#always though if i left the fandom it would be on my own terms

[tootiredtocares-blog]

.

[hiddenlife-manager]

Apollo x Fem Chubby Reader NSFW

cw… orgasmining, no mention of cum but inferred creampie, not edited, public sex, forest sex, slight emotional apollo, loving partner apollo, zeus mention, gentle sex, praise, doggy standing, breast mention, etc...

notepad… NEW FANDOM I LOVE APOLLO AND HERMES!! Not gonna lie this was long, but in a way I needed to use this to get out of writers block. Like I have been struggling mentally for some time and just have been bed rotting all summer due to avoiding stress. I think I plan on coming back though. School is about to start, I am trying to pay for it and the office is PISSING ME OFF LIKE ACCEPT MY MONEY!

You were walking through the forest; it was a dark night, and the moon was high up as you tried to get back to the Polis. You have traveled so far to the Temple of Apollo to meet the oracle. You were advised by your lover to travel from your polis to see the oracle. You were traveling from wagon to wagon, and thankfully, your Polis was down the path, and you were left to walk. You passed trees and looked down to see a lit-up Polis down the large hill. Through the forest trail, you would have to walk for an hour.

“Very well,” you mumbled as you fixed your peplos and began to walk. You were nervous, afraid that an animal would come up from behind you and try to kill you, but the trip to and from has been safe. To some, it would seem like godly intervention. It was as if you were being watched by a god; in a way, it was true. But like all the gods, he had limits on how to keep you safe without interfering. “Just a little more.” 

As you were walking, you could feel eyes on you. Looking up at the sky, you saw a hawk soaring through the sky, landing on a strong branch. You let a smile reach your lips. You raised your hand to your lips and smiled even brighter. You blinked once, and there you saw a tan, muscular man on a tree branch. His long blonde hair was swaying in the night breeze.

“How was the oracle?” He asked you, and there he hopped off the branch and down onto the ground like it was nothing; his cape blew in the breeze alongside his hair as if the winds were favoring him. He walked over to you; he clearly dimmed his own light from the moment he turned into his normal form. He placed his hands on your shoulder, and then one hand removed itself from it and grabbed your chin. “You look dirty, my dearest.”

“What do you expect from me? I have been traveling.” He nodded at your response and noticed that you were close home. He was the one who advised you to go to the oracle. He was the one who said it was best you got your prophecy from them and not him. “The oracle accepted the rabbit pelt you gifted me; she informed me that I will never marry if I stay with my current love.” You looked at him; you always thought maybe he would marry you, but it was clear it was just not possible. “I’m at a fork in the road: leave the one I love and marry another, or stay with the one I love and never be married. But I cannot have both.”

“I am sorry, my dearest; I was too much of a coward to tell you. So I had the oracles speak the truth.” He looked at you as you stared at him. He was confused as to why you were not yelling at him from the moment you saw him. Even on your trip home, you were just calm, no anger. “I would understand if we must part.” He raised his hand, placing it on your chubby cheek.

“I have been unmarried for so long that I have been barred from much of society in my own polis. I see no reason to change it. I have come to terms with the prophecy since the very moment the oracle told me in the temple. I was naive to think I could marry a god. That I will admit.” His hand was still on your chubby cheek; he looked down at you, and his other hand was placed on your waist. He loved the way you were so soft in his hold.

“I am sorry.”

“I chose this life the very moment we met; I will live a life of solitude if I must.” There, his hand shifted down to your neck from your cheek, and he leaned down to you. He was a god, after all; he would clearly be taller than you and the other mortals. He took your lips into a soft kiss; his lips were gentle, almost quivering; in a way, he was fearing you would pick another man. Your lips are slightly parted enough to invite him closer. He pressed you against a wooden tree, his hand still on your soft waist and your neck.

His hand on your waist slowly lowered to your peplos, and he lifted it up. He moved it a bit and lifted it. His hand gripped your ass, his lips still moving against your own. He hated to show his worries; he hated that he fell for a mortal and could not marry them. He knew very well that his father would not agree to it; even if his father fell for a mortal, he knew the risks of being with them and would never approve of you. He sucked at your bottom lip, pulling away.

“I need you.” He whispered into your ear, and you nodded. He turned you around with his hand on your beautiful chub. He loved your rolls; he loved every single thing about you. To him, your beauty rivaled most mortals he has ever met. He fixed his skirt, and there his cock came out. He stroked it with one hand while the other caressed your ass. He played with your fat ass, and there he began to line himself up. “Take a deep breath, dearest.”

You opened your mouth to breathe in, and at that very moment, he shoved his cock into your cunt. You grabbed at the tree bark. Your hands tried to hold it, but all you could do was press against it. You cried out in the forest, causing Apollo to place his hands on your mouth and pull you back.

“We don’t want to attract the animals, dearest.” You nodded. His fingers slowly entered your mouth, and instinctively, you began to suck at his muscular fingers. His other hand is placed around your chubby tummy. He held you close, his thighs tensing as he thrust up into you. He was behind you, his head so close to your back. You could feel his breath against your skin. Each time he thrust into you, he had to fix your peplos, ensuring that your ass was bare so no fabric got in the way of his thrust. “So perfect, my dearest.” He whispered from behind you. He loved the way your mouth sucked at his fingers.

You continued to have him thrust into you from behind. Your back is against his chest. You two were being covered by the three in front of you, and if you shifted a little to the side, you could see the polis that have always hated you down the hill. You wondered if anyone could see you, but you did not care. All you wanted was to feel his cock going in and out of you. You felt so complete, and you loved him so much.

“Haah…. Uugh…” You found your moans to match the rhythm of his thrusts from behind. Each time he pulled out and pushed himself back into your pussy caused you to rip out sounds of pleasure. Your hands were still slightly placed against the tree, but in a way, you didn’t need to have your hands against the tree due to the position. You pressed your thighs together, and he lowered his hand from your chubby tummy to your thighs and spread them.

“You love this, don’t you?” You nodded desperately, drool now pooling from your mouth due to sucking at his fingers. He pushed you against the tree and bent you down harsher. He was no longer holding your ass, and he raised his other hand to your breast. He groped your breast, hidden behind your linen fabrics. He was enjoying the way your gasps and moans left your lips. He did not care that you two could get caught by animals. 

He smirked at the way you were so desperate, without even knowing you were pushing your ass back to him, wanting his cock to go deeper in your pussy. Your peplos were in disarray; your pins were shifted, causing a few to fall to the ground. His hands were now placed on your hip and your lower back.

“Yes, so good.” You cried out in pleasure, pressing your hands against the harsh bark of the tree. His hips continued to thrust, and he began to feel your walls clench against his cock. He groaned as he felt how welcoming you were. Your body was made for him, and his thrust began to get deeper and deeper. He was now becoming vocal; his grunts were louder than before. He loved you so much, and even if you two could never marry, he saw a future with you. He would love you despite the fact that you are going to age, and he will not. “Ah! Close! Ah!”

He smirked at the way you were so breathy; this was all he needed to feel at peace with you. His cock burried into your pussy and he was fucking you wherever he wanted. His thrust was still firm and deep, making you cry out. Your walls clenched even tighter around his cock, and when your breathlessness became incoherent mumbling, he knew you were so close. He himself felt it; his body tensed at the feeling of getting closer to the finish line. He felt his toes curl and thrust so deeply that his back arched and his head was thrown back with a loud groan.

As for you, you felt it hit you like a wagon running at full force toward you; your legs shook at the feeling of yourself orgasming. His cock was pulsing inside you, and as the feeling went through your body, you covered your mouth, trying to muffle the loud moan that ripped through you. Your legs failed, and Apollo made sure to keep your body up with his one arm. Despite your beautiful weight, you were as light as a feather to him.

“Careful dear.”

[imaginesforeons]

The thing with the tongue (Yandere!Geto x Reader)

~You're bored, but Geto is right there. You decide to put him to work~

This is actually inspired from the tv show The Great. There's one scene where Catherine demands that her husband "do the thing with the tongue", so I wanted to write something similar.

CW: Abusive Relationship. Kidnapping. Oral sex. AFAB reader. Face sitting.

Word Count: 1,259

18+ only

Reqs are OPEN! At the top of my page you can see what fandoms I write for, so DM me with your ideas!

Buy me a coffee?

.-.-.

Never, you mused, had you ever been so bored.

To your left you hear the rustling of papers, and look over to see Geto, the man who had kidnapped you six months ago, shuffling through a stack of papers. You were in his office with him, set aside and forgotten on a plush couch like some type of trinket. Your eyes narrowed into a glare, but if he was aware of your gaze, Geto didn’t do anything to show it. He just absently clicked a pen, dabbing the tip on his tongue before signing a paper for who-knew-what.

A couple minutes later, he did the same thing again, stretching out his pink tongue to lick the nub of a pen. Next, he licked his finger, a quick, nimble stripe against the pad of his pointer. Before he went to turn a page, you saw the wetness of his spit gleaming on his skin in the office lights.

You chewed on your lip in a moment of indecision before you sighed, standing and brushing invisible dust off your clothes before walking up to him.

“Hey,” you said, kicking the side of his desk to get his attention.

Geto blinked, and looked up from his stack of papers. “Yes?”

You felt a heat rising to your cheeks, but you plowed forward. “Do the thing with the tongue.”

“Oh?” A cheshire grin spread across his face. “I’m afraid there are lots of ‘things with the tongue’. You’ll have to be more specific, pet.”

You hissed a breath between your teeth. “Get on the couch, lay down, and let me sit on your face,” you snapped. “Then do the thing with the tongue.”

Geto laughed, but that was all he did. You were grateful, though you’d never let him know it. If he had said anything else you’d have probably run from the room, hot from shame, all to hide away until Geto felt like finding you again.

Sex with Geto was a relatively new development. Even though you had been with Geto six months - six months, one week, and five days, to be exact - anything sexual with him hadn’t happened until a few weeks ago, give or take. That wasn’t to say Geto hadn’t tried. He had tried a lot, in fact, since the moment he had stolen you away, with a determination and patience that you would call impressive, if you weren’t the recipient of it. He would trail his hand along the small of your back, give you romantic gifts of flowers and chocolates, or hold you in his lap. At night, when the two of you were in bed - in the same bed, because Geto had never allowed you your own room - he’d offer you massages, or try to press kisses against your lips, your brow, the corners of your eyes.

For a long time, you fought him, hiding or running, but that never worked, at least not for the long-term. It made you so, so tired to always be in fight or flight, and you never knew how lonely it could be without someone by your side. So, finally, you gave in. One night a few weeks ago, you were sprawled across Geto in bed, the man languidly playing with your hair. When he pressed a coaxing kiss against your lips, you pressed back. After that, it was all heat and sensation and Geto.

You cried afterwards. You did it in the bathroom where no one saw, but you’re pretty sure Geto still knew about it. After that, you and Geto had done things together more and more often, but this was the first time you initiated.

As Geto got on the couch, you didn’t bother with any of your clothes but your panties, sliding them down your legs and around your shoes to toss them in some forgotten corner of the room. Climbing on the couch, you straddled his chest, looking into a dark pair of eyes for only a split second before looking away again, scared at the emotion in them.

“Well?” Geto asked, laying down fully and patting his face. “Come use me to your heart’s content.”

You only scooted forward in reply, spreading your legs and already feeling a deep ache in your core. With a sigh, you settled on his face, feeling his breath fan between your legs. 

Geto grabbed your thighs, impatience eating at him, and laved his hot tongue across the entirety of your pussy. You squeaked, whimpered, and felt Geto tease at your clit. With a groan you threw your head back, but you could feel him staring at you. Those endless, dark eyes would be looking up at you, a spark of something unnameable deep in their depths, the man beneath you devouring you in more ways than one. 

You were wearing a skirt today, and you think it’s perfect for the occasion. Geto liked to dress you. He liked to dress you and feed you and spoil you like a pampered pet, and it drove you close to insanity almost every day. You would fight back, snarling and spitting in his face, only to get that infuriatingly bland smile of his no matter how hard you sought a different reaction. This morning you had been too tired to fight, and you had let him coax you gently into a flowy, knee-length skirt, much to Geto’s delight.

For once, you were actually glad you listened to him as you lifted the skirt and draped it over him, covering the top half of Geto’s face. From between your legs you heard him bark out a laugh, and in response you ground your hips down, shuddering at the sensation. Now you could pretend it was just you in this empty room. You and the exuisiteness lapping at your sex.

Muscled arms looped around your thighs, pulling you forwards and down, his tongue circling around your entrance. You whimpered, then jerked as Geto firmly sucked on your clit, massaging your ass while he did so. Soon the two of you settled into a rhythm, the firm pressure of Geto’s tongue matching the erratic movement of your hips. The room filled with your barely suppressed whines, while beneath you the occasional grunt or groan from Geto was muffled by your skirt.

Geto flicked his tongue against your clit one more time before he delved into your pussy, fucking in and out of it like it was all he had ever dreamed of. His movements were raw, primal, and seemed to grow faster by the second. His hands on you squeezed hard once, as if in warning, before he suddenly forced you onto his face with so much strength you would have lost your balance if his hands had not been so firm.

This made his tongue go impossibly deeper, and when Geto groaned you let out a cry as you felt it vibrate up into you. You wouldn’t last much longer, your hands scrabbling desperately for something to hang onto until you found his hair. Clenching it between your fingers, you mewled as your climax pulsed through you, Geto’s tongue pumping in and out of your pussy at an impossible speed.

Finally, your spasming ceased, as did Geto’s ministrations. You allowed yourself only a few seconds of respite before you were up and off Geto, stubbornly ignoring the wet sheen coating the bottom half of his face.

Geto swiped his thumb over his bottom lip before popping it into his mouth, sucking it clean. When he smiled, he looked a little feral. “Delicious.”

[riinkun-art-stuff]

Howdy ho! I'm very excited to finally be able to share this illustration I worked on as part of this year's @bumblebybigbang for @tahnex's lovely and super fun fic (with no pain attached whatsoever), "Of Dragons and Panthers," which you can read here! As soon as I read the original notes on it this scene captured me so much I had to do something dramatic for it. It's been such a pleasure watching the whole collab come together, tysm for having me!

First time joining an event like this, and I'd love to again if the opportunity comes around hehe. Still a few postings to go on this one, the pieces before us this year have knocked it out of the park and I'm super excited to see the rest once they come around!

Made a few process cuts just for fun, which I left under the cut!

I did do a few sketches roughly before I started out, especially based on other parts of the chapter, but this particular composition was so fixed in my mind that I ended up just sticking with it. In retrospect, I would've loved to go back and do some more thorough exploration for it. Here are a few of the sketches I managed to fish back up:

I also was thinking of trying a few other doodles/another big piece, but ended up not really having the time between other obligations :')

And the sketch I finally settled on:

Inking was SUCH a fun process on this piece in particular. I'm a huge fan of how dragon!Yang's mane turned out, especially, and all the detailing on the head and around Blake's fur and such. Feel like I'm really satisfied w the particular way the line weight variations came out, and it's where the piece shines the most imo.

Panther!Blake, too. Oh gosh. I feel like it took me a lot of reworking to get her structure to a point where she felt very leopard-like, rather than any other type of big cat- especially around the head.

Colours were such a challenging part. There was a big feeling I had for that glow coming off dragon!Yang in the middle of the heavy rain- I love seeing that sort of effect in real life so that's something I'm really hoping to work to capture better as I practice. Trying to get dragon!Yang's slight iridescence in there and to balance out the lighting on panther!Blake's fur each took a long time, too- I'm only a pinch sad that a good chunk of it is covered by other lighting effects XD

Blake's rosettes were SO fun. Augguhugg.

In terms of backgrounds. HOO boy I was going through a strange patch in life while working on the background and final polish for this piece, which is why (at least I feel like) it looks kinda rushed. I have been practicing natural landscapes and doing some observational studies but still struggling to get those rock shapes quite right, which I think is a big make or break point of something like this. I did really enjoy toying around with inking on the foliage and foreground layers of the ground, though! And in the end, lighting and effects ended up masking a lot of the big weak spots :D

I think natural effects like smoke/steam, and rain, are big things that I got to practice more of in this piece, but also really would like to get better at in future. Esp since I feel like it's been a great opportunity to mess around with different colours and brushes that I use way less, which I'm always grateful for w painting. I think just layering the rain on its own ended up being about 10 odd layers?

I think the only other thing I would have loved to improve is to just help the piece feel more Bumbleby™ in the final look. I think I like the cool colours of the lighting for this particular outcome, but I also would have probably tried to have made things much clearer (ahem at the very least switch to yellow/purple) in the long run in terms of representation and resemblance. Ik that at least for me it is fairly easy to associate the two characters with dragons and panthers since I'm more familiar w the fandom lingo around these two, but esp for outsiders I feel like it's probably not great at conveying who they are, and why they are potentially in this situation.

I'd also love to try and find a shading style that still has a painterly quality but compliments the inking a bit better, rather than overpowering it.

I think that, on the whole, I am pretty satisfied with the piece and had a great time working with Tahnex on the whole collab! And I've also has a fun time reading his work and notes in return, and thank you so much for being so so patient with me even as my updates were slow n rocky at points :'D

That's about all I got, have a great day y'all! Still a few big bang postings to go, so very excited for those once they come around!

[spencer-sweets]

House MD Fic Recs | House/Wilson

[Part 1] [Part 2]

so... my first foray into this fandom after passively watching clips of it on youtube growing up. finally got around to watching it even though i have spoiled myself with all of the fan content i consumed before even finishing season 1. this is just some of my favorite fics i have compiled here. :) hope yall feel old knowing this show is older than me - and i can vote.

I'd Make A Deal With God (I'd Get Him to Swap Our Places) by TheFandomLesbian (ao3) Teen+ 11,357 Summary: When Wilson receives his terminal diagnosis, House flees to the hospital chapel. He doesn't know how to pray, but he strikes a deal: his soul for Wilson's life. When Wilson goes into remission, he has no choice but to uphold his end of the bargain. In which House learns nothing about God, but everything about worship, in the arms of his husband.

as someone who has a very complicated relationship with religion, this fic warmed my heart. the devotion from house in this fic to be able to put aside his own feelings towards religion in the small chance that he really does owe wilson's life to a higher power blew me away.

Riddle Me by magie_05 (LJ) R (I would say Teen+) 12,300 House loves puzzles. Wilson…doesn’t. When House starts asking his friend seemingly pointless questions that get progressively more confusing, Wilson’s left to wonder what (if anything) it means.

i loved the way they communicated in this fic and it was fun to try to figure out the riddles with wilson

fifteen minutes by eating_custardinbed (ao3) Mature 11,907 When James Wilson came to work this morning, he was expecting a normal day. That is, he has been expecting to tell a few people they were dying, getting bullied into buying his grumpy best friend lunch, maybe flirting with the new nurse in radiology to make him feel just a little better about his third divorce. What he has not been expecting is to be locked in his office with a madman, staring down the barrel of a gun. or, wilson gets shot and locked in his office. he and house have a conversation

oh, my beloved trope of one character thinking the other is about to die but not wanting to show how scared they are. hurt/comfort and wilson is hurt - right up my alley.

Defensive Strategies by m_butterfly (Wayback) NC-17 (Explicit) 14398 In which Wilson has a problem, House has a cunning plan, girls hunt in packs, chocolate cake has unexpected dangers, furniture is unintentionally ordered, several conversations occur, and dinner is repeatedly served.

this was a cute getting together fic that was funny and heavily recommended back in the say - at least from my sleuthing.

House-opathy Series: Diagnosis: Wilson, Patient Write Up: Cameron, Chase Foreman, Treatment: House by Commodoresexual (LJ) PG13 (Teen+) 14498 Wilson gets more than he bargained for when he lets the ducklings diagnose him - Cameron, Chase and Foreman delve into the healing process for Wilson - You can't always get what you want, but sometimes, you get what you need.

these were cute fics that were admittedly written prior to my conception. i enjoyed reading them - it follows the ducklings as they diagnose wilson with being in love with house and how the two get together.

Lost Causes by Eos (Wayback) PG13 (Teen+) 17164 An unguarded comment from Wilson proves to be quite unsettling for House's state of mind. Has three sequels, Same as It Ever Was, Reverse Psychology, and Foolish Hearts

this fic is older than me by almost half a month... that being said it can only be found in the deep recesses of the wayback machine. i enjoyed this fic and its sequels when i read them - it is mostly house coming to terms with his feelings for wilson following an accident in the first fic

Things That Go Bump by peg22 (ao3) Explicit 18,381 Wilson has nightmares. House gets a headache. Everyone tries to diagnose just what's going on between them. This story is set in Season 2, before House got shot, before the first ducklings left us, before Amber, before House/Cuddy . . . those halcyon days where House and Wilson were just . . . House and Wilson. Wilson is sleeping on House's sofa, after moving out from cancer patient, Grace. "Wilson just shook his head and limped back into the kitchen. He unloaded a sack of fresh produce. Good produce. Endives and garlic and tomatoes and asparagus. He moved on to the next sack. Beef. Good beef. Brisket and rump roast and ribeyes . . . he was halfway through the third sack of spices and imported cheeses, whistling and daydreaming about braised salmon with fresh asparagus when it hit him. He was being seduced. Through groceries. By groceries. By House through groceries. And he was falling for it. Hard. Lox, stock pot, and basil."

was actually reminded of this fic while digging through the recesses of old livejournal fic recs for house. i thought "hey wait.. wasn't that also on ao3?" it is! which saves you all the formatting of chapters that aren't linked and are spread across the original livejournal page it was uploaded on. but this fic is sweet and is a hurt/comfort nightmare fic done well. very dialogue heavy but very much in character.

R.I.C.E in Reverse by Phate Pheonix (FF.Net) Teen+ 22,000 An AU of 'The Greater Good' caused by a simple… twist. What if Wilson had discovered that Dana Miller was House's patient just an hour earlier? Cuddy won't know what hit her.

i remember this fic being longer than it was but i also remember really enjoying this fic. cuddy is a bit of a bitch in this but i don't find it to be bashing or anything - they (house & cuddy) are the same as they are in the show they just don't end up together like they do in the episode this is based on. also wilson coming to terms with his feelings for house. the writing is great and feels like it could be out of an episode of house.

buy some time, it's on my dime by ORiley42 (ao3) Explicit 27,034 Well, this took a longer time to write than I expected! Probably because it's five times longer than I intended lmao Wanted to try my hand at something more AU-ish. Though, because House is an ornery bastard and won’t do what I say at all, the setting is still broadly the same. The main difference being that House and Wilson have never met… I’d say this has season 1 vibes, but no actual timeline or plot refs. Also, AU idea sparked by I57371’s lovely “Phoning It In.” Also-also, title from "Nothing New" by Fly By Midnight.

this is not the only time you will see this author on this list - for good reason. i'm traditionally not one for au's or for strangers to lovers fics... but this one pulled it off. very smutty but the plot is still fun.

Witness, Witness by SkyeBean (ao3) Teen+ 29,111 It was past midnight when Wilson arrived, and House’s team had all left hours before. Cameron was the last to go, shooting House a pitying look as she pulled her coat on, but House had ignored her. A Wilson who’s been dating House for years doesn’t work at Princeton-Plainsboro. It takes House’s team years to find out that their boss is dating someone, let alone who, but they see more of the relationship than they know.

cute! what-if house and wilson did not work together but were together prior to season one. its a fun secret relationship fic.

Something to Prove by orphan_account (ao3) Teen+ 30,700 When House suddenly wants to initiate a relationship with Wilson, Wilson is overjoyed. The feelings he'd held for years are finally mutual. Or are they?

if you don't like angst this one isn't for you. house is kind of a massive dick in this one and spends the rest of the fic trying to make it up to wilson and win him over. has sequels that i did not read.

little glass vial by SupposedToBeWriting (ao3) Mature 39,093 House and Wilson have a peculiar friendship - though if you asked Wilson, sleeping together once while one man was reeling from a traumatic surgery slash breakup and the other was in a failing marriage isn't all that unusual between friends. They manage to make it work, mostly by never bringing it up again. While out, a patient's grieving brother approaches Wilson and injects him with an unknown compound. Wilson is rushed to the hospital. Though initially fine, he begins to exhibit strange and deadly symptoms. House is swept into a case that he cannot emotionally distance himself from, with a patient that he has exceptionally complex feelings for. Wilson clings to life as House hits brick wall after brick wall, desperate to save the one person he can't lose.

hurt/comfort with sick!wilson. Its also a case fic with a race against time that i enjoyed.

A Patient's Guide to Living with ICS by ORiley42 Explicit 40,071 House and Wilson share a hotel room at a medical conference. Read on for goofy acronyms, endless banter, horny middle-aged men, and more!

smutty work conference + friends with benefits to lovers fic. also!!! this author is generally just great with house fics.

A Modest Proposal by ignaz (ao3) Explicit 55,649 Tritter's case against House still depends on subpoenaed testimony from Wilson. To save House from losing everything, the doctors of PPTH decide on an unusual solution, which in turn leads to unexpected consequences. This is a story about the sacrifices we make that turn out not to be such great sacrifices after all. (Contains spoilers for everything up to and including "Merry Little Christmas.")

its on everyone's rec list - i know. but this is my rec list and i enjoyed it so its going on here. marriage of convenience trope my beloved. it has a sequel that everyone says is great but i haven't gotten around to it... yet.

Gaseous Nebula by TheFandomLesbian (ao3) Teen+ 77,372 After a hard day at work, House and Wilson intend to spend their evening watching the Princeton Philharmonic Orchestra. Instead, the building collapses, leaving one of them trapped in peril and the other desperate for answers. The chaos drives them to revelations about themselves and each other, but it may be too late.

another hurt/comfort fic that i absolutely adored. also, the second time this author is on the list! god i enjoyed reading this one - it had me on the edge of my seat despite how fantastical it is sometimes. felt like quality television surrealism with how bizarre some of the coincidences are but it tied everything together and had a happy ending.

there is a sequel but I have never read it and it is incomplete.

either love is a shrine (or else, a scar) by jamesevanwilson (ao3) Mature 79,985 House has a brilliant plan, and he needs Wilson's help. Wilson is a chronic enabler. Getting married for the fourth time should be relatively easy.

fake marriage in order to get money from house's dads will with a heafty dose of miscommunication and mutual pining between these morons.

It Will Find You in the End by junkyard_angel Mature 146,954 Gregory House is a misanthropic bastard with trust issues, who doesn't do feelings. But he's pretty sure he's in love -- or lust -- or something anyway -- with his best friend. Life is funny, in a not-funny way.  *UPDATE* -- Here's a link to the Spotify playlist of all songs referenced in this fic to date. Happy reading/listening! https://open.spotify.com/playlist/76B4n4UUncNYJG8scmKqVc?si=e5cd5de147924fb5 Thanks as always for reading, and feedback and comments are welcomed.

god this fic was long (not that thats a bad thing). they finally get together but then they also break up and then get back together so if angst isn't your cup of tea...

Here is a link to a great fic on ao3 with links to old house fic recs https://archiveofourown.org/works/16826263

I will update this as I read more/comb back through the LJ and FF.net archives that I slouthed through. I didn't keep track of most of those before i decided to make this list :/ sorry

originally posted 8/13/2024

[ofstarsandvibranium]

Precious Truths: Part 13

Fandom: Bridgerton

Pairing: Benedict Bridgerton x F!Reader

Summary: After your father finds out you’ve been writing under a male pseudonym, he threatens to marry you off to an atrocious man unless you find yourself a husband within a month’s time.

A/N: hello! yes, finally, an update! thank you to all of you who were patiently waiting for this. tbh the Benophie announcement gave me a bit of a spark of motivation to finish this chapter! enjoy!

Series Masterlist

My dearest Y/N,

I am not sure what else to say other than I am sorry. I am sorry for making you feel as though you meant nothing to me. I must admit, due to my own self-induced heartbreak, I refused to read your letters previously. However, you will not find me doing that again. I have missed your friendship dearly. It is my own fault for doing this to us. I will never do that to you again, I promise.

Always feel free to write to me. You will receive a response from me, now and always.

Yours,

Benedict

You read the short letter over and over again. You're in a bit of disbelief, yet you're overjoyed. You kept your expectations low after sending that letter to Benedict. However, you're pleasantly surprised that not only has he written back, but he desires to renew your friendship once more.

You immediately go to your writing desk and begin to write a reply.

You spend some time writing everything down, how grateful you are for Ben, how you've been spending your days, as well as your moments of grief.

James' parents have provided good company to you. Ever since meeting you, that have been so kind and loving. They remind you of how your parents used to be prior to your mother's passing.

In your letter, your relay to Benedict how you've been trying to write poetry to help you process and cope James' passing, but nothing has come from these attempts.

Admittedly, Benedict was your muse for so long. After he left, James became your muse. Now he's gone. You don't want to think about Benedict potentially taking up the place as your muse again. A part of you feels as though that would be a betrayal to James, however, your muse was originally Benedict...

It's fine. You won't worry about it too much right now. You'll just take things day by day.

After you finish your letter, you fold and seal it. Calling upon a footman, you ask him to send it to Benedict and the young man leaves promptly.

__________________________

Dear Benedict,

I may be going stir-crazy here. Mama and papa have been very loving and supportive, however, I feel that, even in this large estate, I cannot get away.

I've been riding a lot more than usual now just to get out. I know, it is shocking to me as well since I was never fond of it. However, now I find myself wanting to ride every single day just to be out and about.

Maybe I should discuss with mama and papa if I can start accepting guests again. For I am not sure how much longer I can take this.

Anyway, I hope you are well. It has been some time since we last exchanged letters. I am sure you have been busy with the new exhibit coming up. I hope it is successful. Everyone will be able to see just how talented you are.

I am so proud of you and what you have achieved, Ben. Never forget that.

Yours,

Y/N

Benedict sighs, reading over your letter. He is visiting his family, taking break from working on his last painting for the exhibition.

"What ails you, brother?" Eloise asks as she sits beside him.

"Would it be improper if I were to visit Y/N soon?" he asks her with confliction written on his face.

"Why would it be improper? You two are friends again, yes?" Eloise asks confused.

He lets out a deep breath before explaining, "After the death of a spouse, it's customary to mourn them for a year before accepting guests and taking part is society again. It's only been sixth months."

Eloise scoffs, "Benedict, you know that I am the last person to tell you of what you should or should not do in terms of societal rules."

"Of course," he says with a roll of his eyes.

"What is it that you really want to ask me?"

Benedict remains silent, contemplating on how he should ask his sister.

The truth is, Benedict has felt whole again. Having you back in his life has brought so much happiness, familiarity, and comfort that he's been seeking for the past few years.

It's clear to him that his love for you will never seize. You will always remain a part of him and he will always hold you in a special place in his heart. However, if he takes this step to be close to you again, will it end in heartbreak once more? He doesn't want to think of such an outcome, but there's always a possibility. No. Nonsense. He can't think about that.

Benedict may love you, but you are first and foremost his best friend. Therefore, any feelings he has of you must be cast aside. Being your friend, in your company, speaking with you, being there for you, that is the priority. Benedict's feelings be damned. He will not make the same idiotic mistakes he made before. He's wiser and stronger now.

The relationship you two share is much more important, now that ever.

Benedict turns to Eloise and smiles, "I think I'll alright, Eloise," he stands with confidence.

His sister looks at him with uncertainty, "Are you sure? You're not going to do anything stupid again, are you?"

He shakes his head, "No. I promise, I am better. I will be better for Y/N."

"If you're sure," Eloise says before Benedict exits the sitting room.

______________________

The wind is blowing through your hair as you ride through the forest. It is midday and you have a lot of energy. James' horse, now yours, Bluebell, is fast and agile. She leaps over bushes and fallen tree trunks with ease.

You and Bluebell have gotten quite close these past few months. She's been able to grant you the freedom you've been aching for.

The first three months after James' passing were hard. Now six months later, you've finally accepted his death. It was unexpected and there was nothing you could do to help. You had loved him dearly and he accepted and understood you like very few have.

You are grateful for the short time you had with him, but now you'd like to slowly move on with your life.

You've been trying to get back into writing. Very few pieces have come out well. The rest thrown into the fireplace, burning to ash so you wouldn't have to see it again.

You've come to realize that the few works that have been kept, you've come up with while riding. Another reason why you have gone out a lot more. You're trying to find that spark again that you once had before James' passing.

You stop at a small creek flowing through the Montclair land. You dismount Bluebell and guide her to the water so she may quench her thirst and rest a bit. You sit by the creek, watching as the water flows by. You listen to the birds chirping, the trees swaying in the wind.

You think about how you've been feeling the past six months. How only in the late hours of the night is when you experienced the heart ache of James' passing, how you felt knowing you will no longer experience his freeing and doting love.

You pull out your journal from your satchel and begin to write:

Deep in the shadows where heartache grew

Mourning hearts match skies of grey

A love once bright as morning dew

Now drifted gone as night to day

The halls keep our memories

Our laughter and tears

Walking among those walls, memories sunken

deep within the seas

It's short yet conveys the feelings you want it too. You don't hate it, but it may need some work. So you keep it in your journal and stand. Some time has passed for Bluebell to catch a break. You mount her once more and head back to the estate in more of a trot rather than a flying gallop.

When you arrive back, you see Clarissa waiting for you.

"Something the matter?"

She gives you a small smile, "I know Jean Louis and myself have informed you of the mourning customs, however, it has been brought to our attention that sometimes one does not need twelve months to mourn the loss of her husband."

"Mother?" you ask her confused.

"I just know that you have always been more of a free spirited woman, which is why James was so drawn to you. I also know that you did love him dearly and I will not be upset that you shorten your mourning period. You wanted to be free from societal standards from the very beginning, therefore, we will allow you to start accepting guests back at this home. You are also free to go back to yours and James' home in London."

You're not sure why your mother-in-law is saying all of this, "I-Thank you, mama. I do appreciate all of that, however, I must admit I am confused why you are mentioning this."

"I received a letter from Mister Benedict Bridgerton. He was requesting to see you."

Your eyes widen in surprise, "I assure you, I didn't ask him to do that. I was planning on asking you myself."

Your mother-in-law chuckles, "Yes, well, it seems Mister Bridgerton beat you to it."

You sigh, "So it seems."

"Everyone mourns differently, cheri, we understand that you would also like to be in the company of others during this time. Mister Bridgerton is a close friend of yours, yes?"

You nod, "He is. I'll make sure we can be seen and-"

Clarissa chuckles, "You don't have to worry about those things here, cheri. I trust you. I will write back to Mister Bridgerton right now."

You curtsey, "Thank you, mama. As usual, your kindness is greatly appreciated."

The older woman sighs, walking up to you and cupping your face, "You never have to thank me for kindness. It is a mother's duty to listen and understand her children. Although you are not my blood, you are my daughter just the same."

Her words brings tears to your eyes. She reminds you so much of your own mother, it hurts a little. To know that your own mother can't be here with you during this time. You're sure she would have provided a lot of her wisdom and advice. Nonetheless, you are grateful to now call Madame Montclair as your own mother.

"Thank you, again."

"Of course," she kisses your cheek, "Best wash up before lunch, yes?"

"Right. Excuse me," you pick up your skirt and rush back into the house to have a quick bath.

[0w0tsuki]

Hey can we stop pretending like the only feasible reason that a trans woman would not like the term femboy is because she's some puritan anti-kinkster or somehow against men being able to dress femininely?

Like perhaps maybe the group of people who had to go through a phase of having to figure out and explore their femininity while being perceived by society as a man DON'T WANT to police the way men are able to present and express their genders? Like maybe WE DON'T want to make things even harder for transfem eggs. Like maybe we might have an interest in protecting transfem eggs and are speaking from the harm that we experienced as eggs ourselves?

Like maybe it might have to do with the fact that outside of Tumblr your average femboy is a trap fetishist? Like did we all forget the memes of "trying to figure out if the Astofolo icon is a trans woman or a fascist?"

Like some of us were discovering our transness during puberty in the early 2000s. You remember the early 2000s right? Where South Park and Family were at the height of their cultural influence, the R slur was a substitute for stupid, and bigotry was so common that "traps are gay" jokes could be made in polite company without having to worry about backlash. So imagine what kink spaces were like. Especially when you're a teenage trans girl just discovering herself.

I personally was so damaged by that experience that I began to believe that my gender-no my EXISTENCE was a fetish to be embarrassed and humiliated by and to be reviled for. I genuinely did not engage in relationships because I believed I was going to have to give in and tell them that they fell in love with a sex object. I did not believe that I was worthy of love. And it took YEARS of working through that for me to be comfortable with transitioning.

And after I worked through that I still have to deal with them. They haven't left kink communities they had their roots in. To this day there's a kink website I frequent that has community suggestions for tags IE: Unless the OP of the work goes back to delete this feature, anyone can "recommend" deletions or additions to the tags of the work. This is in place to make the proper labeling/searching/blacklisting of kinks easier to help curate content. In practice though it allows transmisoginists to basically graffiti any transfem artwork they come across. And let me tell you Femboy tags are getting added on right after they replace F/F with M/M on a transbians t4t work. And it happens so frequently that I have to check in about once a month to these trans tags to inform the most recent victim about what's happened to their works.

And outside of kink spaces I go into fandom spaces where I have had to deal with trap fetishists positioning themselves as fucking lore scholars when they harass trans positive folks about the Correct and Moral gender of the transmisoginistic character that they've got a fap folder dedicated. I got to see someone rise to twitch fame off the back of trap content turn into a “femboy icon” because he gave some of the trap money to trans charities and has a trans girlfriend. Who is still making trap content by the way.I've gotten to see reddit lose their absolute goddamn minds when the term Trap was banned from r/anime, shitting themselves so hard about it that they made their own separate website with transmisogynistic wojaks on the home page and everything. And then I got to see the fucking Bridget Debacle.

The reason I always talk about Bridgets trans confirmation is that it's the most widely recognized recent event where the exact shit I'm talking about was on full display. The reason why her being confirmed as a trans woman was such a big deal for trans girls was not just because she was one of the anime caricatures with her own folder in the trap enthusiasts masterbation portfolio. It was because she was GROUND ZERO for original coining of the word trap. And the EXACT same guys who deemed her a trap were now coming out in DROVES fuck EN MASS. But this time as self appointed femboys. We had so many examples of fucking Astofolo icon twitter facists trying to drudge up any type of left sounding argument using the femboy identity after having their initial arguments revolving around mistranslation were debunked. Crying that transfems were “stealing femboy representation” and trying to say that it was an “antitransmasculization force feminization trope” unironically. You know the cry of “Let men be feminine!!!!” y'all always bring out in defense of femboys. THAT'S who you're parroting! THAT'S who you got it from! We have had direct evidence of former trap fetishists dawning the term femboy when it became less cool to be openly transmisogynistic and then started appropriating leftist language to give their transmisogynistic arguments an air of legitimacy.

Like y'all need to understand that this magical space we got here is a FUCKING BUBBLE. Femboy communities in literally every other online space are former trap/sissy communities and are fucking cess pits of transmisoginy. I have seen posts by people who's only experience being around femboys was on Tumblr go out and check a place like r/mildfemboys to be horrified by the obsessiveness of the transmisogyny the femboys they interact with. And the femboys here aren't much better by treating being forced to acknowledge that these people exist and that is a still very active part of their community even if they don't personally interact with it as a personal attack on them and their gender presentation.

Y'all just want to pretend it doesn't exist and treat the idea that a Transfem might not WANT to interact with YOU(OH GOSH!!) because of it like it's some sort of personal judgement instead of something you're just going to have to accept happens when there's a large portion of people who share that title who are responsible for traumatizing them. But y'all got to go one step further. Y'all who go on about how femboys are our closest allies and about how “femboys and transfems are actually closer than transfems want to admit”. Y'all treat femboys like they're out little fucking brother in the queer community and it's our personal fucking responsibility to leave behind any personal baggage at the door in order to make them feel welcome.

Y'all can't handle the fucking idea that a trans woman might not be comfortable with sharing community with someone who's average member would call her a trap while jacking off to her selfies if he thought he could get away with it. That's she's not interested in playing the Astofolo icon game with them. Y'all gotta create a backwards narratives where she is against her own interests, where she is for making it harder for eggs in the future instead of you know. Asking for better from the communities those eggs are drawn too.

I have been forced to fucking put up with femboys in nearly every online space I've ever been in. And I

Am sick and fucking tired

Of putting up with femboys

[ladyluscinia]

What Exactly Did David Jenkins Say?

Look, I'm still staunchly of the opinion that Word of God statements and creator interviews are overvalued in fandom, especially when they get pulled out mostly as gotchas without then continuing to analyze whether or not the show canon is successful at getting across that same message. Death of the Author is good, actually, and we should remember that. But they are worth looking at in the context of evaluating intent vs execution, and for future speculation - just, like, please with less of the whole mile high pedestal idolizing and backlash cycles.

But if overvalued "Word of God" is annoying, then overvalued "supposed creator statements that have gone through three rounds of telephone and any given blogger has only heard about a quarter of them, which they'll use confidently anyway" is worse. So, since I'd already looked up interviews for various reasons...

Here is a fairly comprehensive list of interviews David Jenkins has given and statements he's made during them, presented without commentary (save curating which statements get highlighted). All provided with links. I definitely missed some, so if you have any that you want to add, please do - though if you could trim off any commentary and save it for tags / your own post with a link that would be cool.

Also, again, just because he said it doesn't make it incontrovertible canon that only a blind person wouldn't understand. Some of these even arguably contradict each other. The creator's intent doesn't always translate to what the show is doing, nor do you even have to think it was a good idea.

(Listed in chronological order from oldest to newest - post contains spoilers below the cut)

Pre-S1

Gizmodo - Feb 22, 2022 - with Cheryl Eddy (io9) - Link

Why this story - Really, it was the enigma of Stede that drew him in. "I think actual pirate stuff is fine, but it's not necessarily my cup of tea. And I think Taika [Waititi] felt similarly. But hearing about this guy and reading about him and seeing that, you know, he left his family, then he met Blackbeard, they hit it off, and we don't know any of the details in between. So filling those blanks in, and having a very human story, and then being able to do it with the pirate genre, that was like, 'Oh, this would be cool.'"

Post 1x01 - 1x03

Polygon - March 5, 2022 - with Tasha Robinson - Link

David Jenkins, Taika Waititi, and Rhys Darby interview

About Stede running off to sea - "Stede thought he could outrun his baggage, and you can't outrun your baggage."

About S1 - "I don't think there was enough improv on set! We had an insane schedule, with a huge amount of plot. We were budgeted and designed as a one-hour show, but with a half-hour production schedule, which means we really had to chase these episodes to get them shot. And then there are certain emotional beats that we really needed. So trying to find places to find the fun was hard."

Mashable - Mar 5, 2022 - with Belen Edwards - Link

About the show concept - "It was Jenkins' wife who first told him about Stede's adventures; she thought it would make a good TV show."

On casting Rhys Darby - "Stede did a terrible thing to his family. If you cast it wrong, he's a very hard character to get behind," Jenkins said. "Very quickly, the only person I thought of for this was Rhys [Darby]. He has this childlike quality that's endearing."

About the story - "Seeing them discover a need for each other that neither anticipated and charting how that relationship goes is the meat of the story." + "If you're on this ship, you're running from something, and you're running to something that you can't be on land"

Mentions of matelotage - "In fact, one of Jenkins's favorite pirate facts that he learned while working on Our Flag Means Death was the term matelotage, which was a civil union between same-sex pirates. "The more you look at it," he explained, "the more you write to the fact that this is a queer-positive world.""

Discussing piracy careers - "Something else that astounded Jenkins about pirates was "just how fast it all moved — their lives were quite short," he said. "Your career [in piracy] wasn't very long.""

Post 1x09 - 1x10

Decider - Mar 24, 2022 - with Kayla Cobb - Link

David Jenkins, Taika Waititi, and Rhys Darby interview

Pitch for the show - "That was in the pitch," series creator David Jenkins told Decider. "That was the reason, to make them fall in love with each other."

About the romance - "The main thing to me was to side-step coming out," Jenkins continued. "I just want a romance. I want a Titanic romance between these two people. We don't have to do the coming out story and then the non-binary story for Jim [Vico Ortiz]."

About S2 and the show - "The show is the relationship," Jenkins said. "So, we end in a place where there is this breakup. What happens after a breakup between these two people who, one’s realized he's in love and the other one is hurt in a way that he's never been hurt before? What does that do to each of them in an action, pirate world with them trying to find each other again? So again, I really love those rom-com beats."

Collider - Mar 24, 2022 - with Carly Lane - Link

On making it a romcom - "It's the only reason to make the show. If you didn't do that, it would just be weird. I mean, you're using the rom-com beats. You're using these like they're together. And it's funny because so we're so habituated to be like bromance, bromance, bromance, and it's such a simple move to put them together."

Discusses focusing on romance - "I guess I really... I get kind of bored. How much pirate can you do? They're going to rob stuff. They're going to steal ships. There's only so many pirate stories you can do. So if you're going to do a workplace story, I mean, you're essentially having this... You'd have this same amount of relationships in Grey's Anatomy in the ER. So it's standard. It's the most standard. We're making a soap opera on a pirate ship, and to use those soap opera beats... I like it, and I like the flavor in a comedy when you have something that's played genuinely up against very ridiculous things."

Discusses history and kissing scene

Discusses importance of going home to Mary - "Yeah, that was the problem for me in the story. I knew that I wanted to have the end where he goes home, because you need to give Mary her day in court. I just wanted to know from Mary's perspective what happened and then to see that, yeah, they're friends."

Is Lucius dead? - "You got to wait."

EW.com - Mar 25, 2022 - with Devan Coggan - Link

David Jenkins, Taika Waititi, and Rhys Darby interview

Pitch for the show - "To me, [Stede and Blackbeard's relationship] is the reason to make the show," Jenkins explains. "When Taika and I were first talking about it, he was like, 'Oh yeah, that's the show.' I first started reading about Stede and how he befriended Blackbeard and we don't know why. Very quickly, it was like, 'Oh, it's a romance.'"

Polygon - Mar 25, 2022 - with Tasha Robinson - Link

Discusses 3-season intent - "I think three seasons is good. I think we could do it in three."

Discusses acts within S1 - "To me, when you see him get stabbed, and the blood runs through his fingers, it’s like 'Oh, no, the clown got stabbed! And not comedy-stabbed, he got stabbed stabbed!' That to me is cool. And then having Blackbeard find him as the end of what would be the first act of our story felt good to me."

Discusses kiss scene filming and the national moment around gay rights

What to focus on a rewatch - "I think Con O'Neill does such a great job. He's such a complex character, and it's such a tortured relationship. And that's a love story too, between him and Blackbeard. It's a very dysfunctional story, but it's fun to watch. Watch that maybe, on a rewatch, looking where their relationship ultimately goes."

TV Insider - Mar 25, 2022 - with Meaghan Darwish - Link

Discusses show pitch - "When I was pitching [the show] to people, I'd be like, 'Okay, so it's about Stede and Blackbeard, and then they hit it off and then they fall in love.' And then people are like, 'Okay, cool,' Jenkins shares. "And then they really fall in love, and become intimately involved."

Discusses historical inspiration

Discusses S2 direction - "But when [Stede] goes to find [Blackbeard], he's gone and his crew's been abandoned. And so watching them try to negotiate that, that's a good rom-com beat," he adds.

The Verge - Apr 15, 2022 - with Charles Pulliam-Moore - Link

Discusses being surprised by queerbaiting legacy - "...part of me knew that, yes, Stede and Ed's romance was going to be real. But one part of me felt like, 'We're going to do this story, and they're going to kiss, and maybe that's not even going to be that big a deal. Maybe it'll just be a blip.'"

Discusses writing romance - "I'd never written a romance before this one, but I think with Ed and Stede, the question's always 'what's the need for each other?'"

Discusses falling in love and Stede's accidental seduction - "It made sense to have that love be almost like a teenage version of falling in love — one with all these intense and conflicting feelings. They're middle-aged, but Stede's young. Ed's young. Emotionally, they're like 16, and they've both got a lot to learn."

Discusses Con O'Neill as Izzy - "He plays an exhausted quality that's really lovely because this character could just be generically evil, and the way Con plays, it is like, he's credible. I believe that he can do some damage if he wanted to. My favorite thing I've seen about the show is somebody saying that Con's playing the only human with a bunch of Muppets. It does feel like that a bit where he's like Charles Grodin in The Great Muppet Caper."

On Izzy being in love with Blackbeard - "I think Izzy's deeply in love with Blackbeard, and it's a very dysfunctional kind of love, and he's like the jilted spouse who's losing his man to fucking Stede Bonnet, and he can't believe this is happening."

Discusses masculinity and piracy as an escape from that

Discusses diversity and trauma based stories - "And the consensus in that very diverse room was that we wanted to show that isn't just wallowing in trauma. We don't have to do a coming out scene or focusing on the trauma of it — not to say that those stories aren’t valid."

Gizmodo - Jun 20, 2022 - with Linda Codega (io9) - Link

Musing on fandom response to the show - "I'm wondering if the fact that because the queerness of this show isn't gaslighting the audience, and isn't a function of wanting to do something, but not being able to produce the results because of network standards. I think we just happened to be in this lucky spot where the show is actually queer… and I do think that people are responding to that."

Comparing fanfiction to writing - "And Con O'Neill's audition was one of those things I would go back to. I would watch that and be like… Oh, right, that's the show. And in a way, you're writing fanfiction for a certain actor and character because you want them to do something, and you're like–" at this point, it must be said, Jenkins let out a maniacal little giggle. He’s just as thrilled to show off Con O'Neill's ability to seem both deeply exhausted and menacing as the rest of the fandom. "And you [as the writer] you're like… And then Izzy does this now."

EW.com - Dec 13, 2022 - with Devan Coggan - Link

Discusses The Chain sequence - "I had initially wanted that end sequence to be like the FBI raid in a mob movie, where the feds come in, and they've got boxes of stuff, and everyone's running, and someone makes a dash for it," Jenkins explains. "So, it's like a mob movie or FBI raid story, and then it's also a story of Stede's lover coming back."

Pre-S2

Collider - Oct 2, 2023 - with Carly Lane - Link

Discusses fan reaction to S1 - "I thought that they'd kiss, and people would be like, 'Oh, cool, cool!' I kind of thought people would know a little bit more [about] where we were going, but then in hindsight, no, people have been hurt and burned on so many other shows and then made to feel silly."

Discusses starting S2 dark - "One of these characters is very, very damaged and has never made himself vulnerable in this way before, and I don't think [he] would react very well to having his heart broken in this way. I don't think it would be cute, and I don't think it would be funny. I think it would be scary as hell to watch a very damaged guy that we've established in Ed, who killed his dad and thinks he's not capable of being loved, deal with rejection and see that Stede really hurt him."

Discusses adding more female characters

Discusses S2 needle drops including "This Woman's Work"

Discusses 3-season arc

Post 2x01 - 2x03

Mashable - Oct 5, 2023 - with Belen Edwards - Link

Discusses fandom response to S1

About the canon gay relationship - "To watch the explosion of enthusiasm around [the kiss] was disorienting, almost," Jenkins said. "I thought people would react to it, but I didn't think the reaction would be that big. And then it was moving, because I didn't realize that this audience felt so unserved in general, as far as storylines go."

Insider - Oct 5, 2023 - with Ayomikun Adekaiyero - Link

Tease on leaning into the Stede / Ed / Izzy love triangle - "I think Izzy, in a certain way, got the worst deal in the first season," the showrunner tells Insider. "He gets jilted and then he still is in spurned spouse territory at the beginning of the second season."

Discusses Izzy's arc - "What is that relationship about? And I think by the end of the season it kind of becomes a little unexpected of who they are to each other and what they mean to each other," he teases

Discusses addition of Zheng - "He likens Zheng's way of pirating to a successful tech startup, compared with the garage sale vibe Stede had going on the Revenge."

Discusses introducing Hornigold - "I thought Hornigold was the most obvious because he was the person who made Blackbeard what he is. And Blackbeard has a father complex, so it's natural that he's going to bring his former captain back," the show creator said. "It's a struggle with him because he and dad figures don't historically do well."

Discusses importance of the mermaid scene

Inverse - Oct 5, 2023 - with Hoai-Tran Bui - Link

Reveals he didn't commit to the romance until shooting 1x06 - "Jenkins always intended his pirate comedy to end with a romance, but he'd envisioned it as an unrequited love. "It was going to be about Stede learning what love is, and Ed making himself vulnerable and getting burned," Jenkins says of his original pitch. But Darby and Waititi's choices in the scene, which they played without diffusing the tenderness with a joke, made him wonder if they could take the show in a new direction."

Discusses mermaid Stede idea from S1 - "We talked about Stede as a mermaid very early on in the writers' room," Jenkins says. "At some point, yeah, I want to see Rhys Darby as a merman." + "They wanted us to come up with a Season 2 pitch during Season 1. And that was one of the ideas we hit on, and I can't quite remember how we got there, but it was us asking, what is a pirate world? Are there mermaids? Is there magic in this show? With pirate stuff, I don’t know that I want there to be magic, but there was a way where it was something really beautiful about a mer-person, and I like the idea that their coming together would have a mythic size to it."

Discusses historical divergence

Discusses matelotage and pirates as weird outsiders

TV Guide - Oct 5, 2023 - with Allison Piccuro - Link

About the shipping culture - "It's the meat of the show, so it's great to have people bought into the central romance. If it were a bromance that we were trying to make look like a romance, that would suck."

Discusses playlists he makes

Discusses opening dream sequence - "I just like that it started with something badass. Stede, Blackbeard, and Izzy are on an arc together. Whether they're in stories together or not, their ultimate arc is together. I think, by the end of this season, the last episode, that first scene will be gratifying. I won't say why, but their fates are tied together."

Discusses Kraken arc - "But I think the thing that's good about this show is that it can go to really sweet comedy land, but I want there to be, like, if someone loses a body part, for instance, they lose a body part. To do justice to the fact that this guy is a killer and a monster, and dealing with heartache that he doesn't know how to deal with, I think you really need to go there."

Discusses Izzy in S2 - "I mean, he's jilted. He had a partnership with Blackbeard, and he knows he can't live up to this person that Blackbeard fell in love with... Who is that guy? What are his hobbies? What does it look like when he's not totally subsumed with his boss's love affair with somebody, and heartbroken?"

On S2 reunion - "The second season is them being a little bit more mature... It's the thing where you're in your 20s or 30s and you're like, "Well, should we move in together?" They have to make up some time because neither of them have been in a functional relationship before."

About genre of pirate stories - "...is a show about multiple relationships. That's what I want to see when I see this show. I don't want to see a bunch of pirate things that I've seen in other things, I'll just go watch another thing if I want to see that. That's not really my thing. I like the genre, but it's a very hard genre to budge. I want to see relationships in a pirate world."

Discusses the A Star is Born aspect of seeking fame / retiring

Mashable - Oct 7, 2023 - with Belen Edwards - Link

About the mermaid scene - "You need something expressive for when they come back together," Jenkins said. "Their reunion moment has to feel big and mythical. This is not a world where mermaids actually exist, but their love for each other has that size that you can get [a mermaid] in there somewhere."

About Kate Bush - "I love Kate Bush, and I love that song, and I know Taika loves that song," Jenkins explained of the choice. "So I wanted to find a place for that song somewhere in the second season."

Polygon - Oct 9, 2023 - with Tasha Robinson & more - Link

Compares S2 and "Golden Age of Piracy" stuff to Westerns, lists 5 he was thinking of - "Every Western that’s good is that story," Jenkins says. "'This way of life we made is coming to an end. It can't last. It's a blip in time. We created this thing because we need it to exist. We're outlaws, and we need a culture that suits us, but it's running out of time.'"

Gizmodo - Oct 9, 2023 - with Linda Codega (io9) - Link

Short tease on leaning into the love triangle

About Stede, Edward, and Izzy - "I think the three of them are on an arc together that's pretty inseparable," Jenkins said in an interview with io9. "And to watch Izzy try to process what's happened [in season one]… to watch him kind of grow and figure out what's his own story, if he can separate himself from this kind of toxic relationship, is interesting to me and I think gives him a lot of room for growth."

Post 2x04 - 2x05

IndieWire - Oct 12, 2023 - with Sarah Shachat - Link

Discusses directing and show creation

"The limitations of the show also naturally push it back towards moments with the ensemble and plot problems that it would frankly be irresponsible to tackle if you had a giant budget and a fully working ship-of-the-line to sail and then blow to bits. "That's the fun of the show to us, I think. If you open this up and you're like, unlimited budget, that would be terrible because I think you can get seduced," Jenkins said. "[It could be like,] 'Oh man, it's all leading up to a climatic battle on the sea.' And those things are great. But that’s not this show.""

"The nice thing about that, though, is you get to be the lo-fi show that’s like, 'Hey, we’re making The Muppets.'"

PopSugar - Oct 12, 2023 - with Victoria Edel - Link

About S2 Stede - "I like the idea that he learns and grows and he doesn't just stay a bumbling captain. He might be ridiculous, but he is getting better at it."

Discusses genre challenges - "How do you have a show that's a romance show but it's also a workplace show and they're criminals?"

Discusses Edward's redemption - "But Blackbeard still has to come back and apologize and be part of the community again, and give his little press conference. It was fun for us to look at that in the context of piracy, where they all do terrible things to each other. But even by their standards, what Blackbeard did was a bit much."

Discusses Izzy in S2 - "When Izzy shoots Blackbeard and they all mutiny on him, that's Izzy breaking up with Blackbeard. And they're both having their own journey in the wake of it, and Izzy's having his own redemption arc. He's trying to figure out, "Who am I if I'm not Blackbeard's first mate? Who am I outside of this relationship?"" + "If Stede's Spongebob, he's Squidward. I don't know what that makes Blackbeard. But there's a real pathos to Squidward."

Discusses trauma-based narratives - "As a diverse room in terms of sexuality, socio-economic background, and race, we thought, "Wouldn't it be nice to have a non-trauma-based story for these characters who don't get that historically?""

Variety - Oct 13, 2023 - with Hunter Ingram - Link

Discusses three act structure and making Stede work for a relationship - "The way I like to look at a season is in threes. The end of the first act is when they find each other, and this is the beginning of the second act. They've found each other, but they are pissed. Stede thought it was going to be [Kate Bush's] “This Woman's Work,” but, in reality, it is this headbutt –– literally."

Discusses the central romance - "It was always part of the pitch... that is the reason to make the show. The pirate genre is fun, but I wasn’t dying to make a pirate show. Taika wasn’t dying to make a pirate show. But the thing that was interesting to me was that Stede finds love, and he finds it with Blackbeard."

Discusses 2x04 plot - "This episode is based on a very, very thumbnail sketch of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?." Anne and Mary are Martha and George, and they are Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton."

Discusses adding historical pirates

Discusses Buttons exit - "I just love the idea of him turning into a bird: I love the idea of Buttons somehow being the one character that is able to figure that out."

Discusses Izzy and the crew's trauma plot - "We liked the idea that there is something about trauma and getting past that trauma, even on a pirate ship. They have been through two very different ways of living and they have to get used to each other again. But it's also a family that was separated, and becoming one family again is painful."

Discusses bringing characters back - "We could bring Calico Jack back, who, if you remember, was hit by a cannonball last season. Anyone who is that fun to play with and wants to keep playing, you always find a way to bring them back."

Polygon - Oct 14, 2023 - with Tasha Robinson - Link

Discusses 3-season arc and how keeping them apart with some plot device was never in the cards - "at the end of the first season, they're 14-year-olds, emotionally. In this season, it's more like they’re in their late 20s."

Discussing New Zealand production and ensemble cast writing - "It's pretty organic, because as we're going through and tracking everybody's journey for the season, we're watching the thing that holds us together — what stage of Stede and Blackbeard's relationship are we in? Because the overarching arc is, are these guys going to learn how to settle into a relationship?"

"The second season is more overtly about romance, and more a relationship story."

Energizing aspect of fan reaction

S3 is about "love is work"

Gizmodo - Oct 16, 2023 - with Linda Codega (io9) - Link

About the story - "I want to see them become a functional couple or fail to become a functional couple," Jenkins said. "Those are the most interesting parts of the show."

Discusses fandom engagement - "...ultimately the writers are also "the fans in the room." He goes on to say that, "We're fans of the world. We're writing fanfic about our own characters, our own worlds… It's paid fanfic, but it's fanfic." He gives another example: "If you're writing a season of Succession, you're writing fanfic Succession. You're just getting paid to do it. We, as writers–" it's clear that he's not just talking about the writers in the writers room, "become fans of the world and we all have things we want to see these characters do. What we do is not that different."

Discusses the A Star is Born aspect of seeking fame / retiring

Discusses Zheng Yi Sao

Villains of the series - There are a lot of new villains this season, but, Jenkins says, ultimately, "the antagonist on this show is normalcy… These pirates have a way of life that they're not finding in normal life. They've found a way to live and support each other and be there for each other. And that's always threatened by these larger, tyrannical forces that want to shut them down."

Post 2x06 - 2x07

Mashable - Oct 19, 2023 - with Belen Edwards - Link

Discussing drag performance in 2x06

"It is nice to see with Izzy's arc, where he finally breaks through whatever he's been doing to himself. He lets himself have that moment, which I just love. It resonates for Izzy, and I think it resonates for Con. Just personally, it made me feel good to see how it turned out."

Consequence - Oct 19, 2023 - with Liz Shannon Miller - Link

Discusses intent for romance - "...telling a love story in a serialized medium like television has its perils, largely because it's tough to know how much you can draw out any unresolved tension. "I think we take it episode by episode and we try to not piss people off in taking too long and doing double beats and triple beats," Jenkins says. "You can only do Will They or Won’t They for so long. Then you have to deepen it.""

Discusses pirate setting - "The emphasis on relationships also fits into the show's high-seas setting, which Jenkins finds similar to post-apocalyptic narratives. "It is a little bit like you're doing Mad Max, except there's relationships," he says. "Stuff's shitty, so you gotta try to find some joy. Of course, people are going to have a need for each other in these extreme circumstances, and I like the idea of these characters finding some level of a healthy relationship in these extreme circumstances.""

Discusses Jim x Archie

Discusses 3-season arc

Polygon - Oct 21, 2023 - with Tasha Robinson - Link

Discussing gender and power dynamics in Jackie x Swede / Zheng x Oluwande / Blackbeard x Stede + A Star is Born aspect

Jim not being jealous of Oluwande - "I think that relationship was always seen in the room as a friend relationship that got romantic."

About adding a villain - "I think a lot of the internal forces in Our Flag are the villains." + "I think this is a story about the age of piracy coming to an end. This way of life is coming to an end. And every Western that's good is that story: This way of life we made is coming to an end, and it can't last. […] I think every story about outlaws is about trying to preserve a way of life against normative forces that are kind of fascistic."

Historical accuracy - "The balance of the show is 90% ignoring history, and then 10%, bring it in, whenever we're like, Ah, gotta move the story forward! Remember, the English are out there, and they're really bad!"

Post 2x08

AV Club - Oct 26, 2023 - with Saloni Gajjar - Link

Killing Izzy was always the plan - "We wanted to show the depth of that character. Izzy is one of my favorites. He's like middle management who is in a sort of love triangle [in season one]."

Discusses how they really wanted the happy ending for S2 - "I think with season one's end, it was a gamble to leave it the way it was. Everybody stomached through it. Now if it turned out they didn't want us to make more, I just didn't want to have another story where the same-sex love story ends in tragedy, unrequited love, or if one or both of them are being punished."

Discusses S2 progressing the 3-season romance - "They’re a couple who is like in their late twenties right now as opposed to being teens at the end of season one." + "It was an interesting tension of, which one gives up their dream? A lot of times in relationships questions can come up, like who is going to give up on their dream to take care of the kids? Obviously, no one wants to, but someone ends up giving up more than they want to at some point. What's wonderful about a mature romance, and what I'd want to see more of in season three, is Ed and Stede making these tough decisions." + progressing past the getting together point

Discusses parallels, Republic of Pirates, and Zheng Yi Sao

Short bit about fan response

Collider - Oct 26, 2023 - with Carly Lane - Link

Discusses Ed leaving fishing - "I like that he had a little prima donna moment where he thought he could go and be a simple man, and then it's revealed that he really isn't a simple man; he's a complicated, fussy, moody guy. No, he's not gonna be able to catch fish for a living. For him to be told that, "At your heart, you're a pirate. You have to go back and do it," he doesn't want that to be true, but it was true."

Discusses Izzy's speech to Ricky - "I wanted to give Izzy a proper eulogy for himself. He gives a eulogy for himself, but it felt true writing it."

Discusses Izzy's death scene - "In a way, it's very much for Ed, that speech. The "we were Blackbeard" is claiming that he is also Blackbeard, that Blackbeard is not just Ed’s creation, and I like that for him, too, because he's worked so hard for that — and then just to say, "You can give it up." There can never be a Blackbeard again as far as Izzy's concerned because he's dying, and they did that together."

Discusses Republic of Pirates / music parallels from premier to finale

Discusses finale wedding - "We knew we wanted a matelotage in the season, which is the real term they had for marrying crew members. And yeah, they've always been in relief to Stede and Ed, and they're a little bit ahead of Stede and Ed in how much they can talk about things. So to have a bunch of family things in the season, like a funeral and a wedding, and have the parents kind of watch the kids sail away, felt right, and all of those things seem to work well together and build on each other."

Discusses retirement ending - "That will-they-or-won't-they is interesting to a point, but the real meat of it is always like, "Can they make the relationship, and can they do better than Anne and Mary?""

"Frenchie's in charge of the Revenge" + teases Stede struggling to give it up

EW.com - Oct 26, 2023 - with Devan Coggan - Link

Discusses Izzy's death and telling Con - "It feels like the logical end of Izzy's arc. It's heartbreaking to me because he's my favorite." + "I told him in the middle of shooting because I didn't want him to find out at the table read, obviously. I also didn't want it to leak. He was lovely about it."

Discusses Izzy's final arc - "You know, I didn't expect him to become kind of a father figure to Ed. I think we hit on that while we were breaking the [final] episode. He's in such a weird position: He's like a jilted lover, and then he's a middle manager who has to work for a terrible boss. He gets thrown away, and then he comes back. He really develops, and he becomes a part of this family. I think the biggest surprise was the extent that he was a mentor to Ed. They were both Blackbeard. They both made Blackbeard happen."

Discusses the happy ending intent - "With this season starting so dark, I kind of wanted to reward them for the work that they've done and the character growth that they've had. I wanted to leave them in a place where they're really going to try and make this work. I don't think it's going to be easy for them, necessarily. They're both still immature."

Discusses the wedding - "We knew we wanted a matelotage in the second season, and pretty quickly we landed on Lucius and Black Pete. It seems like they were ready for that. We made up a ceremony and everything, where they call each other mateys, and it was just fun to make our own version of a pirate wedding ceremony."

Discusses potential S3 and Frenchie's Revenge - "But it felt like a good place to end the second season. It felt like a contrast to the first season. If it turns out we don't make any more, I'm comfortable with that being a resting place."

Variety - Oct 26, 2023 - with Hunter Ingram - Link

S3 endpoint - "I love things in threes," he says. "That first act, second act, third act structure is so satisfying when it is done well, and you don't overstay your welcome. I think this world of the show is a big world, and if the third season is successful, we could go on in a different way. But I think for the story of Stede and Ed, that is a three-season story."

Discusses the draw of a "Golden Age" and it's ending

Talks about father figure Izzy and wanting a real sense of loss - "There is a nice parallel to have Ed treat him so badly at the beginning of the season and then come all the way around to where Izzy is this sort of father figure he doesn’t want to lose — because Ed usually kills his father figures."

Gizmodo - Oct 26, 2023 - with Linda Codega (io9) - Link

Teasing future Izzy - "Jenkins looked slightly sad himself, saying that "Ghosts exist in this world." I told him not to make promises he couldn't keep."

"Jenkins said that he doesn't see Izzy as a pure antagonist in season one because on some level… Izzy was right in his hesitations about Stede."

Discussing Con O'Neill & Rhys Darby acting

Jenkins confirms the season was always 8 episodes due to budget cuts

About S2 finale vs S3 - "The first season ends on such a downer, so it made sense to end the second season in a kinder spot." + "I think there's plenty of story left for season three, but I think that it was important to end this as if it was the end of the show, and on upbeat note and avoid the kind of "kill your gays" trope. I don't want to see Stede and Ed punished for giving it a go. I want to see them really say, 'yeah, we’re going to we're going to try to have a relationship'."

Teases S3 revenge against Ricky and going to the Americas

Vanity Fair - Oct 26, 2023 - with Sarah Catherall - Link

About the ending - "It's bittersweet. There's death and there's the rebirth of Stede and Blackbeard's relationship; there's a funeral, there's a wedding, and the idea that this family is going to keep fighting even as they lose members. And then it's about belonging to something." + "A lot of times, with this narrative of characters, same-sex relationships end on a dour, downbeat note, where one of them dies and it's unrequited or it's unrealized; something horrible happens and they're punished in a way. So it was important to leave it open and a lot more show to go, but also leave it in a place where it's happy."

Discusses Izzy as a mentor / father figure - "We felt like Izzy's story had reached its conclusion, where we put him through enough. And then there was the realization that he is kind of a mentor to Blackbeard and that he is kind of a father figure to Blackbeard." + "And it's also a pirate show, so he's got to die."

Discusses filming challenges - "It's a big show; it's basically a one-hour show that we're doing on a half-hour budget."

Discusses adding Zheng Yi Sao

Is the show a queer romance? - "For this show, it's important to me just to write a really bold-bodied romantic show that happens to be between two characters of the same sex. I think that the story beats don't matter, because if you've been in love and you've been hurt and you met someone you love—hopefully we all know what those feelings are."

Blackbeard's arc in S2 - "...the second season is about Blackbeard's midlife crisis. And then when they both have their midlife crises, they can open a B&B together." + "I don't think Stede and Blackbeard are ready to be married. They're emotionally saying: 'Let's give this a go.'"

Discusses historical piracy as "counterculture" that's been straightwashed and whitewashed

Did he feel responsibility to the fan community? - "As opposed to responsibility, it feels more like relief—that people feel seen and they feel good about it and they liked what we did. And so it feels like, Okay, somebody's out there and wants the show. The makeup of the writers room looks a lot like the makeup of the fan base. So as long as we're true to our stories in the writers room, I think we just feel excited that there's somebody waiting on the other end to enjoy it."

Paste Magazine - Oct 26, 2023 - with Tara Bennett - Link

Discusses whether fandom expectations felt weighty - "I think particularly for this season, that "bury your gays" thing… I didn't want to end on a downbeat for Ed and Stede. We did that in the first season. I like that there's a lot of different flavors. It's even a little melancholy because the Republic of Pirates got blown up. But there's still more good things."

Discusses production and plotting - "I wanted to start at the Republic of Pirates this season and end at the Republic of Pirates. And I knew I wanted the Republic of Pirates to be destroyed, ultimately. Within that, we are making a one-hour show on a half hour budget, on a half hour schedule."

Discusses planning the ending - "In terms of ending this season, it all felt right just in talking through it when we were in the room. It felt pretty intuitive. When you get to the third act of the story, things kind of settle in. There's gonna be a funeral. We always knew we wanted a wedding at the end of the second season. And I knew that I wanted Stede and Ed to start an inn together. So once you have those beats, it's kind of locked in."

Discusses Izzy's arc - "It's kind of a strange arc in that I knew we were going to put him through all these things, and I knew he would ultimately die. But I think him becoming a father figure to Ed in the last episode didn't really dawn on us until we were breaking the last episode. Asking what would this man say to Ed at the end because they've been together through everything? He went from a troubled and downtrodden employee to a jilted lover to a discarded employee, to someone that is just trying to find his footing again—no pun intended—to actually becoming this guy's parental figure on some level. And he's one person who kind of raised Ed right, because Blackbeard usually kills his parental figures. So, it felt right and it felt like that's how the mentor dies. The mentor in a story usually dies in the second act and then our hero has to go on and try to do it without them. It felt like the right journey for Izzy and a gratifying one for Con."

On leaving open for S3 - "I don't think it was a very hard thing to do. I think it was more that I felt a responsibility to leave Ed and Stede in a good place, at least for now. It's not gonna go well. They're not going to run a business well. Ed's too much of a talker. Stede can't focus. It's gonna be challenging."

Vulture - Oct 28, 2023 - with Sophie Brookover - Link

Discussing Izzy as a "father figure" and his S2 send-off being a priority

Meaning of piracy - "...what our pirates stand for is a life of belonging to something larger than they are in the face of a crushing, slightly fascist normalcy."

Re: Con O'Neill & Izzy's death - "I had to tell him about halfway through the season"

Third season about the work of a relationship between still damaged main characters

Discusses middles as about change and transitions, and wanting characters to change instead of reset, have them experience permanent consequences

About the final scene - "...Ed and Stede as the parents kind of watching the kids take the ship. Frenchie's the captain now..."

Objective of the crew - "...have had terrible things happen to them at the hands of colonial forces, so they want some payback. Party, plunder, and payback — the three P's."

Metro Weekly - Nov 1, 2023 - with Randy Shulman - Link

Discusses historical premise of S1 and easing into the romance

Discusses S2 genre - "In the second season, it was great because we know it's a romance and we can lead with that. It's a workplace show essentially. I wanted it to be more in the vein of early episodes of Grey's Anatomy or something where there are all these relationships on those shows. That's what you’re following — relationships and friendships that are taking place in a hospital, procedural. That's Grey's Anatomy. This is less procedural for the pirate stuff — and you need the pirate stuff."

Discusses not being into pirates - "But I'm like you. I'm not a big pirate person. In general, it's a big creaky genre that's hard to budge" + "Pirates of the Caribbean, those movies are great. That's not necessarily what I hunger to see, but in that genre, it's great. You're not going to beat that, especially on something that's lower budget. We've seen a lot of this stuff, so it's fun to take it then and don't do any of that stuff."

Discusses adapting historical piracy - "You don't want to see them punch down. You don't want to see them do terrible things to people who don't deserve it, which is not what they really did. So, in the show's world, I think piracy is like a stand-in for something. I think it's a stand-in for being an iconoclast and an outsider and queer in some ways and just different." + "Yeah, I mean, the British are there to be Stormtroopers, or Nazis in an Indiana Jones movie. I mean, they're in there to die essentially."

Discusses diversity staffing

Discusses performative masculinity

Discusses Izzy's death, happy endings, and openness to S3

[ghuleh-witch]

Fandom: Ghost Rating: Teen Warnings: GHOVIE SPOILERS, references to death and grief Relationships: Copia x GN Reader Characters: Copia, GN Reader, unnamed Sister of Sin Additional Tags: gender neutral reader, comfort fic, slight dirty talk, no beta Chapter Word Count: 970 Summary: Copia is getting fitted for his new uniform and is having doubts about his promotion. Author’s Note: Ignore that the cover image is the cardinal uniform, I'm trying to make this part as spoiler-free as possible. Also, apologies for any spelling or grammar errors. I won't be posting this to Ao3 until after the ghovie is done airing in theaters.

He was being fitted for his new uniform when you walked into your shared chambers.

In the middle of the living room, he stood on a step stool in front of a mirror while a Sister of Sin knelt on the ground behind him pinning the hem of his trousers legs. You’d seen the woman before. She always did Copia’s tailoring, and it seemed now was no different. From your angle, the uniform looked similar to the black suits he wore as a cardinal—sleek, soft, and formfitting. You took the time to run your eyes over his backside, admiring the dips and curves that the fabric seemed to cling to before realizing that Copia’s eyes were on you in the mirror.

“Do you like what you see, il mio tesoro?” He asked, turning his head slightly to look at you.

You walked forward and around the stepstool to his front and gasped audibly. His uniform was tailored to perfection. The black, sparkling clerical collar sat at the base of his throat. On the sharply pointed lapels of his jacket were large rubies surrounded by small, gleaming onyx gems. The chains that hung from them led to an onyx-encrusted grucifix with a small ruby pendant hanging from the bottom. It was different from anything he wore before, but you could see the subtle nods to his prior outfits.

“Oh my god,” you said. You looked him up and down and marveled over the magnificent man in front of you. “You look amazing!”

A slight blush crossed his cheeks as he looked down at you. “Thank you, amore,” he said looking back at himself in the mirror. “It’s quite different from what I wore as Papa. But also not…” He was silent for a moment—lost deep in his own thoughts. You knew he replayed the events that led him here. You were at the hotel waiting for him to finish the show the night Sister Imperator passed. Swiss called you to tell you what happened and how you needed to get down to the venue right away. You knew you’d never forget how he looked when you found him sitting on a bench behind the Forum. He was still in shock; his paints streaked and smeared from crying and his red sparkling jacket was discarded on the seat next to him. Your heart broke for him. What should have been the best night of his life had become the worst. 

He told you about the letter Sister left him that named him head of the clergy. It wasn’t what he wanted though. You knew if he could continue on as Papa he would, but Copia had come to terms that his time on stage was over and that his purpose was now to help bring the dawn of the new era for the Ministry. You watched as he shifted his weight nervously on the stool and you felt your heartbreak for him all over again. 

“Sorella, can you give us a minute?” Copia asked as the sister returned her pins to the pin cushion on her wrist.

“No problem Pa—I mean Frater,” she said. Her face flushed slightly from the accidental slip-up. She bowed her head and walked out the front door of the apartment. 

Once the door had closed with a soft click, Copia carefully stepped off the stool and sighed. “I can’t do this,” he confessed.

“What are you talking about?” You asked brow furrowed with concern. 

“This,” he said, gesturing to his outfit and sighing. “I can’t lead the clergy. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m an entertainer. I’m a singer. I can’t do what she did.” 

“Baby,” you said gently as you stepped closer and cupped his face between your hands. His painted eyes were downcast and there was a slight tremble to his lip. “You can do this. I know change is scary. All this is scary for me too, but change is inevitable. We all must go through it. You, me, the whole ministry, and all the Ghost fans—We are all experiencing this change together. You are not alone in this, I promise. I will be at your side through it all.  If Sister…If your mother didn’t believe you could do this she wouldn’t have named you Frater Imperator.”

“Sì, I know,” he sighed. “Can’t blame a guy for being nervous though.”

“I know, I know,” you replied. Your hands left his cheeks and smoothed the lapels of his jacket. “If it helps, you look hot as fuck in the new uniform though.”

Copia chuckled as his arms encircled you and pulled you closer. “Thank you, amore. It does help.” He pressed a kiss to your lips, the paint of his upper lip now smeared slightly. His hands ran down your sides before they came to rest on your hips. “Wanna show me how hot this getup makes me?” He smirked.

You couldn’t help but smile as every filthy thought crossed your mind. You looked him up and down, noticing the growing bulge in his already tight pants. “I would, but we probably shouldn’t ruin these clothes just yet. They’re not even officially done,” you said as you glanced down at the colorful pins lining the fabric around his ankles. “I don’t want to mess up all that poor sister’s hard work.”

He let out an exergated groan. “Fine,” he said before he smiled at you. “But you owe me. I need to celebrate becoming Frater somehow.” 

“Oh once this is finished and you have a spare set, I fully plan on letting you bend me over the closest service and ravish me while wearing this.” You smiled and leaned up to kiss him. “Come on, let’s get this fitting finished up. I have a couple ideas of how we can celebrate once you’re done.”

[bbcphile]

In Memory of Kiah

cw/tw: death, medical assistance in dying

If you’re wondering why I kind of disappeared from the Mysterious Lotus Casebook tag and stopped posted WIP Wednesday things, here’s the explanation: One of my closest friends, who has been dying progressively and increasingly painfully over the last two years, told me about 3 weeks ago that they were going to pursue medical assistance in dying because it is legal where they live. It was originally scheduled for the end of July, then moved up to the end of June, and then on Monday, they moved it to Wednesday (yesterday), because their life was agony and they couldn’t wait any longer.

I’m lucky that I had enough advanced notice that I was able to say goodbye–both by sending them a message telling them in detail how much they’ve meant to me and thanking them for everything, and then in one last phone call the night before–so I’m glad they knew how much I loved them and that I could be there for them emotionally, even though I couldn’t physically be there for the end itself, because they live too far away. We met on Tumblr through the chronic illness community because we share the same genetic connective tissue disorder and many of its comorbidities, and I will always be so, so grateful to Tumblr for bringing us together.

I wanted to post about them here because it just felt wrong to keep going like nothing had happened, and because I wanted to do something to pay tribute to how good a person they were and how much I miss them. So, some words about Kiah: 

Kiah was one of the kindest, funniest, intellectually curious, loving, and fiercely protective people I have ever met. I loved that we could talk about anything, including the terror of living in a failing body or how to come to terms with being disabled when you were always an overcommitted overachiever who defined yourself on external metrics of success, analyze media together during watch parties, and laugh together about literally anything (including during our last conversation, where we were both bawling our eyes out, but also somehow laughing about how absurd it is that you can’t really cry hard and talk at the same time and how that seems like a real design flaw). We didn’t share any fandoms, but we still had fun sharing details about our blorbos and fandom activities: I loved hearing about their cosplay adventures, and they always wanted to keep up to date on the metas I was writing. Even once they went blind and couldn’t read my metas on tumblr anymore because it wouldn’t work with their screenreader, they had me send them Google doc versions so their computer could read my posts to them because they didn’t want to miss any of my analyses. And when they were too sick to listen to the full posts, they asked for summaries because they still wanted to keep up as much as they could. 

They were always so caring and compassionate: when they first called to tell me in January that they were going to do medical assistance in dying, and after I had told them I understood and supported them and we’d talked about how they felt about it, they asked me how I was. I had told them that while I was heartbroken, I would handle it, because I didn’t want to make them feel responsible for comforting me when they had their hands full with processing everything and feeling their own grief. They said that while they appreciated my not wanting to make it harder on them, they didn’t want me to feel like I had to be ok in front of them, because they wanted to comfort me and support me even in this if they could, since they didn’t have that much time left to be there for me and they wanted to make it count. (yeah, I’m sobbing right now.)

None of those descriptions could even begin to do justice to how much they meant to me, but I hope this anecdote will:

I couldn’t be with them at the end because I’m a country and an opposite coast away, but I hated the idea of not being able to say goodbye in person or hold their hand if they were scared during the injection. So I played piano and imagined they could hear it.

Most of you probably won’t know what that means or why it would be a big deal. Here’s why:

I used to be a musician. Music was my life and my most important means of self-expression, and was absolutely going to be my career. But in high school and college, an extensive series of very traumatic things happened that made me essentially have to give up performing. For the better part of the last 18 years, literally up until I sat down to play for Kiah, even just the idea of performing for someone or a neighbor overhearing me play was triggering enough that I would have a full-blown panic attack and dissociate so badly I would literally go from concert pianist level ability to mostly forgetting how to read music and having to count ledger lines. But my desire to do something so that maybe, just maybe, I could make Kiah’s final moments better apparently trumped my trauma, because I was able to do it. I had wanted to play some Rachmaninoff, Brahms, or Chopin, but apparently those are still too closely tied to Events and I started to have skill loss issues again (fucking dissociative amnesia), so I switched to a piece I had played long ago enough that it was reliably in my mind and fingers (and that I could sight-read if I forgot it partway through). 

And I played it.

I hope, somehow, they were able to hear it.

I also recorded it.

And I’m going to share it here.

It kind of feels like serving my heart up on a platter, but that feels kind of appropriate for this tribute to them. 

I think they’d be happy, knowing that I’m “doing it scared,” as Tumblr recommends, and that my attempt to give them the biggest gift of love and support I could think of, somehow, even if just temporarily, gave music back to me.

Also, I think they’d get a kick out of the fact that you can hear me giggle a little at one point in the recording when the sheet music falls on my hands, both because it’s a great middle finger to perfectionism, but also because laughing through the tears (and yeah, I was crying while playing this) is very much a chronic illness and disability thing, and feels like a good metaphor for much of the last few months.

So. All that to say:

Kiah, I love you. I miss you so much already.

Here’s Robert D. Vandall’s “Lakeside Retreat.”

[goodluckclove]

How I Critique Writing (A Loose Collection of Tips)

Someone asked me for insights into my methodology when it comes to giving feedback on writing and I realized I had way more than I could say in a reasonable amount of private messages. Are you someone who I've spoken to about their writing? Did someone send you their work and you don't know how to respond? Maybe this will help? Based on how people react I feel like it might be controversial but it seems to work.

When someone sends me their writing, no matter the size, subject or genre, I:

Take it seriously. It's a generational epic about the Vietnam war and its effects. It's a cute, young adult romance. It's Zim and Dib from Invader Zim realizing they've always been in love with each other. All of these things can be written with earnestness, strength, honesty and skill. It's fucking hard to write and if someone writes a single sentence that wouldn't otherwise exist its worth holding in your hands and examining with the same eye as if you were taking an interesting book off the shelf.

Respond with curiosity. It's common for critiques to follow a theme of ambiguous disdain. This doesn't work. Delete this. Bad. No. Gross. Guess what? That's not helpful. If you got that feedback, even if you followed it, you wouldn't be thrilled about it. Oftentimes you can take a line that makes you want to say Bad and ask something else. What is this supposed to express? What were you trying to do here? Am I supposed to feel happy/sad/uncertain when I read this? Curiosity can reframe something that you don't think works as a reader and turn it into an opportunity for the writer to look inward and solve their own problem. They might explain what they were trying to do, and if you were to say that it didn't pan out for you they're way more likely to tweak things themselves and feel like they still have control over their project.

Give comments. I've started giving more in-depth comments on the writing people give me depending on how anxious they are about it. If you're a pretty confident writer I'll give a summary of what I gained and what I was left wondering, what I thought and what I felt, what associations it made me think of in terms of tone and other forms of media - stuff like that. For newer writers, especially those who are far more doubting of their own abilities, I go buck wild. And in my opinion notes should be less like Good! I like this! Wow! Nice! (What are you, grading my book report? No thanks), and more like what you think when you're reading a book you're truly invested in. Make jokes about the characters (Not mean ones. I will send bugs to you in the mail.), chart exact lines that provoke physical reactions, even a small one. Can you imagine reading someone treat your work like it has its own fandom on Tumblr? You can do that for someone else.

Fucking have some fucking awareness of the fact that it might not be for you and that doesn't mean it's bad. I'm angry about this one considering the novel a friend sent me last night that they've been too terrified to try and post online, despite it being fucking brilliant. I'll try and calm down. Listen - you read what you like. I mainly read literary and experimental fiction, some poetry, horror and some sci-fi. Not a lot of genre fiction. But I will always be down to read someone's high fantasy story, because even though I don't really like fantasy I know what the good ones sound like. I've forced myself to gain a sense of what someone else would like, even if I don't like it. And I can still critique it. If I'm a builder and I see a house that's painted a shade of green I find sinful for a home (i.e. mint), I can look past that and focus on the state of the walls and the stability of the foundation. You aren't a reviewer, man. You are neither Siskel, nor Ebert. They write for readers, you write for writers. So you don't like historical fiction? Cool, man. Congrats. If someone trusts you enough to give you some to read and critique, you should still do so objectively. If you give it an automatic F because you wouldn't buy it, then you are legally a stinky little trash man. That's just the law.

Ask them what they liked to write and what was the hardest. There's apparently a weird trend on online writer communities that say there are specific rules that all writers need to follow. This is not true. It just isn't. If the dialogue in a story you read is weak, and the writer says they hate writing dialogue and really struggle with it, maybe tell them they don't have to use it. You might change their entire life.

RESPOND WITH CURIOSITY. You see the Ask games where people try and get more detail on the WIP of certain authors. If you have a WIP and I ask you a worldbuilding question that doesn't relate to the direct plot of the story as it exists now, I bet you'd like to talk about it. If I ask if you were inspired by a certain tone or movie, you might know the work I was talking about and feel happy. Or you might not know it, look it up, and feel inspired. I don't think people realize that a critique of new/unfinished writing is not a one-and-done exchange. You are taking part in an isolated process in a way few other people on the planet will. It's not homework. It's. Not. Homework. We spend so much of our time alone just fiddling our hands and making our magic, and in instances like these we share something in one of the ultimate forms of artistic trust. They're taking you into a world that hasn't fully formed yet. Is it cool? Can you tell me about it? Can they?

Be nice. Storytime, friends. In the way early 2010s, there was something on the internet called sporking. It was pretty much a line by line roast of someone's writing - typically fanfic. And I hate to say this, but I read a lot of it. I was 13, somehow untreated and overmedicated, and I was miserable constantly. Just cold in my chest. At one point I had the chance to critique a stranger's story - probably another child - and I essentially mocked the whole thing. They ended up deleting the story off the website. I cannot begin to describe to you the shame I feel about doing this, even ten years later. It burns in my heart and makes me sick to my stomach. If you are a serious writer, especially a young writer, and you insult another writer's craft to their face just as they're getting started - you will regret it. I promise you that. You will think about holding something alive and full of potential in your hands and squeezing your fists until it is just flecks of meat and crushed bone. It will haunt you. Maybe only a little, but constantly and for the rest of your life. So don't do it.

Wow what a grim note to leave on! That's essentially my philosophy on writing critique, do with it what you will. Want to send me some writing to receive this kind of excessive treatment? Cool! I have an email in my pinned post and I'll do that! I'm also down to chat if anyone wants to send me asks or DMs on writing/writing struggles/publishing tips.

[thecooler]

Magnetar

You are a mature student at the University of Ooo. You tell people that you resent the term mature student, because, in your own words, it makes you sound like an “old fart.” People respond by telling you that your whole everything makes you sound like an old fart.

Fandom: Adventure Time

Pairing: Simon/Betty

Additional Tags: POV First Person, POV Second Person, Grief/Mourning, Alternate Universes

Word Count: 3,368

AO3 Mirror

Simon Petrikov

You are a mature student at the University of Ooo. You tell people that you resent the term mature student, because, in your own words, it makes you sound like an “old fart.” People respond by telling you that your whole everything makes you sound like an old fart. Regardless of your linguistic preferences, though, you, Simon Petrikov, are living in a college dorm about thirty years and change after you last expected to be.

It’s just you in the room. Last time you were in dorms, you had this wad of a roommate named David, who left his laundry on your side of the room and ate your ramen packets without asking. You’d often told your fiancée, Betty, about David. She always giggled at the disdainful lilt your voice would take when you said his name— David, like you might say the name of your least favorite grade school teacher, or your weirdest ex. David wasn’t your weirdest ex, though, that was a different guy, though his name was also David, which Betty always had a good laugh over the first time you told her.

Betty is coming over later tonight, after you’re done with classes. You love her very much. You’ve been seeing each other for what feels like forever.

You pull a pair of matched socks out of your drawers and slide them on, then adjust your bow tie. You look in the mirror, and for a moment, you see a flash of blue. You blink, and find it’s just yourself staring back. Your hair’s started to grey. Betty thinks it looks good on you.

Betty Grof

The school library has always been something of a safe haven for me. In elementary school, being weird meant that I didn’t keep friends for long, and the librarians were always terribly fond of me. They’d give me little tasks to do, like wiping down tables with a cloth or putting a book or two back if I was good. I relished in these small favors. I’ve always yearned to be useful.

In high school, I managed to make friends, because high school is when people who are ahead of the game realize that being weird and being cool are basically synonyms. And some people still give you grief, but when you have friends, it’s a hell of a lot easier to ignore those people. I didn’t need to spend time in the library, then, to avoid my own loneliness. But I returned anyway, because I found the scent of books and the old, dusty carpet in my hometown’s old library to be a comfort. When I turned sixteen, the director of the library took pity on me and gave me a job. By the time I made my way to University, I was already well on my way to building myself a decent resume.

I don’t remember how I got this particular gig, and it doesn’t really matter.

All that matters is that in this life, this is the library where I met Simon Petrikov.

He’s inevitable, a cosmic force that I feel myself drawn to in every universe. He was a bit older, when I met him here, in his first semester. He was looking for an old volume from Kant. He’s always stubborn— he paced around for a good hour before he asked me for help. When he did, I looked at him and smiled and said, “Are you saying you kant find it?” and he’d laughed way more than the joke called for. He always laughs like that at my jokes, like he thinks I’m the most brilliant person to ever walk the earth. Like he’s never once looked in a mirror.

Simon Petrikov

Your first class is at eight am and all the way across campus. You often joke about how it’s fine, because you could use the cardio and the regular sleep schedule. But you always end up leaving ten minutes late if no one’s pushing you out the door, and you don’t think you’ve ever once jogged willingly in your life. You walk at a regular pace across campus, and you’ll get there when you get there. You don’t usually miss much in the first five minutes anyway, though you don’t love the glare your professor shoots you when you creak open the old, heavy wood door.

You sit in your usual spot and listen to the lecture, but it all sort of starts to blend together. You’re suddenly quite tired, and you can feel your eyelids drooping when shuffling starts around you. With a start, you realize it’s time to head to your next class. You blink and stand up suddenly, stumbling when vertigo gets the better of you. A young man you don’t recognize rests a steadying hand on your shoulder and says, “Come on, Simon, I’ve got you,” and his blue eyes look rather sad.

He’s young, you think, too young to be here, until he’s not. You blink, and he has a beard and a chest tattoo peeking out from under the collar of his tank top. You swear that wasn’t there before. “Simon?” he says again, his brow furrowing. You don’t remember telling him your name.

You look at this young man, and you find yourself at a loss for words. You recognize in his gaze a familiar sense of prolonged grief. You’ve never met him, but somehow you think you’ve known him your whole life, or at least his.

“Are you okay, man?”

You nod, slowly, and it doesn’t seem to convince him. “Betty’s coming over tonight,” you say, “I must have  gotten distracted thinking about it.”

Betty Grof

Once, when we were a lot younger, and before the crown changed everything, Simon and I went hiking together. Usually, when we went on excursions, they were meticulously planned. He had every step of our journey plotted out on a spreadsheet or a numbered list, the creation of which was usually his favorite part of the whole thing. Which wasn’t to say he disliked the excursion— more so that he really liked making lists and spreadsheets.

But we’d gone without this time. I worried it was because I teased him about it, even though he knew it was good-natured, or at least I’m pretty sure he knew. I didn’t think he was actually upset, because Simon always wore his feelings on his sleeve, and when he was worried, he got this crease between his eyebrows. On such occasions, I’d kiss his cheeks until he relented and forgave me, for which I was declared a menace to society. So I don’t know exactly why he decided to forgo the spreadsheet this time, but he refused to make one, even when I tried to nudge him to in the hours before we left.

So we went off into the bush on the outskirts of Seattle, near a farm that some friend of Simon’s owned. We had two backpacks full of trail mix and a sleeping bag, but no tent, because Simon said that he’d been orienteering since he was old enough to walk, and he’d get us out of the bush before we needed to sleep.

Naturally, then, we did not make it out of the forest in time. Instead, we found a nice, open clearing, and we lay down on the grass together and looked at the stars. Simon was fidgeting with his shirt sleeves.

I said, “It’s really okay, Simon. You know I don’t mind a little roughin’ it,” and I waggled my eyebrows. It wasn’t really an innuendo, but I’d never been one to miss an opportunity for a double-entente, no matter how half-baked. I meant it, too. Laying under the stars next to the Simon Petrikov was basically a dream, even after five years of dating. I think it’d been five years. Time is different here, it’s hard to tell. Hard to remember how time moves for mortals.

He turned on his side and he looked at me. Back then, before Evergreen’s crown took root in his mind, his eyes were a deep, thoughtful brown. He said, “You would really tell me when I’ve got a bad idea?”

I turned over and smiled, “Would it stop you if I did?”

And he’d closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, and breathed, “No.”

Above, the cosmos shone down, ambivalent to us. It would be hundreds of years yet until we tried to make it ours, and in doing so, fell apart.

Simon Petrikov

You walk to your next class with the unfamiliar old friend. He says he shares the class with you, though you don’t think he seems like the Anthropology type. He pats you on the shoulder and laughs at pretty much everything you say, even when you aren’t making a joke. This feels to you like condescension, but you can’t detect anything other than earnestness in the boy’s face. He looks to be in his early-to-mid twenties, but his eyes are much older.

Your daughter, Marceline, joins you. She has a guitar strapped to her back and you know from experience she isn’t above busting it out in class if she thinks it’ll make the situation funny. Her girlfriend, Bonnie, walks beside her. These are two more people you’ve known for impossibly long, and yet you struggle to pin down any specific memories associated with them. It’s as though your mind is a blank slate, with information slowly being accumulated atop it. Marceline doesn’t look like you, and you don’t think she looks like any of your exes, either. You wonder how the two of you met, then, but you know this is not something you can ask.

She looks back across the hall at you, and you abruptly realize that you’ve stopped walking. You’re staring at her, with her hand in Bonnie’s back pocket, and you feel light— happy. But you don’t have the context for these emotions. Your mind feels like an unorganized mess, as though a cosmic being has reached in and shuffled things around, removed some with the intent to put it back, only she forgot. And now nothing makes sense to you, even things that should be second nature.

Marceline’s brow furrows and her lips tug down into a frown. She presses her palm against the small of Bonnie’s back and whispers something to her, before walking back towards Simon while the other girl makes her way towards class. Somewhere along the way, the boy vanished, like as soon as he was out of your line of sight, he ceased to exist. You tense with the realization that the world around you feels more empty than it ought to be.

Marceline places a hand on your shoulder and meets your eyes. In the reflection of her deep brown irises, you see yourself with ragged white hair, and then one of you blinks, and it’s you again. “Simon,” she says carefully, biting her bottom lip and tapping a finger against your shoulder. She takes what feels like several minutes to decide what she’s going to say, though it can’t be more than thirty seconds.

“Is this about–?”

Betty Grof

There’s a reality where we got the crown (we get it in most of them, one way or another), but it wasn’t you who put it on. Simon took it out and came up behind me and popped it on my head. I remember hearing him say boop and start to laugh, and then the universe exploded around me. This, in my current state, says very little. It’s difficult for me to conceptualize what it would have felt like for my mortal brain, but I think that it was agony. It was, to my best approximation, something like having your skull split open, and then unceremoniously pouring the steaming hot knowledge of the cosmos inside.

Which is to say it was probably about as overwhelming for Simon as it was for me.

But when Simon put on the crown, in that first reality we endured together (for him. There is no first for me, nor a last, they are all as one, but it was the first reality my mortal flesh experiences, and so it is easier to describe it as the first) he only lost me. He thought, at the time, that the madness drove me away, and it took him a thousand years to learn the reality of the situation.

Perhaps it is a mercy, then, that in the reality where I don the crown first, I know immediately what happened to my Simon. The crown slips off my head, and I find him, body entombed in ice, save his head, which lolls lifeless and heavy to one side.

There’s more that happens after that, but I don’t stay long.

Simon Petrikov

Eventually, you’re able to convince Marceline that you’re quite alright, but maybe you could stand to eat soon. The two of you cut class, which makes you momentarily feel like a bit of a wild child. The University has a hall of student-run food outlets, and they vary from quite bad to decent. You are partial to the Greek-themed shop, because the chicken isn’t dry and you’ve always been a fan of tzatziki. You often keep a big tub of it in your fridge, when you aren’t living on campus.

You eat with Marceline, and she tells you that she and Bonnie are doing well, that she thinks Bonnie will graduate at the end of next semester but she’s probably going to take another year. She doesn’t mention what either of them are studying. You think that you should remember that. Why don’t you remember that? 

She asks you if you have any plans for tonight, and you tell her you have a date. Something tells you that you shouldn’t mention who it’s with, and she doesn’t pry, but she does give you a look that feels very sad, and you don’t like how it makes you feel.

Betty Grof

Simon always planned what we were going to do. While he did that, I managed time. Those sorts of things tended to get away from him. He’d get all wrapped up in research, in exploring every last inch of our ventures, and suddenly, he’d look up and it’d be night already. I always knew exactly what time it was. I learned to read the stars and the trajectory of the sun when I was young, and I’d always found comfort in the notion that no matter where I was in the world, I’d know when I was.

Now, time bends strangely around me, and there is equally no future to plan nor past to recall. Everything is happening, has happened, and will never happen. It is not something that my mortal mind was born to conceive of, though I suppose I’m well past that now.

I know all our realities, Simon. I know each of our beginnings and our ends. There are worlds where we die with our hands clasped together in the face of nuclear destruction. There are worlds where you go on without me, and others where I go on without you. There are realities where we linger together for decades, until the inevitability of death pulls us slowly and together into her arms. I spend more time than I should ruminating on these realities.

Simon Petrikov

Sometime after lunch, you end up back in your dorm room. You think you like it here, more so than you’ve liked a lot of your apartments. For one thing, you have easy access to a good library, though the University’s fiction section, as is often the case, leaves something to be desired. You have room for an armchair and a nice standing lamp. You often fall asleep in that chair, and your back does not thank you for it.

There will be none of that tonight, though, because again, you have a date.

You already look good— you always look good— but you like to dress up. Betty usually dresses comfortably, though she’ll put on her best if the situation calls for it, but a regular Friday evening date does not. She’ll be here in a sweater and slacks, and you’ll think she’s the most beautiful thing in the universe. You know, at this point, very little about the universe. You think you know quite a bit, but you’re mistaken. It’s better that way. Our mortal brains aren’t designed to comprehend such concepts. I would know.

Regardless of how good you currently look (very), you strip out of your blazer and button-down. Your tie is a clip-on, which you wouldn’t be caught dead with on a date. Betty doesn’t understand why it matters if they basically look the same, and doesn’t seem to get it no matter how many times you emphasize that it’s the principle of the matter. But that’s fine; you’re dressing up for you, and a little bit for Betty, but mostly for you.

In the end, you aren’t ready until two minutes before your date’s supposed to start. You’ve put on another nearly identical button-down which you insist is your nice one, as well as some nice black slacks and a matching suit jacket. Your tie is properly tied and not clipped on, like some sort of amateur. You fiddle with it in the mirror until you hear a knock on the door, right on time.

You glance away, and out of the corner of your eye, you once again see a flash of blue, but it’s gone when you whip your head back around. You inhale deeply, and exhale slowly through your nose.

I knock again.

You answer.

???

We’re in your dorm room. You’re looking at me, in that lovelorn way you always wore on date nights. It’s like warmth found a home in your eyes, like I can see the burning of your heart through them. You invite me inside and tell me you’ve put the kettle on for tea. You got the English breakfast tea I like.

We’re holding hands under the stars. The dewy grass seeps through clothing that’s too thin for the midnight chill as we sleep under the cold and unforgiving night sky. We’ll survive, but our aging bodies won’t thank us, and when we develop colds a week from now, we know who to blame.

We’re old together. Wrinkles tug at your face in a way I think is terribly handsome, but which you often fuss over. Day by day, simple things grow harder, and when your eyesight starts to go, you cup my face in your hands and whisper, “I don’t know what I’ll do if I can’t see your beautiful face.” I reassure you that you have lived without the sight before and will again, but this doesn’t soothe you. I wish it would.

We’re a thousand years beyond a time we should have ever been allowed to live, and I’m sacrificing my mind to restore yours. I never have a single doubt that you would do the same.

I know now that this is true, I’ve seen it come to fruition, in another life.

The bomb goes off while we lay, hand in hand.

You die cradled in my arms.

We’re in the dorm again, and you’re looking at me with an expression I cannot comprehend. I’ve known you for countless lifetimes, and yet there are still times where you perplex me.

“I don’t know where you end,” I say, and without missing a beat, you return, “I don’t know where I begin.”

Our realities, everything we are, is a web of entanglement from which neither of us can escape, no matter how powerful we become. My end is your beginning, my beginning your end, and everything in between those times, folding in upon each other in an incomprehensible cacophony of misery. I know all, and yet, at times even I struggle to understand it.

You are there, and then you are not.

I can always reach you, in a way, if I so choose. But we will never be as we once were. I know too much now.

Were I capable, I would weep for the loss.

[sukibenders]

TBOSAS movie is proving time and time again that as long the character is a handsome white man, he can get away with anything or be babified of any wrongdoing. Like the number of people that I've seen go out of their way to try and justify Snow's actions, not even just young Snow anymore at this point but he's largely where this happens, using the term "he was just misunderstood" and acting as if his trauma was an excuse is mind-blowing. Did he go through traumatic stuff? Yes, but acting as if that excuses many of his actions, specifically for young Snow because there's no way in hell that mindset will work even a fraction with his older self (but people still try), is false and a mindset that needs to be stopped. Like I can't help but think about the way he views the people of the districts already in TBOSAS, seeing them and anything about them as animals rather than people, and how that mindset even falls on to the Covey and Lucy Gray herself. When reading some of their scenes together he comes off so passive aggressive when she talks about her plight, but it's largely because he treats her like an object---no, a PRIZE to be won and owned (thinking back to how, before they were even together romantically and where she didn't owe him shit, he still saw her as "his girl" and would get obsessive over the fact that others gravitated to her in a way he didn't like).

I'm not saying that it's wrong to find the bad guy attractive, it's not and Snow is very handsome, I will admit that. But just because he got a face card doesn't mean that should be basis for justifying every horrendous act he's done. And also, he's eighteen years old, why are people acting like he doesn't know his right from his left? He knows exactly what he's doing, from the books where his thoughts are literally laid out for us, to the movie itself. Though not as clear cut sometimes as the books, there are plenty scenes that let you know who he is (I think back to that classroom scene where Gaul is asking them questions, and Sejanus rightfully calls them out on their bs, but Snow uses his outrage and turns it into a way to make the Games better, completely going against Sejanus' original point).

What's even more sinister is some in the fandom going as far as to blame Lucy Gray for all of Snow's problems by saying "oh, but if she had just heard him out then maybe he wouldn't have been so heartbroken", as if she should had further risked her life and wellbeing to adhere to this man's needs when he was out to harm her or the fact that him having his heartbroken is justification for everything else he did before and after. There are many other examples of this, but it set a precedent for a very glaring problem in fandom spaces where the female character, especially if they are woc, is always to blame for the male, usually white, character's bad actions and that if they just listened to them and heard them out then so on and so on. Reminds me very much of the treatment of Alina in both show and books fandom spaces and babifying of the Darkling's actions by putting all the blame on her (never mind the fact that he's the cause for so much of her trauma, he's pretty after all *this was sarcasm*).

It's been a minute since I've seen the movie, so my example may be a little fuzzy, but my point still stands. You can like these characters and find them attractive, that's fine and normal. But where problems arise is when you try to paint over their bad acts because you thirst after them and/or proceed to place blame on the female characters, especially if they are woc, as a scapegoat.

[soupbtch]

I’ve been having a really tough time parsing through my feelings about this because they keep changing. It’s kind of silly, too, when you put it under a microscope. All love is, I guess. That’s what this is. And I’ve had a lifelong track record of loving things too hard. Not to say that it isn’t always worth it, though it’s hard to feel that way in the immediate aftermath of things coming to an end before you’re ready.

(Putting the rest of this under the cut because it is entirely too long and personal and self-indulgent. Yes, this is about the OFMD cancellation.)

I’m not a superstitious person, with the exception of talking about things I’m excited about. If I’m waiting for an offer letter from a new job, or to hear from someone, something to happen, I have the constant feeling that if I open my mouth and express my excitement out loud, put my intentions out into the world with my own breath and teeth, push it out with my tongue, it means the thing won’t happen. My words will shift the air and it will bite back. There is shaky, empirical evidence for this. I know that, logically. In my heart, though, the fear of vulnerability lives on. Of being known and seen and disappointed.

The last several years, I got better at guarding my heart. I built strong walls. I’ve kept myself from touching things I know will draw me in too deeply, avoided looking at things I knew would break me in half. Preemptive measures to avoid potential heartbreak. (A large reason for this, I’m sure now, was the long-term (bad) relationship I was in until 7 months ago, which demanded all of my attention and emotions to maintain to the point that anything more pressing to my heart would cause the whole house of cards to collapse around me.) I kept my distance from OFMD until I was sure it wasn’t queerbaiting, after season 1 finished airing. And even as I watched it and immediately after, I kept my mouth shut about wanting a season 2. I wasn’t back on tumblr at the time (another instance of me keeping myself from touching things that will pull me in with crushing force). I only had one real life friend to talk to about the show, and even then, I held back. Only let the words whisper out of the corner of my mouth, eyes shifting. I didn’t want to let myself slip. I didn’t want to show my heart for fear of it getting ripped out. I kept the walls up.

When the season 2 trailer dropped, I felt it creeping in, despite my best efforts. I craved it. With an affable hand, it was tapping on the gate to my heart that had been shut since I left the depths of fandoms in 2013. My bad relationship had ended just a few months prior to this. I was free-falling. Vulnerable.

Season 2 reached for my heart. Tentatively, I opened the gate. I invited it in. I dove towards it. I rejoined tumblr. The brainrot set in not shortly after, a familiar friend. The truth is, it could have been anything. It could have been Good Omens, had I opened the gate a few months earlier. It could have been fucking Doctor Who again. But it wasn’t. It was the gay pirates, the middle-aged men, the nonbinary actor playing a nonbinary character, the people of color, the music, the writing, the story, the actors.

Stede and Ed were experiencing identity crises and so was I. One of the reasons my ex cited for dumping me was that he wasn’t attracted to me anymore after the years of me slowly discovering I was queer and nonbinary while we were together. After I had top surgery, he didn’t love me anymore. He broke up with me during pride month. My identity was coming into focus gradually as the foothold slipped out from under me. Simultaneously, on my TV screen, I see Stede realize he’s in love with Ed. I see Ed lose his grip when his foothold slips out from under him, too; his shaky, fresh identity and bravery free-falling around him under the words “I should have let the English kill you,” spat at him for being soft and vulnerable. I see him lose himself in suicidal patterns, familiar. I feel unlovable, and I hear Ed echo my thoughts. I see him come back from the ledge, healing slowly. I see budding happiness. I see love and self-acceptance. I see the crew experiencing so much queer joy it makes my heart ache. I see the fandom experiencing queer joy around me, too. I experience unbridled queer joy for the first time in my life.

I start reading fanfiction again (a door I kept firmly shut and locked for a decade). I want more, to chase the high of queer joy as I read Ed and Stede finding each other and falling in love again and again, in a million different universes. I deepen my connections. I’m finding my foothold again. I form tentative friendships with other people in the fandom. We excitedly post about the season 3 renewal announcement we’re certain is coming. We laugh. We count down the hours together every day for the first week and a half of 2024. A shared delusion, maybe, but all signs were pointing north, and we were traveling there together. I stand up a little straighter. I feel less afraid of being vulnerable. I feel a little bit more lovable.

I let myself hope. I get excited, confident. I talk about the show and the impending renewal announcement with my own mouth and teeth and breath to anyone who will listen. I push the words out with my tongue as the walls around my heart are reduced to rubble against my ribcage. My heart beats defiantly for the whole world to hear.

We know what happens next. I’m free-falling again. It’s silly, right? I wrote all this out to help myself process my emotions, why the cancellation hit me like a wrecking ball, and I feel sillier for it. I feel silly for my heart being so large, for feeling things too much. I feel silly for letting my guard down and letting myself get hurt. For loving things too hard with no plan of how to let go. After a lifetime of this, I should know better.

This show doesn’t define who I am; I already had a pretty firm grasp on that before I ever hit play on the pilot. It’s not life or death. But it helped me find my tender heart again, the me from 10 years ago, the fearless one. It made me fearless again. It made me love again. And at the end of the day, season 3 or no, that means the most to me, and I am endlessly thankful for this heartbreak.

If we’ve never talked before, hi, I’m Danny. Thanks for reading this. I love y’all, crazy little gay people in my phone. I will keep talking about OFMD until the day I die. Hold my hand, let’s be fearless together.

[takeyourcyanide]

Threshold

AO3

Fandom: Soul Eater

Characters: Franken Stein, Spirit Albarn

Word Count: 1 199

Tags: mentions of marie mjolnir, hurt no comfort, angst, madness, psychosis, mentions of suicide, hallucinations, delusions, minor violence, short, emotional hurt, hurt, neglect

Summary: Essentially, Stein is struggling with the madness, contacts Spirit, and Spirit could not be less unbothered.

Note: A mixture of two ideas I had, though they could likely be more thoroughly explored separately. Perhaps one day I will. For now, have this. Why not. I have some other ideas and if my brain will compute I’ll write them from hemiplegic migraines to spirit and Kami and such lplssss have mercy on me

I should likely sit on my works for a bit longer I did with brushstrokes though not by choice hm hm don’t have the brainpower or do I vsauce music ensues

Stein smashed his head down onto his keyboard, a tightening in his ribcage, in his body as the kishin he’d seen hunched over him, saliva dripping down and washing over Franken’s entirety - even blinding him, faded away and rushed forcefully into his vessel.

Jagged claws gripped and scratched at his kidneys, his liver, his heart, his meninges, moving them thoughtlessly around and wringing them out, pushing them against his flesh, his lungs banging frantically against the bones which confined them in a desperate bid to escape.

He wrapped his arms around his torso, pushing into his side and abdomen occasionally, hand pawing at his chest, fingers running up and down his pained spine, as a groan left his lips.

The noise was not his own- it couldn’t have been. Not a singular word or thought or sound was his anymore, was it? He was corroding, eroding, being pushed from out of the body he was originally kept prisoner in, as the vessel was far from large enough for more than one inhabitant; it was at capacity- had been, the more and more the kishin, and perhaps the wandering eyes, crawled and festered within his form.

He wanted them out. *He* wanted out, but on his own terms. On his own terms.

The shell was a prison, a cell, the layers of skin, muscle, and bone all bars, sure- but he wanted out on his own terms, not to be forced out by the very thing that forced him inside in the first place.

He closed his eyes, opened them, cocking his raising head to the side. The blue light of his monitor shot pins and needles into his optic nerves, the human-bodied figure scurrying across his ceiling, the breathing walls and floor shooting pins and needles into his brain.

The racing, dissected and scrambled tumbleweed of thoughts that would be crammed inside of his skull, the words that would bubble effervescently and die just as quickly on his tongue, any sounds he’d happened to make were far from his. He knew this from the very moment he registered just how they’d narrate every move and breath of his utilizing what was supposedly his voice- the voice he couldn’t even quite recognize as being his. It was always someone else’s, or was to be. And it was. It was now. This was the reason for its unfamiliarity, for their unfamiliarity.

He was being actively replaced by the hoard of static within his head, by the physical embodiment of madness itself, and by everything he’d sworn to ward off; replaced for the sole sake of psychological torture. Sadism. Experimentation. To push him to the very brink and maniacally laugh, daintily wiping a stray tear with a cruel finger, as he jumped willingly off.

“Stein?” Spirit groggily grumbled in a rather annoyed tone. “Do you know what time it is?”

“N… no.”

He wasn’t even fully aware of the fact that he’d even so much as picked up his cellphone, much less what time it was.

“It’s 03:37 in the morning. I have to get up for work in two hours.”

“Work… I forgot.”

“Yeah, I’m not surprised. Why’d you call me?”

Stein shuffled out of his chair, legs strangely weak and tingling. He moved to sit directly beside his desk, leaning and resting against its back leg and against the wall.

“I.. uh…… Spirit…… uhm..

……

Uhm……”

“Come on already, man, I’m tired.” He could hear the muffled snapping of Spirit’s fingers in the background, his left eye twitching and spasming.

“They’re- I don’t know what to do. I don’t want them inside of the body, I want them out, but don’t know how to get them out… uh.. they’re-they’re.. uh…. I don’t know what to-“

Albarn loudly and flippantly yawned. “Are you aware of how ridiculous you sound right now?”

“…Uhm-“

“Stein,” he released an exasperated sigh. “Look. You know it’s just the madness, right? I know you do. And you know there’s nothing to do here, nothing’s inside of you, you know that, I know that, everyone knows that. Marie’s moving in with you in, like, a day or two anyway, she can maybe do some shit- I don’t know. In the meantime, just take it easy. And keep an eye on the clock, by the way. Some of us still work,” he chuckled. “I’m gonna go now-“

“But-“

“Bye.”

The sound of an ending line buzzed in his ear, grating and clear. He chucked his phone somewhere off to the side, an unpleasant feeling within him twisting and chewing on his viscera, as he scanned the room. He gasped audibly once something indescribable leaped at him, faces appearing and disappearing before him. Perhaps it was better that that had happened once Spirit had already hung up.

It’s not as though he was expecting to be taken seriously. But something stupid and desperate within him sure hoped he would be.

Should he call Marie? No. He’d be given precisely the same response, just coated in something sugary and sweet as to lessen the blow of confusion-induced panic, as to lessen the blow of the dissonance. She’d tenderly shush him over the speakers, but she wouldn’t help him. He was simply mad. No one would help him. And, to be fair, he didn’t even know what could possibly help or what could possibly be done. But still. No one was coming for him. They’d all say the same thing. He was simply and utterly out of his mind, or perhaps just “going through something.” And then they’d feel it appropriate to subsequently sweep him under the rug for someone whose problems crossed the threshold of “real” and “reality.”

“Stein…”

A faint whisper whipped gently by, and yet like a slap in the face, quite similarly to a gust of wind.

Stein glanced upward.

From the ceiling hung a noose, and from that noose hung what appeared to be a pallid, sickly-looking dead woman.

His eye twitched once more.

An obvious suggestion it was, perhaps even a bit of a threat. What better way to rid yourself of beings crowding your vessel than to obliterate yourself from existence completely? But isn’t that precisely what they want? Would they, then, proceed to steal his body, or would they discard it? If it was purely tormenting, they’d leave it to swing just barely back and forth from the burning grasp of a rope.

He had no desire to up and kill himself- it was precisely what they wanted. But what else was he to do? How do you evict such things from inside of you? Exorcism? But if no one believed him, if everyone was going to tell him it was simply the madness, no exorcism would be performed- and what *if* it was “only the madness”? He could hardly even consider it, but what if? If so, did he just have to live with the feeling, with the knowledge that they were inside of him, tampering with his organs, and implanting thoughts, speaking inside of his head? Did he have to live with being tortured day in and day out?

Yes.

Then, most importantly, did Stein possess the strength to be weak?

[thisiskatsblog]

Truth is important. I’ve just been reading about misinformation during elections and how to tackle it and it reminded me of everything that has happened in this fandom. Misinformation has been so rampant here. How would anyone be able to trust their minds and their instincts after that? I know some here find it disrespectful to actual victims of domestic abuse to call it gaslighting but I have been a victim of gaslighting in my personal life in the distant past and in my experience the way this fandom was made out to be insane to think certain things… has been as devastating as the gaslighting experienced in my personal life. I feel a strong and lasting connection to this fandom but to be very honest I am finding it more and more difficult to be a part of it. The hurt doesn’t fade, it becomes stronger, also because so many of the people I have met here and that I have loved have left for exactly this reason. It’s an unhealthy relationship.

I have stayed in it, by choice, because I feel that strong emotional connection, and on my own terms, with a lot of distance, to preserve my sanity and peace of mind. And because I somehow still believe that the truth always comes out. That isn’t a certainty though. And I might be naive. I allow myself to be. But on days like today when I really start thinking about it, I question myself. Again. Am I crazy for thinking this or that? Or am I sure of that and am I crazy to stay here, where I’m constantly made to question myself?