Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2025-06-25 04:03 pm
rionaleonhart) wrote2025-06-25 04:03 pm
Fic Concept Roundup 2025
When I have a fic idea, I’ll usually scribble it down in the back of my diary. It’s time to switch diaries again, so it’s time for the annual fic concept roundup!
This post lists all the fic ideas at the back of my 2024-25 diary. If I’ve written the fic, I’ll include a link to it. If I’ve started the fic, I’ll share a snippet. If I haven’t started it, I’ll write at least a hundred words on the spot.
First of all, here are the fics I’ve written in full. (To be clear, this isn’t all the fics I’ve written over the past year; it’s just the ones I’d previously noted the idea for in my diary.) Fandoms: Scrubs, Danganronpa, Ace Attorney, Death Note, Omori, Better Half, Severance, The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy. There may be spoilers for these canons below the cut.
Scrubs: Dr Cox/Elliot. You’ll probably need more of a concept than that.
Apparently that was all the concept I needed! The resulting fic was One Lucky Resident. I often forget about their dynamic when I’m not actively watching the show, but Dr Cox and Elliot have a lot of fun potential.
Danganronpa: Togami/Kirigiri? Perhaps they have sex, both of them aiming to stay above it all and expose the other’s vulnerabilities, with the constant underlying question of whether this will end in a murder attempt (and both of them confident that, if so, they’re not the one who’ll end up dead). Possibly ends with Naegi walking in or working out what happened and going ‘what the fuck what the fuck’.
doreyg is responsible for this one! Her interest in the pairing put the idea of Togami/Kirigiri in my head, meaning I was eyeing up their interactions on my most recent Danganronpa replay, and it did seem like they had some fun potential. This concept became the fic Above It All.
Ace Attorney/Death Note: Phoenix Wright defends Light Yagami.
necrophilia commented on one of my Death Note entries with an Ace Attorney icon, thus dooming me to write Always Believe.
Omori: Something where Sunny keeps hallucinating being pinned down by the red hands?
I originally thought this would be a good image for fanart, so I went on a fanart hunt. When I failed to turn up what I was looking for, I wrote a fic about the concept to console myself: A Helping Hand.
Better Half: The Thius sharing a bed the first night after the split (or a snapshot of different nights sharing the bed as their relationship develops?).
I ended up going with the ‘multiple snapshots’ approach for Two Become One.
Severance: Mark dozes briefly off at work, dreams of his outie’s life, and starts obsessively trying to sleep in the office, wanting to learn more, wanting to see more. The sky! Swimming! K-kissing Ms Casey, he guesses that’s not from his outie.
It’s not the focus of the fic, but I ended up incorporating aspects of this concept into Double-Sided.
Severance: Irving still shoves Helena’s face into the water, but it’s actually Helly. OT4... ensues?
This became Finding Air. I was so pleased to have written a Macrodata Refinement OT4 fic at last, after multiple failed attempts.
Severance: Mark S’s slow experience of reintegration.
Mark fixates on trying to understand Helena after the events of ‘Woe’s Hollow’.
These were two separate concepts I ended up combining into Anthropology.
Severance: Helena comes to genuinely care about the others and has second thoughts about being a mole.
This became For Someone Else. Helena has a lot of interesting potential, I think!
Severance: When Mark passes out after full reintegration, he has a headspace conversation with his innie self and possibly they make out.
![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
th_esaurus suggests the Marks could cuddle sadly in bed in a fic inspired by the final shot of the s1 opening.
Another case where two fic concepts ended up combined into one, although they weren’t quite cuddling in bed. Turns out Mark was not, in fact, fully reintegrated at the end of ‘Attila’! But, thinking he had been, I wrote Null.
Severance: When Gemma tries to escape, Ms Casey first encounters Dylan rather than Milchick; he goes ‘holy shit, Mark’s wife, we need to get you out of here’ and gets in the main lift with her, resulting in a very confused outie Dylan finding himself with a desperate outie Gemma who’s afraid of him at first, doesn’t know if she can trust him. (Milchick tries to pursue and Dylan goes ‘STAY AWAY FROM HER, YOU FUCK.’)
I expanded this idea into The Long Road Home. A journalist working on a piece about fix-it fics contacted me to talk about this fic, mistaking it for a fix-it for the finale, when in fact I’d written it a couple of weeks beforehand and was fine with the way the season ended! In the end, I wasn’t quoted in the article, but talking to a journalist about fanfiction for an hour was an entertainingly weird experience.
The Hundred Line: Yugamu gets into the weird murder relationship of his dreams with Takumi or Darumi.
Come on, guys. You can be brought back after you die; you should at least let Yugamu kill you once or twice, as a treat. The resulting fic, Piercing the Heart, went the Takumi route.
The Hundred Line: Everyone sadly bangs while waiting for the end after day 95.
This became All That’s Left. The more I play this game, the more I feel this fic would fit right into canon. I would not bat an eyelid at the Special Defense Unit canonically having an orgy by this point.
Next, let’s look at the works in progress (or at least the works that were started; I’m not sure they’re actively progressing). Fandoms: Death Note, Metaphor ReFantazio, Severance, The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, Danganronpa. There may be spoilers for these canons below the cut.
Death Note: Light/L/Ryuk where Light has to pretend that the invisible death god isn’t in the bed with them.
I’ve already shared this snippet, but here it is again for anyone who missed it. I’d love to expand this into a full fic, but this concept really doesn’t play to my writing strengths! I did write a Light/Ryuk fic as a precursor to this hypothetical fic, though: New Experiences.
“You seemed to enjoy yourself,” L comments, afterwards.
Light bristles at once. “We were having sex. That’s not unusual.”
“Really?” L asks, mildly. “I happen to know I’m extremely disappointing in bed. Yet you didn’t seem to have any trouble reaching orgasm.”
Light tenses. Does he know about Ryuk? Does he suspect—
No. L can’t see or hear Ryuk; he can’t feel his touch. He doesn’t even know shinigami exist. It would be ludicrous for him to have guessed that there was someone else in the bed with them.
“Perhaps my feelings for you are so strong I couldn’t help myself,” Light says, carefully sarcastic in tone.
L gives him an unreadable look. “Perhaps.”
“Or perhaps I faked orgasm,” Light says, “as part of my supposed intricate plan to seem less like Kira. Were you deliberately bad in bed as a test?”
L shrugs. “You could call it a natural talent.”
Metaphor ReFantazio: The protagonist and Strohl’s relationship in the immediate aftermath of the protagonist being transformed into a human.
a human, a human, a human (this is an injoke that only my housemates will get)
The others are at Will’s side, checking on him, his ever-loyal companions. Strohl should be there too, he knows; it shames him to be standing apart. But—
But a moment ago he was looking up at Will, turned vast and monstrous, and all he could think of were the huge, empty, merciless eyes of the human who destroyed his village.
He thought, just last night, that he was determined to follow Will anywhere. He fought by Will’s side against Louis, he risked his own life in Will’s name. He has dedicated his blood and his being to this boy who suddenly seems a stranger to him.
How much does he know about him, really? Will has never spoken of his past.
Death Note: Severance AU.
This combination of fandoms has a lot of interesting potential, I think, given that Death Note already does weird things with memory, but I just can’t make it click!
“You’ll need to have the severance procedure done, of course,” L says.
“The severance procedure?” Light asks. “You’re asking me to have my memories removed?”
“You won’t have your current memories when you’re in the office,” L says, “and you won’t retain the memories you form in there when you leave at the end of the day. You’re a suspect in the Kira case. I’m sure you understand that you can’t be allowed to remember the names and faces of the investigation team.”
“My father is on the investigation team,” Light says. “I’ve met several of his colleagues already.”
“That’s unfortunate,” L says, “but you’re likely to meet other important figures if you join the investigation. I think it’s still a precaution worth taking.”
“I won’t be much use in the investigation if I can’t remember anything, will I?”
“You’ll retain your intelligence and general knowledge. I think your insight will still be valuable.” L pauses. “Will you be any more willing to consider it if I tell you I’ve also had the procedure done?”
What? He’s lying, surely.
“You don’t have your memories when you’re in the task force office?” Light asks. “You’ve been investigating outside as well. How do you make that work?”
“Oh, no, you misunderstand me,” L says. “I severed myself so I wouldn’t remember sleeping.”
There’s a pause while Light tries to make sense of that. “Sleeping?”
“I don’t like sleeping. It’s a waste of time, and my dreams don’t make sense.”
The Hundred Line: Follow-on from the ‘Howdy Neighbour’ ending, where Takumi and Eito are both locked in the courtyard cages.
I love it when characters find themselves unable to get away from each other, one way or another.
“Looks like Nozomi ran,” Takemaru says. “Guess she knew her lie was about to catch up with her.”
She left the Academy? How long is she going to last out there in the wilderness, by herself?
Fuck, this is all Takumi’s fault.
“You need to find her,” Takumi pleads. “It’s not safe.”
“You want us to save our enemy?”
“She’s not your enemy! She’s...”
He’s going to have to expose her past. He can’t see any way out.
He lays it all out. Kamukura, the pods, Nozomi sneaking into the programme. She just wanted to help.
“You expect me to believe that?” Takemaru demands. “Why the hell wouldn’t you just tell us that in the first place? It’s pretty obvious that ‘she’s an enemy commander’ sounds way worse!”
“He’s right, you know,” Eito remarks conversationally, leaning against the bars of his cage. “You’d have to be pretty stupid to use that as a cover story.”
Takumi buries his head in his hands. “Shut up. I don’t want to hear that from you.”
Danganronpa: After Chihiro’s Free Time events, Naegi blames himself for the events of the second case – or maybe he goes ‘could Mondo have seen her?’ before the trial and goes to ask Mondo about it? Does Mondo end up confessing to him in private?
The snippets I have of this concept take the ‘talking to Mondo before the trial’ route.
He needs to speak to Mondo. It’s hard to think clearly; it’s hard to pin down where he needs to go. Mondo is... he should be guarding the body, right?
He can’t pretend he’s not scared. Someone killed Chihiro, killed her sadistically, strung her up by the neck, and—
—and if it was Mondo, if Mondo starts to think that Makoto suspects him—
But he wants to believe in Mondo. When Chihiro was upset, Mondo was kind to her. It’s hard to picture the same guy doing something like this.
And it can’t be Mondo, because—
Because then it’s Makoto’s fault.
Makoto swallows, blinks back tears. Tries to breathe.
It can’t have been Mondo. He couldn’t have got into the girls’ locker room. Right?
Finally, it’s time for the fic ideas I haven’t touched and now have to write something for. This is always intimidating, but I’ll give it a go!
Fandoms: NEO: The World Ends with You, Severance, Death Note, Dexter, The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, Deltarune. There may be spoilers for these canons below the cut.
NEO: The World Ends With You: They can’t defeat the Noise on the Final Day, and time travel only makes it stronger. All Rindo can do is keep turning back time to the start of the day, never facing Kubo, existing only in this short span of time in which his friends are alive.
I like this concept, but, boy, I do not remember how to write these characters.
“Hey,” Rindo says, “can we take a break from training? Can we just... hang out?”
“You’ve been pretty weird, dude,” Fret says. “Is this your time-travel thing?”
Rindo tries to smooth over his expression, but it’s clear that Fret’s seen it, knows he’s right. Fret’s always been more perceptive than people give him credit for.
“It is, right?” Fret asks. “Did we screw up? Did you come back to tell us—” He frowns, folds his arms. “Tell us we can take it easy? That doesn’t sound right.”
“I just wanna talk,” Rindo says.
“About our strategy?” Neku asks.
Rindo shakes his head. “About... whatever. Anything. Can we – can we just spend time together?”
His voice kind of wavers, even though he’s trying his hardest to keep it steady. There’s a moment’s silence, or the closest to silence you can get in Shibuya.
“We can’t beat this thing, can we?” Neku asks.
Severance: The chip malfunctions and outie Mark wakes up in the office.
I’m not sure I’d be able to do anything with this concept that I haven’t already done with my other Severance fics, but I’ll try to write a snippet!
This isn’t the elevator. Where is he?
He’s still in his work clothes. Sitting at a desk, looking at an old monitor filled with numbers that don’t mean anything to him. Is this—
Is this his workplace? Is this the severed floor?
That’s not supposed to be possible, right?
He looks around at... his colleagues, he guesses, even if he doesn’t remember a thing about working with them. One of them kind of feels familiar, and for a moment he thinks his work memories are somehow bleeding through before it hits him that, holy shit, that’s Helena Eagan.
He’s on a ‘personally working with the heir of the company’ level here?
Jesus, they should be paying him more.
Severance: Despite Lumon’s efforts to control their environment, the innies encounter someone from the outside world on their retreat.
I wasn’t sure whether they should run across an ordinary passer-by or someone from their outside lives, probably Devon. I ended up going with Devon in this snippet.
“Who the hell is that?” Dylan demands. “That’s not one of our weird doubles, right? Unless she’s, like... girl Mark?”
Mark swallows. Tries to speak. For a moment, it feels like he’s forgotten how.
“She’s my sister,” he says, when he’s found his voice.
There’s a long silence.
“Holy shit,” Dylan says.
“What are you doing here?” Mark asks. “Is this... part of it?”
Devon shakes her head. “You told me you were going on this retreat thing. Uh, my brother did, I mean. So.” She shrugs. “I followed you, I guess.”
“Okay,” Mark says, cautiously. “Uh, why?”
“I don’t know,” Devon says. “You’re this whole... other side to my brother, but I’ve barely met you. I guess I wanted to know you better.”
Death Note: L abducts and imprisons Light to see if the killing stops.
This idea came about when I was playing with the aforementioned Death Note/Severance concept, as being severed based on location is essentially a kind of imprisonment for your severed self.
“You abducted me,” Light snarls. “You’d never be able to use this in court.”
“I don’t need to use this in court,” L says. Leaning against the bars, looking in at him, like Light is an animal in a zoo. “I just needed to know I was right.”
“You aren’t right. Kira obviously noticed I’d disappeared, so he stopped killing. You’ve said yourself he has access to confidential police information; he must know I’m a suspect. I’m the perfect scapegoat.”
“He stopped killing newly reported criminals,” L says, expressionless, “but continued to kill ones that had been reported earlier? It’s an unusual approach, if his goal is to make me think you’re the culprit.”
“If Kira can kill with his mind, I could be killing from inside this cell,” Light says. “That’s the idea. He’s not killing anyone who’s been reported since I was abducted, because those aren’t names I’d know.”
“And how does Kira know you’re imprisoned?” L asks. “Rather than, say, dead?”
Light grits his teeth. “I don’t know; perhaps you didn’t cover your tracks as well as you thought. Whatever you might think, I don’t know how Kira gets his information.”
“It must have been someone who noticed your absence very quickly,” L says. “Your sister, perhaps?”
“Leave my sister out of this.”
Dexter/Death Note: Dexter meets Light.
The great thing about my ‘write at least a hundred words’ rule is that those words can come from anywhere in the hypothetical fic. I don’t have to work out how Dexter and Light got to this point in their conversation! That’s future me’s problem, if she ever tries to expand on this.
“You and I have the same goals,” Light says. “We’re both trying to cleanse the world of criminals. L is standing in the way. I can’t kill L without his name, but you can.”
Dexter shakes his head. “That’s not my goal.”
Light frowns. “You target murderers. That can’t be a coincidence.”
“It’s more like... a bad habit, I guess,” Dexter says. “Sometimes I need to kill someone. Honestly, I don’t see how you can get the same satisfaction if you’re doing it hands-off, but maybe that’s why you have to kill so many of them.”
Light’s jaw visibly tightens. “I’m not doing this for my satisfaction.”
As someone who knows a little about this, Dexter’s pretty sure you don’t kill hundreds of people if you don’t enjoy it.
The Coffin of Andy and Leyley: Something about Andrew’s constant struggle not to reciprocate Ashley’s flirting, not to take that road that he knows is open to him? Five Times Andrew Graves Resisted or something similar.
Could be folded into this concept: something about when Ashley first realised Andrew might want her? Or about the first time Andrew suspected she knew? Is she – is she flirting? Does she suspect something? Is she fucking with me? Does she want this? Fuck, no, I can’t think about this, no no no.
I considered writing separate snippets for these concepts, but the snippet I ended up with fits so neatly into both!
“Sooooo,” Ashley says, “what do you think?”
Andrew glances up, chokes out a laugh. She’s in some ludicrous slinky black dress she must have stolen from Mom’s wardrobe.
Ashley glowers at him.
“You can’t expect me not to laugh,” Andrew says. “You look ridiculous.”
“You seriously don’t think I can pull this off?”
Andrew shrugs. “I don’t know. It just doesn’t suit you. If it helps, you’re pulling it off better than Mom could.”
“Fine. I’ll burn the stupid thing.” Ashley puts a hand behind her back, rummages around a little.
Something like fear spikes through Andrew when he realises what she’s trying to do. “You’re taking it off right here?”
“I mean, I’m trying to,” Ashley says. “You wanna help?”
The Hundred Line: Takumi obsessively visits Eito in his cage.
I always enjoy a character dynamic where one character is simultaneously repelled and reluctantly fascinated, and Takumi/Eito is essentially that on both sides.
Eito’s sitting on the floor of his cage, reading a book. Takumi hesitates in the doorway.
“Takumi,” Eito says, his eyes still on the pages, “I know you’re here. Your breathing is as grating as everything else about you.” He looks up. “What do you want?”
What does he want? He just came here to check on Eito, he guesses. He gets uncomfortable if he goes too long without looking in on him; his mind starts to convince itself that Eito’s escaped, that he’s sabotaging their efforts somehow.
But somehow the idea of him not having escaped doesn’t feel great either. The thought of him just sitting alone in the courtyard.
“I thought you might want some company, I guess,” Takumi says.
“You already know that human voices and faces are hideous to me,” Eito says. “Explain to me why you thought I might want to hear you speak.”
Takumi shrugs. “I mean, you’re stuck in this place on your own. I figure maybe my hideous voice would be better than nothing.”
“I honestly owe you a thank-you,” Eito says. “The idea of spending a hundred days with you and the rest of that revolting team was making me feel ill. I’m much happier in this cage, I assure you.”
Deltarune: Kris trying to work out what the soul’s deal is. What are its goals? What motivates it to be nice to Susie, to tease Noelle in the way Kris would (a sense of what Kris would want to do?), to wander around looking at everything, to talk to every person in town (which is unbearable)?
I really want to write Deltarune fanfiction! But I don’t know how! There are still so many unknowns!
You can hear other people’s thoughts, Kris thinks. Can’t you? It’s not just mine.
They can feel the answer welling up in their own throat, but they manage to keep their mouth clamped shut, take it in silently. Sometimes.
It’s hard not to wonder what Noelle thinks of them. But they refuse to ask.
Seems like the soul’s picked up on their curiosity, though. Kris finds themselves starting to laugh, unwanted, someone else’s amusement bubbling out of them.
It’s humiliating, being forced to laugh at themselves with their own body. They bite down on their tongue, hard enough to hurt.
As ever, I have no idea whether any of these will end up becoming full fics, but I’m glad to have written at least a little for each concept!
This post lists all the fic ideas at the back of my 2024-25 diary. If I’ve written the fic, I’ll include a link to it. If I’ve started the fic, I’ll share a snippet. If I haven’t started it, I’ll write at least a hundred words on the spot.
First of all, here are the fics I’ve written in full. (To be clear, this isn’t all the fics I’ve written over the past year; it’s just the ones I’d previously noted the idea for in my diary.) Fandoms: Scrubs, Danganronpa, Ace Attorney, Death Note, Omori, Better Half, Severance, The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy. There may be spoilers for these canons below the cut.
Scrubs: Dr Cox/Elliot. You’ll probably need more of a concept than that.
Apparently that was all the concept I needed! The resulting fic was One Lucky Resident. I often forget about their dynamic when I’m not actively watching the show, but Dr Cox and Elliot have a lot of fun potential.
Danganronpa: Togami/Kirigiri? Perhaps they have sex, both of them aiming to stay above it all and expose the other’s vulnerabilities, with the constant underlying question of whether this will end in a murder attempt (and both of them confident that, if so, they’re not the one who’ll end up dead). Possibly ends with Naegi walking in or working out what happened and going ‘what the fuck what the fuck’.
doreyg is responsible for this one! Her interest in the pairing put the idea of Togami/Kirigiri in my head, meaning I was eyeing up their interactions on my most recent Danganronpa replay, and it did seem like they had some fun potential. This concept became the fic Above It All.Ace Attorney/Death Note: Phoenix Wright defends Light Yagami.
necrophilia commented on one of my Death Note entries with an Ace Attorney icon, thus dooming me to write Always Believe.Omori: Something where Sunny keeps hallucinating being pinned down by the red hands?
I originally thought this would be a good image for fanart, so I went on a fanart hunt. When I failed to turn up what I was looking for, I wrote a fic about the concept to console myself: A Helping Hand.
Better Half: The Thius sharing a bed the first night after the split (or a snapshot of different nights sharing the bed as their relationship develops?).
I ended up going with the ‘multiple snapshots’ approach for Two Become One.
Severance: Mark dozes briefly off at work, dreams of his outie’s life, and starts obsessively trying to sleep in the office, wanting to learn more, wanting to see more. The sky! Swimming! K-kissing Ms Casey, he guesses that’s not from his outie.
It’s not the focus of the fic, but I ended up incorporating aspects of this concept into Double-Sided.
Severance: Irving still shoves Helena’s face into the water, but it’s actually Helly. OT4... ensues?
This became Finding Air. I was so pleased to have written a Macrodata Refinement OT4 fic at last, after multiple failed attempts.
Severance: Mark S’s slow experience of reintegration.
Mark fixates on trying to understand Helena after the events of ‘Woe’s Hollow’.
These were two separate concepts I ended up combining into Anthropology.
Severance: Helena comes to genuinely care about the others and has second thoughts about being a mole.
This became For Someone Else. Helena has a lot of interesting potential, I think!
Severance: When Mark passes out after full reintegration, he has a headspace conversation with his innie self and possibly they make out.
Another case where two fic concepts ended up combined into one, although they weren’t quite cuddling in bed. Turns out Mark was not, in fact, fully reintegrated at the end of ‘Attila’! But, thinking he had been, I wrote Null.
Severance: When Gemma tries to escape, Ms Casey first encounters Dylan rather than Milchick; he goes ‘holy shit, Mark’s wife, we need to get you out of here’ and gets in the main lift with her, resulting in a very confused outie Dylan finding himself with a desperate outie Gemma who’s afraid of him at first, doesn’t know if she can trust him. (Milchick tries to pursue and Dylan goes ‘STAY AWAY FROM HER, YOU FUCK.’)
I expanded this idea into The Long Road Home. A journalist working on a piece about fix-it fics contacted me to talk about this fic, mistaking it for a fix-it for the finale, when in fact I’d written it a couple of weeks beforehand and was fine with the way the season ended! In the end, I wasn’t quoted in the article, but talking to a journalist about fanfiction for an hour was an entertainingly weird experience.
The Hundred Line: Yugamu gets into the weird murder relationship of his dreams with Takumi or Darumi.
Come on, guys. You can be brought back after you die; you should at least let Yugamu kill you once or twice, as a treat. The resulting fic, Piercing the Heart, went the Takumi route.
The Hundred Line: Everyone sadly bangs while waiting for the end after day 95.
This became All That’s Left. The more I play this game, the more I feel this fic would fit right into canon. I would not bat an eyelid at the Special Defense Unit canonically having an orgy by this point.
Next, let’s look at the works in progress (or at least the works that were started; I’m not sure they’re actively progressing). Fandoms: Death Note, Metaphor ReFantazio, Severance, The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, Danganronpa. There may be spoilers for these canons below the cut.
Death Note: Light/L/Ryuk where Light has to pretend that the invisible death god isn’t in the bed with them.
I’ve already shared this snippet, but here it is again for anyone who missed it. I’d love to expand this into a full fic, but this concept really doesn’t play to my writing strengths! I did write a Light/Ryuk fic as a precursor to this hypothetical fic, though: New Experiences.
“You seemed to enjoy yourself,” L comments, afterwards.
Light bristles at once. “We were having sex. That’s not unusual.”
“Really?” L asks, mildly. “I happen to know I’m extremely disappointing in bed. Yet you didn’t seem to have any trouble reaching orgasm.”
Light tenses. Does he know about Ryuk? Does he suspect—
No. L can’t see or hear Ryuk; he can’t feel his touch. He doesn’t even know shinigami exist. It would be ludicrous for him to have guessed that there was someone else in the bed with them.
“Perhaps my feelings for you are so strong I couldn’t help myself,” Light says, carefully sarcastic in tone.
L gives him an unreadable look. “Perhaps.”
“Or perhaps I faked orgasm,” Light says, “as part of my supposed intricate plan to seem less like Kira. Were you deliberately bad in bed as a test?”
L shrugs. “You could call it a natural talent.”
Metaphor ReFantazio: The protagonist and Strohl’s relationship in the immediate aftermath of the protagonist being transformed into a human.
a human, a human, a human (this is an injoke that only my housemates will get)
The others are at Will’s side, checking on him, his ever-loyal companions. Strohl should be there too, he knows; it shames him to be standing apart. But—
But a moment ago he was looking up at Will, turned vast and monstrous, and all he could think of were the huge, empty, merciless eyes of the human who destroyed his village.
He thought, just last night, that he was determined to follow Will anywhere. He fought by Will’s side against Louis, he risked his own life in Will’s name. He has dedicated his blood and his being to this boy who suddenly seems a stranger to him.
How much does he know about him, really? Will has never spoken of his past.
Death Note: Severance AU.
This combination of fandoms has a lot of interesting potential, I think, given that Death Note already does weird things with memory, but I just can’t make it click!
“You’ll need to have the severance procedure done, of course,” L says.
“The severance procedure?” Light asks. “You’re asking me to have my memories removed?”
“You won’t have your current memories when you’re in the office,” L says, “and you won’t retain the memories you form in there when you leave at the end of the day. You’re a suspect in the Kira case. I’m sure you understand that you can’t be allowed to remember the names and faces of the investigation team.”
“My father is on the investigation team,” Light says. “I’ve met several of his colleagues already.”
“That’s unfortunate,” L says, “but you’re likely to meet other important figures if you join the investigation. I think it’s still a precaution worth taking.”
“I won’t be much use in the investigation if I can’t remember anything, will I?”
“You’ll retain your intelligence and general knowledge. I think your insight will still be valuable.” L pauses. “Will you be any more willing to consider it if I tell you I’ve also had the procedure done?”
What? He’s lying, surely.
“You don’t have your memories when you’re in the task force office?” Light asks. “You’ve been investigating outside as well. How do you make that work?”
“Oh, no, you misunderstand me,” L says. “I severed myself so I wouldn’t remember sleeping.”
There’s a pause while Light tries to make sense of that. “Sleeping?”
“I don’t like sleeping. It’s a waste of time, and my dreams don’t make sense.”
The Hundred Line: Follow-on from the ‘Howdy Neighbour’ ending, where Takumi and Eito are both locked in the courtyard cages.
I love it when characters find themselves unable to get away from each other, one way or another.
“Looks like Nozomi ran,” Takemaru says. “Guess she knew her lie was about to catch up with her.”
She left the Academy? How long is she going to last out there in the wilderness, by herself?
Fuck, this is all Takumi’s fault.
“You need to find her,” Takumi pleads. “It’s not safe.”
“You want us to save our enemy?”
“She’s not your enemy! She’s...”
He’s going to have to expose her past. He can’t see any way out.
He lays it all out. Kamukura, the pods, Nozomi sneaking into the programme. She just wanted to help.
“You expect me to believe that?” Takemaru demands. “Why the hell wouldn’t you just tell us that in the first place? It’s pretty obvious that ‘she’s an enemy commander’ sounds way worse!”
“He’s right, you know,” Eito remarks conversationally, leaning against the bars of his cage. “You’d have to be pretty stupid to use that as a cover story.”
Takumi buries his head in his hands. “Shut up. I don’t want to hear that from you.”
Danganronpa: After Chihiro’s Free Time events, Naegi blames himself for the events of the second case – or maybe he goes ‘could Mondo have seen her?’ before the trial and goes to ask Mondo about it? Does Mondo end up confessing to him in private?
The snippets I have of this concept take the ‘talking to Mondo before the trial’ route.
He needs to speak to Mondo. It’s hard to think clearly; it’s hard to pin down where he needs to go. Mondo is... he should be guarding the body, right?
He can’t pretend he’s not scared. Someone killed Chihiro, killed her sadistically, strung her up by the neck, and—
—and if it was Mondo, if Mondo starts to think that Makoto suspects him—
But he wants to believe in Mondo. When Chihiro was upset, Mondo was kind to her. It’s hard to picture the same guy doing something like this.
And it can’t be Mondo, because—
Because then it’s Makoto’s fault.
Makoto swallows, blinks back tears. Tries to breathe.
It can’t have been Mondo. He couldn’t have got into the girls’ locker room. Right?
Finally, it’s time for the fic ideas I haven’t touched and now have to write something for. This is always intimidating, but I’ll give it a go!
Fandoms: NEO: The World Ends with You, Severance, Death Note, Dexter, The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, Deltarune. There may be spoilers for these canons below the cut.
NEO: The World Ends With You: They can’t defeat the Noise on the Final Day, and time travel only makes it stronger. All Rindo can do is keep turning back time to the start of the day, never facing Kubo, existing only in this short span of time in which his friends are alive.
I like this concept, but, boy, I do not remember how to write these characters.
“Hey,” Rindo says, “can we take a break from training? Can we just... hang out?”
“You’ve been pretty weird, dude,” Fret says. “Is this your time-travel thing?”
Rindo tries to smooth over his expression, but it’s clear that Fret’s seen it, knows he’s right. Fret’s always been more perceptive than people give him credit for.
“It is, right?” Fret asks. “Did we screw up? Did you come back to tell us—” He frowns, folds his arms. “Tell us we can take it easy? That doesn’t sound right.”
“I just wanna talk,” Rindo says.
“About our strategy?” Neku asks.
Rindo shakes his head. “About... whatever. Anything. Can we – can we just spend time together?”
His voice kind of wavers, even though he’s trying his hardest to keep it steady. There’s a moment’s silence, or the closest to silence you can get in Shibuya.
“We can’t beat this thing, can we?” Neku asks.
Severance: The chip malfunctions and outie Mark wakes up in the office.
I’m not sure I’d be able to do anything with this concept that I haven’t already done with my other Severance fics, but I’ll try to write a snippet!
This isn’t the elevator. Where is he?
He’s still in his work clothes. Sitting at a desk, looking at an old monitor filled with numbers that don’t mean anything to him. Is this—
Is this his workplace? Is this the severed floor?
That’s not supposed to be possible, right?
He looks around at... his colleagues, he guesses, even if he doesn’t remember a thing about working with them. One of them kind of feels familiar, and for a moment he thinks his work memories are somehow bleeding through before it hits him that, holy shit, that’s Helena Eagan.
He’s on a ‘personally working with the heir of the company’ level here?
Jesus, they should be paying him more.
Severance: Despite Lumon’s efforts to control their environment, the innies encounter someone from the outside world on their retreat.
I wasn’t sure whether they should run across an ordinary passer-by or someone from their outside lives, probably Devon. I ended up going with Devon in this snippet.
“Who the hell is that?” Dylan demands. “That’s not one of our weird doubles, right? Unless she’s, like... girl Mark?”
Mark swallows. Tries to speak. For a moment, it feels like he’s forgotten how.
“She’s my sister,” he says, when he’s found his voice.
There’s a long silence.
“Holy shit,” Dylan says.
“What are you doing here?” Mark asks. “Is this... part of it?”
Devon shakes her head. “You told me you were going on this retreat thing. Uh, my brother did, I mean. So.” She shrugs. “I followed you, I guess.”
“Okay,” Mark says, cautiously. “Uh, why?”
“I don’t know,” Devon says. “You’re this whole... other side to my brother, but I’ve barely met you. I guess I wanted to know you better.”
Death Note: L abducts and imprisons Light to see if the killing stops.
This idea came about when I was playing with the aforementioned Death Note/Severance concept, as being severed based on location is essentially a kind of imprisonment for your severed self.
“You abducted me,” Light snarls. “You’d never be able to use this in court.”
“I don’t need to use this in court,” L says. Leaning against the bars, looking in at him, like Light is an animal in a zoo. “I just needed to know I was right.”
“You aren’t right. Kira obviously noticed I’d disappeared, so he stopped killing. You’ve said yourself he has access to confidential police information; he must know I’m a suspect. I’m the perfect scapegoat.”
“He stopped killing newly reported criminals,” L says, expressionless, “but continued to kill ones that had been reported earlier? It’s an unusual approach, if his goal is to make me think you’re the culprit.”
“If Kira can kill with his mind, I could be killing from inside this cell,” Light says. “That’s the idea. He’s not killing anyone who’s been reported since I was abducted, because those aren’t names I’d know.”
“And how does Kira know you’re imprisoned?” L asks. “Rather than, say, dead?”
Light grits his teeth. “I don’t know; perhaps you didn’t cover your tracks as well as you thought. Whatever you might think, I don’t know how Kira gets his information.”
“It must have been someone who noticed your absence very quickly,” L says. “Your sister, perhaps?”
“Leave my sister out of this.”
Dexter/Death Note: Dexter meets Light.
The great thing about my ‘write at least a hundred words’ rule is that those words can come from anywhere in the hypothetical fic. I don’t have to work out how Dexter and Light got to this point in their conversation! That’s future me’s problem, if she ever tries to expand on this.
“You and I have the same goals,” Light says. “We’re both trying to cleanse the world of criminals. L is standing in the way. I can’t kill L without his name, but you can.”
Dexter shakes his head. “That’s not my goal.”
Light frowns. “You target murderers. That can’t be a coincidence.”
“It’s more like... a bad habit, I guess,” Dexter says. “Sometimes I need to kill someone. Honestly, I don’t see how you can get the same satisfaction if you’re doing it hands-off, but maybe that’s why you have to kill so many of them.”
Light’s jaw visibly tightens. “I’m not doing this for my satisfaction.”
As someone who knows a little about this, Dexter’s pretty sure you don’t kill hundreds of people if you don’t enjoy it.
The Coffin of Andy and Leyley: Something about Andrew’s constant struggle not to reciprocate Ashley’s flirting, not to take that road that he knows is open to him? Five Times Andrew Graves Resisted or something similar.
Could be folded into this concept: something about when Ashley first realised Andrew might want her? Or about the first time Andrew suspected she knew? Is she – is she flirting? Does she suspect something? Is she fucking with me? Does she want this? Fuck, no, I can’t think about this, no no no.
I considered writing separate snippets for these concepts, but the snippet I ended up with fits so neatly into both!
“Sooooo,” Ashley says, “what do you think?”
Andrew glances up, chokes out a laugh. She’s in some ludicrous slinky black dress she must have stolen from Mom’s wardrobe.
Ashley glowers at him.
“You can’t expect me not to laugh,” Andrew says. “You look ridiculous.”
“You seriously don’t think I can pull this off?”
Andrew shrugs. “I don’t know. It just doesn’t suit you. If it helps, you’re pulling it off better than Mom could.”
“Fine. I’ll burn the stupid thing.” Ashley puts a hand behind her back, rummages around a little.
Something like fear spikes through Andrew when he realises what she’s trying to do. “You’re taking it off right here?”
“I mean, I’m trying to,” Ashley says. “You wanna help?”
The Hundred Line: Takumi obsessively visits Eito in his cage.
I always enjoy a character dynamic where one character is simultaneously repelled and reluctantly fascinated, and Takumi/Eito is essentially that on both sides.
Eito’s sitting on the floor of his cage, reading a book. Takumi hesitates in the doorway.
“Takumi,” Eito says, his eyes still on the pages, “I know you’re here. Your breathing is as grating as everything else about you.” He looks up. “What do you want?”
What does he want? He just came here to check on Eito, he guesses. He gets uncomfortable if he goes too long without looking in on him; his mind starts to convince itself that Eito’s escaped, that he’s sabotaging their efforts somehow.
But somehow the idea of him not having escaped doesn’t feel great either. The thought of him just sitting alone in the courtyard.
“I thought you might want some company, I guess,” Takumi says.
“You already know that human voices and faces are hideous to me,” Eito says. “Explain to me why you thought I might want to hear you speak.”
Takumi shrugs. “I mean, you’re stuck in this place on your own. I figure maybe my hideous voice would be better than nothing.”
“I honestly owe you a thank-you,” Eito says. “The idea of spending a hundred days with you and the rest of that revolting team was making me feel ill. I’m much happier in this cage, I assure you.”
Deltarune: Kris trying to work out what the soul’s deal is. What are its goals? What motivates it to be nice to Susie, to tease Noelle in the way Kris would (a sense of what Kris would want to do?), to wander around looking at everything, to talk to every person in town (which is unbearable)?
I really want to write Deltarune fanfiction! But I don’t know how! There are still so many unknowns!
You can hear other people’s thoughts, Kris thinks. Can’t you? It’s not just mine.
They can feel the answer welling up in their own throat, but they manage to keep their mouth clamped shut, take it in silently. Sometimes.
It’s hard not to wonder what Noelle thinks of them. But they refuse to ask.
Seems like the soul’s picked up on their curiosity, though. Kris finds themselves starting to laugh, unwanted, someone else’s amusement bubbling out of them.
It’s humiliating, being forced to laugh at themselves with their own body. They bite down on their tongue, hard enough to hurt.
As ever, I have no idea whether any of these will end up becoming full fics, but I’m glad to have written at least a little for each concept!
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The Light/L/Ryuk made me crack up haha. Natural talent XD The conversation flows so nicely.
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And thank you! ♥
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There really should be more Severance crossovers; it's a concept with a lot of potential!
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Absolutely FASCINATED by the "L abducts and imprisons Light to see if the killing stops." snippet. Especially the “I don’t need to use this in court,” L says. Leaning against the bars, looking in at him, like Light is an animal in a zoo. “I just needed to know I was right.” which is SO messed up and SO in character and <3333. I love these weirdos so much!
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A journalist working on a piece about fix-it fics contacted me to talk about this fic, mistaking it for a fix-it for the finale, when in fact I’d written it a couple of weeks beforehand and was fine with the way the season ended! In the end, I wasn’t quoted in the article, but talking to a journalist about fanfiction for an hour was an entertainingly weird experience.
What even is your life, dude.
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What even is your life, dude.
Very confusing sometimes! Before I learnt I'd been cut out of the final article, I had to post my horrible timeloop incest fic anonymously to AO3, because I was slightly nervous about the idea of unsuspecting New York Times readers clicking through to my account and finding it right at the top.
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... That is a very specific problem to have and one that I would expect to happen to you, if to anyone at all