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elftaintWhat scene?! Where?!: The Room Of Cool Night Breezes, Seymour x Sephiroth, @ ![[info]](https://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif)
the_love_hotel
We're picking up right at the start of a fight, but first:
So I keep showing logs and whatnot to IRL/non-otaku friends and they keep saying "seymour wat" and also "sephiroth, is he jewish lol." Viewers at home, go ahead and mute your speakers and repress your hatred for lolengrish with the following videos:
Sephiroth:
Seymour:
They are both kinda pwn in their own element DA NE. Of course Sephiroth's element is stepping on faces with incredible force, and Seymour's element is being almost unspeakably greasy and having a really active afterlife. In terms of classic seme values this pairing could really go either way.
SEME VALUES CHART
Naturally I see Seymour as the permanent top in this relationship because I always weight heightiness and perviness over strongliness and prettiness and body count (seriously has any FF villain ever killed fewer people than Seymour? Sure he turned in his old man, and that's gotta count for something, but overall the deaths he caused can be measured in, like, single digits. Meanwhile Sephiroth is all *flicks dust offa coat while cities burn*.) in the seme olympics, but YMMV.
There was a player intervention that determined top and bottom, and since it was determined in my favor, it was my happy task to make it look realistic and possible. That's how I saw things. This fight scene nearly overset all my carefully laid plans.
We pick up at the point where Sephiroth has realized that his will is not completely his own. Seymour opens with one of my absolutefavorite worst habits ever:
Bolded above: Juicy Seme Line. I can only pray that other people enjoy them as much as I enjoy writing them. I will seriously throw such intense cheese down at the drop of a hat, and once I've done it once, I will try to do it over and over until I realize I'm being an awful ham.
Look, I did it again in the very next tag!
"Come," He said quietly, slipping his hand under Sephiroth's long coat and around his waist. "This doesn't deserve petulance. Trespasses like these must be fought furiously, or not at all."
Gross!
Inbetween, Sephiroth is patiently doing the hard work of actually being a character.
As a serious aside, during these tags I was furiously searching the entire internet for pictures of Sephiroth's outfit so I would know how to take the damn thing off of him. At one point I was going to throw up my hands and have Seymour order Sephiroth to undress himself. It didn't help at all that there are several variations on the costume, and eventually I went to the place I always go: poetic vagueness.
He slid his free hand between their bodies and started jerking open the zippers and latches and innumerable buckles of Sephiroth's complicated and severe clothes.
But that comes later. What I really want to talk about here is how difficult it is to make a fight work between two Big Bad Guys.
In response to "petulance...fought furiously, &c."![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
son_of_calamity basically asked me OOC "do you mean it? Can they actually fight? It will draw things out." I really appreciated that, because there are situations where I'm not really interested in humoring a fight. There are also numerous restrictions involved at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
the_love_hotel - no uber powering, nothing that would destroy a bunch of things, etc. Canon Sephiroth and canon Seymour both have a lot of very uber powers and I was frankly leary about getting involved in a scene that could so easily become wanky.
Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I was already beginning to trust that Sephiroth-mun was not going to be precious about the character, and that I was only being made to earn my dominance (which I enjoy doing very much.) So let's do a fight scene!
Let's do a sexy fight scene! The narration at the end here, which admits to an uncomfortable level of IC fascination, was really encouraging to me. It reinforced that this was a necessary, important, and challenging part of making the submission work for Sephiroth, so I was glad to pick up the gauntlet.
It's important to remember that being a seme doesn't mean being invincible. I do see these things play out where the guy on top acts like nothing in the world can hurt him. If it turns out that your seme is not physically able to overpower an epically powerful uke, you just have to find another way to do it - you shouldn't make the seme suddenly twenty times as beefy.
Seymour gets in a few good hits in this fight, but it's obvious he's not anywhere near Sephiroth's level. My favorite/least-favorite tag was this one just after Sephiroth has gotten a hand around Seymour's throat:
CHUUUU~~~
Kinda sleazy. It doesn't even really make sense from a physical perspective. Bad RP!
The note at the end does highlight an important bit that maybe should go on the Seme Values Chart: Sephiroth has reluctantly come around to Giving A Fuck, and Seymour never has. Not Giving A Fuck = more seme power. But his emotional void becomes a liability later on, though it will be a while before we get there.
As the fight wore on, Sephiroth's narration continued to suggest that the fight was Seymour's to win, even if it was due to cheap moves and enchantment. Still, I couldn't seem to close the deal.
There's an IC feeling of "well why are you sticking around then" that mirrors the OOC feeling I usually get in prolonged fight scenes. I have a lot of trouble parsing them and figuring out how PAOUR LEVALS ought to match up - an admitted weakness. Anyway at this point I was finally of the opinion that there was no reason for Seymour to win a physical fight - most of all against a powerful warrior like canon Sephiroth. Seymour is a magic guy above and beyond anything else.
That was the last line of the tag. It was completely up to Sephiroth-mun whether this curse would be allowed to hit or miss, and I'm totally like, please let it hit please let it hit please please silently.
Oh thank fuck.
Him too.
Fight scenes can definitely go on too long and I think the worst artifact of that is they become unfun as players try to protect the specialness and uberness of their characters. Ha ha even me, though I like to think I'm above that kind of nonsense normally. But here, Seymour was willing to admit a kind of defeat, and Sephiroth was willing to admit another kind.
I think it was a mutually satisfactory conclusion.
It also left Sephiroth in a delectable position: blindfolded without the blindfold. In the next part of this post-mortem, we'll look getting naked and FINALLY some sex: a big fat BJ!
the_love_hotelWe're picking up right at the start of a fight, but first:
So I keep showing logs and whatnot to IRL/non-otaku friends and they keep saying "seymour wat" and also "sephiroth, is he jewish lol." Viewers at home, go ahead and mute your speakers and repress your hatred for lolengrish with the following videos:
Sephiroth:
Seymour:
They are both kinda pwn in their own element DA NE. Of course Sephiroth's element is stepping on faces with incredible force, and Seymour's element is being almost unspeakably greasy and having a really active afterlife. In terms of classic seme values this pairing could really go either way.
SEME VALUES CHART
| Sephiroth | Seymour | ADVANTAGE |
| 185 cm tall | 187 cm tall | Seymour |
| Huge sword, mighty in battle, fireproof, chip on shoulder | Mage, summoner, terrible mother issues | Sephiroth |
| Physically perfect, abs of diamond, silky silvery hair, luminous emerald green eyes | Fucked up half-breed, built but trending chubby, with sick tats and hair gel club memberships. Has Leona Helmsley's eyes. | Sephiroth |
| Monster yet angel | Just a monster | ????????? |
| Deigns not to get funky with people | Canon sensualist, kisses girl, spent adolescence in monastery | Seymour |
Naturally I see Seymour as the permanent top in this relationship because I always weight heightiness and perviness over strongliness and prettiness and body count (seriously has any FF villain ever killed fewer people than Seymour? Sure he turned in his old man, and that's gotta count for something, but overall the deaths he caused can be measured in, like, single digits. Meanwhile Sephiroth is all *flicks dust offa coat while cities burn*.) in the seme olympics, but YMMV.
There was a player intervention that determined top and bottom, and since it was determined in my favor, it was my happy task to make it look realistic and possible. That's how I saw things. This fight scene nearly overset all my carefully laid plans.
We pick up at the point where Sephiroth has realized that his will is not completely his own. Seymour opens with one of my absolute
If Seymour was surprised, he gave no sign of it. Neither was there any indication of victory. He only smiled, as he had throughout their time together; the quiet, careful, predatory smile of one who had run down his mark. "As you said, this is only a dream. There are no consequences." He remarked, though it was not unkind. "No matter how serious the crime."
He slipped his fingers under the strap that ran down Sephiroth's right shoulder, deeply enjoying the warm skin there and the hard muscle that he felt twitch under his hand. "Is this not uncomfortable on such a warm night? Does it unbuckle, or shall I tear it away?"
Bolded above: Juicy Seme Line. I can only pray that other people enjoy them as much as I enjoy writing them. I will seriously throw such intense cheese down at the drop of a hat, and once I've done it once, I will try to do it over and over until I realize I'm being an awful ham.
Look, I did it again in the very next tag!
"Come," He said quietly, slipping his hand under Sephiroth's long coat and around his waist. "This doesn't deserve petulance. Trespasses like these must be fought furiously, or not at all."
Gross!
Inbetween, Sephiroth is patiently doing the hard work of actually being a character.
This was not what he had meant, not in the least. That he would twist his words as such...
"It unbuckles." His jaw tightened at the touch, as he tried not to respond to it, his eyes flashing cold fury in the face of that smile. "Now take your hands off of me."
If anything, his voice was twice as cold as his gaze.
As a serious aside, during these tags I was furiously searching the entire internet for pictures of Sephiroth's outfit so I would know how to take the damn thing off of him. At one point I was going to throw up my hands and have Seymour order Sephiroth to undress himself. It didn't help at all that there are several variations on the costume, and eventually I went to the place I always go: poetic vagueness.
He slid his free hand between their bodies and started jerking open the zippers and latches and innumerable buckles of Sephiroth's complicated and severe clothes.
But that comes later. What I really want to talk about here is how difficult it is to make a fight work between two Big Bad Guys.
In response to "petulance...fought furiously, &c."
son_of_calamity basically asked me OOC "do you mean it? Can they actually fight? It will draw things out." I really appreciated that, because there are situations where I'm not really interested in humoring a fight. There are also numerous restrictions involved at the_love_hotel - no uber powering, nothing that would destroy a bunch of things, etc. Canon Sephiroth and canon Seymour both have a lot of very uber powers and I was frankly leary about getting involved in a scene that could so easily become wanky.Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I was already beginning to trust that Sephiroth-mun was not going to be precious about the character, and that I was only being made to earn my dominance (which I enjoy doing very much.) So let's do a fight scene!
That sounded like an option, to him, and the other was going to regret simply taking for granted that he couldn't do anything about it...or at least believed he couldn't.
As the inhabitants of his world could testify, Sephiroth could convince himself of just about anything he meant to.
"Very well." There wasn't the slightest change in his expression as the hand on Seymour's chest was used to shove him backwards, as though attempting to pin him back against the nearest solid object. Considerable force was put behind that shove, perhaps to make up for the somewhat disturbing fact that he couldn't draw away just yet, that the feel of his skin's warmth was pulling him in, in a way he could not have explained if he cared to.
Let's do a sexy fight scene! The narration at the end here, which admits to an uncomfortable level of IC fascination, was really encouraging to me. It reinforced that this was a necessary, important, and challenging part of making the submission work for Sephiroth, so I was glad to pick up the gauntlet.
Seymour stumbled back, slamming against the parapet wall behind him with a hard gasp. Sephiroth had pushed him hard enough to knock the wind out of his lungs, and he wasn't able to say anything clever about it until he'd gotten his breath back.
It's important to remember that being a seme doesn't mean being invincible. I do see these things play out where the guy on top acts like nothing in the world can hurt him. If it turns out that your seme is not physically able to overpower an epically powerful uke, you just have to find another way to do it - you shouldn't make the seme suddenly twenty times as beefy.
Seymour gets in a few good hits in this fight, but it's obvious he's not anywhere near Sephiroth's level. My favorite/least-favorite tag was this one just after Sephiroth has gotten a hand around Seymour's throat:
Seymour ignored the hand at his throat - it would be trivial in a few seconds, he was certain of it - and instead leaned in to press his lips against Sephiroth's. His own were warm, a little too wide, and tasted of wine. He slid his free hand between their bodies and started jerking open the zippers and latches and innumerable buckles of Sephiroth's complicated and severe clothes.
He didn't bother to reply in any other way. If he had known of Sephiroth's faith in his powers, immense though they were, he would only have laughed. For the difference between one man and the other wasn't so much in the magnitude of power as in the will to use it. A conscience, regret, sorrow: these things that informed Sephiroth's humanity also bound him. But for Seymour there was only the shameless freedom gifted to the most supreme egotists.
CHUUUU~~~
Kinda sleazy. It doesn't even really make sense from a physical perspective. Bad RP!
The note at the end does highlight an important bit that maybe should go on the Seme Values Chart: Sephiroth has reluctantly come around to Giving A Fuck, and Seymour never has. Not Giving A Fuck = more seme power. But his emotional void becomes a liability later on, though it will be a while before we get there.
It wasn't as hard as he could have. That drain of his strength still seemed to be in place...it was as though the hotel, in its cruel humor, meant for him to have enough resolve to fight, but not nearly enough to win.
As the fight wore on, Sephiroth's narration continued to suggest that the fight was Seymour's to win, even if it was due to cheap moves and enchantment. Still, I couldn't seem to close the deal.
Seymour, too, was confused. He had his hands full with this violent man; he'd be forced to fall back when shoved once again by those powerful arms, and his lip was bleeding, and he was failing completely to make any progress; and yet, Sephiroth hadn't said anything along the lines of "no" or "I don't want to" nor done anything decisive like leaving no matter his advantage in a hand to hand fight.
There's an IC feeling of "well why are you sticking around then" that mirrors the OOC feeling I usually get in prolonged fight scenes. I have a lot of trouble parsing them and figuring out how PAOUR LEVALS ought to match up - an admitted weakness. Anyway at this point I was finally of the opinion that there was no reason for Seymour to win a physical fight - most of all against a powerful warrior like canon Sephiroth. Seymour is a magic guy above and beyond anything else.
The time for mere physical persuasion was over.
His hands curled over each other and a queer dark mist coalesced between them. As he released it, he murmured a curse in the most caressing tone. "Be blinded, Sephiroth."
That was the last line of the tag. It was completely up to Sephiroth-mun whether this curse would be allowed to hit or miss, and I'm totally like, please let it hit please let it hit please please silently.
It wasn't materia, which he might have been able to divert. It was some strange variation of the magic used on Gaia, clearly from his own world, and there was no escaping the spell.
Oh thank fuck.
His relief was apparent on his blue-veined face, not that Sephiroth could see it.
Him too.
Fight scenes can definitely go on too long and I think the worst artifact of that is they become unfun as players try to protect the specialness and uberness of their characters. Ha ha even me, though I like to think I'm above that kind of nonsense normally. But here, Seymour was willing to admit a kind of defeat, and Sephiroth was willing to admit another kind.
Seymour: His gaze was locked on his beautiful prey, on whose fine features were written many secrets and many promises. Only be weak, he prayed. Just for a moment.
Sephiroth: He was silent and still for the duration of the other's words, though there was no telling if they were having the desired effect or not. Those eyes were closed, curtained off by the fall of that silver mane, as was his expression. Even hearing the other draw to his feet and close enough to speak, he didn't move.
He could have fought harder. Could have beaten him, easily. Could have escaped.
That he hadn't would haunt him.
I think it was a mutually satisfactory conclusion.
It also left Sephiroth in a delectable position: blindfolded without the blindfold. In the next part of this post-mortem, we'll look getting naked and FINALLY some sex: a big fat BJ!
