#If anyone figures out how to write this but without the crossover element I kind of want to read it

[amplexadversary]

More fanfiction I’m never going to get around to actually writing:

Someone comes to Pearl from Steven Universe for advice. They stumbled upon an unactivated pearl and in a brilliant moment of quick thinking asked her to call them “Mom/Dad.” This makes our Pearl incredibly uncomfortable for obvious reasons.

Mainly, I’m not sure how the protagonist would have enough background knowledge of gems to realize that that would probably be one of the least weird ways (for them) to deal with the whole gem programming dynamic thing until the nascent pearl could be brought up to speed with How to Deal With Being Around Humans.

Pearl is torn between the fact that the person clearly doesn’t want someone else taking advantage of the younger pearl (which she appreciates), the fact that they see her as an authority on how to handle the situation (which she likes), and the fact that she really, really Does Not Want to Make That Comparison (and probably resolves it, ultimately, by deciding that the fact that this person being human makes it different enough that she can just compartmentalize the issue away)

Maybe for bonus awkwardness have it be Mystery Girl who found the nascent pearl?

#SU Pearl #Steven Universe #crossover #kind of #to be honest usually this comes up in a sort of crossover context. #like I've been thinking about Super Robot Wars and how they fit in Cowboy Bebop #long story short #there are two characters in T who are pretty much just dads who don't happen to have a kid yet #actually strike that. I just remembered Guy/Gai is kind of like that too. make that three #and I'm in the habit of making them watch all the tweenagers between missions #and was thinking about what other series I'd tie in this way #also I want to see Jasper fight a Gundam sue me #If anyone figures out how to write this but without the crossover element I kind of want to read it #actually fuck if this were written with mystery girl you could do a bit where NP figures out that *something* is upsetting her ''Mom'' #talks to a bunch of small children #and then ends up coming to the conclusion that because this is what humans do that she should start calling Orig. Pearl ''Dad'' #and that leads to a painful to read scene where Pearl has to figure out how #to explain to junior that she is Not Okay? with that without hurting her feelings #(maybe she decides eventually that she is Actually Okay with that but only after a LONG talk) #depends on how butch you read Pearl as I guess #I could see her opinion on that going either way (cool with it or not) #Morg SRW Opinions #fanfic

[alloftheblackwidowfeelings]

Almost every reviewer on YouTube wasn’t satisfied with this movie IMO they said it was just Marvel combined some elements from other marvel movies so they could throw fans a BW movie so we could stfu, it didn’t do justice to the the character ,what do you think, is it really that bad.

To be honest, I've been working on this one for a while but I keep writing and deleting my response. Because all the things I want to say sound gatekeeper-y, in one of several ways.

I think you can be a Nat fan and not read the comics. I think you can be a Nat fan and never talk about her. I don't think you need to know everything about canon and be an "expert" to be a fan. I'm not interested in a locked-gate version of fandom. I don't think this movie should just be for die-hard Nat fans. And I don't think that all Nat fans will like this movie, for a variety of reasons.

Despite all of that, a lot of the comic book/movie expert reviews I've seen feel, to me, like they were evaluating a movie that isn't the one this movie was ever trying to be, and missing some of what the movie explicitly says it is because that doesn't fit what they want from it.

A bit more spoilery and a lot longer under the cut. I am so sorry I'm like this.

This movie felt tailor-made for me. Not because I loved every answer they gave, but because the questions they asked are ones I've been waiting to hear since 2012, when I first saw Avengers and then immediately went back to see the rest of phase 1. I think people disliking the answers is a legitimate opinion, and I'm looking forward to detangling that with people. What surprised me in reviews was not reviewers disliking the answers, which is legit, but not even seeming to realize the questions had been asked.

Most prominently, what felt like the huge thematic arc of the movie to me has been nonexistent in so many reviews that I've started to feel like I made it up, even though I took notes of exact quotes so I could reference them. The movie isn't a Nat origin story, and it's not about her as a cool edgy villain, so not seeing either of those didn't bother me. It's a movie about Natasha's trauma and how that manifests, and how her attempts to break free of it have harmed others in the past, and how she can move forward from that. We never get the key that unlocks the history of Natasha's past, so if you approach this as a puzzle box, it's going to fail.

THIS INDENTED PARAGRAPH IS THE CLOSEST I GET TO DIRECT PLOT POINTS, FEEL FREE TO SKIP

Specifically most of the reviews seem to view Nat's motivating guilt as over how she escaped the Red Room, particularly one casualty she deemed an acceptable sacrifice. But as I interpreted it, Nat's guilt in this movie came from a much closer place: the other Widows were all she'd had, and Nat being able to escape the Red Room made the Red Room hold on to the other Widows that much tighter. She thought she'd taken it down, but she was wrong. So her freedom, essentially, came at their expense. Natasha working to take down the Red Room this time is personal both to avenge her own trauma and to make up for her guilt in the Red Room still existing and creating more trauma for her peers. Without this context (and to be clear, I have gone back over the quotes several times to see if I'm misinterpreting and I really don't think I am), the idea that all of her guilt is over what she did to a single person makes more sense, but it also makes the movie a lot less interesting. If Natasha is justified in blaming Alexei and Melina for condemning her back to the Red Room, how could the other Widows not blame Nat? To me the entire story swings from that, and by not acknowledging Nat's (inadvertent but still very real) responsibility for continuing the cycle, the movie would feel hollow.

PLOT POINTS OVER.

Many critics they seem to feel like the potential this movie introduced was wasted because Nat's dead, so what's the point. First of all, the point is she's Nat and we care. It's not like we went in to Iron Man expecting that we'd have a decade of a franchise; we cared in the moment, and this movie is asking for the same thing. It delivers for over two hours of NOT murdering Natasha, which is more than I can say for Endgame.

To be clear, BW does set up other things for the MCU, and it's but if you're only watching it for what it's going to tell you about the future of the MCU (and I get it, because that's how I'm watching Loki, and it's a very different type of watching than I did for FATWS), this probably IS going to be a disappointment, because this isn't a big crossover event movie; I mean, none of Sam's "Big Three" show up at all. But again, that's about the movie someone wanted it to be, not the movie this was aiming to be.

Is this like a lot of other Marvel movies? Kinda. It's definitely taking a lot from Civil War for its set-up. Its arc felt like a close mirror of to Winter Soldier to me, to the extent that I'm planning to rewatch that on Thursday so I can see how much that's just me projecting my fave onto it. The third act is very Marvel-third-act-y, as adapted to Nat's character; the adapting to Nat's character are the parts I like and the rest is kind of what I consider the MCU price of admission.

I also kind of hate that it feels like the last few movies- Black Panther, Captain Marvel, now this and some rumblings about Shang-Chi- have all been kind of dismissed with "it's just the Marvel formula." It is, but that doesn't change the fact that different protagonists make it different. Dr Strange is pretty much just "Iron Man 1 with cool magic" and people didn't mind, but "how does this formula change when the protagonist is fundamentally different than the archetype to this point?" is apparently not different enough. I get Marvel fatigue, I really do, but for me it's tempered by how, in this case, Nat doesn't have the moral clarity Steve or Thor or even Tony or Scott has. No one in this movie lets her forget that she's a trained killer who little kids look up to.

Again: there are parts of this movie that don't work. I also don't ever ever EVER want to seem like I'm saying that if someone didn't like this movie they're not a real Nat fan or they're wrong. I know there are reasons to not love this movie, and I'm sure I'll figure out more the more I watch- it may not make me not love it, but it will at least complicate it for me, and i think we all know I live for that shit. Moreover, I intimately know how much it sucks when something you've been enthusiastic about and anticipating for ages doesn't pay off and everyone else seems to like it- it's isolating and upsetting and you just sit there wondering why no one else understands, and that's bullshit and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. People who don't like this movie are valid!

But if someone has a history of seeing Nat as just background, or considering her as a T&A deliver system more than as a character, or caring about hot women with guns but not care about the trauma that turned them into that, or saying they like movies about women but just not THIS woman for every comic book movie about a woman not there for them to ogle, or claiming to be experts in all things comics while doubling down on their theory that Yelena wouldn't appear because she was in Agent Carter (YES THAT HAPPENED, MORE THAN ONCE, THE NORTH. FUCKING. REMEMBERS. AND WISHES THEY KNEW WHERE THEY SAVED THOSE SCREENSHOTS), I don't need to weight their reviews heavier than the adrenaline rush I felt watching this movie.

So in answer to your question, I don't think the movie was really "that bad." I think this movie delivers in very specific ways, which definitely are not the flashy ones or the "every Marvel movie builds to the next great EVENT" ones or the male power fantasy ones, and if those ways aren't the ways you care about, it's going to be a disappointment. Even if those AREN'T the ones you care about, it could be a disappointment for any number of reasons, some of which I noticed during the movie and some of which I'm sure I'll be surprised to read about Friday morning.

But it wasn't one to me. For whatever it's worth, despite the movie's flaws, I loved it, I haven't stopped thinking about it in five days, I can't wait to see it again, and I hope that whether other people do or don't like it, they want to roll around in it as much as I do to pick out every single shred of canon worth overanalyzing.

If this is all we ever get for Natasha- and it is a CRIME if this is all we ever get for Natasha but that doesn't mean it's not so- I am grateful that this is what we got.

#allofthereplies #Anonymous #Black Widow movie spoilers #BW spoilers #I mean I tried to make this not that spoilery but I'm sure I didn't completely succeed #also warning for long post #extremely long post #again: I am so sorry I'm like this

[orangepanic]

20 Fic Writer Questions

Finally getting around to this. Thanks for the tags @rasnak2 @theboyfrommakapu @old-and-new-friends

1) How many works do you have on AO3?

37

2) What’s your total AO3 word count?

798,770. I want to do something when I get to one million, but that might be cry? I dunno, suggestions welcome.

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

Technically three: Avatar: Legend of Korra; Avatar: The Last Airbender; and Harry Potter. But I only have one ATLA fic and the HP one was a crossover. The vast majority of what I write is LOK.

4) What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

“AWOL,” my S2 re-write

“Glass,” my sequel to that

“Firestorm,” my sequel to that

“Smoke,” an Equalist Asami fic

“The Lies We Tell Ourselves,” a post S1 fix-it where Iroh and Asami become roommates.

Which, now that I see this, I kind of love? Sometimes I feel like there’s a lot of pressure to write shorter, fluffier fics because they’re “fun” or whatever. And they are fun, don’t get me wrong. Sometimes I need the brain break to write something like "Hotman" or "Mangosami." But it’s a nice reminder that over time what readers seem to enjoy the most are what I’d also consider my more “serious” writing, and that it’s okay for me to indulge in long multi-chapter fics even if they don’t deliver quick wins. If someone asked me for five fics of mine to recommend I’d not be at all disappointed with this list.

5) Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

Sometimes? I need to work on this. I love comments. I love them so much. But I have a few regular readers who are kind enough to comment on a lot of chapters, and I feel like I’m bothering them if I respond to every comment? Which maybe I shouldn’t? I don’t know. I’m so grateful for every reader and comment that I worry about chasing people away by being too needy. But then I love it when authors respond to my comments, so...?

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

“Yao Li’s Blade” for sure, my fic about Ozai’s hair stylist. It’s not even close. My Irosami is all angst with a happy ending — though “Smoke” may tip that balance by the time I finish it.

7) What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

Hard to say because I have a lot of HEA-type endings. I’m very partial to the Epilogue in “Glass” though.

8) Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the craziest one you’ve written?

Very rarely, and only when I’m in a very silly mood to match. I think the only one I’ve posted is “Asami Sato and the Goblet of Fire,” which is a little one-shot imagining Asami as a muggle exchange student and Iroh as one of the Durmstrang competitors during Book 4. Asami is a Slytherin, by the way, and all y’all who put her in Ravenclaw are missing a trick. I consider this one of my most under-appreciated stories.

9) Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Not often, but yes. 100% of it is from Korrasami shippers calling me homophobic for shipping a canonically bi female character with a male. I used to try to respond and ask for constructive feedback on how I could make Asami feel more bi in my stories, but I’ve never gotten any, so now I delete comments like that and then feel like shit for a week before moving on.

10) Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yes. Not well. And not… hard, I guess? All of my Irosami smut is of the sweet and rather giggly kind between two people who obviously love each other, and that one Kuviroh fic is just Iroh being drunk and awkward. Fluffy smut. Flut?

11) Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I don’t think so. I’d honestly be a little flattered? Also pissed, but really the idea that anyone cares enough about my writing to steal it is absurd.

12) Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not that I know of.

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

I’m currently co-writing “Harmonic Convergence” with @ideklolwat, and @the-hopefulpenguin and I started something together that’s on a little hiatus as we both got busy with other projects. It’s a learning experience for me for sure.

14) What’s your all-time favorite ship?

15) What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

I WILL FINISH EVERY FIC IF IT’S THE LAST THING I DO

16) What are your writing strengths?

I’m not entirely sure. I used to think it was writing emotions but the more I read of other people’s work the more I doubt that assessment. Maybe something like fleshing out main characters? I’ve been told a few times that my Asami and especially my Iroh are better than canon. But I’m not as good with side characters.

17) What are your writing weaknesses?

Oh god, probably everything, but the thing that’s bothering me at the moment is trying to insert descriptions and movement into dialog. I can’t figure out how to say what is going on without breaking the conversation flow. I’m also shit at world building in the sense that I mostly make things up. I am awed by writers who do a ton of research and bring those elements into their stories. Most of what I have feels kind of modern AU even when it isn't.

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

I rarely have cause for this. It seems like everyone in the Avatar world speaks the same language. But I’ve had some fun throwing in allusions to other languages, such as creating a bit of a dialect for Southwest Earth Kingdom that mostly manifests in the pronunciation of names, or having someone study “old Omashan,” or having there be a song in another language and Iroh’s like “I have no idea what it means, I just thought it was pretty.”

19) What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Legend of Korra. I’m relatively new to fan fiction.

20) What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

I don’t pick favorites. I love them all in different ways.

Tagging @chiefbeifongcanrailme, @alishatheninth @ohmygodtheywereparabatai and anyone else who wants in

#fanfic writing #author questions

[cupstealer]

Re: your last ask.

I am also no longer into the fandom side of hockey anymore and hardly ever read fan fic anymore. (A senior thesis will do that to a person 😔) Buut I want you to know that I think about contact high on a regular basis. Once a week maybe type of regular, when I’m wishing I was reading something fun and not a science journal. Is that weird?! I mean I know that sounds a little crazy- but it might be the greatest fic I’ve ever read. While I was reading it I got the sense that it would be one of my favorites, but I had no idea how much it would still ruminate with me a year and a half later. I don’t think I can recall a single other rpf work like I can that one. You are such an amazing writer! And I hope you continue to write- whatever it may be that your writing about! 💕

(Sorry to keep putting these on y’all’s dash, but it’s the only way I can THANK these anons and they definitely need thanking.)

Your timing OP ;.; I really got this ask when I needed it most. 💕 Thank you thank you thank you! Sorry for the delayed response—it’s so hard to figure out how to thank somebody and explain how much words like this mean while not sounding like a flu patient or something.

To answer your question, it’s not weird! There are absolutely fics that live rent-free in my head to the degree that I’m basically sponsoring them on a permanent residency program [cut to footage of bring it if you really want it by staraflur]. And god, what an honor that Contact High is like that for you 🙏 Contact High is my favorite thing that I’ve written. A lot (pfff, all) of the content was so self-indulgent for me, just utter wish-fulfillment, which I usually try to dial back, but I wanted to see what might happen if I really leaned in instead. (The thing with toothpaste/walking in on someone actually happened to me when I was staying over at a friend’s house in high school... Sorry again to her brother, I promise I barely saw anything.) There isn’t a single element of that fic that I wasn’t excited about while I was writing it. And it’s that much more touching when the work that feels the most ‘me’ is someone’s favorite.

Anon, I hope you get some free time to read fun stuff soon! You deserve it. And good luck on your thesis! Defend that sumbitch like you’re Connor Murphy (no idea if it’s the kind of thesis you defend, but you get my meaning). Thank you again 💕

I am still writing, by the way! Just as slow as ever though, and for a very mixed bag of subjects! No hockey lately, though I have a few unpublished 1988 WIPs that I haven’t touched in a long stretch yet haven’t let go of either. Every fall, I pump myself up to roll up my sleeves and edit/finish this genre-confused frankenstein of a haunted house-type fic, and I haven’t given up hope yet! (Plus if I finish it, I can finally read jezziejay’s witch Jonny fic—which got posted while I was writing mine, and I made myself bookmark it for later so I wouldn’t be influenced or in my head about any overlap even though they’re almost certainly totally different in every way. I’m dying to read hers ;.;)

Hmm I hesitate to say this, but... If anyone is really interested regardless of fandom, there’s also an unorthodox fic I wrote as a Christmas present for my sister back in 2017 that she keeps telling me to post. (I know, and it gets weirder from there.) I think I want to but I’ve hesitated for several reasons. First: I need to re-do the ending now that I’m not scrambling to finish it on Christmas Eve. Second: It is a pairing that does not exist and kind of bananas. More info under the cut if you’re interested.

Basically, years ago, one of my sisters and I had a looong conversation about who was worthy of being shipped with Stacker Pentecost from Pacific Rim, and when none of the characters from the movie satisfied us, we reached out into the vast universe of basically anyone from any media to find him love, guess-and-check style. After literal hours, I brought up one of my favorite under-appreciated characters, Linus Caldwell from Ocean’s Eleven (Matt Damon). Which makes no sense, but doesn’t it a little? It became a running joke, and then a running a joke that I was gonna write it, and then not a joke. Ain’t that the way?

So yeah—Third: I’m hesitant to get somebody excited about a new hockey fic only to open the email and see it’s a batshit crossover that literally no one (except my sisters) is asking for. That being said, I started it as a joke/challenge, but ended up making something that I find quite a fun little ride because I was so loose with it (because, like, who’s ever gonna see this, right? Some real dance like nobody’s watching shit). I’ve written a bunch of stuff never meant to see daylight, but this fic in particular feels complete. It just has a lot going on (Hidden identities! Never Been Kissed-style fake student/professor tension! Chase scenes! Cameos! Close-up magic! Heist crew banter! Idris Elba’s North London accent! My total lack of military knowledge!). Also it’s over 30k words. (Yeah.)

Is there any interest in me posting this?? To be clear, I’m definitely not expecting it to be popular or anything, but taking the time to fix it up only makes sense if I know at least two people will lay eyes one it, lol. You don’t have to know both films really well for it to make sense, but familiarity with the Ocean’s trilogy and characters probably helps a lot for context since it takes place in between those movies. Goes without saying that no offense will be taken if there isn’t clamoring demand amongst hockey rpfers for 30k of Pacific Rim crossed over with a George Clooney movie franchise in a fic that has neither giant robots nor giant monsters (nor George Clooney, in any appreciable quantity)... Think I’m capable of taking that sentiment on the chin. 🤙

#replies #lOng replies damn #fic stuff

[scifrey]

WORDS FOR WRITERS: The Value of Fanfiction

There’s been a lot of chatter on social media these last few weeks, recycling that trashy, self-aggrandizing, tired old “hot take” that reading and writing fanfiction is somehow bad for you as a writer.

Before we go any further, let me give a clear and definitive answer to this take:

No, reading and writing fanfiction will not make you and does not make you a bad reader or writer.

 Period.

 Why? Here’s the TL;DR version:

1)      Reading and Writing, any kind of reading and writing, will make you a better reader and writer. And it’s enjoyable, to boot.

2)      Fanfiction has been around as long as Original Fiction, so we’d know if there was any negative impact by now (spoiler alert: there isn’t.)

3)      Practice is Practice, so matter what medium you get that practice in.

4)      Comprehending and writing fanfiction is harder than writing original fiction because you have to hold the Source Media Text in your head at the same time as you’re reading/writing a different story. It improves your understanding of storytelling.

5)      No hobby, no matter what it is, so long as it doesn’t harm anyone else or yourself, is bad. And that goes double for if you decide to keep it a hobby. Not every fanfic writer wants to write original fiction, and that’s just fine. Not every hobby has to be monetized.

 Okay. But what do they mean by “fanfiction”?

 “Fanfiction is fictional writing written by fans, commonly of an existing work of fiction. The author uses copyrighted characters, settings, or other intellectual properties from the original creator as a basis for their writing.”-- Wikipedia

 Basically – it’s when you take elements (setting, characters, major themes or ideas) of a Media Text (a novel, a movie, a podcast, a comic, etc.) and create a different story with those elements. You can write a missing scene, or an extended episode, or a whole new adventure for the characters of the Media Text. You can even crossover or fuse multiple Media Texts, or specific elements, to create a whole new understanding of the characters or their worlds.

 Similar to fanfic, you can also create fanart, fancomics, or fansongs (“filk”), fancostumes (“cosplay”), and fanfilms. These are called Fanworks or Fancrafts.

 Fanfiction is usually posted to online forums, journals, blogs, or story archives and shared for free among the public. Before the advent of the internet, fanfiction was often printed or typed, and hand-copied using photocopiers or ditto machines, and distributed for free (or for a small administration fee to cover materials) among fans at conventions, or through mail-order booklets (“zines”).

 Fanfiction has existed pretty much since the beginning of storytelling (A Thousand and One Nights, Robin Hood, and King Arthur all have different elements attributed to them by different authors retelling, twisting, adding to, or changing the stories; there’s no single-origin author of those tales.)

 There are billions on billions of fanfics out there in the world—and while a majority of them are romance stories, there are also adventures, comedies, dramas, thrillers, stories based on case files, stories about the emotional connection between characters when one is hurt and the other must care for them, historical retellings, etc. There are also stories for every age range and taste, though be sure to take heed of the tags, trigger warnings, and age range warnings as your browse the archives and digital libraries.

 As a reader, it’s your responsibility to curate your experience online.

 So why are people so afraid or derisive of fanfic?

 People who are hard on fanfic say that…

 ·       It sucks.

o   Well of course it sucks! As it’s a low-stakes and easy way to try out creative writing for the first time, the majority of fanfiction is overwhelmingly written by new and young writers. Everything you do when you first try it sucks a little bit. 

I’m sure no figure skater was able to immediately land perfect triple axels ten minutes after they strap on the skates for the first time in their lives. No knitter has ever made a flawlessly perfect jumper on their first try. No mathematician has ever broken the code to send a rocket into space after having just been taught elementary-school multiplication. So why on earth do people think that new writers don’t need to practice? I can promise you that Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first rap was probably pretty shaky.

·       It’s lazy or it’s cheating.

o   Listen, anyone who tells you that writing anything is lazy clearly has not sat down and tried to write anything. Writing is tedious. It is boring. It takes hours, and hours, and hours to get anything on the page, and then once it’s on the page you have to go back and edit it. UGH. There is nothing about being a writer—even a fanfic writer—that is lazy.

o   And anyone who tells you that trying to tell a fresh, new story within the limits and confines of a pre-existing world and have it make sense is cheating, then they have no freaking clue how hard it is to be creative with that kind of limitation placed on you. It’s harder when you have a set of rules you need to follow. What you do come up with is often extremely interesting and creative because of those limitations, not in spite of them.

o   The argument that using pre-made characters, settings, tropes, and worlds to make up a new story is cheating is also complete bunk. Do those same people also expect hockey players to whittle and plane themselves a whole new hockey stick from scratch before each game? No, of course not. And yeah, a baker can grow all their own wheat, grind the flour, raise the chickens and cows so they can get eggs and milk, distill the vanilla, etc. Or a baker can buy a box mix. Either way, you get a cake at the end of the process. Whether you write fanfic or original fiction, you still get a story at the end of the process.

·       It makes you a worse writer.

o   * annoying buzzer noise * Practicing anything does not make you worse at it. And reading stories that are not edited, expertly crafted, or “high art” will also not indoctrinate you into being a bad writer. If anything, figuring out why you don’t like a specific story, trope, or writing style is actually a great way to learn what kind of writer you want to be, and to learn different methods of constructing sentences, creating images, and telling tales. Or you know, just how much spelling and grammar matter.

·       It’s not highbrow or thoughtful enough.

o   Sometimes stories are allowed to be just comfort food. Not every book or story you read has to be haute cuisine or boringly nutritious. You are allowed to read stories because they’re exciting, or swoony, or funny, or just because you like them. Anyone who says differently is a snob and worth ignoring. (Besides, fun silly stories can also be packed with meaning and lessons—I mean, hello, Terry Pratchett, anyone?)

·       It makes you waste all your time on writing that can’t be monetized.

o   No time is wasted if you spend it doing something that brings you joy. Not every hobby needs to be a money-maker and not everyone wants to be a professional writer. You are allowed to write, and read, fanfic just for the fun of it.

·       It’s theft.

o   According to Fair Use Law, it’s not. As long as the fanfic writer (or artist, cosplayer, etc.) is not making money on their creation that directly impacts or cuts into the original creator’s profit, or is not repackaging/plagiarizing the original Media Text and profiting off it’s resale, then Fan Works are completely legal. So there.

 How, exactly, does fanfic make you a better writer?

 Fanfiction…

 ·       teaches you to finish what you start.

o   The joy of being able to share your fic, either as you’re writing it, or afterward, is a big motivating factor for a lot of people. They finish because they get immediate feedback on it from their readers and followers. Lots of people have ideas for books, but how many of them do you know have actually sat down and written the whole thing?

o   Fanfic is also low-stakes; there’s nothing riding on whether you finish something or not, so you have to inspire yourself to get there without the outside (potentially negative) motivation of deadline or a failing grade if you don’t get the story finished. You end up learning how to motivate yourself.

o   Fanfic has no rules, so you write as much or as little as you want, stop wherever you think is a good place to end the story, write it out of order, or go back and write as many sequels or prequels as you like. Again, it’s totally low-stakes and is meant to be for fun, so you can noodle around with what it means to write a “whole” story and “complete” it, which teaches you how you like to write, and how you like to find your way to the finish line.

·       teaches you story structure.

o   Before you can sit down and write a story based on one of your favorite Media Texts, you’re likely to spend a lot of time consuming that text passively, or studying it actively. Either way, you’re absorbing how and why Media Text structures the stories it tells, and are learning how to structure your own from that.

o   Once you’re comfortable with the story structure the Media Text you’re working in is told, you’ll probably start experimenting with different ways stories can be told, and find the versions you like to work with best.

·       teaches you how to write characters consistently.

o   Fanfic is really hard because not only do you have to write your fave characters in a way that moves the story along, but they have to be recognizable as those fave characters.

o   This means you have to figure out their body language, verbal and physical tics, their motivations and they way the handle a crisis (fight, flight, or fawn?), and then make up the details you may need for your story that you may never see on screen/the page, like how they take their eggs or what their fave shampoo is, based on what you already know about them. That takes some top-notch detective work and character understanding to pull off.

o   Once you know how to do that, just making up a whole person yourself for original fiction is a breeze.

·       Teaches you how to hear and mimic a character/narrator voice.

o   You have to pay close attention to how an actor speaks, or how a character’s speech patterns, dialect, work choice, etc. is reflected on the page in order to be consistent in your story.

o   And all of this, in turn, teaches you how to build one for yourself.

o   I have a whole series of articles here about building a narrative voice, if you want to read more on constructing an original voice for your narrator.

·       Teaches you how to create or recreate a setting.

o   Again, like achieving character consistency, or mimicking a character or narrative voice, it takes work and paying attention in order to re-create a setting, time period, or geographical region in a fanfic—and if you’re taking your characters somewhere new, your readers will expect that setting to be equally rich as the one the Media Text is based in.

o   Which, again, teaches you how to then go and build an original one for yourself.

·       teaches how to take critique.

o   Professional writing is not a solitary pursuit. In fact, most writing is not entirely the work of an author alone. Like professional authors work with editors, critique partners, and proofreaders, some fanfiction writers will sometimes work with beta-readers or editors as well. This are friends or fanfic colleagues who offer to read your fanfic and point out plot, character, consistency, or story structure errors, or who offer to correct spelling and grammar errors. This is a great way to practice working with editors if you decide to pursue a professional career, and also a great way to make friends and strengthen your community and skill set if you don’t.

o   Many fanfic sites offer readers the opportunity to leave a comment on a fic, rather like a reviewer can leave a review on GoodReads or Amazon, or any other online store or blog, for a novel they’ve read. Sometimes these comments/reviews are 5 star and enthusiastic! Sometimes they are… not. The exact opposite in fact. As you get comments on your fanfic, and learn to ignore the ones that are just mean rather than usefully critical, you gain the Very Important Skill of learning to resist firing back at bad comments or reviews, while enjoying the good ones.  It also teaches you how to ignore drama or haters.

·       Teaches you how to exist within a like-minded community.

o   While the actual writing part of writing is solitary and sometimes tedious, nothing is ever published into a vacuum, whether it be fanfiction or original. Besides your editing/critique/beta reader group, you will also likely develop friendships, a support network, and mutuals. It’s always great to uplift, support, cheer on, and celebrate one another’s accomplishments and victories, whether the writing is fanfic or original.

·       Teaches you that it’s okay to write about things important to you, or your own identity.

o   You can change a characters ethnicity, cultural background, sexuality, religion, or disabilities to match yours, and talk about your lived life through the megaphone of that character. Or, you can insert original characters based on you, your desires, and experiences.

o   Once you’re comfortable writing in your #ownvoice in fanfic, you can approach it in original fiction, if you like.

o   See my article titled Your Voice Is Valid for more on this.

 What if I want to be a professional writer?

 Notice how I didn’t say “real writer”. Any writer who writes any kind of story is a ‘real’ writer. I mean, pinch yourself—you’re real, right? The difference is actually between being an “amateur” writer (a hobbyist who does not write for pay), and a “professional” (who is paid for their writing). Just because you only play shinny on the street with your friends, or in a house league on the weekends, it’s doesn’t mean  you’re not still as much of a hockey player as someone who plays in the NHL.

 Writing fanfiction before or at the same time as writing original fiction that you intend to sell is a great way to learn, or practice, everything I’ve mentioned above. If you read it widely, it will also expose you to different story telling styles, voices, and tropes than your reading of published fiction.

 ·       Can I sell my fanfic?

o   No. For fanfiction to remain under the umbrella of Fair Use Law, you cannot profit off your fanfiction. There’s some grey-area wiggle room around things like charging a small amount for a ‘zine or a PDF to cover administrative costs, but zero wiggleability around, say, selfpublishing your fanfic and charging heaps for it.

·       Can I “file off the serial numbers”?

o   “Filing of the series numbers” is when you take a fanfic you’ve written and essentially pull it apart, remove everything that’s clearly someone else’s Media Text, and reassembling the story so that it’s pretty much a completely original piece of creative writing.

o   Yes, you can sell these, provided your filing is rigorous enough that you aren’t likely to be dinged for plagiarism. It’s widely known that Cassandra Claire’s Shadowhunters was once Harry Potter fanfic, and that Fifty Shades of Gray was once Twilight fanfic. But did you know that my Triptych started life as an idea for a Stargate Atlantis fic? There’s lots of stories out there that were once full fics, or the idea for the novel was originally conceived for a fandom, but written as original instead.

o   So long as you’re careful to really rework the text so that it’s not just a find-name-replace-name rewrite, you should be fine.

o   Be aware, though, that the agents and editors you might pitch this novel to know how to Google. They may discover that this is a filed-off story, and depending on their backgrounds and biases, might be concerned about it. There’s no need to inform them of the novel’s origin straight off in your pitch/query letter, but you may want to have a frank discussion with them about it after it’s been signed so they can help you make sure that any lingering copywrited concepts or characters are thoroughly changed before publication.

o   Should you take down the original fic-version of the novel while you’re querying/shopping it? Well, that’s up to you, and whether you’re comfortable with an editor/agent potentially finding it.

·       Should I be ashamed of my fic, or take it down, or pretend I never wrote fic?

o   What? Why? No! I mean, I have hidden some of my most immature work, but I’ve left pretty much my whole catalogue of fanfic online and I don’t deny that I was/am a ficcer. Why? Because it’s a great repository of free stories that people can read before they buy one of my books, so they can get a taste of how and what I write. Also, you will be in good company. Lots and lots of writers who are published now-a-days started in fandom, including:

Steven Moffat

Seanan McGuire

Rainbow Rowell

Claudia Gray

Cory Doctorow

Marissa Meyer

Meg Cabot.

Naomi Novik

Neil Gaiman

Lev Grossman

S.E. Hinton

John Scalzi

The Bronte Sisters

Andy Weir

Sarah Rees Brennan

Marjorie M. Liu

Anna Todd

...and me, J.M. Frey

 How fanfic can harm.

 Like with anything else, there are ways that reading and writing fanfiction can actually harm you, or others, but it has nothing to do with the reading or writing of fanfiction in and of itself.

 ·       Some creators may prefer that you don’t (and may or may not follow up with legal action).

o   Anne Rice famously went after fanficcers in the 90s who wrote fanfic of her work, handing out Cease & Desist notices like confetti.

o   99% of creators don’t care. Those who do will generally have a notice on their websites or social media politely asking fancreators to refrain. Mostly this is due to their general discomfort over the idea of anyone else getting to play in their worlds. The best thing to do is respect that request, and find a different fandom to write in.

·       Flamewars and fandom fights leading to bullying and doxing.

o   Regrettably, just like any other community filled with people who have different favorites, opinions, and preferences, there will inevitably be clashes. It’s up to you to decide how to react to negative interactions, and how to model positive ones.

o   Don’t forget, you curate your online experience, so don’t be afraid of that block button.

o   Also, don’t be the jerk who goes after people for liking different aspects of the fandom. Everyone is entitled to interact and like a Media Text their own way. “Don’t yuck my yum,” as they say.

·       Trying to make money on other people’s IP/Media Text (law suits, etc.)

o   It doesn’t belong to you, so don’t try to make money on it.

o   There’s a grey area here in terms of selling prints/plushies/jewelry/etc. and there’s no hard line about where one copyright owner will draw the line, and another won’t. Warner Bros. owns the film rights for both Harry Potter and Hunger Games, but I’ve seen Harry Potter-themed bars spring up while fans wanting to make Hunger Game fanfilms have been shut down. A friend of mine sells hand-made fandom-inspired items at cons—there is no rhyme or reason to what she gets told to stop making and what she’s left alone on.

o   Best thing to do if you’re told to stop is just so stop, move on, and find a different fandom to be active in.

·       Writing Real Person Fanfic (“RPF”) can be considered a violation of consent.

o   This article sums it up pretty well, but basically… if you decide to write RPF, be aware that they person you are writing about is a real person, with real thoughts, and emotions, and they may feel violated by RPF. If you decide to write it, never send it to the people it’s about, and always clearly tag it so other can choose to engage with it, or avoid it.

o   Also be aware that it could ruin their love for what they do. For example: the friendships between the members of 1Direciton became strained and the band eventually disintegrated because people wouldn’t stop sending band members smutty stories or art of them having sex with one another, and it made them too uncomfortable to continue in the band.

·       Showing/sharing fanfic & fanart outside of its intended context. Fanworks are for fans, and there are definitely issues if…

o   It’s shown to celebrities/actors/creators.

  Shoving your fantasies onto the people who create or portray your fave characters is rude, and wrong, and also kinda gross. If they seek it out themselves, that’s one thing, but the same way you wouldn’t throw it at a complete stranger, don’t throw it at them. You may love the characters these people play, but they are not their characters, and they are not your friends.

  It may also really weird them out and ruin their love for what they do.

o   it’s shown to writers working on the series.

  There was a famous case where a fanficcer sent a story to a novelist, and the novelist was accused of plagiarism by the ficcer when their next novel in the series resembled the plot of that fanfic. There was a whole court case and everything.

  Because of this, writers of TV shows, books, etc. don’t want to (and often times, legally can’t) read your fanfic. They don’t want to get accidentally inspired by what you’ve written, or worse, have to throw out something because it resembles your fic too closely. Just let them write their stories the way they want, and if they choose to seek out fic, they will.

o   it’s mocked by celebrities.

  I’m not letting Alan Carr and Graham Norton off the hook. If it’s super rude and gross to shove fanworks at actors/writers/creators when you’re a creator, then it’s doubly rude for anyone to take a story or art made for a specific audience (the fans), by a specific community (the fans), lift it out of it’s context, and invite the public to mock it while also shoving it at the actor/celebrity in a place where they are literally cornered and can’t leave (i.e. the chat-show sofa). Man, it really steams me up when they do that. It’s rude and it’s tone-deaf, and it’s not fair.

  And most of the time they do it, they don’t even ask the artist or writer for permission, first, which is just…. Uuuuugggghhhh. It may be fanfic, but it was still created by someone, and you should always ask permission before publicly sharing something created by someone else.

  Grrrrrrr.

 In Conclusion

 If someone tells you that reading or writing fanfic is bad for you as a creator, tell them to get bent.

Famous Fanfic

·       Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda

·       Wicked by Gregory Maguire

·       Wicked: the Musical by Stephen Schwartz

·       The Phantom of Manhattan by Fredrick Forsyth

·       A Study in Emerald by Neil Gaiman

·       Sherlock by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat

·       The Dracula Tape, by Fred Saberhaugen

·       Paradise Lost, John Milton

·       Inferno, by Dante

·       The Aeneid, by Virgil

·       Ulysses, by James Joyce

·       Romeo & Juliet, by William Shakespeare

·       The Once and Future King by T.H. White

·       A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, by Mark Twain

·       The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas

·       Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, by Seth Grahame-Smith

·       Phantom, a novel of his life by Susan Kaye

·       …and so many more.

#words for writers #fanfiction #fan fiction #fan fiction is good for you #writing #am writing #writing community #writing fanfiction #writing fanfic

[rayegunn]

Updated Asgard speculation

So, this is kind of an update on my last mega-ramble speculation post, you can go read it for the full (very long) explanation of WHY I think this, but the TLDR version is basically that I think that in Marvel, the lives/fates of the Asgardians are governed by an in-universe narrative with pre-defined roles that starts anew every so often (not the Ragnarok cycle, that's a cycle within this larger cycle, it's different) when there is a new King. So when Thor became King, a new cycle began, and right now all the characters are finding themselves in new roles. I correctly predicted that Thor would have to formally give up his old role and Mjolnir, to allow someone else to fill that role (he had been trying to do both roles, but that is not possible) and that Mjolnir was trying to force the issue. I think Loki will be his replacement. I know some people will find that hard to believe, but there has been a lot of foreshadowing and setup for that if you read close.

SO. The new bit of speculation comes after seeing the solicit for issue 18. This speculation has a bit less to back it up, it's more a couple epiphanies i had, and what i think could work, so I think it is not as likely as all the roles stuff, which has some very clear elements supporting it, but still. I just like writing these posts out to get all my thoughts in order, of other people like them too, that's good too. I've gone over this in smaller posts on CBR already, but wanted to collect it together again.

The solicit says that Throg is being sent by Thor on a "top secret mission" that only he can do. It at first seemed a bit odd to me, why Throg as a spy? You'd think if they needed a spy, they'd go for Loki. Throg's more about action than subterfuge. In terms of personality and tactics, he is basically a very small amphibian Thor, all about glorious battle and stuff. And what's his mission? Well, the mission at least seems clear, Mjolnir went missing the issue before, according to solicits, and no one seems to know where it went. Either it was taken by someone who could get in and out of Avengers Mountain undetected, or it just.... abducted itself, and flew off or something on it's own. I think there are things to support either scenario, and I think each has pros and cons. But in either scenario, I presume that because Thor formally gave it up, he can no longer simply recall it from wherever it is, like he did before. So there needs to be another way to track it down, if it's new wielder is not making themselves known, and they can apparently hide from Sif's sight. So how do you track it down if Thor can't call it back, and Sif apparently can't see it? Then it hit me. This is why it had to be Throg. What if a little piece of Mjolnir could be used as a sort of tracking device? Because that is what Throg's hammer is, it's a small chunk of Mjolnir. Could this little piece be drawn to the larger hammer? If so, then Throg makes complete sense for this mission, he truly is the only one who could do this, if we assume the most obvious solution, asking Sif where it is, and who took it, isn't working.

Though this brings up questions on the specifics of the mission, and how Mjolnir went missing. First of all, WHY can't Sif just go 'oh, there it is'? There are not many that can hide from her sight, and Loki is one of them. This is part of the reason Thor approached him to help with Blake, he wanted Loki to hide them from Sif. Is Throg intended to get Mjolnir back, or is he just there to find out who has it, and what they are doing with it? I mean, with the enchantment acting up, it could technically be taken by just about anyone, after all, and could be being used for good or bad purposes as a result. But there are very few people that have the ability to take it from inside Avengers Mountain, let alone do so while remaining undetected. Loki is one of those people, it wouldn't even be particularly difficult for him, even though to most, Avengers Mountain would be extremely hard to get into, something previously only done with inside help. so really I'd think Loki would be a prime suspect, particularly if Mjolnir was actually taken directly. But it is also possible Mjolnir flew off on it's own, to either act autonomously, or to find the person it chose.

I'm a bit torn on which would be better. If it just up and flew to Loki, (or whoever, but I do think he's likely) then it's a clear sign that's the chosen successor it wants, and shows that Loki doesn't have like, malicious intent, cus he didn't actually do anything. At least to the reader, anyway, I'm sure the characters would question it. And we have had some foreshadowing that it has chosen Loki. It seems to act up in his presence, and when Sif sent it to Jotunheim, it proceeded to fly to him and land at his feet, accompanied by blatant foreshadowing that this would be brought up again as 'a story for another time'. I don't think Sif would have sent it to Loki specifically, i think it was just a general destination of 'Jotunheim' and then it kinda... chose where it landed specifically. But questioning Loki's motives may make the better story, if he went in there and took it himself, and then had to work and prove he deserves it, rather than people just accepting the decision of the hammer. And it would show agency, though as with the TV series, the point may be to strip him of agency, since that's something he hates. So yeah, i can see merits to both scenarios. Tho, with Jane it just kinda called to her, but she still had to go there to get it, so it was kind of both.

But, regardless of the specifics of how it gets to him, Loki is one of the very few that could hide this from Sif and everyone else. And I could understand why he would want to, even with no malicious intent at all. He knows he is not trusted, and that if people knew it was him who had it, it would be likely that they'd try to take it away. There may also be an element of not wanting to hurt Thor, who seems to be ready to give up his old role, but is not quite ready to pass it on to someone else.

So then Throg. I think it could end up in a scenario where he ends up finding him, and tries to act as a sort of mentor to Loki. Like he finds the hammer, and then rather than fighting him or trying to take it back, he instead tries to make sure Loki does the right thing. I mentioned in my previous post, that I thought it would be a good idea to do the Hero's Journey with Loki here, and follow it very closely. The monomyth requires at least one mentor figure, and it could make sense for Throg to try to be that to Loki. But if it is Loki in the role, I don't think the point is to make him into a clone of Thor, but because the role has to update for the newest generation. The general beats will echo what came before, but specific details like methods used, and personality will likely change. So it will likely end up that Throg thinks he's giving good advice by trying to make Loki be more Thor-like, but that's not actually what's needed, and they both have to come to realize that. Still, he'd probably be able to offer some help, and it would be fun to see them together. But another possible mentor that's been set up is Iron Man, who is definitely more in line with how Loki operates. So he's actually probably be a much better mentor figure there. Though not without risks, as they could end up feeding each other's bad habits. I think that could be a fun trio for an adventure, Throg, Iron Man, and Loki.

But I had another thought, about echoing the past. Occurred to me that Cates said Throg would be appearing again after this, but not necessarily in Thor, and... he's writing Hulk. Loki used the Hulk as his pawn in the scheme that inadvertently got the Avengers together... so, if they're gonna echo the past... then Cates could do a bit of a crossover with Hulk for that part. Presumably with Blake breaking free and trying to get the Avengers to fight Loki, using Hulk. Or even just try to get Loki to fight Hulk. We'd probably get a 'puny god' callback in that case, but hopefully Loki fares a bit better here.

#thor #loki #marvel #donny cates #speculation #ramble #mjolnir #comics #throg

[rosebloodcat]

Grim Fandango Notes

Here are some notes I’ve written and had on my computer for a while I made them when I was trying to think of things to write for Grim Fandango.  Just different thoughts/interesting things I’d noted for Fanfiction writing (crossover or otherwise) purposes, feel free to use them for your own writing!

It’s a mix of notes for writing ideas, world notes, and stuff that seemed interesting to me while I was playing. I haven’t finished the game and may make a “sequel” to this post with more notes, but this is what I have so far.

> It’s implied every character sprouted has different flowers appear from them, this is from the line said by Hector after sprouting Don Copal. (Marigolds for Don, “I was expecting Tulips.” No idea what flowers appear from Lola and Manny (I tried to look, couldn’t figure it out))

> Sprouted characters are basically reincarnated back into the Living World, as said by one of the game creators. I assume this is true for all “Second Deaths” in-universe. (Can others be reincarnated at some point without being Sprouted? Are there other kinds of Second Deaths? Like from the Beavers?)

> No one likes flowers due to their association with Second Deaths in the Land of the Dead, Florists are supposed to go mad from the conflicting feelings they have about it.

> There are three different times where Manny almost/could have been Sprouted and therefore reincarnated:

 After being locked in the Garage in Year 1 (which he escaped)

 An incident with Meche in Year 3 (Need to learn more about this one. Might be a fanfic thing)

 And when Hector shot him in Year 4 (He managed to save himself)

> Manny has a sense of right and wrong that Don Copal knew would be trouble, which was why he was never part of their scams. (I’m guessing)

> DOD computers used dental recognition to keep people from accessing their databases. Eva, despite working for the DOD as the boss’ secretary, didn’t have the clearance to use them.

> The Land of the Dead has demons that manifest to complete specific jobs and tasks. The demons can die if they go for too long without performing that job. It’s not stated how they come to be, just that they do. They often get taken for granted by the spirits they work for.

> There are demons that work in the LotD and are human-like and there are demons that are like animals. Although, most of the working demons are actually Elementals. (Not sure if the working demons are “domestic” or if the “demon animals” are really just supernaturally souped-up animals. It’s never clarified as far as I know.)

> Most spirits visit the Living World on the Day of the Dead, there is no stated reason that would stop them from visiting. But many stay behind if there’s no one they want to visit (as stated by Manny) or if their job prevents them from going (as said by Eva).

> Reapers and people with debts are not allowed their own cars in El Marrow. This is meant to keep them from skipping town, but it seems they can walk wherever they please.

> Spirits can have phantom pains from injuries they had in life (like the Dockmaster’s eye, which has him wearing an eyepatch). It’s unknown if lethal injuries and causes of death are part of that.

> Manny, based on his accent and language, is most-likely of Hispanic or Latino descent. Not specifically Mexican, but definitely from that area of the world.

> “Animals” seem inconsistent in the Land of the Dead. Pigeons are skeletons, there are (supposedly) man-sized cats that can be ridden and raced, “Demon” ravens that can talk, flaming “demon” beavers, and spider-bats.

> There is food and drink in the 8th world, enough for restaurants and cafes to be credible sources of income. (What is the food made from? Is it plant-based? Are there meats? Where would they get meat?)

> Anyone who gets on the Number 9 doesn’t come back to the 8th world. (Does that mean they don’t even visit their living families? Is it possible that they can have a Second Death while in the 9th world?)

#grim fandango #grimfandango #manny calavera #manuel calavera #notes #fanfiction notes #writing notes #free for writers to use

[killmebutneverinsultme2]

Rules for mobile (Pinned Post)

The Code

Success. I’ve sufficiently pestered the wench to make me a blog, much to the cost of a certain behorned mischief god whose presence I must share. Follow the rules below, and there’ll be smooth sailin’, savvy?

This be an exceptionally selective blog. I was me mun’s first ever muse yonks back and I’ve pestered her into writing me again, BUT, she’s horribly pressed for time. Partners will likely be very few, else ones doubling up with Loki’s. Anyone is welcome to approach and enquire, but she and I will be leaning toward those either from me own universe or crossovers with which she’s highly familiar and characters in whom she’s especially interested. Ye have been warned.

Replies are like to be slow, up to a few weeks at most.

Partners must be 18+. Various themes of an adult nature may be found here. Sexual things will be tagged ‘#filthy pirate’ with whatever level/variety of sin I deem them. More details below.

Behave. There shall be no rudeness, no passive aggression, no hate, no censorship or generally being a twit. Do I make meself clear?

The Code - Extended (below the cut)

Hi, guys. I’m Pirate (oddly known as this long before I made Jack a tumblr). Here are my more detailed rules and guidelines for writing with me on this blog, though the absolute basics are at the top as, honestly, it’s never easy to remember everyone’s requirements.

Jack is a sideblog. If you’re being followed by a benevolentgodloki that means I’m following you back. I don’t need us to be mutuals (both following each other) for us to write together, but there is a greater chance of us having a partnership if we’re letting each other know we’re interested.

How I Roll

I note myself as ‘highly selective’. This isn’t to be an elitist bugger, it’s because we all only have a limited amount of time we can put in. I want to write what I enjoy with people I enjoy. I am married with two attention-seeking cats, two jobs, a slow-brewing intended writing career and a video game addiction.

Asks/Memes - I will usually answer these no matter who they are from but I may or may not turn them into a thread I intend to keep. Some memes are very much designed to be something that continues so context can be key. If you would like to know in advance whether I intend to answer and/or keep something, please do pop me a message and I will be kind and honest.

My Threads - While Jack’s blog is still exciting and new, I’m being a bit all over the place with who and what I reply to depending on which way Jack’s.. compass.. is pointing. I do have a rolling turn order that I adhere to (to the point that I can genuinely tell you who is next at any given moment) but it’s all piled in with Loki’s threads, meaning I can take a few weeks to get round everything. Every partner gets one of their threads answered within that ‘round’ and then I go round again. However, when I’m really into something/finding something easy to pop back, I treat myself to spamming certain threads or partners at my whim. I use rpthreadtracker.com to maintain what I have. 

I will remind partners of threads that have not been replied to for more than three months. If I do not do this, I have either forgotten/lost it myself, I’m not too fussed about keeping it at that stage, or you were absent for a long period of time. 

My Style - I will write in both past or present tense depending on partner preference. My default is past but I like either. Please kick me if I screw up and write the wrong one. I prefer using regular size font but I will make mine small on replies to people who use the smaller so that it looks neat. I will often match partners’ lengths and some formatting details e.g. bolding dialogue, but I struggle with doing novella-length posts for reasons below.

I have a bugbear to admit about role-play. What we call splicing. A good half of my partners write this way so I’m not about to tell everyone to stop but if you’re someone who does this, you will occasionally run into some frustrations when writing with me. ‘Splicing’ is when you retrospectively write dialogue or actions as having previously happened during your partner’s last post. These things are fine when they’re passive i.e. your character muttered them, thought them or you were writing what your character was doing at the time because that’s pretty much essential. The trouble comes usually when my characters talk a lot/ask rhetorical questions and partners choose to answer every single one despite the fact my character carried on talking. I know it’s an ass that I have talkative muses and you really want to respond to every point/get a word in, but putting words and actions into the past effectively godmods my muse into accepting they happened. If you feel your muse would have full-on interjected midway through their ramble, please ask me to edit my post/stop it at that point. Otherwise if you do prefer to splice, my muse will only respond to whatever it is your character did or said last in their post. This is one of the reasons I can’t write novella, because often there is only so much you can write before you’re stepping into the territory of changing what went before and not allowing your partner to do anything about it.

TL;DR don’t ever worry about your post being too short for me. If it’s one sentence long but it’s because something fast-paced is happening, I won’t be miffed.

Shipping! - no not that kind of ship, Jack. I love shipping. Ships all around. Let’s face it, romance can be one of the most exciting reasons we bother writing. I am open to a lot of ships for Jack, practically all of them. Yes, even that one. I will do downright nasty, toxic, horrible stuff, savvy? It’s fiction and Jack is a great indulgence for bad things happening to him as much as good. That said, of course don’t force something on him without prior agreement between us. Well, I mean, your muse can try and accost him and see what he does, just don’t expect him to definitely reciprocate. Jack and I are bi/pansexual. We’re open to everything. I will admit a heavy lean toward m/m but, that said, Jack is extremely fond of the ladies, more so than Loki. I am very into Sparrington especially.

Not Safe For Ye Olde Work

Sliding down from the above topic, I enjoy the occasional smutting. It is not a requirement from my partners. In fact, I’m warming very much to fading to black depending on the context/mood/if things feel a bit repetitive. I do feel a touch more comfortable with partners who don’t need that boundary but as I’ve recently figured ‘if it needs a cut, then it’s smut’ I know when to skip on.

Saucy material will go under cuts/Read More’s and be tagged as mentioned above with ‘filthy pirate’. Additional tags will be based on the citrus scale: ‘lime’ for general grabbing, ‘lemon’ for full on sexual content and ‘grapefruit’ if things get extra kinky. I will tag things such as ‘rape tw’ or ‘noncon tw’ or ‘dubcon tw’ where necessary. Please blacklist any or all of these at your leisure, or search them if you fancy :U I do NOT tag these as ‘ns.fw’ because tumblr just completely hides them from being searchable which is useless for my partners.

OC’s - Due to my time constraints I am extremely picky when it comes to OC’s. This is a good fandom for well-thought-out muses and I know firsthand how hard it is to make headway as an OC in the RP world. However, I also understand that for people like me, I want to dip in on this site to mostly play with the characters and worlds I’m really absorbed in and ship my weaselly black guts out. Some people have more time than others to really give your OCs the time and love they deserve. Unless I’ve played with you a long time and I really like the cut of your and your muse’s jib, it’s very unlikely I’ll bite. Apologies! The same goes for crossover muses from fandoms I’m unfamiliar with, but I will let you know if that’s the case.

Limits

Threads - I don’t have a strict limit on how many to have per person but please bear in mind that the more of these you have with me the longer it will take me to get to a particular one (unless I’m spamming it back and forth). This is more a mun/muse context how many I accept.

Exclusives/mains - I don’t do these although I may consider having a maximum of 3 or 4 of one muse depending on activity levels and to ensure plots don’t get mixed up or attention feel unfairly balanced.

Triggers/squicks - I don’t like body horror e.g. graphic detail of squishy bits having bad things happen to them. I’m writing a pirate so there’s absolutely allowed to be elements of torture/violence, just don’t stab him in the eye or chop bits off him. One torture-related thing sends me into a complete freakout which I’ll discuss with partners if we’re doing a thread of that ilk as needed. Kink-wise I’m not into mpreg, A/B/O or infantilism or toilet things. Just ask me/Jack if you’re after something XD

Who I Am/What I Need From You

Being yourself is the most important thing and I promise I am not a scary person (usually). We’re only human and it’s natural that we’ll get along better with some rather than others. This is more to give you a gist of the sort of person I am and who I gel with best.

So I’m a shy hermit at the best of times. I’m trying to be better at engaging and enthusing with partners over our threads because I realise more than ever this does keep things alive and make for a more enjoyable experience. I’m not always great at it. I work best with people who are patient and don’t worry too much on what I think of them and their writing, with people who are happy to keep threads going for the longhaul rather than keep dropping everything before I’ve had the time to get to the next post, and most especially people who accept that fiction =/= reality. I do need a certain level of quality, which doesn’t always mean perfect grammar, but it must be coherent, fun and creative. I like a relaxed approach, sharing mutual enjoyment in silly fantasy world sandboxes as escapism from (and exploration of) this complicated world we live in.

If you managed to read all of this, have a drink (even if it’s water). You’re a diamond. 

Pirate xxx

#rules #pinned post

[celila-reblogs]

Fic Tropes Game!

The lovely Pie​ tagged me for this game -- and since she followed the rules and only tagged one (1) person - me - I now feel obligated to actually do this thing ;D Thank you for tagging me @potteresque-ire :*

Rules: Copy/paste and bold your fic preferences because why not, gotta choose one (near impossible, but go with your first gut instinct), and tag someone because, again, why not.

slow burn or love at first sight

(oh, gimme hundreds of thousands of words of build-up, thank you very much!)

fake dating or secret dating

(I mean in both something is going on that the rest doesn’t know about, but i find secret relationships just so much more interesting <3)

enemies to lovers or best friends to lovers

oh no there’s only one bed or long-distance with correspondence

(I love getting to know the characters in-depth, and reading their letters or text messages or chats - and again all the pining - is very relatable ;D)

hurt/comfort or amnesia

fantasy au or modern au

(I don’t really know what to answer here ... I’m reading fic a lot in three fandoms: Harry Potter, Merlin, and Voltron (VLD) (a tiny bit of Yuri on Ice) -- all of them have magical/fantasy elements? while I absolutely adore well-writen modern Merlin AUs where prince meets student or they’re just two students at uni, or co-workers or in the military, I also love it when canon gets re-written. And my favourite “modern” Merlin/Arthur AUs are: 1) they’re both in special ops and magic exists; 2) they’re both students and Merlin has magic and keeps saving Arthur; so it’s a compromise ;D HP plays in the 90s up to now and could go into the future depending on how old the characters are that you’re writing about, but that’s all quite modern to me already -- maybe they mean technology-wise? While I do love a well-written texting fic (see above), I enjoy it much more when the author dives into magical theory and comes up with the most amazing ideas (and not everything is just solved with muggle technology ;)) and I don’t think I’ve ever read a non-magical HP fic? Unlike Merlin fics, where non-magical AUs are quite normal, but I do prefer the ones with magic <3)

mutual pining or domestic bliss

(Yes! Give me enough pine to shame Ikea!!) <-- that’s what Pie wrote and I just have to keep it ;D it’s so funny and so true! <3

smut or fluff

oof, what a question.. I probably have to go with smut. I love fluff, but you can only read so much fluff without a story getting boring (if there is no tension ... or climax of any kind haha). and smut - whether explicit or not - can give you a lot of build-up and tension, interesting situations and definitely diverse outcomes, from declarations of love (there’s your fluff) to spectacular fall-outs, especially when I think of our favourite boys and their inability to communicate ;D) 

canon compliant (missing scenes) or fix-it fic

(that one is much easier to answer for me [and it’s the first one where I choose a different answer than Pie ;D]. In VLD I want to disregard all of the last season, but especially the epilogue - completely - season 8 just doesn’t exist. in HP, I love 8th year fics or anything where the boys don’t marry Ginny and Astoria respectively right after school - which again can be viewed as disregarding the epilogue. In Merlin, I either read magical modern AUs anyway, or the fics in canon-era that I do enjoy disregard episode 5-13 completely and definitely ignore the epilogue/last 5 minutes of the series. So all my fics can be regarded as fix-it fics, and especially in Merlin & VLD that is a very common tag).  

alternate universe or future fic

(definitely the future fic -- though it all depends on your definition of “alternate universe”, i love cross-overs ;D there are some between my favourite fandoms, like Merlin going to Hogwarts during the lightening era, or the VLD characters also going to Hogwarts. It’s so much fun. but those are exceptions in the vast landscape of fics. if you define “AU” as not canon-compliant, I guess everything could be viewed as an AU as soon as I disregard epilogues? But if we just don’t count epilogues, I love reading stories where the characters are a bit older, have found their place in life, or have tried things and failed and are now figuring things out or are at least realizing, that failing is part of life, but it’s much less stressful with the right partner <3).

one-shot or multi-chapter

(weird question.. If the definition of “one-shot” is still that it’s a fic that has been written in one sitting (let’s disregard editing), then i’d definitely go for multi-chapter. because i love longer fics. that said, i don’t have any problem at all with a 50k fic that is only 1 chapter. but I wouldn’t use the number of chapters to define whether a fic is a “one-shot” or not, so there’s that ;))

kid fic or roadtrip fic

(definitely the kid fic!! aaah, so cute ;D)

reincarnation or character death

(oof, I don’t like reading MCD >_< and reincarnation would imply that one or both of the characters also died at some point .. and in Merlin fics that would just mean that canon happened and Merlin has been waiting for 1000 years for Arthur to show up again... and aaah no, thank you, I read a few fics like this and they’re just too heart-breaking ugh. so yeah, no, both not for me ;D)

arranged marriage or accidental marriage

(if i’m forced to choose, maybe accidental bonds that can be reversed, like magical accidents or something like this? but in general, it’s not something i gravitate towards. I’d much rather read a soulmate AU <3)

high school romance or middle-aged romance

(see above, I love when characters have had time to learn from their mistakes in the past, I love seeing how many different ideas authors can have for the same characters and their decisions in life. so yes, let them grow up a bit ;))

time travel or isolated together

(Time travel is … difficult to get right. I’m picky about it.) <-- what Pie said

neighbours or roommates

(what question is this? OMG THEY WERE ROOMMATES!!! ;D)

sci-fi au or magic au

(I guess that is for fandoms that are in neither of those categories? like Sherlock or Yuri on ice? since HP and Merlin fall into the magical category and VLD is sci-fi and I do love crossovers, I guess I have to say: Both?! Both is good! ;))

bodyswap or genderbend

angst or crack

(well written crack is so much fun, but the problem is the well-written part. there is much more well-written angst, so i have to go with this ;))

apocalyptic or mundane

(definitely mundane here. apocalyptic just stresses me too much after a while, same goes for dystopian or any mix thereof. I don’t mind angst with a happy ending (note the happy ending ;)) - throw everything you have at the main characters, but don’t just let them barely survive and then have a bleak or no future.. that’s just ... na, thank you. i read fic to escape my worries, not to have even more ;))

~~~ I’m tagging the fab four ;D @sassy-cissa @erin-riwen @lettersbyelise @maesterchill  if you’d like to play, just know that you don’t have to write anything, you can just bold your choice and move on ;D and if anyone else wants to play, please tag me in your answer <3 

#fandom #tropes #fic tropes game

[quietlysatan]

Can Your Friends Do This? - Watermelonsmellinfellon, AO3 (Though OP said they cross posted on FF.net too)

Link: Here!!

Rating: Mature

Favorite Quote(s): Because I love The Avatar show

"First, there are more than one dimension and more than one universe. Foolish mortals are the only ones to assume they are the only forms of intelligent life in their respective universes. This Earth we are on resides in a different universe altogether and consists of nations of people who possess an affinity with the elements. Some are born as mixes of two and use chakra to create new elemental affinities or abilities. This planet Earth parallels another planet Earth in another dimension of this universe, where there are only four large nations and each represents either fire, water, earth, or air, and with beings able to bend their own element to their advantage."

And these ones because these four are important.

1. "A lot of suicidal people didn't really want to die, they simply wanted the pain to cease so that living once again seemed worthwhile."

2. Hari was very firm on her decision. She'd always been the one rescuing people and never once realized that maybe she should have been rescued.

3. “Despite his wish to be Hokage and to be a hero, I realized that someone needed to rescue him first for that to happen. And so I took the job." 

4. "I've lost many people, and while it doesn't coincide with what others will tell you in life, it actually does get better. There aren't enough hours in the day to keep thinking about what you've lost. There are jobs to do, and people to watch over, and even your own health to consider. You won't have the time to recount every mistake you've ever made. And the pain from their distance will eventually dim and become tolerable. The only way it wouldn't get better is if you keep thinking about it all the time. People who are always depressed over the loss of loved ones are usually the very same people who think about them all the time, which ends up keeping them in their depressed states, to begin with. And then there is no progression."

A Fucking mood from Hari/Harry Potta/Potter

“I don't like exercising. I'm not meant for it."

Because Sasuke is an adorable little shit, which is, as always when it comes to him, The Best

Naruto was teaching someone Taijutsu? It was laughable at best, though he didn't actually laugh. That would ruin his image as the strong and silent loner. He couldn't afford for people to think he was nice or anything.

Because this is something important and personal to ME specifically

"This is all sweets. But they are sugar-free sweets. There are foods you can eat that will give you the energy you need without having a negative effect on your body. Bananas are a good snack. Watermelon, lettuce, leafy green veggies, they all have a lot of water in them. They fill you up quickly, can keep you hydrated, and because most are made of water, you aren't consuming fats and oils. Though do not replace every meal with these things unless you take vitamins and supplements on a daily basis. While there is nothing wrong with being vegan, a lot of vegans forget to take their supplements and vitamins. They especially need those because they keep so many important foods from their eating schedule."

Another Mood

To make it worse… she'd gotten her monthly visit from TOM. She named it TOM in memory of a certain arse who caused her a lot of pain and grief. Her Time of the Month, TOM, liked to mock her for at least five days out of every month and this month was terrible.

And last, but not least, the best thing I have read since I woke up

Potta Hari's cousin was not romantically involved with anyone, or so his sources said. Perhaps marrying someone to her would offer a better chance for an alliance between their clans?

A knock startled him from his thoughts, and he had to compose himself quickly. "Yes?"

"A letter has arrived for you, Hiashi-sama," Kosuke said from the other side of the door.

"Come."

The letter was handed over within seconds, and Kosuke was gone immediately.

When he finally got to the message however, he had to smirk in amusement. He should have known that making plans about a Seer wouldn't go as expected.

Dear Hyuga-sama,

No.

Respectfully, Potta Runa.

And this

Was Danzo literally the only bad person in this world who was bad naturally and not because he had some unfortunate upbringing, was bullied or was manipulated into being bad? 

Basically tbh 

Words & Chapter(s):  287,295 words and 20 chapters, unfinished, but worth it

Summary: Tsume Yuki's, 'Ain't Never Had a Friend Like Me' prompt.

Master of Death Hari is sealed inside a genie bottle and tossed into the Veil. Only the interference of Death stops her from being enslaved. When Naruto comes into possession of the bottle and frees Hari from her prison, she gets attached and decides to help him, changing everything we know.

Score: 13, this is very amusing, and has no qualms with having humor AND seriousness whenever. Not to mention, I could honestly go back to the very beginning and read it all over again and I’d still love every moment of it in all honesty.

Pairing(s): Hatake Kakashi/Female!Harry Potter, as well as Uchiha Sasuke/Uzumaki Naruto, background Anko Mitarashi/Luna Lovegood

Warning(s): For all that this looks like a lot of warnings it’s just because this fic is well over 200K words, and it’s not nearly as bad as all these warnings look. There’s no major character death (Technically. A few from the HP universe passed before our MC even came into our universe. Still, only casual mentions so far)

Always a girlHarry still had to deal with all the abuse of her counterpart. The ministry betrayed her (Shocking. I know.) mentions of (CANON) past childhood abuse described three-quarters of the way through chapter three, then again in chapter four, no worries though it’s not graphic or gratuitous.

Mentions of death, and the things and ways that death may affect someone (This is a naruto universe crossover fic soooo, I don’t know what you were expecting honestly. At least it’s not as subtly/suddenly angsty as FMA fics get.), attempted murder that fails because Hari is the Mistress of Death (... Is Master not gender neutral??? I thought it was... Still, Mistress sounds cooler and more dangerous)

Mentions of porn, off-screen lemon, etc.

There IS a bit of fat-shaming from certain characters, but they eventually learn better, there are also mentions of children, and others, on diets, and also that have unhealthy eating habits and why they’re not good regardless, as well as the effects of being on a diet while also doing various exercises and rigorous training regimens, but not to worry, it slowly but surely improves.

Manipulation and grey morals, (Again shocking, I know.) which is great because my morals would go very dark very quickly if I were Hari (Because this is a crossover, and she is in Japan/The Elemental) and I’d for some dumbass reason decided to return to my original world (THAT DOESN’T HAPPEN THIS A HYPOTHETICAL WHAT-IF), but Hari doesn’t which is always amazing

World/Dimension displacement. Figured I’d add that just in case, personally I love those types of stories but you never know.

Kidnapping followed by attempted murder fails spectacularly. It is quite amusing to see for my inner sadist.

One of Hari’s family members passed away due to cancer, but it’s a small mention and there’s minimal angst because it happened years ago. The others seemed to have died in a war with the goblins which is only occasionally mentioned here and there.

Someone tries to enslave Hari as a genie. It does not work. Death seemed upset that someone thought that would work at all in the “Like, honestly, who the fuck do you even think you are???” kind of pissed

Danzo and ROOT exist. Sadly.

Also “ the lives of the many are more important than the lives of the few “ is something that seems to be a basic background of the morals of this fic. I know some find this detestable, but I would like to point out that, it’s true. It’s really fucked up, but unless that One has some very important and necessary ability, they are less important than the five-hundred and forty-two. Shitty as it seems.

There’s technically a war. If you could call the opposing sides... attempts a war. No major casualties or uber gruesome happenings though.

There are some injuries, of course, their big but not graphically described as far as I’ve seen up to the current chapter limit.

Pros: GREAT FUCKING WRITING!!! Great research and really immersive too!!!

Hari and Naruto because each others precious people, and Harry protects Naruto as best she, a civilian and witch, can.

The Japanese That Doesn’t Need To Be Written Because You’re Writing This In English And It Doesn’t Make Sense And Is Awkward isn’t present which is always a plus. 

It’s really unique and different from what is normally written in these situations (Not that there’s anything wrong with what we normally get!!!) from how a female main character reacts (Very Harry Potter-ish) and whatnot to her romance with other characters to her friendship with them, and also I love the way her relationships are with everyone! It’s just, so, refreshing for a female MC to be written like this, like getting that first bite of watermelon in the middle of summer, and jumping in the pool, or a drink of hot chocolate in the middle of a snowy night.

Not to mention! The way Hari interacts with the world around her and manages to change everything even though she wasn’t trying, and the way she still isn’t overpowered regardless for all that she can use her magic at will. UGH!!! IT’S JUST SO GOOD

Aesthetic: It’s like drinking fresh lemonade after a hard days work, like swimming in your best friends pool after you finish your homework, it’s like a warm cup of tea after a stressful day, and cuddling up to a friend or lover, like dancing to your favorite song while you’re all alone in your kitchen. It is like being alone, but not lonely, ad being with a few good friends but not ignored. It is freeing and refreshing and relaxing and exciting and new and old and so much more. It feels happy, for lack of a better word. Very, subtly, happy.

Gif Aesthetic: Oh my god yes, this is Hari

and this is what the romance in this fic reminds me of

and this somehow reminds me of several characters at once

And this one too sometimes, which is nice

and this (Except Boruto doesn’t exist obviously, I think this fic was actually started before Boruto even came into the picture actually) is what the fighting looks like

except for when it looks like this

Hari and Luna fucking everything up while everyone else watches and decides it is safest to just, not interfere with the crazy witches.

Hari, Death, and Luna/Runa planning who to fuck up protect next

Every single Rookie Nine without fail

(Scroll back up and look at how cute the slimy kitty yawns!!! She’s so cute!!!)

#SasuNaru #Sasuke x Naruto #Naruto x Sasuke #Harry Potter #Female Harry Potter #Harry x Kakashi #Satan has great taste in: SasuNaru #Satan has great taste in: Harry Potter #fluff humor and angst fic #bisexual Harry Potter #Harry is an adult btw don't worry #and NaruSasu is young but cute as shit #they're so oblivious #it's fucking adorable

[ladylynse]

So, long before Legend of Korra aired and told us more about the spirit world in ATLA, I started writing a Danny Phantom/Avatar: The Last Airbender crossover....

“Pick a door, any door, right?” Danny muttered to himself, glancing down at the paper in his hand before looking around him again. He’d never gone out to this part of the Ghost Zone before. Not that he remembered, anyway, and it was beyond time that he started filling in the blank spots in his map.

Ordinarily, he wouldn’t be out scouting without Sam and Tucker in the Spectre Speeder, but it was five in the morning, or at least it had been when he’d left the house, and he was definitely not prepared to wake anyone up just because he couldn’t sleep.

It wasn’t normally this bad. After doing the catch-and-release thing with the Box Ghost twice, he’d just left him in the Fenton Thermos for the night and planned to get some much-needed sleep. He’d only gotten about two hours before his ghost sense had first gone off, and he really hadn’t wanted that to be it. But he’d only just been getting back to sleep when it had gone off for a fourth time, and then it had been Skulker after his pelt, and by the time Danny had him in the thermos, it had been around three thirty.

After an hour and a half of rolling around in bed, he’d admitted defeat. Tired as he was, he wasn’t going to be getting any more sleep. Also, tired as he was, any homework he did wouldn’t make sense anyway, so he’d left it as is. Hence the early morning scouting mission in the Ghost Zone.

Some of the doors led to places created by certain ghosts themselves. They were specific realms for ghosts who hadn’t made their homes directly in the Ghost Zone like Skulker or Dora or Frostbite had. But some really were just doorways. He’d opened one that appeared to be a shortcut to the Far Frozen. Another had opened into a dungeon—or at least a really dreary prison cell—in what he assumed was the Real World. But there’d been a whole host of things in between, places that, if they weren’t created by other ghosts, had to be other dimensions. At the very least, other worlds.

Danny opened the door to his left. It opened into a swath of blackness permeated by pinpricks of light. “Right,” he said, closing it. “That was either outer space or a planetarium or Nocturne’s favourite place in the entire Ghost Zone.” He made a few notes and then moved to the door on his right.

It was then that he heard it.

Some kind of ominous rumbling sound.

His ghost sense didn’t go off in the Ghost Zone (thank goodness), so sight and sound were about the only warnings he ever got.

And he didn’t need to see this thing to know he shouldn’t stick around.

“Fastest way back, fastest way back,” Danny murmured, glancing down at his notes. Whatever this was, he didn’t want to lead the thing straight to the Fenton Portal, but he didn’t want to do a whole lot of roundabout manoeuvring when he didn’t have a firm grasp of where he currently was.

When he took a quick peek up at his surroundings so he could guess at how long he had before he got attacked, he knew he had to move now. Whatever it was would give a chimera a run for its money. (Sam should be proud that he remembered what those things were called; for all that she’d been trying to coach him on a bit of mythology after the incident with Pandora’s Box, it was slow going.) He definitely didn’t want to stick around.

Trouble was, he was kind of backed into a corner. Stupid thing could duplicate. That was probably how it got its prey—surrounded them, cut them off, and then attacked.

Fun.

He got backed into one of the doors. The one he hadn’t yet checked, of course. Logically, he knew it was his best bet for escape. Still, he’d never intended to actually go through one. That was just asking for trouble. Especially when he had no idea where he’d end up if he did.

Crud. He’d never hear the end of it if he let slip that this had happened. Jazz, at the very least, would make sure he never went into the Ghost Zone by himself again.

But if he didn’t take a chance, he wouldn’t have to worry about how Jazz would react, and he’d never get to see the look on Sam’s face (or Tucker’s, when he found out) when he admitted—

No. He was going to get out of this. Alive and in one piece. Danny felt for the door handle, murmured, “Here goes nothing,” and flipped around, diving through the door as the ghost lunged for him.

The door slammed shut behind Danny, cutting off the bright green glow from the Ghost Zone, and it took a minute for him to realize that he probably wasn’t going to die a very painful death or otherwise be wiped from existence. The place looked normal enough. Lots of rock and bare trees, but not really cold. Kinda dark, with muted colours, like someone had taken a page out of Sam’s book, but since he didn’t yet have company, he figured it was a fairly safe bet that he hadn’t stumbled into another ghost’s lair. That meant he’d come through a doorway into another world.

Well, if this was still Earth—his Earth—then it definitely wasn’t a time with which he was familiar.

Still, it wasn’t that big of a deal. Not the end of the world, anyway. All he had to do was sit tight until he figured the creature on the other side of the door had left, and then he just had to—

Danny glanced over his shoulder, and his heart sank. “Crud,” he muttered. He had a problem.

Even by his terms, it was a pretty big one.

The door was gone—and with it, his way home.

XXXXXX

“We’re running low on supplies,” Sokka said, looking up from the papers he’d piled in front of him. “We’re going to have to make a quick stop in a town soon. And I mean quick. No sticking around like last time. We don’t have time.”

“You never say we have time,” Aang countered from his place by the fire in the middle of their makeshift campsite. He was playing with Momo, trying to keep a leaf from touching the ground.

“Because we’re behind schedule!” Sokka retorted, gesturing at the papers. “Look at this! We’ve only got—”

“If you say it one more time tonight,” Toph said without moving from where she lay, “I’ll wash your mouth out with dirt.”

“But we can’t—”

“I can make sure there’s at least one roachworm in it, too.”

Katara laughed at Sokka’s sour expression, and he glared at her. “Don’t pretend you’re not worried,” he groused.

Katara’s smile fell. “Of course I’m worried,” she said. “But Toph’s right. Saying it again isn’t going to help us move any faster. Appa needs rest, and you’ve already said we can make up our time if we start a little bit earlier each day. We’ll make it.”

“Appa’s doing the best he can,” Aang added. “Aren’t you, buddy?” He looked over to the edge of their campsite, and the flying bison in question snorted his agreement.

“We can’t always start earlier every time we get behind,” Sokka muttered. “We’ll end up quitting earlier if we try that.”

“I won’t be complaining,” Toph said. “The sooner I get back on the ground each day, the better.”

“But we wouldn’t—” Sokka broke off, realizing he wasn’t going to win this argument. For all that he was often right, he didn’t win a lot of arguments. He was cursed with travelling with people who were hard to argue with, if only because they didn’t listen to him.

Ever.

“We won’t be off right away tomorrow anyway,” Katara said, reaching over to use a stick to shift the logs of their fire. Fortunately, if they were careful, smoke wasn’t something to fear. The Fire Nation didn’t track down every smoke trail they saw; only the suspicious ones.

They’d managed to skirt the patrols for days now. Katara had still been reluctant to gather wood for a fire, but Sokka had finally managed to talk his sister into something. That was an argument he had won, and he’d been rewarded with a hot meal. With real cooked meat from the game they’d caught. Something other than roots and berries and (he still shuddered to think of the fact that he’d ever swallowed it) insects.

But a fresh meal wasn’t something they could afford to seek often, and they could never risk staying in one spot long enough to do anything to preserve a large supply of meat so that they could take it with them and, theoretically, not have to stop as often as supplies.

Besides, Aang didn’t eat meat, and though he didn’t stop them from enjoying it, Sokka knew Katara, at least, was doing her best to find and prepare meals that they would all eat.

Eat, but not necessarily enjoy. Roots just didn’t taste as good as meat. They were bland. Stringy. Tough. Berries were good. Well, most berries were good. But even when they found edible ones, some of them were sour or they had pits or the seeds got stuck in his teeth…. In his opinion, meat was just so much better.

Sokka sighed and slumped back down onto the pile of leaves he’d gathered for his bed. Though he couldn’t see her, he knew his sister was gathering all the papers he’d left into a bundle. When the shuffling stopped, he asked, “Did you think of something else we need?”

Katara hesitated before saying, softly, “I’m not thinking of our supplies.”

“Then what are you thinking about?” Aang asked, sounding far more cheerful than Sokka figured he had any right to, especially seeing as he had the greatest responsibility of them all.

Sure, Sokka would admit optimism was good and that keeping their spirits up was important, but he sometimes got the feeling that Aang didn’t appreciate—or just plain ignored—how much danger they actually faced. Being realistic didn’t seem to come anywhere as near as easy to the air bender as being optimistic did. Sokka just couldn’t bring himself to ignore all the things that could go wrong like Aang could.

But Aang was the Avatar. And if Sokka was honest, he’d done a lot of growing up since they’d first met. He might not know fire bending, but he was skilled at the other three elements. He had a kind heart, if too trusting of one, and Sokka had seen more than one act of wisdom on Aang’s part, for all that he still had more than his share of childish moments.

Sokka knew all about that, of course. Aang might only be twelve—even if he was technically one hundred and twelve—but not all of his wisdom came in snatches through mediation or influence from his past lives, and not all of it came from what the monks had taught him, back when the Air Nomads had still existed. The decisions he’d faced since he’d found himself the centre of a war that had been raging for all the years he’d been missing…. It wasn’t the same as the ones Sokka had had to make after his father and the rest of the men in the Southern Water Tribe had left, but he knew, on some level, how Aang felt.

He knew what it was like to feel like everything was going over your head but knowing you had to do your best anyway. He knew how it felt to act on decisions, pretending to be satisfied with them while fearful that they might not have been the right ones. He knew the agonizing feeling of being forced to make split-second decisions without having enough information. He knew how it felt to work towards something and see all his hard work come to naught. He knew how it felt to make mistakes and be held to them. He knew how it felt to have people look to you when you weren’t sure you’d yet earned the right to be the one everyone depended upon.

When Toph spoke, Sokka realized Katara had never answered Aang’s question. “We’ll make it, you know. Sokka will make sure we’re moving according to schedule, even if it kills us. Or—” here she paused “—even if it means he drives us to kill him so we can get some peace.”

“I know,” Katara said, and Sokka didn’t need to see her face to know that she was looking at him or that the sound of Toph’s knuckles cracking had brought a smile to her face when it brought a grimace to his. “You’re right.”

Toph snorted but didn’t comment. Instead, it was Aang who asked cheerily, “So what are we going to get tomorrow?”

He was entirely too comfortable venturing into villages in the Fire Nation in Sokka’s opinion. But that was in his nature. He didn’t want to see danger at every turn. He wanted to see the best in people, to believe that not everything had changed from how he remembered it or that it wouldn’t be that hard to remind people that things didn’t have to be the way they were. But Aang was wrong. Until something changed, they couldn’t afford to pretend the danger wasn’t as real as it was. They had to keep their heads down. Even something as seemingly simple as a supplies run had to be handled carefully.

Sokka turned his head slightly and caught sight of his sister, who was already wrapped up in her conversation with Aang. He knew she’d never answered Aang’s question. He might have forgotten, and Toph might have, too, but she couldn’t fool him. Not all the time, anyway, and she’d pulled that trick on him far too often for him not to recognize it.

He could guess what she was worried about. There was any number of things that could be on her mind. Most, if not all, of them were on his mind already.

They didn’t have enough allies.

They hadn’t found a fire bender teacher.

They constantly ran the risk of detection.

They didn’t have much of a plan.

They were running out of time.

They didn’t know what the Fire Nation was up to or if they even had any inkling of what was actually being planned.

Their friends were risking their lives for them, depending on them, and they might not even succeed if they didn’t shape up. If Aang didn’t….

It all came back to Aang, in the end. As the Avatar, this was part of his responsibilities. They could help him as best they could, but when it came down to it, he’d be on his own. He needed to be strong enough, fast enough, wise enough….

He needed to be, Sokka realized with a sinking heart, someone he wasn’t quite yet.

Aang was the Avatar, and he still had much to learn, but they were running out of time.

XXXXXXXX

Danny had revised his earlier opinion. Nothing truly resembled normal here. This place, wherever it was, was freaky—even by his standards. He figured he’d been moving for at least an hour now, probably more, just picking his way through the forest and trying to find a way out. Another doorway, maybe. Anything. At this rate, he’d settle for contact with something that didn’t shift, even if it wasn’t human.

But he hadn’t come across anything that really stayed still yet. Nothing seemed to stay still. Things blurred on the edge of his vision. Trees twisted themselves into different shapes, branches turning to follow him like a sunflower would follow the sun—only to return to their previous positions when he turned to look at them. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught glimpses of creatures skittering around that seemed like a horrible mix of the normal ones he knew from back home. They were underfoot and overhead and sometimes just out of sight, even though he knew they were there.

But it wasn’t just what he saw that was really gnawing at him. The air felt…dead. Like he was still in the Ghost Zone. Only this place still had a real sky, unless it was always this dark, which he doubted. And even though the animal life was far from what he was used to, the vegetation seemed normal enough. So it had to be a place like Earth.

Just a really, really creepy place on Earth.

Those places had to exist back home. The woods here almost felt like something out of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, minus the worrying sound of hoofbeats, and that inspiration had to come from somewhere besides nightmares. It was just…. It wasn’t right, somehow. He’d been dragged to enough supposed ‘haunted houses’ as a kid to know what it sounded like when you were hiking through a forest to some abandoned hunting cabin. And this….

It wasn’t always normal, with short silences broken by small animal sounds or wind in the trees or anything. It was like someone was fiddling with the volume knob on the radio. Sometimes it was horrendously loud, with various calls and hissing and rustlings. And sometimes…. Sometimes, there was something that definitely didn’t…. He heard muted screams. He couldn’t tell if those were human screams, exactly, but he…. It set him on edge.

To make it even more unsettling, there were other times when, as if a switch had been flipped, it was completely silent.

At this rate, he wouldn’t have been surprised if he found himself walking past melting clocks or something. Trouble was, this just didn’t seem like the Real World. It didn’t…feel the same. It almost felt less like human realm than the Ghost Zone. In his life back home, he’d been in a couple different realities and various twists the timeline could have taken but didn’t, but those had always felt…tangible, he supposed. This was more…dreamlike. Surreal, rather than vivid, even though he knew he was living through this. It wasn’t a lifelike dream.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t even a dream at all.

Even Nocturne’s induced dreams felt more real than this place did.

“Just one step at a time,” Danny told himself, rubbing his arms. “Just keep going. Try to find a way out. You’re not going to be stuck here. It’ll be okay.”

He was way more thankful to have a ghostly glow than he’d ever admit to anyone when he got out of this.

Especially to Jazz. For all the questions he knew she was going to ask, he was not going to say what he felt right now. He’d never hear the end of it.

Besides, it wasn’t that he couldn’t form an ectoblast, couldn’t just create one and cradle it to have a bit of extra light, but he just didn’t want to draw attention to himself. He didn’t want any more attention than he was already getting. He doubted he could blend in—he had yet to see another humanoid creature—but so long as he didn’t really stand out, then that was good.

Laying low and playing it safe seemed like a good thing to do right now.

And, anyway, it probably was a good thing to keep a few things to himself. For all he knew, the trees had eyes. He felt like he was being watched, anyway. He definitely wasn’t alone.

This place felt like it had layers. Like you could peel away the outer skin, the disguise, and see the true form beneath it. Like this entire world was built on double meanings, full of tricks and traps that you could fall into if you weren’t clever enough to spot them.

He hadn’t been threatened here yet, but he was almost as scared as he’d been when he’d had to fight his future self.

He was stuck here, wherever here was. He was alone. No one back home would know what had happened to him. He’d never see them again. Not if he didn’t get out of here.

One foot forward, then the other. One step at a time, Danny reminded himself. Don’t think about the future. Don’t wonder what’s going to happen. Don’t waste energy worrying about what can’t be changed. Just focus on the here and now. Just keep moving. Keep looking. Find a way out of here. Find a way home.

(Part II)

#danny phantom #atla #fanfiction #crossover #dp fanfiction #atla fanfiction #lynse's random WIPs #dp wip #atla wip #crossover wip #my writing #ladylynse #snippets #dp snippet #crossover snippet #atla snippet #why yes I did start this before Mirrored #that is why it has a similar intro #but then LOK aired and kinda...messed with my current HC for the spirit world #and it made it more difficult for the plot to work #text

[fyrapartnersearch]

Devil May Care

Got lost? Or maybe just lucky?


(nah, who am I kidding?)

Please call me Gil :) I have posted here a while ago and was very happy with the responses I received from various individuals. I do share a good role-play with the said partners…. but it has been some time since I did anything fandom related. Especially since I am a total geek for video-games. Now I am craving for another kind of RP, a darker one… with less boundaries and more grit. Something from the supernatural side. It’ll be a hell of a good time! 

I am currently looking for someone who is willing to do a Devil May Cry inspired RP with me! (But if that doesn’t necessarily suit your fancy, I am also open to do a Harry Potter RP - either next generation or before the events of HP) My mind has become restless with the idea that has been haunting me recently - a Roleplay involving Devilish creatures, Demons, Demon Hunters as well as the concept of Heaven and Hell. And no I don’t mean in a biblical sense… more in a mythological kind of sense. After I’ve played the newest release of DMC 5, I am once again fully hyped for it and hope to find my soulmate. (well on rp’er terms that is) 
I am also willing to incorporate crossovers as well! I will make a short list down below what I am willing to do! Before we move on, I’ll give you the same ol’ description of what you should consider before messaging me :)   If you reach out to me, please be sure not to ghost me after the first few messages before we even get to the roleplay itself. Yes, I’ve had many instances where my partners had to go off the grid because life gets in the way, etc. I understand that - but just disappearing without getting to the juicy bits is just a waste. Don’t write to me without a proper thread or a simple one-liner. Short and lacklustre messages will also be ignored, sorry :( I am currently searching for a literate, mature (preferably 20+ partner) writer with a vast, creative mindset willing to push some boundaries. Someone who is not afraid delving into darker themes, or come up with new fresh ideas for a fantasy plot. Someone who is willing to commit to a long-term roleplay. Are you that someone to join the I’ll swing you a few facts about me. Who am I? I am a 20+ female, living in Europe and currently studying at a university which is fairly time consuming. With that being said, I am able to type out 3-4 messages per week, sometimes even more. I think tis a good solid rate that can get the plot going. Depending on my schedule, my frequency will increase or decrease. Not to worry, I will let you know as soon if there is something coming up that might influence the roleplay. I love detailed paragraphs that describe a story with nuance and vibrant emotion. If you are someone comfortable or only willing to type one-liners, you are not going to find your match here, sorry. I only role-play on either email or goggle docs. Summary:

        I’m above the age of 20, thus well aware, mature and open

        I’m a Paragraph writer

        I’m detailed

        I have experience with over 10 years under my belt

        I do prefer doubling but I am also open to make exceptions

Good brainstorming is key. Once we get to know each other, I would love to do a bit of strategizing, erecting a system for our world as well as gathering ideas we can utilize for the story. 
Here’s a detailed description of my style and boundaries that I have for a potential RP.

How I write:

I am a multi-paragraph sort of writer, which means that frequently, my writing will exceed at least 500 words, and upward of 1000+ words. I love detail in description, and I am actively seeking someone of the same infamy. Generally, I tend to write in the 3rd person. But it can change based on the situation. My partner should have a basic grasp on grammar, punctuation and somewhat of an interest in erudite writing.  

The genres I am into:

I am versatile when it comes to genres and settings that I like to focus on. Supernatural is my bread and butter, especially urban and gothic fantasy, but also very much like mythological stories and lore. I am not opposed to tapping into science fiction, action, romance, crime, action or thriller genres, though my most favourite is a combination of both fantasy, action, drama and a bit of sci-fi. For the roleplay I would like to take a lot of elements from Lovecraftian lore and even a little bit of Constantine. I love to mesh multiple genres together to create something completely new and fun. Yes, I know this is a fandom role-play, but that doesn’t mean we’re bound to this hard-set rules. Romance: I openly play and accept characters of both genders, preferable m x f pairings, but I am open to m x m and f x f relationships as well. I have more experience with m x f relationships, so I might excel in this category more than I would do with the others. I do not fade to black - instead I encourage erotism and tastefully written romance scenes. The passion must be felt, even if its just an intelligent description of someone’s stream of thought. I am double friendly and prefer it over a single pairing! OOC:


OOC-chat friendly! Trust me, I won’t hold it against you if you tend to ramble outside of the roleplay. I love meeting new people and making potential friends. Plus it strengthens the relationship as well as the roleplay. Communication is key! If there is something that bothers you, or if you think you are left out in some way (be it a mistake on my part or we’re both at fault here), don’t be scared to let me know. Really, it won’t be taken personally - since I know that we all tend to make mistakes every once in a while. It doesn’t bother me to re-write a scene to fit the narrative in a better way and so on. We can always exchange our opinions and see what would benefit the story most. I'll also inform you if there are things that irk me. Characters are the centre of attention: Faceclaims, GIFs, drawings, mood boards or just a plain physical description is absolutely welcome / sufficient. I am not someone who necessarily requires a face claim for a character in order ‘to get the picture’. There are many instances where I could not find a suiting match for my character’s definition, so I resorted to drawing them myself or leaving it with a simple description. Characters should have flaws - that is a no brainer obviously, because its what makes them most interesting and compelling to read. I think we’re also far past the Mary Sue and Gary Stu issue, so I am certain that anyone who messages me, is capable of forging great characters. World building & plotting: An active roleplayer is wanted in this category, without a doubt. I love to build but I tend to lose interest real quick when I get the feeling I’m the only one who puts effort into it. Too often I find people shying away from it in this regard. If I feel that I’m the only one carrying the weight of the world-building part, I will end the roleplay with immediate effect. Be bold with your ideas! A bird cannot fly with only one wing, no? Content: I find writing erotic, dramatic or action packed scenes very enjoyable. I don’t hinder myself when certain subjects are mentioned that may be uncomfortable for the general public. But then again, as a reminder, a roleplay is not reality but fiction. For example situations that heavily imply and involve brutality, mayhem, psychological and physical torture are things that don’t really bother me in a sense, because again, it is fiction. Characters should be fully fleshed out, even the not so pretty parts of one’s personality and actions. Limits: I don’t do necrophilia, pedophilia & and any sort of underage pairings as well as bestiality, vore, scat, toilet play, furries or other bizarre fetishes. What I’m also not particularly fond of are oneliners, text-talk ‘grammar’, or emails with the subject: ‘Hey wanna rp?’ or ‘RP?’. I also note that my partners must be around 20 years or older, I will accept no younger partners, sorry. The last thing I tend to avoid like the plague are slice of life roleplays, because lets face it, our own lives are already a slice of life. 
Crossovers that we could incorporate with DMC if you’re feeling particularly cheeky:

DC (Justice League Dark / Constantine mostly)

Marvel

Supernatural

Castlevania

Alright! If you are still reading, congratulations! xD 
The journey has come to an end! Usually I would list my Discord on this platform, but since Discord did an update recently where I can’t log into it anymore - I thought email would be a good alternative. In the past, people on Discord had only sent me friend without messaging whatsoever so I couldn’t quite figure out what they were looking for in the first place, or being completely uncommunicative. Email is much safer and more direct this way. Contact me here! EMAIL: [email protected] 

I am looking forward to meeting you ～

#indie roleplay #independent roleplay #oc rp #multiple paragraph #para #long term #email #marvel rp #smut rp #mcu rp #dc rp #aou rp #submission

[the-scenic-route-stories]

Lost the Plot: A Parenthesis

The Doctor is (politely) displeased.

This follows on from my ACGAS/Fifth Doctor crossovers The Scenic Route and Tea in Bed but do be warned that it is written in a very different style from those previous pieces and is a piece of utter absurdity, inspired by a plot point in A Very Peculiar Practice and my love for ‘Castrovalva’ and the fictional worlds of Jorge Luis Borge as well as for All Creatures. Now with minor revisions.

Features Tricki-Woo and Mrs. Pumphrey, offstage.

The Doctor gently swung his legs down to the floor and used one hand to slowly push himself up into a standing position. Tentatively, he padded in his red socks across the Persian rug, holding on to various items of furniture for support. After his previous attempts, he was anxious lest a wave of dizziness or nausea should hit him, but succeeded in crossing the room without incident. He arrived at the fourth wall and cleared his throat.

“Excuse me,” he said, attempting to bring a tone of polite authority to his voice. “I’ve been lying in bed for a couple of weeks now. It’s been wonderful to be looked after and everything, Mrs Hall is a very kind lady, and I do like that green quilt, but the thing is that I’m stuck here while everyone except me is having adventures and I feel that I’m not really living up to my job description. James and Tristan have been up in space and Turlough is out there on the Eye of Orion – sketching, supposedly – while I’ve been languishing here on earth coughing and collapsing whenever you wanted the readers to feel sorry for me. Now I’m feeling more myself again, it’s getting to be really rather tedious. If you had to give me space flu – what sort of an unoriginal name was that, anyway? You could at least have come up with some fancy Latinate terminology – to facilitate your frankly ridiculous plot mechanics and have young Tristan crash my TARDIS, can’t you at least let me recover properly now so that I can repair her and resume my normal life of dashing about the cosmos? He’s a decent enough young fellow, if a little reckless, but it’s rather trying to look at a mirror image of yourself and be constantly reminded that with regeneration, you never know what you’re going to get.”

“I’m very sorry, Doctor,” I told him. “I had some plot ideas but wasn’t sure how to put them together. It really is a very nice quilt, and I even rescued that dressing-gown from Lady Cranleigh’s for you to wear, although that wasn’t mentioned in the episode at all.” I stopped there, realising that the dressing-gown thing had been pure self-indulgence on my part, based on how absolutely ripping he had looked in it when he wore it in 1925. “Isn’t it better than languishing in a dungeon while the writer figures out how to get you out of there? I thought it would be nice to have someone looking after you for once. In most of your adventures, you end up getting bashed about, locked up or tortured with nobody to take care of you. You just have to dust yourself down and get on with the story. I thought you would appreciate the soft bed, tea and crumpets after all that.”

“That was indeed very considerate of you, and you know how much I love tea. The crumpets were delicious, too. Thank you very much. But I am beginning to suspect your motives in some of this. Can you genuinely say that you have never daydreamed about mopping my fevered brow? Or building your own benevolent version of Castrovalva for me to recuperate in? In which I am not ‘trapped’ in the strict technical sense but develop a strong disinclination towards leaving while there is honey still for tea?”

“Er, well…” I suppose you don’t get to be an intergalactic hero without having a good deal of insight into other people’s motivations, and such insight comes more easily when you’re being written by the person who has those motivations. (It’s almost like telepathy.) “OK, yes. I did want to look after you. But I’m not trying to keep you trapped in this story. I just haven’t got round to writing the next part yet.”

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” he said, arching his eyebrows. He really is such a smart aleck. Pretty much everyone quotes that wrongly, apart from him, of course. Probably picked it up when he was drinking with Shakespeare, or ghostwrote it for him, or something. “'Look how much nicer I am to you than the BBC was', eh? What about the space flu, though? That wasn’t pleasant at all!”

“I’m sorry about the space flu. But if nothing unpleasant happened to you, there wouldn’t be a story, would there? I’m afraid that’s an occupational hazard of being a hero.”

“I suppose you’re right,” he said, with a universe-weary sigh. “Writers of stories really do seem to have it in for one, sometimes. Tea and crumpets are certainly better than Cybermen and Daleks, and you have promised that you are going to give me a chance to play cricket. But as for making me wear this absurd dressing-gown again…”

“I have given you pyjamas too, you know. With your favourite question-marks on them. You haven’t had to spend most of an episode walking down corridors with the dressing-gown open to your chest in my story. Nor wear a Pierrot costume. And in any case, this is just prose, without any visuals. For all the readers know, you could actually be wearing a baggy old cardigan.”

“Hmmm. But what about those illustrations of yours? To be fair, you haven’t done an illustration of me in the dressing-gown yet, but I suspect it’s only a matter of time. I wonder whether these illustrations aren’t something of a pretext for downloading a ridiculous number of pictures of me from the internet. Drawing references, indeed. How many drawing references does anyone need?”

“Have you been rummaging around on my hard drive while I’ve been asleep?”

“You’ve given me so little else to do, and one must keep oneself occupied somehow. There’s only so many hours one can spend doing crosswords. You still haven’t managed to draw me properly, you know, despite all your references. You’re nowhere near as good as Turlough. And you’ve started writing me out of character now, too. I’m not usually quite this sardonic.”

“In my defence, I’m not the first person ever to have done that, but I will try to do better from now on. So, what sort of plot do you want? How do you want me to get you out of here?” (First rule of plotting: consult your protagonist ahead of time about all important plot decisions. Except, perhaps, ones in which he is attacked by monsters that are made of rubber or green versions of Dobbin the pantomime horse from Rentaghost. Sometimes it is necessary to preserve the element of surprise, particularly when the special effects aren’t very convincing.)

At this point, Tristan came in and looked quizzically towards the Doctor.

“Authorial conference,” said the Doctor.

“Aha, I see. Good stuff. Perhaps I can contribute too. I used to read through some of Mr. Wight’s drafts and make notes for him, or rather the real person I’m based on did. Wonderful chap, Mr. Wight.”

“We’re discussing what should happen next in the plot,” said the Doctor. “I was feeling rather grumpy about not having had much to do in this story so far. It must have been the aftereffects of the space flu that made me feel so out of sorts and out of character. I’m feeling much better now, though. Quite my old self.” He rocked backwards and forwards on the balls of his feet to illustrate this, and grinned broadly.

“I didn’t cut a very good figure at all in the last section of ‘The Scenic Route’,” said Tristan, turning towards me. “Made rather an ass of myself sashaying around in the Doctor’s costume and then crashing the TARDIS. Any chance of a rewrite?”

“No, I’m afraid not,” said the Doctor, before I could answer. “Web of time, and all that.”

“Well, I think the first thing to do, since you’re feeling better, is for you to change back into your normal costume. You’ll feel much more like getting back into action, then! It’s laid out on the chair. Unfortunately, your celery buttonhole has wilted and Mrs Hall has had to throw it away. I think it might have caught the space flu from you. It's obviously a very important part of your outfit although no-one seems to have taken the trouble to explain why. But there’s no problem – I’ll bring you a nice new celery stalk from the vegetable rack. ”

“Ah, but my previous celery was imaginary,” said the Doctor. “It came from an Edwardian yacht in space. Imaginary space vegetables keep for much longer than real ones. My first stick of celery, which was produced by by block transfer computations, lasted for a year and a half before it started going a bit brown around the edges.”

“That’s no problem,” said Tristan, breezily. “The celery from downstairs is imaginary too. We’re imaginary. Well, I’m not entirely imaginary, but I’m a fictionalised version of a real person, and this conversation we’re having now certainly never happened in real life. It’s far too silly. We look so similar that we're clearly being played by the same actor - perhaps due to budgetary constraints at the BBC - and are only appearing together in these scenes thanks to CGI. Or smoke and mirrors, since I'm someone from the 1930s who hasn't heard of CGI."

“I meant imaginary in the context of this story. Things that we’re imagining. What we call in the trade second-order imaginariness or the doubly fictional. I would tell you to go and look up the entry on ‘Uqbar’ in James’s musty encyclopaedias in the cellar to give you an idea of what I mean, except that the episode in which James buys the encyclopaedias hasn’t happened yet and the encyclopaedia in question, despite being published in 1902, is the subject of a fiction that wasn’t written until 1940. Continuity can be rather confusing, sometimes, even when you’re not suffering from regeneration sickness.”

“Ah, I’m not sure how we’re going to manage to produce something that’s doubly imaginary in a veterinary practice in 1937. We do have quite a few interesting chemicals in the surgery…” mused Tristan. “Oh yes, I have an idea! I’ll ring Mrs Pumphrey, and ask her to ask Tricki-Woo to imagine one. I’m sure she won’t mind. She’s always been very forthcoming where food items are concerned.”

**********

“Here you are! To dear Uncle Doctor, from Tricki-Woo, Esquire,” said Tristan, bounding up the stairs with a very crisp-looking but entirely imaginary stick of celery. “Nothing but the best from Mrs. Pumphrey. She popped a very decent-looking bottle of port into the package, too.”

“Excellent,” I said. “Now, Doctor, if you’re ready to change, I’ll avert my gaze and insert a row of asterisks.”

Tristan gave a naughty grin. “If I were writing from the omniscient narrator point of view, I’d be sure to make full use of all the privileges that that afforded.”

“Yes, I rather imagine you would,” said the Doctor, with a raised eyebrow.

Tristan blushed and grinned again, a little sheepishly, realising that he must after all have left a copy of Health and Efficiency inside one of the more sedate publications that he had lent to his visitor.

“Tristan!” I said “Be more respectful! He’s very proper, you know. Hundreds of years old, and is supposed to be a good example to the young. No hanky-panky in the TARDIS, and all that.”

“I’m not supposed to be a good example to anyone. Quite the reverse, in fact!” said Tristan, laughing.

************

The Doctor, now back in his usual costume, turned to me: “Pleasant as this discussion has been, we don’t seem to have got much further with deciding on the plot.”

“There have been a lot of distractions. But look, I have got you better from the space flu, now. That’s progress.”

“Yes, indeed,” the Doctor said brightly. “No more shivering and shaking. Definitely an improvement.”

“I have a plot suggestion. You could write yourself into the story as a love-interest for me!” said Tristan. “Of course, our relationship would have to be ultimately doomed to failure because of a disapproving father or a strange obsession with goat dung, because the BBC has it in for me too, but we could have some fun first.” He gave me a very flirtatious look.

“Well… yes… I could do that…” I said, blushing and suddenly feeling very flustered.

“So, would your authorial avatar like to come to the Drovers’ with me this evening?”

It was very tempting, of course, but taking into account Tristan’s overdeveloped sense of humour and the presence of his exact lookalike, I was not at all convinced that I wouldn’t be the victim of some convoluted mistaken-identity prank sooner or later, even without the Doctor’s active collusion.

“Tristan. The author has to concentrate on writing the rest of the plot and doesn’t need this sort of distraction, and you know full well that Siegfried has forbidden you from going to the Drovers’ until we have finished mending the TARDIS,” said the Doctor. “Come on,” he added, putting his arm around Tristan’s shoulders, “Let’s go down to the paddock. While the author is working out where to go next with the plot, we can get started with the repairs, and then if the plot turns out to be too dull, we can fly off and have our own adventures instead.”

#lost the plot #fiction #doctor who #all creatures great and small #fifth doctor #tristan farnon #absurd and surreal humour #authorial avatar #celery #my fiction

[skulduggerypleasant]

Twitter Q&A (8/3/18)

Derek did an impromptu Q&A session on his Twitter last night, and answered a lot of tweets in very quick succession. I really do mean a lot, and he’s not even finished with all the questions yet (although I helped him out where I could), so expect an update to this post soon enough! Under the cut, you’ll find a summary of pretty much everything that he said, excluding anything that wasn’t really relevant to a wider audience. There are, inevitably, spoilers for every book up to and including Resurrection. Anyways, enjoy!

We’ll be getting bits and pieces of information about Carol’s death—and it’s consequences—as the books go on, although it won’t be a main plot point by any means. [x]

“China is generally the hardest to write, because I have to force myself to not make jokes. Val's the easiest, because she's the most real to me.” [x]

“Skulduggery has had primarily straight relationships in the past, but pretty much all sorcerers are bi, China included. Val is, at this point in her life, kinda straight, with definite bi leanings.” [x]

Female sorcerers have a monthly menstrual cycle for however long their bodies stay young. [x] (Why do you people ask these things?)

We’re never going to be told Skulduggery’s given name. [x]

The Unnamed will be elaborated on in Phase Two. [x]

Skulduggery brushes his teeth, and he showers if his bones are dirty. [x]

Derek only decided on Ghastly’s grisly fate around Mortal Coil; up until that point, he was going to live. [x]

Derek considers Necromancy the coolest power to write, but thinks that Teleportation is ultimately the best. [x]

“If someone was taken over by [both] a Remnant and a Faceless One, the Faceless One would burn out the Remnant in an instant.” [x]

Derek has no intention of telling us how many books he has planned for the series, but we’ll probably find out eventually. [x]

“[Valkyrie’s] powers will be explored further as we go.” [x]

Only one reflection can be released at a time, and you still have a normal reflection in mirrors all the while. [x]

“I had the first idea [for the series] in the summer of 2005, and I didn't change any of the major aspects since then. The only question was whether to set it in the ‘real’ world or a fantasy world where walking skeletons weren't a big deal. Obviously, the real world won.” [x]

Valkyrie will not be teaching any other sorcerers, as she isn’t in any kind of mindset to teach, and her power set is entirely unique. [x]

We’ll learn how Mevolent died during the war in Phase Two, as well as how the alternate-dimension Mevolent managed to survive where the original did not. Also, it’s implied that there’s plenty more we’ll find out about. [x]

“Harry Potter probably influenced me the most, especially early on. I should have been confident enough to throw off those shackles, but in a way I needed them in order to find my own way of telling stories.” [x]

Derek is suitably—but not necessarily suspiciously—evasive when questioned about possible connections between Valkyrie/Darquesse and The Unnamed. [x]

Skulduggery probably can’t seal his true name, without a heart to carve the appropriate symbols into. [x]

“Okay, but when does Ghastly come back to life?” / “On a Tuesday.” [x]

We’ll find out about Valkyrie’s infamous “vision boyfriend” that Cassandra Pharos saw back in Last Stand of Dead Men. [x]

Again, Derek heavily implies we’ll see the return of alternate-universe Mevolent in future books. [x]

“I've left it open enough so that I COULD link [Skulduggery Pleasant and Demon Road], but I don't think I will, unless I have an awesome idea for a crossover...” [x]

Derek was originally intending to reveal what Saracen’s power is, but now he’s unsure if he ever will. [x]

We’ll find out what strange thing Dusk tasted in Valkyrie’s blood back in Dark Days; it was already confirmed that it was neither her Ancient lineage, or her Darquesse alter-ego. [x]

Necromancers have yet to successfully figure out a way to harness their powers without the use of an imbued object. [x]

Derek is unsure if he’ll ever write (another) Dead Men short story set during the war, as short stories are incredibly time-consuming. [x]

We’ll find out as we progress through Phase Two what, exactly, made Skulduggery quit his job at the Sanctuary. [x]

“China’s charm works on EVERYONE.” [x]

The Reflection would’ve been unable to approach the Book of Names. [x]

It’s possible for a sorcerer who has discovered their true name to achieve power equal to, or greater than, the Ancients/Faceless Ones. [x]

Valkyrie has “not yet” dressed up as Skulduggery for Halloween. [x]

“Love is love, is it not?” [x]

Gracious O’Callahan is based on one of Derek’s friends. [x]

“Where did Skulduggery find the Bentley?” / “In the Bentley shop.” [x]

The Book of Names was not the only way to discover one’s True Name, and the Book itself was created by the Ancients. [x]

“The pop culture references simply reflect the times in which the books are set. The problem is that pop culture can date a book pretty fast, but I tend not to care about things like that.” [x]

Before Skulduggery died, his face was apparently “like, super handsome and stuff.” [x] (As if that surprises anyone...)

“You can use sigils if you're, say, an Elemental, but you can't get to China's level unless you devote yourself to the discipline.” [x]

Lord Vile is not mute, he just doesn’t like to speak. [x]

It’s a possibility that we might see a villain in future who has control over older, more visceral forms of magic. (Although, I can’t say Derek’s response was notably promising, but who knows?) [x]

“Omen has a definite journey in these books. He's just trying to figure out who he is, and find his place in the world.” [x]

“Darquesse is either A) kicking Faceless One ass or B) having her ass kicked by Faceless Ones. Vile hasn't gone anywhere...” [x]

Derek promises that we haven’t seen the last of shunters, again pretty much confirming a return to the Leibniz Universe. [x]

“Solomon always liked the name, which is why he took it... and he HAD [nine] brothers but they all died mysteriously. VERY mysteriously.” [x]

Fletcher was supposed to die early on, but Derek changed his mind. [x]

Solomon Wreath once had a pet gerbil, apparently. [x]

“The Taken Name is a psychological protection, so literally all you have to do is decide on your new name, and there you go.” [x]

We may possibly get more short stories set before the first book. [x]

“As powerful as Vile was, Mevolent was more so.” [x]

There are no plans to tell us much more, if anything, about Skulduggery’s family. [x] (However, we have previously been promised that Midnight will delve a little more into Skulduggery’s past.)

“Is there any way of bringing Tanith and Ghastly back together?” / “Sure. I’ll just have to kill Tanith.” [x]

Derek listens to music while he writes: “Soundtracks only—no lyrics! Star Wars, Marvel, Pirates of the Carribbean—anything big and bombastic.” [x]

Serpine has apparently used Skulduggery’s ribcage as a xylophone. [x]

Darquesse’s personality shifted away from Valkyrie’s because “she changed once her power grew; her consciousness expanded.” [x]

“[Skulduggery]’s unlikely to be the only one who's ever figured out how to do it, but I like to think that anyone else who learned how to fly lost their focus mid-flight and died screaming all the way down...” [x]

Following the death of Anton Shudder, the Midnight Hotel has been passed on to a different (unknown) owner. [x]

There probably won’t be any extra books or short stories about Milo, of Demon Road trilogy fame. [x]

We pretty much already know this, but: “[Skulduggery] is one of the few magically ambidextrous people out there.” [x]

If Derek had the chance to rewrite the series, he would save Ghastly. [x]

Skulduggery’s guilty pleasure is “watching old movies.” [x]

“Tanith is keeping busy, and Militsa SO fancies Val...” [x]

Billy-Ray Sanguine’s magic is earth-focused, so technically it could be classified as an Elemental ability, but because he’s so specialised and his powers are so unique, it’s counted as an Adept discipline. [x]

Elders are elected. [x] (But apparently, Supreme Mages are not...)

“At this point in her life, I'd say Val is probably closing in on bisexual, but heteromantic. So far.” [x]

“[Thrasher] had a mother, but she has sadly passed.” [x]

Apparently, Mevolent’s three generals were “cool with each other,” and “they had game nights and everything.” [x] (Inexplicably, I got scolded by an anon for saying that this was more than likely a joke.)

Valkyrie and Tanith’s dynamic may have changed following the events of the last books, but we’ll have to wait and see “if and when they meet again.” [x]

“There are parts I wish had slightly different rules linked to them, which would have made it easier to use these things in later books, but nothing I regret as such, no.” [x]

Mobile phones still worked when Skulduggery and Valkyrie were in Hammer Lane Gaol (in Kingdom of the Wicked) because... magic! [x]

There are no plans, and there probably never will be, to tell us whether Skulduggery’s child was a boy or a girl. [x]

Derek knew that Erskine Ravel was probably going to end up being the main antagonist in the book in which he was introduced, but he only knew for definite by the time he was writing the book after that. [x]

Again (because when do they not?), someone asked whether there would be a movie or a tv show based on the series, and as always, the answer is: hopefully yes, but no news yet. [x]

Derek would consider writing for Doctor Who again if asked, but he generally prefers having complete ownership over his writing—so he can kill whichever characters he wants. [x]

I don’t know why this was asked, but in case anyone was wondering, Skulduggery and Serpine are not related. [x]

#skulduggery pleasant #archive #i think i've managed to get all the links working but let me know if i've messed anything up

[fuzzhugs]

Broken Wings - Redwall/FMA Crossover - by Fuzzhugs

Welcome to Part 1 of my Redwall + Fullmetal Alchemist crossover.

Special thanks to @thegoldensoundtwice for inspiring to actually write all of this down and to @theredwallrecorder for editing assistance. 

If anyone prefers reading in a GoogleDoc format, follow the link here.

Part 1 - Ingredients

Beastkind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is alchemy's first law of Equivalent Exchange. In those days, I really believed that to be the world's one, and only truth.

Water, 35 liters.

Martin obsessively checked his notes and calculations. His haggard appearance and frenzied behavior showed the result of days without sleep.

Carbon, 20 kilograms.

The walls of his spacious yet decrepit shack were covered with hundreds of pages. Renderings of transmutation circles intersected and covered each other. Pages torn from books were pinned to the wall alongside his own handwritten notes. Strings stretched between walls, connecting one set of information to another.

Ammonia, 4 liters.

The shack had not been Martin’s first choice of a laboratory, but the Noonvale mice had told him if he planned to continue with his blasphemous experiments, he would have to do it elsewhere. More than happy to be rid of him, the mice helped him build the shack a league away from their sanctuary.

Calcium-lime, 1.5 kilograms.

Martin had reappeared at Noonvale several seasons after the Battle of Marshank, begging to be taught their ways. Chief Voh had been reluctant to give one so emotionally unhinged further power to manipulate the world, but Brome had persuaded him that learning healing arts would be a way to help Martin.

Phosphorus, 800 grams.

His thirst for knowledge did not remain confined to the alchemic healing practice they called Alkahestry. He poured over texts for days at a time, rarely stopping to eat or sleep. His first experiments delving into the nature of life and death had dire consequences for the Alkahestry library. Martin’s attempt to resurrect a deceased fish resulted in an alchemic backlash blasting several of the main support beams to splinters. Martin himself was only mildly injured from the explosion.

Salt, 250 grams.

While Martin was recuperating from his injuries, Chief Voh took a closer look at the notes he had been keeping and learned the true depths of Martin’s desire. When Martin was well enough to walk again, he was cast out of the central village and told to settle farther away from the main settlement, hence the shack.

Saltpeter, 100 grams.

Brome had ceased visiting several fortnights ago, tired of trying to convince Martin to give up on his impossible ambitions. The arguments between the two mice had grown heated, escalating almost to the point of violence.

Sulfur, 80 grams.

He had spent ages collecting all of the ingredients. He had managed to convince Brome to bring him some from Noonvale’s stores, but the rest he had to find himself, either through wandering the countryside or bartering with traveling merchants. The only thing that mattered was his work. Everything else could wait. His father’s sword was leaning against the wall, long neglected and seldom used.

Fluorine, 7.5 grams.

Every component had been carefully measured and weighed according to the exact specifications Martin had written out. They had been stored in jars and locked in a chest until he was ready to use them.

Iron, 5 grams.

The mix of elements now freely blended together in the metal basin he had placed in the center of his shack. Retrieving a piece of chalk, he began to draw out his own variant of a Beastfolk Transmutation Circle. The complex design branched across the room like a spider’s web. Circles, triangles, and hexagons merged and split with each other. Bizarre, arcane runes filled the empty spaces.

Silicon, 3 grams.

Everything he had spent seasons planning for would finally come to fruition.

Trace amounts of 15 other elements.

He would have her back again. His greatest mistake would be undone.

Blood, as a bridge for the soul to cross.

Martin pulled out a knife and slashed the blade across his paw, letting the crimson rain fall onto the mix of powder and liquid. The blood would link the transmutation target to him, pulling Rose’s soul back from the place beyond life.

He knelt down at the edge of his circle and calmed his mind. Reaching out, he could feel the energy that flowed beneath the earth rising to his will, powering his alchemic formula. Slamming his paws onto the circle, he released the energy in one large burst.

The chalk-lines began to glow as the transmutation started. An eerie red light filled the room as shadows began to leak out from the circle. The shadows formed into tendrils, ending with small, grasping claws. In the center of the circle, a crack appeared and opened to reveal the form of a gigantic eye. Something was very wrong.

The tendrils shot across the room and clung to him, pulling him toward the circle. Martin struggled to remain outside the boundary. As he fought, a brilliant burst of white light filled the room.

Martin was standing in an endless white void. There was no wind, no sound, no horizon. Behind him, a massive stone door carved with alchemic symbols floated above the featureless ground. Ahead of him, a figure sat crouched on the floor, surrounded by a black haze. Like Martin’s surroundings, it was featureless, save for the prominent grin plastered to its face.

“Where is she!?” Martin demanded, too determined to be awed by the strange place.

The figure continued to grin and tilted its head to the side.

“I don’t know who you are, but tell me where she-”

“The world.”

Martin fell silent, unprepared to hear several voices at once come from the figure’s mouth. “What did you-?”

“I am the existence that you call ‘the world’. In other words, the universe. In other words, truth. In other words, all. In other words, one.” The figure paused for a moment. “I am also you. Welcome.”

The stone door behind Martin burst open and the black tendrils reached out to pull him in. Fighting against their grasp, Martin tried to force his way toward the figure, managing to take several steps forward, but never gaining any ground.

“You are a determined one, aren’t you?” The figure grinned as the tendrils pulled Martin into the darkness of the void behind the door. “Most of those who get here are just screaming at this point.”

The stone door slammed shut and Martin fell away through darkness. Bright lights began rushing by him as everything he had seen and would see, known and would know flew through his head, too fast to understand and too fast to contain. His head felt like it would burst open. Before his eyes, his body began to fall apart. Then he realized what he was seeing was truth. Pure, unadulterated, universal truth.

In an instant, he was back in the white space. The figure was still there with its ominous grin. “How was it?”

Martin turned to look at the door. So many new ideas filled his mind. He knew where he had gone wrong, he just needed something more. “Show it to me again. I need to see it all again.”

“No, no, no. You only get that much for the toll you’ve paid.”

“Toll?”

As if on cue, tendrils lashed out and grabbed his face. A burning pain seared through Martin’s mind and he fell to the floor, screaming. The figure knelt over him, still grinning.

“Now, if someone is dumb enough to come and meet me, I usually end up taking their arms, or their legs, or their sight. They can see plainly what my services have cost them and I don’t need to tell them what price they’ve paid. You, little alchemist, you’re a special case. You wanted your only love back, right? Well, I’ve taken that from you now. Every feeling of love is being erased from your mind. Oh, your memories will stay intact, but that delectable flavor you call love is no longer yours. You cannot remember love and you cannot feel love, but I am not without mercy. I’ve left a little speck of it in there just for you, enough of it for you to remember what you’re missing. I have also generously thrown in another gift. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. Equivalent exchange, is it not?”

The real world rushed back in an instant and Martin found himself on the floor of his shack, screaming and clutching his head. Pain blocked out most of his immediate memories, and the next thing he was aware of was waking up in a bed in the Noonvale Infirmary. Brome was looking down at him, scowling.

“Brome,” Martin gasped as he came to his senses. “I know what I need to do. I just need…”

“You need to leave,” Brome commanded without an ounce of pity in his voice. “Can you walk?”

Martin stood up and walked with Brome, thinking only of his work. “The transmutation…”

“Whatever that thing was that you made was not natural. It didn’t live long, in any case. We’ve already buried it.”

The two mice arrived at the outskirts of Noonvale. “Brome, I need to-”

“Whatever you need, you’ll have to find it far from here. Bringing you here was the last kindness we will do for you. You will receive no more help here. If we find you within a day’s walk of Noonvale, you will be forced out. Now go, Martin.”

“If you just let me-”

Without a word, Brome slammed his gauntlet-clad fist into the ground. Martin caught a brief glimpse of the transmutation circle etched upon it before earthen spikes shot up out of the ground, stopping a hair’s-breadth from his face.

“Out, Martin. Don’t come back.”

Martin turned and left without another word. There was no sense of loss accompanying his forced departure. The brotherly affection he had once had for Brome was gone, utterly absent. There was nothing left attaching him to Brome, so there was nothing lost for him to mourn.  

“Yes…yes. I had the right idea,” Martin said to himself as he walked without a particular direction in mind. “The right idea, but the wrong power source.”

He thought of one of the few comprehensible things his brush with truth had given him: the alchemic theory known as the Philosopher’s Stone. “Yes, a Stone. Infinite power. Anything should be possible with that. A Stone can bring her back, and all the others too. Felldoh, Gramma, Mum. ” In his excitement, Martin clapped his paws together. He felt a rush of power and watched as a perfect reproduction of Rose built itself out of the dirt.

“Interesting,” he commented to himself. “My arms form the circle, my thoughts form the array.

Looking at the statue, he could feel he was missing something inside. He knew he should have felt something, responded in some way, but there was only emptiness. The emptiness angered him.

“Dammit,” Martin cursed. “You may have taken my love from me, truth, but don’t expect to hold onto it for too long. Once I have the stone, nothing can stop me from taking it back.”

Walking a little further, Martin experimented with his newfound ability, transmuting rocks and trees with little more than a clap and a mental picture of what he wanted to happen. “You were right though, truth. I do enjoy this gift.”

Stopping by his now partially-destroyed shack, Martin collected some of his notes that he felt would come in handy. As he prepared to leave, a spur of the moment decision prompted him to take his father’s sword with him. Shouldering the blade, he left his shack and began his trek southward. Alchemy  and Alkahestry had come from the south. He would find answers in the south.

End Part 1

#redwall #redwall fanfiction #martin the warrior #redwall fma #broken wings

[darrowbyeightfive]

Lost the Plot

The Doctor is (politely) displeased.

This follows on from my ACGAS/Fifth Doctor crossovers The Scenic Route and Tea in Bed but do be warned that it is written in a very different style from those previous pieces and is a piece of utter absurdity, inspired by a plot point in A Very Peculiar Practice and my love for ‘Castrovalva’ and the fictional worlds of Jorge Luis Borges(*) as well as for All Creatures.

Features Tricki-Woo and Mrs. Pumphrey, offstage.

(*) Just please don’t expect anything as good as AVPP, Castrovalva or, especially, Borges, or you will be very disappointed.

The Doctor gently swung his legs down to the floor and used one hand to slowly push himself up into a standing position. Tentatively, he padded in his red socks across the Persian rug, holding on to various  items of furniture for support. After his previous attempts, he was anxious lest a wave of dizziness or nausea should hit him, but succeeded in crossing the room without incident. He arrived at the fourth wall and cleared his throat.

“Excuse me,” he said, attempting to bring a tone of polite authority to his voice. “I’ve been lying in bed for a couple of weeks now. It’s been wonderful to be looked after and everything, Mrs Hall is a very kind lady, and I do like that green quilt, but the thing is that I’m stuck here while everyone except me is having adventures and I feel that I’m not really living up to my job description. James and Tristan have been up in space and Turlough is out there on the Eye of Orion – sketching, supposedly – while I’ve been languishing here on earth coughing and collapsing whenever you wanted the readers to feel sorry for me. Now I’m feeling more myself again, it’s getting to be really rather tedious. If you had to give me space flu – what sort of an unoriginal name was that, anyway? You could at least have come up with some fancy Latin terminology – to facilitate your frankly ridiculous plot mechanics and have young Tristan crash my TARDIS, can’t you at least let me recover properly now so that I can repair her and resume my normal life of dashing about the cosmos? He’s a decent enough young fellow, if a little reckless, but it’s rather trying to look at a mirror image of yourself and be constantly reminded that with regeneration, you never know what you’re going to get.”

“I’m very sorry, Doctor,” I told him. “I had some plot ideas but wasn’t sure how to put them together. It really is a very nice quilt, and I even rescued that dressing-gown from Lady Cranleigh’s for you to wear, although that wasn’t mentioned in the episode at all.” I stopped there, realising that the dressing-gown thing had been pure self-indulgence on my part, based on how ‘absolutely ripping’ he had looked in it when he wore it in 1925. “Isn’t it better than languishing in a dungeon while the writer figures out how to get you out of there? I thought it would be nice to have someone looking after you for once. In most of your adventures, you end up getting bashed about, locked up or tortured with nobody to take care of you. You just have to dust yourself down and get on with the story. I thought you would appreciate the soft bed, tea and crumpets after all that.”

“That was indeed very considerate of you, and you know how much I love tea. The crumpets were delicious, too. Thank you very much. But I am beginning to suspect your motives in some of this. Can you genuinely say that you have never daydreamed about mopping my fevered brow? Or building your own benevolent version of Castrovalva for me to recuperate in? In which I am not ‘trapped’ in the strict technical sense but develop a strong disinclination towards leaving while there is honey still for tea?”

“Er, well…” I suppose you don’t get to be an intergalactic hero without having a good deal of insight into other people’s motivations, and such insight comes more easily when you’re being written by the person who has those motivations. (It’s almost like telepathy.) “OK, yes. I did want to look after you. But I’m not trying to keep you trapped in this story. I just haven’t got round to writing the next part yet.”

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” he said, arching his eyebrows. He really is such a smart aleck. Pretty much everyone quotes that wrongly, apart from him, of course. Probably picked it up when he was drinking with Shakespeare, or ghostwrote it for him, or something.  “Look how much nicer I am to you than the BBC was, eh? What about the space flu, though? That wasn’t pleasant at all!”

“Yes, I’m sorry about the space flu. But if nothing unpleasant happened to you, there wouldn’t be a story, would there? I’m afraid that’s an occupational hazard of being a hero.”

“I suppose you’re right,” he said, with a universe-weary sigh. “Writers of stories really do seem to have it in for one, sometimes. Tea and crumpets are certainly better than Cybermen and Daleks, and you are going to give me a chance to play cricket. But as for making me wear this absurd dressing-gown again...”

“I have given you pyjamas too, you know. With your favourite question-marks on them. You haven’t had to spend most of an episode walking down corridors with the dressing-gown open to your chest in my story. And in any case, this is just prose, without any visuals. For all the readers know, you could actually be wearing a baggy old cardigan.”

“Hmmm. But what about those illustrations of yours? To be fair, you haven’t done an illustration of me in the dressing-gown yet, but I suspect it’s only a matter of time. I wonder whether these illustrations aren’t something of a pretext for downloading a ridiculous number of pictures of me from the internet. Drawing references, indeed. How many drawing references does anyone need?”

“Have you been rummaging around on my hard drive while I’ve been asleep?”

“You’ve given me so little else to do, and one must keep oneself occupied somehow. There’s only so many hours one can spend doing crosswords. You still haven’t managed to draw me properly, you know, despite all your references. You’re nowhere near as good as Turlough. And you’ve started writing me out of character now, too. I’m not usually quite this sardonic.”

“Yes, I’m sorry, I have. In my defence, I’m not the first person ever to have done that, but I will try to do better from now on. So, what sort of plot do you want? How do you want me to get you out of here?” (First rule of plotting: consult your protagonist ahead of time about all important plot decisions. Except, perhaps, ones in which he is attacked by large rubber monsters. Sometimes it is necessary to preserve the element of surprise, particularly on when the special effects aren’t very convincing.)

At this point, Tristan came in and looked quizzically towards the Doctor.

“Authorial conference,” said the Doctor.

“Aha, I see. Good stuff. Perhaps I can contribute too. I used to read through some of Mr. Wight’s drafts and make notes for him, or rather the real person I’m based on did. Wonderful chap, Mr. Wight.”

“We’re discussing what should happen next in the plot,” said the Doctor. “I was feeling rather grumpy about not having had much to do in this story so far. It must have been the aftereffects of the space flu that made me feel so out of sorts and out of character. I’m feeling much better now, though. Quite my old self.” He rocked backwards and forwards on the balls of his feet to illustrate this, and grinned broadly.

“I didn’t cut a very good figure at all in the last section of ‘The Scenic Route’,” said Tristan, turning towards me. "Made rather an ass of myself sashaying around in the Doctor’s costume and then crashing the TARDIS. Any chance of a rewrite?”

“No, I’m afraid not,” said the Doctor, before I could answer. “Web of time, and all that.”

“Well, I think the first thing to do, since you’re feeling better, is for you to change back into your normal costume. You’ll feel much more like getting back into action, then! It’s laid out on the chair. Unfortunately, your celery buttonhole has wilted and Mrs Hall has had to throw it away. I think it might have caught the space flu from you. But there’s no problem – I’ll bring you a nice new celery stalk from the vegetable rack.”

“Ah, but my previous celery was imaginary,” said the Doctor. “It came from an Edwardian yacht in space. Imaginary space vegetables keep for much longer than real ones. My first stick of celery, which was produced by by block transfer computations, lasted for a year and a half before it started going a bit brown around the edges.”

“That’s no problem,” said Tristan, breezily. “The celery from downstairs is imaginary too. We’re imaginary. Well, I’m not entirely imaginary, but I’m a fictionalised version of a real person, and this conversation we’re having now certainly never happened in real life. It’s far too silly.”

“I meant imaginary in the context of this story. Things that we’re imagining. What we call in the trade second-order imaginariness or the doubly fictional. I would tell you to go and look up the entry on ‘Uqbar’ in James’s musty encyclopaedias in the cellar to give you an idea of what I mean, except that the episode in which James buys the encyclopaedias hasn’t happened yet and the encyclopaedia in question, despite being published in 1902, is the subject of a fiction that wasn’t written until 1940. Continuity can be rather confusing, sometimes, even when you’re not suffering from regeneration sickness.”

“Ah, I’m not sure how we’re going to manage to produce something that’s doubly imaginary in a veterinary practice in 1937. We do have quite a few interesting chemicals in the surgery…” mused Tristan. “Oh yes, I have an idea! I’ll ring Mrs Pumphrey, and ask her to ask Tricki-Woo to imagine one. I’m sure she won’t mind. She’s always been very forthcoming where food items are concerned.”

**********

“Here you are! To dear Uncle Doctor, from Tricki-Woo, Esquire,” said Tristan, bounding up the stairs with a very crisp-looking but entirely imaginary stick of celery. “Nothing but the best from Mrs. Pumphrey.”

“Excellent,” I said. “Now, Doctor, if you’re ready to change into your costume, I’ll avert my gaze and insert a row of asterisks.”

Tristan gave a naughty grin. “If I were writing in the omniscient third person, I’d be sure to make full use of all the privileges that that afforded.”

“Yes, I rather imagine you would,” said the Doctor, with a raised eyebrow.

Tristan blushed and grinned again, a little sheepishly, realising that he must after all have left a copy of Health and Efficiency inside one of the more sedate publications that he had lent to his visitor.

“Tristan!” I said “Be more respectful! He’s very proper, you know. Hundreds of years old, and is supposed to be a good example to the young. No hanky-panky in the TARDIS, and all that.”

“I’m not supposed to be a good example to anyone. Quite the reverse, in fact!” said Tristan, laughing. “Anyway, it was you who thought up that bit about the privileges of the omniscient narrator.”

“You said it, not me!”

“You put the words into my mouth! Trying to blame things on a fictional – or semi-fictional – character, indeed!”

************

The Doctor, now back in his usual costume, turned to me: “Pleasant as this discussion has been, we don’t seem to have got much further with deciding on the plot.”

“There have been a lot of distractions. But look, I have got you better from the space flu, now. That’s progress.”

“Yes, indeed,” the Doctor said brightly. “No more shivering and shaking. Definitely an improvement.”

“You could write yourself into the story as a love-interest for me,” said Tristan. “Of course, our relationship would have to be ultimately doomed to failure because of a disapproving father or a strange obsession with goat dung, because the BBC has it in for me too, but we could have some fun first.” He gave me a very flirtatious look.

“Well... yes... I could do that...” I said, blushing and suddenly feeling very flustered.

“So, would your authorial avatar like to come to the Drovers’ with me this evening?”

It was very tempting, of course, but taking into account Tristan’s overdeveloped sense of humour and the presence of his exact lookalike, I was not at all convinced that I wouldn’t be the victim of some convoluted mistaken-identity prank sooner or later, even without the Doctor’s active collusion.

“Tristan. The author has to concentrate on writing the rest of the plot and doesn’t need this sort of distraction, and you know full well that Siegfried has forbidden you from going to the Drovers’ until we have finished mending the TARDIS,” said the Doctor. “Come on,” he added, putting his arm around Tristan’s shoulders, “Let’s go down to the paddock. While the author is working out where to go next with the plot, we can get started with the repairs, and then if the plot turns out to be too dull, we can fly off and have our own adventures instead.”

#all creatures great and small #doctor who #fristan farnon #fifth doctor #my fiction #absurdity #lost the plot #imaginary space vegetables