Hey everyone, Layman here! I know you're probably surprised to to see a second chapter on a fic I said would remain a one-shot. Well, that's because this isn't a normal chapter, it's a commentary! Basically, this is going to be me talking about my thought process while I was writing Melt and my reasoning for some of the things I did in it. By no means am I forcing you to read the self righteous ramblings of some random shmuck on the Internet, but it'd be nice all the same.
Also, this is less an explanation of "how I did", but rather simply "what I did".
So, without further adieu, here's a look into my mind.
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1. "Neptune couldn't believe this was actually happening!"
So I was reading this really good fic (I'm withholding its name so as not to incite anything) that pretty much focused on Weiss and Blake that had them confess their love for each other after about 40 odd chapters. This doesn't sit well with me for many reasons, the most prominent being how it completely interrupted the plot and disrupted the narrative flow. (The second reason I'll expound upon in a bit.) I ended up unfavoriting the story, because I don't want to promote incorrect ships, and did what I always end up doing when I have strong emotions about something: write my own, sometimes similar story to balance things out in my mind, which is also how "Sins of the Future" came to be. It's...something of a coping mechanism for me in regards to people who ship outside of canon or general common sense. (adtl. Note: take that last statement with a grain of salt.) So, Melt was born.
2. "...it came as quite a shock when she asked him, completely out of the blue, if he wanted to have sex with her."
If you've read any of my other fics- heck, if you just read the ending author's note of this story, you'll know my feelings on ships in the RWBY fandom that don't match up with canon. (To reiterate, Jaune/Pyrrha, Weiss/Neptune, and Blake/Sun have been either confirmed or heavily implied.) Now this isn't to say I feel that way about every non-canon ship; there's a really rather funny fic by the name of "Blake and Jaune's Infinite Playlist" (based off the movie "Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist") where Blake and Jaune end up together by the end, Yang and Jaune is a guilty pleasure of mine even though I haven't really read any in depth, and I even like Weiss and Jaune, if only because I love the ship name "Yellow Snow", and those are [strangely] just the examples that involve Jaune.
Inversely, things like Blake and Yang or Ruby and anyone (because the reason should be blinding obvious if you want to stay off a sexual predators list) irk me something fierce, especially if sex is involved. While it's been stated that LGBT characters exist in RWBY, it hasn't been revealed who they are, nor has it been confirmed beyond the shadow of a doubt that any of the main four girl swing that way, and it strikes me as kind of pathetic the way people try to contrive reasons to justify their ships. Granted, this is nothing new to fanfiction as a whole, but it's the way some people in the RWBY fandom act like it's canon when it clearly isn't; Ruby is 15, Yang has gone on record as liking boys (in Volume 1, episode 4, "The Shining Beacon pt.2"), and both Blake and Weiss have at least been heavily implied to have boyfriends (i.e. Sun Wukong and Neptune Vasillias, respectively), and while they've each had character moments with each other, that's all they are, and anyone who tried to use those moments to justify their ship are grasping at straws.
Which brings me back to the story that prompted this one to be written. Now, I'm well aware that Fanfiction is a way to explore different ideas and concepts, and as a writer myself I'm aware that sometimes characters can get away from the author and do their own thing, but that shouldn't mean I have to compromise on my beliefs. Now, I'm not about to jump down someone's throat for writing something I disagree with, and deep down I don't like starting confrontations, so Melt is my passive/aggressive way of voicing my contrary opinions.
Forgetting all that, I don't enjoy reading smut; most of it either isn't done well enough to be titillating, or it's done really well but for a pairing I don't agree with. Occasionally I'll find a fic like Too Strong To Love by Wild Rhov that a. handles the subject in an emotionally mature way, and b. the sex is merely a part of the plot and isn't the only thing to it. (This is a Fairy Tail fic, by the way.) Unfortunately, these kinds of stories are few and far between, so I usually stay away from anything with a smut tag.
So, with that knowledge, and my raging emotions regarding shipping (particularly about Weiss and Blake, in this case), coupled with the fact that I'm willing to try new things at least once, a story formed itself in my mind.
3. "I've done a lot of thinking lately, about a lot of things in my life..."
Around the time I got this idea, I'd decided that if I was going to write about two people having sex, I was going to do so in a believable and realistic way, not as an excuse for perverted wish fulfillment, so I naturally opted for the "first experience" angle. The next question was when I was going to set the story. I'm a big believer in working within canon, but Volume 3 doesn't really have much wiggle room for that sort of thing; Volume 3 was just entering its second half, before the metaphorical bomb dropped, so to speak, so by default that sort of meant I had to set things just before it started. After that, things actually began to fall nicely into place: Weiss's motivation for doing this, her relationship with Neptune, her friends not being around, etc.
4. "...this time with much less white knuckle terror..."
If you've read my other RWBY story Dif'rent Faces, you'll know I know my way around the show with how I reference things from both Volumes 1 and 2 in an organic way. In the case here, it's when Neptune and Sun scaled the school up to Team RWBY's window in Volume 2 (and later on, his fear of water from Volume 3).
It's little touches like these that I think elevates fanfiction from just scribbles to an actual story, and I always try to add them whenever I can.
5. "He looked down at his trident t-shirt and sweat pants..."
In the show, Neptune only has two models: normal/combat, and his tux he wears to the dance. Honestly, this sort of feels like the laziest choice I made in this one-shot, but at the same time I couldn't really think of anything else for his jammies. Plus, speaking as a card carrying of the Man persuasion, I can tell you that guys tend to not really care about our sleepware that much.
6. "...a part of him wondered why Weiss was acting so embarrassed about simply undressing."
Again, this is Man Logic at work. Not that we don't have a sense of shame, but we tend to cover it up with machismo a lot of the time. Also, we think stupid things sometimes. (Fortunately, Neptune has an attack of sense.)
7. "Neptune couldn't help but stare at the girl standing before him..."
If you couldn't already tell by this point, this story is primarily from Neptune's perspective. This was because it was the easiest way to move the story along in the shortest amount of time. (Like I've said before, I'm not a big fan of smut, so I didn't want to dwell on the subject for too long.) Besides that, I don't feel qualified to attempt this kind of story from the girl's perspective, for rather obvious reasons.
That said, it was an interesting challenge trying to describe Weiss without tipping over into the perverted; the point of Melt was to realistically show two young people taking this step, not satisfy the libido of all the perverts on the Internet. I think I pulled it off, but I can't really control what turns people on.
8. "D-d-d-don't stare so much!"
Like I said, I didn't feel qualified writing this from Weiss's point of view, but that doesn't mean I'm not familiar with what women go through during this, at least academically. Some things were givens, like Weiss and Neptune being squeamish and the effects of losing your virginity, but the more nuanced and personal things that would be going through Weiss's mind I can only guess at. So rather than failing around the subject and making an ass of myself, I opted to simply focus an Neptune's side of things and hope for the best. (I think it worked out well.)
9. "...Weiss abruptly stood on her toes and grabbed his head, kissing him full on the mouth..."
For this, I figured Weiss would be the dominant one (by the slimmest of margins) in the relationship, which fits with her personality and back story, and I figure that Neptune's the kind of guy who wouldn't mind if his girlfriend took the lead.
10. "...in no time at all they were once again in the throes of pleasure..."
I decided to skip ahead here because by this point in the act things would get too graphic and I wanted to actually be able to keep this story up on the site. And like I mentioned before, I wasn't writing this to be vanilla smut; the Internet is a big place, you don't need to come here to watch two people screw. Plus, there are just some lines that I won't cross as a writer, and detailing what went on after that point is one of those lines.
If I may make a slight aside, I'm a big believer in what I call "negative space writing", in which certain details are left to the reader's mind to fill in. This is not a technique that can carry a story on its own, but used in small doses it can be effective. (For example, "the Beacon uniform" conjures a very specific image, especially if you've seen the show, so if the main cast need to interact with a one off character from Beacon Academy, I don't need to detail every last part of their outfit. However, if you have an OC that plays a major part in the story but only wears "the Beacon uniform", that smacks of lazy writing. The same logic and be applied to other things and situations, like if Team RWBY is walking around downtown Vale, you'd only need to give a general description of the area because we already know what "downtown" is generally supposed to look like. In the case of Melt, even if you don't have any first hand experience at sex, you probably have a general idea what needs to happen to make a baby, so I don't need to explain what went on between then and after they finish.
11. "Just don't go flirting with other girls behind my back..."
Like Neptune's fear of water, this is a reference to the same episode from volume 3, where Neptune flirts with the girls on the Team he and SSSN are fighting in the tournament, Weiss sees this, and gets understandably mad. It's these little bits of truth that help sell the lie, so to speak, and I always try to use them whenever I can.
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And that's everything I could think of to talk about. I hope this was interesting, and if it wasn't, the story proper is just a button click away. Once again, I don't plan on doing anything like this story again, since this was just to help me work out some strong feelings about improper shipping.