Chapter Text
"Oh, hey!" Ruby said. "Seems like Red finally posted the first chapter of Vampires of Atlas!"
"Well it's about time," Weiss said, rolling her eyes. "It's been like two months since this fic ended, and she spent a while on the last chapter, too!"
Hey, get off my back. I wrote 180k words of you two, much of it while I was either in college, working on a video game, or both. Lux and Vivian are taking up a lot of my time these days, but I'm still gonna keep this series going.
"Wait, who are those two?" Ruby asked, interested.
A very gay nature paladin and a bisexual wizard princess.
Weiss's brows furrowed. "Are you referring to the same Lux and Vivian from the tiny little fic you have on here, 'Of Two Worlds?' Because that Vivian is a lesbian, not bisexual, and she's a CEO, not a princess."
Yes and no. That fic is about my D&D characters of the same names, and it just kinda summarizes their backstories and the campaign (also I have like... 3 more chapters written but just zero motivation to publish them for some reason. Let me know if any of you are interested in seeing that, I guess). But the version of them that's taking up a lot of my time is a super exciting, original manuscript. I took their characters out of the context of the D&D campaign they're from, gave them different backstories which altered their characterization a lot, put them in a totally original setting with totally original characters, and then wrote over 70k words in, like... (checks watch) 3 weeks.
Ruby shrugged. "Sounds cool. Is it gay?"
Ruby, read this fic. Or literally any other fic I've ever written, except I guess The Legendary Champion.
Of course it's gay.
"Someone's writing for an outlet," Weiss snorted.
Hey, I don't exactly hear you complaining, little miss "I started this fic with no friends and now I have a wonderful found family and an amazing werewolf girlfriend." You kinda got everything you could've wanted, despite the trouble it took to get there.
Weiss shrugged. "Point taken. Am I your self-insert character, then?"
No, Ruby is. And Yang, to a much lesser extent. But I definitely still empathize with you and Blake.
"Really?" Ruby asked. "But if you inserted yourself as a character into a work of fiction, wouldn't you want that character to be the one receiving all of the cool supernatural stuff? Like... wouldn't your fantasy be getting Turned, as opposed to Turning someone else? I grew a lot in this fic, sure, but I'm definitely not the main perspective character. Way more chapters are from Weiss' POV."
That's my secret, Ruby. My fantasy is being there for the people I care about.
"That's gay," Weiss said instantly.
"So where can people read Vampires of Atlas?" Ruby asked.
It's the third fic of this series. I'm also gonna link it in the chapter notes, except this time I'll actually use the proper HTML stuff to do it instead of just putting the link in parentheses.
"I can't believe all the readers put up with you doing that for this long," Weiss laughed.
To be fair to me, it took, like... ten seconds of Googling.
Ruby frowned. "Yeah, but... you didn't know how to embed a link in HTML? Don't you have a computer science degree?"
Allegedly.
"Yeah, wait, she does have a CS degree!" Weiss said, pointing an accusatory finger at the extremely hilarious and attractive redheaded deity in the sky. "You made Velvet say this whole thing about how people don't portray computer experts well in movies..." she paused, crossing her arms. "Also, I didn't choose to describe you like that."
Yeah, but that's just because you've never seen me. It's all true, promise.
"Didn't you also have Velvet talk about mutex locks, for, like... a while, in Bonus Chapter 3?" Ruby asked.
I did, yeah. It was one of those interesting Computer Science Concepts(tm) that had been floating around in my head since sophomore year, so I had her talk about it because I like explaining it to people. Despite how in-depth it is, the banking example really makes sense.
"So... let me get this straight," Weiss said. "You explained an assembly-level aspect of multithreaded programming to a fanfiction audience, just because you felt like it..."
With you so far.
"But you didn't know how to embed a link in HTML?"
My degree's in programming, not webdev. I never learned HTML.
"That's not what your resume saaaays..." Ruby called, singsongy.
Ugh. I mean... I could learn HTML. I knew a lot of syntax once, and it's a really widespread language so there's probably tons of documentation. Listen, I didn't come here for you two to judge me, I came here to make a simple update chapter -
"And then you got a dumb, fourth-wall-breaking idea, thought it would be fun, and here you are at 9:28 PM, with no shirt or socks because the radiator's on, writing this..." Ruby trailed off, squinting up at the sky. "Wait - you're writing this in Ao3? Directly???"
Weiss let out a horrified gasp. "You monster! Just use a google doc!"
I do, usually! I thought this would be really quick and easy but then I kept getting ideas for what you guys could say and now it's... uh...
"You don't have access to a word count function in here, do you?" Weiss asked smugly.
Shut up. Why are you guys omniscient right now, anyways?
"Well, you did kinda make us that way, for the joke," Ruby shrugged. "What, did you think we weren't gonna dunk on you?"
You have me there.
"Can we stay like this in Vampires of Atlas?" Weiss asked. "I'm sort of enjoying the feeling of infinite knowledge about my story and its author."
Absolutely not. This isn't even canon.
"But the bonus chapters are?" Ruby asked.
More or less. Definitely chapter 2, it's slightly relevant to the plot and explains some vampire mechanics. I was originally just gonna write Winter and Robyn doing soft and sexy things together, but -
"Please do not make me think about my sister doing 'sexy things,'" Weiss groaned.
It would seem that your omniscience has turned out to be a curse.
"Ugh. I hate monkey's paws."
Eh, they're fun literary devices. Anyways, I was supposed to do just some fluffy and soft interaction between them, a cute little one-off where Winter's heart starts beating for the first time - which is probably the thinnest metaphor in this entire series, and I'm okay with that. But partway through I decided to apparently do some worldbuilding because it fit in so perfectly, and now it's stuck there.
"Nice planning," Ruby remarked.
Listen, I usually walk in with a vague outline of the plot and then just let you two, and everybody else in this fic, say the things they'd say and do the things they'd do. Sometimes the choices you make totally alter where I was originally going, but it's such a cool idea and so in-character that I keep it and alter the overall plot of the fic as a result.
"So, Ruby and I... and I guess everybody else... we're just voices in your head that try to tell our own stories, and you transcribe them, like an ancient Greek poet being granted very literal divine inspiration from a Muse?" Weiss asked.
More or less. I mean, I have some control - watch:
"Pumpernickel!" Ruby blurted. She tilted her head, scratching behind an ear. "Huh. What does that mean, again?"
My ADHD brain refuses to tell me, and I don't wanna look it up. But anyways, most of the time, I don't know exactly what you girls are gonna say until you say it. I just know, generally, where things are gonna go, and then your story tells itself.
Weiss hummed. "Do you edit?"
Extensively. But almost exclusively as I go. Once something's written, it feels written, and changing it - even for the better! - is weirdly difficult for me. I guess it's a handy style for chapter-by-chapter fanfiction, though.
"When you try and publish that manuscript, your editor's gonna hate you," Ruby grinned.
With another person's edits, it's different.
Probably.
"For their sake, I hope so," Weiss said.
There was a pause, as I re-read what I had so far.
"Ugh, don't narrate your own actions," Ruby said. "It's already weird when you do it for us."
"I agree," Weiss said. "Can't you just let us talk, and remove all of the things around it, like that 'Weiss said?'"
I'm just used to it. And this way, people know which one of you is talking.
"You could just preface our statements with 'R:' and 'W:' or something," Ruby offered.
Ugh, are you kidding? I have standards.
Weiss looked up at the sky with her arms crossed. "You've spent like an hour writing this very dumb joke. And when you read it back later, it was more like two hours."
Not the whole hour. I also ate a pizza.
"You're out of milk," Ruby said.
Thank you. I know.
"Have you run out of silly jokes, yet?" Weiss asked, bored.
Meh, I'm on my way. Is there anything else you two wanna ask me, before this weird chapter ends and you forget all of it?
Ruby thought for a moment. "You said that Winter's heart beating again was a metaphor. Are there any other metaphors in here?"
There's a few. I don't get to control how people interpret my art, so I make it very carefully and do my best not to imply things that are bad or offensive. But some of them are definitely intentional. For the record, it's totally valid if my audience doesn't see them, or disagrees - they're all absolutely entitled to their own impressions, each of which is just as valuable as mine - but if you two are curious, I can share a few things I implied on purpose.
"Go for it," Weiss said.
So, obviously, being a werecreature in this universe had to be a metaphor for something. It's a rather vague, imperfect comparison, obviously, but in general I thought of the concept of being a werecreature as an allusion to being LGBT , most especially being trans. Maybe it's something you kinda always knew you were, maybe it's a sudden, intense realization you have later on in life, and then you have to come to terms with it while you balance the rest of your day-to-day. Either way, it's this aspect of yourself, which often can't be easily observed (at least by most people), but is entirely intrinsic to who you are. Sometimes you may have to hide it for your own safety, but you hopefully have a group of very close friends, people like you. And when you're with them, you can just let go and be yourself. Maybe you and the other members of that group were all a little lonely, in your own ways, so you came together and formed a big, mutually supportive found family - one that you value just as much as, and perhaps even more than your biological ones.
"Wow..." Ruby said. "When you put it like that..."
Yeah. In the interest of total honesty, the comparison was never so well-thought-out and eloquent until I transcribed it just now, but I generally knew what I was dong - at least in that respect.
"Huh," Weiss said. "This dumb idea of yours got... weirdly wholesome."
Eh, I dunno. I got weirdly nostalgic for this silly journey you two have taken, and I'm really, really excited to see what everybody thinks about the way that things kick off in Atlas.
Also, it's just been a weird day. I tried to finish up the first chapter and post it, but I suddenly got messages from like 3 different people while I was doing it, then my glasses fogged up and just wouldn't get clean for some reason, then they put Sephiroth in Smash Ultimate...
Ruby blinked. "Wait, seriously?"
Yeah. I mean... truly anything can happen, after Steven Minecraft.
"Does he look fun?" Ruby asked.
Probably. I mean, Cloud's entire kit is "besides Limit, the only thing I have going for me is my massive disgusting anime sword hitboxes," and then in walks Sephiroth like "hey idiot, guess how my kit works?" And his anime sword hitboxes look even bigger and even more disgusting. But I'm worried he might be designed closer to Byleth and her massive sourspots, especially because he doesn't seem to move that fast in the air. Honestly, I feel like 10% miffed that every DLC character since Joker hasn't been anything resembling a glass cannon fastfaller, because that's my general playstyle.
"At this point, I'd imagine you're driving away your core audience of women who love women and read RWBY fanfiction," Weiss said. "From what I remember, the online Smash community has a single-digit number of women to begin with."
I'd be amazed (and very grateful!) if any of them have read this far. But you do make a good point - I think I'm just rambling now. If you actually have made it to this point, thank you, this was a silly joke that went on way too long. But I had an absolute blast writing it, so I hope that you at least exhaled air from your nose a little bit faster a few times when you read it.
That's all from me, and from these two - at least until we return to canon. I sincerely hope you enjoy Vampires of Atlas, and I'm gonna do my best to continue it over the holidays. Wherever you are, I hope that you are safe, happy, and loved, and thank you very, very much for reading.
"Oh!" Ruby yelled out, delaying the ending. "The 1000 kudos bonus chapter is on the way! She's just lazy and hasn't written it yet!"
"She read all of their comments and put a list of her favorite ideas in her phone," Weiss said. "Give her some credit, at least."
Thanks, you two. Remind me to never let you be this omniscient again.
Ruby pouted. "Not even for a bonus chapter?"
Only if this idea somehow becomes popular, and they really, really want it. Which I doubt.
"They've surprised you before," Weiss said with a smirk.
That's most certainly true. Either way, thank you all very much for reading, and I can't wait to see what you think of Vampires of Atlas!
-Ruby, Weiss, and Red