rionaleonhart: top gear: the start button on a bugatti veyron. (going down tonight)
When I watch things with my housemates, I don't always write about it on here because, well, you can't really pause episodes to scribble down your thoughts while other people are watching them with you. I thought I'd try to pull together a few lines each about some of the things we've watched over the last couple of years, though. Here we go!


Gargoyles (1994): Rei remembered this cartoon fondly from their childhood, but I had never seen it before. It was an interesting watch! Darker and more complex than I tend to expect from nineties Western cartoons, and Elisa and Xanatos are great characters; I'd have loved to see the two of them interact more. I'm annoyed by the 'Macbeth was just misunderstood' plotline, though; don't take away everything that makes Macbeth interesting as a character!

Cowboy Bebop (1998): This was an interesting anime, very stylishly directed, but it felt a bit like two different shows clumsily jammed together. I think it could have benefitted from cutting most of the 'bounty hunting procedural' aspect and becoming a shorter, more focused series. Spike is a fascinating character who feels severely underused, which is perplexing, given that he's the protagonist.

Wynonna Earp (2016): This was fun! It felt a bit like a version of Supernatural from an alternate universe; if Supernatural had been created by women and had female lead actors, I suspect it might look a bit like Wynonna Earp. Wynonna, in particular, feels very like a female equivalent to Dean Winchester; she's a wisecracking disaster who's incapable of coping with anything healthily. She's great. I love her.

Milo Murphy's Law (2016): A cartoon by the creators of Phineas and Ferb, about a boy who's plagued by misfortune. I loved this! In particular, I find Milo himself very endearing; I like his resourceful nature and positive attitude in the face of the certainty that everything's going to go wrong around him. Also, lumberjack-themed boy band song 'Chop Away at My Heart' is a banger.

Trinkets (2019): I'm a little sad that, although the ending was beautiful and perfect, the rest of the show wasn't quite good enough for me to run around recommending it. It's about three girls who meet at a programme for recovering shoplifters. Their friendship is great and I had a lot of feelings about it, but the show as a whole is so Constant Teen Drama that it's slightly exhausting. The finale was wonderful! I cried! The show as a whole is okay.

Batwoman (2019): We only watched the first series of this (and, in fact, I can't remember whether we finished that series). I really enjoyed what a catastrophe Kate Kane was, and her love-hate relationship with Alice was delightfully intense and messy; I feel it's a sort of relationship you don't often get to see between female antagonists! The show felt relentlessly miserable in a way that wasn't that fun to watch, though. We didn't make an active decision to stop watching it, but we drifted away.

The Owl House (2020): I really enjoyed this! Very cute and fun; very Gravity Falls vibes, which makes sense, given that it was created by Alex Hirsch's partner. It does seem like a disproportionate number of the episodes focus on teaching Luz that she shouldn't lie to impress people, though; if your protagonist learns the same lesson in half the episodes of your cartoon, I think you have to accept that she's never going to internalise the lesson! King is very reminiscent of our cat Zuko, who is a beautiful, perfect boy with absolutely no brain.

We Are Lady Parts (2021): A sitcom about an all-girl Muslim punk band. I got much more emotionally invested than I was prepared for; I thought this was just going to be a silly comedy! But then I met angry, self-sabotaging disaster Saira, and obviously I was doomed to love her.

Arcane (2021): A fantasy series based on League of Legends, a game I know absolutely nothing about. This is the most engaging show I've watched in a very long time. It genuinely surprised me on multiple occasions; I quickly gave up trying to predict what would happen in it, because I clearly had no idea! Every character is a disaster and it's great. An excellent series if you enjoy characters screwing up and tearing themselves apart over it. Gorgeously animated, too.

Queer Eye Germany (2022): A heads-up for anyone who enjoys Queer Eye: the German version is just as delightful! Ayan, the interior design guy, is my favourite of the Fab Fünf; he's extremely earnest and sweet.
rionaleonhart: final fantasy vii remake: aerith looks up, with a smile. (looking ahead)
Here is the completely straight-faced Queer Eye AU for Final Fantasy XV that nobody wanted or needed. I cannot explain or defend this.


Title: You Came Into My Life
Fandom: Final Fantasy XV
Rating: G
Wordcount: 3,400
Summary: Prompto, Ignis and Gladio give Noctis a lifestyle makeover. He's not ready for their acquaintance to end there.


You Came Into My Life )
rionaleonhart: final fantasy vii remake: aerith looks up, with a smile. (looking ahead)
The final entry in this adventure through my fandom history! I've really enjoyed this.


The Last of Us

The Last of Us came out just before I turned twenty-five. I wanted to play it, as I'd loved Naughty Dog's other work, but couldn't afford to buy it new. My brilliant plan: tell [livejournal.com profile] th_esaurus, with whom I lived at the time, about this game where a middle-aged man and a teenage girl travel through the apocalypse together (this concept is absolute catnip for her), then sit back and wait for her to buy it. It worked like a charm.

All of my fics for The Last of Us are over five thousand words long, which is unusual for me! Apparently it gives me ideas that need some space to explore.

The Last of Us is also unusual amongst the things I've written fanfiction for in being really, really good. I'm usually more drawn to write for messy, flawed canons.

Favourite character: Ellie is such a perfectly drawn character. She makes the game so human. It would never have worked without her.
Favourite pairing: This isn't a fandom I'm in for 'shipping purposes, especially, but Ellie/Riley is really cute.
Number of words written: 20,418

Snippet: This tiny thing is all I can find. It was meant to be something about Ellie's perspective on the world before the outbreak, I think. Warning for... discussion of miscarriage?

The Last of Us unfinished snippet. Ellie and Riley, 2014. )


Assassin's Creed

I tried out my housemate's copy of Assassin's Creed when I was twenty-six. It was a bit repetitive, but I enjoyed it enough to check out the later games in the series, which were great fun.

I've written a couple of Kenway/Kidd fics, a couple of Frye-sibling oneshots, but my main involvement in Assassin's Creed fandom was with a single series. A single, cowritten, extremely long series.

Visitors was originally supposed to be a oneshot. One chapter, containing eight short scenes from a Sense8 AU. I wrote it, and then it was over.

But I couldn't stop thinking of other scenes. So I wrote another eight and posted them as a second chapter. And then I posted a third, and, look, by that point I might as well keep going until I'd written for all twenty-eight possible two-character combinations.

Then salanaland started writing scenes in that universe, and I just kept going, and VampireBadger joined in, and we started making all sorts of plans in Google Docs, and and we all just wrote frantically in this one universe for a year and a half. By the time we drew the Visitorverse to a close, it was 900,000 words long. (Although over half the total wordcount was by VampireBadger, who is terrifyingly prolific.)

It was an absolute blast. We had a table to keep track of who had hugged whom, because it was our duty to make everyone hug and we took it very seriously.

A lasting impact of my time with the Visitorverse, when I was posting a new ficlet every couple of days: I'm now much better at finishing fics. It taught me how to look at what I've written so far and go 'okay, what needs to be added before this is ready to post?' So I've generally got less unfinished fanfiction lying around for my post-Assassin's Creed fandoms; if I start writing something now, I'm much more likely to see it through.

Favourite character: There are a lot of games and a lot of characters! But possibly Haytham Kenway? Repression, sarcasm and fraught parent-child relationships: always good. I wish I enjoyed the gameplay of Assassin's Creed III more so I'd be more willing to replay it.
Favourite pairing: Edward Kenway/James Kidd, for pairings that actually make sense. For pairings that don't make sense: Shay Cormac and Aveline de Grandpré never canonically meet, but I've 'shipped them ever since writing their first scene together in Visitors.
Number of words written: 122,813, of which 116,519 are in the Visitorverse.

Snippet: This was a concept for a Supernatural AU where the Frye twins become hunters.

Assassin's Creed unfinished snippet. Assassin's Creed Syndicate/Supernatural, 2017. )


Until Dawn

I have no idea what made me think that investigating Until Dawn was a good idea. At the age of twenty-eight I went 'I should watch a Let's Play!' and then 'NO, I HAVE TO BACK OUT, THIS IS WAY TOO SCARY' and then 'NO, I CAN'T BACK OUT BECAUSE THEN I'LL NEVER KNOW THE FATE OF THESE KIDS AND THAT'S WORSE.' I ended up having to spoil myself for everything before I could handle watching. Then I started uncontrollably writing fic after fic where the entire plot was 'IT'S POST-GAME AND EVERYONE'S TRAUMATISED'.

Favourite character: Mike! He combines two character types I have a weakness for: 'confident, kind of a jerk sometimes' and 'desperately trying to atone for a horrible, horrible mistake'. Also, he gets his fingers caught in a bear trap and it's hot.
Favourite pairing: I love Mike/Sam a lot. It's got shades of Nate/Elena, both in their appearance and in their dynamic. I was so happy when they teamed up.
Number of words written: 16,881.

Snippet: This isn't actually a snippet from an unfinished fic; it's a bit from an early draft of a finished fic. My Until Dawn time loop fic, New Game?, was originally going to be much lighter in tone and have Mike and Sam trapped in the time loop together.

Until Dawn unfinished snippet. Mike/Sam, time loop, 2016 or 2017. )


Final Fantasy XV

What a mess. What a masterpiece. I first posted about my anticipation for this game when I was twenty; I finally actually got to play it when I was twenty-eight. There's so much wrong with it and I love it so fiercely. What a strange joy of a game. The only game I've ever played for over a hundred hours on one save file.

I leapt straight into the fandom and swam happily around in it. I was expecting the fandom to be horrendous, but it turned out to be surprisingly relaxed! Everyone was there to have fun, and I never saw any shipwars or 'you can't 'ship that; it's morally wrong'. I had lots of fun writing for prompts on the kinkmeme.

Favourite character: Prompto! Simultaneously the most fun character in the cast and the most heartbreaking. An absolute joy to write. Suffers extremely well in fanfiction.
Favourite pairing: Ooh, hard to choose. Might have to be the Noctis/Prompto/Ignis/Gladio OT4, although I've got a particular soft spot for Noctis/Prompto. I also like horrible Ardyn/Noctis and Ardyn/Prompto.
Number of words written: 36,651.

Snippet: Here is a Queer Eye AU for Final Fantasy XV, because that's obviously a perfectly sensible fanfiction concept.

Final Fantasy XV unfinished snippet. FFXV/Queer Eye, 2018. )


Zero Escape

I enjoyed 999 and Virtue's Last Reward well enough, but they didn't capture my attention in a fannish way at all. I barely even mentioned them on here. I certainly didn't expect to write any Zero Escape fanfiction.

And then Zero Time Dilemma happened. I bought it when it was heavily discounted, at the age of twenty-nine, and I played through it at great speed, and I wrote seven fics in the space of a month. I came to the fandom late and there was very little activity (at one point I had written a full third of the fics on the front page of the AO3 tag), but the lack of an audience couldn't prevent me. It was a perfect excuse to write fanfiction about not knowing what's real, which is one of my absolute favourite fictional themes.

Favourite character: Bizarrely, my favourite Zero Escape character is a nice, relatively well-adjusted young man (who I can then make much less well-adjusted in fanfiction). I can't explain why Carlos appeals to me so much. I also think Akane is fascinating.
Favourite pairing: Carlos/Akane. I also love Carlos/Akane/Junpei, but Carlos/Akane is definitely the axis of it that appeals to me most.
Number of words written: 21,136

Snippet: Again, this is a cut scene from a posted fic rather than an extract from an unfinished one. (As I said, Assassin's Creed made me better at finishing fics, so in my later fandoms I have fewer unfinished works and I'm more ruthless about cutting scenes that don't fit.) This was originally going to come in So Close, So Far, my Carlos/everyone fic, at the end of the Carlos/Phi scene.

Zero Escape unfinished snippet. Carlos/everyone, 2018. )


Detroit: Become Human

I caught a bad case of Detroit: Become Human shortly before turning thirty. I initially put on theradbrad's Let's Play of this for background noise and ended up getting really into this disaster of a game.

My Detroit: Become Human fanfiction is horrible and I'm not sorry. It's got so much awful potential! Android programming raises so many horrible, fascinating questions of consent! Android limbs are so intriguingly detachable!

Some of you have got into this game because I started posting about it, and I'm extremely sorry about that. But I've been rewarded for my evil deeds with great fanfiction by [personal profile] magistrate, so it's hard to feel too much remorse.

Favourite character: Hank! Grumpy, sarcastic, cares more than he'd like to admit, made entirely of unhealthy coping mechanisms.
Favourite pairing: I still haven't really pinned down whether I feel I 'ship Hank/Connor or just enjoy its potential for horribleness, but either way it brings me a great deal of joy. I also like Connor/Kara and Connor/Connor, and [personal profile] magistrate has been sending me extracts of an ambitious fic-in-progress in which I am 'shipping everything, including but not limited to Connor/Markus, Hank/Markus and Hank/Kara.
Number of words written: 12,063.

Snippet: All I have are these few sentences from Hank's perspective, in a document entitled 'detroit feeeeelings.doc'.

Detroit: Become Human unfinished snippet. Hank/Connor, 2018. )


And that's the abridged version of how I got here! I look forward to finding out which fandoms await in my future.
rionaleonhart: final fantasy vii remake: aerith looks up, with a smile. (looking ahead)
I've only seen the first two episodes of Netflix's Queer Eye, but I'm already sad that only eight episodes exist. If you have Netflix, you should definitely watch it to improve the chances that it will be renewed! And also because it's delightful.

Seriously, I wasn't expecting to enjoy this. A reality show? A makeover show? But it's so charming; it's got so much heart! My housemates and I keep cooing and awwing at the screen. The Fab Five meet these isolated, lonely, insecure guys, and they don't just teach them to take care of themselves; they teach them to like themselves. It's incredibly sweet. I may have shed a couple of tears.

The third episode, which I've watched since typing the above, was somewhat less adorable on account of focusing on a Trump-supporting police officer over whom I was not always inclined to coo, but it had some interesting moments. In particular, I'm glad that Karamo was allowed to go 'yeah, that fake pull-over was a horrible joke and I was genuinely terrified' in front of the cameras, rather than being forced to go 'ha ha, what a hilarious jape that definitely didn't make me fear for my life'.

And then there's the fourth episode! Which is lovely! Antoni is extremely attracted to AJ and it's a delight.

Here's the worst fanfiction idea I've had in a long time: a Queer Eye-inspired AU for Final Fantasy XV. Noctis is isolated, directionless, sleeping constantly, untidy, generally bad at taking care of himself. Enter the stars of Lucis's hottest reality show to help him get his life together! Gladio gets him more active; Prompto makes him feel better about himself; Ignis is in charge of food and drink, and interior design, and grooming, and fashion, and... look, Ignis does everything. It's not clear why the other two are even on the show. But Noctis bonds with all of them, and, when they've parted ways at the end of the week, Noctis sets out to get them back into his life. He knows what he wants to do with himself at last!

This is a really bad idea. This is such a bad idea. I shouldn't want to read it as much as I do.