Open Thread #1 - welcome aboard

[sunlit_skycat]

The goal of this thread is to provide people a place to talk that isn't a full-on fic or meta essay, while also reducing the amount of clutter in the main area. How exactly things work here will be in a state of flux over the next few months, since norms are still being developed and I'm waiting to see how this space actually gets used once there are people in it.

For now, I plan to keep this thread open until end of June or end of July, and then make another as a monthly thing.

Now that I've rambled on about this, time to kick it over to you all. Some things that I'm curious about:

• What things do you want to see in Pale fanfic? Any ideas you're working on?
• How readable is this site to other people, especially on mobile?
• How did you hear about this site?

Comments

[sunlit_skycat]

I've got a lot of ideas bouncing around in my head, but finding the time to do them is hard. In no particular order:

Set of three that aren't in the same universe, but are thematically tied together in that they are inverted isolated LVA concepts.

Verona Belanger, where an Aware Verona is recruited to the Belanger Circle as an apprentice, and attends the BHI. In there, Alexander takes a shine to her, but that does not make him any less predatory towards her as a female apprentice. With less resources and a more toxic environment than canon, Verona must make her own way through the world of Practice. Longfic, waiting until Pale finishes to even start outlining this. Main issue for me is that this would require writing a lot of impressive Practice, and that's currently a weak point of mine.

In a fit of spite, a dying Carmine Beast decides to Awaken Lucy before Miss can, and charges her with stopping the Choir. Lucy's first introduction to magic is through the Carmine Beast's viewpoint, and she first meets the Kennet Others as an agent of the Seal, not a semi-friendly investigator they chose for themselves. In other words, Lucy works through matters of justice for 50k words.

Avery's parents split households earlier, and a lonely, isolated Avery moves to Thunder Bay with her mom. Kelsey is targeted by one of Florin's machinations, and accidentally makes Avery Aware. Basil and Marlin approach Avery with the idea of getting revenge on Florin, and she is inducted into a shady Practitioner underground. Suggested by someone else, so while it fits the set, this is the idea I'm least attached to and have no plans to work on.

Other ideas:

Covering the gaps of canon on how Brie ran the Hungry Choir after binding it. I like to think she made a network of all the people running it after her, to try to give them advice and support, like a larger scale version of the Hungry Choir wiki. End on Charles unmaking the Choir and collapse of all those efforts to do better with the hand she got.

[lunecat16]

ever since you've mentioned Tanner mentor as a possibility for Verona in the Belanger AU i've been quite excited to see that one. genuinely i think all of these work pretty well. i'm guessing TB Avery wouldn't go down the Finder route in nearly the same way

[sunlit_skycat]

This alt!Avery would probably take some very unhealthy inspiration from Marlin's Drifter Practice. I doubt it would be good for her, but this general idea set is loosely framed around taking elements of LVA and exaggerating them for worse effect, at least to start with.

Ideas

[(Anonymous)]

I have an idea for a Worm crossover. Post Arc 13 for Pale, Post canon for Worm. When Charles goes looking for allies he finds a bound and dormant Other living in head of an otherwise Innocent Taylor Hebert. I think Charles wakes up QA to it's 'normal' state and throws Taylor into the world of magic as an Aware. No explicit compulsion or binding on Taylor, Chuck relies on her fundamentally conflict centric nature to play into his own ends. He even tells her that she's free to try to try to take him down and points her towards Kennet. The only thing he holds over is that if he wanted to he could undo all the bindings on the monster in her head and bring back Khepri. I figure from there Taylor ends up in Kennet Below as a brutal but otherwise cooperative enforcer for BSW, helping out with all the various conflicts until it comes down to Charles. Don't have an ending yet, probably won't until Pale does.

Re: Ideas

[lunecat16]

'wait til pale ends' seems like the usual sticking point for a lot of fic ideas )':

if you wanted to try and write it out anyway, you could probably come up with a placeholder end of sorts and tweak it as pale nears its end, but that depends on how quickly you get chapters out vs how quickly pale ends, so i understand not wanting to deal w/ that.

[megafire7]

I first caught wind of this site existing from someone on Tumblr, but when I came over I saw the 'Empty Thrones' posting, and I decided to ask Lune about the place to convince me to join up!

[drowninstylisticaudacity]

I was linked here by a friend, and I saw it on the Parahumans Discord.

The mobile readability is fine if I zoom in, which has the slight disadvantage of side-to-side motion if I'm lazy (iOS).

I might write something character-focused about Sebastian Harless--something about his appearance in the most recent chapter and the whole thing about being a lawyer who doesn't Practice much until he finds himself shrinking down to fairy-size and traveling internationally via goblin-hole to take out a Judge hit the blorbo bits of my brain. Assuming that WB doesn't use him for an Interlude, of course, but there doesn't seem to be a need to for the rest of the conflict if the girls are right there.