Lovely Scenic Towering Infernos.

[rionaleonhart]

Still thinking about Life Is Strange 2. It's the perfect game for me and I love it and they need to release the second episode before I explode.

I tried to paint a shot of it, although my painting ended up very different to the original.






I think this is the worst example yet of my recurring 'I'll just paint a nice, calm scene where nothing looks like it's on fire - oh, shit' problem.


I don't know whether my favourite comment on Boundaries is the one that says 'you bleed truth here, you know the characters better than I know half my family', which is very kind but also hilariously intense for a comment on a fic where the entire plot is 'a teenager shows his friend his dick', or the one that just says 'wtf'.

(The outline of this fic I wrote for a potential entry, before I just gave in and wrote it: One of my favourite moments between Sean and Lyla is Sean looking at the dick she drew on his hand and asking, 'Is this how you see a penis? Damn, you should try and actually see one for real.' It's what really made me realise how familiar and comfortable they are; you've got to be incredibly close friends before you can safely make a casual comment like that. I sort of want to write fanfiction where Lyla goes 'well, if you're offering' and Sean goes '????? wait hold on???' and Lyla goes 'WELL YOU COULD AT LEAST SEND ME A DICK PIC' and Sean goes 'LIKE I'M TRUSTING YOU WITH A PHOTO OF MY DICK' and that's how Lyla ends up getting a totally platonic look at Sean's penis while Sean blushes furiously.)

I've now written a full third of all the Life Is Strange 2 fanfiction in existence. I'm not surprised that nobody seems to be writing for it - we're only one episode in, and there's very little scope for shipping (Sean/Lyla is the only viable pairing, really), and there's no scope for femslash at all when the Life Is Strange fandom skews extremely femslash-heavy - but I'm still a little sad about it. Sibling fic! Friendship fic! Fic about Sean helplessly trying to claw himself out of his pit of agony! Come on, guys.

Comments

[wolfy_writing]

Yeah, your reds and yellows do seem to come off more intense than you entirely intend. I really like the trees, though! Especially that middle island!

“You bleed truth here” is an amazing review!

I almost want to have some sort of “Write characters you barely know about” fic swap, because everyone I know is having the same “Tiny fandom, barely any fic” problem. (Like it was fine when I got into Daredevil, but then I got into an increasingly complex array of Marvel comics characters, and “I want people to build on that one panel where it was suggested Moon Knight and Spider-Man dated at one point”, “The guy who bonded with the Venom symbiotic, but not the one from the movies, had adventures with murderous space-pandas, and I would like more murderous space-panda fic”, and “I want people to really get into the relationship between Machine Man and the guy who’s so obscure he’s a secondary character in Machine Man comics, and even Marvel Comics writers forgot how to spell his name at one point” have much less likelihood of happening.).

[rionaleonhart]

RD told me some months ago that a lot of beginning artists tend to be overcautious and use very muted colours, and, hey, at least no one can accuse me of that!

That theoretical fic swap sounds both fun and colossally intimidating. Maybe drabbles would be possible? I don't know!

[wolfy_writing]

Yeah, you definitely have a bold sense of color!

Drabbles definitely feel more possible.

[(Anonymous)]

...Yeah, your version is kind of like the version where Sean and Daniel have ran off the frame due to causing the giant forest fire. (It is, however, still really pretty and far better than anything I'd do!).

I can't say I'm surprised at lack of Life is Strange 2 fic. As you said, the fandom for the first game is very Max/Chloe heavy, so that they haven't carried over to a story about two male siblings (one of whom is 9 years old) is pretty much expected. It may remain eligible for Yuletide next year though, so... whoo?

I wouldn't be totally adverse to trying to write Life is Strange 2 fanfic for the sake of making the fandom a bit bigger, but I don't know what to write. All my fanfic tends to lean towards introspection with a fixation on writing around canon scenes, and not sure how interesting people would find that!

Maybe I could write a Daniel POV fic? The comparison to The Walking Dead game is apt, and still my most popular fic I've ever written on AO3 was the fic I wrote for Yuletide where I wrote in Clementine's POV, and she's basically the Daniel of that game. (And that was the second ever fic on AO3 for The Walking Dead game - there's now 640, so it could be a slow burner like that one!)

[rionaleonhart]

due to causing the giant forest fire.

Evidently I've accidentally done a Before the Storm painting instead!

I would be thrilled if you contributed some fanfiction to this too-small fandom! There's definitely room for canon-based introspection. There's room for anything, really, when there's so little fanfiction! And my 'Sean introspection just after they go on the run' fic seemed to be pretty well received.

(Well, I say 'there's room for anything', but I'm not sure the 'wtf' commenter felt there was room for platonic dick-displaying fic.)

[rosa_heartlily]

As far as I know, I'm the only person who ever wrote about Cid and Edea's pre-game relationship. Celebrate being a pioneer!

And yeah - maybe tone down the reds and yellows if you're going for a not-on-fire pic! I do like the painting, though - I want to row over to that little island and explore.

[rionaleonhart]

It looks like there's a small handful of pre-game Cid/Edea on AO3; maybe you're responsible for kicking that off! 'How did they end up together?' does seem like a question worth exploring. (Sadly the Jiggy McCue fandom never took hold; I wrote one fic for the series five years ago, and it's still the only one on AO3. The Life Is Strange 2 fandom probably has more of a chance of expansion, fortunately.)

And thank you!

[squeemu]

I am intensely angry at how beautiful that screenshot is. HOW DARE ALL THESE VIDEO GAMES BE SO PRETTY

(I still feel this way about FFXV, too. Woe.)

I feel like your painting style of "oops I set it all on fire again" is kind of similar to your fanfic style, in which you set everyone's mental landscapes on fire or at the very least put them through some kind of trauma. And hey, at least you're consistent! (On a serious note, I do really like the reflection of the trees in the water and I am super into the trees poking up into the bottom right corner there. They're so ready for fall.)

[rionaleonhart]

I really love the visual style of the Life Is Strange series. The lighting is always gorgeous. (More games should borrow FFXV's 'you can take photographs!' feature. Or, even better, FFXV's 'your in-game friend takes charming and ridiculous photographs that the characters then comment on!' feature. I suppose you can technically take photographs in the first Life Is Strange, but only of specific things; you can't run around photographing things at will.)

'you set everyone's mental landscapes on fire' is probably my favourite ever description of my approach to fanfiction. Thank you!

[pict]

That's such a lovely painting!

I have to confess, LIS2 broke me. Fic is too difficult to really conceive of with that mindset: it's all just so bleak. These children are not going to have a happy life now, or so the story is setting up, and the root of it is reflected in real world truths. It's way too raw for me to be comfortable playing with and making words for, and I can't even argue that parts of the drama (the cop with zero de-escalation training) are overwrought or heavy handed. I'd like to argue it! But I can't!

That might be why you're not seeing a lot of fic? Blackwell and Arcadia Bay was a bit more fantastic, rich and beautiful children causing trouble and also a literal butterly → hurricane scenario. Take away the telekinetic element and LIS2 is just very, very sad - almost unpleasantly so.

Then again, maybe the next chapters will give us some hope. Who knows!

[rionaleonhart]

Thank you very much!

You may have a point there. The original Life Is Strange actually felt a bit too bleak to me at times, and I don't really know why Life Is Strange 2 doesn't have the same problem for me; it's not like it's less bleak! Maybe I'm blinded by my love of fictional siblings.

Or I suppose it's possible that the first Life Is Strange just bit too close to home for me personally in its themes. I'm white, and I live in a country where there's almost no gun violence and the police aren't routinely armed, so, while I understand that the problems the Diaz siblings face are real and horrible, they're not problems I've encountered in my own life. On the other hand, I have lost friends to suicide, which made the original Life Is Strange very upsetting at points.