It has returned, or I'm a norska!

Dear Yuletide Writer

2019-11-02T05:41:26Z

Welcome! Thank you for writing a story for me!

This letter is a bit more of a WiP than I'd like, though I suspect it's pretty complete. >_>

I'm sorry to say my fandom presence isn't the easiest for researching/stalking purposes.

Likes:
• p i n i n g
• slow burn, including the version where sex happens before anyone admits to feelings
• denial
• angst with a happy ending, mixing angst and fluff
• intense relationships: codependency, relationships that straddle the line between “&” and “/”, being scared of how you feel for this person because it’s giving this specific person too much power, being greater together than apart, “I would do terrible/amazing things for you” and "I have done terrible things to you"
• friends-to-enemies-to-lovers
• hopeful endings
• aftermathes, consequences, atonement, picking-up-the-pieces
• fraught communication: double or triple meanings (on purpose or accidental), tokens as reminders/code, carefully avoiding outright lying, putting on a scene for the gallery, when a character says something so cruel and true the reader gasps in delighted horror, things left unsaid, things pointedly left unsaid, dancing around issues, declarations of love/hate
• emotional showdowns: understated ones, big dramatic ones after a dramatic scene, public denial, private denials, displays of support, magical curses that force you to speak the truth (and the aftermath)
• performative relationships that don’t reflect exactly the private truth of the relationship
• transactional relationships: characters who are together because each has something the other want
• a willingness to use oneself, one’s loved ones, or the love between you to achieve your goals
• the emotional cost of the above, especially in pining, denial, and sense memory
• betrayal and loyalty: your loved ones for your ideals, your ideals for your loved ones, your morality for your ambition, your ambition for the greater good… including the opposite way you thought you were going to choose; compromising between the two while knowing you might not if it were someone else; a character concealing the fact they didn't betray someone the way one might expect they'd conceal a betrayal
• explicitly making exceptions or refusing to make exceptions for your loved ones
• idealists: ruthless idealists, idealists who reject ruthlessness at every turn, people whose only ideals are their devotion to another person, believers in realpolitiks, people on the run, talking about what kind of a world they want, talking about the cost/limits of idealism/pragmatism
• politics: lawmaking, every day urban planning, negotiations, etc
• stories about ruling: rulers who want to fix their country, starting with building a hospital/passing a law banning child labour/studying how they’re going to beat the famine this winter, what kind of difficulties they face, how they deal with them, how they address the misgivings (both legitimate and not!) of their opponents, etc, with as many details as you can put in
• little details that add to the world-building: traditions, celebrations, the kind of food, etc.
• imagery, local color, a sense of place and atmosphere – traditions, celebrations, passing seasons, the color and shape of buildings and streets, what kind of people live there, how the city changes between day and night. The contrast between the overarching stakes and the mundane (we’re saving the world but we still need to buy food) and the mention of one when you’re dealing with the other.
• travels to the center of the mind/inside someone's dreams to save them (Euridyce plot with "inside their own mind/nightmares" as "the underworld" = A++)
• outsider PoV
• resentment, nostalgia, love

In all three canons and characters I picked, there's an element of emotional revenge/come-uppance I love: the betrayer realizing he hurt themselves the most, the manipulator realizing they underestimated their opponent, the seducer falling and staying fallen, and realizing they're not as in control as they thought they were, and how could they be so blind? I find reading about that very satisfying, it feels like a victory for the other character. If you wanted to include one aspect of that, I would eat it up with a spoon.

If your fic leads you to including smut (and I don't mind the absence of smut, fade-to-black is perfectly fine with me), I like edging, begging, desperation, wall sex, rough sex, "I could do anything to you right now and you would let me", the more experienced/less vulnerable partner being surprised by the other/not being in control.
I don't enjoy negotiated kink, safewords, or fics where the top is the only one engaging in dirty talk and the bottom has lost all control.

Dislikes:
• Christmas fics
• different setting AU
• A/B/O or gender essentialism
• a fic that's nothing but fluff (schmoop, WAFF)
• PWP
• babies/children fic
• non-con
• bleak, banal unhappiness
• unrequested pairings (background canon pairings are fine), unless otherwise stated
• character bashing
• kink-wise: pet-play, voyeurism, language kink (by which I mean "speaking a foreign language as a kink")
• I have a bit of an embarrassment squick

Akatsuki no Yona
characters: Soo-Won, Yona
do i ship them: yes, a lot, and as an OT3 with Hak

DNW: PWP, fluff, Christmas fic, ~~domesticity~~ curtainfic, language kink, setting change, babies/children fic, non-con.

I love themes of "killing your own heart/humanity to achieve your dream", sacrificing your dearest bonds, and then exploring the emotional cost of that. Especially when there's a lot of regrets, a lot of denial, and no possible take-backs (maybe there's a happy ending, but they're gonna have to work for it). I love a charismatic, fem-looking guy who plays (everyone for) a fool and realizes he's been underestimating someone, too.

I'd prefer fic that's set vaguely during canon (or a future fic), to childhood shenanigans.

- Soo-Won, p i n i n g. For Yona, for the past, for an impossible way to get both his dream and his friends. Realizing he underestimated her so very, very much. (How much of a distraction is it? How obvious is he? How many risks does he end up taking for her, for Hak? Outsider PoV?)

- Soo-Won and Yona, after she wins. Did she condemn him to house arrest for life, because she won't condemn him to death? Are there any plots to put him back on the throne, does he think her a fool for not executing him? Has she forgiven him?

- anything about ruling and being a leader and how they're both idealists even though it's not the same kind of idealists. Maybe Hak's PoV as he does his own p i n i n g over them. (Hak’s taste runs to pretty charismatic dangerous people he would lay down his life for.)

Give me all the ways Soo-Won looks at Yona and tries to processes that she’s amazing? he didn’t see her development coming? at all? also she’s a danger to his plans, but omg she’s so? smart and brave and devoted to their country and she got to know their country so much asdklsdkldzokmw<333, tl;dr Soo-Won getting to be a big, swooning Yona fan and concealing it because it’s extremely inconvenient no matter the moment you place the story is a bulletproof kink.

I love that the more Yona (and Hak) are able to be functional over Soo-Won, the more Soo-Won is prey to Feelings. I love that Soo-Won and Yona are both good people, good leaders, good rulers.

Give me all the ways Feelings are making things way less convenient than they should be for everyone involved. The Feelings can totally be platonic, so long as they are most intense, soul-wrenching, you-were-half-of-my-world Feelings. I love the intensity/desperation of it, it doesn't need to include smooching. Wistfulness and sensorial memories would also be fantastic, as well as (pining) guilt for misplaced nostalgia (p i n i n g for the past is still pining).

If you wanted to write a story with a soulmate trope, that could be yet another angst source for these two!

You can consider me up to date with canon (which i'll def do before Yuletide) for the purposes of writing!

Long Live the Queen
characters: Elodie; Banion
do i ship them: oh so much

DNW: PWP, fluff, ~~domesticity~~ curtainfic, language kink, Cruel Elodie, character death, Elodie/Talarist, setting change

I'm interested in politics, snark, Banion being the most ExtraTM smug snake, and Elodie giving as good as she's getting.

- more of the timeline where they marry with Elodie making the wedding attires a statement about their respective powers and Banion attempting to embarrass Elodie by revealing one of the flower boys is his. (IconiqueTM.) How does Elodie retaliate - does she declare the child heir to something? Does she get interested in his education, does she test him for a Lumen? I'm not into kidfic usually, but if you want to write about the boy's life should Elodie take an interest in him, and all the ways it gets political, I'd love to read it. What kind of other public power plays do the Queen and Consort engage in throughout the years? Are they secretly allies, and using their cheerful rivalry to run circles around would-be political plots? What kind of personal agenda does Banion attempt to have Elodie acquiesce to? Outsider PoV on said relationship (through gossip rags, letters between nobles, etc) and how inaccurate the court's impression of them is?

- more of the timeline where they carry an affair after Elodie marries Thaddeus. (if you want Thaddeus to know and be okay with it, it's fine by me; I don't mind infidelity in the context of arranged marriages, though, so you don't have to.) How do they keep their affair going? Does Thaddeus know? How much political power does Elodie keep? Does she ever play her husband against her lover so she can have freer range over her country's politics?

- if you'd rather stay gen, rivalry over politics. Does Banion ever get over his disdain for the young queen, or the fact that she didn't marry him? Who did she marry (Briony? Kevan? someone who's not even a noble? my shipping of Elodie/Kevan is pretty strong too so if you wanted to write the fic where Banion is pestering Elodie about politics and Kevan takes it upon himself to officially terrify Banion into not fucking up Elodie's plans, I would be into that), and how much does it break Banion's brain?

- the AU where Elodie has to flee during the invasion, and turns toward Banion for help.

- a timeline where sacrifices were made to prevent the invasion/Kraken, and Banion is forced to be supportive of Elodie's guilt, or help her through the cost. Especially if he's way less wracked with guilt, but maybe slightly scared all the same.

Obviously the tone I suggested above is just a suggestion and other tones may lend themselves to several of these prompts! I would never, ever dislike a story about a moment of uncharacteristic emotional honesty between these two - such a scene, or such a story, would be lovely.

Feel free to add as many or as little cameos from other characters as you want, I like pretty much everyone in this bar and reading about life went on for them would be fantastic. If you want to mention ships, whether canonical or not, all I ask is that you don’t break up Julianna and Lucille.

If you do ship Elodie and Banion and the fic isn't set several years after canon, I would prefer fade-to-black over explicit smut.

Magical Diary
character: Damien Ramsey
do i ship him: Damien/Mary Sue is my OTP, and in a world where Mary Sue isn't interested in doing him (good for her!), Damien/William is my other OTP; and post-canon Damien/William/Angela could be a thing.
other ship notes: if it comes up, please don’t break up Donald/Ellen, and please do break up Minnie and Kyo.

DNW: PWP, fluff, Christmas fic, ~~domesticity~~ curtainfic, language kink, Damien backstory, non-con, character death, focus on OCs, setting change, torture

Damien Ramsey never did anything right, ever, in his life.

With that out of the way, here's a couple of prompts!

- Damien/Mary Sue - any post-canon where Mary Sue has wrestled/manipulated more power from Damien in the relationship, or a Damien PoV of the school year. Either the timeline where Mary Sue lost her powers and Damien is in super over his head or the timeline where Mary Sue played everything right and is still in Horse Hall work for me. You can go as obsessive, resentful, devoted, and focused on mutual destruction as you want in how you imagine their feelings; I love the idea of Mary Sue using Damien's new-found devotion for her to make him pay.

- Damien/William - if Damien/Mary Sue never happened, I would love a fic with exes getting back together. Maybe it starts with hate-sex. Maybe it's surprisingly rom-com-y. Either during the school year or years later would be great!

- Damien &-or-/Angela - props to the only person to win at a relationship with Damien. How did it go? Was there much it's-all-about-William going on that they would never address? (i hope yes.)

- Damien and Potsdam - I trust each of them about as far as I could throw them, and I'd love to read more about their dynamic. Did she ever try to talk to him after William punched him? Do they get back in touch post-canon?

I'm not into non-con, but Damien is a manipulative asshole even if he's no longer quite the abuser he is during canon, and if he manipulated/guilt-tripped someone into giving more than they wanted to (because Damien totally frames it as "giving"), even if the fic/relationship progresses past that and even if it's not explicitly adressed, I would be into that.

I just want Damien to not have all the power in whatever relationship is taking place by the end of the fic, I really like the idea of Damien's lover being able to "fight back".

I only requested Damien, but as you can see it’s more because I find him a ~~great~~ ~~terrible~~ phenomenal taste that goes poisonously well with everything than because I’m invested in how Damien came to be! Feel free to use another character as your PoV, for instance (because William going DDDD: over his Terrible Taste that leads him unerringly toward Awful Very Pretty People Who Will Use Him And Break His Heart, or Angela going :3333 over winning at the relationship, or Mary Sue going >:D, would also be great!).

I also noted above “Damien Ramsey never did anything right”, but if you’re of the opinion that the Damien/William thing back then (and just that) was a bit more complex than just Damien deciding to break William's heart, it’s fine with me if you want to have them work through that. (I can see William being oblivious of Damien being jealous of William's family.)

You can also go way lighter with Damien/Mary Sue than most of the examples I've given - for instance, Damien finding himself playing the supportive if disreputable boyfriend while Mary Sue is preparing her exam to become an Otherworld agent, and being a bit resentful but mostly being way more into trolling other people than Mary Sue for once, or something along those lines... That'd be fantastic tbh.

I'm up-to-date with the beta of Wolf Hall, for the purposes of Damien knowledge, but I'd rather the fic take place in Horse Hall continuity.

This entry was originally posted at https://runespoor.dreamwidth.org/138265.html. There are comments there.

Dear Yuletide Writer

2014-10-20T12:05:41Z

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Thank you for writing a story for me! Whichever fandom you’’ve been assigned, please know that I’m delighted to get fic for it. These are all canons I discovered this year and I’m very excited about all of them. Sometimes at inordinate, I-keep-cutting-stuff-out-why-does-it-grow-back length.

For each fandom I have included some rambling about canon (these things tend to get away from me), several examples of stuff I’d be interested in, a list of stuff I ship in that fandom if you're someone who likes to have mentions of pairings , and a “things that might be relevant” paragraph, which covers a lot of ground but tends toward excitement for every single character in the canon and headcanons.
If my ships aren't your ships, please don't contradict them? I love gen about character relationships (I just… read it as pre-ship) and it would not be a let-down.

If you like to do research on your recipient, my AO3 name is Runespoor.

Both these lists are long on the off-chance you'll get inspired by something in the former, and the fact that I'd really rather not have anything from the latter, but the "likes" list especially in no way means a fic needs to have all these elements for me to enjoy it! They're just things I like, feel free to pick and choose and discard at leisure.

Likes:
• Aftermaths! Repercussions, dealing-with-what-happened, reactions, atonement, rebuilding, trying out for a routine.
• Happy/hopeful endings. I like dark themes and conflict and angst, but it’s important to me that there’s a least a thread of hope running through: earning/stealing/building your happy ending.
• Characterization with a side-dish of plot, where plot can be read as “buying a birthday gift” or “surviving in a post-apoc world”.
• Get-together! Pre-get together/implied feelings (that thing that’d have been tagged “pre-slash” in 2004 about same-sex ships.) UST, slow burn, pining. Socially-unacceptable choices of lovers that are open secrets. Rivalshipping, hateshipping, sparring as foreplay, attempted murders. Contradictory and complicated feelings and interactions.
• Familial themes: families, found families, dysfunctional families.
• Characters with issues: Co-dependence. Trust issues. Conflicts of ethics – duty, honor, loyalty, love, honesty. Determined girls and thoughtful boys, disasters of all genders. Big ideals and characters with a vision. Devotion. Telling lies to yourself to do what you think you have to do; self-sacrifice; seeing yourself as a tool/weapon/symbol (and deconstructing that – what do the other people in canon think of it, how do they react to it?); self-sabotage. Identity issues and plays on identities and masks, switching between identities, being unable to shed an identity completely, pretending there’s no bleed/continuity between two identities or failing (relevant for costumed heroes, gods walking the earth, spies and traitors and impersonators, kings or queens…)
• Interactions: lies, betrayals, dramatic reveals, communication and miscommunication (dialogue, banter, awkwardness, confrontations, body language, confessions, being caught in one’s lies, double- or triple-meanings, things left unsaid, things pointedly left unsaid, dancing around issues).
• Continuity references, cameos by other characters. My nominated fandoms have great ensemble casts, and I love the dynamics there, so if you wanted to include cameos with other characters, it would be more than okay.
• Playing with the format and the narrative – meta, stories-within-stories, gameplay mechanics being alluded to, framing devices (I generally prefer stories to go in chronological order, though). Travels-inside-someone’s-mind. Dreams and nightmares that run on fairytale logic. Time-loops. Canon-divergence AUs and AUs that change the setting but keep the themes, relationships, and personalities similar. Interactive fiction. Long fic; short fic; drabbles.
• Outsider PoV! Especially outsider PoV on relationships. Stories that use the contrast between external perspective and what’s really going on.
• Imagery, local color, a sense of place and atmosphere – even if it’s a couple of sentences telling me how a city smells, the color and shape of buildings and streets, what kind of people live there, how the city changes between day and night. Wordlbuilding details/references. The contrast between the overarching stakes and the mundane (we’re saving the world but we still need to buy food) and the mention of one when you’re dealing with the other.
• Kink-wise, I am into orgasm denial, begging, restraints, needing to keep quiet, aphasia, powerplay and challenges, including in non-sexual contexts, breathplay, focus on the senses and the sensations, pegging.

Dislikes in fic (any exception will be developed in the appropriate fandom): I would prefer no PWP for Yuletide. Fluff. Kitten-fic, curtain-fic, kid-fic, coming-out fic. Established relationships, unless it’s outsider PoV. Character death. Non-con, whether onscreen or offscreen. Cheating, pregnancy, wedding or holiday-fic. The following type of AUs: A/B/O, slave, coffee-house, college, fandom, mundane AUs. The-magic-is-gone futurefic where the characters have forgotten the passion of their younger years and are now existing in the humdrum of routine. That trope where female characters are exasperated by how stupid the boys are (I like my female characters to be as faily as the male ones). That trope where other people play matchmaker for the pairing (I’m fine with “knew something was going on before it happened”). That trope where the only person who understands and accepts a character is the other part of the pairing and canonically reasonably supportive and well-intentioned supporting cast is… not.
Applying American norms and customs in non-American canons.
Violence-wise, I am fine with mentions or lists or descriptions of graphic stuff and the repercussions thereof, but not with the narration of on-screen nail-tearing (saying “character A’s nails had been torn” would be fine; describing it happen onscreen wouldn’t) and no torture involving animals.
Kink-wise, no pet-play, toys, voyeurism, fetishization of virginity or underage, spanking. No extremely unrealistic sex either: hyperbole is one thing, but blood-as-lube breaks my suspension of disbelief...
-Isms: I don’t want homophobia/sexism/racism/etc as a set-up for drama or hurt/comfort. Slut-shaming. Canon characters displaying homophobia/sexism/racism/etc when they didn’t in canon. Casual misogyny/homophobia/transphobia/etc (“don’t be such a girl”, “that’s so gay”, “haha, can’t believe you didn’t see she was a man!”), unless it’s subverted (“I ‘fight like a girl’? Am I supposed to be insulted?”). Please don’t use actual, real-life slurs in your fic (*if a character self-identifies as queer, it’s fine to use it though); paraphrases are great.

CHIHAYAFURU
Ayase Chihaya, Mashima Taichi, Wataya Arata

OT3!
One thing I love about canon is the genre mix-up. Mostly, Chihaya thinks she’s in a shonen. Taichi thinks he’s in a shoujo. Sumire thinks she’s the heroine in a shoujo. Shinobu – well, Shinobu might think she’s in a low-magic setting. It’s very refreshing to see all these characters whose different views on life coexist, who follow (try to follow) different tropes.
Another thing I love is the competition! I’m big on relationships with rivalry elements (Chihaya and Shinobu, Chihaya and Arata, Taichi and Arata…), and sublimation of the self through competition: wanting to achieve one’s goal to prove oneself one is good at something, effort, determination. I love that rivalries are not just expressions of enmities: Chihaya extending concern for Shinobu is one of my favorite things. On the subject of competition, I love how each character has a style, a specialty they’re good at.

But the thing I like best about Chihayafuru is the relationships and the character depth. Stories about childhood friends growing into rivalry slay me every time. OT3. Rivalries between girls! A prince-type languishing!!! (seriously, I love that last. I spend so much time cackling at Taichi’s pain. I love him and his angst is hilarious to me. because I convince myself it’s going to end happily for everyone shhhh. Also he can be passive-aggressive as fuck.)

I’m more into getting-together than established relationships. So yeah, OT3 get-together, if you’re up for that. Get-together and competitive karuta. (I’m the most boring Chihayafuru fan ever.)

If you’d rather write established-relationship, I’d love to read outsider-PoV (interviews of Chihaya-as-Queen or Arata-as-Meijin way down the line; Chihaya’s future students getting to know their teacher and going through the stages of being introduced to Chihaya, or maybe Chihaya’s teachers at uni, of the principal getting the news that Ayase Chihaya is a teacher). One particular type of Outsider-PoV I’d be very interested in would be outsider-PoV from each family: how do they feel about their children’s passion for karuta that keeps on in adult age? Is the trio being together an open secret? Did Chitose terrify Taichi but take to Arata in a Tokyo second (“you should be more like Arata, Taichi”)? What’s the status of friendship between families? Are there awkward chance meetings between Chihaya’s family and Taichi’s? How do celebrations go, when there’s a birthday or someone wins a title? Does the relationship between Taichi and his mother ever relax? (If Shinobu is in the picture, does Taichi’s mom Approve of a young lady of Kyoto far more than she does of Chihaya? I’ve always imagined Taichi’s mom somewhat approved of Chihaya’s drive and confidence, though she knew perfectly well her son was gone on that girl.) (even present-day, what does Chihaya’s family think of her friendships? Mother-daughter bonding would be a great theme.) The families helping their children move into a shared flat because-it’s-closer-to-uni and taking semi-awkward coffee (or not) together afterward.

If you wanted to include Shinobu because like me you so happened to ship Chihaya/Shinobu and Chihaya/Arata/Taichi, one scenario I’m pondering is Taichi and Shinobu having poisonous demonstrations of self-depreciative passive-aggressiveness against one another and I would eleventyone all over you.

AU-wise, I'd be interested in canon divergences, or maybe re-imagining canon as a low-magic setting like the one Shinobu thinks she's in.

ships: poly all the way. Chihaya/Arata/Taichi, Chihaya/Arata/Taichi+Chihaya/Shinobu, Kana/Sumire.
things that might be relevant: I read Kana as lesbian. I love Kana, I like the principal and Sudou a lot, but then again I can’t think of a character in this canon I would be unhappy to find on the page.

GATCHAMAN CROWDS - SPOILERS
Rui Ninomiya, Hajime Ichinose

I fell for this series this year, and I fell hard. Not only is it gorgeous, the treatment of its themes – heroism, communication, solidarity – took my breath away. I love the canon because it’s optimistic and good-natured and earnest without being too sweet or cute for my tastes; because there are hardships happening, and violence, and sadness. As for the characters, it’s safe to say I love them, especially the two teenaged idealists I requested. They’re definitely my break-out characters of 2014.

I adore Rui: it’s painfully easy to contemplate a continuity in which the first half-or-so of the series culminated in Rui being seduced by the dark side. Rui certainly is enough of an absolutist to fit the well-intentioned extremist profile, and secretive, controlling, and secluded enough. Rui’s first contact was with Berg Katze, and that would seem enough as well. Even the OP, by comparing/contrasting Rui and Hajime, seems to foreshadow a descent into darkness on Rui’s part. But Rui doesn’t. Even when Rui is narratively on the brink, they’re never tempted. And the people who reach for them are the Gatcha crowd. Rui is more than a little messed up, and their thirst for absolute, pure idealism is an expression of that.
And Hajime, well, Hajime is amazing. Cheerful girls determined to make the world better are always going to be on my short list of favorites. Hajime never stops, not even once, and she’s always full of ideas and she’s quick to adapt. And she cares about people as persons, not as an idea or an ideal.
(Not like Rui does, who removed themselves from the physical world and address people as number, not like Sugane does, who wants to save people but hasn’t thought about helping people help themselves. That’s one thing I love about the series, these different positions on the ways of helping people.)

Here’s a handful of things I’d be interested in: post-canon, Rui’s integration to the team, dealing with being a Gatchaman, dealing with school, dealing with real people. A down moment of Hajime’s, maybe with Berg Katze not helping. Rui and Hajime spending time together, discussing visions of the world, discussing cute stationery/clothes/decorations you can put on your GALAX. Does the fact that Berg Katze is within Hajime bother Rui during friendly/private moments? I suspect Berg could tell Hajime a lot of nasty things about Rui. Outsider PoV on them (schoolfriends; the Internet; politicians; the Nobel prize committee; a gossip rag and a serious magazine). Rui is used to being downright secretive, and Hajime is very open about secrets: does the fact that Hajime is likely to mention she’s dating Rui in an interview come up? Would it be an issue to them?

The canon’s pretty, pretty shiny art style is what first drew me in,and I love the sense of places you see (Rui’s big, empty screen cave, Hajime’s DIY nest…) if you wanted to evoke/describe stuff like that I’d love it.

I would be pretty into a magical girl AU (they could be rivals) or a magical realism AU (à la Uchouten Kazoku or Spirited Away – maybe they stumbled upon traditional folklore being real instead of sentais? maybe they stumble into it post-canon, when they’re on holidays whileRui is looking for inspiration for their next nature-based app?), or an AU where Berg Katze won (maybe due to not finding Rui) and there is a resistance/apocalyptic setting where Hajime and Rui and whoever you want are trying to fix things and there’s angst and heroics and a happy ending (subset of that might be a Danganronpa AU).

ships: Hajime/Rui might be my OTP. I also ship Sugane/Jou (or at least Sugane->Jou) and Utsutsu-crushing-on-Hajime. I would totally be amenable to Hajime/Rui/Sugane. If you don’t ship any of these, please don’t contradict these? I also wonder whether OD might have had a History with Berg Katze.
things that might be relevant: I realize that this is a polarizing topic, but I don’t see Rui as cis. “They” (or “she”) pronouns would be fantastic. If you do deal with outsider-PoV, your outsiders are free to use whichever pronoun feels more natural to their relationship with Rui. I’d rather it wasn’t the focus of the fic anyhow. I'm not really into fluff either, though fluff elements are welcome.

SUPER DANGAN RONPA 2 – SPOILERS
Nanami Chiaki, Nagito Komaeda, Hinata Hajime

OT3! (including the platonic version, if you can’t abide the thought of them kissing.) I’d want them to be in the process of earning their happiness: they all have a lot of things to make up for and come to terms with. Here is a list of ideas I’m interested in: post-canon, the navigating of the repercussions of the game (i.e. the successful murder/suicide/revelations about their past selves). Growing as persons while retaining their edges. Uploading a saved version of Nanami. Komaeda’s waking up and rehabilitation (or failure). Getting some memories back, or not. Nightmares. Building new bonds between them. Nanami and Komaeda having an Understanding about the murder/suicide and it driving Hinata mad. Hints that they’ve been hanging out together (referencing video games ftw).

I like that they’re messed-up. I love Nagito’s immeasurable devotion to Hope, to this thing he wants to serve. I love how far he went. I love Nanami’s cautious helpfulness and her keeping her true nature a secret. I love Hajime’s temper. (If your story features them stumbling into making-out or sex, I wouldn’t be opposed to some roughness or restrained violence or pent-up resentment.) I love their secrets and lies, and generally speaking I love the tone of canon, with its raw emotions and its post-apoc outside landscape.

Format-wise, feel free to play! Framing devices would work great here, mix of RL and VR is good, dating sim is good, memory shenanigans are good, travels-deep-inside-someone’s-mind are good. All I ask is that you please refrain from killing anyone for real – the game already covered that. I… can’t think of an alternate reality I’d be interested in, unless it’s a VR thing that’s used to further characterization/healing/whatevs, in which case do everything you want.

AU-wise: WHAT IF Komaeda had imprinted on Nanami, way back at the beginning of the game? How would things have gone? How would it have impacted Nanami’s relationships with the rest of the group? Would she have told Komaeda about her role, would he have guessed, would Hinata have been on their case like a really persistent headache (the one, in fact, they’re causing him)? (you have my formal blessing for killing people for real for this one. yes, including people who made it alive in the game.)

ships: I ship them so much. I would be perfectly happy if they didn’t kiss, when I say “ship”, I mean their relationship is intense and fraught and I love it. I also like Kuzuryuu/Peko/Koizumi in all variations, Naegi/Kirigiri, Ibuki-maybe-winning-Twogami-over. I do not ship Souda/Sonia or Souda/Sonia/Gundam, but I do like Sonia/Gundam.
issues with canon: mostly the fanservice and the poop jokes (I have nothing against Tsumiki except the way she’s turned into moe-fanservice because that was unnecessary). I’m not the biggest fan of Owari, Nidai, and Teruteru. I also think that the franchise has a tendency to cast female characters as victims even when they end up executed.

TALES OF XILLIA – SPOILERS for Jude’s & Milla’s stories
Milla Maxwell, Alvin

I ship them with Jude. I didn’t request Jude because I don’t want the focus to be on him, but just throwing it out there: my Xillia OT3 is Milla/Jude/Alvin. I am deeply into the gender-inversion of the game (Milla: “I will fulfill my mission, not matter what it takes.” Jude: “I’m right there with you.”)

I love the relationship between Milla and Alvin because they are so terrible to each other. And so good. Their relationship is fascinating: built on betrayal, distrust, power exchanges and attempted murder (their relationship is kink to me). Some of my favourite scenes with them are the scenes you only get on Milla’s side: the “getting frisky” scene in Xian Du where Milla shoves Alvin against a wall, Alvin sneaking up on Milla with his gun when she’s in bed, Alvin showing up to help Milla dispose of her childhood friends when it turns out they’re Exodus and they want to kill her (and nOT BREATHING A WORD OF IT TO ANYONE ELSE. Killers having killers’ back; liars keeping secrets). I also adore that Milla knew Alvin was working for Exodus and chose not to share, and the scene where Milla orders Alvin to save Elize (it’s a sign of trust, after all). They get each other on that level, and it does feel to me as though they’d decided to protect Jude from it. Alvin is from Elympios and as such takes rather lightly the whole “Lord of Spirits” aspect, except when he’s bitter about Milla’s moral myopia, but he falls apart when Milla dies. His dialogue to Jude on Jude’s story reveals he looked up to Milla just as much as anyone else in the group. But he never tells her that. (Maybe post-canon Muzet tells Milla Alvin fell so hard apart he made a deal with her? That’d be an interesting route to explore.)

Here are some ideas I’m interested in: the exception to my no-holiday-fic rule, make up a fictional holiday in these worlds – either during canon in Elympios with everyone being surprised, or on Rieze Maxia, or after canon (maybe it’s a new holiday). Maybe there’s one day/week when the boundary between the spirit world and the human world is weaker… It doesn’t need to be filled with action: for instance I’d love to read about Alvin and Milla shopping (maybe for a gift for Jude, or maybe because Alvin saw an outfit he’d really like to see on Milla, or for weapons) and having fraught discussions and Milla offering Alvin to take him to the spirit’s world to see his mother. Travel-deep-inside-the-mind (and/or the spirit world), preferably Jude’s or Alvin’s, maybe to see Alvin’s mom. Or outsider-PoV from Jude’s neighbours/coworkers about the weird people he’s bringing home and the strange relationship he’s got going on with these two in particular. During canon, I would like to see more interactions, to have more focus on the specific bond between these two than they were given in the game. Or maybe something about Milla’s love for books – maybe Alvin telling a story by the fireside during the game. Or bonding about families, especially during the late game. Or something goes different in canon! Either something with Gaius or something with Nachtigal or maybe Jude is kidnapped – they can be on the same side or not! Maybe Milla heard about Gaius trying to get the Lance of Kresnik destroyed through Agria and decided to join Gaius (for a while at least)! Maybe Alvin did kill Milla and that makes a difference when she comes back! Or, if you’d like to go the OT3 route, any of these post-canon + get-together. Or if you’d like to write scorching hot rough Milla/Alvin pr0n (especially if in the middle of admitting they both wouldn’t say no to spending the rest of their existences with Jude), I wouldn’t exactly turn it down.

Or the AU version of Milla dying where Jude is the one who dies and the Milla-and-Alvin version of falling apart promptly starts with violence and escalates to violent sex (and then Milla gets the idea of getting Jude back from the spirit world and they set out on a rescue journey).

(Another type of AU I’d be pretty into here would be something in the tone/setting of Baccano! or Durarara!!!: something that allows for magic and violence and deep, messed-up relationships between characters. …preferably without doing away with the female characters’ arcs and/or agencies, though. Both series have the noir atmosphere of Alvin-related stuff (Trigleph, Xian Du), the epic powerscale of Milla (Lord of Spirits), and the focus on character relationships of Tales games.)

ships: Milla/Jude/Alvin OT3 post-canon, Leia can come if she wants. I don’t see Milla and Alvin as very domestic – Milla has responsibilities and Alvin has issues. I think I might ship Milla/Gaius as a no-commitment thing too (at least I see Tension there) even though that feels horribly narcissistic on both their parts (I guess they wouldn’t turn Jude down either)(though Wingul would be :| about it, Wingul seeming to see Jude as a threat to his smart-guy status in a way Milla is clearly not)(or at least Alvin could joke about it)(I cackled at the “queen coat” only Milla can wear, what can I tell you). I love the Alvin/Presa we see in canon – generally speaking I love Presa. Generally speaking I love everyone except Ivar and Derrick Mathis.
things that might be relevant: if your characters somehow end up doing it, I favour Milla being an educated virgin due to books and bossy, Jude being an educated virgin due to medicine, and Alvin being rapidly in over his head (as Alvin does) rather than being in control (at least emotionally). On the not quite kink side but almost, one aspect I’m very fond of is that Jude and Alvin are into Milla giving orders – Jude explicitly acknowledges that she cuts right through doubts and lets him not worry, and as for Alvin, this is just my interpretation of the characters but I think it makes sense. Milla is certain in a way Alvin wishes he could be. Milla’s take-charge attitude is one of the reasons I love her very much, and if you wanted to include a bedroom scene I would prefer if that side of her still applied. It doesn’t have to be explicitly D/s, but D/s being referenced would make me pretty happy. Because of Teepo’s characterization, I read Elize as being pretty dang queer (though not admitting it yet), I would appreciate if you didn’t write anything that contradicts that. Elize is also my favourite character in ToX, or just about, if you care about that. I would also prefer Leia to find stuff to do on top of her current “have a family, be happy” plan and to grow beyond wanting to be Jude’s assistant. My vision of Milla is that she’s more knowledgeable at human customs than she lets on (she is well-read), whether it’s to give herself more time to think through a situation and come up with a plan or because sometimes it’s just fun.
a note about ToX 2: I haven’t played it, please don’t spoil me. Feel free to disregard everything about it. The one thing I do know about ToX2 and wouldn’t mind if you referenced is Leia’s chosen profession.

This entry was originally posted at http://runespoor.dreamwidth.org/137742.html. There are comments there.

[Naruto] The Liar

2014-01-01T03:02:44Z

Title: The Liar
Characters: Sasuke, Naruto, Sakura (NaruSakuSasu-ish, NaruSasu)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: "...And I love you so much, I'm gonna let you kill me...": a confrontation between Sasuke and his old team.
Notes: This is Sasuke narrating, so as usual it's an exercise in denial and selective obliviousness. An alternate confrontation before current canon.

The first time Naruto leaves himself wide open, Sasuke dismisses as typical moron, typical Naruto; then he suspects complacency – Naruto relying on the Kyuubi to heal his wounds. And that's—doesn't he remember Sasuke's fist spearing through his chest? Naruto's always been careless, but now he's devolved to suicidal. When it happens a third time, Naruto just lunges at him, arms thrown wide like he intends to tackle Sasuke or – or hug him-- and at the last moment Sasuke's wrist twists to bury the hilt of Kusanagi in Naruto's belly, cutting his breath off and leaving him wheezing, hands on his knees.

“Naruto!”

A clatter of boots rush by, slow compared to him, pink hair and red shirt, and Sakura – green eyes fixed on Naruto – runs her hand gloved with healing chakra down Naruto's chest. Sakura's not as dense as Naruto, surely she knows he could've stopped her at any time? Instead she holds herself in profile, her whole attention focused on Naruto. Her short hair leaves her neck bare, locks brushing against her nape. Sasuke could be on her in a blink and swing his blade down on her neck, and she'd never be able to block.

Last time he saw her she attempted to kill him – he almost killed her – and she still hasn't learnt the lesson she can't let her guard down around him.

“I'm okay, Sakura-chan,” Naruto tells her. His breathing is already back to normal. Sasuke could have hit harder.

“What did we say about running ahead?”

“...That I sent you a clone when I found him?”

“Small favours,” Sakura grouches.

They're children, the both of them. Children playing at devotion. Who look at himstunnedevery time he hurts them, like they can't accept he means it.

Slowly, Sasuke draws his blade. Orochimaru rambled a lot about sword-wielding being a form of art, that demanded respect, and grace. Load of bull, according to Sasuke. Weapons are weapons. But there's something momentous about facing his old team again, nostalgic. It lends gravitas to his arm as his blade slides out of its sheath with a steely whisper.

Naruto's breath hitches.

It seems foolishly optimistic to hope that Naruto's finally got it through his thick skull that Sasuke is dangerous.

“C'mon,” Sakura says softly, hooking her hand through Naruto's elbow, pulling them closer together. She didn't use to touch Naruto so much, Sasuke notes. It's because he's here; she takes comfort in Naruto's staunch presence.

Naruto smiles at her like he stills hurts, the moron, and his breath catches again when he turns to face Sasuke again, flush against Sakura's arm but without seeming to pay attention to her. Sasuke activates the Sharingan; he's certain Naruto should be over the hit Sasuke gave him by now. At least the two of them tense when they see the red eyes, but the Sharingan's scanning only confirms that Naruto shows no damage to explain why he's still affected. His posture (insultingly, stupidly open) betrays no sign of internal harm. He's perfectly fine, except for the tension contracting his muscles – the set of his jaw Sasuke imagines breathing against, the clench of his fists that make Sasuke want to get closer, get in his face to show Naruto can't stop him, the muscles under his jacket Sasuke know will shudder when Sasuke is against him, like that time down the cliff.

It's the same tension that runs through Sakura, the length of her thighs taut, ready to jump, her shoulders flexed with the promise one of those impressive chakra-fuelled punches, green eyes blazing, the incomprehensible curl at the corner of her lips that the Sharingan revealed.

That's him, he realizes suddenly. The catch in Naruto's breath; the shadow of a smile pulling at Sakura's lips. Those have no—no possible, no tangible cause. That's Sasuke.

They're still wearing him on their bodies, like Konoha's insignia or a bad habit.

That, that annoys him so much, he speaks first. That never happens; Sasuke's always the one who's silent through all their protestations, impassive and untouchable, except for when he wants. This time, he wants.

“Aren't you going to defend yourselves?” he asks, blank.

Naruto—smiles, deep and predatory. Sasuke's skin tingles all over – anticipation for Chidori, and the memory of Kyuubi's chakra at the Valley of the End, burning.

“We're not giving you the excuse,” Sakura says, in a clear voice.

It loosens something in his chest. Relief. The evidence falling into place, even to them, that they'll fight.

Still, he has to ask.

“What do you mean?”

Not taking his eyes off them, the no.1 unpredictable Leaf-nin and this girl who never made sense to him.

This time, she smiles, grim, and Naruto answers. They're distorted reflections of each other, turned toward him.

“See you on the other side, asshole.”

What are they--

Sasuke's eyes widen. Unbidden, his weight shifts.

They dash at him. Open, exposed, their head first and their arms thrown back like running from tree to tree.

Calling his bluff. Except he's not bluffing.

He jumps back.

Evading them.

He didn't decide to do that.

He strengthens his grip on Kusanagi, frowning – scowling? – this entire situation is ridiculous.

He's glaring when they stop next to him, one on each side.

“See?” Naruto says, so fucking smug it's a wonder it doesn't shatter three years and a half of unlearned habits and Sasuke doesn't sucker-punch him on the spot.

Putting a sword through Naruto's thorax would work, in a pinch. Maybe not for long, thanks to the Nine-Tails, but it'd be a welcome respite while it lasted.

“Why didn't you kill us just now, Sasuke-kun?” Sakura asks, in a coaxing tone. Bedside-manner. He remembers the warmth of her arms around him, the – the certainty of them, as though she was holding the world around him.

He rearranges his traits into smoothness, but he can still feel the frown, this time he knows it's a scowl.

“...My body moved on its own,” he says.

He knows before they're out of his mouth that it's the wrong words to change their mind. If he could—swallow them back--

For a moment, things still.

Sharingan slows the world down, gives the user impossible speed. Between a heartbeat and the next, Sasuke could do anything. Seconds pass that exist only to him. They belong to him. He could plunge his blade into Sakura's chest, he could bite Naruto's lips, and no-one here has the power to stop him.

He can be gone before Naruto's shouted laugh reaches him. Before Sakura's eyelashes sweep away the mist gathering in her eyes. Before they grin at him like things have gone right.

He can turn their victory into yet another loss.

He always has that power, over them.

Sasuke breathes.

This entry was originally posted at http://runespoor.dreamwidth.org/137501.html. There are comments there.

[Naruto] Mercy Kill

2013-12-07T21:07:37Z

Title: Mercy Kill
Characters: Sakura (gen-like-canon)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: the lies Sakura told herself.
Notes: for the Sakura-goes-to-kill-Sasuke arc. Oh, Sakura, bb.

Sakura puts poison on the kunai because it’s practical. It’s discreet, and as a weapon, it can be thrown. Range is good, against Sasuke. Poisoned kunai are unassuming: if he knocks it out of her hand, he might think her defenseless, and get close enough for her to punch him.

Punching him is just her back-up strategy here. She’s stronger than he is, but strength means nothing if she can’t land a hit. She’d have to take him out with one punch – bone and flesh crushed, organs torn from the inside, fragments pushing out of the skin maybe, blood splashing. Preferably targeting the vitals. One-armed, he’d retaliate and she’d be too close to dodge. He might be able to flee, even if she shattered his femur – and again, she’d leave herself wide open.

Meanwhile poisoned kunai are less flashy. He wouldn’t be able to pick up on her readying up her chakra. She’d just need to nick him for the attack to be effective. First it’d slow him down – disrupt his rhythm – weaken him. It won’t kill him at once, but she’ll be able to defeat him. Using instant deadly poison on something that can be used against you is stupid; Sakura was taught better than that.

She volunteers because he’s her teammate and her job. A medic always tries to save her patient, but sometimes saving someone is knowing when to stop fighting against the sickness devouring them, and Sakura was taught triage anyhow. And it’s time she did something about it.

And maybe – if she doesn’t want to see the gore of him on her hands. That doesn’t mean she’s squeamish. She’s not being sentimental. She’s just taking precautions so that she doesn’t accidentally end like her shishou, unable to heal for years and years because of her love’s blood on her hands. She’s thinking of the village. If she doesn’t want the last time she touches Sasuke to be to kill him, she’s allowed. So long as she does her job.

She’ll do it. Sasuke is so far gone he’s not even himself any more. That’s the rule, the best and the worst: you never abandon your comrades. She’s kind of following the rule. He’d be horrified at what he’s become. How long it’s been since he threw himself in front of Naruto to save him!...

Kakashi probably won’t want to see her anymore.

She can’t think about Naruto at all right now. She puts him on hold. Like she did with Sasuke for years.

Naruto shouldered so much of Sasuke’s weight. It’s her turn now. She’s a medic-nin, it’s her job to treat the disease. Contain the infection. Cut out the gangrene, bleed the festering wound. The past has poisoned the present, and Naruto-who-will-be-Hokage-someday thinks too much about the-traitor-Uchiha-Sasuke. Obsession as the poison of the mind.

The Academy has kunoichi classes about poison, and manipulation – how to slip words in someone's ears like you would drops in their drinks. That part didn't work, when she tried to bring Naruto around. Kyuubi's chakra makes Naruto resilient to poison; why wouldn't Sasuke's obsession do the same? Both the Kyuubi and Sasuke are more dangerous in the long run than poison or lies, and stronger.

She’ll cut Sasuke down, because she’s a medic. She’ll use a kunai because she can’t use a scalpel.

(She doesn’t think about how slow-acting poison will knock him out rather than kill him.)

This entry was originally posted at http://runespoor.dreamwidth.org/137087.html. There are comments there.

If your fics don't improve on a canon's issues, don't fucking raise your nose at it

2013-12-07T16:43:02Z

By which I mean: it's all well and good that you think the canon is problematic. Congrats on realizing it's sexist!

But here it is: you don't get to take the moral high ground if you don't do better in your fic.

For instance:
- don't give all the glamorous, dangerous jobs to male characters - including male OCs. If, for whatever reason, you don't think the existing female characters would be interested in these jobs (and that's already applying a double-standard, given that about half those male characters you chose didn't show any interest in it and would be terribly suited for the task), but you need OCs to pad the ranks, make some of these OCs female.
Do not do this and complain that all the girls in canon are healers, or on the sidelines, when you are doing. the. exact. same. thing.
- don't have your sympathetic male characters go "your woman turned you into a woman" and "excuse me ladies for disturbing the gossip session" and "you fight like a girl", especially to other males. Especially when canon showed that "fighting like a girl"= massive, non-comedic property damage!
Especially when canon never once had anyone say to anyone else this kind of thing!
- if you decide to include a one-night stand between your main character and a female sex worker. GIVE HER A NAME. Even if she does end up giving him back his money, and her phone number, because he was ~just that good. Remember that comment you were making about female characters in canon being "a pair of tits"? Takes a guess what you're doing.
- if your canon has a female character in a position of power and the only comments on her leadership in your fic are about the size of her boobs, several times, from sympathetic characters-- just don't. Don't do that and then pretend you're improving on canon.

In the same manner: I agree it's problematic that so many of the canon's female characters are involved in the same traditionally female domains. Do I ever agree. But the opposite "female characters need to kick butt otherwise they're clearly passive wimps" is JUST AS BAD!!!!

Yeah yeah, it's not you, it's the characters. If no-one, at no point, comments on this bullshit coming out of the mouth of your sympathetic characters, then the narrative is fucking well endorsing it.

IN CONCLUSION: YOUR OWN PREJUDICES. EXAMINE THEM IF YOU WANT TO BE PERTINENT.</rant>

This entry was originally posted at http://runespoor.dreamwidth.org/136731.html. There are comments there.

Dear Yuletide Writer

2013-10-14T17:43:33Z

Likes : interactions, introspection, world-building, politics, communication and miscommunication (banter, awkwardness, confrontations, body language, confessions, lies). Playing with the format and the narrative – meta and stories-within-stories. Conflicts of ethics – duty, honor, loyalty, love, honesty – and lies and devotion. Characters that are simultaneously self-righteous and hard on themselves – especially female characters. Angst and drama with a non-bleak ending (earn your happy ending – or steal it, I don’t care): I love “the adventure goes on” type of endings, where closure is achieved but the characters will still have to adapt. Outsider PoV. I also like AUs, especially change-the-setting AU that retell the story (though I’m not too fond of modern AUs), if that’s what you want to write. Theatricality is a huge, huge kink of mine, though I’m also fond of understated. A sense of place and atmosphere – waxing lyrical on cities is something I always fall for, even if it’s one short paragraph telling me how it smells, the color and shape of buildings and streets, what kind of people live there, how the city changes between day and night.

Dislikes : A/B/O AUs. I would prefer no PWP for Yuletide. Character bashing. Homophobia/sexism/racism/etc as a set-up for drama; I’m fine with the characters encountering any if it makes sense for canon (ex: while there may be sexism in Baten Kaitos, it’s certainly more subtle than “ladies oughtn’t do this or that”, issues with Laguz/Branded/Beorc integration is completely fine in Fire Emblem), but I don’t want it to be the backdrop for hurt/comfort – and especially not as a way to discredit a villainous OC on a personal level rather than a political one. Christmas fic, wedding fic, pregnancy fic. Domestic fluff. WWII AU. Bleak endings. Casual misogyny/homophobia/transphobia/etc (“don’t be such a girl”, “that’s so gay”, “haha, can’t believe you didn’t see she was a man!”) and slut-shaming of all types.

Tropes I like: groundhog day type fics. The idea that the land is alive, either in a Fisherking-type deal, or that places have their own spirits. Identity Issues. Others I'm forgetting about at the moment.
Ships: are a list of things I ship if you feel like including ships or mentions of relationship of other characters in the fic.

Baten Kaitos
Xelha

My raging idealist who is the most accomplished liar in the party. Tell me more about her doubts, about her thoughts during the game - what she hid from the party, what she knew about Kalas and hid as well, what she hid from Kalas - or tell me about the future she builds. Mid-game angstiness is also a good possibility.
If you favor interactions with another character, please do! I'd love to read a conversation between Lyude and Xelha about countries and duties and ieadls, for instance. Or to Melodia, about the weight of loneliness.
I'm not looking for something that's all introspective, but something about Xelha's contradictions (i.e.: her fantastic propensity for LIES) would be great. I ship Kalas/Xelha a lot.

I love the atmosphere of this game, that each place has a clear identity. I love the myths and the wings of the heart. I love the scenery porn and the creatures. I love the dungeons – the Library! The Garden in Mira!

During the game: How does she feel lying to her friends about her self, about Kalas? Do the others ever confront her after she reveals she’s the Queen of Wazn? Do they forgive her because “it’s not like you ever hid anything from us the way Kalas did”? CUE GUILT. How hard was it, for the queen of an icy land, to pass in places snow only fell in winter? Did she ever slip up in front of Kalas – other than her fateful reference to their first meeting? What are the new traditions of this new world, how does the world react to this new continent? I expect Wazn adapts easily (I have a long-standing headcanon that they’ve always done trade with the other islands, they simply hid where they were from – they’d have to, Wazn can’t be big on agriculture), but how do the others take to this hidden country and its Witch Queen with lies of spun ice? I did mention I really enjoy Xelha’s lies and secrecy, that exist parallel to her being a genuinely good person. Treaties with King Ladekahn or Queen Cordelia would be nice. Maybe she helps Kalas settle in Wazn as they navigate their brand-new relationship and they’re not sure it’s even a real relationship?

Feel free to make up bits of worldbuilding for this fic please, customs and celebrations and children’s stories and food, and sprinkle them over!

ships: Xelha/Kalas is OTP. Also Gibari/Anna/Reblys OT3, if you care for mentioning other ships.
things that may be relevant: Obviously Mizuti is genderqueer, but I also have a headcanon that Xelha is MtF.

Batgirl (Comics)
Brenda Miller

Preferably non52 future-fic (she was out of Bludhaven when it was destroyed, okay?). Interactions with members of the Batfam or other outsiders who have interactions with the Batfam would be awesome, either in or out of masks. Did she move to Gotham or elsewhere? I imagine the Bats are keeping an eye on her, she was a friend of Cass'. Does Cass come back? Does she become Cass' Alfred way in the future when Cass inherited the mantle of the Bat?

I don’t know what I could add to my original request. I’m not interested in tragedy here. I like the idea of Brenda slowly becoming aware of who the people coming through her coffeeshop are, and pretending to stay unaware – plausible deniability being everything. I also like the idea of her and Stephanie Brown’s Nick Gage hanging while their Batgirls/not-girlfriends do heroics. Basically Brenda interacting with the Batfam or their friends and allies would fill me with joy. I like the creepy, loving surveillance the Batfamily puts over the people they like – it’s for security reasons! So maybe Brenda realizing she’s being stalked by costumed people could happen. If you want to send her to another DC city and interact with other heroes, I’m very fond of the Arrow Family.

I like the mix of humor and wince-what-distasters accompanies the Batfamily. It also strikes me that this is the ideal way to write a coffeeshop not!AU. Maybe Cass (or whoever you want) asks Brenda for a job, and suddenly Brenda finds herself in what she realizes are secret identity shenanigans.

ships: I have no Brenda ships, but your heart leads you to Brenda/Cass I’d be completely okay with that! I have vast amounts of ships in the DCU – Steph/Cass, Babs/Dick, Bruce/Jason are OTP, Cass/Steph/Tim, Babs/Dick/Bruce are OT3, Bruce/Dick, Everyone Has A Crush On Dick, Everyone Wants Bruce, Babs Tops Always, The Good OT6 Cass/Steph/Tim/Kon/Cassie/Rose, Bruce/Selina, Robinosexuality Is A Thing.
things that may be relevant: this is not the first time I have requested Brenda fic, in case looking at previous requests may help you. If you include Cass, acknowledging her disability is important – or even if you just mention her, Brenda was very aware of Cass’ illiteracy. (If it somehow comes up, Bruce’s mom was jewish and they once believed Jason was Shiva’s son, so he’s clearly mixed-race. I don’t know how it would unless your Brenda is jewish and they discuss it or Jason cameos in your fic, but they’re things I like so there you are.) Also I tend to headcanon Jason as genderqueer, and sometimes Cass as well.

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn
Micaiah

Give me the future she builds, after the war she's carved out. Give me how her people sees her, and her friends, and the other monarchs. Give me her remorses, the nightmares that haunt her. Give me the proud face she shows others. Give me her relationship with her sister, with those she almost destroyed and who almost destroyed her, with the herons. Give me Sothe, or Pelleas, or Sanaki, Tibarn, Elincia, Soren, Jill, Ike, Naesala. Give me Micaiah from the outside and Micaiah from the inside.
Or, you know, Part III angst. That's always good. I love reading about Micaiah's ethics, and the twisting thereof.
(I ship Micaiah/Sothe and Micaiah/Sothe/Pelleas and I would ship her with Tibarn or Naesala or Reyson or Leanne because bird tribes, but for politics and sex and friendship and not love.)

As I said, I’m most interested in future fic. How far in the future is up to you – the reconstruction fic is good. So is the fic 200 years in the future where new heroes have to convince the Mad Queen of Daein to lend them her help and claim the throne she’s abandoned back (or the one where they have to defeat her) – what are the accounts of the Ashnard and Ashera war by this time. I’d love to see a fic that was both about the myth she’s become and the woman she is. A fic where she deals with what she’s done and what she still has to do with Daein would be great. Maybe a fic where she comes out as Branded to her people – either because she has no choice or because she wants to change Daein’s attitude toward Laguz and Branded. Maybe a fic about the legacy of the war (and her legacy); do they start defining war crimes on Tellius? If you wrote a Micaiah/Pelleas/Sothe get-together fic in the aftermath of the war, with politics and visits between royals and social tensions, I’d love you (the one where they realize Pelleas’ time is running out and they wrestle the spirit for Pelleas’ soul would be awesome). Post-canon fic focused on her relationships with any of Naesala, Elincia, Sanaki, Tibarn, Reyson, Soren, Ike, Jill (especially if Jill betrayed Daein), or conversations with the same, would be really cool.

I could also get behind Part III Micaiah – Part III is what I love best about the game, the guilt, the drama, the tension, Sothe rightfully pointing out they’ve become what they hated and Micaiah finding Daein’s safety a fair exchange for her soul, the hopelessness of their fights, Jill and Zihark’s doubts or betrayal and Edward’s utter trust - or just pre-canon Micaiah leading her Resistance. Micaiah has parallels and contrasts with many other characters – Sanaki, Elincia, Ike, Soren, Naesala mostly; Sanaki for their family links, Begnion’s betrayal of Sanaki vs Daein’s devotion to Micaiah, Sanaki’s fear that Micaiah will want Begnion’s throne despite the fact that Sanaki is more experienced; Ike for charismatically leading a lost royal to reconquer their land; Elincia for the contrast between what they do with their power (Elincia’s sacrifice of Lucia vs the cliff scene with Tibarn and Sothe); Soren for their blood and love and devotion despite their apparently contradictory ethics; Naesala for their blood pact and their remarkably similar attitude toward what must be done to protect their countries.

ships: Micaiah/Sothe, Micaiah/Pelleas/Sothe, but I also ship them open enough that she could totally have a flirtation with [insert non-Rafiel bird royal of your choice here, especially Naesala] while Sothe is Displeased and Pelleas is Woobie. Micaiah/Jarod is my badwrong pairing of hateporn in this canon. I don’t ship f/f where Micaiah is concerned, though I’d have nothing against the Micaiah/Leanne subset of the Bird Tribe Orgy. Ike/Soren, the Crimean Court Is a Hotbed of Romantic Intrigue (Elincia/Lucia/Bastian/Geoffrey in various combinations), Bird Tribe Orgy (Tibarn/Reyson/Naesala/Leanne with Rafiel standing chastely to the side and Nailah protecting his virtue), Tibarn Hits On Herons and Strong Women.
things that may be relevant to stalking purposes: I’ve written cracky AUs of this game and I produced one Micaiah fanmix. Basically if you want to swap the setting, it’s all good so long as it displays Micaiah’s very intense set of ethics and devotion. As long as it’s not anything to do with WWII. For glaring reasons. Or colonialism/imperialism unless you’re being extra-careful in your handling of the subject matter. Again, for obvious reasons.

Malaussene Saga – Daniel Pennac

Anything about Jeremy. His relationship with Therese (which I ADORE!) or a nice scene with Julie or a family friend! Five things Jeremy wrote, from the first essay in elementary school that made the teacher afraid of how he was being raised to his diary entries to his second novel! The one time Jeremy thought he was starring in a YA mystery book! Jeremy's crush on a cute boy or nice girl in his class! Outsider PoV on Jeremy - at school or elsewhere! jeremy looking for mentorship! Jeremy being confrontational!

I adore Jeremy to tiny bits. I love him because he’s the biggest mouth in a family that’s not lacking them, because he’s so very earnest, because he writes, because he’s emotional, and because he’s one half of the Therese-and-Jeremy show. I adore the Malaussene saga because it’s hilarious and gripping and focused on family relationships and friendships and social issues and because it plays with words and with how the story is told.

Here are a few ideas of what I’d like to read with Jeremy: Jeremy looking for mentorship from someone who is part of the family, but who isn’t a sibling, someone like Julie or Loussa. “5 things Jeremy wrote”, from childhood to however old he is now – school essay, note supposedly from their Mom to let le Petit out at 3 one day, love letter, novel drafts from when he was 8 and wanted to be a superhero? Jeremy being fiercely protective of his family – the time his school called Benjamin because he’d fought with another kid and Jeremy says it was because the other kid had said something about Mom, and Benjamin telling him he should fight back with words – and growing to regret that piece of advice over the years… Outsider PoV on Jeremy, either at school, in the street, from a cop friend of the family (or a new cop who doesn’t know yet about the Malaussène family). The one where it's Jeremy's turn to be a suspect to a murder. Jeremy thinking about what he’d like to do with his life. Jeremy in love and freaking out because it’s his turn to have a kid, he knows it’s his turn, first Louna then Clara then Benjamin then Therese, so now it’s his turn (because if it’s not his turn then it’s le Petit and the kid still blushes whenever Clara solemnly puts condoms in his pocket before he goes out) – bonus points if Jeremy is currently in a relationship where pregnancy risks are a non-issue. Or in no relationship at all, really. Jeremy and Therese, over the years, always and forever (in my view, they bicker so much, that means they’re close). The Hogwarts AU of the Malaussene family – I’m guessing Mom is a witch. The Shadowrun AU where he and Therese are shadowrunners (as is Julie!) to poor-corporate-sap!Benjamin's desperate pride and desperate worry and there are Malaussene hijinks in a cyberpunk world.

things that may be relevant: if you chose to make Jeremy queer I would be delighted (fannish reminder here that Hakim is bisexual)! Also fannish reminder that the Malaussene are a bit more mixed than the Movie depicts (what with Dr Bertrand’s one racist tirade that they’re half Arab) and I always read them as somewhat Jewish. I am unfamiliar with Jerome Charyn’s works though I totally buy that le Petit is Isaac Sidel’s son.
A NOTE ON THE MOVIE: please keep it out of the fic.

Oban Star-Racers

I would like 1)interactions 2)that are full of the character's emotions 3)with a dash of worldbuilding.
One thing I love about the canon is how fraught every discussion is. Intreactions are never gratuitous and always touch more than one level: if Don makes a gesture oward Molly, it's good because he's starting to trust her, but it's bad because he's failing Eva. If Molly calls Jordan partner, he'll wish she also called him something more.
Also the worldbuilding and scenery porn is gorgeous and I love the sense of places.
Team Earth shenanigans? Molly/Jordan/Aikka rom-com? The scars left in the relationship between Molly and her father? Mentoring between Rick and Molly, the fraught relationship between Don and Rick? The weight of duty, the different ways words such as loyalty and honor are interpreted, and the strain resulting from it? Don and Molly absolutely get in touch with Rick when they come back down - how does that happen?
During the series = great. After the series, when things are back to the new normal and people are getting used to them again = also great.

Mid-canon: Molly (or someone else) stewing over their issues and exploring Arouas or Oban. Interactions with locals. Jordan and Aikka accidentally rivalkissing and boom OT3.

Have you seen Spirited Away? If you want to write future fic, I have this idea where I tend to see Molly/Eva as I do Chihiro. I can’t abide the thought that she never goes back to the stars. I like the idea of Molly becoming a pilot or a racer or something and participating in a race, and seeing an incarnate Jordan again (come on, he’s the Avatar). Or her attending an intergalactic race with a friend, and meeting someone from the race.
AU ideas: The one where the Krogs won, Don works with them, and Molly joins the Resistance – bonus points if Aikka is a prince in exile looking for help on Earth to save his own planet. Cyberpunk, daemon AUs.

ships: Don/Rick is OTP, Molly/Jordan, Molly/Jordan/Aikka. Ning and Skun are also the least subtextual lesbians in a French cartoon.
things that may be relevant: my previous Oban requests.

The Girl that’s never been (song)

How do they get by?
I ship Alice and Cheshire and I want to know what happens after the song. Or what Cheshire was up to before. Did he look for her? How literally are we to take his answer anyway? Is there another story for them to jump into - or climb out of?
And yes, their relationship. I want that. That questioning, down-the-rabbit-hole, speaking-in-riddles-only-they-can-understand, halfway-out-of-this-world relationship. Like a threat that is also a comfort. Like they only remember they're alive because the other is like the prick of a memory against their skin.
Don't hesitate to play with meta and narratives, I eat that sort of things right up. However, keep in mind that my knowledge of Lewis Carroll's works is tragically lacking.

Things I’m not interested in reading about: drugs, the original canon, the short story the song is based on. I realize this makes me the worst. I’m not asking you to pretend the drugs in the song never happened – just don’t focus on that – or there’s no such thing as the Lewis Carroll canon – but I won’t enjoy guessing at references I don’t know, my knowledge stops pretty much with Disney’s Alice in Wonderland. References to are fine! Just err on the side of the cliché – the Rabbit, the Hatter, the Queen and the Duchess whose baby was a pig are all fine, but don’t delve in the specifics of the text itself. The raven and the desk is about the extent of my knowledge. As for the short story, I’d rather you’d ignore it entirely.

ship: YES. Or if you don’t ship them, I’m still very fond of the tension and ambiguity between them.

This entry was originally posted at http://runespoor.dreamwidth.org/136550.html. There are comments there.

Cosplay Questions (title picked mostly for the alliterative factor)

2013-03-06T17:45:10Z

if one were to cosplay a villain, what character would you recommend?

Criteria include:
- easy/cheap realization of costume (I don't have a sewing machine),
- needs to look kinda like me (short, curvy, white-skinned woman with longish wavish dark hair),
- female,
- recognizable costume,
- comfortable costume (no fanservicey outfit showing a lot of skin or bare midriffs; I'm not comfortable in pants),
- cool character I love from a canon I know,
- anti-villain?
- not defined through being in love with her boss or the narrative making correlations between her being a villain and her sexuality (ie no Poison Ivy)

My final choice should fit as many of these criteria as possible, but the only real deal-breaker is how easy+cheap to put together it would be, given it's for the 23th. Also wings are a no-no, so while I'd be okay with cheating on some hair length/color, I'll have to pass on pink-haired villains.

My ideas so far, and why I'm not convinced by any:
- Vriska (normal: ...it's not very fun+jeans+robo-arm; god-tier: fucking wings on top of horns)
- Mindfang (coat. so. much. sewing.)
- Azula (wears pants and I would like ridiculous. also I'm not enamored with her the way I am with Vriska)
- Marianne from Code Geass (not iconic, fucking orange dress)
- Oktavia von Seckendorff from PMMM (not iconic, also wtf costume, also we all know that's not the version of the character I really really love)
- Anthy from Utena (I'm white-skinned. Also, chubby, ie not fitting the Utena stylization.)
- Kendappa from RG Veda (dat hair. her outfit is very white. also her musical instrument.)
- Maleficent (so many kilometers of hemlines. Also, the neckline wouldn't fit me at all; I prefer more cleavage)

On the "fuck this gender criteria I'll go with portraying a male bad guy even though that means I'm failing at representing cool female characters and also pants and also I'll look nothing like how I imagine the character hahahahahasob"
- Jason Todd (is not even someone I'd be okay with labelling a villain)
- Lelouch from Code Geass (yeah at that stage I had pretty much given up on anything resembling any of the criteria above beyond "well I like them")

So. Ideas?

This entry was originally posted at http://runespoor.dreamwidth.org/136307.html. There are comments there.

Dear Rarewomen Author

2013-03-04T09:26:06Z

Hello, dear author. I’m sorry I didn’t put my letter earlier. I apologize deeply for the trouble I caused you. Thank you for sticking with me.

I organized my letter in alphabetical order to show I have no preference on which request is filled: I’m very excited about all of them.

Preliminary notes: I like disasters. All the characters in this letter are here because they have at least an aspect of that - because they did something, because they failed to do something, because they're rushing toward tragedy, because their life sucks, because they're dooooooomed, because they're glorious. Shooting stars. Conversely, I babble a lot about disasters and tragedies, but that doesn't mean you need to write something sad. The doom is what attracted me in the canon; in the fanon, you're free to focus on the glory, the flamboyance, the persistence - and yeah, the flaws - of all of them. See: hopeful endings are one of my favourite things.

I like: hopeful/the adventure goes on endings, bittersweet endings, strong friendships, a sense of setting and atmosphere, worldbuilding and riffing on worldbuilding, character details, conflicting loyalties (love vs duty vs ideals etc), tragic heroines, pathetic heroines, anti-heroines, self-destructive characters, beautiful and tragic trainwrecks, magical girls, history, stories about stories, the power of love/friendship/fuck you, theatrics, being a hero in a canon far more cynical, betrayal and deeply personal costs, deception and self-deception, character studies that are also about how the character interacts with the world, linear or twisty storytelling, alternate perspective on canon scenes, 5-things, lots of feels. I also like fusion AUs (what would the characters of X be like in the world of Madoka Magica/Homestuck/Evangelion). And more.

I dislike: fluff, holidays fic, wedding/marriage fic, rape as drama (it seems to hit my “how original” button these days), I have no interest in smut for this ficathon, modern-world AUs that ignore the ~terrible tragedies~ of canon, bleakness (as opposed to drama), routine, crossovers, any kind of slave- or alpha/beta/omega AU.

1. Baten Kaitos
characters: Xelha, Melodia
Xelha is my favourite character in the game. I love that she’s the optimistic, idealistic, heroic leader… and also secretive and duty-bound. She spends the entire game hiding stuff from her friends; she’s heavily hinted to have known Kalas was the traitor before it was revealed to everyone; she’s the one who’s lucid and ego-less enough to voice that “everyone lives with contradictions of some sort or another… The desire to be sincere and loyal to others and the urge to drop everything, lie back and care about nothing… We want to be free, but also want to stay secure… We want to protect someone dear to us, but at the same time, we simply want to abandon them… We want to live on, but also want to give up and die…” Every character recognizes part of themselves in it. What does that mean for her, who’s been the impetus leading the fight against Malpercio, who also has her duty as the Last Queen of Wazn awaiting for her, who has fallen in love with the one who has betrayed them? She is always a hero, but she’s aware of the price. I would like to see something exploring the different aspects of her life, maybe a scene from the game period where she has to lead the party, and she loves these people, but where she also has a lot going on in her mind about her country. She didn’t apologize very much about hiding who she was from them; why is that? Or maybe a scene in Wazn after she told the party who she is, or with the other monarchs. Or even something after the game entirely, when she no longer has the weight of the Ocean on her shoulders. Basically anything about Xelha focusing on what I feel are the three main aspects of her character would delight me: her being a hero and a leader, her constant lying, and her duty.

As for Melodia, I’m intrigued by the possibilities the canon hints at. I’d like something from her backstory: how did she meet Kalas and how did she sell him on the plan? How did she become a close friend to the Emperor? What were the political consequences of that friendship for the Duke and for Mira? I’d also be interested to see where the post-game is taking her. How does she get better? How does she live? (if you want to write the scenario where Trill decides to be the better person for Kalas’ sake/the Duke still wants his grand-daughter to be happy and thus provides her with pastries, and a fragile relationship is formed and they fall in love, I would not be displeased. Queer!Trill is my headcanon.) Or a story set during the game – specifically during or after the time Kalas is working openly for her. What does she feel? What does she think?

Incidentally, I would not be interested in the story where Xelha “fixes” Melodia, platonically or otherwise, but a story where they’re both unsure as with how to proceed with their post-game life would be much more my thing.

Baten Kaitos is also a gorgeous game with gorgeous graphics, I love that each island has its aesthetics, fashion, etc. It gives the world a very rich, sensual atmosphere, with its own quirks, and if your fic included some of that it would be lovely. I was also very impressed with the idea of "wings of the heart", and basically Baten Kaitos is like worldbuilding catnip to me, so if any place/feel has ever stricken your fancy, go for it!

If you’d like to invite any other character over for the fic, please feel free! (Either Savyna and/or Lyude would entirely have their place on a fic about duty; I’m slightly less keen on Gibari, but it doesn’t mean I dislike him.)

ships and headcanons: Kalas/Xelha, Mizuti/Fee, Gibari/Anna/Reblys, Melodia/Trill. I see Mizuti as genderqueer, which is why I didn’t nominate them for this exchange. I also see Trill as definitely queer (more so than my general “everyone is bi” policy). I have the headcanon that Xelha is mtf, but that's just background stuff for me: I don't see that as an issue for her, I just... don't see her as cis.
AUs: no, thank you. Though if you are familiar with the game and would like to recast any of the other canons within this universe, I would read the hell out of it.
I haven't played Origins yet and would like to remain unspoiled.

2. Darker than BLACK
characters: Suou Pavlichenko, Kashiwagi Mai
Suou is the poster child for “it sucks to be a Magical Girl”. But then she’s also the poster child for “totally a Robin”. I’d be interested in more of her adventures, possibly in the post-series canon AU. If she’s figured out something is missing in her life, she might be looking for what’s missing – cue spandex or magical girl powers. Or astronomy studies, that’d be okay too. I love her because she’s got ideals and life kicks her all over the place and she hits the ground running a lot and she’s got a temper and I love her backstory and her relationship with Hei and her relationship with July and urgh she’s my baby. I’d also love an AU where she (and Hei and/or July?) stick around in the post-apoc world and life kicks her around some more and she kicks back because Suou always kicks back. Maybe with Kirihara? Or something mid-canon – Hei is the worst Batman ever, Mao is not what the brochure says a mascot is like, and the tattered remains of what used to be Suou’s life are flapping in the wind.

I got hung on Mai when I watched her two-parter ep, and I choose to believe she’s alive and she has a future after the debacle with the Syndicate. What is it? (Cameos welcome.) Alternatively, I would also take the friendship(?) of Suou and Mai in the post-series canon AU. Or the AU where Mai was Hei’s Robin before Suou (either because the ending of her two-parter went differently either because they met and fled together during the finale of the first series.) Or the X-Men fusion where Mai gets into the school.

Basically the theme for these requests is “young teenage girls get kicked in the face by unexpected supernatural powers”. If you manage to stick in a mention of the evils of tobacco I’ll love you forever. All cameos welcome. If you resurrect April I’ll love you forever x2. Alternate futures about either/or/both Suou and Mai kicking asses and having issues would also be good.

ships and headcanons: I kind of absolutely ship Suou with Hei in the “not till she’s fifteen” way I tend to adopt for most of my Batman/Robin shipping, but I would absolutely understand if you want nothing to do with it. In which case all I ask is that you please don’t erase or whitewash her attraction to him (i.e. no “she couldn’t imagine how she could ever etc, she’d truly been an immature little girl, now she only saw him as an older brother” narrative) – just don’t say anything and go gen.
Hei turning the heads of everyone he meets is also deeply hilarious to me.
AUs: as my letter shows, yes! Feel free to play with the post-canon high school AU so long as it takes a turn for the weirder. Magical girl, cyberpunk, sci-fi, noir à la Baccano or Evangelion would all be great.

3. RG Veda
characters: Kendappa, Soma
Kendappa is flawless. I love how she manages to… maybe compartmentalize isn’t the best word. I love that her feelings are true: she doesn’t deny that she’s deeply in love with Soma, or that Karura is her best friend. She will do what she can to help them, which is “nothing to hinder their goal”. But she’s also decided that her feelings do not matter as much to her as strength, and she devotes her life that ideal. I love that she seems to not second-guess herself even a little on that subject: she’s thought about it, she’s made her choice, she’s sticking to it.
tl;dr: she’s a disaster so of course my reaction is “oh no she’s perfect”.

Soma is flawless in the not-actually-a-disaster sense of the word. (though if you’re of the opinion that Soma is kind of a slight disaster herself, please show me!)

Stories I would be interested to read would be the courtship of Soma and Kendappa, Kendappa slowly coming to realize that yeah, one day she’ll kill her lover, Soma on the road with the other Stars thinking back of Kendappa… Something I’d really like would be a view on Kendappa and Taishaku-ten’s friendship; I imagine a lot of quietly painful bonding over their doomed love affairs, and the parallels and differences in their respective stories. Other stories of Kendappa at Taishaku-ten’s court would also be lovely. Or a story about Kendappa and Soma’s reincarnations in an AU of your choice would be great.

I know nothing about music, but again the atmosphere of the manga stuck with me, so worldbuilding as well as evocation of the senses (CLAMP's attention to fashion and hair drives me to wordlessness) and/or symbolism, even as hints in the narrative, would be great.

ships and headcanons: Kendappa/Soma OTP. Doomed tragic lesbians with deception and betrayal and love. This is basically everything I ever wanted in an OTP. Please don’t give them a happy ending, unless you’re writing about a reincarnation AU where they come this close to absolute disaster before it turns out that Soma threw herself to the side/Kendappa couldn’t go through with it again etc, so it ends hopefully, but they’re still the ship of sudden yet inevitable betrayal. I see Kendappa+Taishaku-ten as platonic.
AUs: Yes. I don’t care for TRC, but other genre settings might be fun (I still like Evangelion, cyberpunk, magical girls, Baccano)

4. Tokyo Babylon
characters: any (Sumeragi Hokuto, Lady Sumeragi)
Hokuto is flawless with none of the “what are you on” angle of the previous request. Hokuto is Best Person. Hokuto dates gaijin girls after saving them from the cops who were asking for their ID. Hokuto is afraid of nothing and is stylish as hell and makes an angry, heroic last stand into a victory condition for her little brother’s life and happiness. (Not her fault Seishirou is even more terrible on recognizing it than she’d planned on.) Hokuto cares about politeness, not so much about traditions.

Lady Sumeragi is the head of the Sumeragi family and anything about how she relates to either or both of her grand-children would be great. A Day In The Life of Lady Sumeragi would be interesting, I think, especially if it includes a reflection on how society has changed since she was a young onmyonji and how it hasn’t, what she expects from each of her grand-children versus what they think she expects, handling the household and the contacts with the government, not to mention her own contacts with spirits and/or research on the Sakurazukamori…

Story seeds: the atmosphere of Tokyo Babylon was a big plus when I read it, so social issues, a sense of place, and Japanese (urban) myths are always good themes. I admit to being a complete Hokuto fangirl and more than a little in love with the possibility of an AU that doesn’t kill her. (Did Seishirou kill Subaru instead so now she’s the Sumeragi despite only mediocre gifts? A friend once pitched me a story about how Seishirou had kidnapped one of the twins back then to make them into his successor – that sounds cool to me too.) If these make you wrinkle your nose, another Day In the Life of Sumeragi Hokuto = still all of the win. Something about both Hokuto and Lady Sumeragi would also be great. Not to mention the obligatory Hokuto-is-a-Magical-Girl AU (or the one where Subaru is an actual Magical Boy - because let’s face it, his life sucks enough for it). General Hokuto+Seishirou(+Subaru) is never a bad thing. Post-Hokuto’s death would be very cool (argh my heart).

ships and headcanons: Hokuto/unnamed gaijin girl. I… don’t like Hokuto/Kakyo.
AUs: sure!

runespoor7 @ 2013-01-09T22:02:00

2013-01-09T21:13:00Z

And then I ruined the evening of an anti-gay marriage militant by refusing to take her flier and engaging her in a 30-minutes long argument. No minds were changed, but increasingly desperate glances were thrown at the other passer-bys as they walked by without her being to hand them her fliers. I also feel about myself for arguing back this time. I'm gonna call this a win.

I also went to see a nice movie.

This was not a bad evening.

PS working on the magical girl meme.

This entry was originally posted at http://runespoor.dreamwidth.org/136081.html. There are comments there.

[Meme] Magical Girl AU

2013-01-08T10:37:52Z

Give me a character (and a more detailed prompt, if you like) and I'll write them in a ~generic magical girl universe.

This entry was originally posted at http://runespoor.dreamwidth.org/135874.html. There are comments there.

Life, the not-update

2013-01-07T11:40:49Z

Can this latest week-end be the end in this depressing trend of "lolz ur gonna be sick now"?

Because this is taking the "I'm mildly feverish basically one-fourth of winter" way too literally for my taste on all accounts, except on the "mildly".

Silver lining: I now have a prescription to have my ribcage x-rayed, which is yay, as it might explain why it's decided to hurt extra-hard recently.

Silver lining the second: I might be on the way of having my own workable, real, actual-fact-touchable security card! *touching wood* This is a very exciting prospect for me, guys, as I should have got it some 8 years ago, but I seem to have slipped through the cracks of the system - making it a huge pain in the buttocks to get reimbursed after I go see a doctor, in turn explaining why I almost never go see a doctor.

Silver lining the third: actually, not linked to the sickness thing, but rl-hilarious-to-me all the same. I seem to have terrified my not-landlords into taking *gasp* action regarding my hot water tank issues. There is some extremely bad blood between me and these guys, mostly because they're a)incompetent and b)thieves, so the sound you're hearing? is me, snickering as they fall over themselves to try and please the actual landlord. And hopefully that means that soon I can take away the jar under the leaks in the water tank. Because it'll be replaced. On their goddamn money.

This entry was originally posted at http://runespoor.dreamwidth.org/135541.html. There are comments there.

Animes I am watching

2012-11-28T11:55:39Z

I have watched Mawaru Penguindrum and I'm feeling pretty bad about my shipping choices.

#going to hell

I'm glad I stuck around for the second half, though.

eta: there are spoilerz in the comments.

This entry was originally posted at http://runespoor.dreamwidth.org/135055.html. There are comments there.

[DC] felt through a phone line

2012-11-21T15:26:21Z

Title: felt through a phone line
Characters: Babs, Kate
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The best part about being a Gotham hero is mixing business and pleasure. (aka: Barbara and Kate are gorgeous HBICs that have UST-charged, snarky comlink-to-phone convos.)
Notes: for the 2012 rarewomen exchange; I forgot to crosspost this on my actual journal.

I.

Barbara was considerate enough that she didn’t send the courier before morning stretched into lunchtime. She watched, through the cam she’d put in front of Kate Kane’s door, as Kate emerged, her hair pulled into a hasty ponytail, listened to the courier in sleepy confusion, and signed the receipt.

She didn’t open the long, thin box on her doorstep; you learned that lesson after you’d opened your first sex toy joke gift in front of your less worldly roommates. It was okay with Barbara, she just needed to switch cameras.

The second view-point was less comfortable, only framing half of Kate’s kitchen and sink. The angle included the better part of her kitchen table, though, so all in all it was still a pretty decent shot.

It would’ve been immeasurably more practical if she’d had cameras inside Kate’s home, but the thing with Helena way back when taught Barbara to be careful with new allies and potential assets and wait before snaring them in her web of constant surveillance and/or manipulations. (This was the honest answer, which only Bruce, Tim and Cass were entitled to know, if only because none of them asked. Everyone else would get the breezy reason that she was trying to cut back, on the grounds that they might judge it non-creepy.)

In this case, mediocre settings paid. In the corner of the screen, the rectangular box was flipped open, and the mike laid inside picked up the sound of tissue paper rustling. More rustling, then Kate spoke up.

“Well, if it isn’t more flowers from Oracle.” Her tone was dry, but not unamused.

Respecting her interlocutor’s sleeping pattern had been a good decision.

“Hello, Kate,” she replied. The distortion level she used when addressing Batwoman was less high than her usual, for reasons Barbara didn’t care to dwell on but which mostly revolved around needing new capes in Gotham to trust her, as long as the cost wasn’t her actual identity. That it also made flirting a good deal less one-sided was a pleasant side benefit.

“I see your flower de choix is the red rose once again. Lack of imagination, or attempted seduction?”

Babs smiled. She wished she could gave other viewpoints on Kate’s apartment; the earring mike carried Kate’s voice over perfectly - perfectly enough that if Babs put on her own headset, it would be as though Kate was speaking directly against her ear - but Babs had to tune down its quality regarding surrounding noises, else her transmissions with her agents would be forever garbled with noise pollution. She only heard a tap being turned, then closed again; probably water for the rose.

Babs amused herself with picturing the scene. Was Kate more likely to choose an ordinary vase or a stem vase? Did she even have any at hand, or would she recuperate an empty bottle of vodka? Her information regarding Batwoman’s decorating tastes was sorely remiss.

“I won’t say anything regarding the latter, but red roses are simply my signature when I contact potential agents.”

“Is that what I am?”

“Well. Ally,” Barbara offered. Give and take; to and fro. Batwoman hadn’t taken Oracle up on her original offer to join the Birds of Prey, but neither had she thrown her first comlink earring and the complimentary bouquet into the trash.

“Is that all the reason for the flower? I thought we’d agreed on that. Not that the new earring isn’t snazzy,” she said, with a tink that reverberated into rasping, probably flicking the pendant.

Babs grimaced out of habit, but the hissing was lesser than it used to be. The improvement was long overdue, really; maybe it was a blessing in disguise that the Calculator’s intervention forced her to do something about it.

“I’ve had a... leak in security recently. Someone broke into our frequency, changing equipment was necessary.”

“Sounds serious,” Kate commented. “Was it local?”

“Not exactly.”

“Huh. Well, don’t keep me hanging if something like that happens again.” Kate couldn’t have said Oracle was dismissed more clearly if she’d actually spoken the word.

“I might. If you wore the earring.”

“Touché.” On the other side, Kate’s voice carried a smile again.

II.

The smoke swelled in thick, acrid puffs, clouding Kate’s sight.

Black ribbons danced in the corner of her vision, a tangling swarm that she tried to ignore as she groped, inch after soot-blackened inch, toward an escape. The cape weighted her down, dragging against the floor as she crawled.

It had protected her during the explosion, maybe even the only reason she was still alive, that double -- triple? -- nomex blend, but it was heavy, heavier than she was comfortable with at the moment, and-- her hand got caught on a piece of her cape, and she tripped, crumpled all over herself in a boneless slump.

Okay. Her head between her arms, one hand clasped against her mouth, she breathed slowly. The blast of the explosion had torn her breathmask away; it was lost in the burning mess now. She didn’t have her spare because she’d given it to the hostage she’d rescued earlier tonight.

At least the lenses of her mask were still protecting her eyes.

She wasn’t sure how long the structure of the building was going to hold, but it was going to be really interesting to see whether she’d be crushed to death or she’d run out of air first.

Well, it wasn’t the first time the Religion of Crime had lured her into traps that were as blatant as they were inevitable, and it won’t be the first time she survives them either. Now to get to an escape.

The gravel dug into the flesh of her hand - she hadn’t realized the explosion tore her gloves to pieces - and the pressure grew around her lungs, as she forced herself to keep breathing, no matter how bad her urge to cough. The back of her throat was tickling, and she knew that if she started coughing she wouldn’t be able to move fast enough, wracked from head to toe. She already felt like the inside of her lungs were ripping from the inside out, biting her lips so she wouldn’t give in.

At some point her hearing came back, clearing beyond the pounding of her head, or her blood in her ears, she wasn’t sure. She expected the thunder and threatening crackling of chemical fire and weakening girders, not the female voice talking into her ear.

“--ceive me, Batwoman?”

How--right. Oracle’s transmitter earring.

“Yes,” she wheezed back, and hoped Oracle’s mike would pick up on it. She knew from experience it was possible to carry out a conversation without straining her voice, but her living room had rarely seemed less relevant than now.

“First floor down, to the left; there’s a way out.”

Usually it should be her father guiding her to the most efficient path, alerting her to the various exits. She had the Religion of Crime to thank for the fact that he couldn’t, and if she was a little surprised Oracle was already aware of her situation, well - not like she didn’t know Oracle knew her secret identity. Might be a little late for the indignation at being under watch, here.

“The stairs are fifteen meters away,” Oracle said.

Besides, having someone to watch your back was damn useful.

She found the stairs where Oracle had told her, and stumbled down, gripping the rail. Her back was aching, bruises flaring, and her left leg protested every move she made. Please don’t be the knee. Hopefully it was just the aftershock of the blast and she hadn’t messed the articulation up.

“They’re not waiting for you outside,” Oracle reported, “once you’re out you’ll be in the clear. I can send an agent to you.”

Each step was a burst of painful sparks from her knee. Batwoman grit her teeth, her mouth filled with the sticky coppery taste of blood. She must’ve cut her face or the inside of her cheek.

“If I give you the code, can you track down the tracer I put on the lieutenant?”

“Yes,” the reply came at once. “I can send an agent after them to take up from here.”

“No can do, Oracle. This is my fight. I want you to track them down for me, and keep me informed.” The end of the stairs was a benediction.

There was a snort on the other end of the line. Kate’s lips quirked, stretching dry skin. “What is it with you Bat people and giving orders? As long as the Religion of Crime is on Gotham ground, it’s fair game.”

“My fight,” Batwoman insisted. Her voice came out the same as she used when intimidating skels, a deep hiss that bloomed from her chest. “Your agents don’t know them like I do.”

There was a silence on the other end of the line, and Kate stubbornly limped on. She could see it now, a small door half-hidden by the fumes. It was half-hidden behind fragments of crates, but when she squinted it didn’t look like it was blocked.

“You drive a hard bargain,” Oracle said. “Get out and I’ll send someone to back you up. I have just the partner for you.”

Menacing rumbling above Kate distracted her a moment, and she missed a step. She slapped a hand against the wall, barely catching herself before landing over the charred remains of twisted metal bars. She hissed a breath before starting again, carefully placing her feet between the knot of broken iron.

“This is how you do your business, then. Pick a moment of weakness and nag your opponent to death?”

She didn’t keep the peevishness out of her voice. Now she wasn’t actually in danger of dying anymore – not imminently, at least, the building wasn’t so close to crumbling it’d squash her before she made it out, come on, soldier, just a few more steps – she would’ve appreciated if Oracle made herself a little more scarce.

“If you admit this is a moment of weakness,” Oracle remarked, tone as blank as a computer-generated voice. “I’m offering sharing my resources here, and you’re not in a state to finish this by yourself. Not tonight.”

She could still feel the heat of the explosion on her face, and she didn’t close her eyes because the faint buzzing in her ears told her she might topple with vertigo. Oracle was right about her general state.

“Whoever you’re sending me, I’m calling the shots. This isn’t up for negotiation,” she tagged on, just to be sure that got through.

“She’ll be here in ten,” Oracle said.

Kate wasn’t sure if it counted as an agreement, but she had neither the time nor the breath to argue the point; she tugged on a breath and took another step.

III.

The morning overcast was grey with lead, the substance that sent Kate wondering about industrial towns and Gotham’s unemployment rate and semi-abandoned warehouses. The weather never shone on Gotham, not even when there was good news. Probably scared of ruining the gloom-and-doom grip it had on the city.

The lightning in her father’s hospital room wasn’t as poor as the clouds augured. She’d never grow used to seeing him in a hospital bed, but the doctors assured her he’d be out tomorrow, and her stepmother was swearing up and down he’d get much better care at home. She’d left them to passive-aggressively discuss it over in the lobby, excusing herself to slip in and see her father alone.

He was still sleeping; for a man who’d made a life in the service, for his daughter that had always known him to be awake for reveille, it was strange to consider, but not so strange for the night he’d had. He looked tired, but well.

The vase on his bedside table caught her eye as she stepped closer, going for the chair. It wasn’t filled with the extravagant bouquet she’d come to expect from her father’s wife; instead, a single long-stemmed red rose was tipping to the side like a pennant.

Under the vase a card was tucked. It was an ordinary get-well-soon card, rather low on the sparkly scale, though it did display a photograph of two very fluffy kittens in a basket. It wasn’t signed - the rose was signature enough - but featured a phone number.

Kate turned the card in her hands, lingering by her father’s side. His chest was rising and lowering with his breath, peaceful and sound asleep. Lightly, she kissed him on the forehead, and slunk back outside.

The voice that answered wasn’t as exhausted as Kate would’ve imagined anyone would be after three days hunting an evasive-as-liquid cult. If Kate had had to do the research Oracle did for her in that time period...

“Is everything still all right?” Kate wanted to know.

“Oh. Yes,” Oracle said, breezy. “Why wouldn’t it?”

“You left a rose in my father’s hospital room. And a phone number. Excuse me for thinking something might be up.”

“If it were urgent, I’d have contacted you the other way.” It sounded sensible; too much for a single-rose invitation. She prodded.

“So the flower for my father?...”

“A get well gesture, Kate.” Again, Oracle’s tone was tinted with faint, dismissive amusement, clearer now than previously.

“With a phone number.”

There was a short pause, then a laugh. “Maybe it was an invitation for you to call me.”

Kate paused, letting the flow of people part around her, as she tried once again to imagine what Oracle looked like, and once again pushed the thought from her mind as frivolous. It was; but mostly Kate didn’t want to play Oracle’s game. There was no way Oracle didn’t know what was going through Kate’s head when she flirted.

“I wanted to thank you for the past few days,” Oracle continued. She’d toned down the flirtatiousness, but her word choice remained questionable. “We did good work.”

A cell of the Religion of Crime dismantled, and - more importantly - one of their lieutenants alive behind bars, where she’d be questioned and hopefully put on trial. For once, she wasn’t running after the Religion of Crime, attempting to keep up and always falling behind, as they threw terrorist scares at her to keep her floundering. Kate had her doubts whether the woman would talk, and keeping her alive until the trial would be a challenge, but it was a bigger achievement than she’d managed in a long time. And if anyone could make sure their convict wasn’t suicided before trial, Oracle was that person.

“Thank you for sending Black Bat,” Kate replied. “You were right: I do like her, and it wouldn’t have been possible without her. She’d make a good soldier.”

Kate would swear Oracle’s breath caught a moment, though her next sentence wasn’t any more emotional than usual. “I keep forgetting the rest of the world uses that phrase. But yes, history aside, she’s a trooper.”

The fondness in Oracle’s voice wasn’t feigned. More hints at things Kate wasn’t allowed to know. Yet. She changed the subject.

“My father’s fine, by the way. His room is on the fourth floor, and I don’t think the Religion of Crime will try anything against him there. Too public and too small scale.” Besides, they’d given them other things to worry about.

“In any case, if there’s anything suspect I’ll be the first to know. And you’ll be second.”

“Surveillance?... Oracle, do you have cameras in my father’s room?”

“It’s our standard security measure for these cases. They preserve privacy as much as possible, I promise.”

Kate turned it over. The conversation had taken a slight turn toward the surrealist, though if she wanted to be honest, she couldn’t say it was too much of a surprise. She pondered her reaction; maybe she should’ve been angry that Oracle didn’t warn her or her father that loss of privacy while in the hospital was a consequence to allying forces. She couldn’t deny the wave of relief, in the back of her mind, knowing that the most reliable in the business was keeping an eye on her father until he went back home. Mostly, she was amused at the other woman’s thoroughness.

“You’ve been working with Bats a long time, haven’t you?” she concluded.

“Why, Batwoman. Are you trying to discover my identity?”

“Maybe I’m just trying to know more about you. It seems the right thing to do, since you’re buying me flowers.”

Oracle hummed. Kate changed the subject. “Is Black Bat still in Gotham? I’d like to thank her in person.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Kate fancied she could already hear Oracle typing another number, in the other woman’s distraction.

epilogue

After years of trying to teach Cass to knock before entering, and failure across the board, Babs didn’t startle when Cass appeared, for lack of a more descriptive word, by her elbow.

It helped that years of exposition to Batman has rendered her immune, more or less.

“Saw Batwoman,” Cass announced. She was grinning.

Babs hmmed in answer. She wasn’t not listening; she was just also focusing on Veronica Cale’s latest investments.

“She said thank you,” Cass said, bouncing on the heels of her feet for emphasis. “She said, next time she’ll ask you to send me.”

Once again, Babs congratulated herself on not sending Stephanie or Helena to help Batwoman out. She had the feeling the personality cocktail would be more explosive.

“She gave me this for you,” Cass continued, and she pulled out from under her cape a single flower - a long-stemmed, red rose. There was a card attached, and an hour noted.

8:00 tonight. I doubt you’ll pick me up for dinner, but maybe you won’t chicken out of a phone call. I trust you have my number.

Kate

This entry was originally posted at http://runespoor.dreamwidth.org/134691.html. There are comments there.

Animes I am watching

2012-11-16T14:51:12Z

Sailor Moon

Just finished the first season (we haven't watched all the episodes, having skipped most of the pre-Mercury & non-plot-advancing Kunzite episodes due to doubt and low tolerance for filler) and I like it lots.

- favourite arc: it's a toss-up between the Naru/Nephrite thing, which is the arc that made me sit up and realize that wow, this show had more than fun stuff, and the Zoisite arc. Because Zoisite.
- favourite villain: Zoisite.:D look, all I'm saying is "death by beauty" is less convincing than "death by curtain" anyway.;)
- favourite one-shot character : plenty I liked, but my favourite is probably the ninja paparazzi Youma (Catwoman by night, Evil Lois Lane by day!), for being funny, smart, competent, and very pro-active. I'm also extremely fond of the lesbian animators from the Nephrite arc.
- best plans: Zoisite's cosplaying and Sailor Moon pretending to be on the outs with the other Senshi. I sense a theme.
- my shipping senses are tingling: Usagi/Rei Usagi/Rei Usagi/Rei. Usagi/Mamoru is cute as all get out. Also I can basically ship everyone/everyone, because this show is not stingy with the lesbian subtext.
- NO U things: Minako's introduction. I'm not fond of characters that are established as more competent than the characters we've been following from the start. Artemis NOT BEING NICE WITH USAGI.
- most underestimated move : Bubble Spray may not have as many destructive applications as the other Senshi's attacks (read : any), but it saved their asses more times than I can count. Anything that adds stealthiness and allows to come closer to your enemy or run away is most excellent in my book.

Code Geass

I'm on 2x08, and I am pretty much enormously entertained. More to come when I have time, but I have to say that if the series finished on 2x08, I would not be upset. It's the highest point in the series since... before Britannia invaded Japan. Which means I'm terrified of what will happen later. (making salinea laugh in the process, because when there's a cliffhanger I'm "OMG FUCK YOU SHOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT OH SHIT" and now I'm "AAAAAH FUCK YOU SHOW WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN OH SHIT".)

Anyway, my moral stance in one sentence: better a leader of the resistance with terrible motivations than collaboration(ism).

I think Lelouch is my favourite character at the moment, and Kallen has been consistently the winner of my personal "Best Person" award since the beginning, with a few fumbles.

This entry was originally posted at http://runespoor.dreamwidth.org/134573.html. There are comments there.

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries

2012-11-08T13:22:40Z

I've watched the series yesterday, and I have to say, I love how they modernized some of the plot.

On the other hand, I find their Lizzie to be unlikeable on the whole. Which is rather a huge surprise, given how much of a fan of hers I am.

This entry was originally posted at http://runespoor.dreamwidth.org/134283.html. There are comments there.

[YJ] ellipsis

2012-11-06T15:11:38Z

Title: ellipsis
Characters: M'gann (Artemis)
Rating: PG
Summary: “He killed you. He deserved-”
Notes: spoilers for 2x10, Before the Dawn.

In her head, she writes countless letters to Artemis. Apologies; explanations.

I'm sorry I wasn't there soon enough I'm sorry I'm sorry

Nobody blames her (Wally's too busy not-blaming Dick), but M'gann knows this is her fault. It was her fault when she didn't see Kaldur's betrayal coming, and that makes he did her fault, too. What good's a mind-reader if they can't even know when one of their friends is being tempted? She should've been more there for Kaldur, at the time. She should've been more practical when he left.

The mission needed me elsewhere; it was something only I could do

Artemis would understand. She didn't blame her when M'gann's control slipped in the mental training simulation.

She's better now; more power, more control. She makes the team better, safer. She'd never hurt a teammate psychically now, she trained and trained and her focus is better than it's ever been. If she was thrown into a mental simulation now – even if she didn't know it – she'd never mistake it for the real thing again. Accidents would never happen.

But she still wasn't good enough.

M'gann's failures always get Artemis killed.

After the funeral she stands by Artemis's memorial in Mount Justice and looks up at Artemis' determined face and none of the things that she has thought up fit. They dissipate like the morning mist, weightless in front of the reality of what has been done.

I'll make him pay, M'gann promises, and she smells something like ozone and blood in the air, and that's a cue these words are a little less wrong.

After she confronts Kaldur and rips his mind apart, there are still flickers of messages to Artemis flitting through her mind. Apologies; explanations.

I'm so, so sorry, I didn't know

Apologies for hurting Kaldur.

He'd killed you, he deserved everything I could do to him. I thought.

Explanations for what she did.

She tries to fit the sentences into a narrative that will make sense, but they jar, pieces of a puzzle that she can't put together. Words aren't the right shape for what she wants to say, too small and not pointed enough. They escape her and trip her up in a web of meanings that muddle the issue. They don't encompass the vastness of her fury, the unfailing certainty of her tearing through Kaldur's mind.

She's fumbling with what she wants to say more than she did when she actually came to Earth. In her mind's eye she sees Artemis, and she still can't find the words. Earth has many vows of revenge, but here M'gann finds its language lacking.

There are no words for a mind-reader's crimes.

This entry was originally posted at http://runespoor.dreamwidth.org/134102.html. There are comments there.

State of the Runespoor

2012-11-05T10:55:28Z

Fic exchanges

- Ladystuck: I can do that.

- Yuletide: I can do that.

I just need to remember how to write.

Emotionally

I hate moodswings and being tired all the time and wanting to cry for no reason. I hate that it's only the beginning of November and I'm already starting to be down all the time, to the point that I'm grinning and wanting to dance when I'm out and there's a ray of sunlight and the weight has fallen off my shoulders. I love winter; it's just my body that hates it. I hope it's going to get used to it fast, because I don't want to spend the several next months depressed. :/

Other

Would it be worth it to start watching Once Upon A Time again? I dropped it in a rage last year after the Hansel and Gretel ep, because that was when the "blood family is the best family" message became too much for me. I could give the show the benefit of the doubt until then (or at least I could wilfully ignore it), but that ep pushed it into the NOPE FUCK YOU territory. So I want to know if they've dialed it back/dropped it, and if there are eps that are as egregious as that one I'll skip them.

This entry was originally posted at http://runespoor.dreamwidth.org/133639.html. There are comments there.

[DC] Neither Fate Nor Fortune

2012-11-02T16:11:00Z

Title: Neither Fate Nor Fortune [on the AO3]
Characters: Barbara (Jason, Bruce, Jim; Bruce/Jason)
Rating: PG-13
Series: Bring on the Night
Warnings: character death, ableism, violence, depression, offscreen underage, and all the content warning that comes with only mildly sanitized vampirism.
Summary: Barbara becomes Oracle, and Gotham's dead Robin is a vampire.

Canon timeline: I'm going with the idea that The Killing Joke takes place some months before Death in the Family. I'm playing loose with the chronology of some of the post-Death in the Family pre-No Man's Land storylines because of reasons.
Inspiration: I made canon soup from sources as diverse as Gotham Knights #43-44-45, Batman: Turning Points #3, Batman Chronicles #5 (Oracle Year One: Born of Hope), the DCAU, the Elseworlds Thrillkiller and Supergirl & Batgirl (spoilers for the latter two), Batman #424, and Gotham Central. I may be forgetting some.

Thank you to Discowing for betaing and cheerleading, to etrangere for bearing my regular whining, and to moetushie whose remix for the first story made me want to go on. Comments are cherished.

written for the dcu_bang 2012, this fic is accompanied by a fanmix made by ecto_gammat - link is pending due to the hurricane.

read on dw

[DC] The Queen and the Girl who would be Night

2012-10-30T13:31:25Z

Title: The Queen and the Girl who would be Night – a Gotham fairytale
Characters: Cass (Oracle, Steph, Helena, Leslie, Harvey Dent, Dick)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: ableism, mind control, derrealization
Summary: the Queen of Fables takes over Gotham, and Cass is the hero of this story.

Notes & timeline: goes hand-wavy sometime between Infinite Crisis and RIP. Inspiration from the “Queen of Fables” arc of JLA (JLA #47-49). References No Man's Land and some of the unhappy events post Infinite Crisis (specifically, the Deathstroke screwing with Cass' mind storyline, which I've taken a couple liberties with. I don't know either.)
No one's dead, everyone's in Gotham but Jason, Cass is Batgirl, Steph is Spoiler, Tim is Robin.

A huge thank you to silveronthetree, without whom this tale would have no title and a fundamentally flawed ending.

written for the dcu_bang 2012, this fic has gorgeous accompanying art made by dylogger that you can find here.

The Queen and the Girl who would be Night
a Gotham fairytale
on dw | on the AO3

DCU Big Bangs

2012-10-26T14:23:33Z

...and now I have to find titles.

welp finishing the things did NOT help the selecting process. It's a fine equilibrium of "how much pretentiousness is too much pretentiousness" and wanting people to see that the title is relevant to the story and wanting it to reflect my feelings on the story and the character. ("Cass Is My Magical Perfect Hero" and "Babs Is The Baddest HBIC Ever" were never even in the running, but some hypothetical titles for the Cassbang edge quite close indeed to the "Cass = ♥♥♥" zone.)

This entry was originally posted at http://runespoor.dreamwidth.org/133006.html. There are comments there.

Dear Yuletide Writer

2012-10-24T10:42:13Z

Hi ! Welcome! Thank you so much for writing me a story!

This is epically tl-dr. Fandoms are in alphabetical order.

I like fusions (transplanting the characters of one fandom into the world of another) but not crossovers, banter/wit/snark/awkward babbling, hopeful endings, referencing to backstory, referencing canon, slice-of-life, making up anecdotes about characters, themes of family (the difficulties of blood family, family-of-choice, mentor+student relationships, legacies), class issues, rebellion, embracing the fucked-upness that attracts me to most of the canons, not shying away from the problems the characters are likely to run into in their everyday life, relationships that defy categorization, rivalry as friendship or love, puns, cameos from other characters, heroes being vulnerable/wrong/angry/failing, anti-heroines and anti-heroes, cities, shippy pretending to be gen, cities, stories within stories, wacky AUs and post-apocalyptic/cyberpunk worlds, identity issues, fucking with gender-roles, characters holding themselves to impossibly high standards. I like both imagery and clear-and-concise. I like snappy dialogue. I'm more character-driven than plot-driven as a rule.

I do not like setting fictional stories in actual, RL genocides or using WW2/Rwanda/Yugoslavia/etc as a backdrop for star-crossed romance (I’ve been triggered in the past, so I mention it even though it’s very specific). I don’t like conspiracy theories explaining real life disasters/wars/etc. Slave AUs. Sexual assault as a basis for h/c, or sexual assault between the main pairing. Cross-generational incest. Prophecies and/or predetermination, especially the biological kind. Character-bashing. I don’t particularly like the following tropes: characters realizing their love because their friends informed them (or a character realizing they were wrong/etc because a minor character talked them through). I don't like marriage fic and holiday fic and kidfic. I'm not a fan of high-school AUs and genderbending.

-Isms: I dislike casual misogyny/homophobia/transphobia/etc (“don’t be such a girl”, “that’s so gay”, “haha, can’t believe you didn’t see she was a man!”). Casual racism of the "you don't look like a X" is the same, but I can see where you might want to tackle the issue in order to skewer it if you're writing Rose Wilson, who consistently gets drawn as though she was Caucasian.

Ships: I talk about them not because I want them but because there are some I don't want, and so you'll know which are guaranteed to make me squee if you give them a nod/banter. OPTIONAL DETAILS ARE OPTIONAL. I'm perfectly able to squee at things that are 100% gen! I love gen! It's just a question of where I prefer to find my subtext. But don't worry: I am a shipper, and subtext is more than sufficient to keep me aflail for a while.

Batgirl
Brenda Miller
What I'd like best is a fic about Brenda post-Blüdhaven, preferably where she finds herself involved with the Batfamily in some capacity.
What I love most about Brenda and her role in Cass' series is that's she's somehow like Jim Gordon: she's a friend, and maybe she doesn't know what's up, exactly, but she can feel there's something going on. What I'd like best, I think, is a fic about Brenda post-Bludhaven. Does she meet Cass again? Or Batgirl? Does she move to Gotham? Maybe she works as an intern for Wayne Enterprises at some point. Maybe she finds herself on the outskirts of weird stuff again – whether she realizes there's more to the young blond woman or the snarky lady in a wheelchair than meets the eye is up to you. Was she even out of Bludhaven when the city was destroyed, or did she help people out? Maybe she finds herself recruited by the Batfam – working out of costume, sure, but a Bat adresses her to Leslie Thompkins, or she's recruited by an association calling themselves Oracle's agents and claiming they've been active since No Man's Land. Maybe she bumps into that old guy she thought was Cass' sugar-daddy at first. Maybe she's travelling across America and she bumps into/is saved by this Asian lady who turns out to be an incredible fighter and who tells her she's from Detroit (does Shiva tell her of her relationship to Cass?) One thing I adore about the Bats and their supportive cast is how involved they are – they don't come forward and claim it, but Dick and Cass actively get Wayne scholarships for the people they meet, Bruce sends his lawyer defend Montoya or Bullock, Oracle puts info in the GCPD's network. And the relationship between Brenda and Cass was clearly friendship, so even if Cass disappears, there are bound to be Bats and Wayne money around. Or maybe, way in the future, Brenda is one of the civilian members of the Batfamily. Maybe not the Alfred, but you get the idea. Basically, I want Brenda to keep doing her outsider-pov thing on Bats or people associated with Bats, and the more she finds herself involved, the merrier. Up to you whether she realizes the truth about them. Also, feel free to include Brenda's family issues if you want!

AU wise: a change-the-setting for the period when Brenda and Cass were friends would be awesome! Or maybe she learns Cass' secret identity because of shenanigans (Cass saved her and lost her mask, or Alfred or Bruce told her because they thought Cass needed someone to rely on...) and she becomes basically her Alfred/confidant/what-have-you. If you choose to write an AU, I'd like you to include Cass in some manner, please.

If you want to include ships, I OTP Steph/Cass and/or Cass/Steph/Tim, and the thought of Brenda hitting on Babs or Dick or both at one point makes me laugh, but honestly I mostly want gen. (Incidentally: I do ship Babs/Dick.) I Do Not Ship Dick/Tim or Cass/Tim or Babs/Dinah or Jason/Tim. (My other Batfam OTPs are Babs/Dick and Bruce/Jason.)

Canon notes: I... sort of have issues with BQM's Batgirl, and the way it did away with Cass' legacy. So if that's the time period you're going with, can you remember that Cass was Brenda's Batgirl? Or set it just post the ending. Bring back Cass in Gotham, even if she doesn't appear on screen and you just have someone mention something about a hero with a raggedy cape. Also, DCnU needs not apply.

Fire Emblem : Radiant Dawn
Micaiah
I'd love something about Micaiah's growth as a character and a person, and the difficult choices she's had to make. I'd be very interested in seeing her interact with someone like Elincia, or Sanaki, or Pelleas.
Micaiah is my favorite FE character. I love anti-heroines and characters heading for doom and girl disasters, and Micaiah's storyline is breath-taking in those respects. She starts out as this parallel to Ike – basically she's Joan of Arc – and then you realize that she's got Soren's moral compass (ie, a very specialized one) and then she finds herself doing these terrible things, and she knows they're terrible, and she still does them. It's a big tragedy, and it's damaging.

Of course, canon then drops the ball in Act IV, but we still get intriguing glimpses. Micaiah's never been the most honest protagonist to the player (we only learn she's a Branded because other characters bring it to light, and we only learn that she thought about leaving Daein after the end of the conflict when she tells Ike she's changed her mind about that.), and a lot of the game builds her up as a Joan-of-Arc/Fanatic-Guru figure, and fic could equally smash that or play on it.

Basically, post-canon would be my favourite setting. Micaiah dealing with the things she's done. Micaiah-the-outcast, Micaiah who led her countrymen through hell, as Queen of Daein. How does she deal? How do her friends (I'm most interested in Sothe, Pelleas, Jill) deal? The other Beorc queens? Outsider PoV on Micaiah reaching the throne would make my day, especially if it included a heart-to-heart from Elincia or Sanaki. Or awkward bonding with Sanaki. Elincia too had to make hard decisions. Pelleas handing Micaiah the crown. Sothe trying to get Micaiah to confide in him. Micaiah's conversation with Naesala in Part IV, and the obvious parallelisms between them, also made me crave more. Anything about post-canon Micaiah and the reconstruction of her country and her psyche!

AUs: look, I wrote a Prohibition-era AU and I just think mob-boss Micaiah is rad. But she also works well anywhere there's a disaster and a resistance and anywhere vows have powers – in a fairytale or as a magical girl or something along these lines.

Ships: Micaiah/Sothe (I also like Micaiah/Sothe/Pelleas and Micaiah/Naesala, and Micaiah/Jarod for the badwrong) and Ike/Soren (plz don't break them up). I like Elincia with Lucia and/or Geoffrey.

Nightwing
Rose Wilson
The AU where Nightwing mentors Rose for real after the Renegade arc. Or the one where Rose and Cassie kiss. Or pretty much anything about Rose and I wax into more details in my letter.
Here are a few ideas of stories I'd like to read about Rose: any AU where she becomes part of the Batfam (the one where she becomes Nightwing's sidekick/partner after the Renegade arc; the one where she gets to Gotham earlier/later and maybe she takes/is given one of the identities laying around – all I'm saying is, if you want to make her Robin/Batgirl/Spoiler/Red Hood and play musical masks with the identities, I'll probably enjoy reading that; one of my favourite things in the canon World Without Young Justice event/AU was that Steph was Robin and Tim was Spoiler.). Bonding with Cass over the "awesome kids of evil fathers who tried to control us" bit of their life, and dealing with the fight they had in Batgirl, when Rose was drugged – if you'd even like to tackle somewhat the fact that Cass was drugged by Deathstroke too, that's be all right (disclosure: I never read that arc because Beechen, but I like the idea that Deathstroke basically "stole" Cass as equivalent to his daughter being "stolen" from him). Getting together with Cassie Sandsmarck, whether in the Bat!Rose AU or in canon. More of Rose trying to find her mother, especially if you can work in Rose/Cassie or Bats or Titans or stuff. A Day In The Life of a Teen Titan.

But really, pretty much anything about Rose would fill me with joy.

Things I wouldn't enjoy: the fic being all about Slade issues. Heroes killing (Huntress has longed stopped thinking it's A-OK to let the bad guys die, Rose killed one guy in her mini... Rose being violent and thinking some people don't deserve heroes getting out of their way to leave them alive is perfectly fine, especially if she's arguing that perspective with Dick or Cassie or Bruce, but more than that hits me square in the Do Not Want zone). Rose not being queer.

Ships: Rose/Cassie OTP! If that's not your thing, I also liked her relationships with Eddie and Bart, and I think she'd be cute with Miss Martian. Or I could live with Rose hitting on Steph – she canonically Has A Thing for Robins. My Batfam OTPs are Babs/Dick, Steph/Cass (or Steph/Cass/Tim) and Bruce/Jason, btw.

Canon notes: Let's keep the DCnU out of this, okay? Also, let's keep in mind that Rose Wilson is mixed race. (she and Jason should start a club: mixed-race kids who get so white-washed canon forgets they're part Asian.) Also, Bruce is my favourite character, so... don't hate on him, right?

Oban Star-Racers
any
I love this show and anything relating to it would fill me with glee.
Some of my favourite things about this show are 1)the character driven drama and 2)the issue of conflicted loyalties/trust etc. On top of the aliens, the scenery porn, and the world-hinting. My favourite character is Molly; I'm fascinated with her relationship with her father. I adore worldbuilding and politics (the moment I started loving Aikka was in the Oban Cycle, when he's shown taking orders from the Krogs – how he must have suffered!) and character-driven drama. One thing about the ending of the series is that it made me bawl like a fan. Don't get me wrong, it's a really good ending – but it tastes so bitter! And at the same time, a simple fix-it seems to me like a cop-out. So, if you have a fix-it fic you've always wanted to write: go nuts. You've probably thought about this more than I have. If you don't: I'm not asking you for one. (Maybe the Avatar finds it easier to take human form if they have to investigate INTERGALACTICAL POLITICS SHENANIGANS – I mean, Satis did it – and so Molly and Jordan and Aikka can have adventures in the stars? Maybe they're exploring! Or there's spying and politics and stuff!)

Or you can write about the canon time period. Satis' PoV on things, maybe on Molly's chances. Aikka weighing his chances vs the situation at home. Jordan and Aikka accidentally rivalkissing and then boom, OT3. Don Wei being torn between his orders, his morality – and being a fish out of water on such a planet – and his prickly relationship with his daughter – or is it the team's pilot? Molly's moods, her resentment, her identity issues, her training, her adventurousness. More of Molly's Issues – some dream stuff, some family stuff, some alien stuff – would be pretty much awesome. Post-canon with no fix-it involved: maybe Molly and Don Wei's relationship, how they settled into a family life. Maybe she grows up to become a pilot and she looks at Rick for a mentor. Hey, maybe Don is the one looking for Rick. I've talked a lot about Molly, but post-canon Jordan (or pre-canon Satis) writing a travel-guide of the places he's seen would be awesome too. So would Earth Team being ~~LOLOLOL~~ gently teasing about Jordan's failcrush.

AU wise: there's always the good ol' apocalypse standard. THE BAD GUYS WON (up to you whether it's the Krogs during the Earth/Krog Empire war or Canaletto) and now Our Heroes are struggling to survive/resist. I think Molly would make a fantastic resistance fighter-- her father is working for the Krogs or pretending to or she thought he was killed by the Krogs but in fact he's their prisoner! Jordan just joined the resistance and Aikka is, well, the visiting alien prince (maybe his planet tried to resist the Krogs and were destroyed! Maybe he's working for them! Tension! Drama!). (Or/and—the great Race starts on Oban, the Earth's last hope for freedom! It's up to Our Heroes, etc.) Or you can always go "fuck this alien bullshit" and write the AU of Molly's life as a runaway punk biker queen, and the cute boys who fall in complete and utter love with her (I do mean Aikka and/or Jordan, here. I have no interest in OCs.)

Ship wise: I ship Molly/Jordan and Molly/Jordan/Aikka and I'm not a fan of Molly/Aikka, and I don't ship Molly/Rick, but if you want to write about Aikka falling in love with Molly, that would work for me! Just no post-canon fluff. (Aikka-realizing-he-loves-Molly-through-the-maelstrom-that-is-the-series is the only scenario I'm interested in canon as far as that ship is concerned.) While we're on the subject: I ship Don/Rick a lot. My working theory of them is "they were together and had a nasty break-up when/and Don fired Rick". Please don't smash it to bits? Just don't mention it if it's not your thing. There's a lot of shipping done here, so I'll repeat: NON-SHIPPY WILL DELIGHT ME. Don't worry about including my ships: I will bring my own subtext. :3

This entry was originally posted at http://runespoor.dreamwidth.org/132722.html. There are comments there.

Dear Ladystuck Writer

2012-10-19T09:39:48Z

Request 1 : Vriska Serket, Magical Girl

Some things I love about Vriska are : she's terrible and she's a disaster, and you rarely get female characters who have that basis for their personality. She tries too hard and she gets everything wrong, and she's blunt and she thinks she's doing well, and she's got high ideals of what she should be, and she's secretly pretty down on herself. Maybe she's the dark magical girl, but she thinks she's the hero (Aradia might be the actual hero). Her home life sucks (please include an equivalent of what Vriska has to do for Spidermom), but being a Magical Girl rules ! :D (and maybe she's doomed.)

I'd love to see a series of snippets about that (feel free to expand the cast as you see fit! shipwise: I ship Vriska♠Terezi as “kismeses who are everything” and Vriska♠Aradia and I like Vriska♦John - I'm also fond of Vriska♥/♠Tavros as either red or black), especially if you play with the rules of the genre. Is there a price to being a Magical Girl? Like canon, I think this trope/genre can be very meta and very fun. Being as this can be done humanstuck, I'll mention that I don't like when Vriska's blonde! I see my Vriska Middle-Eastern.

Two things that evoke Vriska to me are the Marina & the Diamonds song "Oh No" and this asofterworld strip.

Request 2 : Rose Lalonde + Roxy Lalonde

I'd like to see them adjusting to one another, and bonding. Mommy issues, a zest of wizards, and it'd be fantastic if they set out to break or rule the game. Or at least, Rose might try to break the game, and Roxy might want to stop her. What does Rose think of Roxy's drinking? How does Roxy cope with Rose's destructive tendencies? I'd rather this took place with everyone else around, even if they only get mentions, rather than in a place/time where Rose and Roxy are isolated. I'd love to see the inside of their heads, and their conversations. (If you want to know about what ships to include/not to include, I like Rose-hearts-Kanaya, and please don't make Rose and Roxy kiss.)

Request 3 : Feferi Peixes ♦/♥/♠ Vriska Serket ; Feferi Peixes, Vriska Serket

In a world without SBURB... Feferi is the Empress, or trying to be, and Vriska is... a pain, or an asset, or a pirate, or the one who volunteers for all the most dangerous missions. I ship every flavor of them, and I think they'd be good for each other, and terrifying for the rest of the world. They get each other, and they could have fun while being pretty catty to one another. So that's what I want: them being good together in ways that look weird or worrying to the rest of the world, without being WAFF. (frex: you're not supposed to kiss your moirail, or your kismesis isn't supposed to be the one who knows best how to calm you down, or pick a quadrant already, or please stop sneaking off to kill trolls and take a vacation with no warning.) It doesn't have to be all explosions either! Something more subdued, where they talk (or not) about their issues, about the masks they have to wear, about their lusii, would be awesome.

Alternatively, I'd read the hell out of an AU where Vriska and Fef have a band, and you don't have to pair them for that, though sweet biting kisses are always awesome. If you do go that route and you settle on writing humanstuck, please consider not making Vriska blonde? I see her as Middle Eastern. Also I picture Feferi brown-skinned, if you want the full disclosure. (If you wish to include Eridan, I ship him black or pale with Fef and pale with Vriska, because the potential for hilarious terribleness makes me laugh and laugh and laugh.) One song that's Feferi/Vriska to me is Metric's Gimme Sympathy.

Request 4 : Terezi Pyrope♠Vriska Serket ; Terezi Pyrope, Vriska Serket

The one where they hate-get together. That's it, that's all. I want them to realize they are in glorious hate with each other, in that ~meant to be~ ~epic~ way, where they're each other rival and best enemy. I adore the "everyone can see it but no-one says anything because it's going to be really unfortunate." Here are some asofterworld comics that I find relevant: here, and here.

I want them to realize how long they've been dancing about the issue and in denial and what an unquadranted mess they were/are and that they've been wanting to be kismeses since they were the Scourge Sisters. (Or maybe later, because they couldn't stand how they fell apart?) I want the realization process, and it can be sweet or it can cruel or exhilarating and maybe Vriska's hate-flirting with everyone and it annoys her terribly that Terezi doesn't seem to care or maybe Terezi just saved Vriska's life and she has to admit to herself that she just hates this girl *so much* or or or. Whatever you want, just - HATE-GET TOGETHER ALREADY.

If you want to set it in canon, I'd like if it took place post-now, when they meet again the dream-bubbles. If it's in canon, please give them a happy ending? (If you want to include smut, I like Vriska begging, but the smut is totally less important than the rest.)

Request 5 : Kanaya Maryam, Rose Lalonde, Porrim Maryam – (Kanaya/Rose/Porrim)

In which Rose and Porrim proceed on romancing/hitting on the heck of anything comes their way. Hide your humans and your trollfolks! They are HBICs and they get on like a hive on fire, and it gives Kanaya weird feelings. I have no set opinion on what color I want it – I like Rose♥Kanaya, maybe Rose is testing out how she'd feel about having the other available Maryam lady as hate girlfriend?

If you wanted to include a gloriously decadent threesome of the seduction of Kanaya Maryam (or how Rose Lalonde manoeuvered to get her aw-yiss dream threesome), that'd be totally fine with me.

I can go for the PG or the NC-17 version of this: banter and ~eyebrow-waggling are awesome, and so are begging, banter, tentabulges for trolls and Outer Rings tentacles for Rose, hands/tentacles as retraints.

This entry was originally posted at http://runespoor.dreamwidth.org/132427.html. There are comments there.

[DC] disaster in the making

2012-10-12T14:06:08Z

Title: disaster in the making
Pairing: Bruce/Jason
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Everyone can see it.
Notes: Takes place when Jason is Robin. self indulgent outsider pov + identity porn.

The girls let the kid hang out. He's not there very often, and they don't target the same customers.

He's at that age where if he were a girl, he'd start being competition and they'd have to run her off or take her under their wings serious, and Paul would want in into her cuts, but Jay brags he can take care of himself.

Which is fair, even if Sally sometimes puts her hands on her hips and says something about staying in school.

Jay's always got an answer ready – swears he's doing his GED, he'll only re-enroll if his teachers look like them, or that he did and hey, tomorrow's not a school day!

He's kind of a smart-ass and kind of a punk, in that inevitable way that all Gotham kids get, Gotham either grinds the spunk out of them and the survival instinct in, kids who know it's better to hide and close one's mouth and live to see the morning, or the brazenness of a rebel – if you're gonna die soon at least leave a hell of an impression. Gotham makes mice and sparrows, with no room in-between. People say the mark of a kid is they're not aware of their own mortality; maybe it's true in other places, but all Gotham kids know they come with an expiration date.

Sometimes it makes you want to shake the reckless ones by the shoulders and yell at them, specially if you've got kids of your own, and you don't want to see them end that way. Other times there's not much you can do. Not everyone's got family. Jay's from Crime Alley, and if he does his work out here in the East End, chances are he hasn't got a home. Or not one he'd care to go back to. So it's his life, his choice.

Anyway, mostly he just hangs out. Sits on the porch and chats, and they let him because he lets them hit him for smokes every once in a while.

Once or twice he's had bruises on his face. Some nights he moves like he's sore, and they can't always keep from telling him to be careful, and sometimes he shakes his head with the cynical gleam in his eye – like talking's all well and good, but a kid's gotta eat – and sometimes he grins and opens his arms wide, sprawling, and says that he is, he really is!

And there's really no way to open up the eyes of someone that love's made blind. They all got experience on that front.

So they shut up and hope it won't end with tears and a dead body.

Tonight's a bad night. They know, because he barely spat a hello before throwing himself down on the porch's steps, and he hasn't looked up from his Game&Watch console since he got there.

Then this guy approaches, striding like he's got a purpose, and the girls make half-hearted attempts to approach him. He looks like he's kinda a hurry, but after he's done with whatever's got him running, maybe he'd like to come back and have a good time. They can't see his eyes behind the shades, but he walks between them like he doesn't hear a word, and goes straight for Jay.

He stops and stands before the kid for a while, and neither of them says a word.

Tension's clouding around them, and Sally and Teresa are doing their eye-thing, gauging how likely it is there'll be violence. That would all kind of suck, mostly because Paul would wanna get involved (bad for business), and Jay would not want anyone butting in. With a discreet nod and tap to her wrist, Teresa extends two fingers. Two minutes before reminding Jay that if he wants his private business to stay that way, he shouldn't drag it in the open.

“Whatever you want, old man,” Jay says without a glance. Is the guy Jay's dad? His lousy boyfriend? Pimp?

“Are you goin' to freak out on me again if I say 'you'?”

Well, that answers that question.

Jay snorts. “If corny lines made everything alright, then we wouldn't be here.”

The guy shifts. Here's to hoping it doesn't come to blows. He's built like he can take and dish out some serious damage, once the suit's terrible polyester stops fooling you.

“You're playing with that toy I got you,” he comments, easy as you please. Detached and meaningful.

Jay's fingers still on the console, and his shoulders tense.

“So? You want it back?” He tries for unconcerned, but he just sounds defensive. Unsure.

“Nothing like that. I like that you enjoy it.”

Jay huffs, and his shoulders shake with a short, silent laughter. “Really, Matches?”

He looks up, finally, to look the guy – Matches – in the eye. The locks of hair falling over his brow don't cover entirely the bruise on his temple, or the circles under his eyes, but he's smiling.

Matches reaches out, pauses in mid-air like he's giving Jay time to move away, but Jay doesn't, doesn't stop him, and Matches' hand ends up in Jay's hair, Jay's head tilted and his eyes closed.

“You know I do,” Matches says, in a deeper voice. Bedroom voice, from the tone and the way Jay's breathing hitches. His hand's still in Jay's hair when he asks, “y'got what I asked you?”

“Of course.” Jay doesn't bat an eye. “What d'you expect?”

Heavy hand of Matches' patting Jay's cheek. “Nothing else, Jaybird.”

“You have the worst petnames,” Jay comments, grabbing Matches' thick wrist with one hand. His other hand is putting the console back into his pocket.

“Do I?”

Matches' voice rumbles, amused, and Jay relents. “Heh. Guess not.”

For a second, they're still. Then the kid breaks the moment, grips Matches' sleeve and pulls himself up. “C'mon. Let's go home.”

Matches' hand rests on Jay's shoulder as he follows – guides – the kid to the car stopped at the corner. Sally can't help but glare at the guy, but what can you do? Jay's smiling at all the girls as he leaves.

This entry was originally posted at http://runespoor.dreamwidth.org/132321.html. There are comments there.

Madoka

2012-10-09T12:03:24Z

OKAY I'VE WATCHED IT.

- I am glad it ended well. I feel like the writers put a lot of effort into ensuring a happy ending - and I do count it as happy. It's "hope saves the day".

- I am a little shipper who ships. (Kyouko/Sayakaaaaaaaaaaaa OTP. And Madoka/Homura, obviously, because I never turn down a yuri pair canon wants me to ship.) I was cooing extatically at my screen when Kyouko was trying to save Sayaka, because ahahahahahahadooooooooomed. I REALLY LIKE STORIES ABOUT SELF-DESTRUCTION, and Madoka has the "for someone you love" version, the "because you don't live your to your own ideals" version...

- I get why everyone loves Homura. (I love her too! But still, Sayakaaaaaaaaaa is my favourite. Being a magical girl gives her magic! She fights for justice! She's not doing enough and people are selfish and terrible and being a magical girl can't stop that! She's a horrible terrible no-good person! I want to see the crossover where she meets Jason Todd.)

- on Kyubey: okay, so he was working for a greater good. You know what it still doesn't really make better? INFORMED CONSENT, YOU MONSTER. THE IMPORTANT WORD IS "INFORMED".

- I love everything about this second half, from Sayaka's fall to darkness to Kyouko's desperate reaching out and awesome self-sacrifice to Episode 10 to how they ended the show.

- Oh, Homura.

- Ep10: obviously Mami had a break-down, but really, taking out as many witches as you can and killing yourself before you become a witch yourself was the best thing to do. "You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become a witch."

- Ep10 Sayaka: Sayaka is Jason Todd. Doomed in every universe where she becomes a magical girl. :3

- I am never going to be able to type that emoticon without flashing to Kyubey. :3 :3 I CAN'T STOP SEEING IT.

- compare "selfish wishes" (especially the way Mami frames Sayaka's wish) to the role of a Prince in Utena.

- I try not to dwell on the "important historical figures were magical girls", because it does cheapen what they achieved, and if I'm right at least one would piss me off a lot.

- "When you're ready to die for the universe, call me. I'll be waiting." is a gorgeous line. And not just because it's incredibly cruel, whether Kyubey means it to be or not. Because it's also incredibly attractive. I'd sign on that dotted line.

- the 2013 magical girl fic exchange cannot come fast enough.

- Madoka still has the best mom.

- feelings. everywhere. dammit, show, I'd started wary of fanservice and just engaged enough in the plot and the characters to appreciate it on an emotional level, and the Kyouko/Sayaka blew through the distance walls and the Ep10 blew through the skepticism walls and the GOOD ENDING made me :DDDDDDDDD back at the entire thing.

- I am not a huge fan of Hitomi's move. She was being perfectly decent until that one day ultimatum bit. :( Y u give ur friend only 24 hrs to make up her mind? (Until the end, I'd hoped she meant "you have one day to tell Kyousuke, or I tell him for you.")

- the ending where Homura talks with Kyubey really drives it home how much things changed. Madoka made the universe into a straight-up magical-girl verse. :D

- EVERYTHING IS BEAUTIFUL AND NOTHING HURTS IN A BAD WAY.

This entry was originally posted at http://runespoor.dreamwidth.org/132026.html. There are comments there.

Other thoughts about Madoka

2012-10-04T11:57:52Z

Still on ep6, and will be until this week-end at the soonest.

- was Homura’s wish “I want to be special” or?... Because she stands apart as ~good at everything and popular and cute at school, and she’s apparently something of a wildcard as a Magical Girl. Was it her wish that set her apart, on top of the strains of being a Magical Girl? (It would work well with Mami’s assumption that Homura used to be bullied, but I’m not sure it explains Homura’s ‘splosions+teleportation powers. And it doesn’t fit with her costume at all, which is basically a school’s uniform. Unless her wish was “I want to be special at school”.)

- reading various watch-alongs up to the point where I am, I’m finding pretty interesting stuff. Especially with regards to the fact that Kyubey seems more interested in the girls’ wishes than in them fighting witches. He doesn’t present being a Magical Girl as being the right thing to do; he doesn’t try to sell them the powers or the glamour of being a MG. That’s not part of the sales pitch at all. He tries to sell them their wish. Wouldn’t that be interesting, if it turned out that the thing that’s supposed to be a compensation for your eternal services was even more useful to the—the whatever it is Kyubey tries to achieve/serves/sides with?

- the biggest twist would be if Kyubey turned out to be a perfectly benevolent if inhuman entity. Heh, maybe he is working for a greater good, even for our human criteria, such as trying to keep the world from being destroyed, and making pacts with Magical Girls and using their soul/life energy is the Only Way to keep the walls between reality to shatter.

- so I wonder: is the wish the price or the prize?

- one thing about the girls’ fighting style: Homura ~~hasn’t used a weapon yet (no clue whether she’s got one she just hasn’t taken out yet or not)~~ ETA: has her tiny shield, Kyouko has her articulated spear thing, and Mami and Sayaka have their cool and metaphorically incredibly disturbing throw-away weapons. If the weapons say something about their users, and I have no reason to assume they don’t and plenty to think they do, that means Kyubey considers Mami and Sayaka cannon fodder – use them once and throw them away, there’s an endless supply where it comes from.

- I wonder what Kyouko’s backstory will turn out to be, because so far I’m perfectly fine hatin’ her.

- also read the theory that becoming a Magical Girl = not growing up anymore. (man, the more I read these things the more I want to shove them in a room with the Robins.) Which is appropriately interesting and terrifying, but I’m not sure how it parses with Mami having been a MG “for a long time” and still not mentioning it to Sayaka and Madoka. Having decided that Mami is basically the most sensible and ethical character on the show, it doesn’t hold.

- ending with a superficial note: I hate Sayaka’s costume. THAT SKIRT. WHY.

This entry was originally posted at http://runespoor.dreamwidth.org/131801.html. There are comments there.