#martianbugsbunny will answer asks

[martianbugsbunny]

Ahhhh thought I’d return the favour following your ask for me: gonna mirror it this time, what’s your LEAST favourite element of rumple’s arc in the show?

OMG this is wily of you!!! So excited to answer this lol

I think my least favorite thing about his arc is when he reverts to being villainous in the later seasons. I think it works pretty well for his character to revert, don't get me wrong, because the ongoing struggle becomes this sort of epic narrative as it continues across all 6 or 7 seasons depending on where you stop watching, and it makes him more human and it adds a layer of difficulty for him in actually accepting a happy ending that other ex-villains don't get. I just don't think it's handled well. As the show goes on it feels more like he's just in love with the power, and that doesn't really align with the best-written parts of his story. I adore Rumple when he's reluctant about power, when he begins to crave it once he has it because he didn't have any for so long, when he uses it for dark things, in the early seasons, because it always feels like it's born out of his immense love for others. He takes the dagger for Bae, to save Bae, but that ends up being how he loses Bae, too, so what does he do? He uses his magic, he collects more power, over centuries, because he refuses to believe he's been parted from son forever and he will do anything to get back to him and apologize and try to fix their relationship. He pushes away the other most important person in his life, Belle, because he thinks she might take his magic away from him, and he needs it to find Bae. All the wheeling and dealing over the years is for one reason: causing the Dark Curse to be cast so he can find Bae.

Stuff like that, where Rumple is doing the wrong thing for the sake of the love he has for someone else, but where he maybe enjoys the feeling of power because he was about as powerless as it gets, is really good. But that doesn't feel like it's how he was treated in the later seasons, where it's kind of just, oh he likes the power, he likes the darkness, he's chosen it over everybody he loves time and time again and they either have to live with that or leave him. That's not nuanced enough for him, and it starts to feel really annoying after a while, because he's such a brilliant character and he shouldn't be making the same poor, badly explained decision over and over again if it's not going to contribute something to the good core in him. Every time he chooses the wrong thing, but it adds to his innate goodness a little bit and gives a glimmer of hope that he'll redeem himself eventually, I love. Every time he chooses the wrong thing, and it feels like he's being a jerk to the people he loves for no reason, I loathe.

I also don't really like the element of his story where he keeps lying to Belle about his powers. He's an intelligent, cunning man. He had to be, to get the Dark Curse to align, even with his foresight (which is not a perfect power). He shouldn't be dumb enough to think okay, this time I'll totally get away with it, this time she won't figure out I'm lying. He's met his match in Belle, he knows it, he knows how intelligent and clever she is, and even if he has a touch of hubris after all the years of success in constructing his ultimate plan, it doesn't make sense for him to underestimate Belle consistently like that, and it makes him look less clever than he is.

gonna pull my own uno reverse card here: @wastingstarsss what's your least favorite element of Rumple's arc?

[lost-in-derry]

WIP Ask Game

I got tagged by @mystical-salamander and @heart-of-a-rebel16 Thanks guys! These are all Kalluzeb I’m pretty sure.

Rules: In a new post, list the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them and then post a little snippet of it or tell them something about it! And then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

1. Communion (the sentient bo-rifle fic. Chapter 2 does not want to become words 😑)

2. Fic???? (the angst snippet I posted a while ago. I really want to expand on it or add it into another WIP)

3. Kallus Backstory (right now it’s mostly a timeline of events in Kallus’ life from birth until the start of Rebels. It is Dark and Sad)

4. Requiem of Ascension (can’t decide if I like the title of this one. The characters in Kallus’ Backstory return to bring him back to the Empire. Dead or alive.)

5. Kalluzeb GoT AU (Kallus and Zeb agree to an arranged marriage to prevent a war)

6. The Knight, the Witch, and the Fallen Star (this is a full on fairytale. Zeb is a traveling knight on a quest to save his kingdom. Kallus is a witch whose forest home is dying. They soon learn that a curse is the source of both their problems, and they can only beat it together.)

7. Human!Criminal Underworld AU (Zeb is a thief and Kallus is an assassin from rival factions. They work together to solve a murder.)

I have more WIPs than I thought 👀. I’d love to answer questions or share more on any of them!

Tagging: @seth-silver-ink @freefalasteen @never-ending-fanfic @martianbugsbunny @not0a0mundane

[martianbugsbunny]

Fulcrum Fic?

YaY!!! I love this fic, I swear I'm gonna finish it and post it soon bc it's so tasty

I felt like having Ahsoka, Kallus, and Cassian hanging out together for fun even tho canonically they couldn't do that, because they deserve to have a good time, so I did! there's some nostalgia but it's not super angsty, and Ahsoka realizes that even though she lost one family she's found another one with the other Fulcrum agents

here's a piece of it that I really like:

[martianbugsbunny]

do you ship crosshunt? if you do, please can you write anything about them? pretty please?

omg yes friend!!!!! I do ship crosshunt, they're basically one of my top five or maybe even top three ships at this point and I am 100% planning on writing fic for them as soon as I come up with a plot lol, tysm for asking!!!!

[martianbugsbunny]

for the ask game! frankenwolf or CS I can't decide lol): what made you ship it, what are your favorite things about it, and do you have an unpopular opinion about it?

ooooo why not both lol!!!

CaptainSwan I started shipping bc of the way Hook turned himself around for Emma, I loved seeing that. My favorite things about it are the way they support each other and grow with each other, and ofc the savior/pirate aesthetic, it's impeccable 10/10. (Tbh, their dynamic kind of reminds me of Tiana and Naveen, because they both teach each other things about living: Hook teaches Emma that sometimes you just have to take the plunge, even if you're afraid, and Emma teaches Hook that you can be better than you are, and that your mistakes don't have to exclude you from having a good life. They have a great sense of equality and balance.) Idk if I have an unpopular opinion about it, except maybe that Hook's introduction into Emma's storyline made it all the more interesting and beautiful, and that they really are mean to be together, bc I feel like there's a pretty big part of the fandom that doesn't like Hook very much and I think they're wrong.

Frankenwolf I started shipping bc of S2E12 (In the Name of the Brother) bc that was the first time Ruby and Victor had a real connection, and the whole monsters having a heart-to-heart thing was so cute! My favorite thing about them is that even though they're side characters without a lot of screen time, what scenes they do have usually point back to them being meant to be. Also the mad scientist/werewolf girl thing is so out of the box!!! I love it. My unpopular opinion about them is probably that it would have been more interesting to have Ruby stay in Storybrooke and have her and Victor develop a proper relationship than for her to go off and find Dorothy, bc as much as I enjoy Ruby Slippers it didn't have any buildup at all while Frankenwolf did, and I was kind of disappointed at not seeing any payoff there.

[martianbugsbunny]

Who is franck? I tried googling him but know nothing

omg I should've clarified in the tags, Franck is this absolute icon of a man:

I love him so much he's hilarious he's stylish he's so slay, and the movie he's from is Father of the Bride (1991) (and also the sequel) and he's jumping up and down in a little corner of my brain pretty much 24/7

[martianbugsbunny]

CaptainCroc ask (or as I call them, Goldenhook):

Wholesome: what kind of candy do you think they’d eat on Halloween? And would they share or would they bicker about who gets what?

Not so wholesome: who do you think dies first? (If we’re sticking with Hook’s lifeline being longer due to his stay on Neverland. But also if you want, throw in some ideas about Hook being a dark one too cause I feel that has POTENTIAL)

Lucky for me my siblings just brought me a bag of candy from a parade a couple days ago so I've been able to do plenty of first-hand research on this lol

The thing they fight over is 100% the chocolate stuff. Milky Ways (they've definitely almost gotten divorced over a Milky Way Midnight), Twix, M&Ms, Reese's Cups, all those. For Hook, I really want to say somebody handed him a package of Swedish Fish once and he tried one and went "who had the audacity to call these fish?" but then they kind of became his guilty pleasure. For Rumple, my first instinct is to say he wouldn't like any of the artificial fruit flavored candies, but y'know the guy did eat a burger once, and apparently he likes ketchup, so I'm gonna say his other favorite is the classic Twizzlers.

Now the hard part. I have spent entirely too much of my time thinking about who dies first, because there are just too many juicy options.

I'm tempted to say neither of them dies; in a relationship with another villain (and I'm pretty sure Hook would still be a villain if he was with Rumple, mostly for family reasons) Rumple wouldn't hesitate to use whatever incredibly dark magic he needed to keep Hook alive indefinitely. They outlive all the heroes, probably return to the Enchanted Forest bc realistically what the heck are the Dark One and his pirate husband gonna do in Maine, and they basically rule unchecked for all eternity. Maybe they get a little more mellow as they age, and eventually they fade from unquestioned lords of the land into these semi-mythical beings; Hook is the thing all sailors pray to and fear, and Rumple is the thing people only whisper about in broad daylight.

Now, if Hook became a Dark One, there's obviously two ways that could go down: either the way it did in Camelot or he kills Rumple (which means Rumple would die first). The more angsty way is if he kills Rumple, but there's not really a good reason for him to do that if they're together. Maybe another villain steals his heart or uses illusions to manipulate him into taking the dagger and killing Rumple, which honestly isn't too bad of an idea. Said villain expects to be able to kill Hook and get the power for themselves; they just knew it would be easier for him to kill Rumple than to do it themselves, but Hook wins and becomes sort of a vengeful ghost, slowly but surely undermining the heroes in a plan to slaughter them all as punishment for not defeating that other villain themselves (what are heroes for, after all) and the heroes find a way to kill him because there's no other way to stop him. He and Rumple are reunited in the afterlife.

If it goes down like Camelot and they're both Dark Ones, it's probably pretty similar to the first scenario, because they're both theoretically immortal. But in this situation, I think Hook would take the original darkness from Rumple, less to protect other people than to keep the darkness in the family, and when he's transported to Camelot he realizes he can use the other half of Excalibur to give Rumple back some darkness, and make him immortal again. So of course Hook does that, with a Dark Curse along the way bc why not, and then the heroes have to solve the problem of what to do with two Dark Ones running around Storybrooke. They steal Excalibur and offer Hook and Rumple the choice of death or having their dark magic cut away. Rumple's been pretty close to death recently, so he says he'd rather lose his magic than die, but Hook is totally mad with power and won't settle for that. A mega-battle is waged and in the end the heroes kill Hook in front of Rumple and then he goes totally nuts and probably takes down at least one hero with him, but he's also killed because there's no other way to stop him.

If they're both mortal for some reason, then I think Rumple probably dies of old age. In this scenario, they're both mellowed out a bit, because they have less power than if one or both of them was the Dark One, so Hook either waits patiently to die and be reunited with Rumple or he does the classic old-people-in-love thing and dies within days to weeks of Rumple.

As a generality, I think Hook seems to win the Dies Last award, mostly because it's fun to kill off the immortal guy before his mortal husband, but also because it's fun to kind of twist around the guy who canonically died first and say "well if he was a villain, would that still be the case?" and I think the answer is no, if Hook was a villain in love with Rumple, another villain, it wouldn't be. (Although I'm kind of enjoying the neither of them dies scenario, them being sort of eldritch gods of terror in the Enchanted Forest a couple hundred years later is a slay.)

Anyway the point is I couldn't decide who to kill first so I just invented ways for both!

[martianbugsbunny]

OOO NEW ASK GAME HOW EXCITING

Tell me about “Hope (it’s the last thing that’s holding me)”

ooooo I love this one, it's a Nick Fury/Talos fic that's been in my WIP folder for absolute ages about the death of Talos's wife, because I thought that was one thing Secret Invasion didn't explore very much even though it affected the characters quite a bit, so it's basically his experience of losing her and realizing that the only thing he has left to cling to is hope and maybe Nick Fury

u may also have arguably the best line in it so far: "He clutched that hope with both blistering, bloodied hands"

[martianbugsbunny]

Let's play a game! Pick three of your favorite lines that you've ever written and then pass this ask on to other writers you want to play with <3

(It wasn’t quite right to call Rumple soft, either; the man shared Killian’s affinity for playing with the lives of others, and for the beauty of shed blood. And he had, indeed, been hardened by life. But his core was tender, if rough.) From my CaptainCroc fic "Who Makes You See Color"

He had fought for humanity…or for Fury, at least, and yet he could be written off as simply another one of the fallen enemy. From my Espionage Husbands fic "If You Are Gilgamesh And Did Those Things"

Plo thought he would’ve been quite happy to marry Kit with no symbolism, no traditions, no ceremony. Five minutes to make it legal in the eyes of Republic law would’ve been enough for him. From my PloKit fic "Reader, Plo Married Him"

[martianbugsbunny]

Ask game!! I’m curious about “Lit My Love And Watched It Burn”

ack! this is the WIP That's Least Likely To Be Finished lol, I love the concept and the bits I have but it's a chapter fic!! and I'm not too good about finishing those

It's a Nick Fury/Talos fic that spans like the entire time they know each other, so from the moment Talos realizes he's in love with Nick to maybe a couple of gap-filling moments between Captain Marvel and Secret Invasion and then the events of the TV show itself, haven't decided if he's still going to die or if I'm going to give them a happy ending, but it's definitely heavy on the pining haha

have some snippets!!! I really like these bits, even if they're not totally polished yet:

[martianbugsbunny]

I'd ask about How Did We Meet Before We Met for the ask game but I think I know that one lol

I love that title but I actually have at least two WIPs that are using it right now lol!!! I like it so much and i can't pick which fic gets to keep it for permanent use. one is a Frankenwolf Hyperion Heights AU that I'm really enjoying messing around with, bc they're cursed and they think they're meeting for the first time but they aren't bc they met in Storybrooke. the other one is a Cherik fic that I've had sitting around for months bc I just can't get it right, but it involves some canon divergence and mind powers stuff

[martianbugsbunny]

Hello!! New ask game, very exciting. Please please please tell me about the "Command Me To Be Well" wip?

ooOOOOoo I'm dying of excitement!!! this is one of my many languishing OUAT fics, it's CaptainCroc because that's most of what I write for that show lol, Rumple takes some time to think about how his darker impulses tend to end up endangering the people he loves, and he starts thinking of it as sort of an illness that he's never been able to heal from on his own, so he gives Killian the dagger so he can...well, command him to be well >:) it's quite tasty and I could. not. resist. the way rumple is a perfect setup to use a quote from Take Me To Church as my title

U may have this lil chunk bc it's quite delicious and bc the screenshot worked:

[martianbugsbunny]

🌸 If you get this, answer with 3 random facts about yourself and send it to the last 7 blogs in your notifications, anonymously or not! Let's get to know the person behind the blog. 🌸

I love playing these lil games it's so fun <3

I think the Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and Tom Holland versions of Spider-Man each have their own unique appeal and I love them all to death. No favorite, no least favorite, just a whole lot of admiration and giddy cackling.

I collect bunny plushies bc bunnies are my favorite animal and I like soft things. (and yes, my collection includes a couple of Webkinz in case you were wondering. those critters were the height of magic to lil 4yo me who played the game on my mom's computer.)

Giratina is my favorite Pokemon, he's my lil meow meow and also my first legendary. I would die for that flying worm.

[martianbugsbunny]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love 💗

Okay I'm still figuring out the whole answering asks things bc I get very few of them but I do definitely have favorite fics, they're my lil brain children and I love them

Who Makes You See Color, my CaptainCroc soulmates AU fic. It's my longest fic, 14 chapters, which shows you just how much I loved it to actually stick with it for all that time. It's (not to brag) really well written, and I can no longer watch the OUAT episode "The Crocodile" without thinking of my fic. It's got both angst and fluff, and it makes me really happy when I read it.

Reader, Plo Married Him, my first PloKit fic. It's entirely domestic fluff, which is rare for me, but I adore both Plo Koon and Kit Fisto and I wanted to see them happy together. It's very romantic and definitely good for getting that melty feeling.

Better Than Blood, the only risqué fic I've ever written. It's also CaptainCroc, because I'm obsessed with them, and because they have really great enemies-to-lovers potential, which is hexactly the point of the fic. It's one of my favorites not only because it's pretty poetic, but also because I wasn't sure I could actually write something like that well, and it's nice to know that if I really want to, I can.

Every Bit Of You, one of my HatterHare fics. That probably seems a little weird if you've read and the fic and you know the content, but projecting my own issues with food and weight onto one of my comfort characters, and having one of my other comfort characters be the one to reassure him, made me feel better. It's not always about how well-written one of my fics is; sometimes, it's just about how it makes me feel.

Locked In This Embrace, my first (and probably not my last) Espionage Husbands fic. I really like fics where I get to rewrite a scene from the source material, using mostly the original dialogue, but adding an internal monologue for one of the characters and some new material of my own. Plus, Nick Fury and Talos have completely stolen my heart, so writing something for them was an absolute joy.

I will be sending this prompt to other writers, but maybe not five because I don't think I know five writers lol.

[martianbugsbunny]

Hello! List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox of the last ten people that reblogged something from you! Get to know your mutuals and followers :D

Thank you anon! I was having kind of a rough day but this made it so much better! <3

Writing! it's my favorite thing to do with my free time, and it makes me feel so creative and talented when I do a good job

friends. my few irl friends and my friends on here, they all make my life more interesting and they're wonderful people, I'm happy whenever I get to talk to them

stuffed friends!!!! I love collecting them, especially bunnies and dragons, because they're all squishy and huggable and adorable

Once Upon A Time. that show got me into making my own posts on Tumblr and gave me endless hours of intrigue, joy, and ofc ugly crying lol. plus it has so much for me to turn into fics!

boba drinks. I visit boba places with my mom and my brother when we hang out and it's fun to have a special thing with them, especially one that's so tasty

[martianbugsbunny]

List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox for the last ten people who reblogged something from you! Get to know your mutuals & followers!! <3

lol at this point I would be getting to know the other members of the Loki fandom who are participating in the collective insanity after the finale, but that sounds fun too!

5 things that make me happy are bunnies (so soft!), Alice in Wonderland, redemption arcs, apple juice, and family time!