#marcus to is still my fave Tim artist of all time

[iphoenixrising]

hihi!! i hope youre doing wonderful lovely!!

i was just wanting to get your opinion on something. im always soooo fucking salty when it comes to dick, tim, and damian cause i just always feel like damian came into their lives and dick immediately threw tim away. its like he cant be bothered to be a good brother to more than one kid at a time. (maybe he got that from bruce and his inability to be a decent father to all of his children…) so i was wondering if you think thats like a fair assessment to dick and his character? theres just a lot of stuff that he did when it came to tim and damian that makes me want to put dick in a head lock and make him explain to me wtf hes doing to tim. i wasnt sure if its cause tim’s my favorite and i got some rose colored glasses on or if dick truly is well, a dick, when it comes to tim and him constantly seeming to chose damian over tim.

Hi babe <3

So. So. I've written so many, so fucking many, drabs and things about the pre-New 52 time when Dick prioritized Dami above Tim in the Red Robin series after Bruce was "dead" (reads as missing in time) and Dick obviously gave Damian the mantle of Robin without clearing it with Tim first.

(What a douche move tbh.)

But like, here's the thing about that instance: up until then, Dick was so obviously Tim's big brother and mentor and friend and ally and the person that actually gave more of a fuck about the third Robin than his own fucking parents did. Dick wore the cowl after Jean-Paul Valley and was totally Tim's Batman for a while, was there through a lot of the shit Tim was going through in his initial 20 year Robin run.

Dick was absolutely family and prioritized Tim so much during those years. (He literally fought the Justice League over letting Young Justice keep fighting crime. Dick Grayson FTW)

So when Dick pretty much yanked the cape out from under Tim, it was very out of character. I feel like this was just another instance of bad, lazy writing to push a plot point in which Tim takes on another name and leaves Gotham on the journey to find Bruce that he knows is alive. I think the writers wanted to up readership of the new Red Robin series and started off with angst and Tim on his own rather than have some kind of understanding between the new B and the current Robin that it was time for him to move on.

(I've written fix-its of this before. Some with hurt/comfort, some with a big old fuck you and the zip line you rode in on. See No Home for Dead Birds.)

I also don't feel like Dick can only be a good brother to one Robin at a time, but rather, the writers knew Tim was going to have to go on this self-discovery by himself, so giving Dick a new Robin to train while wearing the cowl was a way to keep them busy so Tim could have this solo book without the same safety net and opened up the storyline to new characters (Tam, Z, Pru, and Owen), to give Tim space to grow up a little more (becoming an emancipated minor, being called "Detective" by Ra's al Ghul, becoming the CEO of Wayne Enterprises, etc.). This was supposed to be the series that transitioned Tim from a 20 year teenage Robin into a young adult like Dick.

New 52, however, ret-conned so much of his OG backstory and really fucked his personality over, so the realization that could have happened with the Red Robin series didn't get to come to fruition.

...which is why I started Fracture, tbh.

I hope this gives a little more perspective, babe <3

[hermionegranger56]

a v late recap of evermore

so i think Taylor Swift sensed that i was Going Through It and was like here you sad bitch, here’s another surprise album to help fix all that. cause good lord evermore is just what i (and i think we all) needed. i truly TRULY can’t believe we’re lucky enough to get a sister album to folklore, i love it so much. the first day it was out i drove myself 2 hours to the very end of the Cape and sat on an empty beach and cried to it and honestly??? magical. here are my thoughts on it that no one asked for:

first, as an overall here, this album complements folklore so well. it’s the spring to folklore’s autumn, it’s self-assured and warm and beautiful. each album shows off her lyrical genius so well and she only grows stronger here. when folklore came out, i was floored because the music was so different for her and so up my alley. each song’s production sucked me in and it was like she was confidently telling us “here is another genre i can work with” (masterfully at that). evermore feels different. it feels like Taylor is so comfortable in this creative space, she isn’t trying to fit into any new molds or expectations, she is just HERE, now, saying “this is who i am and this is my craft”. it’s really been a privilege to watch her grow as an artist. ok. here we go

willow:

god the video was so beautiful, a really good continuation of cardigan. the chorus is so so delicate and prettyyy, thats MY MAN ughhh its so good. it reminds me a lot of invisible string tbh, or if betty from cardigan grew up and found love. this is really one of my favorites, she starts so strong

fave lines: “the more that you say, the less i know/ wherever you stray I follow/ i’m begging for you to take my hand/ wreck my plans, that’s my man”; “life was a willow and it bent right to your wind”

champagne problems:

oh dear god, it’s if all too well and new years day had a baby and it is a MASTERPIECE. i can picture it all, college sweethearts, broken hearts, i feel like its new england at christmas, ivy league old money…its cinematic. and it gets at the feeling like you’ll never be good enough so you leave before that happens (basically before you get to the tolerate it stage??) and OOF. AND GODDAMN THE RANTING BRIDGE (illicit affairs came close on folklore but i think THIS might be the best bridge since All Too Well). I’ve screamed it a lot tbh

fave lines: BRIDGE BABYYYYYY EVERY SINGLE PERFECT WORD. WHAT A SHAME SHES FUCKED IN THE HEADDDD

gold rush:

this one is bright and lovely and catchy!! it reminds me a lot of mirrorball tbh, all like swirly and magical. i can’t even put it into words but i can see this one so clearly. its all rosy and golden

fave lines: “eyes like sinking ships on waters/ so inviting, i almost jump in”; “what must it be like to grow up that beautiful?/with your hair falling into place like dominoes/ I see me padding across your wooden floors/ with my Eagles t-shirt hanging from your door”; “the coastal town we wandered round/ had never seen a love as pure as it”; “my mind turns your life into folklore”

’tis the damn season:

UGH I FUCKING LOVE THIS ONE EVEN THOUGH IT MAKES ME WANNA TEXT MY EX. the melody is SOOOO satisfying, the progression to “write this down”, i’m obsessed. the idea of being home for the holidays and feeling a little lost and tired and nostalgic for what could have been is something superrrr relatable. this song reminds me of snowy drives around my hometown in the best/worst possible way hahah. one of my top 5 for sure.

fave lines: “we could call it even/ you could call me babe for the weekend/ tis the damn season, write this down/i’m staying at my parents house/ and the road not taken looks real good now”; “and wonder about the only soul/ who can tell which smiles i’m faking”

tolerate it:

oh honeyyyyy this track 5 packs a punch, i mean the lyrics are absolutely BRUTAL in the best way. it’s just so sad, and encompasses a lot of my own insecurity about always feeling like you’re more invested in a relationship and watching someone fall out of love or just stop caring. i LOVE the “my love should be celebrated, but you tolerate it”, like bitch YES your love should be celebrated. also taylor sounds angelic on the “I” at the start of the chorus

fave lines: “i know my love should be celebrated/ but you tolerate it”; “i made you my temple, my mural, my sky/ now i’m begging for footnotes in the story of your life”; “what would you do if I/break free and leave us in ruins/ took this dagger in me and removed it”

.

no body, no crime:

YESSSSSSSSS I LOVE THE SUBGENRE OF COUNTRY ABOUT WOMEN KILLING SHITTY HUSBANDS AND THIS SONG IS SO FUCKING GOOD AHHHHH!! I LOVE the beat, i love country taylor, i love the addition of HAIM. UGH ITS SO CATCHYYYY, like i’m obsessed with the slide from “i think he did it but i just. can’t. prove itttttt NOOO no body no crime” UGHHH this is without a doubt in my top five

fave lines: “she thinks i did it but she just can’t prove it”

happiness:

I heard this one described as an emotional marathon and holy shit it is, each line is a sucker punch. i really like how it feels like a conversation and looks at the acceptance and pain that mingle together when a relationship just…ends. her lyrics are unmatched on this album but this is a particularly strong track

fave lines: “i haven’t met the new me yet”; “when did all our lessons start to look like weapons/ pointed at my deepest hurt”; “there is a glorious sunrise/ dappled with the flickers of light/ from the dress i wore at midnight”

dorothea:

this one feels like Betty 2.0 and its so sweet and bright and also kinda sad. it’s wistful!! that’s the word i want, wistful! the vibe is gives off reminds me of Red, like musically. it’s home-y. idk if that makes sense but i like it a lot

fave lines: and if you’re ever tired of being known for who you know/ you know, you’ll always know me”

coney island:

ugh this one is magical, i honestly really love the instrumental to this one, it’s so soothing. the lyrics to me feel like you’re in some dream state, going through every heartbreak you’ve ever been through. I love the addition of The National, the vocals fit together so well (and I like it better than both Bon Iver features i think??)

fave lines: do you miss the rogue/ who coaxed you into paradise and left you there/ will you forgive my soul/ who you’re too wise to trust me and too old to care?”

ivy:

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH (that’s how i feel about this absolute masterpiece oh my GOD) it makes me so incandescently happy, the folk feel, the lyrics that are so cinematic and poetic and paint such a clear picture (to me) of two Victorian lovers who are in unhappy marriages but don’t let that stop their love. the chorus just like….fills my whole chest, the OH GODDAMN hits so different. and i want “my pain fits in the palm of your freezing hand” tattooed on me, that is one of her BEST lines and i will die on that hill. its all so pretty, i can’t deal. the vibe also strongly reminds me of a) invisible string and b) Little Women (2019). i think taylor should do folk and uhhhh only folk please

fave lines: EVERY WORD BUT ESPECIALLY: “i’d meet you where the spirit meets the bone/ in a faith forgotten land”; “oh goddamn/ my pain fits in the palm of your freezing hand/ taking mine, but its been promised to another/ oh, i can’t/ stop you putting roots in my dreamland/ my house of stone, your ivy grows/ and now I’m covered in you”; “he wants what’s only yours”; “clover blooms in the field/ springs breaks loose, time is near“; ”so yeah, it’s a fire/ its a goddamn blaze in the dark and you started it”

cowboy like me:

ALL RIGHT everyone sleeps on this song but oh my GOD its so good!! it’s smooth and dreamy and gives me that old fashioned, bonnie and clyde type love story and some of the lyrics are so poetic. I really love the addition of the Tim McGraw chords too???? BUT DEAR GOD COULD WE HAVE GIVEN MARCUS MUMFORD MORE OF A ROLE HERE??!! HE SOUNDS WONDERFUL, GIVE HIM A FEATURE, GIVE HIM A WHOLE VERSE. THIS IS A FOLK ALBUM TAYLOR, USE FUCKING MUMFORD AHHHH (i fucking love him omg)

fave lines: “dancin’ is a dangerous game”; “you’re a bandit like me/ eyes full of stars”; “now you hang from my lips/ like the Gardens of Babylon/ with your boots beneath my bed/ forever is the sweetest con”

long story short:

A BOP!! GIVE ME SOME HAPPINESS TAYLOR WOO! I really love how catchy this one is. it feels like her introducing the craziness of her life to joe and being like look all of that was tough but here i am now and I couldn’t be happier. It’s refreshing, self-deprecating and endearing. I couldn’t love it more and it is ALWAYS stuck in my head!

fave lines: “and he’s passing by/ rare as the glimmer of a comet in the sky”; “long story short I survived”

marjorie:

ha hahah hah ha this one ENDS me, like dear LORD i need to call my grandma immediately. it is so so GOOD and SAD, like the you don’t know how good something or someone is until they’re gone, but even then, they’re still there with you. I love the grandma wisdom of “never be so clever you forget to be kind” etc. and holy SHIT the addition of Taylor’s grandmother’s opera singing as background vocals is GENIUS AND DEVASTATING, god the part where she goes “i’d think you were singing with me now” and then Marjorie comes in is honestly one of the most beautiful musical moments i’ve heard in a hot minute and it breaks me every time. wow.

fave lines: “never be so polite/ you forget your power/ never wield such power/ you forget to be polite”; “the autumn chill that wakes me up/ you loved the amber sky so much”; “and if i didn’t know better/ i’d think you were singing to me now”

closure:

ok i’m sorry, this is my only skip here. I really do love the lyrics and the idea of, yeah no you don’t deserve closure from me. i just can’t get past the pots and pans beginning, its too chaotic. but i’m sure it’ll grow on me! it does feel like finally moving on and i do love that about it

fave lines: “don’t treat me like/ some situation that needs to be handled”; “i know i’m just a/ wrinkle in your new life/ staying friends would/ iron it out so nice”

evermore:

god her voice is SO soothing in this one, it’s literally hypnotic. the song itself feels wandering and dark at first, like you’re stuck in this depression, and then bon iver comes in and it picks up and it feels like coming out of the trees, into the sunlight and finding your way again. finding that the pain WOULDNT be for evermore like she says. it feels like an ending and a beginning. beautiful

fave lines: “writing letters/ addressed to the fire”; “and when i was shipwrecked/ i thought of you/ in the cracks of light/ i dreamed of you”; “and i was catching my breath/ floors of the cabin creaking under my step/ and i couldn’t be sure/ i had a feeling so peculiar/ this pain wouldn’t be for evermore”

[yessoupy]

annual writing self-evaluation

All answers should be about works published in 2018.

tagged by: @ferryboatpeak ⚾

i. Optional if applicable: link to last year’s self evaluation:

honestly i don’t remember if i did one

1. List of works published this year (in the order that they were posted):

At The Very Least (Lilo)

pastoralis princeps (dactylic hexameter about harry and farm animals)

don’t think, you can only hurt the ballclub (chapman/olson, oakland A’s)

Shared Space (desus, the walking dead)

A Taste Of Your Own (hitch)

ilia rumpens (desus)

2. Work you are most proud of (and why):

MOST proud of... probably the mlb slash. I hadn’t published anything in that fandom seriously since December 2013 and if you know anything about the A’s, you know there’s like hardly anyone (Marcus Semien??) left from that season. When I got my camera I ended up with dozens of shots of Marcus and Matt Olson fucking around during warmups and I thought for months that when I finally wrote A’s slash again that would be the pairing but heartbreak will change you. I placed them in the rented house that the young bachelors of the early 00′s A’s had rented to reference the intense nostalgia I’d felt the entire season. The only really surprising thing is that this wasn’t fic about Tim Lincecum finally accepting that he was out of baseball and making a life for himself again. I guess I’ll write that when (IF) we get a retirement announcement.

Another reason I’m proud of this is that I was writing for basically one other person who didn’t know I was writing it and it’s not even her team, but I knew she’d read it. So it was truly a labor of love.

3. Work you are least proud of (and why):

The pinch-hitting I did for the exchange I ran. I posted it in the day between my Texas Harry shows (and the afternoon before I got to the ballpark at Arlington to see NICK MARTINI had made it up) and I think if I’d had like ... a week of summer break to just focus on it it could have been much better. I’d actually cribbed a shitload of stuff from this thing I was writing for baseball that there was no way I’d ever finish/publish because I’d gotten too close to the player.

4. A favorite excerpt of your writing:

here’s a lil bit from each fandom, how’s that?

hitch, the reveal

The poetic license, Harry’s tongue flicking out to wet his lips as the arena fills in the wrong phrase, over and over, what he’d actually had and not what had sat there as a provocation on his person as Harry had leveled that slow-blink up at him and slithered down off the couch, naked still but for the ink needled into his skin. Mitch hasn’t recovered, not fully, for during these few minutes when Harry closes his eyes and embodies Mitch’s own confession in front of thousands of strangers he’s back on the couch.

TWD (shared space), daryl being daryl. helpful, but also generally confused by civilization.

Daryl clocked a shocked look on the face of one of the workers from the Kingdom. He glared until the man got his eyes off the pair. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Paul.” He kept his mouth shut the rest of the way to the kitchens where they were greeted like conquering heroes for their haul. He tried to put Paul’s weird shit aside and he succeeded for awhile. He took a watch shift out beyond the wall for a couple hours and repaired one of their fences inside. Maggie made a face at him when he trekked through Barrington House looking for some tool or another one of the construction guys was asking about.

“Least take off your shoes at the door, Daryl.”

Daryl was rummaging in a drawer in the kitchen and gave her a disbelieving stare. “You serious?”

“We’re building a civilization and you’re tracking in God knows what from God knows where.”

“Never bothered you before.” He spied a pair of vise grips and yanked them out of the drawer. Wrong tool for every job, he thought, should do the trick. “Anything else you gotta tell me?”

“Real glad to see you and Jesus hitting it off.”

Daryl rolled his eyes and slid the drawer shut. “Alright. I’m leaving.”

“I’m just saying.”

“Bye!”

baseball, the consummate professional being made aware of something not baseball.

Maybe Matt shouldn’t have been surprised by any of this. Maybe this was where everything had always been going, this instead. With Olson’s mouth working over his slowly, gently, one hand hooked around his side and the other holding his head in place, maybe the 2018 season wasn’t about playing deep into October, but instead priming him for this moment right here. He’s never had a thought like that, that something was more than baseball, and it’s fitting that should come right here, wrapped up in his first baseman’s arms with the breath kissed out of him.

5. Share or describe a favorite comment you received:

@the-well-rested-one sent me a really nice message about the hitch fic, about how it has impact for being so short. When I was writing it I let a lot of conventions fall by the wayside in the effort to get the idea out of my head (idea was conceived and executed over the course of one day) so it was v nice to hear it had impact. My fandom buddy also screenshot the first paragraph and circled where I’d had “the the” and I also v much appreciated that. 😂

additionally, @runthroughthegarden‘s comments on my dactylic hexameter were such a pleasant surprise and i can now announce that i officially have a beta for my latin verse going forward. lollllllllllllllll

6. A time when writing was really, really hard:

Well, when your fave character is still alive (and in a happy relationship with his boyfriend) in the original source material but you’ve known for months they’re killing him off, the week before the episode where that actually happens is a v difficult week. Although based on when my works are published, you could say that the first 5 months of the year is difficult.

7. A scene or character that you wrote that surprised you:

Oh well, I never had any intention to write from Mitch’s POV but it was surprisingly easy. I think it helped a lot to remember he was from Indiana (a state I know well) and had he been 15 years older he’d have been recording tracks in my uncle’s basement. Also so many of us feel like Harry caught us unawares and we were helpless in the face of his charms, and that’s Mitch.

8. How did you grow as a writer this year:

Hmmm. Well, I finally wrote TWD fic after having been in fandom since the beginning???? That’s 2010, folks. Finally felt like I had a handle on Daryl Dixon.

9. How do you hope to grow next year:

It’d be great to actually have the ability to write something long. I feel like the ideas I have are for short pieces.

10. Who was your greatest positive influence this year as a writer (could be another writer or beta or cheerleader or muse etc etc):

Let’s go with @chasm2018 because without her I definitely wouldn’t have written that hitch fic. She’s good at pushing me to write what I don’t actually NEED to be writing but absolutely SHOULD be writing.

11. Anything in your real life show up in your writing this year:

Oh that lilo fic for sure. And We Are All Mitch.

12. Any new wisdom you can share with other writers:

IDK that it’s new, more like reinforced, but just fucking write what you want to write. 

13. Any new projects you’re looking forward to starting (or finishing) in the new year:

I can’t believe I left Poe and Marek alone this entire year, seems unbelievable. I didn’t REALLY, because there’s a couple of docs I definitely fucked around in (including one with Marek and Caz), but nothing got anywhere close to a complete story. I’ll rectify that in 2019.

14. Tag three writers/artists whose answers you’d like to read:

not tagging anyone specifically but if you’re reading this and want to do it, consider yourself tagged (and pls tag me so i can read yours).