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stillness-in-green · 11 months

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First Sentence Game

The Rule: Share the first sentence of your ten most recent fics.

Personal Caveat: Since nine of my ten most recent fics have been for event weeks or prompt lists, I'm cheating a little and just picking one favorite first sentence from any given "set" of stories. Otherwise, these are presented from most recent to farthest back.

Tagging: @codenamesazanka, @robotlesbianjavert, @leftofrevolution, @desultory-novice, and anyone else who wants to play!

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10) It’s so hard to tell anything apart—what’s inside, what’s outside, what’s real when everything, everything, itches just the same. —Spinaraki Week Round 3, Day Two: Flesh | Resentment

9) “Why didn’t anyone tell me?” —Inheritance Deferred, aka the Magical Gang Reviver Eri-chan AU

8) It starts with blood on your hands, a sticky wetness you can smell but can’t see. —MLA May AUs, 5/3, Tokoyami: you’re lost in the labyrinth

7) Ten minutes to close, the health store is quiet, nearly deserted, with the cashier eyeballing his only two remaining customers when they aren’t looking. —Bad Example, the most recent Brogaraki installment

6) “What’s so impressive about him? You were the only one of us who was there.” —Mors Certa, in which Trumpet tries and fails to explain what it was like to be at The Crater

5) “Rise and shine, princess. Breakfast time.” —Moon Shot Aim, the Overhaul/Nemoto soulmate+bodyswap AU principally narrated by Lady Nagant

4) “I’m not saying I want to be stuck with a fake one, but the whole point was to—” —Discussing the Merits of Clones, i.e. stillness processing the Clone!Re-Destro reveal

3) Raltiiru Station was not always a miserable shithole of a place to live. —Spinaraki Week Level 2, Day One: Chase | Space

2) The first cup of tea he ever serves her, with eyes as gentle as his assumed name, is the first black tea she’s ever tasted, and though she loves everything about him, still she winces back from the strength of it. —Tonight I Love You Less (Than I Will Tomorrow Morning), the one where Gentle and La Brava adjust to togetherness, as tracked through the tea they have along the way

1) He hears tell of it from a man in distant Koya, of the secret stone, the pit at the heart of fragrant, fleshy Omelas. —A Blessing Count in Funeral Toll, aka the fusion AU with LeGuin’s The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, in which condemnation begins with a kindness

#memes #my writing #ficcing #mainly what collecting this told me is i need to write more fic #also that i start a lot of stories with dialogue #would love it if more people would read the Omelas fic #SO pleased with that one #“It's an allegory” i say as i allegorically explain why Hero Society brought this on itself

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stillness-in-green · 2 years

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Bad Example

Every so often Brogaraki likes to stroll into my brain with a new installment of himself. This time, it was thanks to some thoughts on how Aizawa and Brogaraki might--at least initially--appear to have some complaints in common. Enjoy!

(Requisite brief on Brogaraki: He's an amicable, very zen exercise jock--most of the time. Shares a physique-swap AU with Mean Nerd!Spinner. Still AFO's ward, still a villain, still wants to take down Hero Society, just thinks everyone should pay a little more attention to a balanced diet and good workout routine while they do. Prior installments have now been tagged, though mostly they're scattered in amidst other stories.)

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Ten minutes to close, the health store is quiet, nearly deserted, with the cashier eyeballing his only two remaining customers when they aren’t looking. Aizawa could do without the eyeballing, but he’ll take it over overly-helpful any day of the week. He deals with quite enough noise and commotion during the day without having to deal with it more than he has to when all he wants is to grab his necessities and go.

The drink pouches are a quick grab, but he gets most of the way down the aisle before it sinks in that his usual brand of vitamin supplements is, apparently, trying a new ad campaign. Aizawa stops several steps away from the display, staring at the cutout of a curled bicep and yellow tufts that are too distinctive to be anything other than what they obviously are, even as a noticeable lack of polish suggests that this is not an official, Might Productions-licensed endorsement.

“Tch.” Aizawa clicks his tongue in irritation and behind him, something shifts.

“He get on your nerves, too?” says the man—young man, Aizawa mentally corrects as he glances over his shoulder at the store’s only other customer.

The guy’s shorter than him, though not by much, and looks solid, the kind of fit that only comes from having stuck to a hard workout routine for so long it becomes normal. Backing up that impression are the bottle of carnitine tablets, the boxes of FIT bars, and the canister of protein supplement that runs for over seven thousand yen taking up most of the available space in the handbasket hooked over his elbow. He’s dressed in gray sweats, topped off with a tousle of white hair and eyes that are, even for this day and age, an unusually vivid red. He jerks a thumb towards the display. “All Might,” he clarifies, unnecessarily, a smile tugging at his lips—scarred, Aizawa notes, and one below his right eye, too. There’re a few fresher ones dotted across his knuckles that speak of a recent punch-up, but the ones on the face look old and pale. Youthful mishap?

“That’s rare. I don’t usually meet people who get irked about All Might.” The kid’s still going on, undeterred by Aizawa’s silence, and there’s—something there. Something ever so slightly off, a nagging at the back of Aizawa’s brain, though whether it’s off-socially awkward or off-dangerous, he hasn’t pinned down yet.

It’s true that it’s rare to meet people who don’t like All Might, though. Even rarer, people who dislike him.

“…I don’t like the kind of example he sets,” Aizawa finally allows.

“He makes it look so easy, right?” White Hair says, and the threatened smile unfurls into a grin, or at least half of one, crooked beneath an appraising stare. “But he won’t say how it gets it. Sometimes I wonder if he’s on steroids and they just cover it up.”

Definitely socially awkward, then. Aizawa casts his eyes up to the store’s fluorescent lights, weighing his mental image of All Might—the man All Might is when he’s not being All Might—tucked primly on one side of the couch in the teacher’s lounge, nursing a cup of instant tea, elbows tucked in close to himself, narrow back bowed. It’s a bit impressive, how little space he takes up, when Aizawa compares it to his on-the-job persona.

“I don’t think it’s steroids,” he says.

“Nah? I mean, it’s gotta be something, though, right? Unless that’s just his quirk: Make Everyone Else Second-Guess Their Life Decisions.”

And here we have the downside for coming in right before close.

“I wasn’t talking about his physique,” Aizawa mutters, turning back to the shelf, because this conversation is officially getting too bizarre.

“What did you mean, then?” White Hair asks, not taking the hint.

Aizawa sighs heavily and weighs his answer. The abrasions and purpling skin up and down Midoriya’s arm jump all too quickly to mind, right alongside the cluelessly bright eyes that still have a long way to go before they learn—really learn, in a way that sticks—a single thing about the kind of toll his mentality takes on him and everyone around him.

He cuts off that train of thought before it can make it all the way to the place it always goes. Aizawa knows exactly what it is he doesn’t like about All Might, but he didn’t come out here tonight to grumble about the state of heroics and society and novice teachers who only got in because of special circumstances a certain rodent has, for his own inscrutable reasons, declined to divulge to his staff.

“I just think he should be more aware of how dangerous it is for people who aren’t him to try and emulate him.” Aizawa hasn’t seen the injury that’s got All Might dallying with teaching the next generation instead of flying around Japan at all hours of the day all year long like he used to, but from what he’s pieced together, even for All Might it’s not safe anymore to act like he did back then. “Given how popular he is, that’s only rational.”

White Hair falls quiet; Aizawa swipes a jar of amino acids off the display and makes his escape, beelining towards the checkout.

Staring after the hero, Shigaraki feels his grin settling into something that hurts his cheeks less, though the spike of pain in his chest still stings. He had a thousand things he wanted to say to that, and the hero had left before he could settle on just one. Still…

“You’re pretty cool,” he murmurs to himself, “Eraserhead.”

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Apparently, the kinds of supplements that you see at e.g. GNC stores and such for the workout nuts among us are crazy expensive in Japan. Much like pets and gym memberships, they're considered kind of a luxury good, and priced as such.

Kurogiri, who is handling the credit card bill, wonders if Shigaraki Tomura could perhaps find a better price for these things online. Brogaraki says he's getting out and interacting with the public, just like Sensei wants, so what's the problem?

#bnha #shigaraki tomura #aizawa shouta #brogaraki #ficcing #my writing #got a few asks waiting still #but i'm taking a small break through the weekend

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stillness-in-green · 3 years

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BNHA Gift Fics Post

Hey all, I am here on this fine Boxing Day evening to share the fics I wrote for Yuletide my fandom friendos this year! Rather than a bunch of big AO3 embeds one after another, let’s just keep this to one post.

In (Un)Common Cause: Spinner and Trumpet go a few rounds. In a manner of speaking. (ft. the Shigaraki/Spinner "physique swap" AU, also known as Brogaraki)

More Brogaraki for @robotlesbianjavert, who delights me by never getting tired of him. This one, though, is much more about that particular AU’s version of Spinner and his contentious relationship with Trumpet (who has even less time for the weedy nerd version of Spinner than he does the jacked one).

A Blessing Count in Funeral Toll: How is one to tell about joy? How to describe the citizens of Omelas? One thing I know there is none of is guilt. (All For One takes Omelas's bet.)

For @codenamesazanka, a fusion-style crossover with Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, written in an approximation of the style of that story. It is, of course, primarily about how a child becomes a monster in Omelas, but it’s not not about how Shimura Tenko becomes Shigaraki Tomura in Hero Society’s Japan too, if you catch my meaning.

Racketeering? More Like Racquetball: A run-of-the-mill sales pitch goes sideways when Nemoto targets the wrong hero. He tries to keep on top of things.

For @holioc, fic for a completely delightful AU idea she had a while back about Nemoto Shin getting picked up by Curious and the Metahuman Liberation Army instead of Overhaul and the Shie Hassaikai. I also took the opportunity to explore what life might be like for heroes who aren’t Top Ten in the Hero Rankings--who are, in fact, a good deal farther down than that.

Every Other Ghost: Shigaraki and Re-Destro had been having a pretty good time when All For One's vestige interfered where it wasn’t wanted. Afterward, though, Shigaraki finds out that Sensei isn't the only one who has opinions about his sex life.

And for @leftofrevolution, a speculative sequel to her wonderful fic Building Pyres For Ruined Gods (a story you should absolutely read before this one if you want this one to make any sense). Back when she first wrote Ruined Gods, I got very inspired and dashed off a few paragraphs of continuation based on a headcanon of mine that AFO stole Destro’s quirk back in the day. This is, if not the full version of that continuation, at least a full first scene of the hook.

I may or may not write something like this as a stand-alone someday, honestly. I am pretty cool on the AFO Possession plotline, but I am fascinated by the idea of quirk vestiges within AFO other than Sensei himself, how conscious they are of their situation, and what Shigaraki’s experience with them will be like. My suspicion is that the canon won’t deal with it at all--the AFO vestige is quite a lot of plotline for Shigaraki to wrestle with already!--but I hope to be proven wrong.

I also have one more treat I’d like to write, which I’m hoping to have done around New Year, and then I have another Re-Destro project I’ve been champing at the bit to get to. I’ll also have a certain pairing-themed week to start thinking about again soon.... Well, suffice to say, unless canon really breaks my heart in the new few months, I’ve got a pretty good amount of villain-themed fic and meta I’ve been eager to get back to.

#iguchi shuuichi #shigaraki tomura #hanabata koku #all for one #nemoto shin #kizuki chitose #yotsubashi chikara #spinner bnha #trumpet bnha #afo bnha #curious bnha #destro bnha #bnha #boku no hero academia #my writing #ficcing #brogaraki

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stillness-in-green · 4 years

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Spinaraki Week, Day 4: Late Nights | Reverse

The return of.....BROGARAKI. (ft. the aftermath of Kamino)

(For context, Brogaraki is an extremely silly concept I came up with joking around with @codenamesazanka about Shigaraki being Beefy McRipped now that he’s out of the tube. He’s “phsyique-swapped” with Spinner, such that Spinner is now a weedy, resentful geek and Shigaraki is a friendly, bro-ish, very zen exercise jock (right up until the switch flips and he turns into a violent acid trip jock). I wrote a bit about him and Spinner previously here, but I wanted to revisit him at a time when his walls were a bit further down, and the Reverse prompt was the perfect opportunity.

———– ———– ———– ———–

3 AM after the escape from Kamino found Spinner digging around Shigaraki and Kurogiri’s kitchenette, hunting for coffee or an energy drink, or something he could microwave. What kind of person didn’t keep so much as a pack of precooked gyoza in their freezer? And there were definitely too many damn vegetables in the fridge. Shigaraki was a protein drink nut, no surprise there. Probably the bigger surprise was that the police hadn’t tracked him down years ago after knocking over too many health food stores.

Sure, Kurogiri had told him to help himself, but that did not mean he was going to waste time figuring out his boss’s rice cooker, much less chance said boss walking in on Spinner failing at cooking. Not that the latter seemed likely.

It had taken a few hours to coordinate their next move after it became clear that All for One was not going to be coming back, but the planning was complicated by the fact that Shigaraki Tomura was in some kind of mental shutdown, sitting on his bed with all those gruesome hands piled up in his lap, watching the news with a blank, rigid expression and not budging for Kurogiri or anyone else.

Kurogiri had promised everyone that Shigaraki would come around and, well, it wasn’t like there were many other, better options. What was anyone going to do; give up and go back home? Not likely, when the heroes busting up the bar had run off a roll-call of real names. No, they were in it now, poison swallowed, so no point in sparing the plate.

So the plan was, split up, lay low, shake or otherwise deal with any tails that might have been how the heroes found the bar to begin with, stay in touch, and plan to meet back up in two weeks.

The League had filtered out one by one in coordination with Kurogiri: he warped them to wherever they’d been holed up before so they could collect their stuff, helped them secure a change of clothes and whatever else they needed for concealment purposes, and then warped them to an agreed-upon drop site, somewhere innocuous they could then disappear from on their own.

Spinner was left until last. Other than Dabi—who had bailed on his own, refusing the assist—he was the most recognizable person in the group; he wanted as many people in bed as possible before he headed out into the streets.

Which was how he’d found himself alone in another villain’s kitchen, fitfully polishing his blades and listening to the news on the radio when the bulletin came through announcing the real names of the League of Villains to the public.

There’d been more after that, probably the usual—reward money for information, threat levels, known priors—but that was about when Spinner’s own brain had fused into uncooperative rage and he’d shut the radio off (he’d only stopped himself from throwing it out the damn window because the window above the sink looked too tiny for it to fit) in favor of hunting for food.

And naturally they don’t have anything but fucking health food.

He snatched a few granola bars off a cabinet shelf and slammed the door shut, turning back to the table—and immediately nearly dropping them in favor of climbing up the back wall at the sight of Shigaraki standing in the apartment’s tiny living room, red eyes fixed on Spinner.

“What the hell, Shigaraki?!” he demanded, stealing a glance at his daggers and knives, all laid out neatly on the kitchen table, all out of reach. “What are you doing, sneaking around your own hideout?”

Shigaraki took a step closer and Spinner tensed, leaning back towards the sink. There was a drawer on his left, maybe a one in four chance it had flatware, less than that of having a good, sharp santoku or shashimi knife. Shigaraki just came up to the fridge and opened it, though, gaze skimming over the contents. He moved even more quietly than normal—and his normal was already way too quiet for a guy his size—only the rustling of his clothes audible as he leaned forward and shuffled through the fridge’s contents.

He looked—off-putting. And, yeah, he always looked a little off-putting to Spinner, who distrusted jocks on principle, but now even more so than usual. Not even a day since his mentor was captured and he was smiling, a small, faint upturn of his scarred lips, his face pallid in the unforgiving lighting. Red abrasions glared out from his neck, a few so deep they’d driven blood, bare little crimson trickles gone patchy and dry on his skin.

“Where’s everyone else?” he asked suddenly, pulling an unmarked bottle full of some soupy green mixture out of the fridge and closing it near-soundlessly with a delicate three-fingered grip. He straightened back up, though still not to his usual wide-open stance; his broad shoulders slumped inward towards his chest, giving his posture a subtly deflated look. The hollow between his clavicles caught Spinner’s eye, a shadowed divot carved at the base of his throat.

“Kurogiri’s been taking people back to their hideouts and stuff,” Spinner said, mentally cursing himself for how flaky that and stuff had sounded. He pulled his eyes up towards Shigaraki’s face, meeting his stare, or at least expecting to—but even though Shigaraki was looking right at him, his attention was clearly elsewhere, his bright red eyes gone foggy and distant. “Should be back soon.”

Shigaraki hummed softly and sat down in the chair across from Spinner’s polishing cloths. He still looked slack, burned out, his legs stretched out long in front of him, heels on the floor. Spinner approached gingerly, like he would a stray raccoon that hadn’t yet shown enough teeth for him to know if it was rabid or not.

“There’s a loft up there, if you want a nap,” Shigaraki offered absently, looking over Spinner’s knives. “Kurogiri uses it when he sleeps.” Which was a weird as hell way to phrase it, but not something Spinner was inclined to linger on in the moment.

“…I don’t think so.”

“Worried about sleeping in someone else’s ‘hideout’?” Shigaraki turned his vague smile back up to Spinner as he edged closer.

“I don’t think I’m gonna be getting much sleep for a while,” Spinner replied, a trace of heat slipping back into the words. “Seeing as they just released all our names to the public.”

“The news had mugshots,” Shigaraki contributed, and his eyes flicked down to Spinner’s hands as they spasmed into clenched fists. A bit of his usual lilt returned, drowsy as if it had been dragged out of bed too early. “What, didn’t see that coming?”

“It was a predictable outcome,” Spinner gritted out. He was not about to tell Shigaraki Tomura about how people in his hometown didn’t need an excuse to vandalize his parents’ house on a good day, when everyone in it had kept nice and quiet and in line, much less how bad he knew it would get once word about him got around, which it would.

Shigaraki stared at him for a moment longer, white hair fanning over his shoulder as he tipped his head to one side.

“I don’t really get it, I guess,” he said at last, and went on before Spinner had figured out how to field something like that, “but I do want my team to keep their health up. Valerian root’s a really good sleep aid. You can take some with you, if you want. I can even show you how to brew it up right.”

“No,” Spinner said coldly, mostly because his thoughts had stuttered off-track and into a wall, and that was all he could think of. He sat back down at the table and picked up his polishing cloth and the knife he’d been working on last.

Shigaraki shrugged and picked up one of the granola bars from where Spinner had dropped them, peeling back its wrapper in quick, well-practiced gestures using just his thumbs and forefingers. Spinner stared at cloth and blade for a solid thirty seconds before finally giving in.

“Why do you even know that? Don’t most people just take pills if they need to crash?”

Shigaraki laughed—not at all his usual friendly guffaw with its ever-present underscoring of anticipatory menace. This sound was wry and hollow. “Spinner, man. If you knew how long I’ve needed sleep aids…”

“How long?” Spinner could have let it go, but he hated that kind of conversational grandstanding. Why not just say it, if you’re going to bring it up? What, like your backstory’s so damn interesting no one would ever skip through hearing about it.

“Since I was—like five, I guess. Somewhere around there.” The smile played lazily, if wearily, around the corners of Shigaraki’s mouth. “Can’t take pills for that long. You gotta cycle through things, so your body doesn’t acclimate.”

“Do you ever shut up about health routines?”

Shigaraki shrugged again, unoffended. “Guy’s gotta have hobbies. Can’t be planning the destruction of Hero Society 24/7.”

It occurred to Spinner, in that moment, that he did not actually know what villains did with their time other than eat, sleep and plot. It was hard to imagine someone like Stain doing much of anything else. All for One, a supervillain so fabled and mysterious that only Mr. Compress (a self-admitted old man) and Spinner (who’d been doing villain research since Stain had first started cropping up in the news) had even recognized his name, was even more of an enigma.

Though given his fashion sense, I bet he’s not an exercise freak like his protégé.

Spinner’s mouth twisted. He was being cruel, he recognized, and for no real purpose but his own frustration. Harshness was all right, but it should have direction, volition. That was Stain’s way.

“I like knives,” he offered stiffly.

“I coulda guessed,” Shigaraki returned with a flicker of his usual pleasant candor. “Which one’s your favorite?”

Well, sleep definitely wasn’t happening, and it seemed stoic silence was off the table, too. Spinner sighed heavily, scratching at his hair, and thought, Fine. What the hell. Fine.

“That hachiwari in the middle, with the red handle,” he said, gesturing to it with the blade already in his hand. “I got it when I first decided I supported the Hero Killer.”

Shigaraki sighed a bit at that in turn, but Spinner decided to let it go.

They were still talking when Kurogiri returned an hour later.

“Shigaraki Tomura,” the man said, sounding a little surprised. “Has your mood improved?” Which was a funny way of asking, Are you feeling better? but then, asking something like that when there was a subordinate right at the table would probably be pretty embarrassing for everyone involved.

“Sure thing,” Shigaraki responded easily. “Spinner and I had a nice talk.”

Kurogiri’s wavering yellow eyes slanted over to Spinner, who ignored him in favor of hastily resheathing his weapons. “I see. Good. Did you discuss our plans moving forward?”

“Yep.” Jewel red eyes landed on Spinner again, boring into him with an intensity almost as strange as the addled despondency had been. “See you again in two weeks, right?”

“Yes,” Spinner answered stiffly, giving him an obstinate stare in return. Shigaraki grinned at him, sitting back in his chair.

“Sure you don’t want some of the valerian?”

“I’m sure.” Spinner pointedly turned toward Kurogiri. “Let’s go.”

“Very well. Shigaraki Tomura, I will return before dawn, if that will be sufficient time to prepare?”

“We’ll make it work,” Shigaraki responded, shifting and pushing himself back up to his feet—and all the way back up, at that, shoulders straight, a crafty, off-center smile spreading wide across his face. It looked a bit too much like the smile he’d given Muscular right before… Spinner frowned back at him, trying to will him to stop playing around.

Kurogiri inclined his misty head toward Shigaraki, then opened up one of his warp gates off his left arm, gesturing Spinner in with his right.

Spinner ducked through without looking back.

———– ———– ———– ———–

The ‘already been poisoned, don’t spare the plate’ line is a rephrase of a Japanese idiom, “When poisoned, one might as well swallow the plate.” It’s a similar meaning as, “In for a penny, in for a pound.”

A hachiwari (also called a kabutowari) is an old-style Japanese samurai sidearm, basically a dagger with a can opener hook at the base of the blade. The hook was used to parry weapons, crack open armor plates, or hook the cords of armor and/or helmets, while the sharp end was for piercing through weak areas of armor, like armpits and the like. Not an active component of any currently-taught martial art, but you can still purchase them in the modern day!

#spinarakiweek2020 #iguchi shuuichi #shigaraki tomura #boku no hero academia #bnha #my hero academia #my writing #ficcing #brogaraki

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