#consultingjedi

[bedlamsbard]

fanfic director's cut - ⭐!

Some of the banter from the battle scene in Yonder 5 for you!

I like writing banter and I'm very good at it, though I sometimes have mixed feelings about it because "banter during fight scenes in the MCU" is one of those things that people in and out of fandom is shorthand for "poor writing." On the one hand, I've never had anyone tell me my banter doesn't work; on the other hand, I'm very self-conscious about it when it comes to the MCU people won't shut up about how everything about it is the downfall of American cinema, including the banter.

“I like your hair!” Thor said to Natasha as they reached him.

“The haircut looks good!” she told him, and he grinned; there was lightning in his teeth.

“Notice you’ve copied my beard,” he told Steve, who let out a weary laugh and made a vague gesture towards his chin.

This scene is adapted from Thor and Steve meeting on the battlefield in Wakanda in Infinity War.

“Men,” Sif snorted, bashing an Outrider in the face with her shield.

“Oh, please,” Loki gasped. “Like you haven’t –”

“You’re wearing enough gold to pay for a warhorse, Loki, you don’t get to talk!”

Sif has known Loki and Thor almost her entire life.

Yelena just laughed.

Yelena is deeply, deeply bemused by this whole situation.

The energy barrage ended as abruptly as it had begun. Loki held the shield a moment longer, then released it and staggered. Thor caught him, steadying his brother as Loki panted for breath.

Natasha looked upwards, trusting her companions to keep her from being killed in her moment of inattention. The guns on Thanos’s spaceship were turning upwards, blue bolts of energy shooting at something she couldn’t see. An instant a streak of brilliant light tore through the massive ship, looped around, and did it again.

“Took her long enough,” Loki said, wiping a hand beneath his nose and frowning at the blood on it in irritation. “No one told the damn wizards to get her?”

“Who?” Thor asked him.

It had to be Carol, who had been coordinating preparations for the Snap’s reversal among her allies in space. Natasha stared upwards in relief, then winced as the ship began to fall towards the lake. Well, there wasn’t anything she could do about it.

Scene mostly out of canon, the dialogue is mine. In canon Strange stops the lake from flooding the battlefield; presumably he does so here, too, but because it's happening out of Natasha's line of sight she doesn't know it's happening.

What the hell Carol Danvers is doing during the Time Heist and why she's late to the battle is never addressed in canon so that they can have her Dramatic Arrival.

Loki levered himself upright with a hand on Thor’s shoulder. “You’re late,” he told his brother, then blinked as he realized he still had Steve’s shield. “Here –”

"You're late" is a nod to Thor: Ragnarok of course. This is actually the first thing that Loki and Thor say to each other in the fic.

Steve tossed him Mistilteinn and caught the shield in response.

Flip side of the Endgame canon scene where Thor and Steve exchange Mjolnir and Stormbreaker. (Which is a whole thing I don't love in Endgame but if I was going to go into my issues with Endgame we'd be here all day, I wrote this fanfic for you instead.)

Thor’s gaze followed the exchange, then flickered to Natasha’s Asgardian shield and sword. His face did something complicated and confused. “I can’t believe you slept with my friends!”

“What – what?” Loki spluttered, jerking upright.

Steve’s face went bright red.

“Oh, god,” Natasha muttered, feeling her ears heat. She shot her widow’s bites at the nearest Chitauri to make herself feel better. She could deal with this from Clint and Tony, but Thor was something else.

“What – what is wrong with you?” Loki demanded. “I can’t believe you got murdered, how about that?”

Lightning cracked around them, half a dozen bolts striking downwards to take out a rush of Outriders.

“Now you know how it feels!” Thor yelled at his brother.

“Now I – I already know how it feels, Thor, I’ve been murdered before!” Loki shouted at him, Mistilteinn flashing in his hands as he beheaded an Outrider.

Going by comments, this is a top favorite exchange in this chapter and I can tell you exactly where I was when I came up with it: in the ride queue for Remy's Ratatouille Adventure at EPCOT in Disney World with @reena-jenkins and @isweedan. (This was pretty soon after that ride opened.) It is also one of my favorite exchanges in the whole story. It's one of the scenes that makes readers go 'wait, did Loki, Steve, and Natasha have a threesome?' which is not otherwise explicitly addressed in the text, since this was one of my earliest MCU fics and back then I was still really nervous of actively writing shipfic. (I always wonder if I should go back and put in the two or so lines about Natasha and Steve being together that I kept out originally.)

Every time I get to Loki's quadruple "what - what - what - WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU???" I absolutely lose it. Even though it's broken up by Natasha's reaction the first "What -- what?" is meant to be part of the whole "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU." Loki's just flabbergasted.

I also love the contrast of this peppy banter -- which is still very emotionally-laden, "I can't believe you got murdered" / "Now you know how it feels" / "I'VE BEEN MURDERED BEFORE, JACKASS, DID YOU FORGET" / "TO BE LEFT BEHIND, OBVIOUSLY, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU" / "WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME, WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU" -- with a lot of the heavier and more formal language in here, since on the one hand you've got Loki making his grave pronouncements/prayers/promises but on the other hand...this. And that's the MCU for you! That's one of the things I love about it.

“To be the one left behind!”

“I’m sorry, brother, I didn’t realize we were in a competition!”

They're going to have a lot of catching up to do when they can breathe again. This is the first conversation they've had since Thor got unsnapped! Battlefield banter.

“I kind of missed this,” Sif said meditatively.

“What is wrong with you!” Loki yelled.

Sif is very confused and Loki is very annoyed, but I do love the "What is wrong with you!" that Loki yells. Loki missed Thor but he probably mentally erased some of the arguing during his post-death heroization of Thor, despite. you know. the fighting.

From Sif's perspective Thor and Loki are basically acting normally again for the first time since before Thor 1, but without Loki's previous resentment. From the point of view of any of the desnapped Asgardians who knew Loki beforehand (including Thor) at a first glance he's basically factory reset to being pre-Thor 1 normal and it's extremely disconcerting.

[plothooksinc]

👋 fic wip game: hands, water, left?

One incident per word per WIP, greedy friend! (surprise, it's not all TMNT):

Leo had taken to pacing while April worked, and while she was thankful he seemed to have come out of his daze, his urgency was only making her hands shake more.  Didn't get it until they made the rooftop and made the jump, marking Raph's position immediately--taking cover behind rusted metal struts that used to carry a water silo, slamming a man up against them and letting him fall, Casey crouched behind him--and saw the enemy.  He paused for a moment, hands forming into weak fists, and then gave Hojo a pleading look. Raph didn’t stir until well after the paramedics left; until they finally closed the body bag and lifted Joi into the unmarked van that had quietly arrived. “I’m humouring a lot of people today, it seems,” Donnie muttered darkly, but threw up his hands. “The salt water will strip what’s left from the tower, and Leo’s right. There’s already debris at the bottom of the harbour. Adding more shouldn’t be an issue.” [mental note: add hands to this sentence somehow, clearly--] He had faith in Megumi's integrity as a doctor to deal with it even if it arose, but the thought of it left a bad taste in his mouth.

Send me a word and I'll give you the sentence from my WIP that contains it! (or a selection if it appears, you know, fifty times--)

[dedicatedfollower467]

choose violence :3 10, 13, 14, 15?

obviously i'm picking trigun. obviously.

10. worst part of fanon

honestly? very frustrated that everyone has just universally agreed that (tristamp) wolfwood's cigarettes are nicotine. YOU COULD BE DOING SO MUCH WITH PSYCHEDELIC WORM DRUGS AND INSTEAD YOU'RE JUST SETTLING FOR REGULAR OLD TOBACCO? disappointed, trigun fandom.

13. worst blorboficiation

i have actually not seen TOO much blorbofication beyond the characters i have already blorboified in trigun. that said, i feel like some of y'all are getting dangerously close to flanderizing vash. tristamp fans in particular, you're on thin fucking ice.

14. that one thing you see in fics all the time

(NSFW AHEAD)

the whole "vash has plant-like genitals" thing. it's not bad, it just doesn't really do anything for me? y'all are tagging shit with "non-human genitalia" and like at this point i practically expect it. it's the same trouble i have with tentabulges in homestuck fandom, which is; y'all have this entire alien species that you could be doing SO MUCH WITH, you could have SO much crazy alien sex shit, and instead you've all collectively decided "oh he has a small penis AND a vagina and the lips are shaped like petals" like NO. COWARDS. BE MORE CREATIVE!!! GET FUCKING WEIRD WITH IT!!! IRL PLANT SEX IS SO FUCKING WEIRD!!!! I DARE YOU!!!!!

basically i have a lot of opinions about monsterfucking in all my fandoms and they mostly boil down to "the monsters you are fucking are not monstrous enough, you cowards."

15. that one thing you see in fanart all the time

oh, hm. don't really have anything i can think of here that's choosing violence, everyone's fanarts are all so good all the time. (this is mostly because my friends and mutuals have excellent taste and only show me the best stuff.) the only things i can think of are things that canon is technically more guilty of (like the twinkification of all the tristamp characters. studio orange are cowards for making all my faves skinny teenage-looking twinks instead of mid-thirties hunks with broad shoulders.)

[j-whirl44]

weirdly specific asks: 3, 5, 18

3. a specific color that gives you the ick? hmmmmm I don't really have one?? if I had to pick maybe like ?????? man i can't even think of one nevermind hdbjsnk 5. favorite form of potato? home friessssss 18. your boba/tea order? coffee milk tea with coffee popping bubbles and nata jelly mmmmm now i want boba hfjdns

[thingsprogrammersshout]

Things Programmers Shout #683

“THERE IS LITERALLY NO REASON FOR THAT TO BE AN INSTANCE VARIABLE!!! WHY IS IT NOT LOCAL?” // submitted by @consultingjedi

[bedlamsbard]

trick or treat! 🎃

You get...the first 500 words of Better in the Morning chapter 10! (Which I swear I'll get back to after Home.)

Then

T plus ten seconds after first nexus event

Significant variance energy detected

Multiple sequence violations in progress

Multiple variants identified: O9780 (Borson, Odin), L1291 (Laufeyson, Loki), T1216 (Odinson, Thor)

REDLINE IMMINENT

RECOMMEND IMMEDIATE RESET

The temperature dropped first.

Loki’s breath puffed out in a white cloud even as frost formed around them, dousing the remaining braziers and climbing up the walls, spreading over the ceiling with a crackle of forming ice.  He saw his fingers where they gripped the Kursed’s head turn blue, the color spreading up along the backs of his palms to vanish beneath his shirt-cuffs and uru-alloy vambraces, though as always he could still feel the change passing over him.  The color of his skin was the least of it; beneath that bone shifted, muscle hardened, internal organs rearranged themselves, flesh and sinew and cartilage all made the minuscule and not-so-minuscule alterations that turned him from one of the Aesir to one of the Jotnar.  His feet cramped inside his boots as his toes grew an extra joint each.  A few extra teeth forced their way through his gums and his left eye went entirely blind, the damaged rods and cones unable to bear the strain of the shapeshift.  When he blinked his eyes open – he had shut them at some point – his good eye saw everything through a spectrum a little different than his usual one, all the brilliant energy of the Kursed beneath him, the lightning crackling through Thor’s veins, pin-points of life forms barely visible through the insulating stone and marble of the palace.

The Kursed growled a curse in its own tongue, startled by Loki’s shapeshift but not particularly affected by it; the magic that had scarred Thor so badly a year ago slid off him with as little effect as Loki’s Asgardian magic and Thor’s lightning.

That was fine.  Loki had expected that, though it would have been useful if it hadn’t been the case.

The spell forms were still barely half-familiar, dissimilar from the ones he knew like he knew every corridor in Valaskjalf.  His mind grappled with them for a moment as he clung grimly to the Kursed, then caught the patterns and sank his magic into them.  Cold magic, the magic of frost and snow and ice; it might be his by birth but not by wyrd, and even after two years of half-hearted practice and one occasion when he had needed it very badly it still felt unnatural and alien.

Ice crackled and formed around them, the air growing incrementally more dry as he pulled moisture out of it.  The Kursed made a sound of startled surprise as he tried to move and couldn’t; ice had frozen into solid blocks against the floor and ran up his legs to his waist, then continued to grow up around his chest.  One arm froze where he had a hand clamped around Loki’s leg; his other was reaching to try and break the ice apart when the ice reached it and continued relentlessly upwards.

Blood was dripping from Loki’s nose, spattering off the top of the Kursed’s head in dark blue droplets; he was wringing this magic from his physical body because he couldn’t make the spell patterns work with his usual Asgardian magic.  The Kursed cried out, the words dying in a crackle of forming ice as it spread in a thick rime across his face and head.

[dedicatedfollower467]

fic writer ask game as promised :3 💚 3, 3, 3 (yes, really :3 ), 6, 11, 17

3. What’s a fic idea that you have but haven’t written yet?

Three of these, huh? Hoo boy. Buckle up. (These are all Trigun because that is my current obsession)

1. Time loop/reincarnation AU where 98 reincarnates to Trimax reincarnates to Tristamp. The idea is Vash (and maybe Knives) is the only person who definitely remembers previous loops, and this kind of pervasive tragedy of just... maybe THIS time he can do it, maybe THIS time he can save everybody, maybe THIS time Wolfwood doesn't have to die... Honestly the only reason I haven't written any of it yet is because idk what I want the format/framing device to be. Once I figure that out, it's over for you fuckers.

2. Red string of fate soulmate au. People are born with strings around their fingers that only they can see. The strings tie them to their soulmate(s), and the color of them can change depending on the relationship: red for romantic, blue for platonic, black for antagonistic. The strings are lax if the other person hasn't been born yet, and are "cut" when the other person dies. Vash is born with two strings on his hands: one which ties him to Nai, and one which will eventually tie him to Wolfwood. Dunno what the story is here yet so that's why I haven't written it.

3. I've already mentioned Nikki and the accidental pregnancy fic idea here, so instead I will tell you about the idea where WW's concussion during his fight with Midvalley causes brain damage that even the serum can't repair and leaves him permanently blind. Because he's fucking Wolfwood, he tries to pretend like everything is just fine, he's all healed up and can see perfectly, what are you talking about. (This does not last long.)

6.Have you written any fanfictions featuring OCs? If so, elaborate!

There are two that come to mind. The first is Anne from "Anyone Can Drive A Car..." It's just an outsider POV of Dave's first heat from my omegaverse epic "Smells Like Belonging," and the point of it was to let me establish what is actually normal in this world and not just. What Bro wants Dave to THINK is normal.

The other is "A Decent Sort of Bloke" which features my useless lesbian demon OCs Maggot and Bonecruncher and their long-suffering demonic wingperson, Orzalos. I should... probably fucking finish that fic eventually lol.

11. How many words do you have on AO3 (if you use that platform)

287,920

17. Are there any writers and/or stories that you consider an influence?

Man, it's honestly very difficult to pick out writers or stories that have definitely influenced me, beyond, like... everything I've ever read in my entire life lmao. The ones I can definitely point to as being a specific influence on my writing style are Homestuck, Undertale, Embers by Vathara, The Sacrifice Arc by Lightningonthewave, and @redring91. I want to claim Terry Pratchett as well, but I think if I'm being honest my writing isn't particularly Pratchettian at all, and might actually potentially be more Gaimanic.

[bedlamsbard]

[out of curiosity, and please ramble away as much as you want] would you ever write a crossover/fusion fic? why or why not?

I have done so in the past. (The most cracky is probably the Susan Pevensie/Willy Wonka fic, but there's other stuff; somewhere way back on my Dreamwidth I have a SPN/PotC crossover that postulates they take place in the same universe, I've written or co-written a lot of Narnia crossovers in my day, including Stardust, Batman, Merlin, Ocean's 11...a lot.) I am not really interested in doing so right now outside of the occasional thought experiment; like, I have no interest in writing a SW/MCU crossover, but in this scenario Wanda Maximoff has to be a Nightsister, you know? who doesn't take five minutes to think about Loki, Gamora, Nebula, and the Black Order as Inquisitors from time to time? is Steve some kind of weird Kaminoan experiment? but like I don't want to actually write it. part of it is just that I don't care; I'm in this fandom because I like the set-up of the actual canon, which is why I tend to stick really close to it while writing. even though I near-exclusively write AUs. also, like, why would I need to write a crossover, something like Morning essentially is a crossover even though it's all from within the same canon (so to speak), because various parts of the MCU are so disconnected from each other. the closest thing I have to a crossover right now is probably the Disney fic that I swear is still in progress, but that's just post-Snap Disney World in the MCU, not really a crossover.