The fanfic BCF - Brocktons Celestial Forge - confounds me.
I understand the appeal of wanting to explore small characters, regardless of morality. It can be a great writing exercise and it should be done more.
What I can’t understand is why you’d have the MC be the guy who tried to harass Sabah in college for a relationship, and then downplay that defining moment, and then also have that MC groom and constantly be in flirty “jokes” with Aisha and Taylor (13 and 15 years old respectively at Worm start) and just ignore all the creepiness of that???
And power fantasy fics are fine. Guilty pleasure I get it.
But why a power fantasy with this creepy asshole?? Why include all this creepiness?? I would at least have outside perspectives of people being like, “Bruh this guy is flirting with children, maybe Parian is right to be sketched tf out”, and explore the moral ramifications of needing to rely on this OP creep for whatever reasons
It actually updated last night which I haven't read until now! Yay!
BCF Chapter 113.2 Interlude: Alan Barnes. Ah fuck. I almost wish it was filler. I'd rather eat glass. I have eaten glass and it was infinitely more pleasant than this. Its not like this b plot really matters to anything important so it's like the worst of both worlds.
For a quick recap of Emma's involvement, we haven't moved past any Winslow related plots. School was temporarily held on pause because of Joe's whole giant kaiju vs mecha fight that destroyed the city, but Taylor is still dealing with harassment. She went back to school with Emma and then decided to stand up for herself and then made a super cool awesome speech that #owned Emma so hard Emma attacked her. Joe watched this remotely from the wristwatch he gifted Taylor and then hacked into several other children's phones and leaked the video on Twitter and such. This went ultra viral and completely destroyed Emma's modeling career as basically every company made public statements about it and she was totally canceled. She missed out on modeling for the charity event his fashion summon did and he replaced her with his child robot thing Tetra who is so awesome and cool and epic that she totally overshadowed anything Emma could have done. Oh and he called the cops on her or something so she was arrested. However none of this was enough after all, Joe has returned to dunk on a child once more because he'd rather do this than save lives with his technology.
All of the fight happened largely in chapters 98 Finite Resolutions and 98.1 Interlude Taylor, Preamble Emma, Addendum Danny, and other chapters, however Joe has been aware that Emma is "bad news" for a while now because of his shard. Youd really think after establishing the fact that his shard has warped priorities he wouldn't trust it when it says some high school girl is the devil but the "fanon shard" honestly just seems like an excuse for Joe to already believe in spacebattler opinions and not have to waste time establishing then. Yawn. Oh, and the Protectorate are aware of Taylor's civilian identity, they worked it out from the video or something a while ago on 104.1 Interlude Hannah, Addendum Joe.
And oh my fucking god is 113.2 a DOOZY. BCF really just wanted to jack off about how awesome and moral Joe is, oh fucking man. Joe is one of the worst wormfic protagonists of all time already honestly and he spends all of his time sucking his own dick and letting people die unless he spontaneously develops a crush on them (Chen) i fucking guess but oh no Taylor was saaaad. She's literally fucking immortal now. Whatever. Okay.
Alan decides to head over to talk to Carol to try and manage the situation and then finds fucking Joe there in Apeiron garb just fucking hanging out. Because of course. What could possibly be more important than this. We have to spend the next 21 thousand words mauling this civilian. No other options. Emma must Suffer for her Sins. I imagine we're also gonna put them under 24/7 total surveillance.
He then talks to Alan about magazines about himself because hes cool and awesome or whatever and then goes let's read this one about Annette and then starts his ominous speech about her daughter. Joe by the way was one of Annette's students or something because I guess even Lord thought this was a little creepy without some personal connection but it really doesn't land. Alan then says "the unwritten rules" which Joe then goes ha, this is a unimportant school yard fight and not cape business. Anyway brining back from the Taylor discussion last chapter he accuses Emma of attempted murder because the locker was a biohazard and ecoterrorism and she's basically Bakuda.
Joe then tells Alan he lies to himself and he must be a very desirable lawyer for being able to believe anything basically calling him corrupt and Alan pauses for the 6th time now to think about how he could fucking die because of this conversation. And he could! I'm not gonna bother wasting breath on why this conversation is stupid but christ alive. This has already gotten an award BTW. Joe has had a bigger reaction to this than the Nine. Than to literally any other problem hes faced. It's really the most wormficy shit ever. Ugh. He brings up the flute. Joe you raging dick.
WHAT THE FUCK. Joe spawns in a SOLAR FLARE from a STAR and then tells Alan he wants to fucking kill him and Emma with this. WHAT. Fuck you Joe holy shit. Hes put more effort planning ways of torturing these two than into anything else. He has endbringer tier weapons literally made for Emma. I cannot make this up. I hate this fucking guy so bad. I hate him. Whatever.
This is basically porn for a sbsver. He also implies he soma'd Alan and is running a neural counterpart of him to predict his actions. What? Whatever. What the fuck? Why are we putting Alan into a simulation. Why? Fuck you. Whatever. WHAT?
Okay, so for some time now–by that I mean the chapter before the Bakuda fight–Joe's had a crossover companion insert named Alma and I'm not familiar with her source material outside or BCF but basically shes a dead little girl that's haunting some sort of psychic plane. She's been a negative character existing in maybe four scenes of attacking Joe and then offhand mentions of giving her gifts to placate her and thats a very very generous number. Now we've fucking summoned Alan to go meet the extremely powerful unstable dead little girl because of course she's upset about the locker. Why not. Why is she even in the Forge since Lord says he removed companions other than the Palico? Fuck you shes technically not a companion.
Okay man. Whatever. Joe continues to larp. Its hard to not laugh at his rants about the perversion of justice and abuses of power considering he is Joe and literally everything about Parian happened. He continues to threaten to kill Emma. By the way Joe turned into like a thirty foot tall cybernetic dragon creature to scream at Alan. What the fuck is your problem man. I gotta laugh at the fact that he was gonna trap Alan for months in a nightmare dimension. This reads like it was posted in 2017 for fucks sake. He then only decides not to (graciously) for Alma's sake and decides Emma is going to prison. Oh and Alan is being constantly surveilled 24/7 on literally every level. Cause fuck you. Joe why are you glazing yourself for violating Alan's mind with your mind copier. That was totally fucking unnecessary and wildly unethical. You treat snails better than this. Literal snails.
It ends with some glazing introspection about how cool and awesome the Forge is. Fucking amazing. If I reread this right now I could find something even more stupid than the general events and honestly I might later. This is genuinely one of the worst wornfics ever imo. The sheer length to just then take a massive shit in your lap with the same self righteous garbage you can scrap off of the side of the average op si is really just unmatched. Throughout all of this Joe and the narration made massive ovetures to justice and grand declarations and how furious he is and it's literally comical. This is like almost parody. I wish Joe died in a horrific car crash.
This was definitely difficult to get through. The Brian chapters mightve been worse but that was literally glaze over tech we've seen before for like three chapters straight and anything BCF does with aisha should land you on a watchlist. I can't wait for the next 4 chapters to be about nothing else but this and then 5 of filler haha. I jest–previous estimates placed us at about ten to fifteen chapters until the Slaughterhouse Nine but the handling of this does inflate the count. Plus I wouldn't put it past this fic to want to relax with some more filler soon. 2026 slaughterhouse 😭
How does BCF handle the broader matters of the setting? Shards, cauldron, s-class threats and the like
Every time I think about the chapter where joe for an entire chapter (14k) drives a 5 minute at most drive and discusses how broadcast has hacked the entire shard system and is fucking like controlling the entire protectorate to keep the nine alive and making everything worse by shard stuff so it needs to be destroyed as a shard and then hes like well I could use Taylor's shard but shes important to but then I could use eidolons shard to build a giant megaweapon but that would be unethical because it cannot consent and he also mind you just got out of a date with Crystal after causing completely unknowingly to her her entire family to fall apart..
So like. Really poorly. Also lord hates cauldron because hes a deeply stupid person and joe is a raging hypocrite on the best of days. He's read weaverdice though he LOVES to tell you hes read weaverdice until that mostly drops off and the shardspace is where joe built a giant spaceship to fly around and poke shards and stuff and also he cant heal two case 53s for no reason he has to pick just one ? But like this isnt a limitation from his power he just decides that one can give up their healing to save the other and then he gives said healed case 53 who is a ward massive fucking boobs and like what can I say? What can I even say?
Any thoughts how the rest of the Undersiders are handled in bcf?
Pretty poorly. TLDR
The undersiders as a team have not bonded. They are in a fraught situation barely held together by their individual obligations to Jozef and the assumption that they are a proxy team slash frequent clients of his putting scrutiny and pressure on them from all sides, and times are aggressive towards each other. They are each in difficult positions and far more stressed physically and mentally due to the city being in tatters and Joe's involvement. There is very little love lost between the team and less trust. This is like a natural consequence of Joe's meddling but it sucks and Joe really doesn't fucking care. The undersiders right now are an annoying semi obligation he doesnt really care about beyond bare minimum support and he only ever gave half of a fuck because of Taylor and moving to why their lives indivudally suck....its weird!
Taylor has an extremely unhealthy relationship with Joe where she feels guilty and responsible for his actions and his inappropriate level of attachment to her despite the lack of actual contact. This trend starts from the very beginning where she "seduces" Joe over to villany via his shard and the problems start from there.
Lisa is just put into a torment nexus, BCF does not shy away from #dunking on her narrative wise. She attempts to manipulate Joe, 'falls in over her head' and Joe is continually aggressive towards her and leaving her to deal with the fallout of his more rash actions. Semi recently Joe came across a power that lets him spot manipulation so you know how that goes. Lisa has also spent much of her time with chronic headaches that only Joe can provide occasional relief from. Currently she is contemplating how to inform Joe of Noelle without causing an S Class event because she is unaware Joe and the Forge are already immune to anything Noelle could do anyway. Great.
Alec has had...changes. After the first clash with Bakuda, he was tortured with a blowtorch by the ABB. Joe used nanite technology to heal him and he discovered afterwards he couldn't hijack Bakuda. Joe with his technology went over his neural pathways and identified his brain as damaged due to his upbringing in Heartbreaker's household and in correcting it gave Alec a full range of emotion. Alec is now apparently the emotional center of the team while Taylor and Rachel are orbiting and Lisa and Brian attempt to control the situation. He is also not dealing with this particularly well but Joe approves of the change I guess. BCF and Joe are incredibly weird and hypocritical about neurological changes. So now he's made some attempts to reach out and support his teammates, i guess
Rachel honestly hasn't been given that much screen time. She initially was very against Joe joining the undersiders and was involved in some of their schisms about behavior like the grudge held against Alec for his failed hijack attempt. After the Forge debuts as a team she finds Fleet, a male AI, attractive and goes out on a date riding their dogs together. Rachel is largely positive towards the Forge.
Brian....jeeze where do I begin. I need to do a comprehensive post about his recent triple-terlude. But through most of the story he's been a frazzled control freak unaware of Aisha's contact with Joe. And his dad thinks he's gay now I guess.
As a bonus, Joe approached Lily with the offer to make her immortal via nanites and she also thought he was objectively hot and was like okay sure and now has some dumb sword from him. Joe cannot stop contacting children and telling them to not tell their authority figures.
I could elaborate on any of these but that would make a very long post so i would have to do them separately. Tumblr does have an image limit.
you guys hate me. I'm getting to this. I'm working with these guidelines since i think it follows the spirit of the question:
1 I am not allowed to depower Joe by deleting the CF from existence*
1 (a) i AM allowed to make alterations to its function and characterization (citation, lordroustabout)
1 (b) i am not allowed to "reboot" the fic from the beginning (A la A Daring Synthesis, A Bad Name, etc)
2 i am not allowed to discard Joe as the main character
2 (a) i AM allowed to follow the interludes system of BCF which include alternate perspective addendums. More perspectives, quicker plot. Don't know how BCF fumbled this change
3 No edits to the posted chapters whatsoever.
3 (a) word of God is not legally binding (citation, lordroustabout)
2.4 million words just to be at the Bakuda arc? Crazy
BCF officially begins chapter one on April 8th, 2011 (though Joe triggers on April Fools day). From the wiki chapter 104.2 ended on the night of April 27th. I'd put the current events at around April 30th to maybe the first week of May? I'd be surprised at a second week. Side note the wiki is fucking ridiculous.
I'm gonna find this guys house and send him a bomb. SHUT UP ABOUT STRONG SPARK FOR FUCKS SAKE AGGGGHHHH I fucking hate it so much. Its so late that any personality alterations have largely been fiat'd away so it's basically set dressing and it's literally only getting any focus because bcf fans have been having wet dreams about it for YEARS and its an excuse for this BULLSHIT. The madness place doesn't matter. plus Joe isn't even IN the madness place during this chapter he's already had his fucking tantrum! Joe has fiat mental immunities and is sane.
I DONT CAREEEE. Joe has INFINITELY more appropriate channels to confront Alan. Survey is LITERALLY A LAWYER AND A MASSIVELY SMART AI. They could have rebuffed Alan's attempts with a single paragraph mention. This is a massive waste of time and extremely impractical too! Joe straight up doesn't need to be involved in this WHATSOEVER.
Joe is a grown fucking man who has had like years of time to process this. He is the REASON Alan is ever in hell. its not a fucking nice thing to put Alan in hell and then go ah well I might as well not just for my friend though that's not fucking virtuous Jesus christ. Joe literally has no excuse for any out bursts and he went on a massive rant about holding himself accountable after threatening Alan's life 70 times.
I don't fucking care about Alma. She literally has no relation to this. He could've kept the situation from her. He could have just said no when she wanted to fucking murder someone. Frankly I have no idea why she was included in this chapter at all besides to make the locker seem even worse which we already had an entire dedicated chapter to so fuck you. Also again Alma is EIGHT. Joe was in his TWENTIES at the start of bcf.
Joe is a stupid fuck and I hate bcf comments I'm going to find and destroy all of you.
