#i think it's just not my kind of tv. which makes sense bc i'm old now

[angelnovus]

okay so now that I've finished it, I can say that 1.) I do support the right to mediocre lesbian shows as much as mediocre straight shows but also 2.) first kill was poorly directed, and though it had some really fun scenes and world-building, it was really confused about what it wanted us to feel about monsters and monster-hunting.

netflix start hiring good writers and directors for your shows with lesbian and Black leads. i feel like they set up failure on purpose.

[thelovelybitten]

more loonatics headcanons / shenanigans...

i've been on such a binge watch of lu that I just need to post abt it okay leave me alone

BUT I'VE NOTICED THINGS !!! (this is s2 ep4) !! you kind of get an insight of what they all like to do and things they enjoy with these bedroom stills.

ACE:

obviously: likes carrots, cute lil bunny.

HIS LIL DOORMAT DJSNGJSDNJK

i couldn't zoom in enough to see what's on his monitor but you know he likes to watch shows before bed. relatable content.

the fact he's got two side tables as well gives me eating in his bed vibes but also he'd be clean abt it. i also think he'd be a big comic book reader. not sure what, but he would be. I'll let y'all decide.

speaking on that, there's a shelf with books on the far right so yeah. i think he'd also read manga bc of his anime complex. he may also keep some sort of CDs ? maybe vinyls ???

i know this man keeps katanas and a dartboard in his room.

he's a snowboarder !!!! THAT'S SO COOL. he must be a god bc this man is AGILE.

he's got a skyline view PHEWWWWW rich ass mf

also. an aquarium on his right (our left) which is so fun I wonder what kinds of marine life they'd keep!!!

I'm also not sure what the compartment behind his head is for but I think its a closed-off bookshelf or space for his knick-knacks. i also see a fireplace too but idk how logical that is lol

LEXI:

NOW WHY SHE SLEEPING IN A HAMMOCK WHEN THE GIRLIE COULD HAVE A QUEEN SIZED BED ??? she's quirky like that ig. whatever makes her comfy. (I know she'd upgrade, I just know. just bc she can sleep anywhere doesn't mean she's always comfortable.)

a phone/pager by her bed is so real

THE WALLPAPER IS BEACHY IT'S SO CUTE

she's a SKIIER AND A SURFER. WHAT CAN'T SHE DO. (seasickness who)

cabinet obvi for storage, idk why she'd have anything important in there besides old childhood items it's so high up???

lower shelves are for books and things maybe. or video games.

AND DO YOU SEE THE AQUARIUM ??? THIS CONFIRMS THAT LEXI AND ACE HAVE NEIGHBOURING BEDROOMS AND NO ONE CAN CHANGE MY MIND. there has to be some type of barrier/wall between the two tanks for privacy reasons but I'M DEAD GNFDGNDJKFNJDFNKHK MY BABIES

opposing skyline views so iconic... i know she takes mad insta pictures (or duck takes them) to get good sunset shots

i believe the items on the table are her laptop, a makeup bag andddd maybe a clutch purse? just a guess bc they're so tiny.

laptop makes sense. it'd be hard but she could still try to get an education on the side??? lots of work for a girl but she's a boss like that.

makeup for obvious reasons

clutch purse for nights out

SLAM:

THE WAY I'D BE SO SCARED FOR THAT WEIGHT TO DROP ON MY HEAD. SLAM IS A TROOPER WTF

I remember sumth abt that cylinder thingy on the left but I can't remember what it's for yet. will update when the ep comes.

MANS IS AN INTELLECTUAL !! those are all comic books (like ace, they bond) and language workbooks.

the poster of pizza is SO REAL OF HIM

there's a teeny tiny chute beside his door and I wonder what it's for. maybe it's a scanner? idk

light above his head is also...a choice.

i'd like to think that the things at the end of his bed are air purifiers and that slam has some sort of breathing issue when he goes to sleep. maybe he grinds his jaw or is a mouth breather;;;

computer for gaming tings and other endeavours

A WHOLE ASS TREADMILL YEAH BUDDY U STAY IN SHAPE.

i know this man doesn't have a WHOLE ASS DRUMSTICK IN HIS BED. but makes sense. he totally eats in bed BUT IS MESSY ABT IT. duck and lexi HATE IT IT'S NASTY HAHAH they ask him to switch his sheets and vacuum almost everyday

DUCK:

THIS MAN IS SO CONCEITED I CAN'T Y'ALL.

but like ace, he also has a tv by his bed I know he and lexi would watch romcoms together

K-DRAMAS???? SPECIFICALLY SINGLES INFERNO (only bc s3 just came out, it's on the brain) duck just boasts abt how he's better looking than all of the other males while lexi is very much about the relationships/drama

his little peek-a-boo window behind his head is so cute :"))))

I have no god damn clue what that thing is beside him on the left but I'm sure it's important

but he wears headphones to sleep !!! must need white noise or rain to sleep

control panel for his lights and other digitally controlled shit in his room

THIS MAN HAS SO MANY MAGAZINES AND NEWSPAPER ARTICLES ABOUT HIMSELF AND THE LOONATICS (but only bc he is in them, thank yew) I also think he'd carry a lot of fashion magazines too. things that are in. the second a fad ends he's done w it

I'm assuming this is an arcade game setup, but i think he'd love Mario kart :) him and tech love to battle on this but move it to the main room bc duck thinks tech is cheating bc "the screen is two small".

i know this man would sleep with mf silk sheets and a fleece comforter he's a bougie bitch

computer for obvious reasons

REV:

i had to include all four shots bc he is a sleepwalker/runner LOOK AT HOW CUTE HE IS ;U;

it looks like he sleeps in a casket-like bed (hence, the lid is open top centre) I believe he only has this open when he's awake so idk who forgot to close it. it needs to be closed so that when rev does actually get up and sleepwalks, he's contained. the last thing the loonatics want to wake up to is the house completely trashed bc rev had a dream he was running from something. so casket bed it was.

that's also why. he doesn't sleep with sheets. if he trips and falls oh lord. therefore he wears super warm pjs in the winter to not freeze to death

he's got a ton of books, rightfully so, I think he and tech would share this bookcase because it would have different manuals, blueprints and miscellaneous mechanical guides. robot guides. that too. i also think rev would be that person who re-reads his childhood books over and over again and not get sick of them ever

there is also a treadmill in this room I just know it

a tv as well. idk where, but I hc it's there.

TECH:

thanks for giving me nothing to work with here

I kind looked forward into the ep and there's a smidge of the bedroom in a frame but idk what the other shit could be

but I know his room is very clean. it's SPOTLESS. everything is organized and well put together.

I'm going to ignore the fact he suckles his thumb bc this man is 24 years old BYE

there's a whole bunch of ai robots in there to do anything he wants.

he is also the other loonatic who has their own bathroom. he only got it bc he won the straw draw. well, ace won technically, but gave it to tech bc he was the oldest and would keep it in the best shape. duck still hasn't forgiven him for it.

he shares it with lexi since she's the only lady in the house :) ain't no way she shares with the boys.

the others share the other bathroom. one more gets installed later but the other four are SOL

tech also has a nice walk-in closet

he needs to take melatonin b4 bed bc this man is noctournal

has drones scattered on shelves, ones he's built and ones he's collected from professors and other inventors

AAAAND THAT'S IT. THANKS FOR COMING TO ANOTHER TED TALK LOL I'MMA GO FINISH S2 XOXO

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 2/6/2024

some weeks it's really hard to come up with a snappy little bon mot to put here

listening

Barbarella, by a fuck of a lot of people. yes i DID watch this movie this week! this is the single catchiest theme song i have ever heard. i cannot link the actual opening credits scene bc tumblr will censor that shit SO fast. spotify

-

reading

Rebecca Roanhorse's Tread of Angels novella. this is an urban magic old west religious fantasy novella. VERY sangfielle friendsatthetable vibes, there's an old west mining town centered around the body of the demon Abbadon, which is being mined for its powerful properties. demons and angels have sort of interbred throughout the human population. there is some deeply nerdy catholic bullshit and i say that as someone who was in catholic school for fifteen years. actually let's just take Roanhorse's explanation

the setting and premise are not where the novella bites off way more than it can chew. the main character, a cardsharp, has a chanteuse sister being held accused of a murder and she's got 48hrs to prove her innocence. the time limit and general structure is good, and it uses its side characters wisely, there's just a fuck of a lot of them.

in general, this novella does not have the emotional room to make its emotional beats really count. for example, there was a second breakup with an ex after a night of passion that mostly just left me confused. more broadly, the main character has an oldest sister's selfsacrificing nature that has twisted into utter ruthlessness with regards to her sister, and i'm both impressed Roanhorse managed to convey that in so few pages and annoyed bc i really wanted to see more of that in way more detail. due to the nature of it being a novella, the series of escalating decisions she takes feel very jagged in their escalation. i hope that makes sense.

it's got really interesting ideas! i want to know more about the ideas! i wish this was a full book instead of a novella, so the ending hits a little better instead of a Well That Just Happened way. from this interview it seems Roanhorse also wanted it to be a full book, but it was sort of a "i need something short and sweet so i don't go insane while adapting my other book for TV" (which is very exciting!!!)

-

watching

really a bizarre set of films. extremely unemployed energy in this watchlist this week. largely composed of "what's on my letterboxed watchlist and also available for free on tubi, with brief forays into hulu"

Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons (2013, dir. Chow). loved the overall visual design of the antagonists and the monsters, did not overall love this movie. it is a solid martial arts showcase and the first twenty minutes with freshwater JAWS are the most tightly plotted. it kind of flounders (lol) after that. can't find a gif i like.

INU-OH (2021, dir. Yuasa) genuinely healed my heart a little i think. queer (complimentary, not queer in the western massachusetts housing coop way) feudal anime glam rock opera. i am sooooooo picky about bad dads in movies as a driving force but this really soothed my daddy issues. stuck the landing on both storytelling and visuals.

Barbarella (1968, dir. Vadim) WOW Jane Fonda was hot. this was both sillier and less porny than i was led to believe (if we ignore the softcore porn opening credits). however horny this movie was it was not brave enough to have some girl-on-girl action with barbarella and the evil empress, even though the evil empress never seems to actually learn her name and just calls her “pretty” or “pretty-pretty”. shoutout to the one fic on ao3 that rectifies this situation. certainly a piece of scifi history, i wish modern scifi was as brave with its theatrical set dressing, i think one viewing is good enough for me bc i cannot stop thinking about how all the women on set might have been treated.

john philip law popped up and i said out loud to my cat “hey i know him from cowboys”

Flower Drum Song (1961, dir. Koster) got conned into watching this by the hotvintagemen poll bc i wanted to see what james shigeta’s deal was, and if he did have a sort of ratpack sensibility as the propaganda described. he does! however this movie is unrelentingly awful. it is so so so slow. all of its comedy is racism-based. it feels like a three and a half hour two-VHS set instead of two hours. i like to think i have a stronger stomach for older media and am able to consider things as products of their times but this is my upper limit i think. one brief fleeting moment of cool production with this triple mirror effect

Dirty Dancing (1987, dir. Ardolino). we were trying to find something to watch on either peacock or hbo max, and when i said "oh i've never seen that" out loud my my best friend said "that's insane we're watching it". i did not hate this movie, but i feel like i missed some critical window of development in which i would have had to see this movie to really love it. i had sort of an abnormal high school experience and i am a smidge too old to relate to bildungsroman any more. but it was cute! it was fine! i think patrick swayze’s jawline could cut glass. this film was made after Roe v Wade (1973) and i feel like the backstreet abortion b-plot has done this interesting 180 from sort of a historical novelty to a real threat and terror again. fun!

that’s it for the watching section i promise

-

playing

im doing the thing where i play a game for ten minutes, put it down, and then pick it back up again, which is probably not terrific for the health of my elderly switch. but whatever. what have i been up to in breath of the wild?

not a ton of progress map-wise, but did make it up to zora’s domain.

i was planning on the camel being the first divine beast, to get that over with bc i had such a devil of a time in my last playthrough, but the thing about the desert is it’s really far away.

dicked around the dueling peaks stables for a while without managing to defeat that guardian and unlock that shrine. so it goes. i think i really need an actual guardian shield from one of the minor tests of strength shrines instead of a normie shield. this line and sidequest made me laugh— it wasn’t terribly hard to find this little cache but it was a tricky bit of gliding.

didn’t realize the horses don’t have that much vertical threat perception, just like real horses. this little band walked right under me and i failed to glide down and land perfectly on someone’s back, which did freak them all out.

i think my new favorite place in a game is this little grove clinging to the side of the dueling peaks. it felt very peaceful and cozy. nothing can get me up there and there’s more than enough room to make a little campfire and cook dinner and not roll off the mountain in a sleeping bag the middle of the night.

also fully kitted out my house bc i had a very successful mining expedition along dueling peaks. EXTREMELY forgiving and generous secondary opening area imo, thanks game

-

making

i started this glitch sampler pattern by tumblr's own mathysphere (not @'d bc this is a fuck of a long post) at the beginning of the pandemic, june 2020, while thinking "eh let's give this friends at the table counterweight thing a shot" got most of the way through both counterweight and this piece, put it down bc i was so annoyed with all the confetti stitches (random one-off stitches of colors that aren't anywhere near other stitches of the same color. i think i resorted to fraychek at several points in the rover square) and then put it down so long i had to throw it out during the great moth debacle, bc it was partly eaten.

here's what it will look like finished, and a link to buy the pattern

i think this time around i am a much better technical stitcher (the first crack at this i didn't know the loop method of starting, or pin stitches, or really any alternate endings except running the tail under the last few stitches). i usually stitch with three strands bc i like the look, but i think the loop method with three strands is overly fiddly. i have not picked up cross stitch since mmmm 2021, but any mistakes or unevenness in this will simply contribute to the glitch effect. i'm going to go back and backstitch the four "frames" and key portions of the sampler to highlight portions of the glitches (eg the yellow and blue centers of the spiral galaxy, the interior of the eclipse, perhaps add an antenna to the rover).

still not my tidiest back, but hey. it's going to sit in a frame and not have any sort of friction or extra force applied to it ever

i am really looking forward to framing this in a deep shadowbox, i have an idea about how to mat it with little melty cutouts for the drips at the bottom.

[randomkidstarfic]

hey, same anon from before. btw this is a very genuine question and i mean no ill will from it

but why do you release chapters so slow when you have so many written? like i just saw a note abt how you were debating wether to post weekly or bi-weekly and i was like “do they mean twice a week or once every two weeks"

bc tbh it doesn’t rly make sense to me to have all these chapters already written and then only posting once every two weeks

bc to me it just kinda seems like you’re like, dragging it out for some reason. but i’m curious to know if there is some kind of logic to it

like, if you were to post once every two weeks that could easily take another year, assuming you are writing more. and the fic is like, almost two years old

once again, this is a genuine question that i’ve honestly been confused about a lot over the years and i’m not at all trying to be rude but i can see how it can come across that way

Hello again Anon,

I don't think 'drag out' is quite the right phrase, but doing the weekly updates does extend the posting life of the story. I like updating weekly. It gives me times to keep writing the story at a consistent pace so I can guarantee updates. BoM isn't finished right now so I'm not going to post every single chapter, and it's not going to be finished in 34 days so I'm not going to post a chapter everyday. With weekly updates I don't have the pressure of writing it, I can continue at my own leisurely pace.

I also personally always liked weekly or bi-weekly or any sort of predictable or consistent update schedule as a reader. It gives people something to look forward to and sit down and read every week the same way a show on TV only releases once a week even though the entire season is done.

Also, on a somewhat more selfish level, I really love getting comments on my fics, and in my experience when I post whole multi-chapter fics at once I get almost none, which becomes really discouraging.

Those are my personal reasons, and I'm sure a lot of authors who write ahead of updates have a lot of the same.

Hope that all makes sense! Let me know if you have any more questions.

[lookingforcactus]

Live action Yu Yu Hakusho liveblog: ep 1

This is so much fun. Nostalgia time. 13 year old me is LIVING

Warning for like whole ep 1 spoilers and all

Yusuke and Botan look great which I already knew going in from the gifset that informed me this show exists lol, but it's delightful, bc the characters in this show aren't necessarily the easiest to translate to live action

Botan is adorable. Her hair is adorable. And I'm delighted to see that Yusuke's hair is the Correct amount of Poufy

Plot twist: Kuwabara hot. He looks great actually. Translated nonliterally compared to Yusuke but v well. The actor is selling me on it too, fun casting

Kuwabara was always hard for me to watch in the original bc he set off my vicarious embarrassment soo hard. Glad they're less committed to making him the constant source of painful comedic relief here lol

KOENMA PACIFIER REVEAL I LOVE IT

Laughed out loud for real tbh

Idk if I'm a little disappointed he's not a baby but like live action would make that ridic hard to do in a lot of ways so I don't blame them at all. He's in his adult form which makes sense. Still damn glad they kept the pacifier it is RUINING his dignity and I love it

I also don't blame them for cutting the flying oar effects. A lil sad but the initial transition to Reikai looked great so they're forgiven

Yusuke. "No thanks." I knew it was coming and the delivery still made me laugh out loud. Just dropped it in there. Yusuke I love you please see a therapist

Fight scenes are v creative and p epic

Seriously they do a really good job of making Yusuke's fighting style as a human believable, fun to watch, and effective. He rly does come off as just kind of a natural fighting genius (with practice ofc)

Sakyo in ep 1? Weird but I'm not opposed. The wavy hair is kinda freaking me out though ngl. Smoothness was just such his THING in the show it's distracting

Really liked Yusuke's mom's introduction (not that it was flattering to her as a character) but I wish they'd done more with her in the rest of the ep. Her power hug at the end is great tho

Show's slowing down a bit but it's fine I'm still having fun, the nostalgia power will get me through basically whatever

NO PUU!!!! This is tragic but I Do understand this as an adaptation choice. Reluctantly. Tragic tho.

Bug under guy's face effect EPICALLY creepy

That said I keep watching the motion of him and the other demons in this ep and thinking about Hayao Miyazaki said about the disgusting cruelty of using effects technology to make the scary scary inhuman monsters just fucking. look and move like disabled ppl

Seriously I keep seeing flashes of the appearance and movements of people I know with developmental disabilities (particularly this one guy I know with cerebral palsy but also I've worked in care work for disabled adults and just kind of a lot of people in general) and. I hate this. Especially as a person who DOES have a (nonvisible) developmental disability myself. This is such a rising trend in horror/sff/fantasy tv/movies/video games and I hate everything about it. Hayao Miyazaki was right this kind of attitude and shit really is "an insult to life itself"

Anyway fight scene cool

I love Keiko btw. Her crying and blaming herself! Her face when Yusuke comes back! Also Yusuke "I'm not gonna die just bc you talked shit" pffft jackass (affectionate)

DEMON CREW CAMEO AT THE END

Kurama looks pretty good. Goki actually looks wayyyy better than he did in the anime imho, which I did not see coming.

Effects on Kurama and Hiei's fighting looks surprisingly great. They pulled off the rose whip way better than I thought they would, and did some great wirework with Hiei's speed and fighting style

That said....Hiei...oof. That hair was always gonna be a Challenge but I think their ambition here did uh. not play off rip. Hopefully it'll look better later on

[technocraticgaylord]

i'm very conflicted as to how i feel about the percy jackson tv series. i love it. but.

it is SO rushed, to the point it is beyond a doubt proving detrimental to the characters. id like to preface this by saying that 1- i love the actors, i think the casting was great, and that the writing is okay, but disneys 8 episode format just isn't working here. and, 2- ive been a grover defender since i first read the books, so i am gonna focus on him (but TRUST that the other characters are being nerfed just as hard).

i mean, we just don't get to flesh out grovers relationship with percy at all. let alone with annabeth. ik we're only two episodes in, so i wont judge too hard, but GOD. wtf is going on man. the charm of his character in the books is kind of lost to the (to be blunt) shitty writing. we don't get to the fullest extent get to see how he awkwardly fumbles, trying and failing to lie to his best friend. we don't get to see what being a satyr means to him, how that affects all of his relationship dynamics in and outside of camp. (his interactions with dionysus?? hello??)

again, only 3 eps in so maybe they'll touch on some stuff in flashbacks later, but, man. (we're already to the elevator scene. so I'm not going to get my hopes up too high.) anyways, not getting to see how he interacts with the adults at camp is killing me. that's why i liked his character so much reading the books. he was a (twenty-eight/) fourteen-year-old kid. he looked old for a sixth grader, from percys perspective. but we hear Mr d say that he was still so small for his age, he was a late bloomer in woodland magic, and that he was probably too immature for a second quest, that he should wait a little longer to try to get a seeker's license.

"i cant fail in my duties again- do you know what that would mean for me?"

i mean come on? i like them touching on how uncle Ferdinand's death affected grover in the show. i actually appreciated the subtlety of it. they show how he's sensitive and emotional, but has to try to be strong for the sake of keeping the quest on track. (which is why i think him being older than percy and Annabeth was somewhat necessary.)

but that does not change the fact that the shows still not doing great things for the character that we know. he's just.. different now? if that makes any sense.

anyways stopping here for now because if i don't ill talk forever. if anyone wants to discuss this with me (to refute or to agree) id be more than willing to elaborate, as this is just an over-emotional fangirl tangent i went on bc i got distracted while writing a whump fic LOL

[lonewolflink]

hi! before reading your fic I’d only ever watched one hockey match at my local mall (there’s an ice rink) and it shook me for real. after reading your fic my interest in hockey has resurfaced, but I have no idea where to start. any suggestions?

HELLO!!! i'm sorry this response is so damn late; it's been hectic af around here (here being...my life).

i am genuinely so excited that you're interested in getting into hockey. it is such a fun sport to be a fan of.

*warning*: this is a super long post, because i wanted to answer you thoroughly and make a list of useful resources in case anyone else reading wsc also wanted to get into watching hockey and wasn't sure where to start.

generally speaking, my recommendation is to familiarize yourself with the basic rules of the game, and then maybe pick a team to start following. being a fan is most fun once you start getting invested in the players on the team and know their stories, their connection to the community, etc.

—basic rules of the game—

there are some more (and less) useful guides online to getting into watching hockey. i'll link you a few; peruse at your leisure (and note that some of these posts are pretty old; they're still overall solid though).

(1) i think this short guide is might be the best place to start. it's just some guy on his own personal blog, i think, but that (weirdly) is what makes it a better take than more "official" sports journalism outlets.

(2) this is a really helpful (and fairly short) guide to the different zones of the ice and what they're called, and some other basic concepts of the game. i think it's directed at parents of kids who are starting to play hockey, but still super useful!

(3) this guide doesn't give a ton of detail but it's solid re: concrete basic steps to take to get into hockey.

(4) parts of this guide are outdated (e.g. brendan shanahan no longer runs the department of player safety and is instead the president of the toronto maple leafs) and it's a little pretentious in the way hockey fans can sometimes be, but it gives a sense of the flavor of being a fan of this sport i think.

(5) more on this below, but 2024 began with a bang, as the Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL) began it's inaugural (!) season. there are some differences between the NHL and the PWHL, some of which are covered here and here. if you're interested in watching women's hockey, that'll be useful!

—picking a team and how to watch—

[note: i am assuming you live in north america. if you do not, some of this might not apply, e.g. picking a favorite team based on geographic proximity]

if you're starting at a baseline of 0 hockey knowledge, you should probably know the names of three hockey leagues: the National Hockey League (NHL, the best men's league in the world), the American Hockey League (AHL, the NHL's minor league where their young prospects usually play for a few years before transitioning to the majors), and the aforementioned Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL, literally brand new as of a month ago).

NHL Recommendations

—the NHL is a great place to start for watching hockey, largely because it has the best players in the world so the level of play is extremely high and entertaining, and it has some really great personalities in the game right now. i watch the NHL regularly. —if you live in an area that already has an NHL team (or at least one within 2 hours of driving), i'd recommend starting out as a fan of that team. this is bc part of sports culture is to support your home/local team, but also because that gives you more opportunities to see your favorite team play in person. here's a list of all the NHL teams. —watching the NHL on TV or your computer is actually kind of annoying, because the league is run by a bunch of idiots in its bureaucracy. you can watch most games (but for some reason not all of them) if you have ESPN+. here's the nhl's official guide for how/where to watch. —i am a poor grad student so i use other...completely...legal...means to stream NHL games online. they are, as i just said, completely legal (...). but um. nonetheless, if you want to know how to find and use these means...maybe just...shoot me a private message. —if you don't have geographic proximity to any of the NHL teams, there are a few ways to pick a team to follow. some classics:

1. as you learn about hockey and watch some games, you might find yourself starting to have a favorite player. you can start with their team! [message me or send another ask if you want some recs for players to look into!]

2. pick the jersey you think is coolest. it's how kids pick their favorite teams half the time, so why not us? here's a link to an article that that ranks the current home jerseys of teams. i STRONGLY disagree with these rankings, but the photos of the jerseys are high quality so you can see them well. you can also see each team's away jersey and third/alternate jersey designs here.

3. pick a fun, up and coming team to follow. some notes on this: —for example, if i were you and could pick any team, i would probably not pick my very own favs the washington capitals. they were one of the dominant teams of the last 15 or so years because our captain is the greatest goalscorer of all time. however, he is now 38 (ancient by athlete standards) and the team is on its decline. —by contrast, a team like the edmonton oilers is super exciting to watch; they're considered current championship contenders because they have by far the best player in the world, connor mcdavid (aka "McJesus"). they're kind of a heart attack to watch because they have insane offense but not amazing defense, so they score a lot and get scored on a lot. they're a team with amazing history (wayne gretzky's dynasty oilers in the 80s), but were TERRIBLE for decades until mcdavid came around. he's trying to bring the franchise back to glory from the pathetic ashes it turned into. —then there's teams like the montreal canadiens or buffalo sabres, who have been really bad the last while but drafted a ton of great young players who are on the verge of becoming superstars. they'll probably not make the playoffs this year (and maybe not next year) but they'll be on the cusp soon and getting into a journey like that with a young team early on is super fun. —in general, teams i'd stay away from being a fan of, if you have a choice:

-washington capitals/pittsburgh penguins/st. louis blues (formerly top teams in the league, now on the decline) -toronto maple leafs (the most tortured fans (and also somehow the most annoying and entitled), don't join their ranks) -arizona coyotes/columbus blue jackets (disaster franchises (sorry fans of those teams! it's true!!) traditionally have been poorly run) -chicago blackhawks (they do have the next great superstar in connor bedard, but they've had some really messed up scandals in their organization and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth) -new york rangers/islanders (unless you're from nyc...don't)

—recs for current good teams if you want to come in when they're already hot, they're all pretty fun teams tbh: -carolina hurricanes -colorado avalanche (recent champions) -new jersey devils -florida panthers -seattle kraken -vancouver canucks -vegas golden knights (recent champions) -edmonton oilers

—recs for up and coming young teams that will break out in the next 1-4 seasons, i think: -anaheim ducks -buffalo sabres -detroit red wings -montreal canadiens (would be my pick, i low key love them) -ottawa senators

AHL Recommendations

it can be super fun to follow an AHL team if you happen to live near one. tickets to AHL games are SUPER cheap, and the arenas are smaller and more intimate. you get to see some really talented players early in their career before they become superstars, and this can also help you pick a favorite player to follow (and thereby, later, a favorite nhl team) for their career! i love going to AHL games, and did that a lot in high school.

here's the list of AHL teams.

PWHL Recommendations

tragically, i have been so busy in 2024 so far that i haven't been able to get into the PWHL yet. however, i'd really like to, once i have a bit more time.

because the league is in its infancy, there are only six teams: -boston -minnesota -montreal -new york -ottawa -toronto

they don't currently have team names outside of the cities, but i think those are coming next season. for myself, i already know i'm going to be a montreal fan (i lived there for 5 years, and montreal's hockey culture is in my opinion the best in the world).

the pwhl is great for many reasons. -first of all, women athletes. let's fucking go!!! -second of all, we get things like two fiancees playing on the same team (on the same line!!) and celebrating together when they score a goal. -third of all, women's hockey has traditionally had a different ruleset from men's hockey to discourage the more...violent aspects of the sport. but the PWHL...has been honestly violent af so far, at least from the highlights i've seen. could be that hitting is still against the rules, but seems like the refs don't really give a shit, so the games are bloodthirsty lol -fourth, and perhaps most importantly, it is super easy and convenient to watch the PWHL. they stream every (!) game on their youtube channel for free!

for more info on the season schedule and how to watch, look here.

also, speaking generally, i'll probably be reblogging some pwhl content on tumblr so you can peep some of the people i'm reblogging and poke around until you find a team or player you like! :)

OK THAT'S IT SORRY FOR THIS LONG ASS POST I JUST WANTED TO ACTUALLY DO YOUR QUESTION JUSTICE, HOPEFULLY I DID AN OKAY JOB!! PLEASE ENJOY YOUR HOCKEY JOURNEY!!!!!!!!!! <3

[vintagelacerosette]

Interview tag game ✨️

Made by the sensational Lemon @depressedstressedlemonzest & I was also tagged by these dazzling sweethearts Evie @energievie Willow @ian-galagher Jay @surviving-maybe Nosho @creepkinginc Lyle @milkovetti Bri @y0itsbri Carolie @shinygalaxyperson thanks so much 🥰

What are some movie/tv quotes that you quote often? My brain has blanked lol but one thing I noticed I was sing YMCA to my niece, then I immediately when to Do you really wanna hurt me to Stayin Alive & this is all from the Sherk karaoke sing along from the 1st movie lmao

What is your favourite flower?

All flowers bring me joy but one i think is super cool is the bleeding heart

If you were in Avatar the Last Airbender what element would you want to bend? Earth, fire, water or air? I've always found controlling wind appealing even tho I'm a fire sign haha but prob makes sense bc my moon is an air sign

What was your first job? Retail at the Christmas section 🎄

What is your favorite breakfast?

There's this meal called the Alex Breakfast as this local cafe which has sundried tomato, sauteed mushroom, pesto risoni on toast & it's sooo yuuumm

What's a meal from childhood that you love?

Crunchy rice a dish my dad made where you cook old rice in butter & salt to your liking. Then slow cook to make a crunchy crust on the bottom. I made it recently for nostalgia & boy did it hit the spot 😋

What's your favorite joke to tell?

Can not think of any haha but here's one from a nye cracker I got.

What music do planets like to listen to?

Neptunes ba dum tis 🥁

What's your favorite animal to see at the zoo?

Kangaroos, red panda & penguins

What's your go to quick meal to cook/make at home?

Crispy omelette

What's your go to meal to cook someone to impress them?

Brazo de Mercedes which is a traditional Filipino meringue roll with a condescend milk custard filling. It's making the meringue rolls which is impressive haha i accidentally made it hc i was trying to make marshmallow instead but it turned out to be this 😆

What's something you want to do better?

Get more active, sticking to plans, driving & at chatting in discord group chats. (I can find it a bit overwhelming with so many ppl 😅)

If you're working do you like your job?

I'm a month & a bit in my new job & am enjoying it so far & my team is great, but there are some tough transactions that get me nervous to do on my own

Do you collect anything? What?

I've started to collect these cute sanrio blindbox toys, anime figures, crystals, hardcover books, fanfic on google drive, art supplies, eyeshadow palettes, plush toys & pins.

Newest collection 😆

If you were trapped in a kids tv show, what show would you be okay with being trapped in?

Ohh maybe same as Lyle with Steven Universe just so aesthetically pleasing & I'd so be friends with Steven! Or maybe Avatar as a bender or Cardcaptors bc I could be wearing cute outfits made by Tomoyo with a magic staff wand

An adults tv show?

Ohh this one was a hard one! Maybe Reign for the fashion, Roswell New Mexico to be friends with the pod squard or maybr in Firefly

What kind of job did you want as a child?

I have an amazing memory of going on the train for the 1st time & asking who drove the train & was told it was the train driver! I then exclaimed "I wanna be a train driver" My mum protest bc they apparently didn't make a lot of money lol. Also a GP bc i admired mine growing up haha

Do you follow any sports? What team do you root for?

No ❤️ but i think i could be fun if i did lol

If you could be any animal what would you be and why?

Otter or chinchilla i just wanna be something cute

If you could be any mythological creature what would you be and why?

Totally a fairy 🧚‍♀️ having fun in nature, causing so mischief, have pretty wings to fly with & having so many cool abilities like maybe shape shift into animals

What's the most obscure thing you've had to google for a fanfic you were writing/reading?

I was double checking in to power ranger characters types with their suit colours for a power ranger au I'd love to write one day bc I realised I have a lot of power ranger lore i could put to use lol ☺️

What Milkovich do you identify with most?

Mickey with his unwavering loyalty & his ability to love fiercely

Which one are you actually like the most?

Honesty no clue lol

What Gallagher do you identify with most?

I think Ian with his big heart & self doubt

Which one are you actually like the most?

Maybe Ian which makes sense why i can get so frustrated with some of his actions bc like that could me too in that situation lol

I'll tag these dearhearts if they wanna play @mrsinistertype @sleepyfacetoughguy @xninetiestrendx @heymrspatel @squidyyy23 @auds-and-evens @jomilky gardenerian @celestialmickey @gallawitchxx @suzy-queued @rereadanon @darthvaders-wife @gallavichgeek @sickness-health-all-that-shit @shameless-notashamed @howlinchickhowl @gallavich-headcanon @stocious @bravemikhailo @crossmydna @chicanomick @whatwouldmickeydo @bekkachaos @deathclassic @suchagallabitch @beebabycastiel-main @iansw0rld @ianandmickeygallavich @greggster @messedwithmandy @friend-bear @mishervellous @mmmichyyy @lalazeewrites @very-sleepy-head @ psychicskulldamage @captainjowl @abundanceofnots @look-i-love-u @imikhailotakeyouian @mikhailoisbaby

[hilarychuff]

for the ask game :)

i carry it in mine + 3, 13, 14

howl + 9, 15

the ask game

ty for the questions!!

i carry it in mine - tag, ao3

3. what’s your favorite line of narration?

hmm it currently stands at 45k words so hard to pick just one but i'm p sure this was the line that i was like first working towards when i started writing it

He means to make me queen, she thinks, her legs turning to jelly as she sinks to the floor.

like the scenes in chapter 6 and 7 at the wall where he shows her his mark/she realizes the full implications of it all were for sure like one of THEEEE inciting visuals i had

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

i actually write mostly in silence 😭 i can plot and write notes etc with the tv on or with music on but honestly i usually find it too distracting!!! i'm a big singer alonger and i really need to like. concentrate for the most part when i'm writing for real. nooooo clue what would be a good soundtrack for reading bc i would want vibes to be similar to like medieval period piece stuff so maybe something sort of instrumental???? or like a softly crooning female singer songwriter type of vibe. something a lil folksy perhaps???

actually wait i lied sometimes i listen to asmr videos on youtube!!! not that i recommend that per se lmao. but just a lil something to provide a bit of sensory stimulation so that i don't get like. bored.

14. is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?

hmmmm. i don't think i went into this fic with the intention of like "this is what i want readers to learn" so much as i was like wouldn't if be interesting if... and then if their places were switched....

but i will say that something i didn't expect while writing was how many people would be upset with jon in the beginning for not making sansa his priority number one. which i GET like it's a soulmate fic that's sort of the expectation and it's an uneven expectation because he knows something here that sansa doesn't. but i always kind of felt like.... sure sansa is something different to him here than in canon but at least in the beginning the love is very much the same and exists and always existed???? and i could have done a better job writing TO that if i wanted it to be clear but i think it never occurred to me that it wouldn't be. it's so clear to me in canon how much jon loves his family, including sansa, even though we never actually see them interact for ourselves. but the way he thinks about her is so sweet. and the memories he has of her are very tender.

i think probably for the most part anyone who stuck around found a way to move past that if it felt wrong/unfair to them but i guess if i had one thing i wanted people to learn it would be sometimes that your ability to help someone or be there for them is not always a reflection of the love that you have for them. sometimes circumstances are just complicated. sometimes there's nothing you can do. but that doesn't mean you don't love someone and have love for them and hurt for them and think about them etcetcetc.

i am very much a problem solver in my own life/relationships which i think frustrates people sometimes and also sometimes leaves me feeling useless if someone is upset about something and there's nothing i can do but sometimes just loving someone and making sure they know that is enough !!! not that jon does that either in the beginning i guess lol woops but he's very much a sad boy ok maybe cut him some slack 😭

howl - tag, ao3

9. were there any alternate versions of this fic?

WELL the first howl i banged out in literally a 72 hour period cribbing heavily from an old scream script i found online that wasn't quiiteeee screen accurate and there was only ever one version of that. BUT in the larger grand scheme sense of this i do have notes for a howl 3 and howl 4 so like. not alt versions but additional installments in theory!!

i think there in the initial like "casting" phase if you will i had different notions for what howl 2 would be. bc joffrey was an obvious billy but i was like then who is stu.... and then finagling howl 1 meant some changes for howl 2 but honestly those felt really right to me when i settled on them!!!!!

as for howl 3 that casting has also taken a LOT of finagling that probably still needs some ironing out so that has probably gone through a couple different mental makeovers about how exactly to handle the roman/john milton of it all but rest assured i have lots of thoughts!!!!!!

15. what did you learn from writing this fic?

WELL!!!! actually!!!!! one thing that always bugged me about scream 2 was sidney being an actress and doing theater when it felt so like antithetical to her character to put herself in the spotlight in any capacity. but it's so like baked into the movie that doing howl 2 i was like ok how do i keep it??? and in thinking about that for sansa i considered a lot about the interiority of the character and how like. sure it's putting yourself in the spotlight. but it's also an opportunity to step out of yourself and be somebody different which i think both sidney and sansa are really craving, especially when stab/knifed is putting them on a national stage in a lot of ways. so that was something i hadn't really thought about before!!

i also think there are lots of times watching a horror movie where you see a character doing something and you're like "NO WHY ARE YOU DOING THAT WHY AREN'T YOU DOING XYZ INSTEAD" and then when you're making it like prose narrative as opposed to a script and you're in their head you really have to make it make sense to yourself a lot more (like not just running away after the police car crash scene in scream 2/howl 2) and so that was something i felt like i learned more about too like. yes sometimes you are making a decision because it serves the plot. but also how can you reconcile that action with your character's needs/wants/turmoils/experience etc.

[ungirthed]

want to make a place for my thots of anything with no viewers if i remember to come on here. i cant believe i keep having to make these since i end up getting followers and interacting. but i'm an adult with shit to do irl and things to fight and this fandom is almost 20y old so idt i will do that. lol. just finished atla like 20y too late cos my parents hated me and my bro watching tv growing up. journaling/blogging thots!!! ugh. i wish i didnt hve adhd and dyspraxia lmao gonna split them up so i dont get overwhelmed reading my bullshit. if u stumble upon this it doesnt make sense sry

politically a lot of critique that i have to think about. character and plot wise it was pretty good and tight esp for a kids show. amazing female characters. can't wait for the bi agenda from LoK but i may take a while for that. p much i have to say these are great characters and i could talk a lot about them but i'm shocked at what i took away with regards to the romantic rships from the show and the characterization via it.

re love lines:

i wish kataang was written better in the show (MY opinion if any1 stumbles upon this). i don't ~ship~ zutara bc i am an adult and even back then no cos who cares lol but i see the appeal and am attracted to that. i do think we have to retire the trope of the "both sides but falling in love" not because it isn't possible but because post 10/7 (free palestine) i don't think it's worth it to look at it this way anymore. until someone proves themselves not worthy of death because of the resistance fighting back then they NEED TO PROVE THEMSELVES IMMEDIATELY. no more of this i'm in a concentration camp but he's a nazi bullshit. no more i'm a slave but he's the slave master's son (i mean in this case u could have been related but no1 listens to me!) it's repetitive, reductive, and untrue.

that being said: i just never care about the typical bildungsroman love story. you see the One Person bc i guess the kids tasked with saving the world have to be monk-adjacent (in aang's case quite literally) bc understandably theyre so fucked up lol. but it's always sooooo boring to me esp if it's f/m.

katara is such a complex character and mae whitman brings a wisdom to her voice that can be frustrating to connect with for me but her character arc, her strength, her MIND, her heart, and her fists. i think ppl probs like zutara the most when shes' going batshit and no one can understand aang's perspective. but aang is one of a kind and the cutest smartest sweetest loser ever. not my fav char but i love him. he's like if i had a younger brother and not an older one lmao.

of course they're (kataang) together. they were meant to be from the moment they saw e/o and that stupid cave kiss...this is why you don't wait until 32 to watch this lol.

but nothing surprised me and it was meant to be the way it was written. that's also why i find it understandable but shocking people in the universe and apparently outside of it were surprised at aang's turmoil over ozai. like are you joking? he's a 12 year old vegetarian monk. which: i loved his vegetarianism and obviously he was going to be but very casually they put in a line that hints as to why he would be and why many of us are...so i am dedicated to it again.

so wrt that and zutara...the episode where he's with her with the dude that killed her moms and his support of her i can see why people like them. the cave ep obviously but this show is veryyyyy free with affection i noticed and there's some jealousy but they all get over that pretty quickly. i read some of the comics and i could see different rships happening and i definitely think this world lends to queerness (me personally i love monogamy but a certain type lol so not rly interested in much poly but i do like a throuple) but i could see most being bi+ or having identified as that in the past, or labeling themselves but nto limiting. that's just an aside for meee...

so like katara was being katara. i could see suki and zuko being romantic but also a deep friendship that could be deeply affectionate either affect or physically or both bc that's who these ppl are. katara is a very intense person and that's part of why she can be annoying. that's part of why they ALL can be overwhelming. theyre intense, traumatized, repressed kids and teens with mostly good hearts (or just a person so disconnected from herself but also a fascist so u know. her going nuts lol)

hmm what else oh yea. so i came away with maiko......gjpasig the show was paced and plotted well. i am a libertarian communist (anarcho-commie) so MANNNNN i wish they did better on that front but again i must remember i am 32, ancom, and the world is diff. but anyway lmao so team avatar is who i would want to spend time with but i got so interested in mai and ty lee (mailee...). that beach ep conversation was so good, that whole ep, their argument. it was extremely teenage and showed how fucked up they all are. how confused and fucking lost and pathetic. how small their lives are. how boring....so mai...

[nolanfoster]

honest to god i think maxwell arnold is the best person in the world to play nolan. he's one of those characters that i genuinely cannot see another soul acting as bc – well, nolan is maxwell. i think that's something that was really notable about this series. the characters are, in certain ways, the people playing them. those personality traits, mannerisms, speech patterns, etc carry over and make these characters so special and memorable. and nolan is not an easy character to understand or write. that's why i think he was interpreted so poorly in the books because his humor and wit is so difficult to recreate. hell, nolan's an egotistical person, yet he isn't unlikeable in the slightest. but in the books ( and yes, this is absolutely my biggest qualm about them ) nolan is so ... dry. he has zero personality, no humor, and i do not like his relationship with sunshine. they're just so boring together! and their kiss in the second book, or almost kiss ( i actually can't remember ), holds nooo emotional weight whatsoever. while there is certainly a problem with the pacing, nolan just. wouldn't have done that! and i know book nolan is different than youtube nolan, but i truly just don't think it fits in the slightest. nolan falls so flat and it's really heartbreaking to see when he's the absolute best character in the youtube series.

what makes nolan in the original series so interesting is that - he's betraying sunshine! he's there to gain her trust, spy on her, and report back to the markons. he's not even necessarily human at that point, which isn't something you'd know by looking at him, but he's a groundling! and yet, he ends up betraying the markons. he comes clean to sunshine – he even admits that the power of being a groundling is attractive, but that it's not worth it. because he loves sunshine, he loves her family, and he's realized that the side he chose was wrong. another thing i love about this series – the gray area of some of our protagonists ( which is a post i'll work on for another time! but nolan and victoria are too interesting and have made too many mistakes to not discuss ). and nolan's almost kiss with sunshine in the youtube series is great! he steps forward to do it, holds her hands, but he can't. not only because he knows it's not what he should do, but i think his cowardice took over. and i just love that. he grows so much in the series and i really love seeing him go from someone who's terrified of spirits to someone who's willing to take them head on to protect sunshine. but my point here is, nolan is a character with depth and genuine emotion, yet they strip all of that from him in the books. they try, with his grandfather, but it doesn't add up to his betrayal and motive in the youtube series.

and this is another reason i'm ... kind of glad there was no tv show? to me, it's obvious that maxwell arnold wanted out and that's why they killed nolan – and why he's appeared in such spotty places later on in the series. that being said, i highly doubt he would've signed any kind of contract to do a television series, because i think he just kind of wants to leave the whole nolan thing behind. so someone else would've played nolan, and i just can't see that. this isn't really a character that can be re-created or re-cast in any sort of sense. and while i am a little sad that the good old days of this series are over, i'll always have it in my memory, and nolan will always be there for me to go back and watch <3

[djemsostylist]

Siya Beyaz Ask: I finally watched it, or at least kind of?

So, I have promised to try SBA for a long time, and I've not been...putting it off, I've just been busy. This summer I decided to watch, and my review is as follows. Full disclosure is that I only watched six episodes, but I don't have any plans to finish.

In this case, I think it might be a "this is not for you" situation. It was not a bad show at all, it's just--totally not my thing. It's the sort of thing that I can totally see why people like it, and when they explain it it totally makes sense to me, but I just...didn't.

This show has good acting and it's well cast. The actors all sell their roles well, and given the narrative, I'm sure they will only show their range further as the plot progresses. I also think the overall plot is fairly solid (I realize the forced marriage is a trope which doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but since it's a trope, we'll go with it here and I won't complain about it).

Ibo and Birce do have excellent chemistry, and they are compelling to watch on screen, both alone and together. The music is good, and the costuming is really beautiful. For me, it just comes to down, as always, to character.

I don't necessarily have anything against tough characters who can be assholes (I liked Yigit after all) but I also need...something. Anything to grasp onto. The problem in this show, for me personally (and again, these are all my personal beefs, and not anything I'd expect anyone else to have) is that by and large, there really isn't anything to like, about any of them. The characters in this show either fall into the pitiable or despicable category, and there really isn't an in between.

For me personally, the combination of present day Ferhat being a truly despicable human combined with the knowledge that until his mid-teens, he wasn't AND was raised by a father who was a truly genuine and kind and caring person sort of makes it hard for me to ever really want Ferhat to get a happy ending? Like, yes, he definitely was subjected to awful things after his father died, sure, no argument. But the thing is, he was older when his father died. He knew right from wrong. He was raised to be kind and caring and etc. He was raised to care about family.

So it makes it hard to be like "oh that's just his past trauma," partially I think bc we've had plenty of characters with lots of trauma (Kuzgun, Akgun (anything ending in gun I guess lol) whose past trauma made them kinder, not meaner? And sure, that's not the type of character Ferhat is, therefore I wouldn't expect that.

I think though, that for me anyway, it just makes me have no desire to root for him. Even Yigit at his most dickish had something in him that made you want to root for him. You also wanted him to get punched in the dick for the way he treated Kubra, but Yigit wasn't just an ass. Ferhat has nothing at all that makes him likeable to me (putting Asli in bed so she's not snoozing on the floor or "letting" her go operate and see her patients doesn't count for me.) He's horrible to his sister, treats his mother like crap, seems to have no friends, uses women, kills remorselessly. And the fact that he frequently flashes back to his childhood and his father means he knows the person he is now is shit and he just...doesn't care? We only have two examples of anyone genuinely liking him, and one is an old man at a restaurant and another is an old man at a cabin (I assume both knew him as a kid and are all 'he's been through stuff').

I know the goal of the series is for him to grow and change into a person worthy of being loved by a woman he has kidnapped, tortured, blackmailed, and abused, and I also know that it's a tv show. Obviously no one would support this irl, but it's a show and a trope. We aren't supposed to judge this on a normal moral compass. Which, I mean, I love space marines. I'm hardly in a place to judge. Hell, one of my favorite characters is Anakin Skywalker. The thing is though, I don't want Anakin Skywalker to be redeemed and live happily ever after. Being accepted and forgiven by his son before he dies is about the best he needed, but I certainly wouldn't hope for him and Padme to live their best life together. I'm not interested in Ferhat's redemption story, and I don't really wanna see her fall in love with him. I think she deserves better.

So, in conclusion, I see why it was popular. I see why so many people liked it. I certainly don't judge anyone for liking it (unlike I judge people for liking other shows *cough sck*) and I can see the draw of the chemistry. But this type of story just doesn't resonate with me personally, and this type of pairing (enemies to lovers) isn't my jam. It just doesn't do anything for me.

[philtstone]

20 from the touching list and dealer’s choice for pairing!!!

#20 -- bandaging/stitching up an injury

you can also read this on ao3! this got egregiously long and i may eventually just post it as its own fic but also i have no regrets bc ive been thinking of this concept since i made this clown post like 2 weeks after fatws ended. technically part of this verse but can definitely definitely be understood just fine as a standalone. yeehaw!

"Ah ... shit."

Bucky's been in his fair share of dingy motel rooms, and this one ain't so bad as far as they go. Sarah checked for bed bugs before the kids wiped out and didn't find anything. There's a more than functional toilet, with complimentary soaps. The carpet only smells like piss a tiny little bit.

"It's got ambiance," Cass had declared at the door, ever good-natured, rubbing at his eyes exhaustedly under lopsided glasses even as he held tightly to his mother’s hand. AJ had fallen asleep in the backseat of Old June after the commotion on the interstate, and hadn't woken up even when Bucky maneuvered him out of the car and carried him the three flights up to their rented room; he'd asked, from his squished-cheek position against Bucky's shoulder, "'S'it got a TV?"

It hasn't.

Bucky keeps wanting to apologize. He's not sure what for. It wasn't technically his fault that the house got jumped by armed goons. It wasn't technically his fault that Sarah's front hallway is currently full of broken glass, or that the ever-enduring Ram has finger-shaped dents in the hood, or that they had to leave a bunch of knocked-out suits in the backyard for poor Ms. Gloria or the fuckin' state troopers to find. They were all still breathing – he made sure to stop and check. Since Sarah drove past state lines he's only had to take a second and re-anchor himself in his own body once, which is a great, fantastic improvement from the last time he ended up taking out a truckload's worth of strangers without explicit knowledge of who they were or why he had to engage with them, but God, he will be miserably, stupidly happy when they can finally get a lock on wherever Sam is, and figure out why the latest megolomanic supervillain came for Captain America’s family.

Meanwhile, there's an open wound in Bucky’s side that he hasn't noticed until now.

He’s slipped into the motel room's single bathroom, and has to crane his neck awkwardly to get a proper look at it. It's already kind of gummy. Tacky against his fingers and torn shirt. Pretty short across, though deep enough that it's clearly been bleeding sluggishly under his jacket for the last few hours. Not an active problem, though his favourite grey long-sleeved is ruined, which is annoying, and in his newfound awareness the place where the farthest side of his ribcage, almost on his back, got caught by something -- stray bullet, most likely, though that glass he was thinking of is definitely a contender – is stinging more than is reasonable.

It'll be gone by tomorrow. Bucky's already resigned himself to the fact that he's not sleeping at all tonight, so that other part's fine too.

"Bucky?"

"Uh --" He clears his throat, compulsive, straightening up to face the bathroom door and fumbling with the first aid kit he found behind the toilet basin. Sarah's quiet voice is as full and melodic as it always is. "It's -- yeah?"

Sarah says, in the same muted voice,

"Can I come in? I saw some mouthwash in the cabinet and like, I need to rinse my mouth out or I'm not gonna sleep a wink."

"Oh -- sure, I mean, of course."

She enters, soft on her feet. He hovers, trying to maneuver one antiseptic-wipe-holding hand up and around under his shirt without making too much of a big deal out of it. The angle is stupid-awkward, as if whatever did it did so out of an ironic sense of spite. He keeps his head down, and asks, matching her earlier tone,

"Are the kids okay?"

Short-form sigh, the sort she makes so often. Sarah's no stranger to complicated circumstance.

"They're holdin'. Asleep now, probably be a bit freaked out later. You know how things catch up with you."

Bucky lets out a humourless chuckle in spite of himself and nods, listening to Sarah fumble with the bottle cap, pour the liquid out, and take that kind of measured sip people do when they don't wanna make weird mouth sounds around others. She spits, quiet-like, into the sink. Rinses her mouth out. Turns around.

"God, that’s disgusting. Anyway, there's one of 'em on each bed, so I thought --"

"It's fine, I can just take the fl --"

"-- Jesus Christ, Bucky, you're bleeding!"

Her voice climbs in volume at the same time and pace of her widening eyes; in a second she is much closer to him than before in the objectively too-small bathroom, hands hovering.

"It's fine!" he says hastily, trying to keep his own voice level; the last thing he wants to do is wake the boys up after the day they've had. "Sarah, seriously, this is not a big deal. It'll be gone by tomorrow."

"How -- why didn't you say anything --"

But she's reeled it in. From shock to pragmatism in the flip-switch of a heartbeat, and he didn't even realize that he'd been worried about freaking her out until something about the practical way she's looking at him makes him sag, instinctually, against the peeling wallpaper of the bathroom wall.

Still,

"I didn't notice," Bucky admits, eyes flicking over to the stained yellow shower curtain. He tries not to grimace at himself. Sarah tucks a loose braid behind one ear and he sees her lone remaining earring glint. The other got lost somewhere, status unknown, she said in the car she didn't care much anyway 'cause they were department store knock offs from a Black Friday sale.

He had noticed when she first came in that she'd changed out of her dirty clothes, but kind of in his periphery; now that she's right in front of him, it's extremely difficult not to full-body register her silhouette. She's lost her familiar plaid and the yellow t-shirt beneath it, and is dressed in a thin camisole and old bicycle shorts she must have dug out of the Goodwill donation bags perennially stored in Old June's trunk. The camisole is a pale off-white, bright against the dark pouch of her midriff it's ridden up to expose, and the soft slopes and curves of her shoulders and breasts. The bicycle shorts are -- well.

He swallows, reaching through patchy swatches of pre-war memory to access his mother's stern voice, then his grandmother's, then the hairy-chinned nun who always yelled at Steve for being a shit altar boy, and hell, even that one Rabbi down at the corner of Fourth. Pull yourself together, Barnes.

Sarah says, hesitant, but not disbelieving,

"It doesn't hurt?"

"Not much."

Her lips purse together in a flat line and Bucky has to work hard not to stare at them. She raises a considering eyebrow. "So you were, what, plannin' on prancing around the next few days with a bloodstain under your armpit?"

"It's not under my armpit," Bucky says, maybe a little defensive. Then, "I was gonna toss the shirt."

"While you're still bleeding?"

"Mostly slowed up."

"You'll ruin the only spare clothes I could find in the trunk."

"It's --"

"Don't give me that, Bucky Barnes. You’re the one who told me we’re trying not to attract attention to ourselves. Like, I don't know about you, but I'd notice if someone walked into a Waffle House lookin' like a Tarantino film."

Bucky doesn't know if he wants to sigh or laugh.

“It is not that bad.”

“Uh huh.”

He closes his eyes, wincing but steady. Sarah usually makes him feel steady. Even with the bicycle shorts, and the dizzying proximity, she does.

"You're taking this all really well," he comments.

"Baby, I am a pro at compartmentalizing," Sarah says. "Just now? I'm perfecting a lobster mac recipe in my head."

Bucky gives in to that laugh. "I can't reach it properly," he admits.

"May I take a look?" Sarah asks. It's gentler than before. Maybe that's what gets him.

"I -- yeah. Yeah, alright."

She walks the two steps around him and he tugs the hem of his shirt to his ribcage, stays silent when the fabric pulls against torn skin. He can feel the wound, small as it is, open again when he moves. He tries to use his other arm to hold his shirt up, but nearly elbows her in the nose.

“Shit, sorry –”

“No, it’s fine, I’ll just –”

He gives up, feels his stomach flip. Before he can think too hard about it he has yanked the shirt up and off over his neck.

Sarah is silent. He keeps his eyes ahead, tense in the anticipation of her touch, in anticipation point blank. She's seen the seam, where the prosthetic meets him. This is different.

"It's not very fun to look at," Bucky says quietly. "I’m sorry if it -- scares you."

She's at his side, still, but in direct view of the faded scarring along his pectoral and scapulae, hiding the internal plating and wiring that made the first arm possible and even marginally functional. Shuri replaced as much of that as possible, realigned the whole thing so the chronic pressure lessened and the ergonomics improved. The new arm is lighter, the scar tissue rehabilitated somewhat; most of the time, any associated pain is either weather-related or phantom. He can say, truthfully, that looking at it doesn’t make him feel sick like it used to. There is a big gap between less now and not at all.

Sarah tilts her head, and there is a minute movement where he thinks she might be biting her bottom lip but can't be sure. Another braid spills over her shoulder, loose in her ponytail. She got new ones last month. They're the really long kind, hanging all the way down her back and swinging around when she moves. They're stunning on her. Everything is stunning on her. He's a fool, and it's true.

"Antiseptic?" she asks. But there isn't anything different about her voice.

Bucky clears his throat, against the ball stuck somewhere in the back. "I -- yup." He digs around through the first aid kit open against his thigh, then holds up one of the packets. He watches Sarah's full mouth twitch, and is unsure why, until she slips the alcohol out of his hand and tugs on one of his gloved fingers.

"You wanna take this off too, Luke Skywalker?"

That was courtesy of some kid at a gas station near Mississippi. So much for staying under the radar, but it's been making AJ go bonkers all afternoon, probably even a good distraction from the gunfire and very real danger, so Bucky cannot help himself, and smiles crookedly at her in response, his cheeks warming.

"Oh. Forgot."

"It's fine." He tugs the glove off his hand and hears the tear of the wrapper around the alcohol swab. "Weird seeing you with it on, though. You never wear that at home."

Home, he thinks. The concept, like Sarah, is dizzying.

"So," he manages, praying his voice comes out steady. "Lobster mac?"

"Uh huh. Key is, you never use warm milk when makin' the roux."

"Isn't that the case for any roux?"

"You really listen when I talk, huh?" And her tone's joking, but Jesus if he doesn't want to choke out the world's most pathetic yes, yes, every word when her warm fingers press over his skin and it's like every muscle in his chest jumps to meet them in response. She was in the coat closet, with the children, when a gunshot went off and shattered the porch door because he knew how to move out of its way like muscle memory. She was there when he ducked left then right then grabbed a man in the exact place required to crush a trachea but didn’t, only disarmed him and pinned him to the papered wall fast and hard enough that he’s going to wake up considerably concussed. She saw him move in precise, inhuman movements, like he has never had reason to showcase to her before. Sarah’s careful palm presses over his ribcage, and Bucky feels his eyelids flutter of their own accord.

"Anyway,” Sarah says, “your lobster's gotta be a good one."

"Of course."

"C'mon, don't be laughing. You never had bad lobster?"

"Honestly, I've only ever had your lobster."

"Okay, I see the ambiguity there --"

"No, no, I didn't mean --" He ducks his head, sure she can see him flushing, "Sarah. Ms. Wilson. You know your cooking's the best thing in all Louisiana state."

"Mmmhmmm. Okay white boy, nice save."

"So, what, no spices?"

"Excuse me," she tears a bandaid open with her teeth and his brain short-circuits just slightly, "I can't be giving away my whole recipe like that. Bad for business."

Sarah works in sure, precise movements, cleaning up the blood and covering it just enough that it won’t stain anything overnight. She is entirely practical, and efficient, doesn't press too hard, nor too soft, firm yet unquestionably gentle against his body in a way that is not really necessary.

"Shit," he says suddenly.

Sarah stills at once, thumb pressed over a muscle in his back midway through smoothing down the tape.

"What?"

"I missed therapy today," Bucky realizes.

Well; yesterday. It's well past midnight now. He looks down at her. Sarah looks up, clearly slipping into problem solving mode. She does it the exact same way Sam does, he’s noticed. She says,

"Oh! I -- well, do you wanna check in, maybe?"

"Check in?" Bucky repeats, a little stupidly.

"Like, text her, explain why you missed it, so she's not worried. I can uh, leave the room."

A beat. Two. Bucky bursts out laughing.

It’s this messy, dissolving thing, leaking out of him with an edge of hysteria, and Sarah’s not far behind.

“So she’s not worried –” he manages, half a groan, hand on his face because yeah, the boys are still asleep in the next room, and they’re here together in the single shared bathroom like an evolution of the strange domestic daydream he’s been living in every few weeks when he shows up on her doorstep. Her giggles continue, syrupy, poorly muffled, even more hysteric than his own. Maybe some of that compartmentalizing has been breached. He keeps on laughing, bent over, objectively too close to her and gasping with it. It’s only when she brings a wrist up to wipe at her eyes, still more or less incoherent, that he notices it, and reaches for her hand without thinking.

“Hey,” he says, still breathless, “Your elbow, Sarah.”

“What – oh?” Her arm’s shaking, entirely the aftershocks of the adrenaline. This is something he knows. “It’s just a scrape." Her voice shakes, with the laughter and other things. "Bumped weirdly against the car door.”

“Here. Come on, we still have bandaids.”

She’s shockingly compliant, usually so stubborn in accepting help in anything, even less when it's personal. She lets him extend her arm and turn it over, holding it carefully over his jean-covered knees so they are not quite touching. With assured movements to match Sarah’s own Bucky takes the last antiseptic packet, dabs carefully at the raw skin, doesn’t quite wince when she hisses. His right hand is large where it cups over her elbow, and he tries not to notice the kick of her pulse against his thumb, or the fact that her dark skin has erupted in warm gooseflesh, or his own unfamiliarity with administering this kind of care to another person.

“There,” he says, when he’s done, feeling a little bit like he doesn’t recognize his own voice. The bathroom is quiet around them, as if the whole world’s narrowed down to just their two and the toilet seat.

“Wasn’t very bad.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he hears himself say. “Now we’re even.”

It’s like it's trying to crawl out of his pores, sometimes, the impulse impress her. To be -- normal -- around her. She is so kind to him. All the time, like it's as natural as breathing. It is like nothing he has experienced in perhaps his whole life. She quirks a smile, pretty and softening for all that she’s just wiped the blood off his back and been chased out of her home by strangers, and he’s hit with that dizzying feeling again – the need to apologize. There’s something sacred about that house, and Sarah and her children in it. The idea of its walls being breached is terrifying to him at a conceptual level he doesn’t really know how to parse out. He thinks Sam might be the only other person who’d get it, and even then, Bucky doesn’t know if he has the guts to bring it up. Because here Sarah is, letting him touch her, and here he is, wanting. Desperately. It leaves him rudderless, and yet with every passing day feels simpler than before.

Sarah extracts her hand from his to tuck a braid behind her neck again, and to toss the small handful of bloodied gauze into the toilet. Moving on instinct, he gathers up their opened first aid detritus, picks his sodden shirt up off the floor.

"Can I tell you something?" she says, after a moment.

Bucky nods, holding his bloodied shirt close to his abdomen.

"So like, earlier today? When those guys showed up? Gotta grab Captain America's sister, whatever. You were in the backyard, remember."

"Of course."

"Painting that awful shed."

"Yeah."

"Took you thirty seconds to get from there to the front, where I was." She takes a deep breath, like she's shoring herself up to say something. He can see her chin wobble -- the slight tremble of her hand. She has to be the single most incredible person he's ever met, he thinks, and he has met a lot of people in his miserable long life. "Those thirty seconds you weren't there," Sarah says, "I was scared."

Bucky stares at her. Even in her borrowed clothes she smells of that coconut she so favours, and he can feel the puff of her breath against his bare arm, flesh and bone like any other man's. His head is still buzzing, though maybe from different things now.

He says, voice rough, “I could stay up, in case the boys have nightmares.”

“You’re thinking of my babies right now?” she asks, in a strange tone.

He should kiss her, Bucky thinks. He should pick her up and press her against that peeling wallpaper and –

“I just thought –”

“Mama?”

AJ’s voice, plaintive and carrying the edge of panic, sounds from just the other side of the bathroom door. Sarah startles; Bucky jerks to his feet and nearly knocks over the first aid kit. For a split second, their eyes lock, wide and heady and caught. Then she curses and stumbles her way out of the bathroom. Her hands close to herself again, held aloft, ready to comfort, dulled again with the mundanity of living.

“Mom –”

“I’m here, I’m here, baby, just in the bathroom. You know how folks gotta pee in the middle of the night. You’re safe, AJ. Is Cass asleep? He’s right here? Okay. Okay, we’re all together. It’s fine.”

Bucky slumps back against the wall, groaning through his teeth, feeling like he’s just been jolted out of a full-bodied dream. He scrubs a rough vibranium hand over his face, tosses his ruined shirt into the garbage can, and pulls his phone out to see if Sam’s back online. He’s not. Bucky’s phone is newly cracked in the top right corner. Sorry I missed today, he texts, to Raynor’s number. Urgent family thing. Tell you next time.

Then he straightens up, rolls out his shoulders, and pads his way into the bedroom, ready to fold himself into the scuffed fold-out chair in the corner and keep watch on the door until morning.

[sothischickshe]

#And s4 is kind of a question mark currently#Rio's behaviour currently seems batshit#But if fitz is alive.... Rio might not be stupidest person to ever live?#But like.... This show has wronged me re rio's behaviour making sense too many times for me to expect that.#And personally I think that's one of the most egregious things about the show#And I'm not sure that it is getting worse#I think it might just be getting more noticeable over time and how the plot has escalated#But I am holding out a little hope that there is some reason for his behaviour

I cannot explain how much I felt this. Rio's dumbassery is making this season so hard for me and like - if they gave me even the smallest hint that he was playing along and not actually stupid I'd probably feel so much better about the season

❤️

I have a feeling this is going to get long haha (idk if im capable of making anyone feel better, but i can poss offer a contact numbing...?)

so i like the show. i enjoy the show. i think it’s pretty silly, but so am i so that’s not necessarily a complaint. i am very attached to the show, bc i found it (only s1 had aired back then) at a time when i was dealing with a lot of EXTREME physical and emotional trauma (of which topic some more below) and then thrown into a grief hole, and as a result im not sure there’s a shark big enough for it to jump that would make me abandon it. it’s like...yea, literally my comfort show i guess! and i will always be grateful to it for that, and for leading me back into fandom and into writing fic!

large swathes of the plot do not stand up to scrutiny, and that bothers me not at all. if i wanted to watch a proper crime show, i’d go watch a crime show. and frankly if a person’s still watching this show expecting the concept of time to be treated as existing, that’s on them right?

ultimately i think the two things i love most abt this show: i. the acting is incredible & seems to be allowed to lead the plot reasonably organically ii. i cant predict what’s going to happen bc it’s batshit (which i can understand why a lot of ppl see as a flaw haha, but as someone who watches a LOT of american films/tv & can generally tell what’s gonna happen i fucking love) are often at odds.

anyhooo...i like s1 fine BUT there’s a lot of exposition and dialogue which i find v clunky. i can tho forgive a lot for first seasons (which are rarely-never my faves). i think the biggest issue i have with it/i guess the show generally is the mm lack of historicity btwn the 3 main characters? which is probs its own post but def ties into:

the point at which i went ‘oh this show is made by white ppl’ was s1e3. i was on a lot of codeine lol so idk if i wouldve clocked it earlier otherwise, or if i was just seeing deeeeeply through space and time but as @nakedmonkey has said since day dot basically: ok if something has the only latinx character as the only violent gang criminal character...like....i get what ive signed up for. and im Old so im pretty desensitised to racist tropes wandering in and out of things. and i honestly find it almost quaint how this show seems to manage to avoid stereotypes sometimes by simply not knowing abt them ahaha

but... rewatching s1 after s2 finished and having that context (particularly but certainly not only the s2 finale, of which more below)... idk. rio’s behaviour just seems pretty fucking random?! take: yea yea i love making noise let’s go bang some pots and pans blah blah blah im on facebook too vs. SHUTDOWN!!! like i didnt care when this show was fun and silly, but once youve upset me and im combing through trying to work out if he’s the stupidest person in the entire world, stuff like that sticks out?? and yes, i can find reasonings and explain it to myself (and i can have fun doing it!) but in the context of his batshit behaviour in s2: a lot of his behaviour generally seems wildly inconsistent, like the plot purpose of it is SO visible, and i think that is a flaw! but i have to acknowledge im MUCH more interested in character than plot.

i definitely think his behaviour being bananas inconsistent is casually, callously racist and as the show’s gone on it’s found a bouquet of harmful tropes to play with (what fun) but i can also acknowledge that the beth/rio dynamic wasnt an original part of it & im not sure rio was sposed to survive s1 & im almost certain he wasnt sposed to be as much a part of the show so ive got a lil sympathy for some awkward pivoting, & i think they retooled bits of both beth and rio’s characters to get matchier, which im pretty into.

nonetheless, i think s2 is probs the worst offender for nonsensical rio behaviour. the finale takes the top prize (of which more below) but like... ok can anyone explain to me what’s happening in s2e2? the ending of that ep (im going to teach you) was when i went ‘oh this show is stupid stupid’. like... am i sposed to believe that beth gave rio back the gun & then (he?) thought she was going to..... what beat boomer to death......? yea of course i can explain this to myself! he never thought she was going to manage it! it’s a test! but there’s a LOT of this.

what the fuck is he doing in s2e6? all ive got is: he REALLY wants beth to smack him in the face & doesnt know how to use his words (& also he’s very drunk.)

s2e10! park bench scene! what is happening?! episode before she threw him out! episode the next he throws her out! why??? is??? he??? being???? so???? nice???? (again! of course i can find some way to explain this to myself: well if *i* had some vague leverage plan over someone this is exactly how sweet and nice i’d be to them hahah)

but the overall thing is the whole season i was waiting for him to work out they didnt kill boomer (and try to get marry pat’s number off beth, haha). and then that he had the wrong body. and like......?????

look!!!! i love ambiguity!!! i do!!! omg do i!!!! hi!!!! BUT i love it when it’s INTENTIONAL. when it leads to SOMETHING. and im not sure that’s what the show is giving me...? and also!!! look!!! knowing what your non-pov characters are doing/thinking is a lesson *i* had to learn! i love it when stories have a grasp of what characters do/n’t know!!! s2 has annie realising that noah is fbi cos she sees him meet up with turner....who she’s not met...? and sure of course - she’s seen a photo or the girls have described him well enough or he has giant fed energy...maybe....? hmm

and then the s2 finale. ok. on a character level the thing that most annoys me is like.... kidnapping someone & handing them your only weapon & asking them to murder a fed presumably on camera IN YOUR HOME is STUPID. it’s STUPID. am i sposed to think he’s an idiot? like: it’s fucking dumb.

and from a story point of view: when the fuck did he find out about jeff? is rio omniscient but extremely drunk??????

and from a personal point of view: the knowledge that i wasnt going to quit this show. and that i was going to have to walk my rec back! me!?!?! my recs are fucking perfect 

s3! the beginning of s3 i think is pretty good on rio’s behaviour making sense! except he tells a person standing outside to get in his car for some fresh air. but ok, he’s driving drunk again! fine! fits the rest of his characterisation, sure. it felt to me like they made a conscious effort to write him consistently!!! i was very into it!!!!

& ive got a LOT of time for stuff like the hitman or boring dave -- when the plot machinations are externally-generated rather than rio-generated, his behaviour doesnt end up seeming so random bc he’s reacting to things and/or doesnt need to turn up to do something to make the girls do something else.

but the latter part of s3 into s4. hmm. look, i dont know what the original intent with wrapping up s3 was. there is really no point at which i thought rio was going to reveal he knew abt the hitman. like, i wouldve happily eaten my words! but i spent so much of s2 waiting for a reveal that he knew...anything really. burn me twice? pff good luck.

i suspect the original resolution to the hitman plot was sposed to be...better? rio apparently being a magical gps who doesnt ask qs is... dumb. i can handwave it, i can handwave a lot, but i suspect covid shooting restrictions probs played a part here?

rio’s behaviour this season seems pretty dumb to me. but it’s seemed pretty dumb and inconsistent to me for v long time. my expectations are not high lol. i think there’s a pretty reasonable chance that fitz is alive and/or rio’s put it together abt the hit (and thinks it’s romantic cos he’s a fucking idiot), but im not certain on that.

i was pretty on the fence abt the fingering scene (there were aspects of it that i really liked, including the No Dick TIll I Actually Trust You energy), but ive gotta super rec Be Good To Me by @blizabrth cos BOTH the povs like super sold me on it (and yea, should i need fic to sell me on the show? hmm idk but im used to it from the s2 finale, so)

i think a large part of what’s fucking me off is that BC of the time in which i found the show... it hurts me seeing the trauma (physical and emotional) & grief not being given due weight. it’s probably a bit silly to expect it from a relatively silly tv show (that’s literally what fic is for! haha) but... idk, i can put up with a lot when something is fun, but if you’re going to drag me into violence and angsty shit i need it be handled like that has fucking weight, and especially when im constantly being slapped in the face with SPECIFICALLY only black and brown bodies as sites of violence, my patience is extremely thin.

most of the damage ive taken personally is due to my own recklessness (so i do have a lot of empathy for this fucking idiot lol) but like.... there are certain ppl Involved who if i saw them, i think i’d straight up punch them in the teeth without thinking. im not proud of that necessarily. i dont think that’s a good thing. but... it’s accurate man. like, i wouldnt be all oooh hey wanna see the combo to my magic car safe yknow? (and not just cos i dont have a car). [and no... i did not care this much when they werent super paying attention to dean’s recovery/remembering his scar and that is bc idc abt dean. but!!! i still did sigh at it!!!]

the glee with which i will eat my words if rio is revealed to not be being an idiot is... gigantic. i dont need a lot. i dont particularly WANT rio pov (i think a lot of the desire for it is obvi bc his behaviour...is so...batshit), though i’ll take weary irritated mick pov with fucking pleasure. i dont need a tearful apology from beth, the further we get from the s2 finale, the less i can imagine anything like that happening and feeling even remotely in character/true to their dynamic/the tone of the show, though i’d take a drunk grudging ‘im vaguely glad you are alive’ with pleasure. i would v much like them to talk some stuff out, but i can cope without it. i dont need them to touch, though give me a hug and i’ll die. i just.... want... to feel like....they’re being written internally consistently? and maybe they are! i felt relatively positive abt it when s3 started, and i can see how stuff mayve been derailed by the pandemic restrictions & the cut short season. and i think the fact that they’re introducing rio’s family & backstory is potentially a positive thing, as well as the fact that he’s getting frankly too much screentime considering he’s not had a single scene with dean (I DEMAND MY TAX!!!! NAME A BAD RIO & DEAN SCENE, I WILL FUCKING WAIT)

but i am firmly at I’ll Believe It When I See It bc theyve wronged me & I Do Not Forget

(and most of all what i want is for both beth and rio to be written off the show. like. im not joking. theyre both fucking me right off.)

that all said: if you (even if temporarily) accept that beth & rio are canonically just as stupid as we keep being told they are, and tilt your head to the side..... this might be THE greatest absurdist comedy of all time.

like: writing them as morons is absolutely hilarious, im having a great time but.... that’s how stupid i have to think they are, yknow?

also,  since coming back to writing fiction/starting to publish ff:

-  i think ive become a leetle less judgemental abt like all fiction/storyelling including this show. bc writing is fucking hard & ppl have different strengths/weaknesses & collaborative writing/storytelling certainly has its own challenges & i mean....creating art/media in capitalism certainly has its challenges & the fact that the obsessive attention to detail/depressing realities im looking for from the show are missing may well be a positive thing for the ppl involved in it haha

- i’ve definitely become less frustrated. bc i have somewhere to....put my emotions? it’s genuinely therapeutic, and i strongly recommend it to everyone, even/especially if they dont (intend to) publish it

also also, i really stand by: this is not a show you are supposed to watch sober.

[wizzardhat]

alright im reading/rereading all discworld books in (approximate) order. Because only some of them are available through audible I'm kind of alternating between two at a time because the ones that aren't on audible I have to listen to on my computer, which is how I managed to finish Mort before The Light Fantastic. I'm still calling it "in order" though because i make my own rules and i am a god of my own making

rambling below cut

So far I've (finally) finished The Colour Of Magic (probably my 4th or 5th attempt lmao), re-read Equal Rite & Mort, and now I'm alternating between Wyrd Sisters & The Light Fantastic--very close to finishing the latter so I'll be on to Sourcery soon, which I'm hype about bc I've been told this was the Book Terry recommended people start with.

To me the issue with TCOM is Terry hadn't quite nailed down how to really bring his characters to life just yet--I can already tell that TLF is kind of bending in the right direction but as early as Equal Rites that spark is totally there. I have a feeling that that's the main reason why I found it hard to feel invested in Rincewind so I'm excited for Sourcery, since it'll be the first novel focused on him after we get over the hump. Also his cameo in Mort definitely hit different when I actually had enough context to appreciate it.

I completely forgot how much i loved Mort. I remembered enjoying it a lot but I forgot how genuinely cute Ysabell & Mort are and also absolutely ICONIC Death lines such as CURRY TIME! and I AM SADNESS which annihilate me every single time without fail. Also I'm weak and Mort's "don't leave me" after he breaks out of the Death Trance has been Living In My Head Rent Free as the cool kids on Twitter love to say. I have not felt an urge to draw sappy fanart in probably a full decade but I am feeling it rn.

AND THEN THERE'S

GRANNY

WHOMST I LOVE

Granny is really like...not my comfort character in the sense that people usually use now. Comfort characters generally leave you feeling as though you've visited with an old friend, but one who is approximately your equal and therefore someone you relate to heavily. Granny leaves me feeling as though finally I've had a chance to talk to someone who I actually believe knows what they're talking about, has it all figured out, and who I genuinely aspire to be more like, and I feel better for it, and more equipped to deal with life. Like, when I Need An Adult, I wanna read a book with Granny in it. Genuine role model material, even with her many imperfections. PTerry's ability to write interesting, flawed, loveable women is always wonderful and refreshing, but what I love most about Granny is that she is badass and unfeminine and powerful and nothing about her revolves in any way about her attractiveness nor any romantic arc. Arguably peak ace and possibly aro rep. Someone who is respected, and admired, and fails to meet any expectation that women are usually held to. Everything is on her terms. And she is just...incredible and i love her so much.

I think that's it for now. I actually had to throw this in drafts last night and I finished TLF this morning and I'm about an 8th the way in to Sourcery so, we will see how that goes.

Also this may be an unpopular opinion, but I think the Blue Sky 2-part tv movie about TCOM & TLF is arguably a lot better than the actual books--it cuts out a lot but it captures the right amount of Discworld magic & the adjustments to the characters are a lot easier to get invested in. To be honest I watched it before I finished Sourcery, so I was surprised that while the movie made a small effort to show Twoflower & Rincewind becoming friends, and their goodbye was warm and felt appropriately awkward but bittersweet, the book was just straight up awkward. And to be honest I miss the little guy and I'm sad he won't pop up until way down the line in Interesting Times.

[himbowelsh]

Well now I need touch starved Liebgott something! I always imagined Webgott to work the other way around. Y'know Web being unused to hugs and Lieb having no sense of boundaries. But I'm really intrigued by a concept of switching it up.

hello i’m in tears bc this took so long to write, but...  enjoy an extremely touch-hangry boi.  be warned, for copious amounts of obscenely soft cuddling.

Long story short, it goes like this.

David’s just finished an article, two hours ahead of the frankly unreasonable deadline sent by his editor; he collapses on the couch, promptly kicks his sock-clad feet up on the coffee table, and slumps against Joe’s side.

Joe goes very still.

At first, David thinks it’s because of his feet. Joe can be weird about things like that; he values cleanliness, and “not acting like fuckin’ animals in the house, Jesus, Web”. All the things David was never allowed to do growing up in his family’s Manhattan penthouse  ---  like leave dishes out or discard his clothes in messy piles  ---  are exactly the sort of things that drive Joe insane. He kind of relishes doing them, just to see the twitch Joe gets by his eye, and for the way he grips his hips roughly when he growls at him to “quit leaving your shit everywhere”. David’s natural sloppiness leaves Joe needing an outlet for his frustration… and their shared bedroom is kept very clean. It works out great for both parties.

So, sure, it’s probably just the feet on the table… he thinks for a grand total of eight seconds, before looking up to catch Joe’s eye.

His boyfriend’s gaze has gone impossible soft. It takes David’s breath away, a little, because Joe isn’t like that as a rule. He’s sharp edges and broken glass, jagged teeth and bladed grins. He’s harsh as sandpaper and smooth as steel. He’s frustrating, and his gentle moments come and go like fickle summer storms.

To be fair, impromptu cuddling on the couch isn’t like them either… but David needs it tonight, and stepping outside the bounds of their normal relationship can’t be the worst crime in the world. He holds Joe’s gaze for a moment, questioning and careful… but, instead of pulling away, Joe just takes a moment before sighing. His arm wraps around David’s shoulders, pulling him close.

“Rough night, Web?” he asks, an undercurrent of implication in his voice. This ain’t like you. You alright?

“You have no idea.” David rests his stubbled cheek against Joe’s chest, sighing deeply as the tension slowly drains from his muscles. Joe is hesitant to react; his actions, even as he rubs up and down David’s shoulder, lack his usual fearlessness. Joe can grab his ass in the middle of a crowded bar, or ruffle his curls just to get on his nerves… but this casual intimacy is uncharted territory for him.

He needs a distraction from his own head. David’s got just the thing. “How would you,” he sighs, “like to hear about the plight of Heteractis anemone? Because I just wrote four thousand words on it.”

“Heter— huh.” Joe sighs into the crown of his head, ruffling his curls. “Pretty sure Guarnere caught that once.”

“Knowing him, he’s still got it,” David replies. When Joe laughs, it reverberates in his chest, a low rumble in David’s ear.

“Yeah, alright, Web. Tell me all ‘bout your anemoles.”

“Anemone.”

“Yeah, what’d I say?” Joe presses his grin into David’s hair. “Amenemes.”

“Anemo-- damn it,” he mutters, burying the words against his boyfriend’s chest. Joe laughs even harder… and, like it or not, the sound it a balm to David’s frayed nerves. Even better are the strong arms which wrap around him, fully encompassing his shoulders and pulling him against Joe’s body. It’s… more than he was anticipating, more than they probably need, but it feels nice, and he doesn’t want to pull away. David melts against him, curling his legs with Joe and letting himself drift off. Fingers card gently through his hair; his boyfriend’s warm breath caresses his temple… and being this close feels so good that he forgets to remember it isn’t ordinary at all.

If he looked up at that exact moment, he might have found Joe enjoying it even more than he was… but David, as usual, preferred to sail away.

-------------------------------------

That really should have been the end of it… but after their night of unexpected intimacy, it’s like a dam has broken.

Joe does it at unexpected moments. While David is flipping pancakes in the kitchen, he comes up behind him and wraps his arms around his waist, chin looping over his shoulder. They just sort of… stay there. David is so surprised that he ends up charring the pancake, which Joe eats anyways, because he’d inhale charcoal if he was hungry enough… but while his boyfriend is wolfing blackened pancake lumps down his throat, no explanation is offered. David doesn’t know how to ask.

He’s brushing his teeth; Joe comes up behind him and holds his hips, just staying there for a few minutes. He’s reading a book in bed; Joe lies down, curling into his side like an automatic reflex. They’re watching whatever B-rated action flick Joe just insisted on going to see at the Cineplex, and Joe holds his hand the entire time.

Calling it strange is an understatement. It’s fucking bizarre.

Which isn’t to say Joe’s been shy about physical contact before, because he hasn’t. He’s just always been measured with it. Joe doesn’t hold back from touching people, grasping their shoulders or clapping them on the back… but he never goes overboard with it. His touches don’t linger. He’s a handsy person by nature, but David never considered before that he weighs every touch before giving them out. 

If that’s the case, what’s changed? Why has he suddenly become so free — even apparently craving — touches he’s never asked for before?

David doesn’t know much about the scientific method, but any good journalist can test a hypothesis as well as a lab tech. Early one night, before either of them have gone to bed, he sits down next to Joe on the couch and sets the remote in his boyfriend’s lap.

“Anything but reality TV,” is all he says, and Joe smirks as he turns the station to some late night show.

He’s paying attention; David is not. Instead, his attention is fixed firmly on Joe, not even trying to hide it. The curve of his profile, the shadows along his neck and collar, the way he always lounges when he sits… like he’s trying to take up as much space as possible. Something about him seems inexplicably, undeniably lonely.

David leans over and wraps an arm around Joe’s shoulders. The reaction is expected; Joe goes tense, like he’s trying to figure out what the hell is going on. David counts back in his head:  ten… nine… eight… seven…

Before he gets to five, Joe’s relaxed into him. Easy as that — it’s like teaching a puppy to eat food, or a baby to cry. Joe and touch go together like authors and caffeine. Touching is easy for him, but being touched is the most natural thing in the world.

A flame kindles to life within David’s chest, and soon it’s warming him from the inside out. He can’t keep a fond smile from his lips. After a moment, his hand strays up to Joe’s hair, threading gently through the well-maintained strands. Joe’s always had a weakness for having his hair touched, and tonight is no exception. He makes a tiny, content noise and leans into David, the tension slowly draining from his body. It doesn’t take long before he’s leaning against him, head balanced against David’s chest. Arms still around him, David holds Joe tenderly, caressing his hair while occasionally pressing kisses to the crown of his head. Joe’s heartbeat is steady, his muscles lax. David charts the gentle rhythm of his breathing until he’s sure his boyfriend has dropped off to sleep.

When he looks down, a wave of tenderness washes over him. Joe Liebgott with every guard down is a thing to see. He so rarely looks peaceful. There’s something restless about Joe, a relentless hunger thrumming just beneath his skin, determined to break free. He’s always had an edge of urgency to him… but now, dozing against David’s chest, he looks without a care in the world.

He ought to be this way all the time. He deserves to be happy all the time. God help him, if David has any say in it, Joe will be.

“Is it my birthday or something?” Joe asks, when David, completely unprompted, begins massaging his shoulders. “Shit, don’t tell me I’m another year older and just forgot.”

“Not for another few months, old man,” David replies. On reflex, Joe tries to twist and grab him, but David’s massage doesn’t let up; after a minute, he relaxes into it, slumping further back against David’s chest.

“You been acting weird lately,” Joe declares — as though David needs to be good, and as though he wasn’t the one acting weird to begin with. “Everything fine at work? You didn’t… gamble away our savings to the mafia, or promise Sobel our firstborn kid or something? If you got news for me, Web, I can take it without a bonus massage.”

“Why do you think — wait, we’re going to have kids?”

“Head in the game, Web. What’s going on?”

At once, he’s glad Joe is facing the other way, because David’s not sure what he could say otherwise. He frowns at Joe’s back muscles, kneading into them with a bit more force than necessary. Sure, he’s been… more physically affectionate these days. Joe no longer has to seek it out, because he gives it willingly… and even if touch doesn’t come naturally to David, the obvious way Joe eats it up when his touches linger in public or they draw close to each other in private makes it all worthwhile. Joe seems happier nowadays, so clearly it’s working fine.

Why’s he getting interrogated now?

“Am I not allowed to touch you?” he asks. “Just because I want to touch?”

“You ain’t a touchy-feely person. Never have been.”

“People change.”

“Not you.” Joe’s observation is too neutral for David to justify flaring up at it. “Come on, Web. What’s going on?”

He’s silent for a long moment before summoning a reply. “I want you to be happy,” he declares, finishing off Joe’s back massage with a caress of his neck. “I want you… to feel loved.”

Joe is silent for a beat before turning his head to look back at him. “That’s all, huh?”

“Yeah,” David huffs. “That’s all.”

It’s hard to make out Joe’s expression when one half of his face is cast into shadow, but David spots the amusement in his eyes… and something else, too, something softer that he can’t put his finger on. It sparks a familiar warmth in his chest, and he smiles.

“Well, don’t stop on my account,” Joe sighs. There’s no warning before he’s leaning back against David’s chest, but David’s ready this time. He opens his arms, embracing him as they go. Slowly, Joe relaxes into the comfort of his touch, and the world feels a little warmer.