Subject: Have read - and liked - the thing
Author:
Posted on: 2025-09-02 05:15:04 UTC
I think this was a good character piece, and as best as I can tell the NSFW bits work in context towards the overall goal here. I'm glad things are looking up for Derik.
So yeah, I can see why you'd waffle on posting this, and I'm glad you did anyway.
To quote from my end notes: I sat on this piece for absolute ages. My first-draft doc was created December 31, 2017, and the GDoc for beta-reading was created August 29, 2018. And then... I debated, and waffled, and second-guessed, and chickened out for, uh, seven years almost exactly, wow.
Because this is rated M/R for adult content, and this is my first venture into that territory without the buffer of my Badfic Games alter-ego, and it's not a typical PPC story—nor should it be. It's a story I wanted to write for these characters specifically, but that doesn't make it a good idea generally. Just so that's clear.
However, using a nifty CSS trick, I have hidden the naughties with an expandable/collapsible box, so you can skip 'em if you'd rather. I can't replicate that on AO3, so this one is only available on my site.
Without further ado: "Reveille," in which Derik gets his groove back again and Gall gets what she's always wanted.
~Neshomeh
I'll be in the corner panicking now.
I think this was a good character piece, and as best as I can tell the NSFW bits work in context towards the overall goal here. I'm glad things are looking up for Derik.
So yeah, I can see why you'd waffle on posting this, and I'm glad you did anyway.
I don't have much to say on the writing front - I freely admit my head skimmed some of the longer "action" paragraphs (I've currently got the third Fourth Wing book out from the library, and the same happens there), but the emotions hit well throughout, and I really enjoyed Derik's extended metaphor on the tunnel-snake.
It's probably a good thing you wavered over it, not because of anything about the piece, but because of me. If you'd posted this in a time when I was actively writing for the PPC, I would definitely have taken it as a challenge, which is exactly what you're trying to avoid. :D
hS
As long as the emotions come through, that's the important part.
It's always good to know you appreciate the Pern-isms. ^_^ I almost missed the spot to use the simile with between (there was a cold, dark cellar instead), and I was so glad I caught that, haha.
I've heard the subsequent Fourth Wing books are not so good at the parts I liked about the first book, and I haven't gotten around to seeing for myself. The author apparently got started in the Romance genre, though, so it makes more sense to me that those scenes are there, and that (IMO) they don't suck on their own merits. I just wasn't convinced to care about Violet's love life that much. >.>
~Neshomeh
Well, this is a first I guess. While I have read myself only a small portion of PPC stories, I believe this is the first one where the "action" is onscreen?
Regardless, I think you did a good job, and it really passed the message that things weren't, and couldn't be, smooth because Derik still has his Issues (and Gall, is, well, Gall. Not the subtlest creature out there). The prose was a bit purple IMHO here and there, but it could be me - I tend to end up being a bit beige myself. And, besides, even the purpler pieces weren't purple enough to be distracting. Definitely no Urple there!
I believe this piece existing is good food for thought: since we mock badfics, many of which include M-rated content (I missioned a couple "action-y" badfics myself), and we counter that with our own writing... why should we stop short of making good M-rated content ourselves when we strive to make good content of everything short of it? Of cours,e we shouldn't turn the Prime multiverse in Luxury's one of origin XD! But in the PPC, we mostly deal with wish-fullfillment "action" in badfics, and in a lot of canon media is mostly there for the fanservice. But that's not the only way "action" can be used. Yours is a piece in which the "action" actually shows us things about the characters that wouldn't be as easy to show otherwise, meaning that "action" can be used as a storytelling tool!
I admit that I did that myself in The World without Authors, since Nikki doing it with Syaoron and Sergio with Ami was pretty good way to show the current mental place and issues of the three core cast characters. I stopped short of the "action", though, as the leadup and the aftermath were already passing on everything I wanted to show - no need for the reader to know which positions they used or what their naughty bits looked like, only that Nikki, Sergio and Ami were "lost" and doing mistakes.
All in all, while you broke the taboo, so to speak, I don't think we'll suddenly get a ton of PPC smut. Like all tropes, it has its specific uses, and there aren't many cases in which the "action" is the best, or only, way to tell you something about the characters. I might follow the lead someday, as one of the plotbunnies I had rejected in the past was making a part-comedy, part-hearwarming piece about Sergio and Nikki trying to figure things out due to their PPC service meaning they knew very well what not to do but had little clue about what to do in their first intimate night.
If I do, though, it will be nowhere soon as I have a lot of stuff I'm trying to finish first, and that while I'm still dealing with finishing up work in my new house while moving stuff out of the old one...
It may be a first, yeah. I can think of a couple interludes that get a bit heavy (including one I co-authored), but not without being comedically interrupted and/or faded to black before the serious "action" commences.
I will say, your choice of euphemism is very apt! At some point, I don't recall when or where, I came across the idea that sex scenes are basically just like fight scenes from a scene-crafting perspective. They're both action sequences that involve (generally) two characters doing stuff to each other's bodies, and it's not an accident that fights sometimes act as metaphors for sex, or by extension that fights sometimes turn into sex. {X D Good fight scenes can advance the plot, develop the characters, or both. So naturally, the same ought to go for sex scenes. The main difference is that one is usually antagonistic and the other usually isn't, but the distinction there is very fuzzy.
That's more or less the logic I was operating with. And it sounds like you got what I was going for character-wise, so yay!
I guess you could say this is my answer to Magical Healing Sex, haha. The sex part could only happen because the healing part had already begun, and things are not suddenly shiny and perfect afterward. As a matter of fact, It's Complicated™.
I agree that 99.9% of the time, the fact that "action" is happening is all that needs saying, and the details don't matter. Even here, I kept the "camera" relatively unfocused visually. I did relish the opportunity to subvert a couple of stereotypes about what kinds of women's bodies are considered attractive with Gall, though.
I would read that story about Sergio and Nikki, because I imagine that happens to PPC agents all the time. {X D My headcanon is that the kids who are raised in Headquarters/New Cal get a pretty robust sex-ed course precisely because it comes up so much in badfic, but that doesn't help the badfic recruits—or a lot of the World One recruits. And knowing how things work in theory doesn't necessarily translate to having an easy time of it in practice, anyway. But the characters' feelings for each other are the most important thing, IMO, and those can come through even if everything isn't perfect. Heck, maybe even moreso!
Cheers,
~Neshomeh
And yeah, that's definitely the angle I will use to approach it if I get around to writing it. Two characters whose relationship is already strong, and that are trying to take it to the next step because, even if neither of them is exactly sure about what to do, they trust each other and are trying their best to make it work. And it allows me to show some facets of them that I'm not usually able to.