#I had to rewrite eps 10 and 11 two times

[absolutebl]

Hello, hello!! It's me, your favorite graduate, back with a burning question! ;)

I am in the middle of episode 11 of Why R U? (literally paused in the middle of it because I am WAY too invested in FighterTutor and am seriously dreading what is coming) - what a messy, cringey show. There are so many freaking characters, and my question is inspired by one that I have come to love, Kae. He is Tutor's boss at the bakery, and after he (bravely, in IRL standards) confronts Fighter's dad I realized just how much I appreciated his character and how annoyed I am that the show couldn't cut down its cabal of unnecessary characters to focus on more interesting ones. Not only is he an astonishingly great example (for a BL!!) of a queer "elder" in the community - he protects Tutor from creepy customers, gives him a job when he needs one and looks for help when he needs more work, is working-class himself, and tries to give advice to this lonely queer kid he's taken under his wing - he also seems to be a rare less-stereotypical portrayal of a Thai person with darker skin (if not the only, honestly, in my limited experience watching these shows).

So! My question is, are there any side characters or even guest characters (like Kae is billed as) who you wish had been given more latitude or importance in the plot/story of a BL?

OMG what a great question. YES SO MANY. Let me see if I can come up with a top 10. Does it have to be individuals? Can I pick a few couples (I won’t go too far because therein lies madness)? 

Top 10 Side Characters I Wish We Got More Screen Time

In no particular order.  

1. Touch & Daisy in Secret Crush On You

Is anyone surprised by this choice?

2. Choi Yu Na, JaeYeong’s bisexual bestie in Semantic Error

She was just... so effortlessly cool. Do I need to say more? 

3. TulHin in Love By Chance 2

I LOVE THEM, OKAY. Classic whipping boy, my goddamn catnip. And these two actors had amazing chemistry. Ae’s whole arc and character should have been dropped from this script in favor of more time with these truly damaged goods. Yes, I said it. Sorry Perth. 

AND ALSO 

4. Keen in Love By Chance 2

Can’t believe I chose multiples from MAME trash but heh, whatever is necessary for the truth right? Basically this show needed a massive rewrite, but it could have been done. 

That’s what’s so frustrating about MAME’s stuff, it’s so close to being amazing...  It’s like this fantastic 5 course meal but you will be barfing at some point. Maybe the end? Maybe the middle? Maybe multiple times? It’s a regurgitation surprise! 

5. Fong the Philosopher in Still 2gether 

Khaotung is untaped genius at physical comedy. I love him in this role SO HARD. I think we got a lot from him in season one, but I wanted more in season 2. 

6. PokeTongue in Gen Y 2 & What Zabb Man

Look we all know that during Gen Y 2 they were actually pretending to be in some other show. And frankly, we all would have rather been watching that show. Then they got given an actual other show and we STILL wanted more of them. 

7. ChampDoc in TharnType 2

I take the 5th. 

8. Beer in Oxygen

I just wanna look at James but he’s getting his own series (Bed Friends) so I’m okay now. 

9. Sky & Pai in La Cuisine 

Talk about crumbs. What? I mean WHAT WAS THAT? They had these two in their back pocket all along and DIDN’T use them? WHAT? 

10. VegasPete in KinnPorsche

Oh I fucking said it. You were all thinking it from ep 10 on, weren’t you? Why the hell didn't this start in ep 5? Vegas was entirely unnecessary as a love interest for Porsche. It would have been fine, no BETTER, if Porsche & Vegas had developed as a friendship and Vegas had NOTICED Pete in a significant way much earlier.* 

* Don’t comment on this. I’m not interested in this weird KP fandom imaginary-connection muck-wanking thing you’re all AO3ing all over Tumblr like a bad rash. And I could not care less about the original y-novel.  

Honorable Mention

All the GLs that should have had more screen time like the cuties in Meow Ears Up, InkPa in Bad Buddy, and Friend Zone 2, and I could keep going.

 The angry roommate ex lover in Love Class. I just really loved the actor and was very intrigued by the character. We could have spent much less time exploring the stalker story and more time with this boy and still kept the dumb sort KBL length. All in all, the weight of this narrative was all over the place but not using this character to the fullest was a problem.

The two besties of the seme in Mr Unlucky, SO CUTE.

The nerdy support boy who knows what it’s like to be gay and the artsy girl with serious self defense skills from Blueming.

The whole university friendship group that *almost* happened in Cherry Blossoms After Winter.

Tim in My Secret Love, preferably shirtless. 

Nutch in Not Me. 

Mew the ex boyfriend in Together With Me. I don’t know what they were doing with his character. And they didn’t either. But ho boy was he EASY on the eyes. So easy. I mean it takes work to pull attention away from MaxTul and he had ALL MY ATTENTION. 

And (drum roll please) . . . 

K.O. & HAO MEI (Love O2O) 

I will die on this tiny hill of censored bromance. More of them would have substantially improved this show. 

I'm not picking shows that couldn’t be saved. 

So I love KhunKaow in Brothers and CopyNampu in Top Secret Together and SanAei in You’re My Sky, Saint in Our Days, Jun in Love Area 2, but I don't think more of them could have save their respective shows because then it would have been MORE terrible show to watch. I call these the "I'm your huckleberry" awards. I give one each year to the couple that was the only good thing in an otherwise irredeemable show. Like Val Kilmer in Tombstone (bite me).

Current as of Aug 2022, there are a bunch airing right now that could make this list. 

(source)

[bisexualoftheblade-old]

how many wips do you have? like what are they all, and not the number of wips in a fandom? what are all the names?

okay. fuck you. fuck you so much. fuck you.

i’m putting this under a read more cut no one else deserves to see this shit. a lot of these are requests, and for those i will just write out the request itself

Shadowhunters:

domestic polycule fluff with tem, jessa, and will because im not a coward

Supernatural

- hehe hoho i request destiel hehehe

- request 61/? cai cai cai cai i need you to rewrite the destiel scene but yk. GOOD. not like i'm in the know about the spn fandom or anything, it's been years for me. but DO IT

Bright Sessions

- caleb/adam grisha AU

- mark bryant vs. united states aka sue the AM

- caleb/adam college fluff

Umbrella Acaademy

- request 31/? i want a ben and klaus drabble please spare me some brotherly bickering

- AND SO BEGINS NIGHT 4 with request 13/? oooh oooh can i get a raymond and allison playlist??? i think their vibes together would SLAP

- hi there night 2 is technically morning 3 but who's counting not me anyway request 5/? can i get a ben moodboard? gotta rep my tua bb

Percy Jackson

- request 9/? can i get a percabeth moodboard or quote edit?? like god they're the og couple goals take me back to high school cai

- For the 100 follower things :D Jercy getting caught in the rain

- request 29/? a drabble about literally anything to do with pjo. i’ll be happy with anyone and anything i’m love these children

- *somersaults in like I’m a real fancy acrobat* hello ello ello may I request some camp half blood chaos possible involving *does a flip* ✨side characters✨ <3

Penumbra Podcast 

- request 52/? drabble about the penumbra podcast. this is for ren bc ren likes it and i don't actually know anything about it. juno? i think? that's the one ren likes. write it for ren

- Tpp ghost hunting / buzzfeed unsolved au

- sad juno smut

- final resting place fic go brrrr

Marvel

- request 6/? i'm going to my roots y'all can i get a spider-man playlist? if not a playlist then i'd honestly be happy with literally anything involving spider-man

- request 15/? i'm going crazy this is recorded evidence of me actually losing it ANYWAY can i get a quote edit for something from iron man? literally anything that man says is gold so cai's choice :D he deserved better in endgame i'm still bitter

- request 42/? do another spidey thing that differs from the other spidey thing

- request 73/? you have Opinions. rant about infinity way and/or endgame. go.

- request 74/? quote edit for deadpool!!

- spideytorch relationship character study

- peter parker as a tired grad student monitoring the young avengers (send help)

Six of Crows

- okay listen i wasn't going to request anything bc i worry about you but also? if you want to/have the time hit me with a playlist for our girl nina zenik

- request 43/? fuckin give me the ending anya should have had. she is alive and with her new son and having a great time

- request 45/? inej moodboard?

- request 47/? will you make literally any meme of your choosing for six of crows?

- request 48/? write a drabble for kaz, my favorite bastard

- okay so i don't actually like nina or mattias that much but i still wanna hear about your thoughts (and also see if you'll change my mind)

- kaz brekker turning 18 fic. birthday party, everyone singing, whole shebang. i need it stat

- religious trauma fic aka i started shipping kaz/alina/inej and i can’t stop

- kaz trauma soup (he has D.I.D. and you can’t prove me wrong)

- my two redacted fics for @grishaversebigbang​

- wesper fake dating

- six of crows bright sessions crossover: everyone gets therapy

TMA

- uhh... s1 gang having a nice time? melanie getting to have some Pride™️? some "fun" horror thing?

- request 7/? spare steph and jason bonding? please sir? spare some for a humble child such as myself?

- okay so this was meant for night 3 but i had midterm shit SO this is honorary night 3 let's DO THIS request 8/? i want a moodboard of extremely out of context magnus archives shit like i mean confuse the FUCK out of me i don't go here i know Nothing about it

- request 11/? OKAY so i need tim stoker meeting tim drake now i need my timmy to meet your tim plus i want to see character differences no i'm not trying to create a tim stoker in my head so i can read a's fic while NOT thinking of tim drake whaaaaaat you're crazy

- request 18(i think)/? i need a quote edit of every time within the first like. 15 eps of tam where jon is like “sounds fake but go off” thank u bb

- request 40/? i challenge you to write a tma drabble based only on the episodes i've heard. i'm currently halfway through episode 23

- Jon being lovingly bullied into taking a break. I'm aware this has been written a million times but it is one of my favorite things.

- spiral!sasha AU

- extinction martin go brrrrr

- high school era timsasha. they've both been friends for years, and everyone always asks when they will be a couple. they decide to fake date, to prove everyone wrong and show what a bad couple they would be. turns out that's a bit trickier than they thought

- after sasha comes back, tim is broken. he can't let go, scared that if he looks away for even a minute he'll lose her again. sasha suggests shibari as a way for him to give up control

- sasha pov mag 19 au, sacrificing herself to save the others, knows that if she gives herself up to the not!them it will let the others live

- this is the "tim finds a polaroid of sasha" trope

- early archives days,, long nights in research,,, clothes sharing,, somft. late nights and falling asleep at their desks warm and safe in the other's presence

- two parts: timsasha as kids, each picking a constellation that is "theirs". just soft kid antics. tim at sasha's grave glancing up to see their constellations

- continuing your job’s a joke (you’re broke)

DC Comics

- TIMSTEPH HADESTOWN AU,,,

- my redacted fic for @batfam-big-bang​

- request for you to get a decent amount of sleep? serious answer, dickkori, SAL's Venus

- request 4/? timsteph morning after 👀 mayhaps?

- a concept: nonbinary stephanie brown

- teehee hi mom, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, but can i request damian angst for your accomplishments 100 followers?

- hi you can ignore my first request if you want, or you can ignore this one. but bls possibly write some bikini ra’s? -the bikini bitch

- request 27/? jay is asking through me for a jondami playlist but tbh i also want it so win win yk?

- "I don't know how to help you but I can help you find someone who does" with bruce and jason? im just craving bruce being a good day to jason for once

- “I am putting you in time out because you need to understand the consequences of your actions.” with steph and jason as dumbass disaster bi best friends pretty please?

- request 32/? timsteph patrol date!!!

- request 33/? timsteph *gala* date? mayhaps??

- request 37/? tim drake drabble but make it Edgy cai

- request 39/? drabble of a prank war between tim and damian

- joyfire cuddly fluff please? or like just any outlaw fluff if joyfire isnt your thing (feel free to add every member of the outlaws, dont feel like u gotta stick with jason, kori, roy i love them all)

- barbara and robin! jason fluff? bonding over books or something?

- request 62/? i need a drabble about the chaotic trio jason, tim, and steph i'm love them ty

- request 63/? batfam x mcu crossover. batfam meets ironfam. give me ALL the cliches. ALL OF THEM

- request 64/? young justice x young avengers - jay cuz idk SHIT about the young avengers

- request 66/? jondami moodboard pls and ty

- request 67/? timsteph moodboard!!!!!!

- request 69/? HEHEHE kinky 😏 i would v much like a timsteph drabble of the almost first time. does that make sense? like i don't want you to go all the way NSFW cuz i know that's against the rules and i'm a rule follower. but like they *almost* go all the way. this could be fade to black or some shit i don't care just make it a lil steamy and have Fun

- i request damian angst! all of it

- hmm... maybe i request? jondami?

- mayhaps,,,,some batfam,,,,,committing crimes? ily be gay do crime <3 - lu

- How about a ficlet with Steph and Cass?

Found Family Bingo Prompts

- no powers au

- tunnel

- first day

- join the club

- hurt/comfort

- experiment

- playing favorites

- hold on

- possession

- 10 o’clock

- singing

- road

- snitch

- curfew

- timer

- fantasy au

- zombie au

- dreams

- campfire

- are you okay

- movie night

- games

- scared

Miscellaneous

- a request: Write A Drabble, Coward

- is it too late to request a moodboard for me?

- request 20/? i’m going off book because i’m in a Chaotic Mood™️ can you just absolutely vibe check me like go off cai demolish me

- request 21/? i formally request that you pick a favorite cai. i don’t care what that favorite pertains to, just pick a favorite something

- request 23/? roast me

- request 24/? can i have a buzzfeed unsolved spoopy playlist but spoiler alert it’s not spoopy bc shane doesn’t believe does this make sense it has been a Day™️

- request 25/50 i want a jake and amy fic make it Soft cai i’m love them b99 is so good

- request 28/? i know nothing about the lord of the rings so make something that will confuse the shit out of me

- request 34/? malvie and jaylos moodboards 😈

- request 35/? a moodboard for the bbb mods!! perceive all of us!!!

- request 36/? moodboard for the tua mods too???? mayhaps??

- request 41/? doctor WHO? idk but i want a drabble of him and the one character i know from doctor who which is rose

- request 46/? make an alignment meme with our group, have fun!!!

- request 49/? i want you to kin assign me a character from every fandom you can/want to. go feral

- request 50!!!!/? this is a special request. the most special request. can you make a bastards tbh playlist? i want our vibes encapsulated. i want us in music form. i want to hear those songs and be like "that's me and cai" and smile.

- requests 51/? i know jack shit about good omens. explain it to me in the most confusing way possible. make me know less by the end than i know now

- request 53/? can you write a mel aesthetic? i'm Curious

- request 54/? give me a list of book recs cai i want some good book recs pls

- request 56/? edit a picture of US together too

- request 58/? oooh can i have a disney edit? like. hm. i just really love disney and i want anything to do with disney. like a quote or an aesthetic or an aesthetic edit i just want disney.

- request 59/? i would v much like a recipe for carbonara. i've never had it but it sounds fucking delicious

- request 60/? ooh hey can i get a makeup tutorial? i know you like makeup, i'm shit at doing makeup. teach me

- request 65/? i need the most emo playlist you can make that vibes with dear evan hansen thank you

- request 68/? i want a superwholock moodboard. this can be serious, with the actual fandoms in mind, or literally what the era felt like. the insanity. the horror.

- request 70/? ooh ooh ooh do you have a good bread recipe?? i wanna get that bread

- request 71/? i want a playlist with the vibes of summoning a demon. please don't ask questions. i don't have answers. and if i do, no i don't.

- For the requests, how about writing something based on a friend?

- request 75/? MMMM i want literally anything to do with natasha, pierre, and the great comet of 1812

- request 76/? i want some healthy recipes. help a girl out

- a feral bbb quote or two?

- you perceive my plant but now I dare thee to perceive mine own visage

- okay this is a two for one request. 1. you did the bee movie script so now we need a shrek two script edit 2. sleep please

- Pansexual mb for my lil queer soul?

- my (probably) final request is just for you to ramble about something, i don't really care what

- HI ILY CONGRATS AS WELL CAUSE IM LATE BUT CONGRATS. could i request a pirates of the caribbean (or just pirates) or whatever you what to do, free range.

- mood board for the beluga whales who got brought to the animal sanctuary in Iceland please?

- 100 follower request: Moodboard for my stuffed cow Oaky?

[rinharu-purple]

Mr. Love MC’s Choice: Gavin

We fellow producers all have our favorite LI in the game for whom we save our gems and dates, replay their chapters over and over again, sucking our bank accounts dry during the process. And that’s what makes this game so fun! However in my opinion MC’s personal choice is Gavin. I will try to explain it as thoroughly as possible in this post. Obviously they are only my personal opinions at the end of the day so please don’t freak out if you beg to differ ^_^

There are spoilers ahead and this post is a long one, you were warned!

A big, warm hug and grandious thanks to @smallersocksx​ for proof reading so fast and sharing her ideas! <3  </p>

Up until now, I’ve always analyzed ships in subtopics, so this time won’t be any different so I will just dive right into it:

Body Language

The law of attraction between two people in a romantic way has some thumb rules, one of them is that when you like someone then you try to touch them at every opportunity. From all of our LI’s Gavin is by far the one with the most body contact to the MC (The main story only atm, I will come to his dates in a minute ;)). I think the anime speaks for itself, in every single Gavin episode and some of other LI’s episodes (ahem…ep 10 but also ep 11…ahem) Gavin and MC are always in an embrace or a meaningful “hands-on” moment…In the game MC and Gavin are quite often touchy with each other, MC seems to not holding her hands back every time she feels like Gavin’s hurt and reflexively touches him, she is also highly concerned about his hair since every time his hair get messed up by the wind, rain or hormones (swh ;)), MC doesn’t waste any second before correcting his hair. Every reunion they have results in MC reaching out her hands towards Gavin and surprisingly never other way around. Even in a perillious moment in chapter 22 when Gavin goes completely wild and unleashes his “beast-self” the first thing MC wants to do is embrace him. In chapter 24, at the very end among all routes, MC only tells Gavin that she’s missed him and hugs him. Chapter 27...again MC wants to check Gavins body for injuries and tends to them the second they are alone in a closed room. They both yearn for each other’s touch all the way, no matter in which narrative.

If I were to start counting Gavin’s touchy touchy moments on the other hand, then we have to prepare a 4 volumes encyclopedia because that male individual is all about touching MC. Another hint for their closeness is that MC makes notes on Gavin’s scent quite often, mostly related to his jacket or his embrace and while doing it, she always uses adjectives like “clean”, “distinct” or “unique”. Again in ch. 15 she knows its Gavin standing behind her even without looking, because she senses his scent: “A scent that I’d recognize anywhere”. Surely there are many scenes, where MC holds hands with another LI or makes a remark of their scent, but they are not at the intensity or frequency level that of Gavin’s.

       2. The Setting

All four LI’s are representing a certain archetypes women are usually attracted to:

Kiro is a pop idol (target audience 13-15)

Victor is the young successful businessman with a high dominant demeanour and Mr. Grey-ish attitude (target audience 25 upwards or any 50 shades of Grey reader)

Lucien is a young attractive professor with a mysterious and enigmatic vibe (target audience 20-24)

Gavin is the misunderstood bad boy (high school) and later a righteous police officer (16-19 for the bad boy Gavin and 20 upwards for the righteous police officer, special agent, military commander... a pilot?! anything including a uniform fetish)

So, in the game, Elex could take any of these paths and develop it in a way that the chosen path becomes a true love story. I gotta admit, Victor’s story comes at times very close to being one. However, his never-ending bickering and belittling in his 90% of the time cold demeanour just make him lose major points. Plus, MC mostly goes along with Victor’s tone, even though she is a kind and friendly person, she bickers with Victor not because that’s her personality but because that’s the way she can cope with him. If only he were a little bit less domineering.. Which is why I never feel like MC and Victor would belong together irl. 

Seemingly Elex and Mappa take Gavin’s way imo. Because… 

In the main story MC loves all of the LIs in a different way and also has romantic feelings to each one of them to a certain degree, but when we look at it closely and read in between the lines of MC’s thoughts Gavin is a little bit more romantically portrayed than the other guys. 

           a) First of all Gavin had a crush on MC during high school cannonically: Even though Gavin only says that it was a farewell letter, MC says once that she wishes that she could’ve read that “love letter”.  I will stop here with Gavin’s feelings because this post focuses on MC. 

           b) MC, too, was kinda into Gavin during high school because in Episode 18, when she goes to Loveland Hugh during her farewell tour before going with her ultimate sacrifice , she remembers Gavin in intimate things like “watching his athletic body” or “wearing men’s clothes-meaning his-”. Additionally she remembers taking note of his face shining in the sun in the very back of the line during her recital. Even before it all she was specifically interested in him. Her memories with the other LI s are comprised of rather friendly moments like flying kites together but when it comes to Gavin she once again thinks about more intimate elements. Not to mention that the game gives MC a farewell with Gavin. In her final moments she only thinks that for Gavin her grievance would be the hardest. In the End of the Abyss era (ch. 15-18) MC meets all of the LIs after their changes again and reacts to all of them with joy…surely, but only when she sees Gavin hovering above her in the helicopter it is again…drum roll…drama: “The next second I saw a pair of amber eyes…shining like brilliant skies” this girl is always romanticizing Gavin.

“-Can you hear me?

-Can you see me?

-See my heart pounding again at the sight of you?” (so are you saying that your heart wasn’t pounding before? oh ok ;))

Fast forward to CH34 where MC fights Leto for the final time and remembers our guys and again, while she remembers other LIs for their sacrifices and their protection of her, she remembers Gavin's warm arms...

           c)The game takes his time and turns the half of a whole chapter into a date in chapter15 Ep 1-9. There is no other chapter in the game where MC spends time with any of the other LI’s in which there is only the two of them, whereas nothing relevant to the main story happens and they share solely many sweet, romantic and almost hot (when MC tries to dry Gavin’s face in her flat and realizes that she stands way too close to him, she then prepares herself to say something, but gets interrupted by the alarm) and again, MC is getting close to Gavin, not the other way around like Lucien pushing MC against the blackboard, that little sneaky Lucien (actually I could write a post with a masterlist of Lucien’s advances to MC:D).

           d) MC’s premonitions revolve mostly around Gavin (when they are not about the whole world or the black queen). Her dream about the rooftop rescue, her Room 404 dream, her daydream in the office in 6-13 in which Gavin’s suffering and from which she wakes up crying out his name leading to Willow, Kiki and Anna remark on playfully how unfair it is to dream about Gavin and disregarding the other guys. She also sees his future in episode 15 twice! If I am not mistaken, she only sees Victor’s future once in her dream and a vague vision of him in ch 18 but other than that she has no premonitions about Lucien or Kiro. Besides in the anime MC uses her power unintentionally yet instinctively twice while having Gavin in mind in episodes 5 and 8. The third time, she uses her powers in this way is in episode 11 with Victor but he is not her driving force for this but she is driven by the imminent danger they both are in and she doesn’t particularly think about Victor at this moment. In the game it additionally happens in chapter 22 when Gavin is cornered by the mechanical arms and is in a tight spot, this sight makes MC have a surge of rage and to unleash her powers in a great magnitude. Gavin is Queen’s soft spot i.e. More importantly Gavin is a constant part of MC’s future frame. She has her visions about other LI’s past but when it comes to Gavin it’s only his future. MC doesn’t have visions about Gavin’s past, like, ever. While Kiro, Lucien and Victor are stuck in their pasts with MC, Gavin has made peace with his past, is living in the present and looking forward the future (one of his best qualities imo, not being stuck in the past). Ironically, it’s MC, who’s stuck in the past in Gavin’s case. 

       e) I will intentionally not delve much into S2 stuff, but one thing has to be in this post…We know that in S2 MC goes back in time and relives the last 17 years. During these 17 years she makes sure to spend her high school years close to Gavin. So given the chance to rewrite her past, she would choose to make good for the lost years that she regretted dearly in S1 (she gushes out about her regrets in S2 Late Autumn Date in detail). We are yet to find out more about the nature of their relationship during high school, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a “will they, won’t they” situation. Since the game wouldn’t put any of the guys in an ex-boyfriend role, that would be the most romantic frame possible.

        3.  How other people see Gavin x MC

f) In CH 36, the one before CH 37, where every LI gets the same intimate moment with MC, only Lucien and Gavin are getting close to kissing her to which MC doesn't show any rejection towards... She is the one accidentally kissing Gavin btw and this is the only time before CH37 that MC either accidentally or willingly kiss any LI on his face or near his lips.

g) In S1, MC only posts two pics with the boys in her moments. One of them is a selfie with Lucien and the second one is with Gavin, hugged from behind. No other LIs ever have a moment with MC. Neither on their accounts, nor on MCs.

It is always a good indicator to look at how other characters perceive a particular ship. For Gavin and MC, it is almost obvious that once they are standing side by side, others see them instantly as a couple. Sure, at the orphanage some children ask Lucien if MC is his girlfriend or that one actress threatens MC to stay away from Victor because he’s hers (btw what happened to her?) With Gavin however, it’s practically a running joke. 

As mentioned above, her once daydream in the office with Gavin shoutout in CH 6-13 drew the attention of her co-workers, leading them to mock her for thinking about him too much even though her dream was rather a nightmare. Besides, Gavin is the one showing up the most in MC’s office and he also lift her up to his shoulders once in the Visiting Hours date and Homer took a pic of that hilarious moment. 

Every time MC is at STF HQ, respectively, Gavin’s co-workers or subordinates too take note of her presence and in chapter 12 they are even caught red-handed by one of the agents as MC is busy “correcting” Gavin’s hair (because see point 1). Eli seems to be aware of the intimacy between the two and even probably assumes that they’ve done the deed, because in ch 12 he is surprised to hear that MC hasn’t seen Gavin’s wound yet. He presumes that she already saw him naked…oh Eli! Season 2 has even more eminent scenes, we just have to wait and see.

In chapter 15 when they deliver Perry to the hospital, they are mistaken to be his parents by the hospital personnel not once but twice! Needless to say, they don’t find it necessary to correct the misunderstanding. I mean Perry is, what, 6…MC 22, Gavin 24 but they automatically think that they must be the parents?! Sure thats common sense- wink wink nudge nudge ¬‿¬ -

In chapter 22 Shaw makes a comment on MC willing to go to where Gavin is  with a “Really, all you do is following him, isn’t it?”. He uses MC to trigger Gavin in Airport date as well.

And of course, there is Minor…The ultimate number one wingman and the most original Gavin-stan! Minor uses everything in his power to bring them together both in the main story and in dates. He even calls her Sis-in-Law in public in CH 35 which MC doesn't reject. This doesn’t even need explanation.

Last but not least:

Their couple chemistry went viral lol.

Visually speaking, when they stand side by side, for me Gavin and MC look the most like a couple (Kiro is too childish and fashion icony compared to MC and Victor is too mature and business attire-ish making him look like her uncle rather than boyfriend, Lucien is the only one besides Gavin who actually suits MC visually). I am not saying that looks are the main indicator btw so don’t lynch me please ^_^

Come to think about it, MCs life is intertwined with that of Gavin's the most. Considering how she knows his father, brother and colleagues and spends so much time in "his world" whether it's at STF or NW. In the main story MC and Gavin have their favorite restaurants (ehm it's never souvenir due to obvious reasons 😉), share the same passion for music, have many common memories from high school and most importantly their world views are very similar. Both are prioritizing others safety over themselves and are compassionate for anyone who is in need. They are both ambitious and hardworking but not to the point of being power driven. Both are humble and finding hapinness in the smallest things. Maybe that's why they say the same things simultaneously or say the things the other would say simultaneously. MC and Gavin are highly compatible and have a harmonious, healthy relationship despite the conspiracy around them.

     4. Anime

Okay okay, listen…Yes, the anime wasn’t the best adaptation and many of us were disappointed by the ending (including me), still, the anime makes a part of canon MLQC universe and no Gavin-stan should complain about the anime because the anime put canonically Gavin on a pedestal. In a total of 12 episodes, all guys had 2 episodes each BUT Gavin was actually blessed with 3 episodes and so many romantic moments to count…let’s count them anyways :)

Mappa introduces all guys in episode 1 so MC encounters them all in the first 25 minutes but she first meets Gavin in episode 2 and the two spend almost the entire time of the episode together, not to mention the extremely romantic first-fly scene in the sunset. As I mentioned in point 1, MC and Gavin are always in physical contact in any given episode. Anime made sure to portray every single interaction they have romantically.

They even went so far to mix Gavin scenes in other guys episodes (he offers her a ride to work in ep 3, she has an emotional moment with him after the first shooting misunderstanding while Lucien is standing right next to her in ep 4, Gavin is the one to catch MC mid-air in ep 10, this episode ends with them in their life and death embrace falling down in dawn… and then he falls on her in ep 11).

When it’s a Gavin episode MC has no romantic scenes with any of the other guys, let alone having any scenes at all. Its only about Gavin in Gavin episodes. Also, the storyline is edited in a way that between MC and Gavin a romantic story develops. Their meet cute conspiracy, their misunderstanding with Lucien, followed by the “drop the senpai” offer and finally that 5 seconds long gaze deeply in the eyes in ep 8 while holding hands.

It is really sad that the anime ruined this development in the final episode but taking into consideration that there might be a second season, they probably chose to make the change in Gavin’s character after the NW project remarkable.

Another point in the anime is  that they kinda exaggerate Gavin’s Evol a little bit. During his stand-off with Lucien Gavin’s bullet cuts through Lucien’s shield and all in ep 8,11 and 12 there is a significant emphasis on the intensity and destructive power of Gavin’s Evol. I mean, whose Evol is the most upfront one in episode 12? We see Lucien using his Evol only twice, both very briefly, Kiro/Helios/Key and Victor even have to use guns to protect themselves and/or MC. Gavin’s shown using a pistole once at the beginning, after that it’s all turbines and tornadoes and just Gavin unleashed. 

I think it’s an exaggeration because in my personal opinion, Lucien is actually the one with the strongest Evol, followed by Victor and then comes Gavin. Lucien’s ability to copy an Evol is simply the strongest trait one could have, sure it comes with the downside that he then doesn’t have enough time and focus to excel in any of those Evols, Victor can literally create black holes are you kidding me?! But because his Evol has its limits it puts him in the second place. But in the anime, Gavin’s Evol is extremely powerful and destructive and they also created some really cool scenes in which Gavin uses his Evol in various styles (accelerating his bullets speed, dodging a bullet, lifting MC in any and every situation, flying- obviously- and sometimes just overpowered destruction).

But in the anime in comparison, Lucien looks like a copy-cat of Evols and Victor like someone who travels through time to find out nothing can change the course of events (on a side note I will never understand why did Mappa toned down Victor so heartlessly, he is a  powerful character and has countless sweet, emotional moments with MC).

        5. Dates

I left dates to the end because they are highly subjective and don’t belong to the main story. NEVERTHELESS, Gavin’s dates include here and there some hints which may indicate that MC tends to like Gavin maybe just a little bit more. I will just add it as bullet points here since I’m pretty sure that the list will be enriched over time.

Slightly drunken date: Shouting out loud in public “Gavin! I’m crazy for you!”

When the Galaxy Falls Date: “...and in that moment, I make an eternal vow in my heart. To give all the blazing love and the most endless warmth to the person in front of me. Standing on my tiptoes, I carry a heart which is filled with courage to move forward, receiving Gavin.”

2 become 1 date “No matter whether the wedding is real or fake I only want to be your bride.”  Here comes the Groom event where MC had a prob wedding with each and every LI but she actually only wanted to be Gavin’s bride (obviously Gavin’s heard her loud and clear since he’s bought a gem/ring right after) and that gem is brought up in…

The Returning from Afar Date - Thank you for silently watching over my mood. Thank you for always returning to my side no matter where you go. The white muslin drifts to and fro. My heart stirs, and I gently touch the muslin in front of me. Sunlight streams in. My fingertips brush the soft white muslin, tracing the word “Gavin” on it. I turn my head to the side, blinking at Gavin a little playfully. “This word - apart from it being your name, it also has another meaning. It’s “courage”. MC getting poetic, but who wouldn’t in that date (thank you @smallersocksx for reminding me and without @cheri-translates we poor Eng-server players would be left in the dark so thank you for translating season 2 for us!!!) but than MC verbally and literally makes her feelings clear in…

Late autumn date (2nd season translation by @cheri-translates) “I close my eyes, holding onto his solid arms. I lift my head to welcome his lips, savouring his unique breath. The person in front of me has shed off the roughness of youth, leaving behind only the purity of youth. He often makes me forget that he once used to be unrestrained like the wind. He has a body that is stronger than everyone else’s, a tough soul, a will that is as firm as steel, and a heart full of tenderness – it is soft beyond compare. 

I cling to his waist tightly using my calves, wanting to brand every part of him into my heart. 

“I want to bear his everything.” 

Gavin: “Do you like it?”

“I like it…I like it very much…I like it so much that I don’t know how to prove how much I like it” “The rest of my life is yours, The years that we’ve missed out on are also yours” (whatever I have, I will give it to you. I will give everything to you, leaving nothing behind)

I rest my case

[mego42]

A Song Inside the Halls of the Dark and questions 4, 7, & 9 plspls! ☺️

ty ma’aaaaaam!!

4: What’s your favorite line of dialogue?

honestly, the hardest part of this is picking one bc this fic is somehow almost???? 90k???????? (and that’s not counting the 38K and counting that make up the last two chapters omg rip me, you, all of us, why am I like this?????????) ANYWAY, here are a couple of favs:

in ch 3 when they’re fighting in the hotel room, Beth says:

"So I did it, I did what you'd been telling me to. I played the game on your level. It's on me, but it's also on you. You thought I could be something, right? Well, this is that something. The bitch you trained bit back."

I love it for how it plays on their s2 baggage both good and bad, highlighting how tangled it all is, I love how it flips some of 213 back on Rio and I love it as an outlet for Beth getting some stuff off her chest. Plus, idk, it just feels pleasingly snappy to me.

and then Annie to Rio in ch 7:

“I’m watching you, gang friend.”

mostly bc it makes me giggle. I really love the potential of an Annie and Rio relationship of some kind, I do not think he would know what to do with her and I think an Annie more comfortable in his presence would definitely lean into it.

I have a bunch of other favs but they can’t really be condensed down into a single line BUT scenes include:

Beth and Rio’s fight in ch 9 where Rio finally spills the root of how he’s been feeling

Beth’s conversation with Ruby towards the end of ch 10, I had a lot of fun walking the line between Ruby being a friend to Beth and also being a sane individual watching Beth and Rio’s relationship unfold like ??????????

7: Where did the title come from?

Outnumbered by Dermot Kennedy because I was In My Feelings when I came up with it

9: Were there any alternate versions of this fic?

aaaahhhhahahahaha yeah. not counting stuff like what i’m doing now with ch 11 and 12 (I drafted both, got to the end, identified what wasn’t working and now I’m going back through and doing scene rewrites), I overhauled the fic itself three different times which I personally do not recommend doing after you’ve started writing it bc it’s very stressful.

1. the original version that I mostly ended up keeping and working into the first three chapters was a one-shot (lmao, I know) bottle ep thingy where Beth and Rio were trapped in a hotel room for a night with nothing to do but deal with each other

2. the original version of the plot was v different and I started messing with it around ch 4/5 and diverged from it completely with ch 6 when I moved up the PP fire (I forget exactly what was supposed to happen but it was boring)

3. when I got to ch 9 I realized I hated my new ending and had a complete and utter meltdown that @foxmagpie had to talk me down from where I was ready to throw in the towel entirely

fic q’s

[gayenerd]

Another old article saved in a Word document, which I can only find behind a paywall now (but I linked it in case someone does have access to a subscription)

Green Day Rising Metal Mike Saunders, Bam, 28 January 1994 Popcore Ascending? Or Is That Just The First Phase Of 'The Greatest Band In America'?

'We were down in Irvine and Mike was having a pillow fight outside with his girlfriend. He was running away from her, and at the top of his stride he turned around, right into a horizontal beam five feet off the ground – Vhoom...Out cold. So that suggested the concept of ...misery.'– Billie Joe

WHERE IT all it the brick wall for me personally was 11th grade carpool. Four high school boys jammed into a VW bug, or worse, with the AM radio on for about 20 minutes en route to Hall High, Little Rock.

It was the season of the great Bubblegum Wars, that pint in time where the underground FM vs. plastic AM trench wars had reached the point of no return. Kids vs. pigs, rednecks vs. longhairs. Combat was the order of the day, even in music.

In the fall of 1968, the musical lightning rod was 'Chewy Chewy' by the Ohio Express: 'Turn it off' and 'Turn it down' were the majority opinions. I was for sure the only one going 'Turn it up!' The same routine was repeated just a few weeks later with the Archies and the 1910 Fruitgum Co. (the later with the classic top-five hit 'Indian Giver'), and it seems like ever since that point in time 'pop' has been a derogatory term. Something less than…what? 'Rock'?

What does this have to do with Green Day? Well, it’s like this: There’s this real lame tag – 'popcore' (say it once and erase it forever, pul LEEZE) that was kicking around for a while last year and was affixed to the East Bay trio’s style of music. Aw, hell, they’re just a great rock band.

If Santa came and went recently and there’s still no Green Day in your house, here’s a shopping list: 39 Smooth (Lookout!), Kerplunk (Lookout!), and Dookie (Warner Bros./Reprise). Forty-eight killer tracks by this country’s greatest band and, considering that only in the preceding 12 months did its members start to hit drinking age, possibly just the beginning of what could turn out to be an amazing career.

Proof is no farther away than the band’s new album, Dookie, its first for a major label, but proceeded by two LPs and three 7-inch EPs on Berkeley’s Lookout! Records.

Anyone who’s seen the threesome knows they can play like gangbusters; the difference between a tiny indie-label budget (try about $3000 for all 34 Lookout! Tracks combined) and a major-league endeavor is that for the first time you get proof 10 times over on tape. So you get raging guitar sounds and cracking snare rimshots that explode like the early who. Even the band’s chronic shortcoming – weedy studio vocals – has been corrected to an encouraging degree.

"Yeah," volunteers 21-year-old lead singer/guitarist Billie Joe, "for my vocals we used a Beyer microphone, which was used on some of the early Elvis Costello stuff. I’m really happy with the way it came out."

The entire album is a veritable role model for any guitar-heavy rock band. Says producer Rob Cavallo: "In the case of a raw, live-sounding record like this one, what I try to do is capture on the listener’s speakers the whole left-to-right stereo spread – what we heard in preproduction, listening to the band blast away in their practice room. The key to this, in Green Day’s case, is that they have such a focused idea as to what they sound like, and they’re great players in that style."

Specific elements of Dookie’s production style include a live rhythm guitar on every song, singletracked lead vocals only, and all vocal harmonies done by the second-stage voice, 20-year-old bassist Mike Dirnt.

Warner Bros.’ hands-off role, a characteristic of the company in the wake of its Mudhoney "creative control"-type underground signings, was crucial in shaping such a record. "Warner Bros. stayed out of the way and let us do exactly what we wanted to," says 21-year-old drummer Tre Cool. "All I can say is if you can get on Warners, you are one lucky son of a gun!"

The inclination to make a guitar-heavy record was present from the get-go. "I definitely wanted to get a bigger sound," recalls Billie Joe, "something with more meat to it." Which is achieved, in parts thanks to a borrowed vintage 1972 Marshall head hooked up to the same blue Stratocaster Billie Joe’s been battering since he was 11.

The wall of guitar sound was achieved with a live track and just one more rhythm guitar dropped in. "We had experimented a bit on previous records, stacking guitar tracks to try to get a thicker sound," recalls Billie Joe. "But this time with just the two rhythm guitars; we got a better distorted sound."

Like any other trademark-sound band, it’s the deviations on the record that are most interesting. We’ve got three here: 'Pulling Teeth,' 'When I Come Around,' and the album’s first single, 'Longview,' 'Pulling Teeth' leaps out of the album like a K-Tel cut buried in a techno set; it’s the tune Dave Edmunds never had to break his career Stateside. Tight harmony vocals frame a straight guitar-heavy country-rock melody with a conciseness worthy of the masters. Not one wasted word or second.

"We were down in Irvine," recalls Billie Joe of the song’s lyrical genesis, "and Mike was having a pillow fight outside with his girlfriend. He was running away from her, and at the top of this stride he turned ground – vhoom…Out cold. So that suggested the concept of…misery."

'Longview' hits a whole opposite style. It’s something you might imagine as a late’70s FM track, with a loping dumbo beat ("a rumble," suggests Dirnt) not too far off Tom Petty’s 'Breakdown', Lyrics about nothing, really-killing time, punching the cable remote, getting high. A two-chord riff to nowhere, then a basic garden-variety three-chord chorus. The trick is that the whole darn song is a hook. Simultaneously the dumbest and catchiest Van Halen guitar licks panning across the speakers.

"In a way, that song was cheap self-therapy for watching too much TV," recalls Billie Joe. "It was another case of writing about whatever mood I’m in."

Especially near to my heart (I’m from the South, y’all ) is 'When I Come Around,' an unintentional dead-on-evocation of Lynyrd Skynyrd at its top-40 hookiest. With a lazy turnaround beat like 'Sweet Home Alabama', it’s just about five degrees westward of the slightly ‘70s ballads 'Christie Road' and 'No One Knows' from the earlier Kerplunk album.

"On that one, we weren’t thinking country rock, but rather something that had a groove to it, almost like you could imagine having a martini and listening to it at the same time," explains Dirnt.

See, 80 percent of Dookie is in the trademark Green Day raging pop-punk. It’s this deviant 20 percent that makes one suspect they can pull off almost anything they want out of the trash-dump of earlier under appreciated rock styles. A mainstream audience could forge a very, very interesting alliance with this group.

Of the trademark pop-punk onslaught, averaging an airtight two minutes, 30 seconds apiece, 'Basket Case' and 'Sassafras Roots' are two of the strongest numbers. 'Basket Case' was about a friend who’s pretty loopy,' explains Billie Joe, 'but a bit about myself as well – like seeing your own trails in other people where it’s been taken to a total extreme. There are a lot more songs on this record that are about other people’s experiences, even though I might still be singing in the first person.'

The recording of Dookie went fairly fast by industry standards, the music and vocals finished last summer in three and a half weeks (at Berkeley’s Fantasy Studios), followed by an initial mix. The band then headed out on 40-date fall tour with the veteran LA punk band Bad Religion, which enabled them to come back to the project with a clean set of ears. The entire album was remixed with engineering whiz Jerry, Finn who paid special attention to the record’s amazing bottom end. At that point, the band’s 'creative input' reached its most extreme.

"We all three sat there for 10 days straight, 15 hours a day, and listened to every minute of the remixing sessions," recalls Tre Cool. Which is just short of four working-Joe (like me) work weeks without a day off.

Dookie is one of the rawest melodically oriented rock records to show up on a major label in the last zillion years. Usually when bands go from an indie to a major label, the result is a slicker product.

"When I listen to bad rock music occasionally, I just wind up going, ‘What the hell were these guys thinking of?" agrees Billie Joe.

I speculate that there have now been entire generations’ worth of bad drum sounds committed to record. "Huge room sounds on the drum with shitloads of reverb," responds Dirnit. "Flanged drum rolls," adds Billie Joe.

My favorite, rolls across the chromatic-tuned rototoms, comes in a close second.

While most bands with almost 50 tracks into their recording career hit the point of labored songwriting (that old saw about a band’s first album being its best), that hasn’t been the case with Green Day. "Actually, I think I was more comfortable with my songwriting on this record than I ever was before," insists Billie Joe. "I had a real good handle on what kind of melodies and hooks I wanted to come up with. Didn’t rush myself, just let them come out naturally. It was the previous time out, on the songs on Kerplunk, that I was consciously trying to outdo my previous songs."

The variation from Green Day’s uptempo style, now comprising a good one-quarter of the band’s most recent two albums, will continue. "We definitely are going to continue to expand the scope of our material; we don’t want to get into a rut where we rewrite Kerplunk or Dockie over again," explains Billie Joe. "There’s a lot of musical tastes that run through this band."

I did my homework on the band’s "song-about-girls" label (a tag, Dirnt complains, 'we got caught up in') going back to January 1992’s Kerplunk and assigning topics to each song. The tally was girls, four; mortality/meaning of life, three; neurosis/insanity, one; one novelty song; and alienation, motivation, and coming of age, one apiece. Dookie is more of the same, with topics ranging all over the map, the median perhaps being the pissed-off frame of mind of 'Chump' and 'F.O.D.' The girl-songs ratio is down around 30 percent.

The "girl-songs" tag must have sprung from what was the band’s classic 1990 debut, 39 Smooth, written and sung by Billie Joe and Dirnt at the ripe old ages of 17 and 16. A good 70 percent of the album’s songs related to the opposite sex, with the lead off track, 'At the Library', ranking as perhaps the best song ever written by a high-schooler.

One facet of a Green Day performance that’s impossible to capture on paper is the continuous bantering and riposting between the band and the crowd, much of it hysterical.

"It’s all part of making our audience feel like they’re at home, communicating on an eye-label basis," offers Billie Joe.

"See, before a show we’re usually making fun of each other – making a mess by playing baseball with apples or whatever, meeting new people who are funny and have jokes we haven’t heard – so we’re totally stoked by the time we get onstage," elaborates Tre.

It’s safe to say that after two trips to Europe, half a dozen ('at least') full American tours, and over four years of nonstop gigging, performance anxiety does not figure into this band’s equation. "We never have a list, we just make it up as we go," explains Tre.

I offer my theory that no matter how many fans a band has, there are five times as many people who think they stink, and 10 times as many who don’t care.

"I would see it as three different sections: the people who really like you, the people who really hate you, and the vast majority who are totally oblivious," muses Billie Joe.

The vast size of the record industry contributes to making yesterday’s barely gold act today’s 'Who?' (think Britny Fox, Vixen, and a half-dozen gold Loverboy albums). Indeed, if everyone who ever made fun of Motley Crue videos were assembled in one place, we would surely fill the Oakland Coliseum.

Speaking of videos, the world doesn’t faze our subjects – not yet anyway. "We’ve never done a video. They’ve got us scheduled to do one, so for now we think videos are cool," laughs Tre.

"We’re probably shooting the video in our house," adds Billie Joe, the "house" being what appears to be a subterranean Berkeley abode, complete with a tiny band-practice room; it’s not squalid, it’s absolutely slacker). "So…we figure our video concept will be kind of ‘Looks That Kill’ meets ‘Hot for Teachers’ meets 'Rock You Like a Hurricane'," quips Dirnt.

Given the absolutely superb quality of the band’s Warner Bros. debut, the only mystery is that a major label bidding war on Green Day took so long to materialize.

"Warner Bros. was the label initially considering the band," recounts band co-manager Jeff Saltzman. "But it was when Geffen and Sony/CBS jumped in with serious interest that Warners got serious about picking up the band."

Green Day never would have gotten so much done so fast, however, without the astute ears of Lookout! Records’ president and perpetual talent scout, Larry Livermore, who sent the band into the studio two months after first seeing the trio to record an EP called 1000 Hours, which was followed by the 39 Smooth album, which was recorded at the end of 1989 for less than $500.

"I knew Al Sobrante (Green Day’s drummer through mid-1990) from Isocracy, so I knew about his new band, Sweet Children [renamed Green Day six months later]," recalls Livermore. "My band, the Lookouts, were playing a house party up in Mendocino County, February 1989, so I invited Al’s band up to play also. I was so impressed with the band and their attitude, playing just in front of 15 people, that I hooked up with them immediately to record for Lookout! I never had any doubt about their potential, musically. I thought they were great the first time I saw them."

© Metal Mike Saunders, 1994

[courage-a-word-of-justice]

Fruits Basket 50 (s2 ep 25) | Wave!! 7 | Deca-Dence 8 - 12 (FINAL) | HGPC 31 - 45 (FINAL)

Finally back at it, after some months away.

Fruits Basket 50 (s2 ep 25)

I got halfway through ep. 24 before realising I’ve watched it before, so…on to the last ep, then s3 ep. 2.

The birds seem to be sped up…

I-Is that…Cortana?! In Fruits Basket?!!! (muffled laughter)

Is Shigure older than Kureno? Also, I like how the translator used “featherbrained” instead of “scatterbrained”.

Wave!! 7

Back again after some months away – let’s get into it!

I still have some Tsuritama rewatch notes and they say shirasu = whitebait.

Ah, I know Yuta’s feels. That’s what magicalgirlsandcerulean is about, after all – information from the various corners of the internet, such as the relevant Twitters, about magical boys (and some girls).

LOL, Tadao is meant to be Mr Exposition, it seems. I don’t really like having my exposition shoved at me like this.

When your heart isn’t in your activities, you just…suck. That’s the way of the world.

Aji = Japanese jack mackerel.

Mugen = infinity/infinite, so it makes sense Mugen would say “infinite gratitude”.

Deca-Dence 8

I feel like even though Deca-Dence is unique on the surface, it’s telling us a tune we’ve heard many times before.

Deca-Dence 9

The fact the pan starts at Kurenai’s legs is…vaguely disturbing…

*facepalms* So Kurenai’s just a love-obsessed freak…Great.

It seems one type of Gadoll is called a “Yumushi”.

Deca-Dence 10

Pipe…I’m gonna miss you, buddy.

Kaburagi = Kumichou (Boss).

Deca-Dence 11

Why do the Gadoll eggs look like…pomegranate seeds(?)

Deca-Dence 12 (FINAL)

For the last time, it’s cannon!

…d’aww. That ending was cute. See you again sometime!

HGPC 31

“…so much…”

HGPC 32

I feel like Pegitan could have told Chiyu about the stray dog.

Sukoyaka sweet buns, LOL.

Ah, I know the feeling Toji. You do better after some practice.

“Someone who’s been watching you”? Doesn’t…that sound creepy(?)

I was wondering of Toji was gonna be the new Giga Byogen, but Mr Chikara (chikara = power) also makes sense.

HGPC 33

Ah, apparently kaiseki is served at ryokans. I should’ve known it would come up at the Sawaizumi place. (<- researching kaiseki for fan division)

Once again, I’m reminded of the fact this aired during COVID times. Kinda like Look Back by Fujimoto, but…less on-the-nose.

Earth doesn’t seem to be able to use the Paw Shield, huh?

HGPC 34

Tsubasa = wing, Taka = high, mi = eye (if I’ve guessed the kanji right). Makes sense for a gal who does the high jump.

*realisation hits* …oh no! This was probably meant to be an Olympics episode! *droops*

“Sawaizumi” is made of two kanji related to water, so swimming in the sky makes sense.

HGPC 35

“Sunscreen cream”? “Sunscreen” is sunscreen…unless, of course, you have a cream which functions as a sunscreen as well as having other benefits. That could be possible.

*realisation hits* …oh no! This was probably meant to be an Olympics episode! *droops*

HGPC 36

Getting to the end…sooner or later… *sweatdrops*

Is this friend’s name Elizabeth or Natasha…? Update: Now she’s Eriko??? Update 2: Oh, so “Natasha” is Hinata. “Elizabeth” = Eriko.

S-So Nodoka didn’t make any friends at her old school? *feels sad for her*

HGPC 37

(no notes, sorry!)

HGPC 38

“…has been her goal since she was young…”

“…watched you work hard.”

HGPC 39

(no notes, sorry!)

HGPC 40

“Stop joking – your body already looks like a joke.” (<- had to rewrite the sentence partially to make it make sense)

HGPC 41

“I knew you had a wonderful plan.”

…okay *raises eyebrow*, “vanish away” is not proper English…(It appeared twice in this episode, I think.)

HGPC 42

(no notes, sorry!)

HGPC 43

…doesn’t Nodoka care about her dad(?)

I think Latte mouthed “Asumi”.

“Do you think you can purify me, who has further evolved, in that state?” (<- note the commas)

A-As sad as it is, I understand Shindoine…a bit. (<- Remember, I am a simp for long-haired guys…*sweatdrops*)

“Choice” was spelt wrong, LOL.

HGPC 44

It looks like Latte is mouthing “okaasan” (mum) to support her mother…

HGPC 45 (FINAL)

Update: I previously had no notes for this episode, but all that Daruizen business in the last few episodes was…kinda creepy, considering he was essentially birthed from her. The fact Nodoka also learn to be selfish to protect herself, when previously she would have felt obligated to save him (even if he was evil!) is also a good spin on the formula. (Also, what happened to Hinata’s mother? I forget if that was mentioned…) Anyways, I finally finished this anime after almost 2 years of working at it! See you again some other time, or maybe in some of my other notes.

[thethirdwheel404]

What is the Med Rewatch Series?

if you’re new here, I started this new series where I rewatch parts of the show Chicago Med, in order to defend the honor of my favorite character, Ava Bekker, who the writers absolutely destroyed. it’s a crime.

The rewatch is ongoing, I watched the first and last episodes of season 2 because Ava is referenced in the first episode, and makes her first appearance in the last. Then I watch all the episodes of season 3 that she appears in.

If you’re interested...

The reason I am rewatching after avoiding the show for two years is because I recently developed a theory explaining why Ava’s behavior is so erratic over the course of the series. My theory posits that at the end of season 3 when Connor is offered the job at the Mayo Clinic, the storyline resolves with Connor somehow giving Ava the job offer, and she leaves the show. The only reason she stayed (and had the messy messy s4 storyline) was because she had become such a fan favorite character. They had never planned for her to stay for more than a season.

This theory then has a flipside, where at the end of season 3, what would have happened if Connor had really just... left? In my mind, this means that Ava fills the necessary surgeon role and becomes the ‘main character’ of the show, the same way Connor was.

After I finish the rewatch, I plan on doing a rewrite of a little bit of season 3 and a lot of season 4, in the world where Ava actually gets to be a good character. (I have already rewritten a scene from S3 E2, which you can read here, and I have written tiny things throughout my notes on each episode)

So, the rewatch series is basically me gathering evidence for my big theory, and then my subsequent conclusion.

Here are the links to each episode, and a brief explanation on why each is important:

Part 1

S2 E1: Soul Cares. This is the first reference to Ava in the series, when Dr. Latham explains to Connor how Ava (or, at this time the young woman from Groote-Schuur) was actually Latham’s first choice. I expand on how important it is that Ava was mentioned a full season before she first appeared, that level of planning and self-control is unprecedented for Med.

 Part 2

S2 E23: Love Hurts. Ava’s first appearance on the show. Her first impressions are... strong. One of my additional arguments is that Ava was always meant to be a groundbreaking character. The fact that Ava is Connor’s rival means that she should be strong enough to take his place on the show, because they are equals. This episode has a lot of good commentary, just because I named all the additional points about Ava that we comment on moving forward.

Part 3

S3 E1: Speak Your Truth. This episode wasn’t that big for Ava, so I mostly comment on other storylines. In this episode. Ava ends up stealing Connor’s surgery (but I talk about how that isn’t really that bad, and how it doesn’t mean Ava is malicious).

Part 4

S3 E2: Nothing To Fear. This was a pretty cool Ava episode. This is the episode with the scene where Ava brings Connor coffee while he looks exhausted in the cafeteria. In this ep, one of Connor’s previous patients comes back with complications. I talk about how Connor’s behavior (and Latham’s as well) towards Ava in this episode is really unfair. (and I wrote a little reesker scene for this episode)

Part 5

S3 E3: Trust Your Gut. In this episode, Connor is super controlling and Ava just takes it in stride. I also talk about how in the beginning of the episode Ava is just casually in the scene, which is what I want for her. I want her to just be always there, doing her own thing. Ava also shows an immense amount of concern towards her patient, being super empathetic and not psychopathic at all.

Part 6

S3 E4: Naughty Or Nice. Ava doesn’t have a lot of lines in this ep, but I talk a lot about different subtle nuances, like how she seems to express sympathy for Robin. She has a bunch of fun one-liners, too. Also, at the end of this ep, Ava asks Connor out for drinks, and I explain that one away as well, so, pat on the back.

Part 7

S3 E7: Over Troubled Water. This is hands-down the best Ava episode in the series, and I am confident in that claim. This is the episode where her and Connor go out to help the guy who’s leg got pinned under the building. She has more fun lines, a moment to shine when she comforts the patient, and this is the episode with her hair in a braid, so... I don’t have a lot of words on this one, just because the character redemption is so obvious.

Part 8

S3 E8: Lemons And Lemonade. This episode is also really good because it is just more of Ava teasing Connor. This is the one where Connor shows up with his swanky sports car, and Norma in this episode is just... brillant. I claimed that the previous episode was the one that made the audience fall in love with Ava, and then I said that this episode was the one that made us think she’s a lesbian. And it’s true. She teases Connor for his car, and even compliments him on the girl he flirts with. This makes the brotp true for me. (I also wrote a small little reesker thing mixed into the commentary here)

Part 9

S3 E9: On Shaky Ground. This is the episode with Ava’s mentor, where he convinces the team to perform open heart surgery on him while he is still conscious. This episode shows us a different side to Ava, where we see what happens when Ava actually cares what someone thinks of her.

Part 10

S3 E10: Down By Law. This is the episode where Connor brings in the lady who he just had a one night stand with for a workup and Ava gives him shit for it. This is also the episode where the patient’s husband hugs her, but she pawns it off to Connor. This episode has a lot of small, little Ava moments that I talk about a lot (I also write a small little thing about Maggie giving Ava an energy drink). And it contributes a lot to the idea of Ava being a stand alone character, independent of Connor.

Part 11

S3 E11: Folie À Deux. This is the episode where Connor and Ava first kiss, which, yeah, awful, but this is the part that I have devoted myself to rewriting, so it’s good for the rewrite. I help explain alternate routes the show should have taken, and how they make sense for Ava’s character, because the craziest thing med did was they created a brilliant character, and in her characterization, it’s like they almost forget she was supposed to be a love interest, because the theories I offer are far more satisfying and make much more sense.

Part 12

S3 E12: Born This Way. This is a very interesting episode regarding the theory. It is the episode after they sleep together, and it is also the episode where she gives her legendary speech about how ‘if you make a decision out of love, it’s never really wrong’. I give an explanation that is compliant with the theory about why Ava actually slept with him, which is very interesting, and a conclusion that I quite enjoy. This was a good episode, and I do hope you read this one.

Extra

S3 E5: Mountains and Molehills. This one is a bonus episode because I watched it without realizing Ava wasn’t in it, so if you enjoy the commentary part of the rewatch, check it out.

[calzona-ga]

Taraji P. Henson and Ellen Pompeo are two of the most powerful women on television, sitting at the center of major broadcast hits. On Fox’s “Empire,” Henson’s Cookie Lyon has proved to be a fan favorite, while Pompeo’s Meredith Grey has kept viewers obsessed with ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy” for a decade and a half — making the series history’s longest-running medical drama. Both stars, too, have found their voices, speaking out about inclusion and inequity in Hollywood.

TARAJI P. HENSON: Ellen, we’ve been living with your character for 15 years now. How was the character written on the page?

ELLEN POMPEO: When I read the script, the thing that stood out was that it was the lead character. I had been in a bunch of movies, but just the girlfriend or the wife. And then — listen, the nature of how she’s evolved is that I’m 15 years older. What about you when you read the pilot for “Empire”?

TpH: I thought, “The NAACP, they’re going to get me for this one.” She calls one son, who’s gay, the F-bomb, and she beats one son with a broom. This is something that has never been shown on national television — certainly not by a black woman. When you’re a person of color, you have to be careful about the roles you pick. You want to uplift the people. Once I got past the fear, I was able to really see her. I didn’t want just black people to identify with her. I wanted every mother in the world to understand the sacrifices that only mothers can make.

EP: I think that Caucasian actresses don’t understand the nuanced struggles that you have as a black woman, and the roles you choose — what you’re sidestepping, what you want to make sure gets out there. It’s a whole different layer of difficulty that I certainly didn’t understand when I started my show. I knew that we were doing special things by showing people of color as doctors, which hadn’t been done on television in a long time. But when we’re young actresses you’re trying to get any role you can. You don’t have time to have empathy. I’ve had a tremendous education, not always in the most pleasant of ways. I’ve had to observe and have a lot of uncomfortable moments, which is fine, because I’m happy to have uncomfortable moments as long as I’ve learned.

TpH: That means you’re growing. Growth is uncomfortable. When I booked “Empire,” I had a momentum going that I’d been waiting my entire career for. I seized every opportunity. If I was getting 5 or 10 million a movie, I wouldn’t work so much. I’m working because I have bills to pay. I have dreams. I have to get it in.

EP: For me the performance that stands out is “Hustle & Flow.” Your quote should have shot up after that.

TpH: It did not. I think the industry knew I was talented. But it’s about money. Are you bankable? I had to continuously prove that. I’ve been trying to prove and improve. I was asking for half a million. I didn’t get paid that until I did my first Tyler Perry film. He was the first person who paid me $500,000. I was never in a position where I could not take a job; by the grace of God, they have all been really good characters. But it was never a situation where I was like, “I’m not going to do that.” Now, I’m finally there.

EP: It’s impossible to have this conversation without talking about race. It’s such a significant piece of pay parity.

TpH: It’s not going to change until privilege reaches across the table and helps. Otherwise, we’re playing a rerun. The only narrative that I wish I could change is my money. It’s almost like they want this incredible performance for a discount price. The black movies — we don’t get big budgets. I have to wait until Scorsese or someone with a franchise film calls.

EP: You hear that? She wants a franchise movie. Who’s calling?

TpH: We’re going into our sixth season. How did you do 15? Was there any moment where you were like, “Child, I want off this bus”?

EP: There were many moments. It’s funny: I never wanted off the bus in the year that I could get off. The first 10 years we had serious culture issues, very bad behavior, really toxic work environment. But once I started having kids, it became no longer about me. I need to provide for my family.

TpH: I know that.

EP: At 40 years old, where am I ever going to get this kind of money? I need to take care of my kids. But after Season 10, we had some big shifts in front of the camera, behind the camera. It became my goal to have an experience there that I could be happy and proud about, because we had so much turmoil for 10 years. My mission became, this can’t be fantastic to the public and a disaster behind the scenes. Shonda Rhimes and I decided to rewrite the ending of this story. That’s what’s kept me. Patrick Dempsey left the show in Season 11, and the studio and network believed the show could not go on without the male lead. So I had a mission to prove that it could. I was on a double mission.

TpH: Were you and Patrick getting paid the same in the beginning?

EP: He was being paid almost double what I was in the beginning. He had a television quote. I had never done TV.

TpH: I know that story. Is there wine in this cup?

EP: “He’s done 13 pilots.” Well, none of them have gone. I didn’t even realize until we were renegotiating Season 3. No one was offering that up.

TpH: That story sounds about like mine. But when all the tweets were about Cookie, I said, “It’s time to renegotiate. Can everybody sit down at the table, please?” I’d been in the game long enough to know the numbers game, and I knew Cookie had become iconic. You need her. So I need my money.

EP: My husband says, “Closed mouths don’t get fed.” But if you have to walk, don’t be a victim. If you don’t get what you want, put your big-girl panties on …

TpH: And bounce.

EP: You can know your worth, but if they don’t know it, you can’t cry.

TpH: I had to leave a show before, and it was the most money I’d ever seen in my life, and I was so miserable. It was stealing my joy. I just remember praying to God: “God, I’m not happy creatively.” And the next day, I called the producer. He got it. And I walked away, not even knowing where I was going. I ended up doing a play in Pasadena. I didn’t care about who was coming to the theater, executives or casting directors. It was about Taraji falling back in love with this craft. Fox had to woo me. I wouldn’t read the script. I was done with television.

EP: It’s a grind.

TpH: It’s really not for me. I had to say, “I want my money because I know what I bring to the table and I know the following that I have.” I know if there’s money to be had, I should be paid.

EP: I now have three kids. And we turned the culture around. I’ve hit some marks that have made me feel accomplished in a different way. Shonda Rhimes has been amazing. She lets us be mothers. I don’t have to travel. I don’t have to go anywhere.

TpH: I don’t know if I could do 15 seasons of Cookie.

EP: Are you involved in your storyline at all?

TpH: Absolutely. No one knows Cookie better than me.

EP: I haven’t been challenged creatively at all. Every once in a while we do an amazing storyline. But for the last five years, I’ve had other milestones that we were trying to achieve behind the camera.

TpH: For me, one of our proudest moments was with gay marriage. Because we didn’t know how the black community would accept Jamal, the gay son [played by Jussie Smollett, who since this conversation has not been asked back to the sixth and final season of the show], because it’s so taboo. There’s still the homophobes on Twitter, but those are small voices compared to the resounding voices of love that he gets, the character. I’m just proud to be a part of this show that’s not afraid to get people talking. That’s the only way you’re going to get change.

EP: We have the most incredible community of actresses right now. Everybody is just pushing and taking all these old stereotypes and throwing them out the window.

TpH: I don’t want anyone that looks like me, or any woman at 40, to feel they have to stop being sexy on-screen. I’m not ready to just collect a check. I want to open films. I’ll be 49 this year.

EP: Me too.

TpH: And we still have an audience.

EP: We still have an audience.

TpH: We’re still bankable, and we’re still sexy as hell.

[hippyexd]

Collection of my stories: Explained

Here is the post that nobody cares about but I'll share it because I just want the world to know.

1. Demon Academy.

I've posted some things about it already, it's a comic I started in 2014 originally in hungarian. I'm not quite happy with the way I started it, but I've built an interesting world, and I adore the characters, it's one of my best work that I'm very proud of. I drew 260 pages in total (book 1 and book 2) and I intend to pick up the story again sometime soon, when I get over exam season.

2. Runner

A medieval-themed fantasy story that I eventually want to make into a cartoon series. It's a bit cliché, but the characters are fun, and it has a lot of potential for epic music. I basically came up with the entire plot while listening to fantasy music mixes. Fun times. I've only got some character drawigs, and I just recently managed to finally have eneryone's finalized version. I also have a side story/shared universe thing planned for it.

3. Xyber-no

A post-apocalyptic cyberpunk futuristic action horror cartoon series idea. I've got the characters done already, and plans for like 2 seasons worth of content, I'm just lazy to edit the 1st ep's script. It's not even 20 minutes long. Honestly I'm just anxious to touch it. Got most of my ideas while listening to Neffex songs.

4. Racer

I watched Initial-D, and way back I had a roleplay about a car racer dude, and these two motivated me to write this story. It's not really a novel, it resembles more to a script but it's not actually a script. It was mainly dialogue practice, to make the characters feel more fun. I just finished the rewrite like a week ago, I think it turned out pretty great. Planning on adding a part 2 or a season 2 or something like that, but again, too lazy to actually touch it. It's fun to re-read though.

5. Singer

I'm currently working on this story, because when I'm bored, I write. And when is the best time to be bored? Exam season. Hell yeah. Anyway, it's about a suicidal dude falling in love with a singer (also dude, I love my gay kids okay) and then they figure out their shit. Good story to fit in as much angst as possible, with a few lovely fluff parts.

6. ZR series

Most of my followers came from the ZR community, so y'all know what this one is. But in case not, it's a comic series portraying my reactions to various moments that happen in Zombies, Run!, a really fun and creative workout app. The comic is on hold right now because I've already got too much shit to do til christmas. (Such as the Fellow Five drawing I promised. It's not forgotten, I just don't have time!! XD)

7. Demon and Vampire

Basically an over the top gay fluff love story with a little angst. It's pretty cool, sometimes it's boring, it's full of clichés and stuff, but I read it like 6 times and usually I hate my own writing, but there are parts that I just genuinely love in it. Fun stuff.

8. Psychoville

I've written the first 10 pages in like 30 different versions, because I'm unable to nail it. The main character is the daughter of Satan, who's name is ironically Angel, and she lives in a small town called Psychoville in the desert in Nevada, next to Searchlight, Nevada. As the name implies, she lives with 9 (or 8, I forgot) psychopaths, killers, mass murderers, insane mentally ill people who love each other to bits (and sometimes cut each other to bits) until she gets the task to investigate something for her father away from her home. Got a lot of inspiration from Welcome to Night Vale, and that lawless town in Kansas, I think? The yes theory made a video on it on yt, it's pretty dope.

9. Hollywood Undead Hungarian Fanfiction

It's just what it is. A fanfic of the boiz going on tour, getting in trouble, drinking and so on. No romance (bc that's gross and I couldn't find any fanfic that was not in some shape or form a ship fanfic). Da Kurlzz was still in the band when I wrote it. I was like 12. I just wanted to have fun. The chapters are 2 pages long in total. But the hungarian fans liked it, was trending a bunch of times on wattpad and it has a lot of reads. Despite being horribly shitty, I'm proud of it, and it has a lot of really fun parts and jokes.

10. Wrong Number

I almost forgot about this gem, but this was my first finished english story. It's almost entirely written in sms text format, it's progressig a bit too quickly, but at the time I was having a lot of fun with it, and that's all that matters. It has some really funny lines I came up with, I like re-reading it just for that. But also, it was a fun way to get around having to write long paragraphs lol. I just wanted to have fun with it. Heavily inspired by the Call me Beep me klance fanfic.

11. Milky Boiz

Context: my friend and I, at 2am, were thinking about what our ship name would be, but I kept typing "mmmmmilky" in the chat, that turned into milky boiz, and she said, that if we were guys, that would be our ship name. This gave us an idea for a webcomic, which we didn't actually progress with yet, but we do have an insta page where we already posted some of our boiz, you can find it under the name of @ink.stars , go pay a visit, it's my art and my friend's, and she is a wonderful artist and a lovely person and I love her to bits.

12. Night Vale Steampunk AU

It's pretty much dead, but while I was really actively part of the Night Vale fandom, I started a Steampunk AU. It was fun, it got like 4 chapters or something and big plans, but the characters were not in character, and it lost the Night Vale vibe, so I just let it go.

13. Cop Comic

Also a dead project of mine, but I still like it. It was inspired by a moment on one of our high school class trips. The characters were based on me and my friends, but the resemblence stops at hair color, that's all. Mabye not even that. Anyway it's what it is: cops dealing with crime and their personal problems. I wish I had known Brooklyn Nine Nine back then, would have been a great help.

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So, there you have it, all my favourite finished and unfinished works/ideas, just so you know if in the future I reference one (planning to post more Runner, DA and Xyber-no content along with the ZR comic)

[silverinia]

For that fic ask thingy... tell us about Lillies 😊😘

Hahaha, what all 15 questions? Okay, let’s do this 🙅🏻‍♀️

1: What inspired you to write the fic this way?

It must have been during one of my TGW rewatch sessions that I realized that after ep 1x13 they never mentioned Spellman and Diane being threatened by him again (I guess they were still experimenting with the characters and this storyline only served to show a more vulnerable side of her and to introduce us to her conflict of being pro gun control but still enjoying to carry at the same time). And the idea for the fic just popped into my head and wouldn’t let me go again, so yeah, here we are 😄

The most important thing to me was to do it in a respectful and realistic way, I never wanted to write about the topic of sexual assault for the assault itself, rather wanted to show those characters trying to wrap their lives and their relationship around it and moving on together, if that makes sense. That’s also why the bigger part of the fic takes place after the incident.

2: What scene did you first put down?

Well… I did start with the first chapter and took it from there, I find that this is the easiest way for me to write because I can build up the suspense more easily when I do it like this. The first scene that I pictured in my head before I even began the outline though was their fight in Chapter 11, that was the scene that wouldn’t let me go and eventually made me write it all.

3: What’s your favourite line of narration?

Hmm, I think it’s a tie between “Skin against skin, their embrace was the peak of intimacy in the purest and most innocent way.” in Chapter 38 and “And all those realizations, all those great things about this wonderful man who was standing there, waiting for her, waiting to agree to spend the rest of his life with her and the huge declaration of love he had just wordlessly told her with the way he was looking at her and the fact that she was finally able to hold that gaze, they shot hot tears into her eyes.” from the wedding chapter. That first one really reflected the deep level of trust between them, even though she wasn’t ready to sleep with him again, and I liked the contradiction in the term peak of intimacy. And the latter, I don’t know. It summed up their journey in this story, how he helped her overcome those insecurities, how he gained her trust over the course of this and, tbh, I also just really liked the image of her, walking down the aisle to him…

4: What’s your favourite line of dialogue?

Okay, there are certain parts of dialogue that I liked, but for stand-alone lines it would either be “You’re not a victim, Diane. You are a survivor.” (Chapter 28) or “Diane, you never needed anyone to save you. […] But I’m glad you let me help you save yourself. Because I love you.” (46, proposal chapter) (side note: this line was one I wrote towards on from a very early chapter. I thought about making it the last line for quite a while, thought about putting it in his vows but then settled on this), both said by Kurt because I needed him to believe in her strength at a time in which she couldn’t do that for herself. I like the empowerment of her independence in those lines. They really sum up how I wished to portray a woman who was forced to go through something like this. Like a survivor instead of a victim and as someone who didn’t need a knight in shining armour to save her from the pain. That was really important to me.

5: What part was the hardest to write?

God, so many 😂 The nightmares and their aftermath were very, VERY difficult though. Most of Kurt’s and Will’s dialogue with Diane in the greater part of this were incredibly difficult because I remember just sitting in front of the screen and thinking, What the hell are they supposed to say? I realized how intuitively you fall into the clichées of ‘How are you?’s or ‘If there’s anything I can do…’s and that sucks. Because it’s obvious that they’re not good. And it’s obvious that someone like Diane would never reach out for help if they don’t just give it to her without another word of questioning, as they end up doing. So, yeah. That was hard. But I wanted to do it right, so I guess it was at least worth it 😅 at least I hope so.

6: What makes this fic special or different from all your other fics?

One, that it was my first. I had almost 40 chapters of it written when I began to post it because this was all new territory for me, fanfiction, this particular fandom and their response to new writers, general perception of a difficult topic like rape… And then, of course, my own response to writing about it. I mean, as a writer, you really don’t just need to dive into those characters’ heads but also into your own to put at least a few emotions into it. I didn’t know if this was going to bring me down really bad, if I would cry during the process (fun fact: I did. Three times, I think) and if I could even go through with it and finish it at all. I also went through a lot of major life changes when I started to write this and I think that not only my writing changed a lot over the cause of it, but I as a person did, too. It’s very close to my heart. I associate certain chapters with the states that I was in when I wrote or edited them and that makes it pretty special 💕

7: Where did the title come from?

Okay, I really don’t know how to answer that. I’m really, really bad at coming up with titles. Actually, I think that this didn’t have a real title up until I started posting it because then I had to name it somehow. I’d referenced both the infamous white calla lilies and the smell of gunpowder a lot already at that point and I kinda just thought that they were sweet symbols for the two of them 🤷🏻‍♀️ I played around with several different titles and when this came out of nowhere, it felt right. It made sense because it was like a theme, threading through the story, and it sounded melodic and I honestly was just glad that I didn’t have to name it something too long and too ridiculous, like I did now with most of my other fics 😶

8: Did any real people or events inspire any part of this?

Difficult question. I think that (sadly), most women have had to deal with sexual assault at some point in their lives. I saw my friends and family reacting to my stories in similar ways Kurt does in the fic.

On a lighter note, a guy I really loved inspired lots of the happier parts in it. And my best friend, my own, female Will Gardner, she’s in a lot of it, too 💕

9: Were there any alternate versions of this fic?

Only in my head. Regarding whether or not I would have Kurt shooting Spellman, if I would kill Spellman off at all, if they should get married in the end, if I would write about Diane handling a rape case when she’s better (found the middle ground on that one in the epilogue, but this could have been an entire storyline) and so on. But the version I uploaded is the only one I wrote, though I did consider writing a sequel for it until I decided that the two of them had suffered enough in this alternate universe, so I created a new one around my idea and Everything’s gonna be alright was born.

10: Why did you choose this paring for this particular story?

Okay, first of all, I’d say that I chose this story for the pairing and not the other way around, and yes, I think there’s a huge difference in that.

I wanted to unravel them. They’re such amazingly complex characters, both incredibly proud and I really wanted to make them vulnerable (as I’m typing this, I’m very aware of that this makes me sound like a freaking psychopath). And the no. 1 thing, apart from politics, that always drove Kurt and Diane to each other was the (sexual) attraction between them. And while it is of course another layer of the depth of their relationship, another level of their bond, I wanted to explore the characters in a state where that bond was no easy way out. Two people that tend to choose physical attraction over having to deal with their emotions, who choose make-up sex over talking through their problems (sans season 3 of TGF because they’re perfect now), I wanted to explore what would happen if they couldn’t do that anymore, put them in a situation in which they had to confront major issues in another, healthier way.

11: What do you like best about this fic?

Oh God.

I tried to make it emotionally deep and respectful regarding the heavy topic. I tried not to rob Diane of her independence, rather wanted her to find additional strength in Kurt instead of completely making her depend on him. I wanted her to work this out in realistic timing and I didn’t want to rush their way back to physical intimacy. I wanted him to react to her pain and her ways around it, find his own mechanisms to deal with those and to the pace she set with it in the right way. And I don’t know if I did all that, but I’d like to hope so.

And I really like Chapter 38, because I think it underlined a lot of that.

And I ended up really liking the title of the fic.

12: What do you like least about this fic?

Hah, definitely the first few chapters. I mean, the characterisation was alright I guess, but my writing was just awful. Like, I never love my writing but sometimes it’s exceptionally bad, as it was in those first few chapters. Sometimes I scroll through them and want to rewrite it all, but it’s part of the journey and that’s why I don’t do it.

13: What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? Or if you didn’t listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading?

I always listen to music when I write and the first thing that comes to mind here is Debussy’s Clair de Lune. And not just Clair de Lune, no, I mean the YouTube extended version that keeps on going for an hour. Over and over again. That’s why I referenced it in the proposal chapter, it really deserved to be mentioned at that point.

I also listened a lot to Lana del Rey and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds during Chapters, I dunno, ten to thirty, I guess, for the angsty mood (honourable mentions: Tomorrow never came, Young and Beautiful, Art Deco and Blue Jeans; Into my Arms, Henry Lee and Where the Wild Roses Grow (ironic, I know)) and the song Firefighter by Cigarettes after Sex.

And for the happier Chapters after that lots of Cigarettes after Sex and Beach House (literally cannot put what their music does to me into words. It’s art, almost magical, really) (honourable mentions: Apocalypse (please do yourselves a favour and listen to this song), Sweet and Sunsetz; Myth, Space Song and On the Sea (over and over again during the epilogue)), Florence and The Machine AND Home by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. Lots of great music.

14: Is there anything you wanted readers to learn from this fic?

Huh. Well, it might sound bitchy or self-absorbed, but I mostly just write what I want to write. I want to study characters that I love and I want to write in a way that might hopefully touch people on any level, whether it’s humour or angst, I kinda just like the idea of writing words that make people feel things.

But if anyone’s learned something regarding the subject and their views about it, I’m more than happy and thrilled about that, though I wouldn’t put the praise for that on myself but rather on the ones who learned, you know? ‘Cause it’s one thing to write, it’s another thing to learn from reading. That requires more effort on the readers part IMO. I just can’t say that it was my intention to write something that holds major life lessons or revelations, I really just wanted to write and reach people emotionally by doing that and to maybe give them something they would enjoy by doing something that I enjoy.

15: What did you learn from writing this fic?

That love doesn’t solve all issues solely by itself and that it’s only enough if every involved party works to let love stay a beautiful thing instead of letting it grow to become something painful.

I learned a lot about sexual assault and how it’s handled in the social system when I did my research.

I already knew that if bad things happen to you, they still don’t need to define you if you don’t let them, but I learned that it’s not a bad thing if they shape you in some ways.

And I learned how much I missed writing until I did it again for this fic. And I learned that, oddly, my writing is able to touch some people. And even though I don’t want other people’s feedback to be my motivation when I write, I learned how wonderful it is to have strangers reaching out to you when they take joy from something you love to do.

—–

This is long, but yeah. Thanks for the questions, honey, this was very nice ❤ I feel all warm inside now, ew, feelings, ugh.

[johnlockficclub]

Discussion Recap - Author Q&A!

Well, JFC crew, we’ve reached the end of another fabulous fic! Thank you so much to everyone who read along and participated in the weekly discussions - you all are the best.

And of course, a huge thank you to @swissmissing for writing The Baker Street Nativity in the first place and for coming along to our Author Q&A to share some insight into her writing process and background to this fic. Questions and answers are below the cut as this got quite long!

And finally, thanks once again to @frodosweetstuff for allowing us to use her artwork for these update posts!

Happy holidays everyone - may you and your loved ones be safe and happy this festive season! xx

1: Why this AU? What got you started on it? @ewebie 

 I saw the movie and with MF in it, of course I immediately started thinking of how it could be a Johnlock AU.  I do that frequently anyway: imagine Johnlock versions of stuff. I just watched a few Netflix Xmas movies recently and I am still thinking of how to turn them into Johnlock AU's. I see the world through Johnlock-coloured glasses. Is that healthy or normal? IDK.

2. Would you ever consider publishing your fanfic? @norburylibrary 

No. First off, the story is obviously cadged from a copyrighted screenplay. To publish it for real, as an original work, I'd have to scrub the names and characters so that they don't interfere with BBC copyright. That part should be feasible, but the story itself is too close to the Nativity screenplay. As for any of my other fics, the non-fusion ones, I don't think I've written anything that could stand on its own without the Sherlock association. One of the huge assets of fan fiction is there is a built-in character background and setting. I'm not up to rewriting to the extent of creating something that could be published as an original work.

3.  What do you enjoy writing most, humor or angst and why? @elwinglyre

I can do both, but I guess I'm more drawn to angst. I think humor is harder to pull off, for me at least. I'm not a naturally funny person. I have to think hard to come up with funny situations and lines. Confession: In some of my fics, there are certain punch lines that were actually written by my beta readers. I think Sherlock and John - in fact all of the Sherlock BBc universe - lends itself more naturally to angst anyway. although there are humorour parts in the eps, I find them more geared towards angst.

4.  Was it confusing at all having seen the movie to then switch the roles?  When writing it. @sherlock-nanowrimo

Yes, totally confusing at first! I started out with the "natural" roles, with John as the teacher and Sherlock as the assistant, but it wasn't working for me so somehow I just got the idea to try it the other way round. Once I started down that path though, it wasn't confusing for me. I was worried throughout that it would be confusing for readers. But everyone who commented and said they had seen the movie, also said the switch wasn't hard for them to deal with.

5.  When you write is it because you get a fic idea or for some other reason? Like stress reliever or for doing something fun? @tildathings 

Good question. I always want to write. I get a great feeling of satisfaction when I write something. Especially when I finish a piece. It's a big shot of dopamine for me. It carries me for a long time, sometimes days. BUT I can't force myself to write. I tried that one year with nanowrimo and it was not a good thing. So I can really only write when "the muse" grabs me. When I get an idea that sticks with me for days and weeks. And with this fic, it really came alive and almost wrote itself, once I was on the right track.

6. How much do you base your writing on the show and how much on your headcanon? @travelingwithoutthedoctor 

This is a problem too, as I haven't gone back and watched the episodes in a really long time. Many of the eps I only saw once in the first place. I have the feeling that the fandom circles you travel in tend to create a fancanon that pretty much replaces the actual canon. So that's something I struggle with. I actually try when I write to imagine and hear the TV characters speaking and acting things out, in the hopes that it makes it closer to how they might actually be in those situations. I suppose that's unavoidable. I'm sure I do have an image of the characters in my mind, and I write from that. I just hope they are pretty aligned with the original characters from the show.

7.  I thought you did an incredible job making Sherlock a teacher for young children credible. That wasn't something we'd think of Sherlock doing, and you made it work. What did you take into consideration when doing this? @elwinglyre

Woo boy, that's a thing! He is so completely unsuited for this position. I had to justify him being in that position, however, so I kind of hand-waved something. Honestly, it wasn't my priority. I was just trying to create Johnlock moments. I mean, I think he's actually quite good with children. We've seen that on the show with Archie. I think it would depend on the kids.

8.  I’m curious about the speed of writing. How quickly do you get a chapter done? @vitruvianwatson

Once I get going, I can usually do about a chapter a week. My chapters tend to be 2-5K. 

9.  The UST, miscommunication and angst of this fic was deliciously frustrating, and a lot of us were yelling at them to just sort themselves out. If that was the hardest part about reading it, I'm wondering about what was difficult to write in this fic?  Were there certain sections or characters that you found challenging? @lediona25

I was honestly following the pacing of the movie, pretty much. I did need to add some scenes. I tried to pace it so that there was a romantic bit about at the halfway point, and another one for the big payoff at the end. One challenging bit was the dog. I wasn't sure whether to include him, but once I did, I kept forgetting about him. I kept having to go back and remember where the dog was and who was taking care of him. I don't have a dog so I was just doing what I've seen other people doing with their dogs. They leave them tied up outside of shops and restaurants all the time so I figured it was okay. Again, it wasn't really a priority. A lot of people commented that they liked the dog in there though, so I'm glad I left him in.

10. It was perfect casting!  We were talking about it during the movie - like with Greg as the headmistress. @sherlock-nanowrimo

That's one of the best parts of doing a fusion, for me anyway, is the casting.  I love discovering how characters map onto each other. Sometimes it's astonishing.  I HAD SO MUCH FUN WITH JIM!!  I didn't want to make him actually evil or a real threat. It always gives me massive anxiety when Moriarty shows up in a fic because often truly awful things happen then. But I wanted to keep this in line with it being a kids' movie. And to be fair, I didn't really need to change all that much from the movie bad guy anyway. That nativity play he put on was insane! And I actually was just teaching one of my classes last year about universal story plots such as the hero's journey.  (Yes, I'm an English teacher.) 11.  One of your ficlets suggests some pretty unpleasant stuff re: Jim's backstory. @bluebellofbakerstreet

Jim's backstory. I kind of imagined he and Sherlock had been rivals at the conservatory and Jim had tried to derail Sherlock with drugs. Perhaps somewhat successfully.

12.  What the hell is the story with Sherlock and whatever he did to Seb Wilkes?! @ewebie

I don't know either! LOL that is actually something I like doing in fics because, again, I like it when fics do that: hint at something but not elaborate and leave it up to you to decide what was actually going on.  I guess maybe that's frustrating to some people but for me, it gives fics depth and realism.  It's like in some fics where you just hear about a case in passing but the details are never fleshed out. I was using it to show that Sherlock had made poor decisions with kids in the past, so this thing he did with taking the kids to the studio wasn't out of character.

13. John... as a classroom assistant. How did you see him ending up there? Our conclusion was that... lost people just sometimes end up places @ewebie

I don't recall if it's explained in the fic or not, but I actually had something in mind for that. He was invalided out of the army and bumming around with nothing to do, feeling useless. His good friend Mike, who was also a teacher, recommended him to Greg as a classroom assistant. No idea if that would be allowed in the UK but here in Switzerland it's frequently done. Usually a retired person will be brought in as a classroom assistant. This keeps them active and engaged, and is a big help to the teachers.

14.  We loved the whole scene with Moriarty at the end when Mycroft pops out and saves the day.  You did a bang-up job with that.  When you're finishing a story, are you one those "I've planned it all out" writers or stream of consciousness writers. Let's go with the flow? @elwinglyre

In this case, the ending was written for me. I just followed the plot of the movie. Usually, though, I do have the ending in mind from the start. It's usually pretty much a sex scene, lol. The whole point of the fic is usually, how do I get these two together? 

15.  Oh! The sex! Is that easy for you to write. I have the hardest time with that. Is something your really get into? @elwinglyre 

True story (which I also told on one of my guest slots on the TPP): I didn't use to be able to write sex scenes. But I wanted to. So I literally would copy sex scenes from fics I liked. Just like, typing them out word for word. This got me used to writing those words and those acts on my screen. Then I tried writing my own. I think I sort of have a reputation for writing awkward-realistic sex scenes. I'm not aiming for that, it's just how they come out. It's a mix of, again, imagining how the characters would appear and act and speak in those situations, and also I guess how I would feel and want things to be.

16. We have a lot of people in this group who are just starting out writing fic or are thinking about writing something, do you have any advice to new writers? @lediona25

I'll just say what we started out talking about: Write for yourself. Write what you want to read. You will always have an appreciative audience. I see so many writers get discouraged because they don't have massive hits and kudos, and they just give up. I think most of the popular writers in fandom have been around for years. This may be their third or fourth fandom. They've been writing in real life. Experience takes a long time to build up.So write for yourself. The rest will come. And... at the moment, it feels a bit like there's less readers than 2 years ago, so really really don't be discouraged.

Thanks to all those who asked questions and to @swissmissing for her thoughtful answers! :)

[ghostbustermelanieking]

X-Files Rewatch Series Masterpost

summary: Series of (mostly) unconnected stories I write as I make my way through the show again. All can be read independently, but the canon complaint stories are slightly connected. 

canon compliant stories

oregon rain (msr ust, pilot, awkward bonding, wc: 3k)

March 8, 1993, a conversation in a hotel room.

the progression (and regression) of first names (msr ust, scully-centered, s1, beyond the sea, lazarus, young at heart, darkness falls, tooms wc: 5k)

Dana and Scully, she thinks, are two separate people, and he only knows the Scully part of her. She doesn’t know which part she likes better, but she likes it when he calls her Scully.

drifting (msr-ust, maggie scully, melissa scully, one breath post ep, wc: 5k)

Scully deals with the aftermath of her return in One Breath.

fate (melissa scully, dana scully, pre-series, s3, paper clip post ep, wc: 3k)

Thirty-two years of sisterhood sounds like forever, she thinks, but it is not enough.

monster dog (msr ust, queequeg, s3, post eps: the list, 2shy, the walk, 731)

Fox Mulder and his unlikely rivalry with a Pomeranian.

everything changes but the sea (csm, mulder family, pre-xf, musings of a cigarette smoking man, demons)

He’d never once considered being a father. (extended backstory on CSM)

roaring like the ocean (msr ust, angst. cancer arc, elegy/demons/gethsmane/redux i, wc: 11k)

Scully deals with her worsening cancer as tensions run high between her and Mulder.

old pennies (msr ust, angst, kistunegari post ep, wc: 1k)

Post-ep for Kitsunegari.

renegade (diana fowley, diana/mulder, pre-xf, the end, wc: 2k)

Why Diana Fowley went over to the other side.

flights (msr ust, fight the future, wc: 3k)

The flights Mulder and Scully took during Fight the Future.

reconsideration (msr ust, mentions of diana/mulder, the beginning, triangle, dreamland, the rain king, tithonus, one son, arcadia, milagro, the unnatural, field trip, wc: 6k)

Times Mulder and Scully reconsidered the status of their relationship.

auld acquaintance (msr ust to rst, post amor fati, per manum flashbacks, millennium, wc: 7k)

In the wake of Mulder's recovery after Amor Fati, Scully asks Mulder for a favor as they begin to grow closer.

the praxis of a water bed (among others) (msr, vignette, rush, the goldberg variation, orison, the amazing maleeni, signs and wonders, wc: 4k)

Five of the first times Scully woke up in Mulder's bed.

ashes and dust (msr, post mulder’s abduction, deadalive/three words, wc: 21k)

The days following Mulder’s resurrection.

here (msr, baby fic, s8: roadrunners, deadalive, empedocles, vienen, existence, wc: 4k)

Four times Mulder or Scully talked to their baby, and one time they both did.

relinquo (doggett and reyes, post the truth, release, william, john doe, 4-d, msii, wc: 6k)

How Doggett and Reyes left the X-Files.

the definitions of home (msr, post the truth, on the run, wc: 9k)

Mulder and Scully, on the road.

melting snow (msr, iwtb missing scene, wc: 2k)

In the wake of the events of I Want To Believe, Scully reflects.

shatter on impact (msr, pre-msi, iwtb, break-up fic, angst, wc: 9k)

An examination of the reasons Scully left Mulder before season 10.

going home (maggie scully, scully family, pre-xf, beyond the sea, paper clip, home again, wc: 5k)

The last things Maggie Scully said to her family.

the lies told (csm, jackson van de kamp, my struggle iii, an explanation for csm's bullshit paternity claim, wc: 4k)

A complex explanation of CSM’s lie about William’s paternity.

praescitum (msr, s10/11 casefile, post-msi, founder's mutation, mulder and scully meet the weremonster, home again, msii, msiii, this, plus one, the lost art of forehead sweat, ghouli, wc: 167k)

As Mulder and Scully adjust to their reassignment to the X-Files and working together in the wake of their separation, they find themselves investigating a small town and a ghost that apparently warns people of bad things to come.

AU stories

unspoken rules (msr, kissing, pilot, squeeze, the jersey devil, ice, beyond the sea, wc: 7k)

Five times Mulder and Scully kissed and never talked about it, and one time they didn’t.

day after tomorrow (msr, s2, firewalker au, wc: 3k)

She almost died a few weeks ago. But she is here, alive. And her partner has kissed her.

forty-yard line (msr ust, s2, irresistible au, wc: 1k)

Mulder and Scully make it to that football game.

november 27, 1973 (samantha mulder, fox mulder, pre-series au, s2 au: ascension, colony/end game, wc: 6k)

five things that could’ve happened to samantha mulder.

band-aids and goddamn cats (msr, au, s3, teso dos bichos missing scene, wc: 1k)

Missing scene from Teso Dos Bichos.

a roll of stars and fade to black (msr, s4, the field where i died au, wc: 10k)

A rewrite of "The Field Where I Died."

anchor (msr ust, s4, cancer arc, memento mori au)

AU where Mulder stays with Scully during Memento Mori.

locking out the ghosts (msr, s5 fic: emily, kitsunegari, kill switch, bad blood, patient x, the red and the black, all souls, the pine bluff variant, and folie a deux, wc: 62k) 

Post-Emily arc, an emotionally vulnerable Scully breaks off the incredibly new relationship she and Mulder have recently been engaged in. As the season moves forward, how do they cope with this new development in their relationship, and how do the stressful situations their job puts them in affect this?

merry little christmas (msr ust, how the ghosts stole christmas au, wc: 3k)

A How the Ghosts Stole Christmas AU: what if Mulder hadn’t been alone for Christmas?

the fountain (msr, casefic, hurt/comfort angst, tithonus/detour casefile, canon divergence after milagro, wc: 50k)

When Mulder is forced to confront Scully's immortality in the wake of the Padgett case, he can see only one solution: to search for the Fountain of Youth to either look for a way to get rid of it or find a way to keep her from being alone. When Scully is assigned to a serial killer case in the same area as the alleged Fountain, Mulder tags along in an attempt to help her and find the Fountain at the same time.

Months later, Mulder has been missing for months and Scully is left only with the leads he was searching for. When a new lead pops up, she departs to search for her partner and to discover what happened before he disappeared six months earlier.

california winter (fox mulder, teena mulder, cassandra spender, samantha mulder, jeffrey spender, pre-xf, mytharc from one son/sein und zeit/closure, wc: 12k)

Fox and Samantha Mulder, brother and sister, disappeared from their homes on November 27, 1973.

(A shift in the events of Samantha's abduction leads to a very different outcome.)

encephalon (msr, s7 fic, au where m&s actually deal with mulder’s stupid brain disease: all things, brand x, hollywood a.d., je souhaite, requiem, wc: 18k)

AU where Mulder tells Scully that he is dying in season 7 and the situation is dealt with accordingly.

whispering images (emily sim, msr, early season 8 au, mytharc from within/without, this is not happening, emily, references to invocation and per manum, wc: 14k)

During his abduction, Mulder realizes that Scully’s daughter, Emily, is still alive.

whirlwind (msr, william, s9 au: providence and provenance, wc: 13k)

AU where Mulder comes home during Providence and helps Scully search for their son.

a mountain in colorado (jackson van de kamp, emily sim, samantha mulder, melissa scully, post-ghouli au, wc: 23k)

While Jackson Van de Kamp is on the run, he encounters a series of assumed-dead relatives he didn’t know he had.

**series still in progress**

[gallifvrey]

fic writer review

ty @taardisblue​ for tagging me in this! (also gonna leave this under a readmore to save everyone)

1. How many works do you have on Ao3? 7! which is honestly a lot more than i was expecting 

2. What’s your total Ao3 word count? 19544, which is also way more than i was expecting ngl

3. How many fandoms have you written for? on ao3 ive only published for two fandoms (doctor who and the magnus archives) but i’ve got some wips for critical role stuff and some old mass effect stuff i’d rather not revisit 😬

4. Top 5 fics by kudos? seconds. comes in at number one and is probably one of my fave fics ive written. talks about 12 after escaping from the time dial and his regeneration into 13 and dealing with all of that built up trauma. same with never cruel or cowardly, has lots of callbacks to episodes in hopefully just the right place to break your heart! 

never cruel or cowardly details thirteen’s life after regeneration and specifically dealing with trauma from her experiences right before she regenerated (i.e. time dial, losing and remembering clara, dying on a spaceship etc.)

should have been a TMA fic that goes from martin and jon starting to rebuild their life in the safehouse to then the apocalypse and then the end of the world (written before the finale even aired so its all speculation)

what would you do, to save humanity this was written as an alternative darker ending to Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos bc i figured that episode didn’t have enough angst. 

every star a fic about the doctor and the master’s relationship bc this ship always kind of kills me and i am always kinda thinking about it. about how they are so very, very alike. two sides of the same coin.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why/why not? ahhh unfortunately i generally dont - partially i get rly stressed about responding “the right way” but also i like seeing the little notification of unread messages! nice reminder that ppl comment on my fics! but also sometimes i do just forget and feel rly awkward. just know if you comment on my fic i literally owe my entire life to you 

6. A fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending? ah man the tma fic ends in their combined death so theres that? the thoschei fic is... well.. i mean, yknow. a thoschei fic. none of them end particularly ‘well’ tho i think. 

7. Do you write crossovers? nah i dont particularly like crossovers tbh

8. Ever received hate on a fic? thankfully, no

9. Do you write smut? that is between me, google docs, and a secondary ao3 account no one knows about

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen? thankfully, no

11. Ever had a fic translated? No

12. Have you ever co-written a fic? no! i’d like to tho!

13. All time fav ship? god i dont think i could just have one but i am kinda obsessed with thoschei from doctor who, or twelve/clara is a huge one for me also

14. WIP you want to finish but don’t think you ever will? oh man i wrote a really detailed rewrite of the pyramid at the end of the world episodes, where instead of the doctor coming back he was still indoctrinated or still was like, done w humanity ig, so it was bill who singlehandedly was saving the world kinda like martha did. it was my first time writing a longer fic and sticking with it and i think it had real potential! but someone never has time anymore 

15. Writing strengths? i’d like to think im pretty good at descriptions and like, idk what to call it but like the vaguely meta-ish stuff, references to past eps and kinda like “poetic” language describing stuff?

16. Writing weaknesses? i cannot write dialogue to save my life. tbh both in real life and in fic

17. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in a fic? see above. but also i think i’d be fine with it, at least in short bursts. if there’s ever a character that speaks ukrainian i’d be super down to write some of their dialogue in ukrainian in a fic but alas :(

18. First fandom you wrote for? definitely doctor who! i wrote a fic when i was like, 13? or smth and had just started watching the show and it was the most self indulgent thing ever but it was all about the doctor coming to pick up random teenagers from around the world and bring them onto the tardis in this big camp-like sleepover. i absolutely loved thinking abt that fic 

19. What’s your fav fic you’ve written so far? hmm i like pyrite a lot bc its more ~experimental~ than ive written before. but i also have to say seconds. bc it introduced me to @yesokayiknow & then suddenly 2 yrs later had a bunch more dw friends! cool times

ty maddy for tagging me! this was a lot of fun. ik im supposed to tag ppl but alas i know limited tumblr urls off the top of my head so genuinely if you got this far in reading this post like, feel free to do this and tag me in it i’d love to see your response! 

(if you’re thinking “oh but surely they can’t be talking about me!” i am. do the post if you want! tis fun)

[writtenthroughtime]

Master Fanfiction List | July 2017

For those of you who have been asking me for my updated master list, ask and you shall receive!

Here is the Master List for all of my current completed and works in progress Fanfictions for Outlander.  All of my stories can be found on AO3 under the same name of WrittenThrough Time. I do NOT write about real people, so please don’t ask or expect to find those on here.

Enjoy!

My Blog Prompts

A Life Unseen - An AU, Frank cheats on Claire story. Frank cheats right before Claire falls through time and how her relationships/experiences will differ from the books since she doesn’t have that anchor of Frank trying to get back to. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10

Mo Chridhe - Modern AU of Claire and Jamie’s lives Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12

Briste - Modern AU where Claire believes she is unlovable and will never find love. However, life doesn't always turn out the way she believes it will... Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13

The Crook Chronicles - My half is set for Mr. Crook Part 1, Mr. Crook Part , Mr. Crook Part 3, Mr. Crook Part 4 COMPLETE

@lenny9987 and I have paired up for this series and she has written Mrs. Crook Part 1,Mrs. Crook Part 2, Mrs. Crook Part 3, Mrs. Crook Part 4 COMPLETE

Endlessly - Story based on @gotham-ruaidh‘s Endless Loop Theory Part 2

For the Love of a Soldier - Also known as 1940s Claire and Jamie, it’s an AU set in the 1940s with Jamie a Scottish soldier and Claire a nurse meeting during WWII. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8 COMPLETE

A Second Chance - Yet another AU where Claire goes back through the stones with Bree, 2 years after leaving the past before Culloden. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Changing History - One shot AU where Jamie and Claire were successful in getting the Bonnie Prince to go back to Italy and not start the rebellion. Their experience after with a certain Captain of Dragoons. COMPLETE

Just a Man - Currently a one shot, but soon to be multi-post, from Jamie’s point of view. Current post is set (book world) right after the wedding when Claire faints. COMPLETE

25 Days of Outlander - Posts are tagged with 25 Days of Outlander, Gotham-ruiadh,& Lenny9987. There are a series of 25 “Favorites” that I’ve chosen to writeshort fanfictions based upon. Currently there are 11 posts for that particular set. Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, Day 7, Day 8, Day 9, Day 10, Day 11

Claire’s Not a Fetch - Completed AU where Claire goes back and stops Jamie from marrying Laoghaire in Voyager. COMPLETE

The Sorcerer and the Stones - Master Raymond based story (currently complete. Future chapters possible) COMPLETE

A Flurry of Green and Red - Bree goes through the stones before Claire. deviation from Voyager Part 2 COMPLETE

Christmas Faith - Christmas themed one shots based with Faith Fraser as a main character. Alternate Christmas Faith    COMPLETE

Christmas on the Ridge - Fluffy Christmas day story COMPLETE

From One to Another - Frank has a child with another woman, abandoning Claire hours after giving birth to Brianna. COMPLETE

Ma Famille - Fluffy Fergus AU at Lallybroch with Claire & Jamie. COMPLETE

Mutually Beneficial Pleasure - Fic based on an image and the caption “Imagine him looking down at you like that.” SMUT COMPLETE

Untitled Ramblings - Meet cute for Jamie and Claire set in an unidentified Modern Universe. (completely separate from Mo Chridhe.) This fic could also be continued for now marked complete. Untitled Surprise COMPLETE

La Bibliotheque Parisinne - Modern standalone piece of Jamie and Claire in Paris. Smut for Smut’s Sake.SMUT COMPLETE

Forever and A Day… - Rewrite of DiA where Claire stays in the past. Written for @mybeautifuldecay

A Whole New World- JPOV s2ep13: Dragonfly in Amber AU

Scottish Sun - Sweet Jamie and Claire moment COMPLETE

Outlander Drabbles - Collection of Drabbles based in any setting of Outlander Wedding Night Drabbles, The Newsroom, Smut Drabble, Motorcyclist, Drunken Night, Obedience School, Anniversary Gift, Trouble, First Night Alone, Puppy Days, Walks, Ring Bearer, The Halloween Party, Happy Second Anniversary, Happy Halloween

Singin’ in the Rain - ONE SHOT: Roger and Bree moment on the Ridge.Book 9 setting SMUT COMPLETE

A Kiss a Day Keeps the Whores at Bay - Claire saves Jamie from Laoghaire COMPLETE

Life Drawing - This would totally be an AU fic but I would love to see Claire teaching a figure drawing class and Jamie being one of the students draws her.

Letters For Christmas - Secret Santa 2016 for @akb723. For Christmas Jamie writes a letter to his wife remembering different moments in their shared history.  Letter One - 1944 Letter Two - 1946 Letter Three - 1949 Letter Four - 1953 Letter Five - 1957 Letter Six - 1959 Letter Seven - 1969 COMPLETE

Prompts for Imagine

Always With Me - Imagine Jamie going all proud poppa mode with baby Faith if she had lived COMPLETE

Born Out of Time - Bree is sick in the 20th Century and Claire has to bring her back to the 18th Century to heal her. Part 2: I Need A Healer, Part 3: Return of the Red Man and Red Child COMPLETE

Main Du Chroi - Faith asks Jamie if Claire is really a faerie Part: 2 COMPLETE

The Darkness That Leads to Remembrance - Sir Fletcher allows Claire to see Jamie. (Endlessly Spin-Off) COMPLETE

The Steam Rises - The hot baths did win….for both of them. SMUT COMPLETE

Oidche Math - AU where Jamie has premonitions/dreams of his Sassenach before they meet in person. Part 2: Et Somniatores    COMPLETE

An Aching Wish - The stones failed the second time around and Claire goes to France. Chapter 2 COMPLETE

Lallybroch’s Newest Healer - Rewrite of Always With Me where Faith Lives and is NOT a dream. COMPLETE

There Can Only Be One (aka Legwhore Smackdown)- Claire goes back slightly earlier just before Jamie leaves for Edinburgh and he still lives with Laoghaire COMPLETE

Together in Paris - Life for the Frasers had they stayed in Paris instead of fighting in the uprising. (AU where Faith lives) Part 2: Older Brother, Older Sister, Part 3: La Petite Mort

Wanting to Be….A Daddy’s Girl - Fic about Brianna never bonding/having that fatherly relationship with Frank and her reaction when she finds out who her father really is. AU with wee Bree and Frank dies early, Part 2 COMPLETE (for now)

Petit Mircale - Multi-part rewrite of what I believe should have happened in ep. 207. *Spoiler Alert* FAITH LIVES. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, & Part 5  COMPLETE

Neighboring Love - Set in the 18th Century. Young lovers Jamie and Claire. Prompt: So there’s this post on tumblr that’s like “the most beautiful man in the world lives in my building but every time I see him I’m a mess” and I was like OMG THIS NEEDS TO BE A FIC, so imagine Jamie and Claire in this situation. Part 2: 362 Days…, Part 3: Unwanted Affections, Part 4: Since the Very First Day, Part 5: Hidden Letters

Èirigh na Grèine - Set in the 18th Century where Bree is born and grows up then. Jamie talking to, showing, and explaining things to a baby Bree. Part 2  COMPLETE

Away with the Faeries -  In season 2 finale, Bree said Claire is always away with the faeries…Coult you do a prompt of instances of Bree at different ages like 5,9, 14 and 20where she notices Claire is far away (thinking about Jamie and such) and at those different ages what Bree thinks of her mother because thoughts change when you get older :)  COMPLETE

Of Innocents & Voyeurs - Imagine if Mary and/or Louise walked in on Jamie and Claire in the throws ;) SMUT COMPLETE

Sticky Fingers - #5 Claire catches a bairn in her surgery. (this is a multi-fic post where each of Imagine’s mods wrote a piece based on a list of prompts. You’ll find Stick Fingers as number 5 on the list) COMPLETE

Cruinne Malartach - Imagine there are stones that don’t send you through time but into alternative universes.

Owl Post - Imagine Bree explaining Harry Potter to Jamie. Gotham graciously let me borrow her Modern Glasgow world and add this little gem to the universe. Gotham’s Modern Glasgow

Tales From the Past - Claire and Uncle Lamb are folklorists and discover a Scottish Legend deep in the North Carolian Mountains Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV COMPLETE

Angel Baby - Anonymous submitted: Could you please write a prompt where little Bree asks Claire for a sister, Claire tells her about Faith but Frank overhears and confronts Claire? Thanks :) COMPLETE

Guardian Scotsman - What about a story about Claire as a child or a teenager and somehow gets raised by Murtagh?

Baking Disasters - Imagine Claire trying to be the perfect WI wife for her husband doing baking and crafts and gardening and she's kind of awful at it. Chapter 1, Chapter 2

A Shock to the System - Hi, could You write a Fic where Jamie managed to avoid Geneva´s blackmailing (that never happened) and later she met Frasers and SEE THEM TOGETHER (gladly with bairns)? Love to see Claire give her (G) a hard time – kill that little brat!!! COMPLETE

Separate Beds- "Do you wish for us to live separately?" What if Claire wasn't ready to forgive Jamie yet? How would he gain back her trust? COMPLETE

The Laird’s Foster - Because I am missing my favorite characters of late, can I get some Roger and Bree story? I'd like to see the evolution of them falling in love with each other. Too much? Anything from you will do. Pretty please? Thank you!

On the Road - Could you do an story where Claire and Jamie return to Castle Leoch before going to the colonies. Bonus points for one where Jamie never married Laogherie :) (up to you!!) COMPLETE

In the Eye of the Beholder - Using a mirror, Bree paints a picture of her and William together and they give it to Jamie for his birthday. Jamie is so touched he tells them a dream he had in the cave of the two of them playing together. COMPLETE

The Arrangement - Christmas Special with @mybeautifuldecay  This little fic is a combined work from both of us with no chapter separation or author separation. We wrote this in tandem, inspiring one another as we went. We hope you will enjoy this Christmas Wedding Bells edition of The Arrangement!

The French Frasers - Imagine a French family (couple, kids and a granny) arriving to the Ridge. They recognised the gran as Suzette, the Paris maid and making counts about her son age they noticed he could be also Murtagh's son. COMPLETE (for now)

Maman’s Boy - Fergus making his way from the battlefield, just wanting to see Claire and Jamie. He realizes that he thinks of them as his parents. COMPLETE

Drunken Nights - Write a scene where Jamie returns home in Paris, completely drunk and the effort Claire has to put in just to get him into bed with him fighting all the way because he wants his Sassenach. COMPLETE

SAWNY -  Jamie's first meeting with Fergus in the tv show where you find out he's the one who took Sawny so I thought a story about Jamie actually giving it to him either just before Culloden or before he arranges to get himself arrested would be really nice. COMPLETE

With Unseeing Eyes - What if someone had told Claire that Jamie was in love with her when she was first staying at Leoch? Chapter 1, Chapter 2   COMPLETE

The Cat’s Delight - Drabble on Imagine for the 2nd Anniversary of the Wedding Episode. COMPLETE

The Historian, the Healer and the Warrior - Imagine Frank had already remarried when Claire came back.

[iightwoodbane]

tagged by @kodoku-no-maria (thank u m’dear!!)

1. Do you have a dream vacation? Like some place you REALLY wanna go?

THE MALDIVES. A BITCH (ME) IS DYING TO GO TO THE MALDIVES 2. If you rewrite the ending of a manga/book/movie… which one would be? And what would you change?

i’d change the ending of how i met your mother, bleach, mirai nikki and erased. i’d just cut out the last two episodes of it and keep everything else the same. tracy is still alive, married to ted and helps him finish the story of how he met her. robin and barney are still in love and married. lily and marshall have another kid. they all meet up very often and haven’t drifted apart at all. bleach...that’s a lot of shit to fix lmao and i’ve already talked about it before. mirai nikki was shit in general but the ending was even more of a pile of garbage. one of the main characters should’ve died or even better, both of them because they were both annoying little shits. and i’d change the last two eps of erased, the build up was amazing but then the ending fell flat.

3. if you could speak a language instantly, which one would you choose?

chinese! 

4. What are your thoughts on “the discourse” here on Tumblr?

it’s stupid. most of the time the issues being discussed are trivial as hell and “the discourse” gets started by dumbasses who spend too much time online and over-analyse everything. no one irl actually cares about it. just...go outside once in a while... 5. Do you believe in true love?

idk i guess 

6. What is your fav drink?

ice tea! 7. Pineapple Pizza… a sin or a gift?

never had it 8. What do you like the most about yourself?

i’m confident in myself, ambitious and i’m very open to learning anything new. i also have a pretty assertive personality which i like tbh. 9. What is your fav day of the week? And why?

rn idc since i’m on summer breaks and all the days are blurred in into giant mess but during school i like friday the most since i don’t have classes 10. What does this website mean for you?

i’ve made some really great friends on here which i’m very thankful for so it means a lot to me.

11. Do you agree w me that coming up w 11 questions is a difficult task?

yeah. these were p good questions tho

i tag anyone who wants to do this~~~

[ofstormsandwolves]

1, 9? 💕

1) Of the fic you’ve written, which are you most proud of?

Uhhh overall? I’m torn between two:

A Second Chance Verse (Broadchurch/Doctor Who, Hardy x Rose), because it started out as a fic for myself, and whoinwhoville encouraged me to post and it somehow became a huge series of 11 fics (and Tom and Hardy’s daughter got together at the end and everyone bloody shipped it and I have never felt better about a fic because people loved the pairing and I just????)

The Parallel Verse (Doctor Who, canon divergence from Doomsday) because it was a rewrite I hadn’t seen before (Rose trapped in Pete’s World, Jackie and the Doctor in the original universe), and meant that Jackie ended up in various episodes (Smith and Jones, Human Nature/Family of Blood, and The Doctor’s Daughter, as well as (2?) others) as well as being there for the Doctor in ‘missing scenes’ between eps. And I got to write Dimension Hopping Rose, which I hadn’t done before, and without Jackie there I got to write about Pete learning to become a father and accept Rose as his own despite him being without his wife. Although I didn’t like having to rewrite Turn Left, and working out the order of Rose’s cannon jump in Partners In Crime and the videos in Midnight and The Poison Sky, and really all that was hell. BUT, but, when I wrote the final sentence of Striding Parallel, I was genuinely shaking. I’d never had that with a fic before. Ever. I may have even shed a little tear because I’d been working on the series for over a year and I think I’d written the final chapter of Tea (Or, White, three sugars) (which comes after the final chapter of Striding Parallel) already, so the final words I wrote for that series were: 

“Just one last trip, then,” the Doctor said as he set the co-ordinates.They landed with a soft bump, and Rose watched him carefully. He smiled, and nodded towards the door. She looked to Pete, who shrugged and held out his hand to her. Together. Whatever it was, they’d do it together. Father and daughter.They took a deep breath and opened the doors.Right into 48 Bucknall House.

(And I’m not gonna lie, reading that final bit in bold has made me a little teary-eyed again.)

Because here’s the thing. I almost scrapped the series. I almost dumped it. I was deep in Striding Parallel, confusing myself with the order of Rose’s series 4 jumps and struggling to work out how to sort out Journey’s End, and frankly I only kept going because I needed to finish Striding Parallel in order to finish Tea (or, white, three sugars), because I wanted to finish that fic and give everyone the happy ending they deserved, but Striding Parallel almost ended me. If you were following me at the time, you might have seen me post about wanting to drop the story, because it was a struggle enough to write and edit the chapters, and then when I was posting them, I hardly ever got any reviews on the chapters. And I just totally wanted to quit. But I kept going. 

And yeah, no one seems that bothered about The Parallel Verse, even though it’s like 12 stories long, but I put so much work into that story, and it was so wonderful that, after over a year of writing it, I finished the whole series.

9) A passage from a WIP

Here’s a problem- you might not remember, but back in February, my memory stick went haywire and deleted all my Doctor Who fanfics. All of them. I lost plans for fics I was working on, I lost the entirety of older stories that had been on ff.net (such as Lungbarrow) which I’d been planning on reworking. I lost the plans and stuff for The Parallel Verse, for And Yet I Could, for AU fics including my 9/Rose story I was working on. So I don’t have much in the way of WIPs, because, frankly, losing 100+ fics put me in a very bad mood and I didn’t want to rewrite my plans/ stories etc. But, slowly, I am now beginning to work on some stories again (some of the ones that were lost were plans that had never really got past bullet points, so I’m less bothered about them). 

I thought I only had one WIP I could even, post, but I just remembered another one, so it’s your lucky day and you’re actually getting two extracts:

Extract 1 | Bringer of Darkness, sequel to I Want to Believe, 10/Rose:

“Sanctuary Base Science Facility,” the Doctor announced ashe climbed out of the car and turned to face the large steel and glass buildingacross the road from where they’d parked.

“Looks fancy,” Rose noted as she walked round the car tocross the road with the Doctor.

They made a dash for it then, weaving through the Londontraffic and reaching the opposite pavement.

“So,” Rose said as they made their way towards the door,“what do they do here?”

The Doctor sniffed. “According to their website, a fewdifferent things. They’ve got several labs, seemingly specialising in differentthings. They’re doing a lot of research into robotics, but they also do a lotof work in geology, and from what I can gather they test chemicals as well.”

Rose wrinkled her nose. “What, like testing on animals andstuff?”

The Doctor shrugged. “Not that I’m aware of. But possibly.”He held the door open for Rose then, and she made her way inside.

The inside of the building was just as fancy and modern asthe outside, and the reception desk was in front of a gleaming white walldisplaying the Sanctuary Base Science Facility logo. The Doctor led the way tothe desk, leaning against it with his Torchwood ID in hand, smiling at thereceptionist.

“Hi,” he grinned, before leaning a little closer to read thegirl’s name badge, “Nina! I’m the Doctor, this is Agent Rose Tyler, we’re withTorchwood. We’ve come to investigate a report of a missing person.”

Nina looked between the Doctor and Rose a little worriedly.“This is about Mr Walker, yeah?” she asked, chewing her bottom lip. “They saidyou’d be coming in today.”

Extract 2 | School Trip, Tiler and Tyler verse

That Friday, Rose found herself stood beside Evie in theschool playground with all the other children and parents and teachers who weregoing on the school trip, waiting for the coach to arrive.

“People are staring, Rose,” Evie whispered, watching some ofher classmates in confusion.

Rose nodded, and looked down at the girl. “I think theymight recognise me from the papers.”

Evie’s mouth formed a perfect ‘o’ then as she realised that,of course, Rose was a celebrity, and the kids in her class, and their parents,were surprised that she was in theirplayground. Then, Evie beamed happily. “That’s so cool! And they all knowyou’re with me!”

Rose indulged the girl with a smile then, but she couldn’thelp but feel a little uneasy. Stupidly, she hadn’t considered the otherchildren, or the other helpers, recognising her. She’d got so used to Dave’skids just knowing her as ‘Rose’ that it didn’t occur to her that Evie’sclassmates would see her as the ‘Vitex heiress’. Of course, school were wellaware of the situation, and so the teachers weren’t too surprised, but therewere a number of Mums helping on the trip who appeared to be gossiping abouther.

“I don’t see why it’s a big deal, though,” Evie continuedsuddenly, wrinkling her nose and pushing her glasses back up. “You’re justRose. You’re in the papers and stuff, but you’re just a normal person! Why arethey looking at you like you’re not?”

Rose sighed, and the coach finally pulled up outside theschool. “Because,” she explained to Evie gently, taking her hand in hers andgathering their bags, “they’re used to seeing me and reading about my family inthe papers, but they don’t expect to ever meet me.”

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