#i’ve been in fandom for years & i’ve just never seen anything like it. i don’t think there’s another fandom with works as consistently good

[saras-almanac]

BuckTommyWeekend Day 1: Alternate First Meeting

Title:  This seat taken?

Fandom:  911 (ABC)

Pairing:  Buck/Tommy

Summary:  Buck and Tommy meet at a restaurant for the first time. For the prompt: Alternate First Meeting for @bucktommyweek

Notes: There’s so many potential first meetings for these two both within canon and outside of it. I’m behind on writing for this weekend so just went with one that’s a bit quicker, but will probably expand on in the future before posting to AO3. (And/or might do more potential first meetings because there’s so many options and not all of them will lead to them actually being together at that specific moment in time, but it’d be fun…)

Buck sat at the bar, pretending to check his phone while he glanced over at where Josh and his date were sitting. Josh was seemingly having a good time, plus his date was pretty cute, so maybe this would be a win for him. Buck hoped so.

“This seat taken?”

Buck startled and looked over and saw a man—a very attractive man—stood next to him, inclining a hand toward the stool next to him.

Buck shook his head. “N-no. It’s all yours. I mean, if you want it.”

The man smiled and sat down. “Thanks. Just need to wait for my order.”

As he sat down, Buck noticed a logo on the side of this man’s jacket, one that looked incredibly familiar as it was on Buck’s own work clothes.

“Woah. Is that an LAFD jacket? Are you a firefighter?” Buck asked excitedly.

The man smiled. “Yeah. Work at Harbor station now though. Mostly flying planes and helicopters rather than running into any burning buildings.”

“That’s so cool. I’ve always thought being able to fly a plane, like pilot one, would feel like you have super powers,” Buck said. “Does it feel like that?”

“I suppose that’s a good way to look at it,” the man said. “I’m Tommy, by the way.”

“Evan Buckley,” Buck said, reaching out a hand. Tommy shook it, even at the awkward angle since they were sitting so close together. “So when did you learn to fly?”

“A while ago, back when I was in the Army,” Tommy said.

“Have you always been air support for LAFD?” Buck asked.

“No,” Tommy said. “I was on the ground or many years, but just felt like I was missing it. Transferred to Harbor five, six years ago now. I really missed flying so it was a good choice.”

“I bet,” Buck said. “If I could fly, I’d probably never want to be on the ground.”

“Well, I can give you a tour of the place if you’re interested,” Tommy offered kindly. “Show you some of the toys, how things work.”

“That would be awesome,” Buck said. “But I don’t want to trouble you. I mean, you’re just waiting for your food and I’m talking your ear off about work. I-I’m sure the last thing you want to do is talk about your job after just getting off a shift.”

“I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t mean it,” Tommy said. “And I could have always ignored you or told you I didn’t want to talk about work if I wanted.”

“I guess,” Buck said. “I forget sometimes that not everyone likes talking about their job.”

“So then I guess I have to ask, what do you do?”

“Oh, um,” Buck rubbed at the back of his neck. “I’m a firefighter.”

“No kidding,” Tommy said with a laugh. “Which station?”

“The 118,” Buck said proudly.

“Now you’re fucking with me,” Tommy said. “I transferred to Harbor from the 118.”

“That’s crazy! So you do you know Cap? Captain Bobby Nash?” Buck asked.

“Yeah,” Tommy said. “He was just getting settled there when I transferred.”

“What about Hen? You’ve got to know Chimney. I think he’s been there since it was built.”

Tommy smiled and his nose crinkled and Buck had never seen anything more adorable in his entire life. “Howie and I go way back, from before he was called Chimney. And Hen, she’s one of the best firefighters I’ve ever worked with.”

“They’re the best,” Buck said. “It’s so crazy that you know them too!”

Buck glanced over at Josh again. He’d be furious with himself if he got distracted by this god-like man sitting next to him when his friend needed him. Still seemed to be going well.

“I don’t mean to pry, but I do have to ask,” Tommy started, “You’re not stalking those men, are you?”

Buck whipped his head over to look at him. “What?”

“It’s just, I saw you watching them when I first got here. And now you’re looking over again. Just checking things are… all right,” Tommy said.

Buck felt himself blush a bit because he was the world’s worst undercover wingman. “Okay so one of those guys is my friend, Josh. He’s had some rough luck dating and he was feeling a bit nervous, so I offered to come and hang out at the bar while he was on his date. Just in case anything happened, he’d have back up or whatever he needed.”

Tommy blinked. “You’re giving up your night to sit alone at the bar just in case your friend’s date turned out to be an asshole?”

“Yeah. I guess,” Buck said.

Tommy smiled at him, shaking his head fondly. “That’s really sweet of you.”

“I’m just helping out a friend,” Buck said, feeling uncomfortable. “I’d do it for anyone.”  

Before they could talk any more, a waitress came out with Tommy’s food, stealing his attention. Their chat was less than 10 minutes but Buck felt like he could have spent hours talking with Tommy. He tried not to be annoyed that his food came and he was going to leave—the man had probably just gotten off a shift, probably a twelve or thirty-six hour shift, based on it being night. Tommy deserved to grab his food and then head home to eat and crash.

It didn’t mean that it didn’t suck though. But it’s fine. Buck would go back to checking his phone and keeping an eye out for Josh.

Tommy placed a hand on Buck’s shoulder. “Well, it was a delight to bump into you and I enjoyed our conversation. You made the end of a long thirty-six hours speed by as I waited for my food.”

“I’ve been told I do that,” Buck said, completely distracted by the weight of Tommy’s hand on his shoulder.  

Tommy laughed like Buck had told the funniest joke he’d ever heard. He removed his hand and smiled. “And I’m serious about giving you a tour if you want.”

“I’d like that,” Buck said. “Um, should I call the station?”

Tommy smiled again and shook his head. “It’ll be easier if you just let me know directly. I can make sure there’s time and be the one to give you the tour.”

Tommy reached down to grab the pen sitting on top of his receipt and then scribbled his number on a napkin. “Take care, Evan.”

Hearing Evan come out of Tommy’s mouth was surprising, but surprising in a good way—in a way that Buck wasn’t going to think much about right now. “Yeah. Yeah. Uh, you too, Tommy. I’ll—I’ll text you.”

“Sounds good.” Tommy grabbed his bag. “Oh, and good luck with the rest of your date.”

With that, Tommy laughed a little and then walked out, leaving Buck sitting there, carefully holding the napkin and wondering exactly what was happening with fate right now. Maybe his luck was turning around.

[grahamcore]

hannibal nbc fanfiction writers craft dialogue that makes shakespeare look like dr. seuss i’m being so fr right now i fucking love you guys

[pearwaldorf]

I have been trying to write this on and off for a while. I figure the second anniversary of the show is as fine an occasion as any to shove it out into the world. It is not everything I want to say about it, but I think the important bits are there.

It is a human impulse to be seen. To be told, through art, you are not alone. It is universal, but of special importance to people who are not well-represented in media (i.e. everybody who isn’t cis, white, able-bodied, skinny, and conventionally attractive).   

This show speaks to me as a queer person who figured things out later than most of my peers. (Not quite as late as Ed and Stede but not terribly far off either.) It’s not super common to see queer media address this, and I didn’t realize how much I needed that reassurance until I got it. That it’s okay to find these things any time in your life. To be told “A queer is never late, they’re always fashionably on-time.” 

They’re not my first canon queer ship. But they are the first ones where I knew it was true from the get-go. Multiple people assured me this was the case. And yet, I still didn’t believe it until I saw it with my own two eyes. This experience is not unusual for fans around my age.  

After I finished up season one, I laid in bed and cried. It’s not something I thought would affect me so much, but it feels like a weight I’d carried so long I didn’t realize it wasn’t supposed to be part of me is gone.

One of the reasons people unfamiliar with the fandom seem to think it’s absolutely crazy (which some of it is, to be fair, but every fandom has that) is the way fans of the show get extremely super intense about it. It took me a few weeks to realize this is a trauma response. I’m not even sure “trauma” is the right word. It doesn’t interfere with my day to day function, but it lasted for years. Decades. So it was definitely something that fucked me up. And in the way you can only start to see something as you’re moving past it, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to get my head around this. (I don’t know if I have anything to say about it yet. Maybe I need more time to sit with it.)

I know this sounds contrary, but I’m really glad David Jenkins does not come from fandom. Sometimes it’s good to know where a line is, and others it’s better to not know there’s a line at all. And this is, sad to say, remarkable to somebody who has had to deal with this for so long. With so many writers and showrunners aware of the line, and getting right up next to it, but never crossing it.

Imagine doing a show with a queer romance and not understanding why this was received with such emotion and fervor, because it’s just two people in love right? What blissful ignorance that this needed to be explained to him! And then he listened to people’s experiences with queerbaiting, and went “Oh my god you thought I was going to do WHAT?” And then you go “Huh. That is really fucked up.” 

The problem with being told something enough, even though you know it’s wrong, is you start to believe it regardless. All the excuses and hedging. It’s so very difficult to do they tell us, when we hear from queer creators how they had fight tooth and nail to make it as gay as it already was. 

And then comes Jenks, just yeeting it out there: majority queer and (not and/or. and) POC cast, an openly non-binary person playing an openly non-binary character. The ability to not have to make one queer (and/or) POC character speak for everybody, so you can inject a tiny bit of nuance into the conversation. The way you can tell more kinds of stories, like the one where the smol angry internalized homophobe comes into his own with the support of a queer community, even though he was a giant fucking asshole to them before.

So many people were like “You can just DO that? It’s really that easy?” And wasn’t that a fucking Situation, to have that curtain pulled aside. What next? Majority POC casts with stories about POC written by POC? Absolute madness. (Please please watch The Brothers Sun on Netflix. It’s so fucking good.) 

And people will scoff and say “Of course a cishet(?) white man would be able to get this pushed through.” But do they usually? The thing I don’t think people understand about allies is they use their privilege to wedge the door open. You still have to do the work to get through, but at least you have a place to start. And it really fucking matters.

The press keeps trying to tell me The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin is the OFMD substitute we need while we float in the gravy basket. I’m sure it’s a perfectly fine show, but I don’t know who has watched OFMD and decided the itch we needed scratched was anachronistic historical comedy.

I want stories written by people that reflect their lived experiences, with actors and crew committed to bringing that to life. And I would like streamers and studios to commit to giving them a chance, and marketing them properly so people know they exist. 

You can keep people satisficed with scraps for only so long. At some point, somebody is going to give them a whole seven course dinner and people will wonder why they’ve been putting up with starving this entire time.

[pebblume]

I never realized how liberating writing fanfiction would be. I hadn’t written creatively in years. It’s been so long that I kind of forgot what it felt like. The childlike rush of pouring your heart out onto a blank page, not caring about the results as long as you were having fun. I’ve tried writing fanfic a couple of times, for different fandoms across the years, but never finished anything I was really happy with, nothing that I felt comfortable sharing with the world. But something just clicked for me this past week. I realized how much fun it was to stretch out my writing muscles, to get inside the heads of my favorite characters. I realized that it didn’t have to be perfect to be worthy of being shared and loved by others. I realized that I had so many stories inside myself - more than I thought possible. 

But perhaps what I’m most in awe of is fanfic readers. The people who read my work and leave kudos and bookmarks and comments - one word comments, sweet comments, silly comments, paragraph-long comments. I love them all. I used to be afraid of leaving comments on AO3, afraid I wouldn’t have enough words, wouldn’t have the right words, to depict how I felt. But when I felt firsthand how much those comments meant to me I started leaving more and more of them, spreading a digital paper trail of love to all my favorite authors. More and more often I recognize the profile names and images in my comment section and think, Hey, I know you! Now I’m not just a guest on AO3, or a passive reader. I belong here. 

I won’t lie and say I don’t miss drawing a bit, my previous creative outlet. There are plenty of drawings inside me too, itching to be realized. I really just don’t have the time for two time extensive hobbies, not when I need to balance school and practicing and little things like sleeping and eating and relaxing. I miss it, but not as much as I thought I would. There’s a level of investment to sharing a story online that feels…special. When I post my art, I get engagement, and it feels nice, but ultimately, most people are only spending about ten seconds looking at the work I spent eight hours on, if that. When someone reads my fics, we’ve now spent time together. You’ve lived inside my head for a bit, made it your home. It’s about feeling seen, I think. Writing makes me feel understood in a way visual art sometimes doesn’t. It makes me feel vulnerable in the same way performing music does, but less exposed too. It’s interesting to me. 

The only downside, if you can call it that, is now that the writing bug has infected me, I’m finding it harder and harder to stop. I’ll have an idea and then suddenly five hours have flown by because I’m on a creative streak and I just want to write one more idea down, which turns into two, and so on and so forth. I dread stopping, because what if I forget something? What if I get into a writing block later? Suddenly I have people who want to read the things I write and I want to provide it, I really do, but I also have responsibilities. I say, as I write this, ignoring my audition tomorrow afternoon. 

I still have a bit of embarrassment attached to fandom works. When I tell acquaintances that I like to draw or write, I rarely tell them I mean fanart and fanfiction. As if loving something that deeply, that sincerely, is inherently shameful in this age of irony and soulless remakes. Especially when my interests usually consist of media marketed towards children, nevermind the fact that it has more emotional maturity than most ‘adult’ works. But I’m trying to get better about it. A lot of my closest friends know about my hobbies, and some I’ve even let see my work. It’s terrifying but also giddying, seeing them like an art post or comment on a fic. After all, to reap the rewards of being loved, one must submit themselves to the mortifying ordeal of being known, or something like that. 

I realized today that I’ve written over 30,000 words in the past two weeks about about two characters who don’t belong to me, but whom I’ve made my own.

And I’ve never felt happier

[piratefalls]

i'm back! between work and trying to write my first fic for this fandom i've been falling really behind on reading, so for now these are going to be a more bi-weekly occurrence than weekly. in any event, there's truly a little bit here for everyone, so enjoy this week's mix of a+ works!

masterlist

you and me, babe, how about it? by @myheartalivewrites

Alex sits in the back of their Secret Service approved, PPO driven Land Rover, excitement thrumming through his body. The leather squeaks as he fidgets incessantly; his skin burns where Kieran’s shoulder is pressed into his, despite the layers of fabric between them. On the other side of Kieran, he can see Henry’s fingers twitch on top of his own knee, playing an imaginary piano, flicking out and squeezing in before releasing and starting again. Like he’s so fucking desperate to reach out and touch the leg next to his he’s having to muster up all of his self-control, draw on all the years of keeping himself restrained, just to not start things too soon. Alex can’t believe they’re actually, finally, doing this.

you know i can't be found with you by stutteringpeach

“He’s cute,” Alex declares on the first day of class. Liam doesn’t even bother to look up from his laptop. “Uh huh.” “The professor.” Liam makes a non-committal noise. “I’m gonna fuck him.”

Longer Than Most by happinessofthepursuit

“Oh,” Alex says. “Sick.” Henry can’t help but grin. He can’t believe he’s so bloody gone on a man who says sick and dude, who he’s slept with all of one time and proceeded to knock him up. Henry’s a cliche, honestly. “It is, indeed, sick, as you say.” Alex rolls his eyes, but his cheeks darken a shade, giving him away a bit. “Listen, the closest I get to poetry is your fucking face. Excuse me if my vocabulary doesn’t quite compare to yours.” Or, Alex and Henry have a one night stand. That is, until a baby’s involved.

Baby (Let Me Put On a Show) by SatinBirds

It’s been five months, and still Alex is never completely prepared for Henry’s performances. Private or otherwise. Or, Henry is a night dancer, and he’s everything Alex wants.

Sun Salutations (Waif for Me) by @duchessdepolignaca03

He repeats the movement five or six times, his body heating up with each repetition, loosening the hangovers’ grip on him through very effective breathwork. Wanting to open up his hips a little bit more, he settles into a wide-legged forward fold. He holds the pose, enjoying the delicious stretch on his lower back and virtually all the muscles of his lower body. Then he just about jumps out of his skin when he hears, “Mmm, breakfast is served.” Or: Alex parties hard on a Thursday night and has some deliciously anonymous sex with the glittery blond he calls Waif. When he wakes to do his naked sun salutations, he learns that Waif is a very, very hungry, 'temporarily unhoused' boy whom Alex quickly invites to live rent-free in his head.

secret, scars, and trust by viciouslyqueer

He trails off and Henry takes the opportunity to cup his cheek, gently swiping his thumb over the smooth skin. “Hey. We don’t have to do anything. We can stop right now if you want to, or cuddle for a while. I can put on a movie if you’d like. I don’t mind either way.” Alex’s smile grows and he leans into the touch, pecking Henry’s lips again. “Thanks, baby,” he murmurs, and Henry has to fight the urge to react at the pet name. “But it’s not that. I want to keep going, if you want it, too. I just have to tell you something before, okay?”

make it five by anincompletelist

“Fifty bucks says I can get that guy’s number.” Popping the bubble of cinnamon-flavored gum Alex had just blown, he glances up from his phone to look at where Nora’s pointing. Just over the soles of his shoes, crossed at the ankles and propped on the flaking black wood of the shop’s front desk, there’s a man with broad shoulders lingering by the far wall. Alex hadn’t even heard the guy come in. “Nora. He’s literally looking at one of the biggest dildos I’ve ever seen,” he deadpans quietly. + alex works at a sex toy shop. it's usually a pretty easy job — if he could just stop daydreaming about the blonde guy that keeps coming in to buy literally all of alex's favorite sex toys.

talk by smc_27

Henry records himself for an audio erotica app. Alex finds it. And listens.

Got a ticket for two by clottedcreamfudge

Henry likes his apartment - he has done since the day he moved in a year ago. The light in the sitting room is gorgeous at all times of day thanks to the ceiling to floor windows which lead out onto a south-facing balcony, only just large enough for the plethora of plantlife his flatmates care for. The kitchen is always stocked with his favourite tea, everyone keeps to their allotted cupboard and fridge space, and the bathrooms are kept meticulously clean. There's a rota for chores stuck to the fridge with magnets from Rhode Island and Minnesota, London and Milan, with everything typed up neatly so that nobody has to squint to read someone else's awful handwriting. His flatmates themselves? Well, they're a little… strange.

Far Away From the One That I Love by allmylovesatonce

It's been an agonizing two months of Henry being in London and Alex being in New York. When an opportunity to finally be reunited with Henry comes his way, Alex jumps on it. But things don't go quite how they expected after so much time away.

If We're Caught in a Wage (I Will Carry You Over) by @sparklepocalypse

There it is, up ahead – the small island just offshore, with Alex’s favorite broad, flat stone outcropping, perfect for sunning himself in seclusion. He splashes into the shallows and dives in when the water’s up to his knees, and it’s a matter of maybe a minute’s swim to reach the island. Alex finds his footing among the sand and pebbles, pulls himself upright, and shakes the water out of his hair, then pushes it back from his face. He can practically hear the outcropping calling to him -- you know, if inanimate rock could speak. Alex stretches, his mid-back satisfyingly popping, and then skirts his way between some larger rocks until his sunning rock is in view. Except – there’s someone already on the outcropping, their short blond hair shimmering in the sunshine, the upper slant of their shoulders visible from where Alex is standing. (Movie or Bookverse AU; Alex rents a remote beach house and Henry is a cecaelia.)

Protect Your Solitude by graceofgrayskull

At the 2016 Rio Olympics, Alex stumbles onto Prince Henry crying in a storage closet and is forced to rewrite his perception of their first meeting.

Out For A Bite by everwitch

Henry's eyes fly up, zeroing in on the reflection in the mirror. There, behind him. The man from the bar. He looks different in the fluorescent bathroom lights. Sharper. There’s a look in his eyes that has Henry shivering all over again. It's greedy. Hungry. He’s staring right at Henry. Henry's throat feels dry. His heart beats madly. He's heard whispers of this place, and more importantly of its patrons. He thinks he knows what this man is.

each time we touch / i wanna take too much by @firenati0n

my fingers slipped and now there are fingers in mouths. wrote this in one sitting at 5am today. please forgive any egregious errors, i wrote it without my glasses on and on no sleep lol. hope you like it. <3 title from New Girl by FINNEAS

you took the time to memorize me (my fears, my hopes, my dreams) by coffeecatsme

The tour guide has a small bisexual flag pinned to his chest, right next to where his name is scrawled in big, bold letters. Alex, it reads; simple, to the point. The name tag rests on a red and black flannel, and underneath is a white t-shirt with Georgetown’s name stretched on the front, reminding Henry ever so starkly that he’s thousands of miles away from what he calls home. The flannel stretches over broad shoulders leading up to a strong jaw, all in contrast with the bright, dimpled grin stretched over a beautiful face. Henry thinks there isn't a place on the world far enough away from his grandmother to escape her clutches - even after transferring to Georgetown. Then, his tour guide extends a helping hand and shows him otherwise. Or, 5 steps Alex and Henry take to memorize each other and 1 time they realize they already do.

Praise & Supplication by NoCoastPosts

Alex is always moving, always going, always seeking. He is defiance and brashness tinged with anxiety, but not in these moments. Henry pins him down with a gaze as heavy as his touch, and all of Alex’s motions cease. He is calm, he is obedient, he is pliable. He knows he’ll be broken apart piece by piece, sending waves of heat deep into his core. or When Alex gets stuck in his head, Henry helps him let go.

Another Door Opens by 14carrotgold

Henry takes a long drink. “If it makes you feel any better, my dad's dead. He and my mum had the type of love straight from the storybooks and it got cut tragically short, so what is the point in finding something real if it's just going to hurt you?” Alex bites back a smile and shakes his head. “How in the fuck was that supposed to make me feel better?” He waves his hand awkwardly. “Oh, I just thought we were both sharing the trauma that impacted our romantic relationships.” - Henry and Alex first meet when Henry reveals their partners are cheating on them with each other.

Fifteen Hours Till Forever by inexplicablymine

“I would say that in this life, we aren’t granted many chances at true happiness, at the unadulterated freedom and joy that comes to the lucky ones. I would say that I know right now only fifteen feet apart, fifteen hours till forever, and somehow the universe has decided I ought to be one of the luckiest there are.” “But tomorrow,” he continues, “when we are saying our vows, when we are promising ourselves to one another forever, I want you to look me in the eyes and know that you are it for me.”  OR The year is 2025, and the world doesn't know they are getting married. 

home by rizcriz

For a moment he fears Henry’s been outed against his will somehow, but he scrolls down to find a video clip. Unable to trust himself to watch the video, he scrolls a little further to read the transcript. He learns that Henry had come out during a ribbon cutting, of all things. He’d stood in front of a crowd of a couple hundred people gathered for the opening of a new youth shelter, and he’d told his truth. Alex is tempted to watch the video, to examine his body language to see if it was planned or not, but he reads further and one sentence stands out to tell him it wasn’t. There is no comment yet from Buckingham Palace. -- or, six months after Henry rejected Alex at Kensington Palace.

The Way of Things by writerkenna

Henry and Alex have been very much enjoying the life they’ve managed to carve out for themselves. They’ve had to compromise and work and change to maintain it, but it’s worth it. Henry finds himself pregnant, though, and everything they’ve built starts to turn on its head. as always, let me know if you want to be tagged either because you're a writer or a reader (or both!) and i'll see you next time!

My life is a cosmic joke and you're not a real person by lizzie_bennetdarcy

Alex plans to be a lot of firsts in the world. But this absolutely isn't the kind of first he was thinking. He stares wide-eyed into the mirror at the letters on his shoulder while June whines to be let in. Alex finally unlocks the door and June bursts through. “Show me!” Wordlessly, Alex turns to show her his back. "What the actual fuck?" June exclaims, then claps a hand over her mouth. "Sorry, that was rude, but — is it more than one person?" Or: Five times Alex doesn't find his soulmate, and one time he does

tagging: @starkfridays @stilesgivesmefeels @midnightsfp @sarahjswift omg i feel like i'm missing someone

[lisbeth-kk]

Sherlock fandom.

I can’t get you off my mind

I knew Mrs. Hudson was wrong when she told me marriage changes people. 

Not my John, I thought.

How wrong I was.  

Seen in hindsight; has it been three months already, she was right. I should have known that. After all, she was more of an expert on relationships than me. What did I have to show for? My only relationship, if you didn’t count family, had been with John. He was the only one who could fit that term. 

I told Mrs. Hudson that Mary would be reasonable when I needed John on a case. Her response baffled me. 

“Don’t ever use that word and her name in the same sentence, Sherlock. They don’t match. At all.”

Then she huffed and clenched her jaw tight, unwilling to explain herself. So, I’d turned to Mycroft. If anyone knew what was going on, it was him.

“Brother mine,” he said quietly when I came forth with my request about John’s wife. 

“Don’t patronise me, Mycroft,” I snapped. “Just tell me what’s going on. Is John safe?”

“Why would you ask…” Mycroft began, but something about my appearance stopped him from whatever nonsense he was going to utter. 

He sighed heavily and pinched the bridge of his nose. Neither were good signs. 

“She’s an assassin with a prize on her head. We have her under surveillance. I suspect she’ll attempt to flee any day to escape,” Mycroft told me. 

My brain buzzed, analysed, and calculated in quick succession, but in vain. All I could think of was John, unknowing, unsafe, and the baby.

“Mary isn’t pregnant, Sherlock,” Mycroft said. 

“Excuse me?” Were you ever going to tell me any of this?” I asked furiously.

*** 

It’s over now. John’s personal Armageddon. His wife gone when he woke. A letter explaining nothing. The fake pregnancy belly was the final nail in the coffin. I tried to reach out to him, but he was so angry. Thought I’d known all along. He didn’t want to listen to reason. I didn’t blame him. I still don’t. 

Again, it’s Mrs. Hudson’s words putting things in motion.

“Are you just going to let it slide? He needs you, Sherlock! You are his best friend, his entire world. Save him, dear, and yourself. Ask him to come home.”

“He is home,” I protest. 

The look she gives me, makes me feel like a five-year old again. She doesn’t pester me further, but it’s enough. I fetch my laptop and start to write an email. The most important one I’ve ever written.

Dear, John

Believe me when I say I didn’t know anything about Mary or the baby until the day before she left. I would’ve told you if I knew. I was terrified when Mycroft told me, and I couldn’t bear the thought of you being unsafe and unknowing. My plan was to tell you the day you woke up without her, but by then it was too late. 

I don’t blame you for not believing me, John. After all, I’ve lied to you about severe things in the past. If you want to talk, we can. Whenever you want. I’m just a text away. And if you can’t bear the thought of staying where you live; know that you’re always welcome at Baker Street. It was your home, and it’s empty without you. 

We’re not good with words, John. Not these kinds, anyway, but don’t let our friendship end like this. I want you in my life, in my home, our home. I can’t get you off my mind, John. I never could. Please, consider coming back. 

If you don’t answer this email, text, phone or come to Baker Street, I’ll understand, but I hope you’ll do at least one of those things. To let me know where we stand. 

SH

***

I’m mentally exhausted after I’ve sent the email, and go to bed, sleeping like the dead for almost ten hours. When I’ve showered and had some tea and toast, I take out my violin and play all of John’s favourites. 

This can’t be how it ends; I think when I lower the violin and bow. After I’ve placed the instrument back in its case, I hear a sound. I’d been so lost in my own head and haven’t been paying attention to my surroundings. And why would I? I’ve lived alone for months, but now I sense a presence. 

I turn, slowly, alert, and there he is, in his chair, looking at me with eyes filled with unshed tears. Any second now they will trickle down his cheeks. In an instant I’m kneeling in front of him, letting my hands rest on his knees. 

“John, is everything okay? Are you…”

“I’m okay, Sherlock. Just…”

His voice his hoarse. I can tell this isn’t the first time he’s been crying today. Something catches my eye just inside the door. John’s duffle bag. I jerk my head back to look at him.

“John?”

“I’m coming home, Sherlock. For good,” he says and manages to smile while he’s crying. 

***

So, this is how it ends. With a pair of broken hearts that are going to be mended. We only have to give it some time, and we will get there. Together.

@flashfictionfridayofficial @totallysilvergirl @keirgreeneyes @calaisreno @a-victorian-girl @phoenix27884 @sabsi221b @safedistancefrombeingsmart @gregorovitchworld @raina-at @helloliriels @peanitbear @topsyturvy-turtely

[autisticlancemcclain]

Jackie supports the lion swap? How dare you!

Okay SO. This is not the first time I’ve gotten an ask or a comment like this, and I’m fully aware it’s a joke (or at least I think), but I also know that it is kind of a controversial topic on here! And I’ve already written an essay in the topic, but I have some more thoughts I’d like to dive into.

I used to be team Blue Paladin Lance, and hardcore on that team, too. If you look at some of my old fics, you’ll see that. However since I am a contrary person by nature, I started to notice that Red Paladin Lance was way less liked, and so I started to like it more. I really grew fond of the dynamic Keith and Lance got to have as co-leaders, both because it was homoerotic as hell and because the symbolism was fun to explore, but klance is not the main reason I started to care so deeply for the lion change — it was actually Shiro and Allura.

I’m going to start with Shiro, because he’s one of the most fascinating characters in VLD, if not underdeveloped. Part of that fascination for me is that he probably has the most arcs and opportunities for character growth and development in the show, and yet somehow he’s the flattest. He’s portrayed as very one-dimensional in a lot of fic — he tends to be less of a character and more of a role. He’s the Space Dad, or the older brother, or the cool teacher, or the kind and wise friend, or even the stoic Black Paladin. He is loved, I think, but the role he plays is loved, not quite the person he is. And that makes sense, because that is exactly how he’s portrayed in canon.

To Keith, Shiro is “like a brother to [him]”, but what do we see of that dynamic? The show has a clear sense of how a brother acts, that’s a good chunk of Pidge’s character. We barely even know Matt, but Pidge carries herself in such a way that it’s clear when her brother shines through her. And yet even though Shiro also goes missing, twice even, Shiro does not shine through his brother. Keith’s impulses are his own, developed from general abandonment issues rather than Shiro’s specific absence. Shiro’s absence becomes less of Shiro’s absence and more of an absence of a beloved leader figure, kind of a martyr, a “Shiro would have wanted you to carry on”. It is really hard for us as a fandom to use Shiro’s disappearance as anything but a plot device, because that’s all it felt like! We have occasional moments with Shiro, enough to care about him in some way, but as a figure, not as a person. Someone pointed it out on one of my fics and I agree wholeheartedly — Shiro is not shown with any flaws, and that makes it really hard to love him, because you don’t really get the pleasure of defending him, of seeing his motivations, his reasons. Not until the very end, at least.

This is, in all honesty, likely just poor writing. Shiro’s character was honestly just sidelined to a role, because he is really not that present in the show. But I am going to work with the benefit of the doubt, and see if I can use the lion change to explain why we all kind of love Shiro anyway, despite the fact that he’s flat as hell.

Shiro isn’t the Black Paladin. He never was. He flew the Black Lion, yes, and he flew her well — but he was never her Chosen. He couldn’t have been. From the very beginning, the Black Lion was in mourning; she was in no space to choose a new paladin. She accepted Shiro, and she loved him, but he did not fall into her as much as he fell into the role she provided for him. He piloted the Black Lion, but he was not her Paladin. This is made obvious in two ways: in that he never got her bayard, and that from the very beginning, he set up a replacement for himself.

Doesn’t that strike anyone else as odd? I haven’t seen the show in five years, and I don’t plan on rewatching, but I do remember that every moment with Shiro almost had this underlying tension. The closest thing I have to canon off the top of my head is the Handbook (which I had to stop reading because they did everyone SO dirty there, even though some of it was honestly pretty funny), which was released in S2, and even that incredibly early canon talked about Keith replacing Shiro!

From the very beginning, Shiro was planning an out to his role. He knew it was not meant for him. He did the role well, but it was not his to do.

Aside from those two reasons, Shiro also…can’t be the Black Paladin. He can’t be that and himself, I mean. This part is a little more complicated, so I’m going to borrow some of my own tags from some awesome fanart I saw:

I really do think Shiro is defined by his humanity (as is heavily implied by his illness — this is a character who is completely and totally bound to his mortality. Of all the other characters, he is the one most familiar with death, so he is the one who is most intimate with the raw fear of being human. But more on that later), but it’s my last comment that I want to focus on — “he is DEFINED by his his humanity…even as his greatest asset is the part of him that is not human”.

Every second that Shiro is leader of Voltron, he is the Champion. That can literally be his only goal — he is the head of the fight against Zarkon and the Empire. Either Shiro comes out the Champion, or Zarkon does. Either Shiro has to grit his teeth and fight off the flashbacks and the fear and the pain and use the one thing that forces him to reconcile with the fact that he had his entire personhood stripped away (his arm, his Galra arm, one of their biggest advantages as a team; his connection to Zarkon through Black, something that can only help the war effort at a direct cost to him; everything he does in this war is shoving him right back into that Arena again and again and again), or Zarkon wins. Every second Shiro pilots Black, every time he plays her paladin, he has to be who the Empire made him to be. He has to be the Champion. Once again he is not Takashi Shirogane, the person, the astronaut, the man, he is the Role. He is the Space Dad he is the Pilot of the Black Lion he is the Champion. For every second he is in that lion he is stripping away himself.

Obviously, that is something that was never sustainable. On this argument alone, Shiro was going to waste away eventually. There was always going to be a point where Shiro was not going to be able to be the Champion anymore. There was always, from the very way the dynamic was set up, going to have to be a lion switch. Now, interestingly enough, there could have been a really easy fix to this: Black Paladin Allura. She’s already a born and raised leader, already shown her immense competence, already someone the rest of the paladins follow. With her at the helm, nothing else would have to change, right?

Well, maybe. We’ll never know. One part of that is absolutely true — Allura should have been a paladin from the very beginning. Her quintessence is canonically closest to the entirety of Voltron (something that bears its own essay,; the relationship between all six of the paladins and Voltron is wrought with heavy symbolism), she is the most highly trained, she is smart, and she actually wants to be out on the field. She should have been in that armour from day one.

But Allura cannot be the Black Paladin. Allura cannot handle other’s sacrifice.

Of course this is a complicated subject. Should a leader sit back and let her crew sacrifice themselves instead of her? Must she hold herself in higher regard, convince herself she’s more important? Of course not! Teams, especially Voltron, are built with assets. While not everyone might be ‘equal’ in the traditional sense, they are all integral, and expecting sacrifices is not the stance I am trying to take here. But the point of a team, especially a team so small and vital as Voltron, is that everyone is willing to be the sacrifice, as they have to be, and Allura simply can’t handle that. She shows us this from the beginning, when she disguises herself as Galra and is taken in place of anyone on the team she barely knows, and again in Oriande with the White Lion, and finally in the piece of shit canon ending. Allura has to be the sacrifice. Every time.

And how could she not be? The last time she spared herself of sacrifice, she lost her entire people. The last time she let others sacrifice themselves for her, she was left alone, to shoulder a war bigger and greater than she could ever handle. Allura is painfully familiar with the agony of being the survivor, and she cannot do that again. She cannot and will not put herself through that again. As the Black Paladin, she would have to let her team make sacrifices — she would have to let them have their own agency, their own decisions; she would have to let them choose to get hurt and choose to do risky things and analyse and react and act. As leader she would have to trust her team to put themselves in harm’s way, and not only that, but she would have to authorize them to do so.

Like Shiro cannot last as the Champion, Allura cannot last as the Survivor. Shiro cannot even last in Voltron, and it is foolish to keep Allura out of it. A lion change is absolutely necessary for the show to move forward, for the war to move forward. The initial team was doomed to fail.

How would it change, then? What would fit? I know I’ve said my piece. I know who I think would fit where. But since I’ve been comparing character arcs to their roles as paladins, I’d like to keep doing that — what about Keith makes me so sure that he’s the true Black Paladin?

I’ll show you with process of elimination. I know Black Paladin Lance is a favourite, and I can see why. Lance has many leadership qualities, is a good tactician, and cares deeply. However, aside from his desire for power making him less suitable for the role, Lance functions best as support, despite how much he hates it. He is the one who knows how to pick up the pieces of a broken situation. He is an excellent guide, which makes him an unbelievably valuable second. He is adaptable, so he can fill in for many different roles. He can step in for leader when necessary, but putting him in Black would encourage a more active role for him; would force him to anticipate and plan for specific outcomes rather than his strength as one who analyses any outcome as it arises and works within it then. Lance could be the Black Paladin, yes, but taking him from the body and placing him in the head would be a fool’s choice. It would be crippling to Voltron, to put the jack of all trades as a master of one. Lance’s arc is all about learning to love and trust himself as he is, as the seventh wheel. Not to put him in charge of the vehicle.

Well, what about Hunk? Hunk is incredibly intelligent and analytical. He probably could lead Voltron, and did in several occasions. But Hunk’s arc is interesting because it was handled so early in the show. Unlike the rest of the team, Hunk’s arcs were solved largely in the first season. His biggest flaws were his distrust of people and, literally, his inability to fly. He could not take his feet off the ground. He was so untrusting that he could not manage to take a step forward. However his bonding with Yellow and trust with the team and their subsequent and returned trust resolved these issues, more or less, which is probably why Hunk was treated more and more like a side character the longer VLD went on. Hunk didn’t need the role of Black Paladin because he had settled into the Yellow Paladin in a way that was sustainable.

Pidge is in a similar boat. Her arc, primarily, has been about finding her family. Voltron was almost second priority for her, or at least not her only first priority. And understandably so! As the youngest she was afforded with that lenience. Her growth was about growing into her own pain, about becoming her own person alongside what she had become in the absence of her brother. As the Black Paladin, she would no longer have the space to prioritize her search for her family alongside Voltron, so her position as Black Paladin would be unstable. She is best suited in Green, where she can focus on several things at once.

That really only leaves Keith. In many ways it comes full circle — the Black Lion healing from her grief by choosing the man who ran from his Galran heritage and his power as a leader, rather than the man who chose nationalism and power over anything else. Keith is Zarkon’s direct opposite, and as such is the other side of the same coin, the one who is truly Black’s Chosen. We know this because Keith is the one who wields the Black Bayard, and Keith is, from the very beginning, the one the rest of the team chooses to follow — I ask you whether it was for Shiro that the three other humans ran off to chase in the desert, or Keith? Who was it that Lance could not leave alone? Who was it that piqued Hunk’s curiousity? Who was it that challenged Pidge to choose Voltron, rather than the search for her family?

That covers Black Paladin Keith. But what about Red Paladin Lance? I’ve established already why he cannot be the Black Paladin, but why did he have to move from Blue? For that, I bring you another few slices from early, S2 and previous canon:

“I thought what we had was special!” “Seventh wheel, if you count the Alteans.” More than once, Lance laments over being forgotten. He struggles with feeling like anything but the extra, the unnecessary. Whether or not Blue Chose him is irrelevant — he does not feel Chosen by her. The Pilot of the Blue Lion position for Lance is as unsustainable as the Pilot of the Black Lion position for Shiro — Lance does not trust it. He doesn’t trust himself in the role, and doesn’t trust Blue in having chosen it for him. Obviously, this is not the role for him.

But Red? Keith’s Red Paladin, at least? Yes, he struggles with feeling like Keith’s second, but that is literally his arc. Lance’s development is about becoming his own person despite his own misgivings about being second-best. His role as the Red Paladin is the fulfilling of his arc, and is thus the best Lion for him, the Chosen. And Red did Choose him, mind you. There was an adjustment period, of course there was, but Red did more than let Lance pilot her. She opened up new possibilities for Lance — think the broadsword — that he could not see. Red saw his potential and revelled in it. She Chose him.

Lastly — and this turned out to be less relevant to the essay than I expected, but I do want to go over it a tad — is Shiro’s tie to humanity. I mentioned two important points: Shiro’s connection to mortality makes him the most intimate with his humanity out of all the characters, and he is undoubtedly the flattest character of them all. That is, if you don’t consider his clone to be part of his character.

But I’m begging you to reconsider. Reconsider, perhaps, who the clone is — Haggar had pure access to Shiro for a year, you remember. His thoughts, his dreams, his mannerisms, his priorities, his body. Even him at his most human, his most deranged, his most scared. She had Shiro then. She had Shiro when he had nothing to look forward to. She had Shiro when he hurt his crew to make sure they would live, at direct cost to himself.

She stripped him of his humanity — his connection to his own mortality. She took his illness from him. And who, then, did she return to the team? Who was clone? Shiro, mostly. The clone was happy to play with the team. The clone was clever. The clone believed, fully, that he was Shiro, only he was angrier and meaner, a little, and less capable of shoving down his own pain. Shiro, stripped of his tie to humanity and mortality, stripped of his compulsive need to be strained and stressed and the one everyone else can rely on, the Role rather than the Person, is emotional. He has flaws and outbursts. He can’t manage his own pain. He is is cruelest to the one person on the team — Lance — who canonically reminds him closest of himself.

Shiro, in the purest form that Haggar can make him, is flawed and self-hating. That is where our love for him comes. Not the man who pushes himself down at the same time as he sacrifices his personality to be someone for others, but the man who is struggling and can’t keep it locked down. That’s where it comes from.

Anyways. Like with my other essay, I’ll admit that this analysis is probably reading into this. The writing of VLD was flawed, at best, but regardless, I think the lion change is a rich amalgamation of the characters and who they really are.

[buckets-and-trees]

Buck's Eleven

Title: Buck's Eleven Fandom: MCU Characters/Pairings: Bucky and Steve with mentions of Bucky x ex!wife Reader Word Count: 1.6k

Summary: Going into a job this big, you have to take the house or know the house will hunt you down and swallow you into its belly. Vegas is unforgiving. Good thing they're the best at what they do.

Content/Concept Warnings: Thief/Con Artist AU, smoking, 1960s elements, references to sexual acts

Notes: CONQUERING FOUR EVENTS/CHALLENGES, which is my crowning moment this summer:

@buckybarnesevents WEEK FIVE of Hot Bucky Summer: "When I First Met You..."

Sixth square of @buckybarnesbingo U4: "AU: Historical"Playing Games"

Featuring Lemonade and a Road trip for @the-slumberparty's June Challenge

AND MY FOURTH AND FINAL SQUARE for Connect4 Alternate June-iverse: C4 "Thief/Con Artist" (and including an Alpine sighting so I can collect my TOE BEANS)

This is an MCU homage to Ocean's Eleven drawing direct inspiration from the 1960 and 2001 films. The 2001 has been one of my favorite heist movies since it came out, and I had never seen the 1960s original until this week, but once I started watching it, my jaw dropped with excitement over how ripe it was to adapt for a Bucky (and Steve) AU because in the original, it's 15 years after WWII and the crew is a reassembled group of guys who were in the army together!

I borrowed some dialogue beats directly from the 2001 film, and those are in bold italics.

Story graphic by me, story dividers by @firefly-graphics, reblog graphic by @vase-of-lilies

Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest

“Good morning.”

“Good morning.” Bucky takes a seat in the chair across from the penitentiary’s release board and settles his hands casually in his lap.

The man in the center taps his cigarette in the ash tray before returning it to his lips. “Please state your name for the record.”

“James Buchanan Barnes.”

“Thank you. Mr. Barnes, you’re meeting with this board today to answer a few questions so we can determine whether or not you intend to break the law again.”

Bucky nods. Contrition. Congeniality. A touch of charisma, but nothing too memorable. That’s what he must serve up.

“This is your first conviction, but you have been implicated in a long list of other cases for confidence schemes and frauds. Is this a fair and accurate record?”

Bucky glances at the doll off to the side at a small table of her own, clicking away impressively at a typewriter.

“I expect your records to be nothing but accurate, though – as you said – I’ve been implicated but never charged.”

“Mr. Barnes, what we’re trying to find out is: was there a reason you committed this crime, or was there simply a reason you got caught this time?”

“My wife left me. I was upset. I fell into a self-destructive pattern.”

Exactly what he knows they would like to hear.

“If released, is it likely you would fall into a similar pattern?”

Bucky cocks his head almost imperceptibly. “She already left me once; I don’t think she’d do it again just for kicks.”

“Fellas, you know I’d do almost anything for ya, but not… not this,” Banner looks between them, rubbing the back of his neck.

Steve smiles warmly, the smile he knows tricks his friends and his marks into whatever he needs. “Why waste all the little tricks that the army taught us just because it’s sort of peaceful now?”

The din of the night club around them – games of cards, dames performing on stage, drinks being served up all around – gives them all the privacy they need to hold a sensitive conversation around the table, just the three of them.

“We’re trained men,” Bucky adds.

“I know. I know you are, and we always did good work.”

“Better with you on the crew, you keep us careful.”

“You remember a little operation called Stacks back on the Sokovian front?” Steve asks.

“Do I! Eleven of us in and out under the cloaking of the trees at night with more Axis piles of cash than was decent for either side to have stockpiled away.”

“We should have buried it,” Bucky says.

“Speaking of money, you’re going to need an enormous amount of backing to pull this off in Vegas. The city’s not a sleepy little town tucked away near the mountains and off the grid of the main occupation, it’s got a million neon lights glowing on it every night.”

“Fury, easy.”

“None of us are gonna be as easy as you think. You’ll need the best electrician around, and Tony’s out.”

“Got religion?” Bucky asks.

“Naw, he and Pepper have got a kid now.”

Bucky looks to Steve, but he seems unconcerned. “Morgan – she’s cute.” Steve looks back to Banner. “I think he’ll do it.”

Banner shakes his head, but grins. “Pepper’s already unhappy he’s back in the game on the fluffy jobs, but if you think you can convince him… You get Fury and you get Tony, I’ll play ball with you.”

“You can’t do it. It’s impossible. I made it impossible. I invented casino security. When I first met you boys, you were bright young cocky upstarts. Now you’re bright and cocky – and just lucky that most of the time you’re not too cocky. Now I like you boys, but it can’t be done.”

“You know what? You’re probably right.”

“Eyes were too big for our stomachs.”

“You would know better than anyone.”

“Sure, sure. I just don’t want to see you boys behind bars, especially since you’re fresh out, Barnes.”

“Well, we appreciate the lemonade all the same,” Steve says, setting down his now empty glass.

“It’s hand pressed every morning down at the river market.”

“And thank you for taking care of Alpine while I was away,” Bucky scratches the the head of his white cat, who hasn’t stopped purring since being reunited. He scoops her up to his chest, and he and Steve stand to leave.

“It was good to see you, Nick,” Steve says.

“Give Maria your addresses on the way out, she’s got me a good source on Cuban cigars, I’ll send each of you a box.”

Bucky nods. “That’s sure nice of you.”

They turn and start to walk across the terrace toward the patio doors.

Fury looks after them. He sighs. “Tell me the marks.”

They slowly turn back, appearing to casually answer, but knowing this will bring him in.

“The… Sahara–“

“–Sahara, the Riviera, and the Dunes,” Bucky finishes.

“Hold on.” Fury stands. “Those are Pierce’s places. What do you two got against Pierce?”

“Pierce is the king on top of the mountain right now, nothing more than that.”

“I still owe him for how he got me with Project Insight,” Steve adds, “but I could get him back some other way. The golden opportunity to knock over his casinos on the fight night of the year, Thor vs. Starlord in a few weeks? That’s just destiny giving me the gift to make it sweeter that it’ll be his money.”

“And, Rogers, you’re okay with this knowing full well who the dame rumored to be attached to his son’s arm?”

“Yep,” Steve says without hesitation. “It’s not about her. Pierce is the king on the top of the mountain right now, we just want to topple him over. I still owe him for Project Insight. Besides, Buck’s not stupid enough to make this about a dame who divorced him, and like you said it’s only a rumor that she’s his doll.”

Fury turns his stare to Bucky. He shrugs. “She’s made it pretty clear with the divorce papers.”

He studies him for a moment, then seems satisfied.

“And you’re just going to go on your little road trip across the country recruiting your team?”

“Who doesn’t love a summer road trip?” Bucky asks, a full grin on his face.

“Sam’s already in Sin City, picked out a nice house for us to set up and lay low in Henderson.”

“Henderson’s nice and sleepy. Banner will be there by the end of the week, and we just came from seeing Tony.”

“You should swing through Salt Lake City, look in on the Maximov Twins, they’re pulling off some impressive stuff among the locals there.”

“I’ll put them on the list.”

Steve leans up against the side of the convertible while Bucky starts to pump the gas.

“Sam’s not eager about the kid.”

“I know he’s not,” Bucky smirks. “But he’s our grease man. There’s a reason they’re calling him the Spider Boy Wonder now. Besides, he was a kid before I went in, it’s been four years, he’s not a kid anymore.”

“He’s impressive.”

Steve lets silence fall for a beat.

“Tell me it’s not about her. Tell me you are not stupid enough to make this about her.”

Frankly Bucky is shocked and impressed that it took Steve thirty minutes to press him about you now that he knows.

“It’s not about her, it’s about five million cool a piece.”

Steve looks dubious. “Because when we say ‘till the end of the line…’”

“It’s not about her, she just happens to be there, but I’m not ignoring that fact – we’re just going to use it to our advantage because she’ll be a blind spot for him.”

“Because she was a blind spot for you?”

“No, she was never that.” She was fireworks, electricity, what kept him sharp when he was on his game, before he got caught and sulked behind bars.

Steve sighs and his face softens. “I know. Just promise me we don’t do anything stupid.”

"No, nothing stupid. Too much riding on this. Heist of our lives."

As they pulled out onto the street, car aimed for the interstate, Bucky wouldn't spend the duration of the road trip thinking about you, but you would cross his mind frequently, as you always had.

With the miles ahead of them, the memories of you could distract him in peace. Thoughts of when he first met you. Thoughts of sneaking into rooftop parties and pools at places like Fury’s like you two had done when you were both too broke to get in any other way. Thoughts of his hand disappearing under your skirt and up to tease the delicious heat between your thighs. Thoughts of your head falling back and exposing your throat to him. Thoughts of your head falling forward to rest against his. Thoughts of you gasping beneath him as he thrust inside you. Thoughts of you wrapped up in his arms, leaning against his chest as you watched the sun set on your little balcony of that third-floor apartment in the city. Thoughts of the soft mornings and late nights in the bed you had shared together until you didn’t. Thoughts he fights both to hold onto and forget.

But you were unforgettable. You were his. You had to be his again. He's waited for just the right angle to set you in his sights again, and he knows he can get you as sure as he knows they will walk away with over fifty million and without a trace.

Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest

[starbaby-7]

Just mustered up the courage to rewatch episode 6 of Good Omens 2 and I have a whole new slew of thoughts. Whole new slew of observations.

One:

Metatron orders an oat milk latte with almond milk. Which, is a pretty specific drink for someone who is just ordering a coffee Aziraphale. So I got to thinking, and I went digging.

Biblically and spiritually Oats were thought to represent feelings of safety, enhancing an individuals feelings of comfort and safety in dire situations. A comfort food.

On the other hand, almonds represent purity and the ability to have be more godly and holy. To make more godly decisions or, in this instance, heavens decisions.

Metatron is no fool, he knew exactly what he was doing. Stating earlier in the shop when Nina said no one picked death responding with “I don’t suppose they do, so predictable.” And later on when he offers Aziraphale the drink commenting “oh yes I better think so.” When Aziraphale comments on its lovely flavor.

If Aziraphale is anything, it’s gluttonous. He enjoys food and drink and good company and comfort from things he takes pleasures in. So of course Metatron’s olive branch from heaven would come in the form of a cup of coffee.

Two:

“I’ve consumed a few things in my time.”

This is such a strange line to me, it felt too on the nose and sinister. Metatron stares at Aziraphale drinking the coffee and says this. And I don’t think for a moment he is referring to food. Being the voice of god, I’m sure he has dealt with a great deal many angels and demons. Probably without any parties aware of it, maybe even the almighty herself being unaware.

Three:

When The Breakup happens and Metatron walks into the bookshop he says :

“He always did like going his own way, asking all those questions.” When referring to Crowley.

This is SUPER DUPER interesting to me because it implies, really, Crowley’s only crime against heaven was asking questions. Which we knew to an extent form Crowleys own claims on the matter but for it to be confirmed this way felt gut wrenching. Crowley is and never has been evil or demonic. He was curious and that was punishable in heavens eyes to be cast down.

Four:

When Metatron and Aziraphale are leaving there are so so so many times Aziraphale looks for a way out. Broken sentences, body language facing away and out towards Crowley. His glances always in Crowleys direction, like a child being pulled in two directions and unable to voice properly what they want. Which is exactly what the situation is, isn’t it?

I think, as a fandom, we sort of glossed over the trauma Aziraphale endures as a being who remains to be an angel. Heaven, his home, a toxic parent beckoning you with the promise of a warm hug after a millennia of beatings. But nevertheless the promise of that warmth is so tempting. And we know, Aziraphale is STARVING. Starving for anything, he always has been. Especially acceptance from Heaven.

And Crowley represents everything he ever wanted, unconditional and without hesitation. But, there’s still a sense of fear within Aziraphale regarding his love for Crowley. A guilt, and the high he was feelings from seeing Beezlebub and Gabriel do what he always wanted wore off horribly fast at the prospect of eliminating that guilt by restoring Crowleys angelic grace. Which is something we all know was a lie.

Five:

I don’t think the coffee had any sort of mind control anything within it. Metatron didn’t need to do that. He just needed to show what the coffee represented. It was quite simple of a task, so the Coffee Theory is out.

Six:

The elevator fade out is SO IMPORTANT. Because Crowleys expression doesn’t change, he’s hit rock bottom he’s alone with no amount of fresh information to tell him otherwise. For all he knows life as it’s been for all these 6000 years is over.

But Aziraphale’s does, quite a lot actually. It goes from shock, to stoic determination to straight up smirking. We know, from all we have seen of him that at his core Aziraphales motives lie in love and the desire to look after Earth and people. He is a being driven by what angels are supposed to be driven by. That’s his crime, that’s why Metatron had to get him away from Earth. But at the prospect of the Second Coming, Aziraphales motives suddenly become quite evident. He spared a glance at Crowley, which is pivotal to the moment. It’s saying so much. If he had meant to just go to Heaven and never return why look at Crowley? It’s like a romance scene, breakup in the rain with the question: which one of us has the courage to turn around? Crowley never looked away, Aziraphale spared that glance.

Stopping the end is he and Crowleys jobs, the protect humanity, they have their own rules. Aziraphale knows that, he trusts that ability. But he knows he can’t do that if he doesn’t go along with whatever is happening in Heaven. The best way for him to figure out how to stop this is to go into the belly of it.

That brings me back to this line:

“Oh, but saving me makes him so happy.”

Aziraphale has a plan, like always does, and this time it won’t be Crowley saving him. But him saving Crowley.

That glance was a promise.

THE END THANKS FOR MY RANT ALMOST THREE MONTHS POST BOOKSHOP DIVORCE.

[moonlightdancer26]

I'm an ex-marauders fan at this point, but haven't yet worked up the nerve to leave :( Wish me luck.

The marauders fandom promises acceptance and tolerance and lighthearted fun, but as soon as Severus comes up, the previously rosy atmosphere turns downright ugly. I've seen so many marauders fans posting or reblogging about how “your trauma is valid”, how “intentions don’t matter if you hurt someone”, and how “apologies don’t count if they’re coupled with an excuse”… who also go out of their way to justify the ‘prank’ because Sirius didn’t /mean/ to almost kill Snape, and how it’s really all Snape’s fault, and why can’t he get over it already since the marauders clearly became better people (even though Snape never received any kind of apology or any indication that they regretted their behavior)?

And these posts live side by side on their dash? Idk just needed to vent as i figure out where to go next in this fandom (or maybe another one altogether)...

WTF THIS ASK WAS FROM SEPTEMBER 😭😭 I’M SO SORRY I SWEAR I’VE BEEN SO EXCITED TO ANSWER YOUR ASK BUT I GOT TOO BUSY AND ALWAYS POSTPONED IT 😭

Anyway, I totally wish you luck anon. It’s hard switching fandoms and building up the courage to “move to the other side,” but I can tell you that it is 100% worth it when you realise how much the Snapedom differs from the Marauders fandom! As someone who’s been in the fandom for many years, seen what both sides are like, and has a bunch of friends (both online and irl) who don’t always share the same opinion, I can safely say that we are generally far more accepting of different opinions than the Marauders fandom. We tend to steer clear of them because they’re.. very persistent about their opinions and find it amusing to purposefully mistag their anti-Snape posts or to scroll through pro-Snape/anti-Marauders tags and attack the posters. But if you’re not like that and you can accept not always agreeing with friends or fandom members, then we’ll welcome you with open arms <3

And honestly I agree, I’ve seen Marauder stans make excellent and detailed analyses of their favourite characters and articulate their arguments greatly. But then all that reading comprehension shoots out the window when it comes to Snape, and you suddenly see them brush him off as nothing more than a “obsessed incel nazi” and call it a day. I’ve seen similar things happen with Snape fans as well, and I completely understand how you feel.

All I can say is: Just leave the Marauders fandom. Either announce it with a post and say that you no longer wish to be in the Marauders fandom or want to switch to the Snape fandom. Or if you want, you can create another blog altogether. The important thing is that you do it now and get it over with, because simply reading your ask and knowing how it’s negatively affecting you really upsets me. This ask was sent around 2 months ago, so I hope that by now you’ve done something about it, but if you haven’t, this is what I think about the whole situation. I wish you the best ❤️❤️ and if you, or anyone else who’s struggling with anything similar, want to DM me and talk about this, don’t hesitate to do so.

[magnorious]

The Reveal that Changed Percy Jackson

*Spoiler Alert*

I’m talking about the Nico vs Cupid scene in book 8, House of Hades. I picked this scene, even though there were a great many in the original series that defined Percy Jackson as a story far more meaningful than just “cool tweenage demigods with magic and superpowers who fight evil”.

When this book came out, Nico vs Cupid was almost all anyone talked about. Why? Because Nico came out. Nico, an explicitly gay character in a book published by Disney, in a rather high profile series. Nico, the little angsty brat displaced from the timeline, comes out of nowhere with a world-shattering reveal.

House of Hades is already the darkest book in the series and, I think, the most polished and successful with this tone and how it feels so complete. While Percy and Annabeth are in Tartarus, the constant clever and horrific callbacks to quests from prior books quite literally come back to haunt them. The others trying to carry on without them, the ridiculously high personal stakes, the drama, the storytelling, it spares no expense in this book.

The Nico vs Cupid scene was something else, though, and all these years later… I’m not so sure it was done for the better.

—

Independent of the Big Reveal, this scene does a lot of things we’d never seen before in this series, namely this: Cupid is scary, and no one expected him to be.

Percy Jackson, though it does have its serious moments, is the series where the god of wine wears leopard print shirts and the god of the seas has a fishing chair for a throne. These characters quip and joke even when they’re trying to be intimidating and Percy’s personality, snarky and sassy and very rarely shooting straight, undercuts a lot of the attempts at looking competent and threatening (and we love him for it).

They’ve fought gods and monsters and demigods and characters have died really tragic deaths, but for the most part, these serious moments all come when we expect them to.

This scene comes out of nowhere and for anyone who hasn’t read the book in a while, here’s the context: Percy and Annabeth are in Tartarus and Nico is kind of the de-facto leader in their absence, knowing the most about Tartarus of the remaining crew. He and Jason are sent on a side quest to go retrieve the Staff of Diocletian from Cupid and Nico is not at all happy about this venture, but we don’t know why beyond that he’s Nico and he’s never happy.

Right out of the gate, Cupid is not at all who we expect him to be and this fight scene, absent of Percy, is suddenly very serious. Cupid doesn’t quip, he doesn’t show himself, and he fights dirty. The god of love, not the god of war or anything we expect to be violent and dangerous.

He’s whispering in characters’ heads, throwing them around like ragdolls, and taunting Nico ceaselessly all in Jason’s POV. Cupid gets some seriously badass lines, too.

“I’ve been to Tartarus and back,” Nico snarled. “You don’t scare me.” I scare you very, very much. Face me. Be honest.

Love is no game! It is no flowery softness! It is hard work—a quest that never ends. It demands everything from you—especially the truth. Only then does it yield rewards.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say Love always makes you happy.” [Cupid's] voice sounded smaller, much more human. “Sometimes it makes you incredibly sad. But at least you’ve faced it now. That’s the only way to conquer me.”

In all this, unfortunately in Jason POV, we’re primed only once by a previous god finally acknowledging that gays exist in this universe. This universe, based on Greek Mythology, famous for its not-straightness. Even then, audiences have spent 7 and a half books accepting that there won’t be any gays. No one is expecting this from Nico.

So when it comes, when Nico reveals he has a crush on Percy… the fandom lost our minds.

—

And I’m not so sure that’s a good thing, looking back. On the one hand, obligatory “we need representation,” but on the other, there was this one reviewer who knew what was up long before anyone else did.

She’d said something along the lines of raising damning concerns that Nico’s entire character arc was now defined by his homosexuality, that this scene frames all his anger, all his hate, all his rage and depression, about this one aspect of his character, and diminishes him because of it.

All these years later, I’m disappointed to say I agree with her.

This book series’ only major canonical gay (so far) is forced out of the closet with a proverbial gun to his head

Now, Nico likely never would have come out without that gun, but the way it happened, especially in front of Jason who he’s not friends with, showing Jason his memories because it’s not Nico’s POV and Jason has to see somehow because Nico sure won’t detail those scenes himself is... not good?

Jason handles it well, as well as he can given that this is Nico, and Cupid is an explicit villain so him forcing Nico out is in-character and not my problem. The narrative forcing Nico out is the problem—that this is a big reveal both to Jason and the audience is the problem.

The book isn’t new and with respect to when it was written and who wrote it, it’s not a terrible scene or terrible representation. But it’s not just forcing Nico out of the closet, either.

All of Nico’s character development is retroactively pinned on his sexuality

I get it. Nico’s… 14? 14 and from an era where being who he is was a death sentence, with zero education on the matter. Internalized homophobia is a thing (though Nico doesn’t actually seem to hate himself for being gay, he hates himself for crushing on Percy. Nor does he hate other gays or the concept).

Nico, though, is the one demigod who can summon any ghost he could dream up to teach him to hate himself a little less. He could have summoned the ghost of Freddie Mercury and what a dazzling mentorship that would have been.

The way the scene is framed makes it look like all of Nico’s rage comes from this one relationship, when it comes from so much more. He’s a son of Hades, a god no one trusts or likes and is synonymous with death, evil, and deceit. His sister, his last living relative, died on a quest as just a teenager. He has no friends at camp, powers that scare people, and is almost a century removed from everything and everyone he knew in his old life.

And he went and left camp *only* because of his crush on Percy? Not for any other reason?

When he does get his crush on Will, that only makes it worse. Nico did have friends, even if he didn’t believe it. He did have Percy and he’d earned the respect of his fellow campers after the Battle of Manhattan. He back-slid in HOH for this reveal, as if a romance is the only thing that could make him happy.

Cupid’s message is the narrative’s message: The only way to conquer love is to face it [in combat]

With a gun to his head, in front of a veritable stranger, instead of in, I don’t know, therapy with Apollo? There couldn’t have been any other way to fit this reveal in? He couldn’t have made his own group therapy session with other ghosts? Persephone or Demeter never sat this boy down for The Talk with a literal captive audience?

And that it’s a “reveal” at all, in incredibly dramatic fashion, a plot twist for shock value. The book couldn’t drop hints in Nico POV? Couldn’t casually state it anywhere at any time in the previous 3 books? Couldn’t treat it at all like this is normal and not a life-or-death situation?

I just feel bad for the kid. Nico can’t be the only demigod who has a guilty, unrequited crush. Cupid is forcing this out of him because that crush happens to be on another boy.

It’s in Jason’s POV

This world shattering, deeply personal reveal, and the character who’s having it isn’t even the narrator. Jason is a fine character and I know why it’s him out of everyone who could have gone with Nico, but this should have been solely Nico’s moment, not Jason’s commentary about Nico’s moment, being a non-consenting voyeur into Nico’s very personal memories about Percy.

Even if it’s not Jason’s POV to retain the surprise, it certainly starts to feel like Jason’s POV to retain the surprise. Jason can still be present, but even then—Cupid needed Nico to face Cupid, not Cupid and Jason.

—

It sucks because the scene as a whole, removed from the context, is incredible. The choreography, the pacing, the intensity of the battle, Cupid as a villain and Nico and Jason’s desperation to just stay alive.

Its impact on the series can’t be ignored. Blood of Olympus is no one’s favorite. It’s a terrible last book and not all that great as a book, period, but the ending?

Among other travesties, Nico confronts Percy, tells him he had a crush on him, and then *immediately* starts pining after Will. Percy doesn’t get the chance to talk to him, stunned at this reveal. They never have a heartfelt conversation about it, what this means for their friendship, how Percy never noticed or how this makes him feel, if he’s at all guilty for potentially leading Nico on and being a bad friend.

We get none of that. Nico just finds a pretty blond boy after, what, four years pining after Percy? One awful confrontation with Cupid and a few lines of dialogue traded with Jason and all his angst and moodiness is cured off-screen.

Can’t Nico go five minutes where he figures out who he is before he’s trading one crush for another? Can he not define himself independently of who he likes for just a couple chapters? He tells Jason after the Cupid fight that he’s over it, but… c’mon, he’s absolutely lying there, or he wouldn’t have been so hurt and upset and hesitant to reveal himself.

I love that he’s popular now, I love that he does have a healthy relationship (one that eclipsed the whole fandom for better or for worse), but the way he went about becoming popular still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Nico did walk so the rest of the series' extended universe could run. We did get Solangelo, we got Apollo being Apollo, we got a world based off Greek Mythology that stops straight-washing history. It's just a shame that he had to be forced out the way he did, and that his whole character is now defined by his relationship with Will.

[evermoredeluxe]

just something i’ve been seeing and wanted to finally address, i hate when some people in this fandom see taylor as a burden. i’ve seen many people since they started dating saying how brave travis is for dealing with media being all over him and paparazzi running after him after he started dating taylor. i get that it must not be easy and he said so himself but he’s a grown man and is old enough to know what a relationship with her would bring. just imagine how hard it is for her to be living like that for almost 17 years and having to see her partners go through this and not be able to do anything to change that!

(i get it if you don’t wanna post this but it’s just something i’ve been analyzing for a while)

im 100% with you. in fact travis himself has said this:

"I've never dealt with it," Kelce added of Swift. "But at the same time, I'm not running away from any of it.... The scrutiny she gets, how much she has a magnifying glass on her, every single day, paparazzi outside her house, outside every restaurant she goes to, after every flight she gets off, and she's just living, enjoying life. When she acts like that I better not be the one acting all strange." (x)

stop babying grown ass men in 2024!

[laundrybiscuits]

Just curious and i like hearing your thoughts on this stuff. May i ask what aspect of steddie fanon you're referring to (which don't fit IRL queer culture so accurately)?

Ahaha...okay so. IMPORTANT NOTE: fandom is not that crucial, do whatever you want, run free through daisy fields of whatever headcanons and characterizations you please. Also, fic is not real life and that's okay!!

That being said, fandom can get slightly weird about sex, especially queer sexual cultures and especially historical queer sexual cultures. I mean, I get it! Our current hegemonic understanding of sexuality is actually pretty recent; I studied sexuality from a sociological perspective as part of my undergrad degree, focusing on moral panics (gosh I wonder why Eddie's character arc appeals to me! so mysterious!), and I know just enough to know that I don't know shit. So I certainly don't expect anyone to be doing paradigm-shifting sociohistorical research for a fic. That would be ridiculous.

All of this is leading up to say that based on 1) the relayed experiences of queer mentors who were in the scene in the 80s 2) the secondary sources I’ve researched 3) personally having many gay male friends who love oversharing through the last ~15 years, I believe that if canon-compliant gay Eddie Munson is a virgin, it’s largely by choice. 

I've seen it suggested that Eddie's poor academic performance and nerdy interests would be, essentially, a dick deterrent. And like...I enjoy Eddie’s weirdo loser vibe as much as the next fan. I fully support him not being in any way smooth or cool with boys. But even when I myself was in my late teens/early twenties, many of my closest friends were awkward nerdy twinks who absolutely managed to get laid every weekend because MSM* hookup culture is eternal. 

And in the early 80s, when Eddie would’ve been in his late teens, MSM hookup culture was at its peak. AIDS still wasn’t being taken that seriously, and transmission etc. wasn’t really understood because…well, you know this story. It’s not a good story. Fuck Reagan. 

In short, I really can’t emphasize enough how certain types of sexual contact were extremely available for men seeking sex with men. A pretty young thing like Eddie could have literally as much sex as he wanted. Nobody is asking him for a high school transcript or anything about his hobbies, they’re asking if he tops. 

Now, would Eddie actually participate in the hookup culture of the time? That's a more complicated and speculative question, and not actually what you asked, but I'm going to talk about it briefly anyway.

In the 'yes' column: he has his own vehicle**, zero supervision, and a penchant for risky behavior.

In the 'no' column: the boy has at least three extremely involved hobbies eating up his spare time and energy; he's also a not-so-secret romantic.

Personally, I can see the pseudo-intimacy appealing to Eddie's tendency to keep people at arm's length, and I think it’s very plausible for him to be curious and experimental enough to want to explore a bit. I tend to land on 'tried it a few times, doesn't make a habit of it' in my backstories. I also tend to hint at the softer, friendlier side of hookup culture in my fics, just because I don’t often see it represented. 

Of course it’s like any other scene, there are bad actors and generally shitty people/situations, and sometimes the MSM scene specifically can be a bit of a soul-draining meat market. (ETA, because I am not white and neither are the vast majority of my friends and I felt increasingly weird not mentioning it even though it's not relevant to Eddie's situation: the scene is often also super racist, among other things! But that's a whooole other complicated kettle of fish, and again, not relevant to Eddie's situation.)

But there’s also space for casual sex to be part of a friendly relationship, in a way that I don’t really see in hetero circles. It’s hard to explain. It’s one of those dynamics that basically never shows up in mainstream media at all, so I absolutely don’t blame fics that don’t show it either. It’s just one of those things.

This is a step to the left, but I recommend checking out Dykes To Watch Out For: it’s practically an anthropological document depicting dyke culture in the 80s, it’s often funny as hell, and it’s just a fantastically detailed and relatively accessible window into a particular way of life that doesn’t really exist anymore. 

*MSM = men who have sex with men. It’s a sociological designation; not everyone in this category identifies as gay, bi, queer, etc. It may be useful to think about sexuality as having three distinct components: behavior, identity, and desire. The term “MSM” puts focus on the behavioral aspect, because it’s most relevant in this context. 

**As someone who has experienced several other countries' driving cultures, I just want to emphasize to non-Americans how willing many Americans are to drive for multiple hours for basically any reason whatsoever.

[13thdoctorposts]

has anyone else noticed how reactions and consensus on 13 has been RETROACTIVELY negative? I know there's been an intensely misogynistic hate campaign since Jodie was announced but I also noticed that when you look at old posts from when s11 especially was freshly aired, there was a lot more good faith engagement with the show and genuine excitement in fandom. It seems like covid gave the bad faith actors the opportunity to take over fandom and force their narratives on everyone.

Yeah a really great example of this is if you look back to tweets from the night Rosa aired the praise was very very high, now if you bring it up in the fandom you would think it was terrible and racist.

On YouTube I was told the writers, both of them Chibs and Malorie Blackman were incompetent because they doesn’t show how bad the racism really was, yet the episode starts with one of our companions being physically assaulted and told to be careful so not to end up like Emmett Till, some one who had just been murdered acting as if the show was sugar coating what life was like back then. Oh and of course with the Chibs slander that he’s racist because he may have hired a woman of colour to write the script, but she is English not American and he should have made sure it was an American or not done the episode at all

Malorie Blackman is an award winning author claiming she’s an incompetent writer is pretty incredible accusation.

Here’s some of the tweets from articles praising the episode.

I think 2 things hurt 13 era who and they weren’t Chibs and Jodie. It was the unhinged toxicity the fandom constantly spewed and then even after things got praised as you said people would go back and nitpick to a level they never ever do with any other era and 2nd not having a big enough marketing budget and brand manger series 12 and 13 suffered most from this because the BBC did put the marketing money into series 11 even if they didn’t have a brand manager, and Chibs mentions this in the Radio Free Skaro podcast from last year that the BBC put a huge marking budget into series 11 but series 12 and 13 basically the budget was… you can only advertise on the BBC because there’s no money for anything else.

Rosa is just one example but there was a lot of praise for the work at the time of release and it’s quite possible general public viewers may have just stoped engaging on social after series 11 because they would then be piled on, and people in the online fandom knew they couldn’t go to social saying they loved an episode so they started picking it apart before putting their thoughts out there so they could be on trend with the haters who were gonna pile on if they didn’t fall in line.

Seriously if there’s ever a down fall to doctor who the ‘fans’ will be it because they would rather hate on the thing they supposedly love than love it. And ever era has its super questionable moments but if you bring them up for any other era you just being petty, or it isn’t that big of a deal, or ‘it’s of the time’ it’s just excuse after excuse.

I’ve seen people upset about the fact that RTD dead named Rose in the star beast, something very legitimate because now all the right wing idiots of the fandom use that name and the people who were upset get piled on if they say anything because they should be happy that RTD is trying to give them representation… but these same people when Chibs tried to give rep though a female doctor, or an episode like Rosa or Ryans disability, say Chibs is a right wing capitalist, sexist, racist, ablest, you don’t hear them saying hey he was really trying by getting people of colour to write their stories, by getting directors with the same heritage to direct episodes, he work with a dyspraxia organisation to help write Ryan, brought in the first 2 female Doctors and the 1st Doctor of colour who was also a woman, the 1st master of colour, the first Doctor who admitted to having feeling for a companion of the same sex and the episode where the doctor admits those feeling is co written with a queer woman, oh no Chibs gets no grace for tryi neg he did everything wrong but RTD everyone should be thankful for.

I don’t understand the level of hate. Not liking something is one thing but a part of this fandom has made 13 era who seem like the anti christ of Doctor Who, when really it tried a lot harder to involve more people in it then ever before.

[wingzie]

Hi Lovely!

You are the G.O.A.T Jikook historian and I love, love, love your threads on Twitter. I also love your posts you’ve been doing here on your thoughts and perspectives all things Jikook, jikookers and the fandom.

I have a question. I’ve already talked about it a while ago but I wanted your take. What’s your opinion on people feeling like Jikook haven’t been the same post-2020 and the fact that EVEN MORE feel like since chapter two Jikook are not in a ‘relationship’ anymore. I use ‘relationship’ as it’s the easiest word to use for them for this ask, whatever people believe the labels for Jikook’s jikooking should be.

Do you think that:

a. There IS a difference in Jikook of the past and Jikook of now?

b. Do you think that if they once had something they no longer do?

c. Do you think that Jikook are no longer close after chapter 2.

We know Jikook are currently serving together and used the buddy system but apart from that, if you were to answer the above with evidence as the Jikook historian you are, what’s your take.

Thank you for your part in making Jikook spaces fun and informative 😉

💜

Hello! Thank you for your kind words and for sending in the ask. Let’s get into it with some honest truths: I don’t see a difference and I don’t think anything has changed. I am very much aware of what people are saying, but this is a pattern that repeats itself every single time there is less content to “feed” those who are less patient. Or, even worse,  those who want to control Jimin and Jungkook.

On 8th March 2020, BTS were told that their April concerts in Seoul would be cancelled. As we know, this later included the cancellation of their entire tour. Both the members and entire fandom were very upset about this, but I remember very vividly reading takes on the Jikook side of Tumblr saying: "but what about our Jikook content?" When, in all honesty, that should never have been the main focus when the entire world was experiencing a pandemic. I've seen this complaint several times. This happened during their vaction in 2019 and it's even happening now whilst they are in the military. It is incredibly selfish. I may be a Jikooker, but I understand that Jimin and Jungkook are their own people.

Hindsight is also a wonderful thing. There are a lot of times that we don't know about something, until it is revealed later on. We didn't know that Jikook ate dinner together after one of their concerts until the docuseries was released. This goes for 2018 AND in 2022. There are certain things that Jikook do because it is to heavily engrained into their routine together. We just won't always witness or hear about it.

How is this all linked though? There has been a change in content releases. We were used to Memories being released every summer and a Run episode every Tuesday. Episode 155 was the last weekly episode, released in October 2021. The last Special Episode was released in February 2023. They would have been filmed years apart, but they still show the same closeness and loving spirit. Both of these episodes also included some Jimin butt loving from Jungkook!

When chapter 2 began, it was obvious that Jimin and Jungkook were focusing on their own things. They do not have a persona in BTS to explore with, so this was their chance to share their stories or experiment with other music. Though busy, they still supported each other massively with social media posts or hyping each other on Lives. This is another pattern which has maintained over the years.

We also know that they have been on several trips together. They may have been on many more that we don't know of. I personally don't worry about it, I just support them as much as I can without putting any pressure on them. That would be unfair. I just think that whenever we do see anything from them, we are very lucky.

I know this response is probably what you (and others) weren't expecting, but I think those saying these things are probably too involved in Jimin and Jungkook's lives. That also goes with the amount of leaked photos and videos lately that I have seen on all platforms. Respect goes a long way and some are abusing it. (And thank you for always showing it in your own posts!) I am working on a "Jikook during Chapter Two" post, coming soon!

[pippin-katz]

I just had an encounter on Twitter surrounding racism towards Guinevere in the Merlin fandom. A fan made a comment about fans ignoring the black girl in favor of the non-canon ship. I reacted too quickly to disagree with them and we exchanged replies back and forth until I realized what my issue was.

I had claimed that only a tiny part of the fandom is actively racist and hateful towards Gwen, because in my experience, that’s what I’ve seen. I’ve only ever seen love for Guinevere, and the selective moments where someone was being hateful, the fandom shut them down.

This fan informed me that they encounter it everywhere, and that it has been a prominent, majority of the fandom since the show aired.

I tried to argue with them until I realized how counter-productive and hypocritical it was of me to argue with a fan of color over whether or not there’s significant racism in the fandom.

I spoke reactively instead of thoughtfully. My gut instinct felt like they were attacking Merthur fans for shipping them, and implying that it was done out of racism toward Guinevere. I got defensive, since I myself am a Merthur shipper who has and will actively fight racist pieces of shit I encounter. But that’s just the problem, I haven’t encountered anything, so my instinct was to defend Merthur shippers under the impression that it wasn’t as big of an issue as they were making it out to be.

When I realized that’s where my reaction came from, I recognized the flaws in my behavior. I sincerely apologized and explained that I actively fight racism in the fandom, but that my behavior was counter-productive to that goal. I hope they do believe me, because it is absolutely true that I know better, and I’m angry with myself for even doing it in the first place.

But I also hope that they understand that it came from a place of wanting to believe that this fandom was better than this.

I wanted to defend the fandom and correct them about their comment, thinking that I was right just because I’ve never seen what they’re referring to. Over the last year, I was writing massive essays and other Merlin posts that gained a lot of attention. I was super active on here, and thought that that meant I would’ve seen it if it was a significant issue.

That’s obviously stupid of me, and I apologized to them for my behavior, because I know better.

This leads me to writing this post. I don’t care if no one sees this, but I need to voice this, because it’s true, and for my own sanity.

We need to be better.

I realize that just because I haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it’s not there, and it’s not my place to make that call. If they are a fan of color and telling me that it is a prominent issue, I should’ve immediately listened.

So this is directed at those racist people: get the fuck out of this fandom.

You don’t belong here, and clearly missed the fucking point of the show if you think that discriminating against Guinevere for being born a certain way is in any way okay. The entire message of the show is that no one should be treated differently because of something they cannot control, something naturally part of them.

We often use the analogy for hiding who we are for being part of the community, but you need to recognize that being shamed for being a certain way and feeling like an outsider applies to all minorities.

So I say again, if you are a racist fuck who hates Guinevere because of her race or purely because you prefer Merthur, get the fuck out.

There are valid reasons to dislike her CHARACTER, but being a black woman, and being in a relationship with Arthur, are not among them.

Thank you for reading.