair, and it’s just Harry alone, in his office, with Draco’s body.

The room is still filling up around him. Draco’s coffee mug, steaming on his desk. Blank walls slowly plastered over with Auror-standard tan wallpaper. Except. Except, Severus Snape is standing over Draco.

Harry steps closer cautiously, willful not to let the curse know that Snape doesn’t belong.

“The headmaster has asked me to teach you Occlumency. I can only hope that you prove more adept at it than Potions,” Snape says, looking up at Harry with dark, hooded eyes.

A memory, then. Out of place, but relevant. Harry remembers Ron’s words: The curse doesn’t know which memories are relevant. It’s guessing, responding to Harry’s needs. It’s helping.

“Right. You’re right.” Harry says, loud. Snape solidifies, robes saturating darker.

“Rid your mind of all emotion,” Snape continues. “Empty it, make it blank and calm.”

“Empty it,” Harry whispers. He takes a last look at Draco and closes his eyes.

He opens them to a plain white room. Nothing on the walls, the floor. Nothing, except a door. A simple mind trap. Harry opens the door.

i just love the idea that the curse helps him get out. since AI is always developed in service to others, i like the idea that even weaponized as a curse, it would still adapt to the needs of its target and help them in any way possible. idk pals!!!! i just have a lot of thoughts about AI, come scream with me about it!!!!!!!

also, if you haven’t already, i would highly recommend reading the article this is based off-- it is fascinating.

#shah-writes #i pored through OotP for the first time in a decade for the Snape quotes lmao #drarry fic #drarry #harry potter #draco malfoy #ron weasley

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plan-d-to-i · 3 years

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Great to see another person who isn't a JC stan! And the thing is, I like the idea of him being protective uncle and would love to see a reconciliation. But would I want one as JC currently is across all iterations? Nope. Maybe WWX continues to visit his home, but it's definitely not for JC's sake. He has a new life now and shouldn't be expected to be tethered to someone who clearly wanted him dead for years, tortured innocents, and was a terrible uncle.

The donghua makes him look even more pathetic imo, but by doing so, it also gives us a beautiful scene with WWX wanting to leave the past behind. JC going into seclusion is the least he could do (and personally, I was never comfortable with LXC going into one—though the man absolutely deserves to rest—so this kinda balances it out lol). Not every character is going to get their happy ending and that's okay.

Honestly, if WWX deserves to have a reunion with any of his siblings, it's Yanli. And no doubt she'd be disappointed in the person JC has become.

hahah hello other person who isn't a jc stan. ヾ(・ω・*)

I think it's great that mdzs doesn't have a reconciliation. MXTX did reconciliation between the mc and his friend in tgcf: Xie Lian & Mu Qing- but to make the reconciliation happen MXTX made Mu Qing quite different from jiang cheng. I never got the sense that it was overlooked or lacking in mdzs, but only that it's very deliberately not done. It's very true to life. There are some things there's no coming back from. jiang cheng ultimately led a siege against Wei Wuxian and killed people Wei Wuxian had spent years around, who he respected and had become familiar with and most likely loved. Wei Wuxian may not actively keep grudges, or hate in his heart, but neither is he a pushover. Honestly even if so much had not happened between them, they never had anything in common since young, their world views are completely different. They would have always drifted apart. Wei Wuxian was interested in helping others and jiang cheng cared only about helping himself. Wei Wuxian's home is no longer Lotus Pier it's the Cloud Recesses. He's accepted into the Lan Clan as Lan Wangji's partner.

The part of the story where Wei Wuxian takes Lan Wangji around Lotus Pier is really symbolic of him sharing his youth with Lan Wangji but also putting that chapter of his life to rest. Wei Wuxian sees his old living quarters have been torn down:

“Lan WangJi asked, “What is wrong?”

Wei WuXian shook his head, “Nothing. The place I lived in used to be here. Now it’s gone. It really was torn down. All of these are new.”

The atmosphere is on longer as warm and welcoming around Lotus Pier as he remembers it. Since the very first time in his new life that jc wants to kidnap him and take him to Lotus Pier (to torture/kill) WWX is aware that it won't match what he remembers. He doesn't want to go back to the tattered Lotus Pier of the present and now he sees it first hand:

“There aren’t many vendors left. Back then, no matter how late it was, this place was crammed with vendors, selling all kinds of food, because many people in Lotus Pier came out for late night snacks. There were also many boats, maybe even more than your Caiyi Town.” He continued, “It’s much fewer now. Lan Zhan, you came here too late. You weren’t here when it was at it was at its liveliest.”

Finally they make their way to the tree. The tree that WWX fell from when he was little on the night YanLi made him her soup for the first time, and he got along with jiang cheng for the first time- meaning the first night he probably felt some sense of belonging there:

“Wei WuXian, “But this one’s different! This was the first one I climbed after I came to Lotus Pier. I climbed it in the middle of the night. My shijie came out to search for me, holding a lantern. She was scared I’d fall down the tree, so she prepared to catch me on the ground. But what could she catch with her thin little arms? And so I still broke one of my legs.”

Only this time he leaps and falls into Lan Wangji's arms. Unlike YanLi LWJ catches him securely. Wei Wuxian entrusts himself fully into Lan Wangji's care, and Lan Wangji is strong enough to love and protect him wholly. They move on to their last stop in the Ancestral Hall so he can present LWJ to JFM and YZY, since he doesn't even have the ashes of his own parents, and as if things were not final enough jc busts in and effectively ends any (emotional) ties WWX might have still had to Lotus Pier.

“Lan WangJi, “How do you feel?!”

Wei WuXian didn’t answer the question, “Lan Zhan… Let’s go.” Go. Right now. Don’t ever come back again.

Lan WangJi, “Yes.”

That's pretty final. He reiterates that sentiment of leaving the past in the past in the Guanyin Temple, again while holding Lan Wangji's hand.

“Wei WuXian, “Uh, I think it’s best if you… also stop keeping it on your mind. I know you’ll definitely always keep it on your mind, but, how should I say it…” He clenched Lan WangJi’s hand, saying to Jiang Cheng, “Right now, I do really think… it’s all in the past. It’s been too long. There’s no need to struggle with it any longer.”

The donghua somehow, in spite of switching everything around, managed to captured the spirit of those two scenes very well and distilled it into one.

I too thought it did surprisingly well :)

#mdzs #answers #Wei Wuxian #Lan Wangji #jiang cheng

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camilliar · 4 years

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recs for someone new to omgcp

[February 2021.]

Reading, or not reading, OMGCP fics has come up in a couple of conversations I’ve had recently with artists newish to the fandom (ie. @jovishark; @decafffff), who are making OMGCP art (!!!) but haven’t started exploring fic -- but maybe want to? Which of course reminded me that I’ve never bothered to make an actual, concrete recs list for this fandom. So, I mean. Here is one.

The approach is, what do I think about when I think about OMGCP fanfic? What comes to mind, what stands out to me? I have excluded some very popular fics. Some of these I just don’t think are very good, and others I do think are good, and/or I enjoy them, but I don’t see why you’d need me, specifically, to recommend them. I am thinking of a story like maybe i’m waking up, which I discuss below because I link to a podfic of it. It has a lot of merits, to be sure, but it’s the second-most-read fic in this fandom by hits, and it’s got thousands of comments, and it’s by an author whose work is relatively widely praised and circulated. I am not sure what telling you more about this fic will add to the conversation; if you want to find and read it, you inevitably will. I’m happy to, say, answer asks about these kinds of fics, or talk more generally about them via DM or whatever. Feel free.

Also, I don’t think there’s a point to pretending to be objective about fanfic; this list has a perspective and that perspective is mine. In this fandom I largely read stories that navigate the tension around Jack, Bitty, and Parse, in various permutations. This is not to say that I’ve never read fic about the frogs, or that I have no interest at all in other pairings, but I am by no means an expert on Dex/Nursey and can really only speak to the one fic about them that sticks out to me because it goes beyond being merely Dex/Nursey and does something else. This is just to say that I am sure there are great and interesting fics about other things and ideas--but I’m not the person to hear about those from.

Likewise, I’m not super interested in stories that really reproduce that which is already in OMGCP. I like Zimbits--albeit maybe not in the ways or for the reasons most fans would--but I do not really need to see endless iterations of the same story about them falling in love and being cute together. I don’t think these stories are bad or they shouldn’t exist or that they have no merit by default. Still, I don’t need fanfic to give me more OMGCP. I need fanfic to complicate, to comment on, and to transform OMGCP. Many people don’t work like this! Totally okay! But I can’t rec you fics that do that.

What I have noticed, however, is that over time there appears to have been a shift in how people do write fic for this fandom. (Other than, you know, increases and decreases in activity pending the status of the comic, pairings going in and out of vogue, and so on.) Early on, say during Y1 and Y2, the comic was about the group of friends having a cool time at college together; about whether the burgeoning attraction between Jack and Bitty would manifest and, if so, how; and, especially, Jack’s past coming into fuller view for Bitty and how it would have to be dealt with in order for a relationship between them to work. YMMV on how great the comic executed there, but as Y3 went on these themes increasingly disappeared from the story. I think this means a lot of fic written over 2015-2016 or 2017 has one kind of tone, and was written mostly around these questions; after that, it feels like a new crop of writers and a new crop of ideas started circulating, that is, either embracing Jack and Bitty’s canon relationship and accepting its relative straightforwardness in text--or deconstructing it, imagining what readers aren’t seeing, or how problems not dealt with in the comic would manifest later. People who have read my fic know which of these I’m mainly interested in exploring.

All of which is to say, looking at what I’m reccing here, when the fics were posted or when I first read them probably has a lot to do with why they stick out to me so much. Because there’s no real culture of fanfic criticism--and I mean that in the positivist sense of broad evaluation not explicitly for fault and merit but rather, for context--I think it’s really hard to keep this in mind. But I’m obnoxious and I can’t just be easy about things.

Fic recs

In alphabetical order, somewhat unsorted; if a stand-alone fic has a summary I’ve included it, but in other cases I’ve recced a couple of conceptually related fics or series, which I’ve tried to just describe or explain as opposed to copying the summary off AO3.

There are so many more fanfics I think are great and worth reading! In an ideal world I’d come back and add more later, or create a secondary list that’s more along the lines of “if you like this, read these,” or whatever. But, being realistic, this is a starter kit. I’m open to talking about fanfic.

- - - - - - - - - - -

7-0-2 by Idday; Friends in Low Places and Sorry for the Blood in Your Mouth; I Wish it was Mine by blue_rocket_frost | I’m not sure it would be correct to say that I don’t like Parse/Tater, or that I’m not interested in Parse/Tater. I’m not interested in Patater a priori; I think it could be interesting, with teeth. These fics stick out to me when I think about this pairing, because they feel different. Accusations of a preference for just linking any two white men who happen to be hanging around have validity, but because of what hockey is and how it works and who’s hanging around it, it’s not exactly a leap to imagine what kind of gritty spark the friction between two closeted NHL players would create. A little violence in your sex? A little sex in your violence.

A Sight Worth Seeing by sadtomato | A four-fic Jack/Bitty/Shitty/Lardo explicit BDSM series. Either you want that or you don’t. It’s nothing hardcore, and not properly a four-way, really; more properly a kind of voyeuristic round-robin. There’s a more open and egalitarian view of sex here than I really get from the characters in the back end of the comic. It’s an expansive, propulsive view of sex and relationships that’s really nice to see. I love Lardo's detached coolness, and Bitty as a smooth operator; if you’re looking for some kind of Dom/sub dynamics world, this really isn’t it, but it’s a lively exploration into the sexual dynamics in a group of friends that’s super close to the good-times vibe you get from Haus scenes in the first couple years of extras.

call me son (one more time) by Summerfrost, Verbyna, and blithelybonny | This is a series, incomplete, and you will love it or be massively put off by it. I mean that as a compliment. I love it. The premise is, Bob Zimmermann and Kent Parson have been having sex since Kent was, like, 19. Everyone in this story has been chewed up: by themselves, by each other, by hockey. Plainly, this is a pretty bleak view of what OMGCP, as a story, is supposedly offering. If you want fic that is dark and glamorous, treading the toxic melange of substance abuse, sex-as-sublimation, and so much money you can’t possibly throw all of it away without trying, this series has that sick-inducing shimmer to it. But, again, its strength is its examination of Kent Parson, textually and meta-textually, as someone to be projected onto. Bob, Alicia, Jack, and Bitty all impute certain feelings of their own onto him, displacing their own issues to a character who’s centralized in every fic but defies neat or total comprehension. Some critiques I’ve read of this series feel it’s too dark, and I’ve also seen it argued on FFA that an overwhelming amount of praise heaped onto these stories has made it tough for other writers to make headway in writing Bob/Kent fic. But I’m also not sure you could engage with Bob/Kent fic without going down this road at some point? I’m sure there are ways to scale it back, but ultimately it’s a story about how hockey’s violent, homophobic, old-guard gatekeeping has continued to set the terms for a younger and ostensibly less toxic culture. I fully embrace PWP fics that tread on the power dynamic without fully excavating it, but buried within any PWP is the fact that a 53-year-old man is ensnaring a 19-year-old, no matter how much the latter is, realistically, into it, and legally empowered to consent. Not to mention the dynamics of it being a 53-year-old man who is the father of the 19-year-old’s ex-boyfriend, and a 53-year-old man who is an eminence grise in the field the 19-year-old is trying to make a career in The sexual element--the vaguely incestuous nature of it--is making textual the subtext of how hockey works, actually: objectification of teenage bodies as older men’s capital.

Coach Z by thistidalwave | Just before the 2009 NHL Entry Draft, tp prospect Jack Zimmermann overdoses on his anxiety medication and is admitted to rehab. His future turns from a clear-cut road to the top into an uncertain path filled with therapy appointments, ignored text messages, a group of boys who aren't there to teach him a lesson about himself, and, of course, hockey. | I keep reccing this fic because it has 360 comments on AO3 but nobody, as far as I can tell, has ever read it; it never appears on rec lists. This isn’t the kind of fanfic I usually go in for, but I can’t help being charmed by it. This is a character study in the truest sense, a kind of Mighty Ducks-but-better view on what Jack’s time coaching peewee hockey might have been like. I have no interest in kids and my own aesthetic is maybe a little darker than this, but I admire this story because it injects vibrancy into a period of Jack’s life that OMGCP has left largely unexplored, and so has the fandom. We know nothing about what made Jack want to go to college, nothing about how he spent his days in between juniors and Samwell. It posits a very sympathetic and patient Jack/Parse dynamic, showcasing the exact kind of ragged teenage push-and-pull that would have led to the circumstances we see in Parse I-III. The outside perspective Jack needs is largely present in an OFC who’s not a love interest. Super unique, somehow both engrossing and low-key.

#dirtbags by angularmomentum | A series that is a Kent Parson/Claude Giroux fuckfest with feelings. I’ve long suspected that Parse is popular in part because he is the character who most easily elides OMGCP with the actual NHL, or rather, NHL fandom; I think he made it appealing to write OMGCP fics where the NHL is a factor. Case in point, this series, which is basically “what if Kent Parson was a real hockey player and therefore part of NHL RPS”? I have only read some NHL RPS, so I’m not the person to assess accuracy, but what I do know is superstar IRL hockey players take turns here as the caricature fanfic versions of themselves, and since Kent Parson is already that, it’s great how seamlessly he integrates into their social fabric. Rambunctious energy peppered with regret and loss, but ultimately this series is farcical, and it doesn’t take its sentimental ending too seriously--which, good.

fated to pretend by nighimpossible | 5 Jack/Kent fics that Ransom and Holster dramatically reenact for the Haus + the truth. | As a fic format, 5+1 doesn’t usually work for me, but this one isn’t just front-loaded with five too-knowing vignettes; it then wraps up by using its +1 better than you might expect. Sometimes I talk about economy of fic, and this one exemplifies it. A zero-waste fic.

go ahead and move along by originally | "Leave, Parse," Jack says. Again. Or: Kent finds himself stuck in a time loop. | Kent Parson is trapped in a Groundhog Day scenario on the day of Epikegster. I’m sure you can imagine, just from that, what happens. And yet I think this fic is super entertaining, reserving some key surprises. What this story is doing is something a lot, and perhaps even the majority, of great Jack/Parse fic wants to do: digging into the question of just why this can’t work in comic canon. Most often this is approached from the past, by writing teenage Jack/Parse deep-dives that examine their lives mid-juniors, or by writing AUs where enough circumstances are shifted that it does work, or via future fics that posit enough growth has happened, and enough things have changed. But this fic makes Parse live the same bad day again and again, testing multiple theories about just how dependent on circumstance and incident real life actually is. Another day, another tone, 10 minutes sooner, not at all--you just can’t know why it didn’t work until you exhaust every possible variable. I worry that this rec has sucked the life out of the story, though--it’s so fun!

I Saw a Life and Strange Lovers by @bluegrasshole | Most AUs in this fandom seem to retell the story in a new setting or with some big detail change, following OMGCP’s rhythm beat-for-beat. I think of this as, “It’s the plot of Check, Please, but” -- they’re doing high school football? They’re acrobats? They’re a/b/o? They’re in a DIY punk band? And so on. These two stories are not that! They’re both 1950s AUs, each deeply felt, and yet hugely different from each other. I Saw a Life is about displacement and fragmentation, two sides of a similar but incongruent social critique; Strange Lovers is a finely wrought social drama about coal mining in Nova Scotia in the 1950s, centered around historical events. I suppose a theme on this rec list is something like, “I don’t even like this, but” -- yes, okay, I don’t even like Dex/Nursey, but--! This fic is so overwhelmingly complete, the AU laid out so carefully that the story breathes with all the background details informing the writing that aren’t actually, in the story; you just know they’re below the surface. (With the exception of one investigation of Jack’s character in a short, separate fic.) I Saw a Life, meanwhile, really tests the limits of the notion that Jack and Bitty are soulmates--not by calling it into question but by asking, rather innovatively, how the setting and place of the comic itself activates that.

Les Hivers de mon enfance by staranise | What do you do when hockey is the language of prayer for your soul, and also the toxic thing that almost killed you? 2009: Jack Zimmermann takes a mental health year. God knows he needs it. | Here’s a fic by someone who’s no longer around so much, but she felt ubiquitous in 2016-2019 OMGCP fandom. Before any of that, though, she wrote this one lovely fic about Jack’s pre-Samwell recovery. The author is Canadian and really irritated by hockey culture, and I think this fic benefits greatly because she is clear-eyed about Jack’s being caught in an exploitative system; it’s hockey he’s in recovery for, in a way. There’s an epistolary element that works for me, too. I read this early on in my time in OMGCP fandom and it really stuck with me.

Lysistrata? I Hardly Know Her! (by which I mean everything) by @tomatowrites | It feels somehow like cheating to recommend OMGCP fanfics by my OMGCP BFF with whom I make an OMGCP podcast where we talk about OMGCP. You know the fics I really want to rec, like truly the ones that speak to some kind of shared depravity, are the ones where Jack is miserably mpreg for the second time and accidentally lets his kid see Kent Parson’s Long John Silver’s shrimp scampi promo spot, which obviously would get twisted into a self-hating three-way. How many times do I have to rec this fic? As many as I need to, is my feeling. If you don’t know, Long John Silver’s is an American fast-food chain that sells, like, fried pollock sandwiches; it is nautical-themed; I have never eaten there; I don’t know where there is one; I don’t eat fried fish. (Shrimp, on the other hand?) All of which is to say that it takes a real genius to investigate a premise that far out. And while a lot of people almost certainly will start reading this humanity’s depths-themed sex scene and back the fuck out, readers with refined taste will note that Kent, the point-of-view character, is right there with you, despairing that he can’t help himself. And so long as you’re in that story collection, honestly, you’ll love petite gems like Jack is transmasc, Jack and Shitty play hockey in 18th-century England, and oh, right, he’s from Georgia. Tomato holds the distinction of being probably the gamest author I know in this fandom, just really like fearless in her pursuit of any range of concept she’s pushed to. (I can push her to?) See, for example, a sublime bandom AU; Bitty is cancelled for buying a maybe-unethically exported Roman fragment of a youth’s torso; or, god, the masterwork that is this future fic series where Jack keeps relapsing and Bitty exiles him to their guesthouse. Do I think you need to read a fic where Bitty is snide about the teen prostitute whose baby they’re adopting? Yes, I mean, he would be snide, don’t tell me he wouldn’t. I could go on, but my main thing here is, if I have to pick just one, I’m going to pick this Lysistrata fic. The premise, literally, is that Bitty reads the Lysistrata and it gives him ideas. Like most of Tomato’s OMGCP fic, it’s a stripping away of the comic’s polite fiction that Jack and Bitty could possibly attain the ideal it reaches in the comic without some kind of messy, efflusive breakdown. Life is like that, you see! Tricky. Like a lot of people, although it’s tough to say precisely how many, I have always intuited that maybe Bitty is kind of a natural top? But obviously when you meet him, as a literal virgin, it’s hard to see how he’d go from zero to self-actualization so neatly. This fic floats a theory, and it has a fun little side plot for Whiskey, something I never thought about or needed before Tomato built it out herein. In conclusion, BONUS: Dex’s gay lobster novel.

only fools rush in and the light of all lights by decinq | This person wrote of the nature of the wound, one of the early, formative Jack/Bitty fics that was oft-recced when I was getting into the fandom in 2016. It forms part of a larger series that deals deeply with how Jack has been shaped by his struggles (? I hate this word) with homophobia and his own mental health. It’s a picture of the character as you might have imagined him much earlier in the comic’s run. The formatting is atrocious and he author’s flair is what Tomato would call “AO3 house style.” It’s a voice that works great for her writing. I think it’s at its best in these shorter fics; the former is about Parse and Shitty stumbling into a relationship almost accidentally; the latter, an eerie PBJ vampire fic. I had begun writing a fic where Parse is a vampire early on in this fandom, only to read this and immediately quit, because you only need one, and this one’s all I need. The Parse/Shitty rare pair fic shares its exuberance with hockey RPS when it’s good: here’s how fun it can be when you’re young, rich, and jocular. And I don’t even like accidental marriage AUs, they’re usually boring, so that says a lot. By all means, read the wound fic; read the entire series. But these are highly unusual.

OVERDOSE and Oomph and a little spin-o-rama by jedusaur | None of these are long, or plotty, and they’re all a little experimental. OVERDOSE is an AU set in a world where you know how you’ll die, but no details; Oomph, a little fic where Jack hears hockey pucks talking to him. This is the kind of stuff I used to think I’d find in fandom forever, coming out of Lotrips lurking in the 2000s: short, zany bursts of energy that surprise and delight. a little spin-o-rama peers at Kent’s character through the grim reality of being the hypertalented superstar stuck on a dead-last team. All three are sparse and stylish in a way that’s really smart, practically economical.

Sowing Season by @agrossunderstatement | Parse and Zimms, Zimms and Parse. Kent Parson's life, from the Q, through his early years with the Aces, to Jack's senior year. Canon divergent. A story of love, loss, moving on, regressing, hockey, and found families of all kinds. | Effectively a novel, digging into Kent’s personal history, mostly concerning his life in juniors but expanding into his present, overlapping with the plot of OMGCP. I think there is room enough for endless speculations on what went down pre-canon; this one offers a fuller life for Kent than nearly any others, digging into him as a whole person rather than as a satellite to Jack or the plot of the comic. Which isn’t to say that the Kent/Jack stuff isn’t dealt with here; it explicitly is. But the fact of Kent Parson’s life, if we can begin to imagine it beyond mere text, would exist before, after, and alongside Jack; he gets to juniors without Jack, presumably, and he is the captain of a hockey team without Jack, and Pinkerton lays the foundation of Parse’s character within a junior hockey that Jack also inhabits, more so that Parse existing for Jack, so to speak. And I’m not implying this latter tactic is wrong; I have certainly employed it, and others have employed it to great impact and effect. But, still, the title of this series tells you what you ought to know: Kent and his story are the potentiality of OMGCP, up to a point; seeds being planted. Young hockey players, similarly. The question implied there is, what will be reaped? And the answer to the latter, in a sense, that reaping is a sort of violence. Which makes this series sound pretty heavy, but it’s not -- more like, realistic.

(tell everyone) you were a good wife by @queerofcups | The biggest problem with pretending that he doesn’t know that Kent Parson is fucking his husband is that Jack can’t tell Kent how grateful he is. | The ne plus ultra of PBJ triangulation; I’ve been squealing to the writer about how good it is since August, begging for behind-the-scenes insights, and I’d only do that if I really meant it. The precarious social fabric stretched across these three chapters is fraying before the reader’s eyes. The details are delicious, and I don’t want to spoil them, but they sing in chorus with the plot. My favorite OMGCP fics, honestly, remove the romance narrative guardrails that keep things in the comic itself humming along. I think Dann’s take is to ask who in this comic has power and what they would end up doing with it. (Or not doing, from another angle.) At one point, early on in its telling, OMGCP looked like it was going to be a story dealing with the compounded traumas of hockey’s discontents. Then, of course, it wasn’t. This is a fic that steps back and asks what the fallout of that oversight would be. But that’s just the moldering core of this fanfic; it’s actually embroidered, like I said, with glittering detail. The color of the suit Bitty wears to his wedding is burned into my brain. The gray manicure of a woman Jack knows. The ingredients in a cake. This is one of those fics I still haven’t reviewed because the thought of stacking everything I could say about it into mere AO3 comments is inadequate.

when you’re ready by megancrtr | The Aces’ director of communications gets the call at 3:13 a.m. Jack Zimmermann has withdrawn from the draft. | “What happened at the draft” is so mythological it gets asked in the comic proper, and I’ve never counted how many fics attempt to answer this question--from Kent’s point of view, even--but it’s gotta be, oh, hundreds. This story replays the situation from the perspective of an Aces staffer who just wants to do her job, and gets at the jarring discordance between the plot of OMGCP in its quest for social justice and the business of actual hockey. Important context is that this story was written around the time the comic was playing out the end of Y3 and start of Y4, and Bitty pointedly asked Jack the question, “why can’t we?” This story reframes the question as literal, rather than rhetorical. A sterling example of fanfic being a gloss on its source.

BONUS, podfics

hockeyed up | There are many things on Jack's mind. Namely: hockey, hockey, Bitty, hockey, anxiety, hockey, hockey, anxiety, Bitty, hockey, hockey, anxiety, and hockey. | A fic read aloud by its French-Canadian author. Also a relatively early OMGCP fanfic; composed while the first semester of Y2 was posting, the story suggests a version of OMGCP that was in some ways more and in other ways less complex than what it would turn into not long after. The real power of this podfic, however, is that it’s read by the writer, so you can hear the intended emphasis in every line. Also, because she’s French-Canadian, Sophie’s intonation is what I picture when I read or write dialogue for Jack.

maybe i’m waking up | It’s almost funny. All he ever wanted was to play hockey, to play in the NHL, to win the Cup. This—Samwell, the team, the Haus—was supposed to be just a detour, but now it feels more like a destination he failed to realize he’s already reached.(Or: Jack signs with the Falconers, graduates, and leaves. It's the hardest thing he's ever done. What comes after is even harder.) | Don’t get too excited; this isn’t finished. A podfic of probably the best-known, most-recced fic in OMGCP fandom. Striking for its use of metatext woven into the story, this is one of several early longform Jack/Bitty fics that posits that maybe Jack has a lot more development to undergo before he can really, truly, be okay--or be okay enough to be with Bitty? To be honest, this story strikes me now as too long, but the parts in it that work are effective beyond that which fanfic demands. Meanwhile, this audio version only covers six chapters, but it’s so slick, so well-realized, so true to the story. Podfic as art.

my own dear friends | Ever since the day he met Jack Zimmermann, Shitty has seen it as his solemn duty to aggressively love him. (He just didn't know how aggressive the love Jack needed would be.) | There’s previous little Jack/Shitty in this fandom and a lot less quality BDSM,

the city’s ours until the fall | Kent has been, historically, good at this—forgetting about things until suddenly he doesn’t, and then it’s like the scar has never been there in the first place, just the wound. (Or: Kent Parson lets himself be happy, after all this time.) | I’ve never read this fic and I never will. I cannot imagine how, no matter how good it is, it could compare to the version that lives in my head, with Kent’s voice so totally realized. Vocal fry and pathos, a languid energy that I still think about when I think about Parse.

the model home | It’s going to be better, and that’s great, but sometimes Jack thinks, why can’t it be good right now? | j/k j/k, this is a self-reminder to finally one day review this.

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queenangst · 4 years

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Prompt: izuku offers/gives OfA to someone. Who? I don't know! It could be in the middle of a battle, as a tactical decision or when he's bleeding to death, he could pass it on to his successor after a good long career as a hero, or in the hospital after a battle left him crippled or dying, future or present, a rushed or thought out decision, accepted or rejected, fluff or angst, I will love literally any iteration of this trope!

for my 30 min fic challenge / read more: ‘30 min fics’ tag

carve a knife into your own heart [read on AO3]

Her son is bleeding.

The first time Izuku gets a scrape on his knee after running too quickly and tripping on the floorboards, he cries. Of course he does—it hurts, and his knee is already streaked with red. Inko cries when her son cries, simply because he's hurting. But she still gently carries him to her and Hisashi's bed, gets a wet cloth and band-aids, and kisses it better. He's laughing again in no time, charmed by the All-Might themed band-aid and as Inko picks him up and swings him around.

This—

Oh, heavens and seas, she thinks. This is not something she can kiss better, not a wound that can be fixed with an All Might band-aid. She folds her jacket and presses down anyway, and Izuku—

Her sweet Izuku, her little hero, her son... he's crying. Of course he is—it hurts, and what's left of his shirt has already turned dark with blood. Her hands shake. She presses down, and hopes, and waits.

"Mo- Mom..."

There's some part of her that is very far away. She does this sometimes, when the world is just a little too cruel—or perhaps not so much the world but the people who inhabit it; her husband, Hisashi, who used to bring her fresh-cut flowers and then once a small paring knife before he left overseas and never visited again.

"It's okay, baby," she says. Pulls herself back in. "Just hold- just hold on. It's okay. Someone's coming. The heroes are coming."

He's not a hero yet. He's so close, he's gotten his provisional license, he's survived two years of U.A. and worse two years of fighting villains. With one hand still keeping the pressure on Izuku's wound, Inko scrabbles for her phone to check it as if it'll tell her anything. It's dead.

"I- I-"

"Don't speak," Inko whispers, and shifts so his head is pillowed in her lap. Smoke curls around them in their empty shell of an apartment, half-caved in on itself. They're trapped in what's left of the kitchen, saved from falling debris being caught between the counter and the kitchen island.

It's a small, cramped space. About the same size as the pillow forts they used to build together, but there's much less light and no comfort.

Izuku wheezes. His eyes are dull, but they're open and fixed on her face.

"Shh," Inko says, and leans down to kiss his forehead.

"No, I- I have to tell you... I... Mom, we're not—I'm not..."

Going to make it floats across her mind, the way her hand automatically signs her name on all of Izuku’s permission forms and paperwork. Always her; always the two of them.

"You're going to be fine," she says, her voice sharper than she intends. Her jacket is turning red. "It's okay."

"You ha- ah, Mom, Mom, please—" He jerks when her hand moves and makes a tiny cry of pain. "I need to tell... I- I'm so- I'm sorry..."

"You can tell me later."

"Now," Izuku whispers. He closes his eyes for a second, then another, then another, and Inko grabs his shoulder and shakes him. His face twists. Suddenly, green light sparks all around him—she's never seen his Quirk this close before.

Izuku opens his eyes again and meets her gaze. "I- when I was four... you- you took me to, to see the doctor. And he said I was Quirkless."

Her fear is twisting a knife in her chest. "I don't... baby, I don't understand."

"I was Quirkless," he says, and summons some hidden strength that carries him forward. "Until two years ago—I- I got a Quirk, but I- I lied to you. I'm sorry. My... my Quirk wasn't a mutation or- or anything. It was given to me."

"I- Izuku?"

"All Might," he whispers. "My Quirk. One for All, it's called One for All, and it's—he gave it to me so I could fulfill my dream. And be a hero."

Izuku, tired as he's home from the entrance exam, his clothes rumpled like he'd just put them on. Underneath them, bandages.

I have a Quirk now, Mom , he says in her memory. I- I can become a hero.

"Why are you telling me now?" She strokes his cheek. "You know I'm proud of you, Izuku. It doesn't matter if you- if your Quirk was given to you—"

"Because I want you to take it."

Before she can react, before she can do anything else, he lifts a heavy hand. Clumsy fingers drag across her face, catch on her lip; she tastes copper.

"Izuku?"

There's sound from outside, distant shouting, but she uses her Quirk and all her strength to pull Izuku closer to her. To hold him.

"Izuku?"

His chest rises, stutters, falls; rises again, but it's like every breath is getting shallower, and less steady. He blinks at her. Izuku's mouth parts, then closes again like he's trying to say something; and then he slips away from her.

Inko pulls him closer. "Izuku! Izuku!"

It's All Might who comes and sits next to her in the hospital, in the plastic, uncomfortable chairs as she waits for news. She hasn't changed. She hasn't looked in a mirror, either, but that doesn't mean Inko can't see the blood on her hands and under her nails and on her shirt.

"Midoriya," All Might says. His voice is low, gentle.

Anger flashes up, darting like a fish, and then fear, and then it changes again. She stares at him.

"You know, he wanted to be a hero. All his life."

All Might's brow crinkles. He looks so human in this moment, a picture of confusion, blonde hair framing his face. He looks a bit like her, lost and scared.

"He told me about One for All," she whispers, looking at her hands. They're covered in Izuku's blood. "And then he—he gave—"

She chokes.

All Might's large hand slides over hers. "He gave you One for All."

"I- I don't understand," she whispers. "He- he gave it to me to... to… and… I don't want it. I'm not a hero."

"He'll be alright," All Might says. "I chose my successor because I saw a light in him. It's not going to go out yet. I promise."

"I can't do anything with this Quirk," Inko protests, shaking her head. "You- you take it. It used to be yours."

"Save it for Izuku," All Might says. "And perhaps you're better suited than you think. You were his first hero."

There is now something Inko shares with All Might she didn’t before, but it is also this—sitting together, hands empty of something to hold, and the line of two different legacies waiting for continuation.

taglist: @happi-tree @soyoudneverguess @granny-griffin @zannish @liarielle @aroandanxious @gwogobo @honeyandsonshine @cinammon-cinner @ship-tost @gabs-2002 @the-reading-obsessed-stitchbear @weird-skittle @sapphire363 @fr0znmang0 @in-honor-of-you @cheese490 @anakinthetrashking @proheromidoriyashouto @lust-nd-love @firefletch @mamamiamia @frankiealexquin

#asks #30 min fics #bnha #bnha fanfic #my fanfic #inko #izuku #all might #ofa #anonymous

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ziracona · 3 years

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T2 was okay and it could have been really good—had some real moments. But it needed more script iterations, and it was too goofy. Goofy is fine in general, but Terminator works best as a sci-fi action-drama-horror mesh. That’s the peak atmosphere. Also just, they gave their new Terminator scary powers to keep him relevant, but there’s just...no way to really make anyone on screen look like a threat to Arnold Schwarzenegger you know? And they never overcame that and it throws off the whole underdog atmosphere. He just. Wasn’t scary. Not when he was trying to kill heckin Arnold the brick house.

I’m not gonna talk about T3 bc I feel like I don’t need to and I think I have a lot of support for that in the fandom, and I’m not gonna talk any Genysis bc no one ever should, and I know I have support there.

Dark Fate was fine, but I felt like they really didn’t have to kill off their Kyle expy like at this point the surprising thing and interesting one would be /not/ to kill him. That role has died in /every/ other film. Like we get it. But plot rehashes are only good if you have some kind of spin. Mostly though I just...would have liked T800 man’s personality in another context but you couldn’t ever sell me on him after watching him gun down a 10 year old in the open. Like what, he found a soul by being...bored? If you want to convince me of fundamental change in a person, you /gotta/ motivate it better. Show me. Don’t tell me and expect me to take your word. And there just wasn’t enough meet in some spots. I wanted more firm lore and a little less action. Like I’m not even a science-heavy leaning sci-fi fan but it still wasn’t enough. I liked it more than most of the others but it just wasn’t quite...meaty enough. Sarah still a queen. But T800 man didn’t sell and that was a real weak spot, and so was expecting us and Sarah to just...like and forgive him bc he had accrued a family. But also like. I enjoyed having a new protag, but feeling like so much, no, /all/ of the work and suffering of everyone in other Terminator films was for nothing bc it’s not even Skynet anymore it’s some other robots?? It kind just...didn’t really work. It makes everything more hollow like it’s not even Terminator anymore there’s no more Terminators. They should have just had it be Skynet but a different rebel leader, or more. Sarah goes on to mentor Dani instead since John is dead, /something/ to make it more the same franchise and not so hollow. Or if it’s gonna be gutted, go all the way and let us feel that, don’t blip it as a plot point once and keep rolling. There’s decades of character attachment for fans; either make that matter, or make it mourned because it’s dead. Don’t skim it and make it cheap. Also on a meta level it was kind of weird how they handled time travel compared to the norm for the franchise but I’m not going into that.

BUT. The Terminator? A cinematic classic. It’s just...such a good film. The characters work is solid the whole movie, and Reese and Sarah are both truly excellent protagonists also given ample time to explore and exhibit that. There’s so much you get in moments that show tiny things about them. The way Sarah handles getting canceled on and goofing with Ginger, her having a pet iguana she loves to cuddle, talking to the statue at work? And she’s smart and normal (I mean normal in a very complimentary way). Kyle is introduced almost immediately running from the cops, but even in the middle of a chase scene, he’s stealing clothes in a mall while evading flashlights, and little things like hopping while he runs to check shoe sizes give you so much right away. He’s clearly out of his depth but he’s smart and methodical and he holes up in a car he hotwires and has a ptsd moment waking up from a dream because of some heavy construction machinery. You don’t have him say much about himself at all but you get him taking a second to be nice to the kids and guard dog on his way back before a T800 attacks. Even though if you’re watching it classic, you have no spoken goal for Reese and all you know is he’s armed and /also/ looking for Sarah, like the man who has killed three people already is, you kind of aren’t very scared of him by the time he’s creepily following her into a night club. That scene is iconic too damn. Anyway. Her reactions to everything are so great. Only film I ever saw where I 100% felt the person on screen was reacting like anyone would to almost being killed and then getting kidnap-saved by some other guy claiming to be from the future like I’d bite him too, but you know, I’d also be pretty happy he saved me and also decide he was crazy and not like, dangerous, and try to keep the cops from killing him. It’s so cute he thinks anyone is going to believe him like hang in there Kyle baby, king. Love as soon as the Terminator hits the police station, he breaks out and goes to find Sarah, and she’s immediately like ‘so fuck this actually’ and looking for him too. The deleted scene in the motel woods. The slow character build. Him falling in love with her because of the picture where she always looked a little sad and he wondered what she was thinking about and you don’t find out till the last scene it’s him she was thinking about in that picture. A family can be two complete trauma disasters making pipe bombs in a motel. The top 5 cinema shots moment where you think they won and they think they won and they’re both injured and stagger to each other and collapse laughing and crying and hugging and it holds for like ten seconds before that fucking thing gets up and you see the rubble in the fire shift and Kyle sees it first. And the hopelessness and despair. Sarah just screaming no in rage because it’s so unfair. The little scaffolding fight?? Kyle doing what he does? Sarah winning with a broken leg? The picture? The heartbreak? A work of art.

Also just. They’re both attractive but like, they are not remotely airbrushed Hollywood pretty. Kyle’s got that big scar on his lip and they’re both sweaty and bloody and dirty and gross the whole film??? God yeah.

Terminator Salvation? Also a classic. You have a film not about the core cast exactly, but it’s very ensemble. You get early days war. And it’s from the very open a solid narrative about second chances and what it means to be human and they really do explore that the whole runtime. Markus dies and comes back more confused than you are in the apocalypse. Baby Reese is absolutely perfect. You get formerly executed for murder Markus somehow adopting like 20 year old Reese and 13 year old kid Star and they’re amazing. Rebellion drama, lore reveals. Reese’s devout faith in the cause and how fast he looks up to Markus and starts learning and Markus is like :[ but then he’s like ... :] because he god assigned two family members now. The tag team fights—how incredibly talented Star is. Guilt trip on a look to dropping cars, she’s super effective. Tbh Markus is just O_O to >:-[ the whole movie as soon as Reese and Star are taken and I feel it. You’ve got a guy who was killed for straying too far from human, come back as a machine, but he doesn’t know it, wondering if he deserves another chance and if he can change, and it’s really neat the way it unfolds. Even after losing so many friends to Terminators that look human, Blair refuses to believe he isn’t a human even if he’s also a machine and risks her life to save him, when they barely know each other. Markus getting like, tortured by the rebels, and still choosing to help them and be who he has decided he wants to be this time, even towards John. Even with better alternatives. And you have Star never having a moment of doubt, or Reese, and him getting to save them both, and them trying to help the other humans in line for extermination before he arrives. The hand hold with Star when his hands just metal. And he decides to die for someone he doesn’t even /like/ and who has personally hurt him a lot of times, because he knows the rebels need him to win. Anyway death row to death row but completely different people in the same body facing that same death differently are amazing if done well (see TWDG I mean ow) and it was a very simple core theme to latch to and very enjoyable executed and it got snubbed by fans when it’s the best sequel Terminator ever had.

#thus concludes my spoiler heavy rant for why Terminator Salvation and The Terminator are the best two Terminator films #the terminator #terminator salvation #ramblings #spoilers #twdg spoilers #long post #sorry I had no idea how long this was

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