#ellisbarrow

[likehandlingroses]

Thomas 20 + 21

20) Household chore they hate the most

Thomas might be all or nothing—either he’s going to do them, and he’s going to do them well, or he’s not in the mood and they are all bad.

I also think anything someone else corrects him on becomes his least favorite for a period of 4-6 weeks—the inverse is also true, but less intense.

He takes things too personally for cooking to ever be a thing he enjoys, for instance, outside of the things he knows people like.

21) Their fondest childhood memory

I believe he has fond memories of doing things with his father—especially very young. I can see his father explaining clocks to him as if they were alive because that’s easily accessible to a small child, and Thomas always remembers that. Or going out shooting and the first time his dad trusted him to help with anything…those are things he genuinely values and carries with him.

I was trying to think of something that might have less baggage attached and I couldn’t :/

[chronotopes]

whats your merlin thesis bestie

HIIIII okay i was gonna answer this first thing in the morning but then i drank coffee and had a "cleaning the house" fever come over me so now here i am

there's major ways to fix merlin, but both of them depend on the same basic premise, which is a) merlin is a bitchass liberal, b) uther and gaius are terrible father figures shaping arthur and merlin respectively into versions of themselves, c) fuck the dragon all my homies hate the dragon, d) morgana did nothing wrong*

*morgana probably did things wrong but as a product of very real things that shaped her, including gaius and merlin willingly keeping her in the dark as to her own magic, and an ongoing double standard within the show where merlin is allowed to murder every single magic user that makes an attempt on arthur and uther's life, but the moment anyone is like "so what if we just offed uther, you know, the guy who committed genocide" merlin does a whole BUT KILLING PEOPLE IS WRONG!!! kind of thing and then goes on to do his fifteenth murder of the season

so the 'averting tragedy' way to fix merlin is to make these institutions (sons becoming their fathers, morgana devolving into Scary Woman Villainy, the enforced status quo of 'you have to not tell arthur about your magic, ever') not NONEXISTENT but CHALLENGEABLE, make it a show about young adults who are manipulated by adults more powerful than themselves, who are raised to believe in Tradition and Decorum and Waiting For Destiny but who are ultimately able to care for each other and (in merlin and morgana's case) the oppressed group they are literally a part of more than they care for this upbringing, and choose to fight for that rather than the demands of uther, gaius, and that motherfucking dragon. that's a show i'd sincerely enjoy watching!

the 'entrenching tragedy' way to fix merlin, on the other hand, is to keep all of these elements – the tragedy of every goddamn stupid choice merlin makes on that show – and make it intentional. i don't want to really air out my "everything i like is the same" disease, but make merlin a fullblown terezi pyrope archetype, someone who is practically a child who, by means of necessity and of what he's rewarded for doing, grows to embrace the warped justice of upholding an institution that hurts him and everyone he loves. empathize with morgana on a writing-level the way katie mcgrath was clearly very capable of doing - don't make her Less Violent, but make her violence a Comprehensible Choice, not just a “she’s evil and sexy now!!!” message to the audience. basically, consciously and at every point of the story, write merlin as a fullblown irrational protagonist, and when arthur gets merked and the golden age doesn't happen, make it a show about the failures of fantasy-metaphor-liberalism and about sons becoming their fathers in horrible ways, and about the fucking tragedy of merlin killing morgana when they should have been allies from the start. that's a show i'd enjoy watching too, one that leaves you as hollow and angry as merlin-the-show had, but in a way that comes from skilled writing rather than largely-not-very-good writing that sometimes does something heartbreakingly meaningful long enough for you to keep watching.

[oatflatwhite]

📥 What is your fave fic to receive comments/messages on?

answered <3 but i WILL say that the comments on to the harbormaster will always be top tier. something in the water in the downton abbey fandom i s2g

ask me some fic questions!

[fkyb]

#4

4: What was the last book you added to your tbr?

Fleur de tonnerre by Jean Teulé, it's about a french serial killer woman, havent gotten around to actually get it yet but it's next on my list

Thank you for the ask :)

[adamsvanrhijn]

here's my thing: if God is so far above us in understanding that there's some great cosmic reason for suffering that we can't comprehend (i.e., not "it's a test/to make you stronger/whatever), then God must be SO enlightened and above us, that he doesn't make ANY judgments or demands on us at all, for how can he possibly condemn us for our failure to understand, or refusal to follow him blindly? If he is truly Benevolent, and we are truly like ants to him..... Benevolent people don't torture and condemn ants for not paying homage to them. If they do, fuck 'em.

hashtag valid!!!!!

[euphonetic]

I feel like if there really were a 0% chance you would join a cult you would be really closed off from new experiences or other people. which is fine but not how most people live.

[madeline-kahn]

Downton Abbey (2019) ft. Red (Taylor’s Version) (insp)

for @ellisbarrow

[waistcoat35]

this one has to be dedicated to @ellisbarrow because it uses Taylor Swift and barris

[oldbookist]

tagged by @earthbound-in-doubt a while back upon which i promptly left this in the drafts and forgot about it...whoops

"Copy the first few lines of your last ten (I'm doing five) fics, note any fun observations, then tag a few more friends."

All WIPs to make it fun and because I just don't post that much.

Favourite hated omnibus rides—so slow, so stuffy, so old fashioned. France was so primitive compared to England. She had returned only to see her aging mother, and suspected this might be the last time.

A young married couple chatted animatedly beside her, leaning in close to each other. The girl was pretty, she saw with a quick glance, and the young man with shiny black hair looked at her like she held the stars in her eyes. She was dressed expensively, though a little gaudy. The daughter of some wealthy bourgeois, no doubt.

Goodness, how young these children marry nowadays, she thought.

1. A Favourite-centric drabble I have basically finished recently but haven't bothered to edit yet. Hopefully this will motivate me to just get it done…

Lesgle de Mieux walked aimlessly down the street with all his earthly possessions in a ragged carpetbag, save a chunk of bread he was slowly consuming. The bread wasn’t exactly his, but he’d taken it from Marguerite's flat before he left, figuring she at least owed him that much. Right now, he mused, the sky was shining, he had food and a little money, but none of these assets were guaranteed to last. It would probably be wise to find a roof for the night.

2. The “Lesgle gets a dog” fic I have been (not) working on forever. I am especially fond of this one but just have never prioritized actually finishing it. Maybe this year?

Combeferre squeezed the washcloth and rivulets of water ran down his face, down his wrists and forearms to permeate his rolled-up sleeves. It stuck his collar to his neck and dripped down the open front of his shirt, sudden trails of cold across his chest.

3. Possibly about the cholera epidemic, possibly porn. Who knows.

The museum trips had started as a way to stir the monotony of the cold concrete days, how it blanketed them like the hollow breath of the old radiator in their apartment, gray skies outside train windows and take-out boxes strewn around the kitchen table.

In the evenings, he watched Combeferre from across the room, face illuminated by the glow of his laptop, and Enjolras felt a strange sort of longing—not for him, precisely, but something of him, or something of them.

4. My only real modern au that may or may not ever see the light of day. I swear it was originally supposed to be fluffy museum dates :/

“Hey, thanks for coming, by the way,” Joly said from the driver’s seat. “I wouldn’t have asked except that Courfeyrac is going to need Bossuet’s help with Goldens today, so I don’t have anyone to help with the Yorkies.”

Four sets of beady black eyes blinked up at Grantaire from the crates.

“Of course it’s just my luck that they’re at the same time,” said Bossuet.

“Naturally.”

Grantaire grunted in response. Anything that you had to get up at 5:30 to do was not worth doing, in his opinion. But he owed Joly and Bossuet one—more than one, if he was being honest, and Joly had promised him that all he had to do was hold the Yorkies.

5. my Dog Show au. It is Terrible. It is Dreadful. It is Hilarious. One day I will inflict it on all of you.

@ellisbarrow @ranichi17 @baronmpontmercy @sinceremercy @marschallin if any of you like talking about writing

[oilan]

@alicedrawslesmis tagged me in this last selfie, lock screen, last song meme. Appropriate, since my lock screen is your Courfeyrac 😅

And I don’t really take selfies (my last one was in like September), so here’s one my husband took on a hike a couple weeks ago.

Tagging @oldbookist @ellisbarrow @shuang-hua @marschallin @sinceremercy if you want to

[whartonists]

@ellisbarrow tumblr will let me neither reply to nor message you but I think Ada moving in post-Mr Van Rhijn’s death was mentioned in 1.04? When they mention that he died about ten years previous.

[likehandlingroses]

Richard 14 + 17

14. How they did in school

Richard in school…he’s the kid who is always a pleasure to have in class, BUT for some reason, there’s always a prankster in the class—especially for teachers who the kids don’t like. The teacher never suspects Richard!! But it’s him every single time.

Academics-wise, I think he was bright—I could see him gravitating towards what he was naturally gifted at (I think he writes a good paper), and maybe not giving as much thought to the things that are difficult for him (not the best at memorizing facts). And he’s always just getting away with being a little lazy about certain things and a little unwilling to do the assignments on the teacher’s terms.

17. What they’d sing at karaoke

Anyone that he can grab onto a distinctive tone and get a laugh, he’ll do that. If we are talking contemporary to him-ish music he conceivably would have lived to hear—he’s a big fan of show tunes, I think Anything Goes is gonna be huge for him…You’re The Top—he can do Cole Porter, he can go for Ethel Merman…great either way

if he’s doing it today—he’ll do Britney, he’ll do Paris…ABBA is always a good time…

I honestly think in the right crowd he would do anything and commit to the bit

[chronotopes]

3. favorite line/scene

in standard "katia chrono topics" fashion, i reblogged an ask meme and forgot about it.

ground rule, i'm going to divide answers for fic into "al2rnia" and "not al2rnia", because it is my blog and i will be convoluted about it if i want to. thus, fav straightforwardly homestuck scene is the meteor era terezi/kanaya confrontations in the truth must dazzle gradually, just because writing both the pre- and post- retcon versions of it was a big breakthrough (if an unsubtle one in the excerpt below) for how i handled body language in fic!

You’ve never seen her with your eyes, same as Karkat, but you know enough from smells and sounds to fill in how she carries herself; perfectly self-possessed, so aware of her body, its signals, and its movements that she does not have to think about them to keep them in check.

All you have ever managed is a deliberate rigidity of form, desperately conscious control in place of genuine self-possession. A born-and-bred legislacerator in contrast with... someone who is much more than that, better than that, somebody who gets to kill and live past it. A swing of the chainsaw and flowery-violet blood, sunk into the meteor’s stones, and she still gets to be good. Loving an objectively insane light player so much it hurts and she gets to be loved in return with an ardent, tamed devotion (well – not tamed, but curbed; not tamed but… changed?) that you can’t think about too long.

You hate her for it sometimes.

in al2rnia, there's a lot of options because it's my baby, but one that comes to mind is the entire as-yet-unpublished prologue to aivide the epilogue (colloquially titled 'heartbreaking! the two worst women you've ever met have their first encounter'). it turns out i love writing deeply bastardly adult women, who would have guessed?

[oatflatwhite]

💻 Do you do research for your fics? What’s the deepest dive you’ve done?

the most research i've ever done was for to the harbormaster agsfdhasgfak mainly for the chapter about thomas and richard in york because i was like! i need them to go to the pub! what is the appropriate time for that! also i wanted them to get chocolate oranges but then realised it would be closed at night duh then i found out they used to do chocolate apples and yeah i looked all this up more than a year ago but it's still in my brain somehow!

generally though i only look up bits and pieces for a fic (like street names in LA, whether a coffee mug shaped like a frog really does exist, etc.) and vibe out the rest

ask me some fic questions!

[demisexualemmaswan]

@ellisbarrow getting mad about other people’s opinions of 19th century fashion?

it’s more likely than—actually this is pretty on par for the course

[adamsvanrhijn]

combeferre > ellisbarrow

links are going to be broken for a little while, but i'm working on it!