#this is a scene from a fanfic I wrote where they break up

[ravenpoefan]

Arturo: I can’t stay with a man who thinks anger is the only emotion that exists. When you learn how to balance your emotions better and not let your pride and arrogance get in the way, maybe then we can get back together. Goodbye, Benedict.

(If you need me to add any other tags please let me know)

Edit: I had to fix Ben’s nose and I added some stubble

[satorusfelicity]

recollections ⋆｡𖦹°‧★

gojo x fem!reader

word count: 788

a/n: decided to practice my writing (bc I honestly suck at it) by writing fanfics!

“Can’t you stay a little longer?” Satoru asks, although he already knows the answer. He always knew the both of you would end up here sooner or later; you did too, and so did everyone else. After all, life was only fair to its favorites.

“You know I can’t.” Your voice is low, barely above a whisper, glossy eyes trying to meet his, but he doesn’t dare to meet your face.

The people around you two are too busy having other places to be to notice the young lovers under a sign that leaves people like them with hollow, empty hearts.

“We’ll see each other again,” you promise, your thumb dancing around his wrist, trying to cheer him up. However, the white-haired sorcerer shows no hint of comfort from the action.

“And when would that be?” he asks, tears brimming in his eyes. He knew they'd end up like this. He saw this coming. But he was not the slightest bit prepared.

Maybe he was being selfish, Satoru thought. Because although you had a pain-stricken face, he also knows you need this; he knows that you two have to part ways. You’re selfish too, he deems in his head, dragging him along all these months knowing the outcome. Maybe if he wrote you as the villain in his novel, it’d hurt less.

You laugh as if it would help brighten the mood. Grabbing his face with both of your hands, you softly say, “It’ll be okay, 'Toru.”

And he nods, not having it in himself to say anything else. Thankfully, the universe decides to go easy on him as his lover takes this as her cue to leave.

Time has passed since he last saw you. Your voice is nothing more than an echo in his mind, and your smile, one he once knew all too well, still flashes in his head now and then.    

Everything seems to pass so quickly around him, but it’s as if his legs are frozen; he can't go anywhere else, forced to relive moments in his life he longs to forget. 

Maybe, he says to himself, maybe the universe isn’t going easy on me after all. 

His mind recalls the glances he stole before you two started dating and the awkward yet warming first couple of dates that happened not long after. Of course, in order to ask you out, he had to confess first. A chuckle almost leaves his lips as the projector in his head replays the moment you laughed after he confessed his feelings and how his body froze, realizing he was naive for thinking that you’d reciprocate his feelings. At that time, he didn’t know you laughed because you found his nervousness endearing. He knows this now because of the countless nights spent in your apartment, ordering takeout instead of reserving a table at the new five-star restaurant he promised to take you to one day. He’d take in the way your lips parted as his predictions played out on the screen in front of you two, only for his laughter to ring out in the apartment once he admitted to watching the movie the other night. That wasn’t the only secret shared on nights spent like this. With your head against Satoru’s shoulder and the credits playing in the background, you and him would retell the words written on the pages of your own youth and pour out what had you pacing at 2 in the morning.

The sorcerer's mind begins to wander further into the forest of recollection until the sound of his name halts him. Blinking himself out of his trance, he takes in his surroundings; the sound of footsteps coming from one retail store to another reminds him of where he is. Slowly, he turns around and sees you. 

Just like a scene from a movie, the world slows down as you make your way towards him, hands rubbing on the fabric of your jeans, a habit you often do whenever the nerves kick in. Finally reaching him, a small smile paints your face as you lift your head to get a better look at him. His mouth dries as his eyes dance around your face. 

“I’m sorry I took so long,” you break the silence.

It takes a moment for him to respond, but his eyes soften, and he says, “It’s okay.” 

He would never blame you for anything. 

The two of you stare at each other for a moment until he decides to wrap an arm around your shoulder with a playful smile. Walking down the hall, he guides you to the center of the mall, rambling about a dress he saw on display, leaving the sign of the women’s restroom behind.

I love my silly little drama queen sobsob

[physalian]

Dialogue Tags Are Not Optional

I think I read too much fanfic. I must. Because fanfic has given me an unrealistic expectation of properly tagged dialogue that burgeoning authors of original fiction continue to disappoint.

Dialogue tags are not optional. I don’t care what genre or age range you’re writing for. This is for all books everywhere and a rare blanket writing statement that I think is absolutely valid and without exception.

Now.

You can, of course, go 2-3 exchanges between two characters ***that have distinct voices or arguments*** without tagging and the reader can presume before you pick it back up again, but any further and you’re losing out on so much narrative.

You wrote a book, not a screenplay.

Beyond even “Character said” while “said” isn’t dead, you must break up your giant-ass monologues with either movement, introspection, or sensory details. This is not optional.

How much and how fluffy your narrative is, is up to you, but I am so so sick of sitting through an entire speech and completely forgetting where the speaker is, what time it is, who’s in the room around them, what they were doing before they started speaking, and what they should be doing instead of preaching on their soapbox.

A thirteen-year-old writing smut between two hot anime boys for the first time can do better than some of the unpublished original books I have read by mature adults.

Why?

You are telling a fictional story, that means as many details as possible should be reflecting back on the story in a meaningful way. You don’t need ten layers of symbolism but if you’re going to have your character talk at-length about any given topic, whether it’s Tragic Backstory stuff or exposition about the MacGuffin or how the West was won, all of that information is meaningless if it doesn’t tell me anything about the character speaking it.

What does this information mean to them? Why are they delivering it now? How do they understand their audience, and how might their delivery be different with this audience over someone else? What are they not saying? What are they saying without saying? And what tone of voice, facial expression, and body language do they have when speaking?

Tag your dialogue. I don’t care how compelling the Tragic Backstory is, if the character is saying it soullessly.

Beyond that, go too long devoid of grounding your dialogue in the scene and you end up with readers forgetting important details like I mentioned above, like where the character is standing when they’re speaking. Are they home? Outside? In their kitchen in a bathrobe, or in a suit in their office?

And beyond, beyond that, if you don’t tag your dialogue and give some sensory and physiological details about the narrator, your audience will have no idea what tone of voice to read any of it with. You know how it should sound, but the words themselves are barely half the message. It’s the tone of voice, what words are emphasized and what isn’t spoken but instead given through gesture and expression that paints the whole picture.

Where’s that post that goes something like “this sentence means 7 different things depending on the word you stress” and the sentence is:

“I never said she stole my money.”

I never said, implying that someone else did but that the speaker believes it

I never said, implying that this is a complete denial of an accusation and they won’t stand for it

I never said, implying that the speaker has been quite vocal indirectly or perhaps passive-aggressively about the stolen money, or that the thief is blowing things out of proportion

I never said she, implying that there is indeed a thief, but it’s not this girl and the accuser has the wrong target.

… stole my money, implying that the thief may have gotten the funds legitimately, but it still leaves the speaker miffed that they haven’t been reimbursed

… stole my money, implying that the thief stole from someone else, but the speaker is involved nonetheless, and perhaps gave them money legitimately, but now the thief has actually robbed someone

… stole my money, implying that the thief sure stole something, alright, it just wasn’t money.

See? See?

Tag your dialogue. And use italics when necessary. But mostly. Tag your dialogue.

[simp4wom3n]

The Girl of your Dreams

Pairing: Jenna Ortega x Reader

Requested: Yes/No

Summary: Y/N, a new actress who gets cast in the show Wednesday and falls in love with her costar Jenna, attends the shows premiere with her now girlfriend to announce their relationship to the world. ~ Word count: 987 ~ Warnings: none ~

A/N: Hellooo. This is my first time ever completing and posting a fanfic so it may not be amazing but it exists. I wrote it without a request and I hope you enjoy it <3

Working as an actress has always been a dream of yours. You have been acting essentially ever since you could talk. Whether it was memorising and recreating your favourite scenes from movies and tv shows, or acting in your sibling’s homemade plays, you had always loved and admired it. So, when you got the opportunity to audition for a main role in the Netflix TV show Wednesday, to say you were ecstatic would have been an understatement. That level of excitement was soon dwarfed by your elation after you received a phone call from Tim Burton himself, telling you that you got the role. It was there, on the set of Wednesday, that you met the love of your life, Jenna Ortega.

It was all very new to you. You had never been on a set before, never been away from your family for 8 months, let alone in another country, and you had never acted professionally before so even the idea of it was intimidating. The first day you spent on set you were riddled with nerves. You were intimidated by everything and everyone, and scared of messing up or doing anything wrong in fear you would lose the opportunity of a lifetime. All of those emotions, however, vanished the moment you met Jenna. Despite meeting her briefly at the table read months prior, as soon as you saw and spoke to her in Romania, you felt an instant connection, developing immediate heart eyes. She was compassionate, gentle, supportive, and not to mention undeniably attractive. The two of you got on like a house on fire, becoming immediate close friends, known by the cast and crew to muck around both on and off set. It became unusual for one of you to be seen without the other, and you spent more time in her trailer than you did in your own.

Platonic feelings soon multiplied and your relationship flourished into something much more intimate. These feelings were solidified at one of your routine sleepovers after a long night shoot, where after months of pining, the two of you finally shared your first kiss. A few weeks later, Jenna asked you to be her girlfriend and you have been together ever since. The two of you were yet to go public with your relationship but after talking about it with over the past few weeks you ultimately decided to attend the premiere together as your way of announcing it, bringing you to today.

“Y/N? Are you ready to go?” Jenna asked, breaking you out of your trance. You had been waiting in your makeup chair dressed in a custom black suit created specifically to match Jenna’s dress, which you were yet to have seen. Your jaw dropped the second you stood up and faced her. She was absolutely breathtaking. “Wow… you look… incredible” you managed to stutter out. As a slight rosy shade rose its way onto her cheeks she leaned up to press a small kiss onto your cheek. “You don't look too bad yourself” she compliments with a smirk as she leans back and looks you up and down. “Shall we?” “We shall” you reply, giving her a chaste kiss and taking her hand, leading her out the door and down to the car. Despite the location of the premiere only being a short drive away from the apartment, you spent the entirety of the drive admiring her, unable to take your eyes off of her. “What?” she chuckled after noticing your adoring gaze. “Nothing” you reply gently, your smile growing as she retorts, “Mmmm ok.” whilst matching your giddy smile.

As the car pulls up to the premiere, the nerves begin to kick in as you start fidgeting with the rings that adorn your fingers, an old habit of yours. The familiar feelings of intimidation and uncertainty return as you look out the tinted window on the hundreds of people, armed with cameras and expectations, as the reality of your first premiere suddenly hits you. Noticing your fidgeting, Jenna gently grasps your hand into her own, tenderly squeezing it in an attempt to reassure you. “You ok?” “Yeah… just a bit nervous is all.” “I’ll be there with you the whole time. If it gets too much just tell me and we can leave ok? You’ll do great, I know you will.” “Thanks Jenna. I love you.” “Love you too.”. You exchange a quick yet intimate kiss before stepping out the car door, hand in hand with your girlfriend. You are immediately met with the bright flashes and loud shuttering of the paparazzi’s cameras as you make your way into the premiere side by side. The sound of the fan’s screams seem to increase tenfold as the two of you come into view.

“Y/N! over here please!” “Jenna! look this way!” “Are you two together?!” “Looking amazing you two!”. Despite the tsunami of questions and comments being thrown at you, all you can think about is how lucky you are to be standing here, on the carpet of a Netflix production, next to your favourite person and somehow having the honour of calling her yours. Amongst the flurry of photos in which you two were stood together, your eyes lock with Jenna’s, pure joy evident within your Y/E/C iris, she gently smiles before you both lean in and your lips lock in a slow and intimate kiss, the overbearing noise of your surroundings becoming mere background music. You hear the intensity of the crowd's roaring and screaming escalate as your lips softly move against one anothers. As your lips slowly separate and your state of pure bliss is broken, you maintain eye contact as you gaze deep into her dark brown eyes which exude a familiar air of warmth and security. “I love you Y/N… so much” Jenna whispers just loud enough for you to hear. “I love you too”

[ranfordgallus]

Was there a reason as to why you made krattastrophe?

Well im glad you asked....because i already told why i made it but im gonna tell the whole story..

In late 2022, i had this AU where chris turns into a villain (very original...) and...actually this is my first ever AU! And so i had this whole story that...i thought would be cool.

And then, i wrote my first wild kratts AU fanfiction and would post it on insta, i thought it'll be cool and epic...but from my lack of not knowing how to write or type a story, it just sounds really fucking corny

Here is a little screenshot of one of the fanfic, and...you can see the...unprofessionalism... also something to add, this part is the first part of the story, but it doesnt show it the comic.. but the explaination for this weird...typing, is because its not really meant to be taken seriously..

Okok...this is were the comic starts, so basically months later, i had this idea of turning my AU into a comic, and asked if anyones into the idea in my insta story, most said yes so i drew the first comic pages which you can see in the first part of episode 1. I drew this for fun though, but then..it turned into my passion project.

Until mid 2023, my passion project of making the comic feels just like a project, as people asked for more it felt like i had to do it, feeling like work than something i enjoy... and so i lost my passion and "cancelled" my comic, stopping at episode 2 where the scene of martin waking up from unconsciousness starts...

BUUTTTT....then...in early 2024, i reread my "cancelled" comic, and i suddenly had this feeling to continue the comic again, even though i cancelled it. But then i realized that i just needed a big break from making the comic from the constant demands, making my project feel like work than something im passionate about..and so i created more panels to continue the martin scene, uncancelling the comic once more.. and here i am! Still creating the comic for fun!!!!

Now...here are some other stuffs and facts of my krattastrophe AU

These are old concept art of khriz and chris, now..you could see that khriz looks different, he doesnt look uncanny and just looks like...ordinary chris.

This is the very first concept art of chris in krattastrophe

Now here are sum facts or..infos

Before it was even called "Krattastrophe" i still had concept names, the first was "the primal effect", and then second, "the snowball effect", though im still unsatisfied with the names...UNTIL i had an idea, i could mix catastrophe with "kratt", creating Krattastrophe.. and i kept it ever since...grins

The fanfiction and the comics story is VASTLY different, though similiar but...different, i talked about this before but ill talk abt again CUZ I CAN...anyway in the fanfiction, there was a scene where khriz and chris hides away in an apartment after faking chris's death, however, in the comic...they never went to an apartment, but stays in zachs building. In the fanfiction, there was a scene where....chris killed a random man? Because he was a bully when he was a kid, because khriz taunted him to kill him, taking revenge...and then chris accidently eating him? ....its so edgy and full of shock value for no reason, my ass shouldnt have even wrote a single word in that story, but in the comic...it will not happen, obviously...its corny as hell LMAO

And thats all i gotta say teegeyeyeh

[ju-vondy]

Into Jason's mind (Headcanon scene)

So, after the release of EP 4 I couldn't stop wondering the reason Jason prefer not commit to a long-term relationship and how he would react when he realize Candy was breaking that barriers down... So I wrote this for the chap. 20+- in my fic and I just HAD to share with you all. I didn't post the fanfic yet once I'm still waiting AO3 invite me LOL. But here you go, I hope you enjoy it:

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Jason was sitting on the sofa in his luxurious apartment, the dim light from the modern lamps casting soft shadows on the walls. He held a glass of whiskey, slowly swirling the amber liquid, lost in his thoughts. The night was silent, interrupted only by the occasional sound of distant traffic.

He glanced at the clock on the wall: 2:45 a.m. Sleep was something that had been eluding him lately, especially with Candy dominating his thoughts.

Jason ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. The goals, contracts and meetings that once occupied his mind so easily now seemed insignificant. His mind wandered incessantly to Candy, to her smiles, her expressions of determination, and even to the moments of vulnerability that she rarely let show.

Looking around, he realized how his personal space was carefully designed to reflect success and control. However, the emotional emptiness remained unchanged.

Jason picked up his phone and, on an impulse, opened Instagram. He looked at his recent posts: several photos of him at social events, with different women by his side. He recalled Thomas's words that he had overheard while the Devenementiel team gathered at the Cosy Bear Café: "Jason is a womanizer…" “He doesn’t seem to commit to his relationships…”

That was true. But why?

Releasing a deep sigh, he leaned back further on the sofa, closing his eyes. His mind drifted back in time, reliving memories of past relationships. Then he remembered the first time he decided not to commit: He was young, ambitious, and... In love with an older woman who had promised to be his partner in life and in business. But she betrayed him, both emotionally and professionally, ruining not just his heart but also an important business transaction.

After that, Jason vowed never to let anyone get that close again. Long-term commitments brought risks he couldn’t afford. He built a life where control and independence were paramount, and where women were only temporary distractions, never real threats to his heart or business.

Moreover, he didn’t have time to dedicate to a partner. His work consumed every second of his day, leaving little room for anything else. And children? The idea of being a father was a responsibility he couldn’t, and didn’t want to, assume. Kids are absurdly expensive and need time, patience—things he couldn’t offer in the phase of life he was in.

Jason also couldn’t ignore the fact that most of the women he met were shallow. They played hard to get, but as soon as he showed some sign of value, some symbol of status, they yielded instantly. Candy, however, was different. Candy never yielded. She challenged him and… That intrigued and attracted him in a way he couldn’t ignore.

She disarmed him with her intelligence, her strength, and paradoxically, with her vulnerability. He remembered how he felt when he saw her wearing glasses for the first time, how that unexpected sight affected him more than it should have. Jason stood up and walked to the window, looking at the illuminated city below. The view was something that always calmed him, but today, even that couldn’t soothe the restlessness within him. Candy’s presence in his life was starting to make him question his decisions.

What was most frightening wasn’t the desire he felt for her, but the fact that he wanted more than just a fleeting affair. He wanted to know her better, wanted to be by her side, wanted to hear her bad jokes, wanted… Commitment.

“Why does she affect me so much?” he murmured to himself, his thoughts returning to the last time he saw her.

They had met at the tennis club last weekend. He still remembered how his heart skipped a beat when he saw her with sunglasses and a hat, an unexpected and incredibly attractive sight. And then, during the match, the moment they bumped into each other and he offered his hand to help her up. The connection he felt at that moment still haunted him.

In fact, all the other moments haunted him. Even though he had shared a bed with several women in recent months, it was always Candy he found himself thinking about. The first time he kissed her in the garden, that night when the explosion finally happened and they released all the tension between them as their naked bodies engaged in heady movements. And then, at the Snake Room, the electricity between them was almost unbearable. The heat and urgency of that moment still made him shudder.

At the opera, the tension between them was so palpable that he could barely focus on the performance. And later that night in his apartment… their bodies fitting perfectly, the way she knew how to touch him in ways he didn't even know he needed. Every encounter with her was a whirlwind of emotions and sensations.

Jason closed his eyes, remembering the conversation with his mother he had earlier.

Since the moment their families reunited again she encouraged him to bring Candy closer, seeing something he tried to ignore. He accepted the mayor's proposal for a partnership with Devenementiel not only for strategy but also to keep Candy close. At first, he told himself it was to destabilize the competing company. But now, the truth was becoming increasingly clear: he wanted Candy by his side for much more personal reasons.

Jason walked to the desk in his bedroom, opening the drawer and taking out a small wooden box. Inside, there was a ring he had bought years ago, intended for a proposal that never happened. A reminder of his failures and fears.

“Candy…” he murmured, closing the box and putting it back in the drawer.

He needed to admit to himself that all this had started as a game. He wanted Candy to accept his job offer to screw up over Devenementiel again, but in the process, he ended up getting lost. She was not just a pawn in his corporate game anymore; she was someone who made his life more complete, more vibrant and his days became easier when she was around. She was someone he didn’t want to lose.

And he hated to admit it.

Jason stood up again, taking the glass of whiskey and heading to the terrace. The cool night air enveloped him, bringing a momentary sense of clarity. He looked at the stars, remembering how his life seemed simpler before Candy entered it. But now, he couldn’t imagine going back to that simplicity.

He knew he was at a turning point. Continuing with his usual behavior meant losing the chance at something real, something he hadn’t felt since… well, since forever. But opening up meant exposing himself again to pain, to risk, to vulnerability.

Jason took a long sip of the whiskey, feeling the warmth descend his throat. He needed a new approach, a new way of thinking. Maybe, just maybe, Candy was worth the risk. Maybe she was different. He just needed the courage to find out. Because, in the end, he was falling for her. And that was the truth he could no longer deny.

This realization hit him hard.

“Damn, Candy,” he murmured, running a hand through his hair. “What have you done to me?”

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PLEASE DO NOT POST IT ON OTHER PLATFORMS without giving credits! This is all my original writing and I would hate to see anyone use it without my permission. Thank u <3

[conundrumoftime]

Fandom grandma tales: how I survived canon ruining two of the ships I liked.

(Written after a discussion with some of my TROP fan pals about how canon can break your heart re: shipping, and how fandom manages. There are spoilers here for the entire run of Babylon 5, and for one story JMS wrote after it. yes, that story. sorry.)

Babylon 5 was a sci-fi space opera show that ran from 1993 to 1998. It is sci-fi of the era of 22-episode seasons, of huge ensemble casts with characters who get their own B- and C-plots, with an effects and casting budget that doesn’t always match its ambition, and - something it was quite pioneering in, at the time - grand pre-planned story arcs. 

It’s the first fandom that I was involved with in internet spaces as it was running, or at least when its final season was (there’s Discourse and drama from earlier years that I missed). Its showrunner, J. Michael Straczynski - ‘JMS’ - was very active in (non-fanfic) fan community spaces, and you always knew exactly what he was thinking about things because he was part of the discussion around them. There was also fanfic, which he didn’t stop but didn’t go near on the grounds of legal liability for story ideas. 

Most of the fanfic in the early days as the show was airing was focused around two big ships, of which one was canon endgame (Delenn/Sheridan) and one was canon all-ends-in-despair (Marcus/Ivanova). I, as a teenager discovering a developing online fandom for the first time with all the overwhelm and excitement that causes (ask me anything about what reading fic was like before the days of tags/ratings/warnings!) got into Marcus/Ivanova and also into one of the minor ships, Delenn/Lennier.

Delenn/Lennier was never, ever going to happen in canon. This is obvious; it clashes with Delenn/Sheridan which was JMS’s baby darling OTP, the show’s big love story. Delenn is married for the later part of the show. Lennier is her diplomatic aide, is absolutely devoted to her, and they have a very intense mentor/student relationship, which it seems is kind of standard in their culture (when Delenn’s own mentor died she went briefly insane with grief and started a genocidal war over it) but is still Very Intense. He is canonically in love with her, but that’s as far as the explicit canon statements go.

However. HowEVER. Canon also gives us, for that relationship, some wonderful ship fuel. Lennier knows about every bad thing Delenn has done, including all the stuff she doesn’t/can’t tell her husband. He’s her link to her previous world and culture and stands by her even when they kick her out. She says at one point, “without him, I would stumble and fall and never get up again.” 

And then… we had Season 5, the final season.

Season 5, for various complicated production reasons, was operating a little outside of pre-planned story arcs and in this season the Delenn/Lennier stuff ramped up about three gears in one go. It was still very obviously never, ever going to be canon, and was almost certainly not intended by the creator (who wrote most of the episodes himself) to look like there was even anything there. At this point Delenn is married; any relationship with her aide would not only be going against the show’s OTP, but going against it in the sense where she’s cheating on her husband, and there is Just No Way JMS would have gone there. And yet! Season 5 gave us:

A scene where Lennier says he can’t stay, it’s too painful to be around her now she’s married, and she’s devastated and has the following conversation with her husband about it:

S: I got your message about Lennier. Is there anything I can do?

D [snapping]: Almost certainly not.

S: Is it because of me?

D: In part, I think so.

S: Yeah, I was afraid of that. Well, as we say back on Earth, three’s a crowd.

D: On Minbar, three is sacred.

S [slightly uncomfortable laugh]: Well, I don’t think I’m ready to handle that one, Delenn.

Delenn then calling Lennier back to the station to do some secret mission thing for her, which involves her sneaking out of her bed while her husband sleeps to meet Lennier in a darkened alley behind a bar, where she tenderly strokes his face and they have a whole conversation about whether her husband understands her or not.

A scene where Lennier comes back from his secret mission to meet both Delenn and Sheridan, Delenn goes to greet him with a hug, and Lennier does this very pointed step back and nod in the direction of her husband, and she pulls back and just sort of pats him on the arms instead. 

I MEAN.

But, the issue here is not what fans did about it but what canon did about it. Canon did the canon equivalent of dragging that ship outside and shooting it in the head. 

In the final few episodes of the entire series, Lennier tries to kill Sheridan, runs away in shame, and then someone finds his diary in which he’d been writing for ages about what a bad decision he thought Delenn had made and how her whole marriage was an awful idea. Even to this day, it’s fun/awful watching people go through a first-time watch when they get to season 5 and hit that. ‘Character assassination in the form of a diary’ was a whole thing for a while. It’s been 20+ years and the actor who played Lennier is stilll mad about it (not because of shippy stuff, but because he - correctly! - thinks Lennier absolutely would not have done that). 

What *fandom* did, on the other hand, was Fixed The Problem.

Delenn/Lennier was not at all a big ship when the series was airing, and for a few years after. Then the fandom dynamics started to change. With less pressure on what canon was going to do, it felt like fandom had more space to play around with things it didn’t do. Fanfic got less interested in trying to fit within the overall story being told and started spinning off in all its own directions. And *this* ship started getting bigger and bigger. People did really interesting things with it, canon divergence went in all directions, everyone wrote a fix-it story of some variety, some authors did a great series of connected stories based on an idea that Minbari have three genders, the quality of the writing has been brilliant. And I think without that absolute whiplash feeling of what happened in canon, there would never have been this feeling of “well I’m not having THAT” which led to all this.

We did not need canon! Canon had done its thing. And canon had broken our hearts enough ways with many of the other stories it told (entirely on purpose) and we weren’t just going to sit back and let it ruin us forever.

By comparison, the other ship I was into was Marcus/Ivanova. This is entirely doomed. Susan Ivanova’s love life is just perpetually doomed. The first partner of hers we meet is an ex who’s interested in getting back together, but then it turns out he’s just using her to infiltrate the station for the fascist terrorist group he’s secretly joined. Then she falls for an archrival of hers, Talia, who works for Psi Corps, the organisation she loathes most of all things - but it’s okay because it turns out Talia is starting to question them too! Maybe these crazy kids can make it work! They have one night together and then OOPS turns out Talia was being secretly controlled by a sleeper personality implanted in her by Psi Corps the whole time. Ivanova’s love life is doomed. 

So for two seasons, she has this sort-of-flirty, sort-of-bickery, sort-of-friendship going with Marcus, who is on the surface of it very much “why not fall in love at first sight like a true romantic, YOLO!” but it turns out is actually deeply messed up himself and full of survivor’s guilt and pain and, you get the clear impression, would have died of shock if she’d actually called his bluff on the OTT flirting and said “yeah, let’s go for it”. And then he sacrifices himself to save her life. It is a very tragic ending, it is absolutely the way he would have wanted to go, she wakes up both furious and absolutely distraught, says that the last thing she heard was him saying “I love you”, says she wishes she’d at least slept with him once, and says that in a way all love is unrequited. PAIN. 

So, lots of fix-it fanfic, lots of ‘Marcus comes back to life’, lots of canon divergence AUs where he doesn’t die and they live happily ever after and both get over their huge levels of unresolved pain. Pretty standard for that kind of pairing. And as a pairing it doesn’t get in the way of any big canon pairings, it doesn’t imply anything icky like mentor/student power imbalances or adultery. And JMS clearly quite liked it. So that’s better, right?

NO. It was WORSE.

JMS wrote an Marcus/Ivanova story himself, published in one of the sci-fi magazines, to try to give them a happy ending. This happy ending involves Marcus, many many years in the future, waking up from the cryogenic suspension he’s in (it’s sci-fi, keep up, keep up). Ivanova is long dead, but he isn’t about to let this get in the way, so what he does is to *create a new Ivanova* by getting some kind of DNA + computerised memory/personality bank thing, finding a doctor who will clone her, putting himself back into animated sleep until the clone reaches the age Ivanova was when she died, then - THEN, I’M STILL GOING - takes her to a distant planet where, with her memories wiped and their spaceship having deliberately been crashed BY HIM so there’s no way back, they live out their lives in peace.

WHAT.

That pairing still does okay in fandom but it’s not really taken on a post-show world of headcanons and riffing on other people’s ideas and tropes in the way that Delenn/Lennier has (and we all just pretend that story never existed). 

So! This has been my experiences in the field of What We Do When The Show Has Thoughts On That Non-Endgame Ship We’re Into. Fandom manages. Fandom will see you through. And in the words of Susan Ivanova:

Babylon Five was the last of the Babylon stations; there would never be another. It changed the future, and it changed us. It taught us that we have to create the future, or others will do it for us. It showed us that we have to care for one another, for if we don’t, who will? And that true strength sometimes comes from the most unlikely places. Mostly though, I think it gave us hope that there can always be new beginnings - even for people like us.

[strawberrybuff]

He’s My Property

I’ve watched hierarchy And the scenes including Kang ha and Kim rian are so steamy so I took the upper hand and wrote this as the show dosent have any FanFic out there so here you go ~ hope you enjoy

It was the first day for Kang ha’s transfer and he was seated in the assembly waiting for his cue to get up and introduce himself to his peers

“Now let’s introduce our new scholarship student” the principle has announced his name, to be honest he was a little terrified to get up there but he needs to put his plan into action

“Hello dear student and teachers I would thank-“ as soon as he opened his mouth the doors have swing open, he stopped his talking and glanced at who just walked in, and he smirked to himself…

It was Kim Rian and his group, as they got to there Seats, Kim ha restarted his introduction

Time skip to the end of his introduction ~

Ha POV;

I took my seat on the front as the teacher had told everyone to leave to class , as I collected my things and tried to leave, one of the guys next To me grabbed my arm and told me to sit down I was a bit confused so I sat down

And my eyes landed to rian and his group as they got up and left the assembly

I turned to the students behind me and said "Do you know where is the English Classroom ?" as I kindly smiled

"Hah , who are you to talk to me ... you should talk to your people " they turned and left me there , what just happened .... and what does he mean 'MY people' ??

never mind that I gotta find him before class ~

I kept looking for 'him' all around the school but I couldn't find him, out of nowhere I got a text from 'him' telling me to meet him in the Advanced English Classroom .

"Meet me at the advanced English Classroom"

"I don't know where the class at , did you forget that it's my first day ...?"

"Shit I forgot to send you the locations , hang on a sec"

Location Has Been Sent -

I saw the location and kept following the trail , until I've came face to face with a sliding door with the Letters Writing AE , I guess that shortens Advanced English .

I pushed the button and set foot into the class and saw 'him' typing off on his phone .

"You leaving me out there with those barbarians was cruel" as Ha pouted

"Just want to see how they act in front of you before going public" as Rian smirked at Ha's pouted lips , he went near him and circled his hands on his waist as he toward over Him

"But Still they were mean" , "Might as well go public to let them know who you belong to , so they don't bother you anymore" as Rian left butterfly kisses on his eyes while smiling .

"By the way , have you heard from your 'girlfriend' as Ha frowns upon the realisation ...

"She hasn't been answering but as soon as she's back , ill break the news to her, but for now can we please don't talk about her in this situation -"

Rian pulled him near him as he placed his lips on his , Ha knows that this is wrong now that he hasn't broken with his girlfriend , but she deserve what she gets for not helping my brother while he was bullied by her 'fans'

Ha threw his arms over Rian shoulders and kept kissing him, at this point he's feeling aroused but .... can they even do it here ??

Rian slithered his hands on the back of Ha as he wanted to take of his shirt , and Rian was successful while doing so , he pulled away from the kiss as he looked at his boyfriend's Body and he can't deny that Ha has a cute face , but he also has a fucking body of a god .

He trailed kisses along Ha's body as he moaned at the sight of Rian while licking his nipples ... he felt more aroused at the sight of him

"Wait , can we even do this here" as Ka moaned even more

"I have guards around the door to keep the teachers away , and did you forget that I own the school ?" as Rian trailed his tongue over Ka's neck and leaving love bites all over

As Ha and Rian kept doing they're thing , they haven't noticed that Rian's phone has lit up with a notification from his friends telling him that Jaei had arrived to Korea and that she want's to meet Them all on the karting tracks

time skip ~

As Ha lied down on the floor as his clothes were scattered all around the classroom while Rian got up for a smoke, he turned to Rian and saw him leaning next to the window while smoking and don't forget the lack of clothes too

of course Ha bottoms all the time but oh how he would love to top Rian someday but he knows that's all just a dream to him

"Babe , come one get dressed were supposed to leave" "huh ? where are we going?"

"I just saw the text the Woojin has sent me, he said the jaei want's to meet them at the racing tracks"

"Wait ,why am I coming with you ?"

"What , I gotta show her that were done and You are mine to claim"

he doesn't hate the idea of Rian wants to show him off to his 'ex' girlfriend, he might show his Hickeys to her to tell her that Rian is done with her ...

I know thats shitty but she deserve it with the way she treated my brother

as I got up to collect my clothes I saw Rian at the corner of my getting dressed also

as I bent down to get my pants , I felt a smack on my ass , I blushed and looked at Rian

"Cant get tired of this" as he smirked , I giggled and smacked his arm as I collected my stuff

time skip ~

I was in the car with Rian as the driver is driving us to the tracks , I kept making small talk with Rian as he kept kissing my neck leaving love bites Again ....

as the car has stopped I saw that we had arrived to the tracks he extended his hand as I took his hand in mine and walked through the garage as our eyes landed at ... jaei??

"What are we doing here ?? why did you ask to meet us"

jaei's eyes landed to our hands as they were interwind with each other and glared at me while I hid behind Rian ...

"What's the meaning of this ?? I leave for 5 months and your already Dating somebody else ... WE didn't even breakup !!!"

Rian glanced at me while I hid behind him , "Jaei I've been calling you for months trying to tell you .... I already told Woojin and Hera and they didn't have problem with this ..."

"So what your Breaking up with me for this .... this ... WHORE"

at the blind of an eye I saw Rian dash in front of Jaei and held her by the shirt she's wearing and told her to fuck off

"Rian , darling stop , come back here" as I extended my hands for him , he took my hands into his and held it firmly

"listen Jaei our relationship was already falling , so it a good thing that we distance ourself , and don't forget ... He's mine , My property so don't get fucking near him and get away from us .... you haven't forgotten that I can get rid of you , we OWN your family , so you better leave us be and live your life quietly"

Rian had pulled me near the exit as I glanced at Jaei and saw her tears .... I smirked at her and stopped Rian on his tracks and woojin and Hera had left

I glanced at jaei and smirked while pulling Rian in for a kiss , while his back was turned he kept kissing me I moaned into the kiss as I opened my eyes a saw jaei stills standing there ... I whispered to Rian to do more

I felt him trail kissed along my neck , I looked back at Jaei and whispered ....

"He's My Property Now"

[that-nerd-who-writes-fanfiction]

A BBC Merlin fanfic I wrote recently and then promptly forgot about

Merlin saves (tries to kill) Arthur

That one scene in A servant of two masters where Merlin is running at Arthur with the sword but he’s been fighting against the Fomorroh and finally wins.

(Part 2)

—

Arthur had been getting ready for almost half an hour, he still hadn’t gotten dressed but talking to Merlin about the suspected traitor was helped him to process.

Merlin hated this. The detachment from his own body, the fact that he was fighting for control over himself, that his magic had retreated so far from his reach so the fomorroh wouldn’t be able to use it. He hated that Arthur was grappling with issues he couldn’t help with and while Merlin made sure he failed to properly set a crossbow to kill him, made sure to hide his magic from Morgana and the Fomorroh, it wasn’t enough to fix this. He’d think about Leon later and beg the man to at least question him when he made such obvious threats to Arthur’s life.

His usual threats were much more comedic. Leaving Arthur to dress himself till he died of embarrassment, letting him fend for himself for a day till he starved to death or accidentally poisoned himself with bad cooking, stopping adding holes into his belt till he squeezed himself in half.

Just killing him was never something Merlin would say now he’d become friends with Arthur. Maybe while he was still a pratish prince, but not anymore.

Arthur opened the wardrobe, Merlin panicked for a moment until the crossbow failed. Fomorroh was angry, of course, but it gave him a little longer to break out of its control.

He could hardly focus until distantly, he heard Arthur ask for a sword and Fomorroh preened. Merlin fought harder than he ever had before, calling on his magic to do anything to protect Arthur as he desperately tried to take back control.

It felt like a gasp of momentary fresh air.

“Arthur,” he murmured, pained and weak.

Arthur turned back, but his hold wasn’t enough to keep Fomorroh back. Merlin was lost in his mind again by the time Arthur started to ask: “Merlin? Are you alright?”

“Yes, fine. Fine. Ceremonial sword. Of course.” A distant voice that sounded like his own but distorted and broken echoed through Merlin’s skull.

“Yes…” Arthur looked him over and turned away. Arthur was saying something, Merlin used his voice as an anchor to reality. To remember that Arthur was his friend, his king, his destiny. That he would do anything to keep him safe, “but...can't trust anyone.”

Merlin hated the irony of it in that moment.

His hand was on the hilt of a sword.

Merlin struggled for control again. He’d do anything. He’d rather fall on the sword himself.

He held it up, testing the weight and ability to run a man through.

Merlin desperately fought, pushing his magic forward so he could at least protect Arthur.

“In fact, I think you, Merlin, are the only person I can trust.” Arthur said, his back to Merlin and the sword and all the bitter horrible irony of being the one to literally stab his best friend in the back after so many betrayals.

His body took a step, then another,

The door to Arthur’s chambers opened with a panicked Gwen and Gaius looking at him, horrified at what he was about to do.

Merlin felt a surge of magic finally win out over the dark forces that powered the Fomorroh’s will.

Arthur turned around, seemingly recognising the fear in Gwen and Gaius, and saw Merlin taking rushed steps towards him with a sword raised.

Then Merlin’s eyes flooded with gold as he froze, mid movement, gasping and trembling to hold onto the control he’d fought desperately for. He just needed a moment. It wasn’t going to last but if he could just-

“Merlin!” Arthur stumbled back, shock and confusion and betrayal on his face.

Arthur’s voice gave him a focus point to stay in control.

“Morgana-“ he forced out, focusing solely on Arthur and his best friend and keeping him safe no matter the cost. “Mind control. Fomorroh. Knock me out.” He looked to Arthur with gold in his eyes, seeing fear to match his own looking back at him, “Please.”

Arthur was frozen, but in the corner of his eye Merlin saw Gwen move, then his head snapped to the side with a sharp pain and everything went black.

—

Hope you enjoyed. Thoughts?? I might rewrite/continue this as a fix-it for the whole episode :)

[aviivix]

IMPORTANT EDIT MAY 18 2024

A lot about this has changed since I originally wrote this up, especially around act 3 since while right now it’s still up in the air between a few different ideas, the act 3 in this post is cringe-tier and I’m embarrassed for having wrote it. Another significant enough change to mention here is that old Agent 3 and Agent 8 now join Off the Hook as antagonists, and recruiting “enemy” Octolings is now a core mechanic that the story anchors around more heavily. Also, Cy actually looks good now.

I’ll do a revised writeup of this at some point, but for now, take most of this with a grain of salt! A lot has changed. Now, flashback to about a year ago!

Soooo... I’ve been dead for a while and that’s because I’ve been fixated entirely on Splatoon 3 basically since it launched and all this time I’ve been working on an AU/HC/Fanfic/Something Like That called Culture Shock.

Given this has been something I’ve been working on for a LONG time, and given it’s entirely tied to Octarians, I figure I might as well make a big post about it before Side Order totally invalidates it! (Though I’ll keep working on this as an AU even if I don’t like how it interacts with Side Order.)

Details and more art under the break! (Though the quality will vary greatly as, again, I’ve been doing stuff with this since Splatoon 3 came out.) This is an extremely long story concept and if you read the whole thing I officially owe you my soul

There's a LOT to this (as there is with any hyperfixation concept like this) but I'll try to keep it somewhat light on details. Of course, it’s subject to change, and the exact plot progression is still kind of in the air. A big part is whether the climax of Act II should actually happen at the end of Act I... But here’s what I’ve developed so far.

The Story

Prologue

Culture Shock is designed as a DLC story mode set a year after the end of Splatoon 3's main story. The Squid Sisters have disappeared at some point in that time (a familiar situation), and ol' Cuttlefish has called in all of the agents-- plus Pearl and Marina-- to join forces against the Octarians that are undoubtedly behind it. Rather than going into stages alone, the levels are designed for you to do them with CPU teammates.

It's pretty quickly made certain that Octarians were involved, and thus the group is airlifted by Off the Hook into Octo Valley to find Callie and Marie. Upon landing, the player is ambushed by a group of Octolings -- that is, until one member in the backline pulls down her mask and excitedly calls out. It’s Callie? And though she doesn’t immediately unmask, Marie is definitely next to her.

After some confusion and accusations from both sides, the Squid Sisters assure the Squidbeak Splatoon that they’re not brainwashed, and offer to explain everything. Though Marie warns that it’s a long story, so the group settle down by ol’ Cuttlefish’s shack for a massive flashback played from the perspective of the Squid Sisters.

(Gameplay-wise, this whole setup is to allow the player to interrupt the Squid Sisters’ sequence at any time, and then pick up where they left off. It being a flashback also means it’s easy to replay missions or go for 100% by just asking Callie to repeat something.)

Funny title card, and the real story officially starts. I’m gonna skip through things a lot more, since at this pace it would take WAY too long to summarize every little scene and there are a lot of things not really settled on. I’ll be keeping detail for the introduction, as well as some key scenes, but for any less important/in-between type stuff, I’ll be summarizing what happens. Even doing this it will be extremely long, though Act I is far bigger than Acts II and III because it’s primarily setting up the world and motivations.

Act I

Introductory cutscene, in which the Squid Sisters find themselves stuck in purple ink, locked in an Octarian vault. The Octarians who squidnapped them keep their distance, though one particular Octoling does try to chat (to the annoyance of the others).

She claims that the Octarians will let them go in time, and that they won’t be hurt - though the Squid Sisters are suspicious at best. And, after noticing their discomfort in the Octarian ink, she offers them her Octoshot to paint the ground their own color. As the Octoling goes back to standing guard, Callie inks the floor and the two slump over, one of them idly singing the Calamari Inkantation under her breath.

Fade to when the Octoling swaps guard duty with another Octoling, who leans up against the wall and, after the first Octoling leaves, promptly falls asleep. Callie realizes she still has the Octoshot from before, and suggests slipping through the keyhole in squid form. With help from Marie, she’s able to get out on her own, and sets out to find the key to the vault. (This serves as a tutorial for stealth missions - though the guard will not wake up even if you fail.)

After freeing Marie, the two of them head towards the door, whispering about how crazy it was that the guard slept through all of that. The guard then dully tells them that he wasn’t asleep. The Squid Sisters prepare for a fight, but the guard barely has his eyes open and has not moved. After some back and forth with Callie, this Wendy’s employee of an Octoling just assures them that if he could beat them, it wouldn’t have even gotten to this point, and tells them to do whatever they want - just warning them that the other Octarians wouldn’t be so lenient.

An Octoling watches them come out, but just looks around frantically before running up to meet them. Marie declares that they’re breaking out, and prepares for a fight... but the Octoling starts freaking out instead, first worrying that they’ll get hurt trying to escape, and then worrying about what the rest of the Octarians are going to do with the Squid Sisters gone.

Before either Inkling can interject, a much more stern Octoling calls out while angrily marching up to the group. Through this conversation the Squid Sisters learn that the worried Octoling is named Aris, the tired Octoling is named Oregil, and this new more angry Octoling is named Cy. What originally seemed to be a jailbreak quickly turns into some (rather silly) negotiations with Cy, the Squid Sisters trying to convince her that Aris didn’t do anything wrong, and that Oregil totally did all he could to stop them.

Though Cy clearly doesn’t buy it, she lets it go, returning Aris’s Octoshot but also warning the Squid Sisters that their squadron’s mission is of utmost importance, and if the rest of them won’t do their jobs properly, she will. That said, the two of them just broke out of the only vault they had. So now, the Squid Sisters have to just stay in camp under Cy’s supervision.

With no more weapon to brandish and a clearly blown cover, the two of them kind of have no choice but to agree. Though Marie alludes to how dysfunctional this squad appears to be, and how easy it will probably be to escape.

Though before the conversation ends, Aris asks if “Tetra” will be okay with this. There’s a sort of tension in the air immediately upon mention of the name, immediately pierced by an intimidating voice asking what was going on. This was an Elite Octoling, apparently Tetra. After a recap from Cy, Tetra turns to the surrounded Squid Sisters, and tells them in no uncertain terms to always remember that they are prisoners - they are not one of them.

From here on out, the rest of Act I is a sort of slow burn. At the start, it’s purely the Squid Sisters looking for ways to escape. But as time goes on, they learn more about these Octarians by sort of living their life, and through learning about the octo squad themselves.

Aris is kind, possibly to a fault. While she’s committed to the squadron and their goals, she’s also the most both-sides-ist of the bunch. She wants to think that everyone is trying their best, and does everything she can to avoid conflict, but as a result she doesn’t speak up as much when the Squid Sisters make faulty assumptions about them, and she uninentionally hinders their growth at the start by letting them hide behind her leniency. Over the course of Act I, she eventually has to realize she can’t just hold everyone’s opinion equally - the Squid Sisters are making judgements off of bad information, and she realizes that her enabling that is making it harder for everyone.

Cy is the opposite. Cy is deeply passionate about their situation, and takes any opportunity to show the Squid Sisters what they get wrong. She especially butts heads with Marie, having little patience for the various non-solutions to their problems, or for the ignorance about Octarian culture. She’s extremely well connected among Octarians, even having worked with Octavio himself, although she doesn’t seem thrilled about it. Thus, despite coming across as very headstrong and aggressive, she also is the source of a lot of information about Octarian life.

Oregil is a self-proclaimed realist - in actuality, a doomer. He doesn’t say much, but what he does say is not particularly hopeful. When put in charge of something, he doesn’t tend to have a lot of energy behind it, as he’s become convinced that, in the end, Octarians cannot be saved. That said, it would be wrong to call him fully complacent. He still sticks with the team, even if he doesn’t have much energy to contribute, and would rather go down with his sinking ship than abandon his friends and family. Though he always seems to be napping on the job, he never actually does, though not for lack of trying. He has insomnia, and it’s rare to find him asleep at all even when laying in bed.

The Elite Octoling Tetra rarely shows herself. The only things the Squid Sisters have seen of her is that she’s intimidating, and not to be reckoned with. But the way the others talk about her and interact with her betray a different story. Oregil is flippant about her commands and doesn’t actually give anything his all. Cy goes along with Tetra’s commands, but seemingly only due to her own reasons aligning with Tetra’s rather than out of any respect for her authority. Aris obeys, but the way she acts and talks about it makes it almost feel like she’s obeying out of pity.

Lastly, there is also a fifth mysterious Octoling that the Squid Sisters will occasionally grab a passing glimpse of. They don’t know who this Octoling is, and whenever she’s mentioned, the others assure them that “she’s nobody”.

As the act goes on, Callie especially pries deeply into the hows and whys of a lot of Octo stuff. She had been in Octarian territory before in Splatoon 2, sure, but she was being brainwashed by DJ Octavio himself and held up as a superstar. This time, she was fully aware of herself, and living the life of the average Octoling soldier in the time between Octavio’s Zapfish heists.

The two of them wonder why the sun hasn’t come up, and learn that without the Great Zapfish, the kettle’s “sun” cannot shine. It’s a land of eternal night. The Octolings seem to live on a diet of mostly power eggs and salmon, which they learn is because without light, most crops don’t grow. Many little things like this illustrating just how resource-starved this nation is.

There are a lot of assumptions made and corrected. A lot of complaints put into perspective when the things they find uncomfortable or annoying are things these Octarians have had to deal with every day. But one of the biggest things is their ideas of resolution. An early question being, “Why don’t you just leave? Inkopolis is a stone’s throw away.”

There are a lot of answers that are given to this, but to some effect, they all boil down to “culture”. Inkopolis isn’t the same as Octaria. It has different people, different history, different fashion, different food, different expectations... it’s just a totally different place.

Oregil’s lived in Octarian society his whole life - it’s his home. Cy is an artist, she makes distinctly Octarian music and sees firsthand how it connects those in Octarian communities. Aris knows Octolings are “accepted”, but only insofaras they appeal to Inkling expectations. It’s hard to express their culture without being seen as weird or other. Even little things like how they look - Octolings in Inkopolis tending to make their hair slimmer, straighter, adding patterns and minimizing the amount of visible suckers. Plus, how many non-Octoling Octarians do you see in Inkopolis and beyond? Maybe an Octoling can fit in, but what about an Octotrooper?

The most impactful realization for the Squid Sisters as well, is just how few Octarians are even there anymore. Between the exodus in Octo Valley, the bigger exodus in Octo Canyon, the horrors of Octo Expansion, and just recently the similar horrors of Alterna... all stacked on top of the nation itself being less and less hospitable year by year? Since the events of Splatoon 1, so many Octarians have been lost. Within the squad they’re in, pictures and murmurings from the rest of them tell the stories of at least four other Octolings that were previously in their squadron.

So then the other aspect of the Squid Sisters’ arc is... if they don’t think Octarians should be stealing the Great Zapfish or dealing with Salmonids or anything like that... what should they be doing?

Because so far, nothing has worked for them. Negotiations fail, because Inklings don’t know enough about Octarian society to understand why they need so much support. They don’t know enough about the history of Inklings and Octolings to realize that Inkadia is largely the reason they’re suffering. The average Inkling doesn’t know enough to realize there’s a problem, and the average Octarian doesn’t have a loud enough voice.

All this compounded onto the fact that now, the only Octolings Inkadia sees are the ones who decided that Octarians were oppressing themselves, to the point where they abandoned everything they knew to live in the nation that started this in the first place.

Though, it’s hard to blame them when life in Octaria is practically nonexistent. Losing so many people, living in such horrible conditions, led by an egomaniac whose awareness of his people is performative at best... but most Octolings can’t let that take away from who they are as a people. They don’t let it tear their communities apart, or sever the bonds they have with people. Their lived experiences show them that it’s worth fighting for. Well... except in one scenario we’ll get into later.

The final important thing that comes to light over this period... This whole time Octavio has barely come up, because he doesn’t even know the Squid Sisters are there. The squadron are a real squadron in the Octarian army, but this whole mysterious operation involving the Squid Sisters is entirely outside Octavio’s control. In fact, it becomes apparent that the Octarians at least in this squadron or associated with this squadron, hate Octavio and everything he’s been doing to their society as a whole.

They’ve always seen the Zapfish heists as a horrible, horrible ego trip. An extremely hollow, expensive move that only plants targets on the backs of Octarians. But even in feeling that way, Aris and Oregil both admit that there isn’t much else offering them hope. If not for Octavio stealing the Zapfish for those couple days of “sun”light, what would they be doing? Though Cy has a much more strong opinion there, asserting that doing nothing would have put those resources into survival rather than gambling it all on a fool’s errand.

Needless to say, the Squid Sisters get a bit wrapped up in this stuff. Talking to these Octolings, learning about their life, living it, offering to help (gameplay sections), and all around having a lot of beliefs challenged. It’s a lot of stuff that they are only able to wrap their mind around from actually knowing what it’s like to live through it, without the option to just leave when it gets too rough.

While at the beginning they were just looking for an opening to escape, by the halfway point they aren’t even really being watched anymore, let alone trying to break out. Tetra may call them prisoners, but by that point they’ve had so many opportunities to just walk away. The only thing keeping them there is the fact that if they leave, what will happen? And can they confidently say that it’s the Octarians’ fault for it happening?

By the end, their primary objective is to find something they can do to actually give them a shot. And for that... they’ll need more than just the two of them. The idea of bringing in the Squidbeak Splatoon is immediately dismissed as insane by Cy - especially the idea of bringing in THE Agent 3. But after a little while, with Oregil indifferent as always and Aris on board, she comes around, though warning that Tetra will not like it, and they could be accidentally luring Agent 3 into a death trap. But it’s a risk they decide to let the Captain decide for themself.

Act II

Acts II and III are far less elaborate, because this is after all the characters have been established, and the world has been largely explored.

Act II kicks off with there being a lot of reactions. (As a note, the Octolings with the Squid Sisters at the present time are Oregil, Aris, and Cy. In their own ways, they’re uncomfortable in the presence of Captain 3. Cy and Oregil also seem to have an attitude with how they look at Marina.) A lot of disbelief, but also, to some degree, understanding. Naturally, Captain 3 is skeptical, taking a moment to contemplate what they’re being asked to do.

But around this time, Marina cuts in, asserting that regardless of the cause, Octarian society is inherently a problem. That’s why she left. She accuses the squadron of perpetuating DJ Octavio’s oppressive rule, and that they could have their cake and eat it too just by moving to Inkopolis.

The group go back and forth, with escalating emotions and accusations, until Pearl declares that, whatever they’re plotting, Off the Hook and the Squidbeak Splatoon will put a stop to it. Silence falls over the group, until Marie retaliates saying that she doesn’t think she can in good conscience fight against people who are only trying to exist.

The other agents start taking the Octarians’ side, even Agent 8 who, despite hesitating given their trust in Off the Hook, still resonates too strongly with the plight of the Octarians to turn their back on them fully. Pearl is taken aback, but after a glance at a very betrayed Marina, declares the Squidbeak Splatoon their enemy too, Marina locking eyes with Agent 8 before Off the Hook take their leave.

Cy remarks that it’s a shame, but she understands exactly why Marina is acting this way. Callie asks why, but Cy just assures her that Marina isn’t stupid, so if everything goes right, she’ll come around. Aris tells the player where the kettle’s entrance is, and at their leisure, they can join the Octarians there.

Upon entering the kettle as the player Cy assumes you know how things work, and there are a few filler travel stages to break the story up a little, before eventually the group return to see Tetra emerge for the first time, locking eyes with Captain 3, removing her goggles for the first time, and immediately going on the attack. Captain 3 drops their weapon and holds up their hands, but Tetra still rushes them down, holding both Dark Tetra Dualies up to their face.

After a long moment of them staring each other down, Tetra narrows her eyes, throws her arms down in a burst of anger, and leaves without saying anything else. After a few sighs of relief across the group, the tone lightens up, and Cy guesses that Tetra won’t be bothering them - which is a relief.

The bulk of Act II itself is actually fairly underdeveloped story-wise and is a lot more gameplay focused. It reinforces a lot of the character stuff from Act I, but a big ongoing theme is repeatedly clashing with Off the Hook in various places, and getting more glimpses of the strange fifth Octoling and getting more hints as to what it really is that the squadron is planning, and why they’ve kept it hidden.

While their convictions are still the same, there is a growing level of uncertainty among the group as they feel less okay with being kept in the dark. Eventually, the Squid Sisters, Cap 3, and Agent 8 catch a glimpse of the mystery Octoling leaving, and watch them enter a building off the edge of the camp alongside the other Octolings. The Squid Sisters take the opportunity to snoop around the building, which appears to be a laboratory of some sort.

As the group search deeper within for answers, strange, distorted music can be heard - with oddly familiar vocals. It turns into a full stealth mission, until eventually towards the end you’re spotted and confronted by all four of the squadron members. Tetra warns that they were not supposed to come here, Cy is quiet for once, Aris is quiet as usual, and Oregil... actually looks motivated to stop you.

Of course this is a video game and you win that horrible 4v4, breaking through into the room ahead to find that fifth Octoling in a room full of synthesizers, speakers and computers. She calls for Cy, before turning around and realizing who it actually is.

Marie asks the obvious question, of what the hell this is, and the fifth Octoling who introduces herself as Sock, answers that this is a studio, actually. Well, a lab and a studio. Maybe it should be called a studyo. Weirdly lighthearted for what the group was expecting.

Cy, having respawned and entered behind them, is audibly defeated as she guesses an explanation can’t be avoided.

The studio was used over this entire period to study the effects of a song whose influence is as potent as it is destructive... the Calamari Inkantation. It’s the song that spawned not one, but two mass exoduses. It has an undeniable impact on the cephaling psyche. And, as they know, it’s one of the most important songs to not only the Squid Sisters, but Inkadia as a whole.

The fact that the Inkantation can grab the mind so easily when it isn’t being actively fought, and cause such extremely psychological changes... it was, and still is, one of the biggest problems Octaria has had to deal with. And up until recently, there was little you could do about the Inkantation besides actively study its influence.

What they found, was that it was able to simply cloud out your own lived experience. It would walk you down mental shortcuts, take advantage of the simplicity of certain ideas, and corrupt experiences that contradicted it. Causing Octolings to simply leave their struggling communities, their memories twisted with the idea that they’ve somehow invented their own struggle, corrupted only to enable the Octoling to gravitate towards assimilation without dissonance.

The only Octolings welcome in Inkadia are those who have listened to and internalized the Inkantation... those who, consciously or not, allow it to twist their memories and reshape who they are as people.

It’s a lot. Some Octolings are more resistant than others, and some, like Sock here, have managed to reverse engineer it and escape that way. Sock, an Octoling raised in Inkopolis, raised with the Inkantation, and only later exposed to its flaws - without memories of Octaria to have been twisted by it, she was only able to create new ones, to learn from those who live Octaria every day, rather than being stuck behind a layer of cognitive dissonance.

Of course, other Octolings simply could not leave. The new experiences formed after the Inkantation constantly falsify the old, corrupted memories, and reinforce the reality. But many Octolings, upon being swayed by the Inkantation, simply left and assimilated into Inkling societies.

The idea that the Inkantation is not only not good, but actively a corrupting force, was not something Cy nor any of the squadron were confident the Squid Sisters or anyone else exposed to the Inkantation would be able to process. And without that, how else would they understand the importance of their mission - to reverse the effects of the Inkantation using the strange, distorted song the group have been hearing.

Taking a lot of voice samples from the Squid Sisters was the only way they would be able to relpicate the sound that originally entranced those under the Inkantation’s effects. That’s why they needed to go for broke and resort to squidnapping. The Inkantation being a strong corrupting force meant that it was unpredictable how they would react to learning the truth behind the song, while still at least partially under the effects of it.

And that’s also why Cy said of Marina that she understands why she’s so hostile - Marina is one of the most deeply Inkantationed Octolings.

A lot of the breakdowns of how the Inkantation affects Octolings also resonates extremely strongly with Agent 8 - who, despite how prominent and overpowering the Inkantation was, was still able to hold onto friendly feelings around Octarians, and frustrations around their place in Inkling society. So many weird, dissonant feelings, are starting to make sense. But also, a lot of really awful feelings are starting to surface as well - traumatic feelings, now that they’re starting to think back on their life, and counterbalancing that to the horrors they witnessed in the Deepsea Metro. Horrifying, but... real. So, so, horribly real.

This is their last shot. If they can reverse the Inkantation across Inkopolis... who knows what it would achieve. But the plan, at the very least, is unity and community. Cy admits that in all likelihood, most Octolings will stay in Inkopolis even after the Inkantation is cleared. That’s their home now - they have new friends, new commitments, a new life... and there’s not much of a home to return to in Octaria.

But, maybe, some Octolings come to visit. Maybe some Octolings come back. Maybe those that don’t, can at least use their new life in Inkopolis to raise the voices of those suffering back home, and create a real partnership - no egotistical DJ required. And not just turning Octolings into Inklings with funny hair.

Act III

Well, once this whole reveal happens, there is a lot of internal conflict, but on the face of it, there’s really nothing to argue. There’s the disgust and to a degree personal insult felt at the idea that this song that was so important to them, that became a cornerstone of Inkadia, was harmful. That they the Squid Sisters enacted that harm onto tens of thousands of Octolings.

But it’s all there. Their minds want to deny it, but there’s nothing to stand on.

At the very least, they have a rare opportunity to set things almost entirely right. And so, they take it.

The plan is simple: Do what the Inkantation did. Blast the song out to as many Octolings as possible, and then... maybe overthrow Octavio for fun just as a bonus lol

The Squid Sisters are already popstars - they can just take the song into the Inkopolis News Station, perform it live, and get it playing all over, such is how Inkopolis is with its new music. Or well, that’s how it COULD work...  if there wasn’t a sudden “NEVER GONNA HAPPEN” and muffled “Pearl--!!” coming from Agent 8′s earpiece, that they forgot to take out.

So... the easy walk-in walk-out strategy just turned into a big climactic final battle for the station. The specifics of which........ are still being ironed out, sORRY!

But generally, Pearl and Marina get backup in on the situation, and it’s a lot of small missions in one building, split across multiple teams, some stealth, some just battle, some objectives, and the final battle being a survival section over the Squid Sisters performing the song (playing as the squid sisters is cool but its not quite a Splatoon Final Boss if the Squid Sisters aren’t singing some variant of the Calamari Inkantation over it except that one time) including Pearl and Marina themselves getting in on the battle.

I’m not musical enough to think of how this would work, but it would be kinda crazy for it to sort of be objective-based by whether the Squid Sisters’ reverse-Inkantation or perhaps even Off the Hook singing the normal Inkantation is playing for more time - like a dueling song of some sort

After it’s over and you win, there’s this sort of both relief and confusion since it feels like not much happened - but it affects Marina. Like, god, does it affect Marina after everything that happened to her after the Inkantation. A lot of what she knew, the people she was close to, her life in general, all just flooding back. Suddenly realizing that these were not shadowy monsters that were out to get her, they weren’t evil clones trying to destroy the world. They were people she knew, old friends, family even, that were just trying to get by as best they could without leaving their friends and family in the dust. And then she let herself be swayed by a song, and then suddenly... how could she have just left them like that? What did she do to them? What did she do to herself?

But cutting through it all is Pearl’s voice, asking if she’s okay. Despite what she was worried about... it’s still Pearl. It didn’t make her hate Pearl or not recognize Pearl or change anything about how she felt about Pearl. It just, cleared the fog around the other people she cared about, that she had been convinced she didn’t.

So.... yeah!! Once all is said and done, Marina assures Pearl that she’s still her, that all these fears she had, didn’t happen. Plus, some minor panic over how close she got to keeping these thoughts down forever. But she didn’t, and now that it’s all over, she can let it out to Pearl and the rest of them.

Epologue

Other Octolings throughout Inkopolis start feeling similar things, though minus the Deepsea Metro trauma, and as anticipated, some of them do return. Some come back temporarily, some just have a lot to think about. Many who come back in some form or another will also sadly realize how close Octaria is to just crumbling to the ground. But over the following days, weeks, months, and years, both Octolings and Inklings work together to both raise awareness and to help reconstruction efforts.

It’s the start of a much, much, much larger social shift - that kind of also passively involves removing Octavio from power, but that’s easy enough at this point. And of course, Pearl and Marina come up with some shenanigans to get the squadron and the Squid Sisters... off the hook.

And that’s Culture Shock, the entire story exists for that one throwaway pun at the end thank you for listening you’ve been a great audience and even if this FINDS its target audience NOBODY will be able to read this before the direct that will inevitably have Side Order content which means NOBODY except ME will have the knowledge of this before their expectations are shfited by the existence of Side Order

Okay but seriously if you somehow finished all of this like, DM me on Discord @aviivix or something because we will become best friends

Also... if you can believe it... this is like maybe HALF of like all the story stuff I’ve got in Culture Shock - each member of the Octo Squad has an arc (especially Tetra she has the biggest arc but I barely mention Tetra here) and there’s big ass history with the dead Octos and a lot of specifics I didn’t touch... if you ask me about any of it I will be your best friend no questions asked.

TYSM!!!!!!!!!

[recurring-polynya]

Hi! I want to start off with saying I love your blog and it was this blog that introduced me to a new side of the Bleach fandom, so I owe you a huge thanks for that. My question pretains to when you mentioned that you read a lot of fics where Byakuya was there when his father died in the lines of duty, and I was wondering if you could recommend those fics and any other byakuya centric ones.

You're very welcome! I am always excited see new people in the fandom, especially here on Tumblr.

I want to preface this with saying that I have kind of a complicated relationship with Byakuya. He is an interesting, complex character and I like to read fanfic about him, but I hesitate to call myself a fan. I'm mostly interested in his character as it stands in relation to Rukia and Renji. I like stories where he is shitty and causes problems. I like reading about the long, horrible history of the Kuchiki clan, and how much it screws a person up to be raised in that mess. I also just like stories that make fun of him a bit. He's a deeply strange person, and I love his weird, dry sense of humor. Byakuya-shipping usually falls flat for me: I think he's mostly ace, except for the time he fell in love with his wife, and even then, I only really like Byahisa stories where the author has done something creative with who she is and I also need her to drag his ass a little. I would swipe left on him. So, anyway, take these recommendations (and the absence of ones I have missed) with that grain of salt.

The fanfic I was specifically referring to regarding Soujun dying after a mission he and Byakuya were on together was the Rise & Ruin series by @afinepiece, specifically part 2, An Education. It's a...little-bit-AUish precanon fic where Hisana is a thief who ends up getting tangled up in the Kuchiki family after she attempts to steal a painting from them. If you're looking for Byakuya fanfic, AFP is always going to be my first recommendation, especially her Thin Red Line series. Her works are always sprawling and genre-defying, but beautifully crafted. They've got noble/family drama, intricate world-building detail, and great character writing. The Kuchiki family deserves epics, and that is what AFP is out here doing.

Funnily enough, my other favorite ByaHisa writer is all the way at the other end of the writing spectrum. @thegreenfaery. She works in the AU space, and if you enjoy Byakuya Going Thru It but also being in love with his beautiful wife. I'm biased, because she wrote it for me, but The Wedding Party is my fave of her works (80's/everyone's human AU where Hisana has to rent out part of Byakuya's house for her little sister's dirtbag wedding).

If you like Byakuya in his gothic horror era, please read dogviolet by @renjirukia. It's a closer examination of some canon between-scenes during Byakuya and Rukia's Bad Times period.

I think @lucymonster is one of the best Byakuya character writers out there, and Metaesthesia is one of the best fanfics I've ever read. It's a Byakuya - Renji bodyswap, but not in a fun way. You should really only read it if you're in the mood to have your heart kicked down the stairs. I also really like Sticks and Stones and Building Bridges. Note: Most of her works are ByaRen (these are not, at least not explicitly). That's not a ship I am normally fond of, but I get, like 3 weird days a year where I can read it.

Speaking of ByaRen, if you are into it, the other ByaRen writer I like a lot is @grizmelder, who is also a very nice person. I particularly enjoyed Heart Tangled, which is a historical AU set at the end of the samurai era, where Renji is Byakuya's bodyguard.

I was just talking about Lull the other day, but it's a lovely little fanfic by Branch about the relationship between Byakuya and Rukia and sometimes Renji. It's an older fanfic and breaks off from canon after the Soul Society arc, so you can think of it as sort of an alternate idea for how Soul Society rebuilds after Aizen's betrayal.

The Journal of Kuchiki Byakuya by @saranel is a great little fic in the form of young Byakuya writing diary entries about his life, in particular, his dealings with Yoruichi and Urahara. It's really cute in general, but in particular, I love the way it portrays Byakuya's interest in photography.

I also have a soft spot for Breaking to Bridle by Vivienne Grainger, which is about how Byakuya sees Renji, both as lieutenant and eventually as suitor for his sister.

I guess I would be remiss if I didn't mention my favorite crack Byakuya fic, which is Become a Ghost by @hardlyfatal. Orihime dies and goes to Soul Society and becomes a therapist and falls in love with Byakuya. It's pretty silly but also a lot of fun, and it's chock full of Byakuya being Byakuya.

I hope you find something you like in there! Like I said, I am not the world's best Byakuya fan (probably in the top ten worst Byakuya fans tbh) but these are some that I have enjoyed and have stuck with me!

[eupheme]

any tips for how to get started writing fanfics? i have so many ideas but idk where to start! also just wanna say that i LOVE your writing and logan fics :-)

hi anon! thank you so much, that is so sweet to hear and I’m honored that you send this! ���� are there any questions in particular you had? I wasn’t sure, so I wrote down some general tips and some links to helpful resources as well!

when starting, I usually like to have a scene in my mind that I want to explore. you can absolutely just dive right in and start writing, but lately I like to have an idea of where I’m going with it (not a fully detailed plot, but like - general bullet points).

for a series or multi-chapter, I’ll write those bullet points down, and then try to break them up into chapters, based on what I think makes sense for pacing. and then from there, I start to fill in the beats (but I do jump around a lot! everyone has preferences, there’s no wrong way to do it)

but if you are just starting, then I’d recommend a drabble! something short and sweet, without the pressure of a word count or an expansive plot. just seeing where it takes you, and what kinds of things you enjoy writing.

the best piece of advice I can give is to write what you love and what you want to read.

if you’re sitting there like “I would love to read a fic where X did Y-”, then that is a good place to start! maybe start mapping out what that scene might look like - from the characters, to the scenes, to the dialogue, and then start filling in the details from there.

(and if you’re not sure what to write, prompts are always a great place to start! I love the lists by @nightprompts and @creativepromptsforwriting - they have sentence starters and quotes, they’re a great resource for inspiration! 💖)

(some additional references I’ve found helpful:)

Fandom Inclusion

Smut Thesaurus

Show Don’t Tell

Writing Summaries

[memyselfandmya]

JWCT PROMPT COUNTDOWN

Jwct countdown May 14-15 -> favorite ship:

There's not enough words to express how much I love Yasammy. They are by far my favorite ship ever and not a day goes by that I don't think about them two. Sapphic relationships are so scarce in media, especially in children's/younger media so I enjoy every one but these two just have a special place in my heart. I saw my cousins watching some of season 1 one day and I just knew that they had chemistry/were going to get together and that's when I knew I had to watch the show. For the fanfic I'm writing, I only have the moments where they don't know each other and when they're fighting but I don't want that to be my Yasammy post. What else I do have is much deeper into the story and I don't want to reveal that much just yet so I wrote this new little scene between them. It's not at all finished but I wanted it to be on time so I'll probably post the full version somewhere in the near future.

Sammy’s heart is racing outside of the airport baggage claim more than it ever has on Isla Nublar. At any moment, Yaz would walk out of those doors and it’ll be Sammy’s first time seeing her in person in a year. They’ve both been busy with school and family so meeting up was virtually impossible. Sure, they’ve texted, called, and facetimed—the holy trinity in long-distance relationships—but for Sammy, who loves to hug, kiss, and touch, it wasn’t enough. 

So when Yaz walks out the shriek that Sammy lets out is loud. “Yaz! Over here!”

It’s impossible to miss Sammy’s voice and when Yasmina turns her head, brown hair swinging, her face breaks into a grin at the sight of Sammy standing there waiting for her. Seeing Yaz there smiling makes Sammy smile and soon enough she’s running over to Yaz and engulfing her in a hug. 

The impact almost knocks Yaz off her feet but still she’s grinning, hugging Sammy back and pressing her face into the crook of her neck. She inhales and the scent of cinnamon fills her nose. “I missed you so much,” Yaz whispers. 

They stand like that for a while but when they pull away it feels like a moment cut too short. Sammy wipes her eyes which have gone a little wet until Yaz cups Sammy’s face in her soft hands and swipes the tears away for her. 

Yaz then drops her hand to hold Sammy’s and asks, “Where are your parents?”

“I’m driving us,” Sammy says, swinging the keys to her family’s truck on her index finger. She got her license quite a few months ago but it took a lot of convincing to get her parents to let her drive all by herself to pick up Yaz. They’ve got something against Sammy going to the airport alone; trust issues probably from the time she ran off to Jurassic World. Not one of her proudest moments but it gave her Yaz. 

Yasmina’s mouth falls open in surprise. “No way, you actually convinced them?       

Sammy smiles. “I can be pretty persuasive. How’d you think I got you to come outta’ your shell?” 

[roomwithanopenfire]

Six Sentence Sunday

Happy Sunday Everyone!! Thanks to @monbons for tagging me, so excited for the next chapter of your fic!

I've been having a really good week, I finished up all my finals and all my papers, and I moved all my stuff out of my dorm room—meaning I'm back home now and ready for summer! I have two weeks before my main summer job starts, so that means a lot of time for writing! And I've already gotten a start by having a super productive week writing-wise this week as well (finally got some solid work in on my COBB fic, turns out getting some vampire name inspo from @fiend-for-culture and seeing the first peek of the artwork really brought back all my excitement for this wip!!!)

I'm posting the newest chapter of Proof of Life tomorrow, which is one that I'm super excited to share. Unfortunately, this is the last chapter in my backlog, so I'll have take a small posting break after this, but that just means that if you haven't had a chance to start reading yet, you have time to catch up 🙃

But even more exciting news! I realized that I missed the 2 year anniversary of the first fanfic I wrote for this fandom! After reading all three Carry On books, I absolutely devoured fanfiction for probably around 6 months before ever writing my own. And the only reason I wrote anything was because I had a scene absolutely stuck in my head, and no one else had written it yet. So honor of being a month late to it's birthday, here are 6ish sentences from the first fanfic I wrote: Tense Silence (under the cut because this is already getting long):

“You’re a vampire.” says Simon. His voice came from above me. “You really are.”

I look up to see Simon standing, staring down at me. He has the Sword of Mages in one hand and the silver cross dangling in the other. It is very close to my face. I turn my head away. He moves the cross closer. I close my eyes as I smell the metal hanging merely centimetres away from me. 

“You tried to bite me.” He says. “You really tried to drink my blood.”

As you can see, I started out the fandom almost exactly where I ended up—writing angsty vampire Baz fics. While there's some things that I would do differently now and a few noticeable mistakes (Simon's cross is gold not silver, Past Lily, get it right!), I'm still really proud of this fic. I remember spending weeks working on it and being very nervous to post this 6k fic, so it's definitely kind of crazy to look back it and see how much I've grown as a writer, and how many friends I've made in fandom since then.

Tags & Hellos!

@you-remind-me-of-the-babe @facewithoutheart @run-for-chamo-miles @raenestee @artsyunderstudy

@onepintobean @prettygoododds @noblecorgi @hushed-chorus @angelsfalling16

@thewholelemon @shrekgogurt @brendughh @a-maisie-ng @hertragedyconnoisseur

@beastmonstertitan @valeffelees @horsesarenotdeer @drowninginships @supercutedinosaurs

@fiend-for-culture @rimeswithpurple @cutestkilla @alexalexinii @ileadacharmedlife

@arthurkko @rbkzz

[ladywaterfall]

I, for one, will never forget that time i wrote a mlp g2 fanfic in which moon shadow stole an ancient powerful necklace which granted the wearer the ability to see into the future from queen silver rain because moon was an orphan with no friends except dainty dove, who was a pegasus/earth pony hybrid and couldn't fly even after her moult (in this fanfic pegasi have fluffy wings until age 12, then they grow into their flight feathers), but then the leader of the orphanage twinkle star (who was also a pegasus/flutter pony hybrid) got hired by queen silver rain to murder dove, but dove escaped and is now hiding in the woods near the pegasus kingdom, but moon doesn't know that and is planning her revenge on the monarchy.

meanwhile, sundance hates her responsibilities as the princess of the earth ponies, along with her brother firefly and her sister crystal, who has always been overlooked by her parents sunsparkle and night star (who dies while trying to stop moon shadow from escaping with the necklace), until light heart commits arson in the castle during the midsummer day tryouts for a new jester (her popular sister trixiebelle was chosen instead of her) and she ans sundance escape through a secret passage which sunsparkle ordered secret tale and merry moments to build before they ran away to the lost library in the middle of the rainbow forest.

Afterwards sundance meets sweet berry (who is melanistic and has really strong magic) in a cottage in the woods and together they go back to the castle, assuming light heart was captured. they sneak into the castle and watch crystal deliver a prophecy about incoming doom, then sunsparkle tells sundance that sweet berry killed her sibling ivy with her magic. they look for light heart in the dungeons, but instead find moon shadow, who drugged all the guards and she knocks sundance unconscious right before light heart showed up. turns out she had been in hiding in a nearby town. they run away from the scene of the crime and decide to go to the lost library, but not before scaring all the royal guards with sweet berry's magic.

they meet merry moments and secret tale at the lost library, who casually tell light heart that she is a hybrid and that trixiebelle is not her real sister. sundance captures moon shadow and makes her give up the necklace that she took from crystal, and she joins their friend group. merry moments suggests that they should go to the flutter kingdom, because she doesn't recognise the necklace and the flutter kingdom is the most mysterious of all the kingdoms. moon shadow leaves to contact her ex girlfriend dainty dove.

sundance, light heart and sweet berry go to the flutter kingdom, where they meet an exiled border guard named morning glory. she says that the flutter kingdom is an opressive dystopia ever since the old rulers mysteriously disappeared and were replaced by the new queen. morning glory disguses light heart and sweet berry as sundance's government officials and they visit the palace while sweet berry has an existencial crisis about killing ivy by accident five years ago. morning glory breaks into the royal library and finds out that she is actually the lost princess of the flutter ponies, but she rejects this responsibility in favour of escaping with light heart to the unicorn kingdom.

light heart meets her sister dainty dove, moon shadow, crystal (who ran away after sunsparkle tried to use her prophecy powers to declare war on the other kingdoms, and copper glow, who is an outcast from society due to not having magic. together they spy on queen silver swirl, and discover that she is stealing the unicorns' magic in order to conquer the world (why is every ruler in this fanfic trying to conquer the world smh) and that crystal is secretly half unicorn, and that the necklace was worthless all along. all the kingdoms go over and have an epic fight, which the main characters stop of course. crystal also turns her mom into a ghost because yes.

i spent half an hour typing this out.

DROP THE LINK-

but fr there's SO MUCH going on here. I love that you did that.

The corruption of ponies in power. arson. mysterious conspiracies. lost princesses. accidental murder?? turning your mom into a ghost. TRULY iconic. absolutely love it.

[morphinejunkie]

hii how are you? i hope you’re doing well :) i really love your fanfic crush, i’m writing a mello fanfic myself, but i’m having such a hard time capturing his essence, sometimes i get carried away writing him but then i realize it’s not really accurate, i either make him too angry, too much this, too much that, idk, do you have any tips for me? (only if you want, i just really love how you portray him, i think it’s really accurate so i thought what’s better than to ask you?) <3 ✨🌸

thank you very much!

mello was a character i struggled to write at first too. he’s a delicate tightrope walk between intelligence, aggression, coolness and (in my opinion) brevity. personally i find that the hardest thing is striking a balance that encompasses all four.

so i’ll break it down, this is what worked best for me.

1. use canon

the way i wrote mello, i referenced the original manga (and voice/diction in the dub anime) a lot. i would first listen to his lines and try to internalize his voice. and then i would study his body language in his panels and try to shift that body language and attitude into whatever scenario i’m writing.

mello is a pretty layered character, which i think a lot of people struggle with. he plays up the characteristics that people often associate with him (i.e. in the call with the president, he acts taunting and brash) when on his own turf he’s actually very calculating and careful (i.e. any scene in the mafia - he’s often staring into space, sprawled into a relaxed but aggressive position, and thinking).

i think a big thing to remember too is that mello made many decisions in canon that need to be backed up to create a holistic view of who he is. reverse-engineering mello’s character from his actions was a huge part of how i developed my mello as well - “why did mello do this? what motivations were urging him to do the thing he did? why are his emotions this way while he’s doing it?”

general rule of thumb is: if your mello would not do the things that canon mello did, the way that canon mello did, he’s probably ooc.

2. take him as a whole - not parts of him

i focused a lot of my energy on trying to capture mello as a whole. a lot of it is meeting mello where he is, not where you want him to be. assuming he is fully formed, an actual person, and you are getting to know him, not creating him from scratch. when i was no longer concerned about making mello do things that i wanted him to do, and instead interacting WITH mello as a fully formed character, i found it natural to hear his voice. near the end of crush i felt like i was just documenting them with a camera while matt & mello did what they did. they moved almost completely on their own and i was just there to capture it.

for me, especially in the beginning, i would often “practice” by throwing both matt & mello into a scenario with no expectation or plot, and seeing how they play off each other, without trying to move them from point a to point b. i found that let me understand their characters better — better than say a character study or a self-reflection would. in fact the bar scene was that exercise for me, and ended up setting the tone for the rest of the fic.

3. figure out all the different ways you can read mello, and figure out which works best for you

the one thing is, even if you study mello and take him as who he is, there’s not a lot to work from off the original series. a lot of him is further developed in fandom, and so there are various camps of interpretations of mello that are all equally valid & sound. i found that mapping out exactly how mello can be interpreted and figuring out where my mello lay on that scale helped me a lot in determining what i found was personally ic/ooc.

funnily enough this matrix was really helpful even though it was just a stupid joke post from back in the day. i really liked the way “mihael keehl” talked, i found it so cool and grounding. “priss” still exists though the details or manner of speaking has changed over the years, in fact twinky/glamourous mello remains one of the most common interpretations of his character which i personally rejected (i don’t think it reflects his body language in canon at all). “batshit” mello is time and place for me, but ultimately, not how i like to write him (as it only explains some of his actions in canon but not all).

of course writing mello in the end is wholly depends on your personal preference - you could do all of this and still end up with a different vision of mello as i did. as long as he is fully fleshed out to you, the details don’t matter.