@surskitty asked for Neku & co. summoning a demon, and you know what they end up getting. it’s become lengthier than a one shot (by my lazy writer standards), so i’m releasing what i have so far.
This is the most cliche recipe for disaster Neku’s ever been subjected to. A bunch of kids, both under and ill-informed in the art of the occult, equipped with chalk, crystals, candles and the internet to perform a summoning ritual intended to evoke… what exactly? A spirit, a deity, a–
“Which demon we summonin’ yo?” Beat blurted out as he looks over Shiki’s shoulder at the phone screen. All of this is worsened by the fact that it’s spoppy month, and Neku would never have agreed to this travesty in the making, but peer pressure born of new-friend-social-obligation strong-armed him into being here.
Is this the price for having friends? He’ll have to reevaluate his life choices later because a scrying mirror(???) had been thrust into his hand, and once Rhyme had cast a protective spell(???), the chanting began.
Neku simply didn’t understand the appeal. Frankly, he wanted nothing to do with what lay beyond the corporeal realm he occupied. There’s a reason the supernatural remained a mystery to humanity; they weren’t meant to interact.
Or, such was Neku’s opinion on the matter.
Unsurprisingly, it’s a bust. He felt a little bad seeing the disheartened looks on his friends’ faces as they disbanded, but by the time they reached Wildkat cafe, and regaled Mr. H (the cafe’s quirky owner) with the story of their failed evocation, they were all laughing. Neku ducked out moments before Mr. H came down on them for said failed evocation.
Little did Neku know, it was no failure. Something was conjured, and it had taken a special interest in the nonbeliever of the group.
Even for the most sensitive, it’s impossible to discern any one strand of energy amid the constant flux of sensory information powered by one of the liveliest cities in the world: Shibuya. It’s safe to say Neku was completely oblivious to the presence of a metaphysical voyeur, who watched as he slogged through his nightly routine. It’s only in the quiet of his room that he finally sensed… something. No. It’s definitely in his head, the same eerie feeling of uneasiness that a good horror move left in its wake. Recognizing it made it no less prevalent, though, and Neku found himself squirming under the covers, trying his damnedest not to let his deceived imagination create something out of nothing.
Turning the lights on would only prevent him from sleeping, but a little music would at least distract him. He reached for the phone on the side table, but instead of his phone he grasped a hand.
“What the fuck??” His body shot up and forward in shock, his face colliding with another hand, which clapped firmly over his mouth.
“Sshh…” Neku stared, horrified, into the luminous violet eyes looking back at him. A quick once-over confirmed that it’s a boy, and panic immediately set in, questions firing off in his mind. How did he get in? How long had he been here? Was he here all along waiting for Neku to return? And most importantly: what the fuck did he want?
Had the circumstances not been so horrific, he’d note that this boy was quite pretty–dangerously so. Slender build, catlike features, a wild mane of blonde, with stray curls that bounced merrily to his feathery giggle.
“Can’t trust you not to scream just yet, so I will answer the questions I know you’re burning to ask.” Before Neku could react any which way, he continued. “I was not hunkered down in your house waiting for you. I followed you here, but you could not have been able to see me. Really, Neku,” Neku jerked, both at his name and the icy fingers that sifted through his hair, “you should tell your friends to be more cautious when playing with things they don’t understand.” His smirk spread into a grin, bearing unnaturally sharp teeth. Neku’s heart leapt into his throat. “In order to summon a being from the beyond, a door must be opened, and once you have finished tempting fate in the stupidest of ways, you must close the door, lest any old opportunistic entity stroll on through. And, lo and behold…” A claw-like sensation danced along the nape of his neck. No, not claw-like – those were claws.
“They didn’t close the door.” The boy pressed his lips to his own hand covering Neku’s mouth, and just about purred, “You may call me Joshua.”
Concept: Crowley gets nicked by one of his plants and is thrown into the plot of Little Shop of Horrors. FEED ME, CROWLEY feed your murderous hellspawn. ... Or plead with Aziraphale to rescue you. Either way.
@surskitty replied to your post: Which version of TWEWY do you think is best?
I actually still think solo remix is best :OOOO
I stand corrected! It’s certainly not like it was a bad port or anything (and if you’ve got to do microtransactions, at least make them completely optional and sold by LITERALLY THE CUTEST Reaper).
surskitty replied to your post: kh masterpost (august 3, 2019)
this looks pretty handy but it’s currently not very legible thanks to text color + background …?
this is the first time anyone's mentioned that to me, but i can absolutely fix it! it's not a problem and thank you for bringing it up (it looks fine on my screen, but that doesn't always carry over, so i'll tweak it some/get a new layout because i'm due for one anyway)
friday: most self-indulgent fic you have ever posted?
I think the chapter of Afterimage where Joshua and Sanae fight probably leans more in that direction than most. Joshua playing the 'how can I make this even worse for myself and still come out on top' game, and half of his brain adoring every second of it even as the other half's going ow shit why, is very much a thing I enjoy. (Joshua playing that game and adoring every second of it until he miscalculates and lands in genuinely over his head is also a thing I very much enjoy but the really self-indulgent bits of Quis Custodiet haven't happened yet. >_>)
Beyond that, though, soap-boxing a little bit (because this question made me stop and think about what 'self-indulgence' actually means to me in this context, and about how rarely I express my tastes in fiction outright, and about how both of those things are connected to directions I'm gradually starting to take, or try to, in my writing. So hey, I'm now going to be a bit self-indulgent and talk about that!😛) :
Most of the particularly self-indulgent things I've written over the years never got posted anywhere, which is a thing I now have pretty mixed feelings about. The thing is: I love fiction that's dark and messed up and physically and/or psychologically violent, and involves favorite characters either being rather terrible (if they're so inclined) or having terrible things happen to them or both, and also characters that have… complicated and probably-not-socially-sanctioned emotional reactions to the terribleness, stuff that's somewhere in the vast murky lands between 'oh god this is all unequivocally horrible all the time' and 'actually this is all totally ssc and everybody's fine.' I love having a safe place to explore that stuff.
So back when I was first getting into fandom many many years ago, I saw a lot of writers for whom fanfic was that safe place. And even though I was a terrified ball of anxiety that was nowhere near bold enough to write and post any of it myself, reading other people's work was very much an "oh shit other people like to play with this stuff too" moment. It gave me a lot of reassurance that I wasn't secretly some horrible freak.
Leaving fandom spaces for several years and coming back—as you and I have talked a bit about before—it feels like Fandom At Large has gotten a lot less welcoming/understanding of dark and uncomfortable content, but at this point in my life I've become enough of a contrary bastard that this makes me want to write it more. In a 'I'd better get brave enough to write the fics I really want to read, because not so many people are doing that at the moment' sense, mainly. But also in a 'there are probably other people who want to read this stuff and aren't brave enough to write it—because I was one of those folks a decade ago, and that was before fandom was as polarized as it is now—and I'd like to be one of the folks who is around for those people to find as other people were there for me' sense.
tl;dr: I am bad at self-indulgence but trying to get better at it.
ancient: the first fic you ever posted online?
Hoo boy. I can't recall the title now nor the name I posted it under, but it was a Yu Yu Hakusho fic about Hiei losing his memory and his powers and getting trapped in some kind of ice world. I think Yukina was also in it. I didn't really have any idea where I was going with it, though, and it died out after a couple chapters.
