![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rielity posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
todorokislong story short, todobaku is every single one of my favourite ship tropes combined, especially with all the angst potential that is available with them. no surprise that it was easy to rework a fic idea I'd saved for haikyuu (and abandoned) - nightmares! thus cold was born (at the expense of my haikyuu writing)... [spoilers within]
i know there are a number of bakugou-waking-todoroki-up-from-nightmare fics in the tag already, but afaik this is the first one where they're not in an established relationship, so I wanted to explore how bakugou would deal with todoroki freezing hell over in his sleep lmao. a lot of my characterisation was drawn from my experience with writing laviyuu ngl, and I see a lot of laviyuu in todobaku in that regard.... although bakugou swears a lot more than kanda does. I'm not good with writing swear-y type characters, so writing bakugou was pretty fun. em helped me a lot, especially with adding more swearing lololol.
a perk of being familiar with laviyuu is that it wasn't too much of a challenge to visualise bakugou's reaction to todoroki. that weird balance between /not caring/ and /actually caring/ is something I've always enjoyed exploring when it comes to laviyuu, and so getting into bakugou's head was much more easier than when I first attempted to write haikyuu fics in the past. in that sense I guess have prior fandom/ship experience with this particular kind of dynamic comes in very useful.
originally my fic was meant to be very simple; it's still very simple now, but more complicated than I planned for. originally it was just going to be bakugou waking up to todoroki freezing the room, todoroki panicking/being startled into almost attacking bakugou, bakugou letting it slide, and then them going back to sleep...but of course my stupid mind decided that bedsharing would be a good way of changing things up, so here we are lol.
I deliberately made todobaku not talk things out - in part because bakugou doesn't want to know what kind of stupid burdens todoroki holds, and todoroki doesn't exactly want to tell him anyway. i mean, i guess if todoroki wanted to tell bakugou, bakugou would have listened, but as it is their relationship is not that close yet - i strongly believe that canonically todoroki only told midoriya about his backstory so that he could kind of... "justify" his hunger for winning? it wasn't like he suddenly straight up decided that he was best friends with midoriya or anything. to me it's kind of... he wanted to explain his actions? sorta.
so anyway, it wouldn't have made sense for todoroki to tell bakugou about his nightmare, unless he was extremely distressed. for this fic, I think it wasn't that much an unusual nightmare for todoroki; i wouldn't be surprised if it's a pretty normal occurrence for him - it's just that bakugou's presence and being actually woken up by bakugou took him by surprise.
i did, however, want to draw attention to the terror and fear that todoroki probably buries deep inside himself, hence the contrast between 'night' todoroki and 'day' todoroki. and now that bakugou, unwilling though he might be, has seen todoroki's vulnerability - may or may not change things between them, and how he sees someone he once saw as a threat and rival but now sees as someone... to respect. maybe a friend? who knows.
i have a few more things planned for todobaku tbh, though many of them are rehashed concepts from laviyuu. fanart seems to inspire me a lot for todobaku in comparison with most ships, just like laviyuu. already i've seen a few art pieces that I really want to write about. we'll see if I get anything done.
off-topic, being able to churn this out as quickly as I did has kind of persuaded me that my writing block is haikyuu-specific. fingers crossed that writing a few more bnha fics will help me get over this asap!
i know there are a number of bakugou-waking-todoroki-up-from-nightmare fics in the tag already, but afaik this is the first one where they're not in an established relationship, so I wanted to explore how bakugou would deal with todoroki freezing hell over in his sleep lmao. a lot of my characterisation was drawn from my experience with writing laviyuu ngl, and I see a lot of laviyuu in todobaku in that regard.... although bakugou swears a lot more than kanda does. I'm not good with writing swear-y type characters, so writing bakugou was pretty fun. em helped me a lot, especially with adding more swearing lololol.
a perk of being familiar with laviyuu is that it wasn't too much of a challenge to visualise bakugou's reaction to todoroki. that weird balance between /not caring/ and /actually caring/ is something I've always enjoyed exploring when it comes to laviyuu, and so getting into bakugou's head was much more easier than when I first attempted to write haikyuu fics in the past. in that sense I guess have prior fandom/ship experience with this particular kind of dynamic comes in very useful.
originally my fic was meant to be very simple; it's still very simple now, but more complicated than I planned for. originally it was just going to be bakugou waking up to todoroki freezing the room, todoroki panicking/being startled into almost attacking bakugou, bakugou letting it slide, and then them going back to sleep...but of course my stupid mind decided that bedsharing would be a good way of changing things up, so here we are lol.
I deliberately made todobaku not talk things out - in part because bakugou doesn't want to know what kind of stupid burdens todoroki holds, and todoroki doesn't exactly want to tell him anyway. i mean, i guess if todoroki wanted to tell bakugou, bakugou would have listened, but as it is their relationship is not that close yet - i strongly believe that canonically todoroki only told midoriya about his backstory so that he could kind of... "justify" his hunger for winning? it wasn't like he suddenly straight up decided that he was best friends with midoriya or anything. to me it's kind of... he wanted to explain his actions? sorta.
so anyway, it wouldn't have made sense for todoroki to tell bakugou about his nightmare, unless he was extremely distressed. for this fic, I think it wasn't that much an unusual nightmare for todoroki; i wouldn't be surprised if it's a pretty normal occurrence for him - it's just that bakugou's presence and being actually woken up by bakugou took him by surprise.
i did, however, want to draw attention to the terror and fear that todoroki probably buries deep inside himself, hence the contrast between 'night' todoroki and 'day' todoroki. and now that bakugou, unwilling though he might be, has seen todoroki's vulnerability - may or may not change things between them, and how he sees someone he once saw as a threat and rival but now sees as someone... to respect. maybe a friend? who knows.
i have a few more things planned for todobaku tbh, though many of them are rehashed concepts from laviyuu. fanart seems to inspire me a lot for todobaku in comparison with most ships, just like laviyuu. already i've seen a few art pieces that I really want to write about. we'll see if I get anything done.
off-topic, being able to churn this out as quickly as I did has kind of persuaded me that my writing block is haikyuu-specific. fingers crossed that writing a few more bnha fics will help me get over this asap!
no subject
Date: 2017-09-23 05:44 pm (UTC)i think your note on bakugou's tendency to balance between /caring/ and /really not caring/ is spot-on tbh, and your ability to balance that within the fic really resonated. i think it's these three lines that really got me:
wherein bakugou flips between no i don't care and okay fine maybe i do care a little, but it's xs-sized caring don't look at me like that at his instinctive dislike of seeing todoroki vulnerable, and that was charming.
i also agree with you regarding todoroki's self-disclosure in canon -- essentially, todoroki's level of self-disclosure is inherently linked to his sense of responsibility. he made a conscious decision to self-disclose because he knew he was going to seem like he has it out for midoriya, and because of that, midoriya at least deserved to know why. bakugou's bed freezing over in the night doesn't carry nearly as high or personal stakes, so bakugou doesn't strictly need to know.
but with the way this fic is set up, i'd like to think that this sets the stage for a future where bakugou will become more involved in todoroki's life, and thereby creating the need for todoroki to explain himself... this pairing!! this pairing.
but yeah idk also i realized you linked your writing dw journal at the bottom of the fic, so maybe this isn't as creepy as it seems?? your writing is crisp and i really admire your grasp on their characterization! esp since this is in bakugou's pov, and that always strikes me as the more difficult point of view to balance. major kudos -- i've read both of your bnha fics on ao3, and really enjoyed them both! thanks for being great, and i will casually stalk your account in the future.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-24 06:14 pm (UTC)thank you also for... summing up my ramble-rant about todoroki's self-disclosure! it's something that was niggling at me when I first wrote this entry - why exactly would todoroki go to midoriya & say that he wasn't going to go easy on him, and proceed to tell him his whole life story? how does that tie in to todoroki's character and personality? and yes, like you said, it's that sense of responsibility that todoroki holds himself to that demanded his self-disclosure and I really loved that idea of him being the one who decrees when he lets others into his personal "space", so to speak. in cold, he lets bakugou into his literal space, a choice that was borne slightly out of guilt and a sense of responsibility that he disrupted bakugou's sleep, but even so he hasn't willingly let bakugou into his actual /space/ and let bakugou see all the demons he harbours. but the whole setup of cold is that todoroki's vulnerability is shown against his own volition, and like it or not bakugou has seen a little bit of what lies under the surface, under what todoroki has seen.
since you've read my other tdbk which unfortunately I never got around to writing a reflection piece on, I personally find todoroki more challenging to write!
while bakugou's... 90% EXPLODO-KING and brutally honest in everything (which makes him hilarious to write sometimes), todoroki is much more complex and there were times when I was writing 'safe' where I had to take a step back and ask myself whether todoroki would actually do what I was about to make him do. whereas for bakugou it was more like, how violently would he do a thing (eg. how much could I mae him swear before I had to go wash my metaphorical mouth with soap), or how would he react to something that makes sense to todoroki but doesn't make any sense to him... bakugou's straightforward and simple-minded like that, imo LOL.
but combined together, their relationship is amazingly complex and full of many, many layers with SO !!! MUCH !!! POTENTIAL !!! whether for angst, or relationship development... I'm looking forward to writing them and exploring their complicated dynamics once school chills out for me ;_______;
thank you so much for your comment and I'm glad you like my writing! <333 also no, this isn't creepy, it's just surprising for me because, as I said, I didn't expect anyone to read this... as you can see from the mess that is my stream of consciousness xD
have a nice day ahead! <3