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vexarian:

Someone made a prompt that was just… just terrible. I don’t blame them for how terrible it was, not everyone can be a writer, but jeez.

The prompt WAS, “Alpha!John/Terezi, Beta!John/Dead!Vriska”.

Now I realize this may not seem too awful at a glance, but think about this for a second. What is the series of events which would have to come to play for this to become a thing?

1. Vriska interacts with John as she did in Canon.

2. Vriska confesses that she likes John and wants to d8 him.

3. John accepts the d8 and says he’d like to.

4. Vriska is murdered by Terezi, never receives John’s response.

5. Vriska is now dead. She hooks up, eventually with Beta!John who Terezi murdered, a version of John who never actually met her and knows nothing about her or the time they spent talking/interacting with one another. This is basically what canon is to the uninformed non-speculator and it hasn’t stopped being a shitty, sloppy pile of bullshit since the first Beta!John scene.

6. At some point in the future, Terezi hooks up with Alpha!John.

Conclusion: Vriska is now dead and from a narrative perspective she is in an utterly unsatisfying relationship. Terezi, who is the girl who murdered Vriska is now dating what is essentially the boy that Vriska had the hots for. John, who wanted to date Vriska is now dating her murderer.

I cannot possibly be anything but upset by how utterly miserable this prompt becomes with a little dissection. Vriska ends up in an insanely shitty situation. Terezi becomes the bitch of the highest order who murders her friends and steals their men and John becomes a completely unlikable fuck.

I am convinced that this prompt, if written would wound me somehow. Possibly my soul or whatever part of my brain is responsible for sadness.

Are you kidding?  This is a terrific prompt!  Hasn’t your time in Romspec tracing the laws of romantic drama through the plot taught you anything?

All you have to do is have John not learn that Terezi killed Vriska until 2/3 in, then end it in tragedy with at least one death.  Transform that soul-crushing broken-aesop wrongness you were dreading into a satisfying, even more soul-crushing lesson in unworkable pairings and unforgivable acts.  Everyone wins, and the person who suggested the ship will never ship it again!

This is the equivalent of twisting Twilight’s lesson into “you shouldn’t have gone with the vampire”, ending it with Bella’s excruciating demise and/or worse.  Everything suddenly becomes perfect, painful for the right reasons instead of the wrong ones.

With all the ranting you’ve been doing, I get the feeling you’d love writing these kinds of fics!

2011-9-10