#rhs fandom

I'm just.

What a letdown, for me personally.

I found that story posted on a Teen Titans forum we were both on (RIP TitansGo.Net), and while I wasn't reading it from its very beginning, I think there were only 5 or so chapters written when I discovered it. And it was one of those stories you discover at 10pm, and the chapters were LONG, so I think I stayed up until 4am reading it. Something very late like that.

And I went to its fanfic.net page and subscribed immediately. I left long, luxurious, elated reviews on every single chapter that came out after that. I had a lot of conversations with the author, even going to him when I needed feedback on the climax battle of DDD (and his advice to make it "three times as long and nine times the punch" stayed with me), and I adored so many things about his style. To this day, there are echoes of words I learned from that story and immediately wanted to wield myself now fossilized in DDD. ('Lurid' and 'routed' come immediately to mind.)

I absolutely ADORED this story, okay. The technical writing was very good, for one thing, which I've come to dearly appreciate in a fanfiction because otherwise I'm breaking immersion by correcting errors in my head.

But what really hooked me was the fascinating OC, and the writing style, and the lore drops, and the world this author built. The magic system, the way it had a cost and had resistance, lines like "Reality takes affront to being pushed around." The style was simultaneously so lush and so succinct, and I look up to that accomplishment to this day!

Another cue might've been the author choosing to label Raven a Nephil, even though Trigon was never, ever an angel, let alone a FALLEN one, but at the time I saw that, I researched like hell, and despite being Neopagan, I discovered so many fascinating myths about angels, and began working with them (particularly Raphael and Ariel), and Enochian magic, and John Dee's work, and the Book of Enoch. Just set off a cascade of research I ended up incorporating into my spiritual practices.

The third- and second-to-last chapters were scenes of battle between Raven and the OC's demon, both unleashing their full power. It was breathtaking! It was POWERFUL! It was of apocalyptic proportions! It! Was! EPIC!!!

I think it was multiple YEARS I waited for that final chapter, the ending of this story I'd been reading since age 17, this story that inspired so many short-essay-length reviews on each chapter and even personal entries in my own journal.

I was absolutely, entirely, completely OVER THE MOON when I got the email that it had, finally, updated!

And then....... in a quite literal Deus Ex Machina, a mechanism from god, Jesus showed up.

That scene was given a lot of emotional weight, don't get me wrong. But I was still reading it like... "What is he doing here? Where did the epic battle go? How did this resolve that? Isn't Raven Azarathean, like religiously? Why is religious conversion the answer here?"

That last question especially kept me up that night, because by the time it was published, I had been Neopagan for 7 or 8 years, and a big part of my leaving xtianity was because I don't believe in proselytizing. Forced conversion is a tragedy, and has led to the erasure of cultures around the world, and wars in its name disgust me. One of the biggest tenets of xtianity is removing peoples' right to choose their own religion, by force and coercion and cultural extinction, and I absolutely despise everything that stands for.

I think, to this day, it's the only chapter I never reviewed. Because I just didn't know what to say that doesn't boil down to, "What the fuck was THAT?!"

Unfortunately I still love everything that came before that too much to have had anything usurp it as my favorite fanfiction...