rionaleonhart, posts by tag: top gear - LiveJournal

More Goes Wrong Show questions from Tumblr! I'm always delighted to receive these.


Anonymous: How would the girls feel about playing boys?

Annie throws herself with enthusiasm into male roles and has a great time. Even in the Cornley Drama Festival, when she had control over the staging and casting, she actively chose to play a man in her farce; it’s definitely something she’s happy to do!

Vanessa is more or less neutral on playing male roles; a role is a role like any other. However, male roles do add an extra source of stress; she worries about whether she’s believably depicting a man, and she’ll panic if she messes up in some way, e.g. if her voice slips.

Sandra dislikes playing male roles. She’s here to be a sexy lady, and she feels that being cross-cast gets in the way of that. Which is a shame, because she looked great as a boy in 'The Most Lamentable...'!

Lucy is stressed out in any role, but she slightly prefers playing boys because it means she doesn’t have to hear Robert’s bizarre ideas about How to Be Feminine.


mosswall: What does the venn diagram look like between Robert Goes Wrong Show and Jeremy Clarkson?

Extremely heavy but not quite complete overlap!

- Robert only: fictional, obsessed with acting.
- Clarkson only: non-fictional, obsessed with cars.
- Both: large, loud, aggressive, ridiculous, attention-grabbing, destructive, distinctive style of speaking, oblivious to others, highly entertaining, cause a lot of problems, part of a close-knit but frequently antagonistic group of friends who manage to make everything into a disaster, outrageously fun to write, people give me weird looks when they learn that I think they’re hot.


Anonymous: I don’t know a lot about “the show that goes wrong” but do you think they would perform death note the musical and if they did perform death note the musical who would get which role.

I’m going to say that Max would play Ryuk - he’s got the grin for it - and Chris would give himself the role of Light. Annie would be fun as Misa! I can see Sandra as Rem.

Robert demands to be L. Chris refuses to cast him as L; he instead casts Robert as Light’s father and gives the role of L to Jonathan. Inevitably, though, Jonathan is unable to get onto the stage during the performance, and Robert gleefully steps in. Chris and Robert definitely capture the intense hostile homoeroticism of Light and L’s duets, although some parts of the audience are confused by L apparently being Light’s father.


Anonymous: I was going to ask "shag marry kill" for the Goes Wrong crew, but there are too many of them! How many of them are there, nine? Okay. Shag, marry, kill, roommate, stuck in elevator with, fake married to, coworker, owe £10000 to, unexpectedly related to. I think that's nine.

Shag: Robert. It's unlikely to be a good idea, but, look, if I've got to shag one of them, I'm going to shag the hottest man I've ever seen.

Marry: Vanessa. I don't want to be married to anyone, and I think Vanessa's likely to accept 'actually, this was a mistake, wasn't it? let's get divorced' without complaint. Even if we end up permanently married, Vanessa is one of the more liveable-with members of the society, despite being a little high-strung.

Kill: Jonathan. He won't be able to get through the pearly gates, and they'll have to send him back to Earth.

Roommate: Annie. She's very warm and friendly and enthusiastic; I think we'd get along!

Owe £10,000 to: Dennis. He will forget, meaning I can pay him back in small instalments over a long period without Dennis ever hounding me or getting upset; he will, in fact, be surprised and delighted every time I give him money.

Unexpectedly related to: Maybe Max? He seems to have a wealthy and supportive family, after all! Maybe they can help out with the £10,000 I owe to Dennis.

At this point I realise, to my mild horror, that I have to choose between Chris and Trevor for 'stuck in elevator with' and 'fake married to'.

Stuck in elevator with: Chris. He will be stressed out, but he is a better option than Trevor, who will attempt to force the lift's doors open, causing it to plummet to the bottom of the shaft and killing us both.

Therefore, by process of elimination, I will end up fake married to Trevor. I'm not sure my family will be thrilled by my apparent marriage to a man who lives in a layby in two thirds of a caravan, but it beats dying in a falling lift.

WAIT, HOLD ON, I FORGOT SANDRA AND COWORKER WERE OPTIONS

In that case, I'll get stuck in the lift with Sandra and have Chris as a coworker. Chris is testy and I'm sure we'll rub each other the wrong way sometimes, but I'm also sure he will get his work done and respond to emails. Sandra will complain loudly the whole time we're stuck in the lift, but I can handle that. Again, the crucial thing, for my own safety, is that I do not end up stuck in a lift with Trevor.


I was also asked for my five favourite costumes Robert wears in The Goes Wrong Show; I'm going to link to my response on my Goes Wrong website because it includes a handful of screenshots.

Robert Grove of The Goes Wrong Show sank his teeth into my throat at the turn of the year and has spent the four months since then shaking me violently, but I think he's starting to relax his grip a little!

I'm still deeply fond of the Cornley Drama Society, of course! But I'm no longer constantly thinking about the Goes Wrong universe, or feeling the non-stop drive to write fanfiction. I can think of other works of fiction again at last, without resenting them for having the temerity not to feature Robert Grove!

In short, I find myself stumbling back into the real world at last, squinting in the sunlight, with 60,000 words of fanfiction scattered around me. This has been one of the wildest, most intense fandom experiences I've ever had. I lost twenty AO3 subscribers. I don't regret a thing.

Does this mean I'm going to start posting entries about other things again? No promises, but it just might happen.

Actually, here's an entry that's at least partly about other things right now! Rather an overdue entry, to be honest.


Towards the end of last year, I wanted to make an entry reflecting on the three canons of 2025 (specifically, canons I'd first experienced in 2025) that had had the biggest impact on me. I was struggling a little to come up with three, though! I knew Clair Obscur would be one, and the Silent Hill 2 remake would be another, but I just couldn't think of a third.

And then The Goes Wrong Show slammed into me, absolutely obliterating me, and I'm now making this post four months late because I've only just regained the ability to talk about anything else.

Of all the canons I first experienced in 2025, here are the three that had the largest impact on me:

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 leapt with impressive speed from 'huh, I've never heard of this' to being one of my favourite games of all time! Loved the gameplay, loved the concept, loved the characters. The art direction is stunning, as is the music; I actually bought the OST, approximately twenty years after my last purchase of a videogame soundtrack. I replayed the game immediately after beating it; I just wasn't ready to put it down. It's not a perfect game - I have severe frustrations with the ending - but it comes so, so close, and even the aspects I dislike are still interesting to think and talk about. I also really enjoy the way it is unapologetically Frencher than France.

I was nervous about playing the Silent Hill 2 remake! The original Silent Hill 2 was so formative for me; it was hard to imagine that a remake would get it right. But it got it so right. I'm absolutely awed by how well this remake captures and expands on the game, and how clearly it's built on deep foundations of love for the original. It was a pleasure to spend time with James Sunderland again. Well, it was horrible, obviously, but I still had a great time.

And, finally, The Goes Wrong Show, which I absolutely lost my mind about for four solid months, going from 'wow, this is some really impressive stagecraft and comic timing and Robert is hot' to 'I kind of want to dig into these characters' to 'wait, where did these theatre tickets come from' to 'somehow this is now my fourth-most-written fandom of all time?'

On a canon level, I enjoy The Goes Wrong Show because it's very funny and well-crafted! On a fandom level... honestly, I think it woke up a side of me that's been dormant since I was a teenager in Top Gear fandom. I heard 'a group of people, everything they do is a disaster, one of them is a big blustery attention-grabbing man who blithely causes problems for everyone', and the part of me that wrote 90,000 words of fanfiction about Jeremy Clarkson at the age of eighteen immediately shouldered her way to my computer and opened up a Word document.

I love this stupid show so much. It's a shame that I've run out of episodes; it brings me so much joy. Still, at least there's fanfiction! (And rewatching. I've now seen the episode '90 Degrees' four times in the course of approximately a month, on account of showing it to everyone I know.)

There's something very nostalgic about how loud and ridiculous Robert is; writing him brings me back to writing Jeremy Clarkson, back in my Top Gear days. They're both a lot of fun to write!

Thank you to apiphile, who helped to inspire this fic; I wrote a couple of lines as a joke in response to one of his comments, and then I just kept going!


Title: Broken Hearts and Broken Bones
Fandom: The Goes Wrong Show
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Robert/Chris
Wordcount: 2,300
Summary: Robert attempts to seduce Chris. His techniques leave a little to be desired.


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I've gone down with COVID, alas, so I'm self-isolating in my bedroom and a bit physically uncomfortable. In search of distractions, I put out a call on Tumblr for people to ask me questions about my writing from this list, and here are the results!


What is your fave fic to receive comments on?

With These Signs Upon Our Souls, my decade-old Final Fantasy VIII/Final Fantasy XIII crossover, in which the FFVIII characters become l'Cie! 27,000 words may not be a huge amount, but it’s by far the longest continuous story I’ve ever written, and it’s about two different divisive Final Fantasy games, so it’s not something that was ever likely to draw much interest. I’m always thrilled when someone actually reads it!

What is something you recently felt proud of in regard to your writing?

I’ve been getting a little braver about including on-page sex! It’s never especially explicit, but I’ve been more willing lately to give at least a little idea of what’s going on, rather than always fading to black or being as vague as possible.

If one of your fics was going to get you arrested, which one and why?

hey wait I’m not falling for this

I’m going to say it’s my unfinished fic for The Quarry in which Laura and Travis swap bodies, which gave me, as a British person, the following research experience:

Me: Hey, Internet, fic research question: could a woman in her early twenties just go into a shop and buy a shotgun in New York state without any sort of licence?
Internet: Yep, that is absolutely something you can do.
Me: …
Me: …
Me: But surely that won’t seem right? That doesn’t feel right.
Me: If she just goes and buys a gun, surely the readers will go ‘obviously she wouldn’t just be able to buy a gun’. Surely I’ll look like I haven’t done my research and have lazily assumed that you can just buy a gun in America.
Me: You can’t just buy guns, right???


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If I had to get ill, I’m glad it’s at least happening after my visit to Devon, rather than before. I got to stroke five different owls, and my body can’t take that from me.

Fun fact about my recent holiday in Devon: we were staying with my ex-aunt (my uncle's ex-wife). She likes Clarkson's Farm and David Mitchell, and when they came up in conversation I just had to go 'ah, yes, I am aware of the work of these men, I am completely normal about them and always have been.'

If there are any questions you'd like to ask me about my writing in the comments (whether from the original list or not), please do!

Some more questions from this fandom meme! The full list of questions is here at trobadora's journal. I managed not to ramble for five hundred words on a single question this time.

What are the origins of your penname/username?

I misread Rinoa's name as 'Riona' when I first played Final Fantasy VIII. When I realised she was actually called Rinoa, I went, 'Well, Riona's a nice name' and used it to create my fanfiction.net account; I knew I wanted a straightforward, namelike username that I could easily be addressed by. I've gone by Riona online for over twenty years now, so I think this handle is here to stay!

'riona' was already taken when I signed up to Livejournal, so I added 'leonhart': the surname of Squall Leonhart, my favourite fictional character. It had not occurred to me that this would make me look like a Squall/Rinoa shipper who can't spell. (I didn't envision myself as married to Squall; I just liked the name!)

'rixareth' is a username I occasionally use, generally when I'm a little uncertain about a site's culture and I'm not sure I want my account to be too easy to connect to my Riona identity; I used it for signing up to Tumblr and Reddit. I'm more relaxed about letting the usernames mix now! In Kingdom Hearts style, it's an anagram of my name with an added X.

What's a fandom that you wish had a bigger following?

There have been a lot over the years! It's hard to narrow it down. I'm going to say Zanki Zero: Last Beginning, a fascinatingly weird game about traumatised bisexual clones struggling to survive together after the apocalypse, with a grand total of thirty-two works on AO3 and a great OT7 that nobody but me has written for. It's a flawed game in many respects, but it has such strong fandom potential!

What’s the longest you’ve ever been in a fandom? What fandom was it? Not necessarily your oldest fandom, but a fandom that you started and still continue to read/write/create content for in some way.

I think Final Fantasy VIII is probably the most consistently I've been into something over a long period of time. I've loved Pokémon for longer, but Pokémon is more quiet background radiation in my life, whereas I spend more time actively thinking and talking about Final Fantasy VIII. There are periods when I don't think about it much, but I always find myself back there.

The most time I've spent actively in a single 'main' fandom was the fifteen months I spent writing for Top Gear. Wow, was it really only fifteen months? I was so immersed in that fandom; I wrote so much; we had so many in-person meetups! I was sure it was two years at least!

What would make you leave a fandom, or prevent you from getting into it in the first place?

I don't typically pack up and intentionally leave a fandom; I just drift away when my interest shifts to something else. Terrible real-world associations - e.g. something awful coming out about the creator - might make me hesitate to pick something new up.

What are some things that squick you in fandom?

Extreme underage, gore, depictions of surgery. Wounding is fine! Wounding is hot! The moment internal organs are visible or a precise incision is being made, though, I am out of there. People are free to write what they like; these are just the things I find personally offputting.

What's the hardest thing about writing, and why are titles the Worst™?

I often struggle with finding a direction for a fic I'm working on. I've got a rough concept, maybe a scene or two, but I don't know where to take it or what endpoint I'm aiming for. Once I've managed to come up with the ending for a fic, everything usually starts to fall into place. Titles are pretty bad, though!

Do you have a fandom that you follow - either regularly or casually - with little to no knowledge of canon?

I have never read Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, but I've followed zarla's JTHM fic Vargas, and the little fandom that's sprung up around it, for over twenty years. I have written fanfiction for this AU of a comic I've never read.

Ships that you currently like a lot. (They don’t have to be OTPs because not everyone has OTPs.) Friendships, pairings, threesomes, etc. are allowed.

I've always got assorted low-level background ships going on, but I'm not really in passionate shipping mode about anything at the moment. I've been replaying the Uncharted series, so I've been thinking about my deep fondness for Nate/Elena. Other than that, I suppose Barret/Tifa/Aerith/Cloud of Final Fantasy VII Remake is the most recent ship I've had strongly on my mind.

A ship you have never liked and probably never will.

The Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler of Doctor Who never worked for me; I found their dynamic a lot less compelling post-regeneration. Which is slightly tragic, because I love the Ninth Doctor/Rose Tyler, and the two pairings are often bundled together in discussion or gifsets! It's a real challenge when your OTP and your NOTP are technically the same pairing.

Do you prefer art, fic, or vids? Why? Bonus: If someone was to give you a fandom gift, what format would it be?

It depends on the fandom, come to think of it! I'm usually more of a fic person, but there are a few fandoms where I often find myself seeking out art. These tend to be for canons with a lot of interesting symbolism that fanartists can do cool things with, e.g. Death Note, Omori, Revolutionary Girl Utena.

About a week ago, I posted an unfinished fanfiction meme to Tumblr, and I thought it might be fun to play here as well!

Name a canon you know I have at some point enjoyed, and I’ll dig up and post an excerpt from the unfinished fanfiction I’ve almost certainly got lying around. (If you name something I don’t have any unfinished fanfiction for, I may write a few lines on the spot. We’ll see!)

I’ve posted this before, many years ago, but don’t worry about avoiding canons that were requested back then; I’ll just try to dig up something else.

Here are the excerpts I posted in response to requests on Tumblr:


goforthequill: For the fanfiction ask meme: any unfinished stories about DN Angel?

This was tricky! But I dug through an old notebook, and I managed to uncover a tiny paragraph. This was from a Kingdom Hearts/DN Angel crossover I have zero recollection of contemplating, in which Kingdom Hearts Riku is talking to Daisuke. Both Riku and Satoshi are self-loathing teenagers who are intensely in love with someone they feel they don’t deserve, and I have a lot of emotions about them.

“Maybe it’s not my place,” Riku says. He glances in Satoshi’s direction. “Or maybe I’m just… projecting or something. I don’t know. But I think you’re important to him.”


academicgangster: Ace Attorney for the unfinished fanfiction meme?

Here’s a snippet in which Apollo and Athena stay up working too late and end up accidentally falling asleep on each other.

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futuresoon: Danganronpa!

I took this to be a request spanning the entire Danganronpa series and dug up a little Danganronpa 2 snippet. Major Danganronpa 2 spoilers under the cut.

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certifiedwerewolf: Okay so I know it's been well over a decade since you've written anything Top Gear related but I was showing my roommate an episode the other day and telling him stuff about my Top Gear fandom days so now I am curious if you've got any bits and pieces leftover from back when, so for the fanfiction meme, Top Gear? (And if you don't, completely understandable)

We’re really getting into the deep lore here. Here’s something… mildly weird and dark? By Top Gear standards, at least. Because apparently I decided I should write two crossovers between Top Gear and Silent Hill. But Silent Hill is in Wales, for some reason.

(I know the reason. It’s because this was also going to be a crossover with Torchwood. It’s probably for the best that it never got finished.)

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doreyg: Death Note for the unfinished fanfic meme!

I responded with a Death Note/Silent Hill snippet I’d previously posted on this journal. So it wouldn’t just be material I’d already posted elsewhere, though, I also uncovered a few lines from a notebook (a regular non-death notebook):

In another world, you might have been someone else. Nothing special, but enough. Light Yagami, an ordinary man with an ordinary life.

But this is the world you’re in, and you’ve become a god.


tweetymcbastardface: Waterloo Road. Do it.

I can’t believe anyone would do this to me.

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And that’s all the unfinished fanfiction requests I received on Tumblr! Feel free to request a fandom in the comments here, and I’ll see if I have anything lying around for it, or, failing that, I’ll see if I can scribble something down.

More adventuring through my fandom history! All three of my real-person fandoms are in this instalment, so it's easy to skip if RPF makes you uncomfortable.


Scrubs

First saw this when I was seventeen. I don't remember exactly how I got into it, but I think maybe my brothers were watching it? I was surprised by how little fanfiction there was at the time.

I haven't revisited Scrubs in a very long time. I'm curious to know how it would hold up.

Previously I'd mainly written angst and introspection, but in this fandom I took tentative steps towards writing more dialogue and humour. I enjoyed it a lot. (I've sort of fallen back into angst and introspection nowadays! And I didn't entirely escape angst with Scrubs; I wrote the inevitable Silent Hill crossover, after all.)

Favourite character: Dr Cox! Very angry, very sarcastic, very unprepared to engage with his feelings. I had a lot of fun writing him.
Favourite pairing: JD/Cox. I'm pleased to look back and realise my taste in pairings has always run towards the slightly unhealthy. I also enjoyed Cox/Ben and was strangely taken with Elliot/Janitor, although I never wrote fanfiction for the latter.
Number of words written: 35,548.

Snippet: I once wrote a JD/Cox fic where JD was handcuffed to a radiator, then a sequel, then a retelling of the first fic from Dr Cox's point of view. This was going to be the Cox-perspective sequel to that.

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Top Gear

thegreatesthits/gayjunglefever was the first online friend I ever met in person (we went to see the Silent Hill film on our first meeting; she was not familiar with Silent Hill and was incredibly confused). One day, when I was just about to turn eighteen, I went to her house, and she enthused about Top Gear, and I went '...that's a show about cars, isn't it? I'm not really interested in cars.'

She showed me the episode where they make their own amphibious vehicles.

I spent the next year and a half writing fanfiction.

Top Gear fandom was an absolute blast. I found a lot of lasting friendships (hi, guys ♥). I found a housemate! I met up with a whole bunch of you in real life to have adventures in London, which probably did a fair bit to help me overcome my extreme shyness. I owe a great deal to Jeremy Clarkson, which isn't good, perhaps, but it's true.

This was the first real-person fandom I wrote for, and Richard Hammond had his jet-car crash right after I started writing fanfiction. A lot of people in the fandom felt really guilty for writing stories about car crashes beforehand. It shaped my personal approach to RPF; if I'm writing about real people, I cannot write about anything terrible happening. (Well, anything plausible and terrible, at least. Going to Silent Hill is still fair game.) After an even worse 'something horrible happened right when you were getting really into these guys' experience with Linkin Park, I doubt I'll ever pick up a real-person fandom again. But the ones I've been in have been a lot of fun.

Favourite character: Jeremy Clarkson. Extremely obnoxious, extremely fun to write.
Favourite pairing: Jeremy/Richard. I think James/Richard was the most popular pairing in the fandom, but I just wanted Jeremy Clarkson being obnoxious all over the place, and it was particularly fun if he was being obnoxious at Richard, because Richard was worse than James at enduring it.
Number of words written: 90,357.

Snippet: Jeremy and James discuss how to deal with the fact that Richard Hammond is a werewolf.

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Supernatural

One of two shows I got into because I had a dream about them and went 'I'm going to take this as a sign I should watch this show' (the other was Atlantis, although I never wrote for that). I started watching this when I was nineteen. (I can't believe it's still running.) The first episode I saw was Faith, which definitely caught my interest. The second or third was Malleus Maleficarum, which was so revolting I almost stopped watching then and there. Fortunately, I persevered!

I got extremely invested in Supernatural. Fictional siblings! Unhealthy coping mechanisms! What a great combination. The only fandom I've ever attended a convention for.

Favourite character: Dean Winchester. What a mess.
Favourite pairing: I don't think I 'ship anything in Supernatural much, actually. I dabbled a bit in Sam/Dean when I first got into Supernatural, back in season three, when Sam/Dean was pretty much all that existed, but I ended up concluding I preferred them as brothers. I do have a certain strange fondness for Castiel/Bobby. (There's barely any fanfiction, which perhaps isn't a surprise. I read a couple of Castiel/Bobby fics recently and went '...actually, this feels not entirely unlike Hank/Connor.')
Number of words written: 52,383, although this is counting the finished-but-never-posted Derren Brown/Doctor Who/Supernatural fic chapter (see below).

Snippet: I wish I'd finished this Supernatural/Pushing Daisies fic.

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Derren Brown

How did I get into Derren Brown? I was twenty years old. I think I caught his stage show Something Wicked This Way Comes on the television. He temporarily deprived himself of oxygen, then lay down on a bed of broken glass and made a man stand on him. I'll be honest: it was hot. I promptly created derrenbrownfic. It never got hugely far off the ground, but people did write a few things, which is impressive given that there was only one 'character' involved.

Derren Brown is the only celebrity to whom I have sent a ukulele in the post. He sent back a very nice letter.

Favourite character: There is literally one character.
Favourite pairing: Derren Brown/the Tenth Doctor from Doctor Who, which obviously makes vast amounts of sense.
Number of words written: 27,206.

Snippet: From the Supernatural chapter of my and moogle62's overambitious Derren-as-the-Doctor's-companion project. The chapter was going to be called 'In Which Derren Is Shot, and Things Get Worse from There'. I actually finished writing the entire Supernatural chapter, but we had a couple of other chapters planned to come before it, so I never posted it!

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British Comedy

British comedy is obviously a fairly expansive fandom, but I was in the Charlie Brooker/David Mitchell corner of it. I'd liked Mitchell for a while (I first became aware of him when Joseph introduced me to Peep Show), but I only got into British comedy as a fandom after discovering Brooker at the age of twenty-one.

This fandom was great, great fun. As with Top Gear, many of the members lived in London, so we met up and hung out a lot. Even better: a lot of comedy shows are recorded in London, and you can apply for free tickets! I went to twenty-something comedy recordings with other members of the fandom and wrote them up on my 'recording recaps' tag. It was great.

This entire fandom manifested at the start of 2010, thrived for six months and vanished pretty much overnight when Brooker got married, but it was a lot of fun while it lasted.

Favourite character: Charlie Brooker. Crude, hilarious, self-deprecating, surprisingly soft-hearted, worryingly attractive.
Favourite pairing: Charlie Brooker/David Mitchell. I also loved David Mitchell/Victoria Coren and was ecstatic when they got married. First time an RPF 'ship of mine turned out to be canon!
Number of words written: 20,435.

Snippet: This was a work of Charlie Brooker/David Mitchell romantic angst that I never finished because it seemed like more fun to write about them training Pokémon.

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My sudden, intense burst of writing for Final Fantasy XV again continues! This is rather less serious than my last couple of fics. Somehow I still haven't written a Noctis/Gladio/Ignis/Prompto fic, but at least this incorporates three of the four. Sorry for leaving you out, Ignis.

In a weird way, my approach to pairings in this game reminds me of writing for Top Gear. Even if there are some pairings I enjoy more than others, I'm happy to write the boys in any combination. Rather than 'shipping anything specific, I just have story ideas and then go 'right, if there's going to be romance in this one, which character combination would work best with the concept?'

(Newer followers: er, yes, I'm afraid there was a time when I wrote a lot of Top Gear fanfiction.)

I use so many italics when I'm writing Prompto. It's like I'm seventeen again.

I should note that I originally posted one of the scenes in this - the Prompto/Gladio one - as a kinkmeme fill, back in January (I was the second filler). It's been slightly tweaked to fit into the wider story.


Title: Well, This Is Awkward
Fandom: Final Fantasy XV
Rating: PG-13/R? Let's just go with the UK rating system and say 15.
Pairing: Prompto/Noctis, Prompto/Gladio, Noctis/Gladio, Prompto/Noctis/Gladio
Wordcount: 3,000
Summary: When you're on the road together, you can end up in uncomfortable situations.


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Assassin's Creed is now the single fandom in which I have written the most by wordcount. In about six months, it managed to beat the record it took Top Gear a year and a half to set. I loved my time in Top Gear fandom, and it was where some of my strongest fandom friendships were forged, but it was a slightly odd thing to have at the top of my writing leaderboard for almost a decade.


I finished playing Final Fantasy Type-0 HD a couple of days ago! It's an interesting game. On paper, it's not great: it's a PSP port and looks it; the plot never really gripped me; it throws a load of incomprehensible jargon at you the second you start the game up; there are so many characters that none of them get any real depth or development, although most of them are likeable enough (and then there's Machina, who is the worst). But the battle system is great fun, and the ending really stayed with me and, I think, retroactively made me care a lot more about everyone. Possibly even Machina. I can't imagine how much it would have affected me if I'd been more invested from the start.

Final Fantasy Type-0 also deals with a concept I find fascinating; it's set in a world where, as soon as someone dies, all memories of that person are erased. It's interesting to see the different ways people cope with that. Some people are glad not to be held back by grief, or find it reassuring to know that their loved ones will be able to move on if they're killed; some fear being forgotten. One character writes down the names of everyone she meets; if she looks at her list and finds a name she doesn't recognise, she'll know that someone she once knew has died. Everyone carries a tag with their personal details on it, so that it's possible to establish who they were and contact the next of kin who won't remember them. It could be an interesting thing to borrow for AUs.


On a very different note, I attended a recording of The Unbelievable Truth last week, courtesy of reipan! I can remember very little, I'm afraid (I don't know how I used to write up those huge recording recaps five years ago), but here are a couple of pieces. The guests were Jon Richardson, Henning Wehn, Susan Calman and Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Entry, i.e. Jack Dee; the host, as ever, was David Mitchell.


Calman spun a bizarre tale in which absolutely nothing sounded remotely plausible. Everyone sat in silent confusion, not daring to buzz. Eventually, Wehn buzzed just to exclaim, in despair, 'Something has to be true!'

At the end of her lecture:

Mitchell: And at the end of that round, Susan, you've managed to smuggle four truths past the rest of our panellists.
Richardson: Not the bloody lasagne sandwich.
Mitchell: One of them was the lasagne sandwich.
(Richardson expresses his emotions by knocking over his water bottle)

I just like it when they make jokes that will never work on radio. At one point, Calman sang the praises of Boris Johnson and said we should leave the EU, then shook her head and mouthed no. Richardson pointed out that the broadcast could very well end up misrepresenting her views.


When other people buzzed in, the light indicating Henning Wehn would sometimes incorrectly light up. During Henning's first lecture, there was a buzz and Mitchell did a wonderful double-take. (buzz) 'Henning. - Henning???'

Given that this error couldn't be reliably reproduced, Mitchell started to wonder whether he was just imagining Henning's name by the light.

Mitchell: (looking at Henning, frowning) Maybe I love Henning.

I don't often post audience participation entries these days, simply because there's not much of an audience left to participate; Livejournal and Dreamwidth are very quiet places! But I'm fretting about various things at the moment (nothing insurmountable, things are probably going to be fine), and I could do with a distraction, so it's worth a try:

Ask any fictional character you think I might be able to manage a question, and I'll reply in-character as them with an answer (or possibly reply as myself going 'WHAT THE HELL, I CAN'T DO THIS'). Feel free to ask either as yourself or as another character.

You may, if you wish, ask multiple questions (perhaps of multiple characters) or attempt to engage the characters in extended conversation. I've attempted to answer as real people in the past, but I'm specifying fictional characters this time, I'm afraid!

(Alternatively, or in addition: name a canon you know I have at some point enjoyed, and I'll dig up and post an extract from the unfinished fanfiction I've almost certainly got lying around.)

Feel free to comment even if we haven't talked in six years! If you're not sure of my fandoms (I have approximately a billion fandoms), my tag list should give you an idea. Although for some reason I have a 'buffy' tag? Don't ask for Buffy; I've seen about four episodes and you'll be disappointed.


To avoid duplicates on the 'unfinished fanfiction' question, below are links to the different versions of this entry (and the list of fandoms I've thus far posted snippets for in each one):

Livejournal: The Mentalist, My Little Pony, Harry Potter
Dreamwidth: The Last of Us, Uncharted, Top Gear, Assassin's Creed, The World Ends With You, Dangan Ronpa, Ghost Trick, Supernatural, Doctor Who, Prison Break