#my first time writing a british character and the hardest part was trying to decide his dialogue....

[doryyaaa]

Hi there! Would it be possible to request a Steve x reader story about him declining to sing while you're at karaoke but makes up for it with a trip to the music store to play the ukulele? I know it's a bit specific, so it's okay if it doesn't quite spur the inspiration! But I'd love to see you tackle if it you can

The victory party is in full swing. Steve Fox stands triumphant in the center of the room, raising his newest championship belt for everyone to see. The strobe lights shine across him like diamond trails over his blond, slicked-back hair. His boxing gloves are still strung over his shoulders, and he’s knocking back beer glasses with his mates like there’s no tomorrow. At some point, you take your eyes off him for just a few seconds, but he’s quickly closed the distance and sidles up to you at the bar area.

“Fancy another drink, luv?” Steve raises two fingers to the bartender, and slings an arm over your shoulders. His fresh cologne scent tickles your nose. The bartender returns with your drink, and Steve happily clinks your glass. “Here’s to you! My darling babe, the sexiest angel and my greatest treasure in the world—”

“Okay—I get it, I get it!” You burst into a giggle as he peppers small kisses along your jawline.

“Is the party too boring for you? Any creeps hitting on you? I’ll clock ‘em in the face,” Steve says, making a show of blowing on his knuckles.

“There will be no clocking,” you say, while your eyes wander over to the karaoke machine in the corner. “How about a song? I’ve never heard you sing before.”

A drunk partygoer stumbles behind you then, and Steve is quick to shield you.

“Woah! Easy there, fella. Hands to yourself, alright?” Steve playfully bumps his fist against the partygoer’s chest, just hard enough to elicit a choked laugh. He turns his attention back to you.

“You were saying, hun?”

“Karaoke! Will you sing for me?”

Steve glances to the machine from afar. Some other drunk guys have just picked up the microphones and started belting out a beloved classic. More people gather around to cheer and tease.

“Right. Actually, maybe now’s not the best time for that,” Steve says, much to your disappointment, and you settle for imagining it in your head instead, the way Steve’s cheeky tone might shift into a deep, honeyed timbre.

Your tiny pout must have left a mark on Steve, though, because he skips the after-party to go for a walk with you into a fancy shopping district. The sun has already set, and soft fairy lights glow from the surrounding gardens. Steve leads you by the hand through boardwalk, gentle as ever. He stops to cover both your eyes before nudging you towards a certain shop.

“Alright, you can look now!”

You find Steve’s adoring smile, and the music store standing quiet behind him, deserted at this odd hour.

“Here’s a special performance, just for you.” Steve picks up a ukulele on display, testing a slow strum. The chords echo melodiously in your ears.

“No way.” You gasp softly. Steve strums again, easing into a slow love song, the strings vibrating under his deft fingers. He takes his time working up to the climax, never missing a note.

“What can I say?” Steve winks. “I’m a man of many talents.”

“You’re amazing."

"Why, thank you."

"A musical genius.” You press a sloppy kiss to his cheek this time, and it’s his turn to giggle, boyish in his smile.

“I just hate to see you disappointed. You mean the world to me, you know that? I'll do anything to make you happy,” Steve says between slow strumming. You kiss him again, a peck on the lips.

"You already make me the happiest I can be."

"Oh, my heart." Steve ends the song with one last strum, soft and full of love. He puts the ukulele down, and pulls you in for a sweet embrace.

It’s much, much better than anything you could have imagined.

[inked-out-trees]

⭐ for The Keep Going Song? Thanks! :)

(anh i would die for you)

Thank you for asking! I am going to be talking about the whole thing because it's fun, and because there's not really many ~secrets~ within the text to ramble about, just little fun snippets!

I'll do it under a cut because I will definitely ramble. Woohoo!

I came across The Keep Going Song (the song) after my Lookout 3 Companion Playlist (& my spotify discovery) introduced me to the Bengsons. The effect was almost instantaneous - it's the kind of warmth I try to encompass in everything I do, and for the next few days I had it on repeat as I worked. This was around the time I was finishing my Lookout script, and I had been toying with the idea of writing a Cornleyverse fic after absolutely devouring all 10 fics in the tag. What I knew was that I wanted it to be sweet, I wanted it to pull them all together, and I wanted it to be a progression. Despite only having seen the Goes Wrong Show, jumping into the fandom made me want to dimensionalize these characters and give them a story beyond everything that had already occured.

I also watched Christmas Carol before / during the writing process, but to date I have not watched Peter Pan or the full-length TPTGW. My prior knowledge comes from Wikipedia, the delightul amateur TPTGW production on YouTube, a friend's excellent transcription of the Haversham Manor script, and tumblr meta analysis. I think I did a reasonable enough job pretending I knew what I was doing.

Let's get going!

I knew off the top that it was going to be vignettes - they would give me room to spread the story over the long period of time it takes for a group of people to grow into something resembling a family. Like I said in the original author's note, there was supposed to be more of the early, snippy days - but I got so focused on making them kinder that I found I couldn't properly write a fight. In hindsight, it probably would have been easier if I tried writing that first, but, well. Once I realized that it was too late. The alphabet idea came later, once I had them all finished: I wanted to organize them somehow, but numbers felt too open, too infinite - closing the story on an organizational endpoint was just really satisfying.

a - Every good story needs a good beginning.

c - Starting with the end of Peter Pan is my sneaky way of slipping past the fact that I haven't seen the earlier shows! The Max and Sandra storyline is just so sweet, and I wanted to let it exist a little bit in between our jump from Peter Pan to Christmas Carol. This vignette came so easily when I wrote it and I love love love the feelings and the tentativity about the whole thing.

f - This was actually the last vignette I wrote. I realized I needed some front-end padding because otherwise my angst plot came rather abruptly, and what better way? At this point, too, I was trying to bring in POVs from each one of our characters, and when deciding on Trevor's POV I thought the exasperation-excitement combination would be an excellent choice. It turns out Trevor is my favourite to write, mostly because I can find his voice a lot easier than some of the others - and probably also because I hold a lot of fondness and nostalgia for stage crew work. Also, I wrote most of this one on a long evening walk in the notes app on my phone. Fun fact.

h - I did my original idea slam in a draft tumblr post, and this one just says "birthday party but one without all the drama of christmas carol". And what do you know, that's exactly what it is! I definitely took the birthday party (in CCGW as well as in this fic) as a kind of proof that they really do like each other, if they're doing things like this and if they want to do things like this - and that theme of okay, they want to be here formed the basis for this part. I think it's exceptionally sweet that Dennis came looking for friends and ended up finding, well, something. And I popped in a little MMNI reference with "one of the Janines" - Backwards Janine? Frontwards Janine? Original Janine? Who knows! It's one of them!

l - The thing about this plot is that it's actually one of the first ideas I had when dreaming up this fic, and I couldn't quite let it go. The point was, what if I somehow split them up? How can they get on when half the society is out of commission? And the most reasonable way I could find to actually get half of them out of commission was the car accident. To be honest, this one is mostly filler - it's also the second vignette I wrote, and it found its birth in the email drafts of my work laptop.

m - Trying to map out this little plotline without overdoing it might have been the most difficult part of this fic, and I'm still not 100% sure I succeeded. This is our explanation for the unease from the vignette above, and it took me 3 rewrites before I finally found something that settled in my brain. "Dennis gets chased by a goose" might be one of my favourite lines in the fic though.

Also, putting these letters right next to each other made me feel really clever for no reason.

n - My Jonathan perspective also took a few stutter-steps in its beginning, but this one ultimately came from the promo video's reveal that Robert and Dennis live together, and me playing with the continual idea of the remaining cast members being rather unmoored in their injured castmates' absence. Robert in particular because I love his character and I love making him Feel Things(TM) (fun hint: this will also be a small theme in the new cpds fic I have in the works!) and I want to see so much from this odd relationship between him and Dennis. Obviously they have to tolerate each other if they are willingly roommates - how far can I go with that? I love how this one turned out.

o - All I have to say about this one is that I still really love the sweetness between these two, and they deserve the world. Also, at some point during writing this I was really caught up with how striking Dave's face silhouette is (don't ask) so that ended up making it in somehow.

q - Girls' Night is SO important to me. After all the work they've done to make these gals friends I needed to capture it, and a pleasant night in just made a lot of sense. This one is the home of a few of my headcanons - Annie has a chef roommate and Max does a lot of the cooking, thus the "neither of us are the usual household cooks" comments, and I also think they're at the point where they can joke about their previous failures (especially with these three together) so the nod to A Trial To Watch (my favourite gws episode) was so fun. Also, Waking Ned really is a silly pick-me-up of a movie - would recommend. Special thanks to CBC for giving us Canadians quality British TV alongside our occasionally questionable homegrown programming.

r - It wouldn't be a fic about progress and growth with this crew without a disheartening moment turned into gold. I wrote this one while barbecuing, another fun fact, and no joke the hardest part was figuring out what to name the play they were doing. I kept pace with the whole "Jonathan can't get onscreen" gag, which was personally hilarious and made me cackle as I wrote it, and the rest of it just felt good. I will always have a soft spot for comfort and reassurance in a story and getting to write it has just been an absolute delight.

t - This was one of my other unplanned vignettes. It was originally to fill out Robert's POV, but also to express a bit of how things have changed in Chris's attitude towards his cast - if there's one thing I would change from Mischief's characerisation thus far, it's this brand of almost-kindness that I consistently need to write him with. It takes the aftermath of the car accident and uses it to kind of make him understand - this is a valuable group of people and I don't want to lose it. But of course he's not the type of person to actually express that in any way, so I thought the frenetic hovering was a good way to get the point across. As well, the kind-of-bonding between Chris and Robert - the two of them are such powerhouses of insistent personality that conflict so easily but they've also got a more secret kind of friendship that deserves to be explored a little more. I really like this vignette and how it ended up portraying how they are around each other, how they really do know each other, especially when they're not fighting. Makes me soft.

w - This is the first vignette I wrote! I honestly didn't realize until writing this just how much I identify with Annie - best of both worlds re. crew and cast, a bit of tenacity regarding getting through things, overall personality - I just love her so so much. She also seems like the most sensible of the cast, so the collective "why are we really here?" moment with Trevor really spoke to me. I love their friendship, I love the kind of quiet vibe this vignette gives off - this is one of the ones I can feel most strongly, the one I can step into and exist inside. I also spent most of my old drama rehearsals and classes without shoes, so that had to make it in just by virtue of the sock brigade (me).

z - One thing I knew for sure since the inception of the fic was that it needed to end on a victory. I took the images I had of this victorious adrenaline, everyone together having a good time, kind of getting smashed, and karaoke (I really wanted the karaoke, for some reason) and went the obvious route: the wedding. Ending on Chris POV also felt so right - possibly because he's the one with the most growth in this fic - and getting to finally feel this triumph with him after all these other trials and tribulations was an absolute joy. The wedding hall, in my head, looks like the one my cousin used (it was at a zoo... my sister and I went on a night walk and heard a lot of screaming peacocks) and I definitely threw all my wistfulness, all my love for the characters I'd developed, and all my love for this fantastic fandom into this part. The incorrect lyrics that Annie sings are exactly what I think every time I hear that song, because I've never looked up the lyrics before and my brain likes to play Mad Libs with my super-questionable auditory processing. And the image of the ballroom staff getting really exasperated with them and shutting all the lights off came to me at night and is hastily scribbled on a sticky note (it's a wonder it's legible) but I still strongly believe that it's the perfect, perfect way to end. I still get the warm feelings when I reread this part, even now, after so many reads.

And, finally - our end quote is exactly what started this whole thing. What is this drama society if not a rough beginning? But the concept that we'll make it through, that we can just take a step and then another and it'll be okay because we're together... it's hard to describe just how much it means to me, to my place in the world, to the world itself. I think one of my rather consistent aims in writing, no matter what it is, is to be able to have this collective - characters that become family, people that are important to each other, this constellation to lean on - because it's all I can say for the human experience. It's probably quite a bit of wishful thinking (as I said to another friend, "I am apparently letting loose on all my repressed social feelings of the past year and shoving them into fics") and a sort of subconscious confirmation that if I write it, I can be it. So this force of understanding and kindness and ultimately good people helping each other through the world is something I can't help but include, something that means the absolute world to me.

I'm so glad to have been able to share this fic with everyone, and extra glad that it's been able to touch some people along the way. I've found such an incredible community in Mischief and coincidentally I think The Keep Going Song represents that warmth, too - the community I've been so lucky to exist inside, how we're helping each other along, step by step. What a beautiful thing to be a part of! Thank you for reading and allowing me to give you a bit of my heart. 💖💖

[tlbodine]

Literary vs Genre Fiction

The divide between literary and genre fiction is one of those topics that gets endlessly debated in writer circles. You’ll see it making the rounds on social media every time a book gets some buzz for busting out of its category. You’ll hear it in MFA programs across the country. But what even is literary fiction? How is it actually different from genre fiction? Is one better than the other? Why does anybody care?

A lot of smart people before me have thrown their hat in this particular ring, but I’m going to try tackling this one anyway. 

First Off: What Do We Mean When We Say “Literary Fiction”? 

Defining the thing is almost the hardest part of this whole discussion, and that may be part of the reason why people argue so endlessly about the literary vs genre divide -- if you don’t have a clear definition of the categories, that divide can be drawn up just about anywhere. 

So before we dig into characteristics of literary fiction, let’s look at some clear examples. The Booker Prize is a literary award specifically given to works of literary fiction, so it stands to reason that winners of that award would be the best examples of the category, right? Here are some recent Booker Prize winners (as pulled from Powell’s bookstore): 

Margaret Atwood - The Testaments The sequel to A Handmaid's Tale, told as testaments from three female narrators in Gilead, a dystopian setting where women have been stripped of their rights.

Bernardine Evaristo - Girl, Woman, Other Twelve central characters, mostly black British women, lead intersecting lives with struggles of identity, race, sexuality, class, etc.

Anna Burns - Milkman A girl identified as "middle sister" catches the unwanted attention of "the milkman," a local paramilitary, and has to deal with the threat of violence and spread of rumors.

George Saunders - Lincoln in the Bardo A father-and-son story about Abraham Lincoln and the 11-year-old son who died of illness in the midst of the civil war, leading to them both struggling in a type of purgatory.

Paul Beatty - The Sellout A satire about an isolated young man who ends up at a Supreme Court race trial after trying to reinstate slavery and segregate the local high school in an attempt to put his town back on the map.

One thing becomes immediately clear about literary fiction when skimming through the titles and summaries of these award-winning books: These novels are well-nigh impossible to summarize in a way that actually sounds enticing. 

So okay. What are some genre fiction books, for comparison? There are genre fiction awards, like for example the Hugo award for Sci-Fi/Fantasy: 

Mary Robinette Kowal - The Calculating Stars A cataclysmic meteor collision in 1952 causes an accelerated effort to colonize space, leading to a woman fighting to join the astronaut team in this alternate-history book.

N. K. Jemisin - The Stone Sky The third in a trilogy of post-apocalyptic novels about two women with the power to avert destruction of mankind.

Cixin Liu - The Three-Body Problem Against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project makes contact with aliens whose civilization is on the brink of destruction, leading them to plan a takeover of earth.

There’s also the Edgar Award, which is given to mystery fiction (it’s named after Edgar Allan Poe): 

James A McLaughlin - Bearskin A man on the run takes a job as a park ranger, but runs the risk of being found by the men he's hiding from when he tries to expose some poachers.

Walter Mosley - Down the River Unto the Sea After spending a decade in prison for a crime he was framed for, former-detective King works as a private investigator whose investigation of his own frame-up leads him to cross paths of a journalist with a similar story.

Sujata Massey - Widows of Malabar Hill In 1920s India, Bombay's only female lawyer investigates a suspicious will on behalf of three Muslim widows, a case that takes a murderous turn.

These aren’t the best summaries in the world, but there does seem to be a stronger sense of both plot and character in the story concepts. At least, when someone asks, “What’s that book you’re reading about?” the genre fiction ones will have a somewhat easier time explaining it. 

So What REALLY Separates Literary From Genre Fiction? 

There are a lot of battle lines drawn between genre and literary fiction. I’ve heard it argued that literary is about character while genre is about plot; that literary is about the quality of the prose while genre is about the story; that literary is about experimenting while genre is about adhering to formulas. That literary is about expanding horizons while genre is about escapism and comfort. That literary is about realism and genre fiction is about fabulism. 

I think there’s a nugget of truth in all of these, but I’m not really happy with any of them. 

So I’m going to toss out my own hypothesis: I think the difference between literary and genre fiction is the way tropes are employed. 

“Okay, great, but what are tropes?” 

I’m so glad you asked. Fiction tropes are a type of shorthand. They are things that we the audience have seen before, so we know immediately what they mean. Tropes exist in characters, plot points, settings, concepts -- you name it. Here’s a sampling of tropes you might be familiar with: 

The tough lady-cop whose dad was a police officer 

Thanks to a mix-up, two people with hidden romantic feelings book the last available room at a hotel but there’s only one bed 

A man goes on a quest for vengeance but destroys himself in the process

The wise old man who teaches the young hero valuable lessons but then dies before the pivotal battle

And so on, and so forth. Every genre has its own tropes -- a formula, if you will. In that sense, genre fiction is formulaic, but that doesn’t make it easier to write; actually, a big part of the challenge is in giving fresh twists to familiar tropes. Readers of genre stories demand certain tropes; the author has to deliver on those demands in a fresh way.

By comparison, I would argue that literary fiction does not rely upon tropes. There certainly are tropes and conventions that emerge in literary fiction -- a middle-aged academic struggling through divorce, for example -- but these tropes are more often than not met with irritation, not delight. Readers of literary fiction are looking for fresh insights and innovations, not familiarity. 

Tropes are powerful tools. They are the mythic seed of storytelling. They are the archetypes that pass down through generations. They are a sacred backbone of mythology and folklore. Genre fiction, at the end of the day, carries the torch for storytelling in a long and (ha, ha) storied tradition from our prehistoric days huddled around a campfire. 

Literary fiction, on the other hand, eschews tropes -- with their agreed-upon meanings -- in favor of assigning fresh meanings to things. Literary fiction is chock full of metaphors, but it’s the author, not convention, that determines what those metaphors mean and how they’re employed. Literary fiction reinvents the wheel. When it succeeds, it hits on depth and emotional resonance that can be life-changing for the reader. When it fails, it comes off like so much navel-gazing nonsense. So it goes. 

Fiction Wars and Gatekeeping

The problem with the literary vs genre fiction divide is that it never stops with “This is how these categories are defined.” The problem is that people will insist on ascribing moral significance and hierarchy to them. 

Literary fiction is viewed as being smarter, deeper, more meaningful or more valuable than genre fiction. If a genre fiction story manages to break out and gain wider appeal, suddenly people will start ascribing to it literary attributes (whether or not the book and many others in the genre had them all along). And that is all a bunch of nonsense. 

It’s the exact same thing that happens in horror fiction -- when a horror story goes mainstream, suddenly it becomes a “psychological thriller” or a “dark drama” or anything other than horror, because “horror” is an inferior genre. 

The fact of the matter is that literary fiction gets elevated over genre fiction for systemic reasons: 

Most MFA programs focus on writing literary fiction, which means that a lot of lit-fic authors come out of those programs, which means that literary fiction is often the domain of upper-middle-class, frequently white, people who can afford to graduate from those programs

A focus on dense prose and “difficult” writing means lit-fic books must be analyzed and interpreted; it’s hard to read, making it exclusionist to people who lack formal education 

Lit-fic dominates awards, gets pushed heavily onto book clubs, is talked about more often on daytime TV and so forth (because it is perceived as being better/more important, thus creating the ongoing cycle)

Basically, lit-fic gets held up as an example of Fine Culture. And any time something is designated as Fine Culture and High Art, it is subject to a completely arbitrary classist distinction meant primarily to keep out an undesirable element (women, BIPOC, poor people, you name it). 

That’s not a problem endemic to lit-fic itself. It’s really a problem of the culture surrounding it, and attempts to hold it to a higher esteem than genre work. 

Cross-Pollination Is Inevitable and Desirable 

How do tropes get made? 

Someone comes up with a new metaphor, concept, character, or idea that resonates so deeply that others who follow borrow that same thing and its meaning, and it gets repeated enough times that it becomes a stock trope. 

In other words, every single piece of genre fiction exists because someone writing in some other established tradition decided to experiment and go off on a tangent to create something really fresh and new -- and knocked it so far out of the park that people were compelled to follow. 

People like to pretend that the overlap and blurred lines between genre and literary fiction are somehow a new trend, but the fact is that this has been the trajectory of fiction-writing for the whole history of storytelling. 

Literary agents have a term for this: Upmarket fiction. Books that “transcend” genre definitions to appeal to readers on either side of the aisle. And those are highly sought-after books, because they have the potential of bringing in double the readers. 

So, snobby gatekeeping aside, is there any real reason to argue about the definition of literary vs genre fiction? 

I’d say...no. Not even a little bit. I’ve got a mix of both on my shelves. I incorporate a mix of both in my writing. And I don’t see that changing any time soon. 

A Final Note 

I mentioned above that lit-fic tends to be written by people in MFA programs, and I wanted to touch on that again as an MFA drop-out and someone who was once warned by a teacher not to bring “any more of that genre nonsense” into the classroom. 

I can understand, from a teaching perspective, why writer’s workshops would want to focus on lit-fic. From the perspective of learning how to write, forcing writers to derive stories from their experiences, to dig deep into themselves and ascribe unique meaning to things, to develop their own metaphors and hone their craft at the sentence level -- all of that makes a lot of sense. Banning genre tropes is a way to force writers to hone their craft without leaning on the work of generations of storytellers before them, and as a teaching tool I think that’s actually really valuable. 

But I think it’s pretty important that we keep that in context. The lit-fic focus in writing classes should be a teaching tool first and foremost. It should not be the end-all and be-all of writing classes.

This post topic was voted on by my Patreon subscribers. If you would like to vote for future posts and get early access to posts before they go live on tumblr, you can become a patron here: https://www.patreon.com/tlbodine

[epicstuckyficrecs]

How To Tag Stucky Fics Part 3: Additional Tags

The Additional Tags are probably the hardest to fill out, but also the most important! All of the other fields are pretty straightforward when it comes to what you need to put in, but here? It’s the Wild West! You can pretty much write as much or as little as you want, but those tags are really gonna be the ones that will let potential readers know what is in your fic. In fact, they’re probably as important as your summary 

If you want an easy reminder of what to tag for, keep in mind the W’s: WHO, WHAT, WHEN, and WHERE? 

Under a read more because this is long!

Who

Character traits

We’ve already settled which characters are appearing in your fic, now it’s time to tell us more about WHO they are. This can include:

Physical traits

Personality traits

Jobs

Sexuality and other sex-related stuff

Religion

Nationality 

Disabilities and mental illnesses

Fantasy creatures: vampire, werewolf, angel and demon… you get the gist.

MCU specific stuff

etc.

In my opinion, these tags are useful if the characteristic in question is something that is memorable, important with regards to the plot, something that defines the character in your story specifically, or something that differs from canon. I don’t really need to know that your fic contains some Shy Bucky Barnes if it’s not somewhat important to the story; you probably don’t need to tag for “British Peggy Carter” since thats just the default canon, but you could tag “American Peggy Carter” if she’s American in your AU!

I’ve mentioned a lot of them in my Comprehensive List of Stucky Tags post, but it’s not actually a complete list! If you want to know all of the canon tags existing for a specific character: go on AO3 and click on the Search tab on top of the page > Tags > Enter the character’s name > Select “Freeform” in the list > Click “canonical”. 

And besides, if you can’t find a canonical tag for what you want, you can always invent one! Just remember: if you wanna create a freeform tag for a character, please make sure to use the characters’ LAST NAME too, in order to help tag wranglers! For example: if you want to tag for Steve having black hair, you should write something like “Steve Rogers has black hair”, and not just “Steve has black hair”, because at the moment there are 279 canonical “Steve” character tags so… who knows which Steve you’re talking about? XD

As for some things specific to the MCU, again, I’ve listed a lot of them in my Comprehensive List of Stucky Tags post, but I would tag especially anything that differs from canon, for example, “Steve Rogers as the Winter Soldier” or “Bucky Barnes as Captain America”. You can check out the post if you wanna have an idea of the canonical tags that already exist, but once again, you can always create your own tags and let the wranglers deal with it! :P Just make sure to use the characters’ last name in your tag.

Another tip: if there’s a dichotomy in the character roles or attributes, or opposite roles/positions between the characters, I would make sure to tag them both! For example: 

Don’t just tag “Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics”: also tag Alpha Bucky Barnes, Omega Steve Rogers, or vice-versa

Don’t just tag “BDSM”: also tag Dom Steve Rogers, Sub Bucky Barnes, or vice-versa

Don’t just tag “Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons”: also tag Angel Steve Rogers, Demon Bucky Barnes, or vice-versa

etc.

Relationships

Why am I talking about relationships again, you say? Haven’t we covered that in Part 2 of the series? Yes I did. But here’s a little reminder of what I said then:

“Any side pairings/friendships can go in the Additional Tags field (for example: Minor Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov or Steve Rogers & Bucky Barnes Friendship).”

So there’s a few types of relationships that you can consider here: 

Friendships: you can decide wether you want to mention the friendship in the Relationships field, in the Additional Tags field, or both. That’s your choice!

Past relationships, minor/side relationships: I personally would put them only in the Additional Tags field (NOT in the Relationship field), and here’s why: 

Putting “past” or “minor” or “side” or whatever else qualifier in front of your ship in the Relationships field makes it a non-canonical tag (only the Additional tags can be non-canonical, or “freeform”. Like I’ve said in Part 2: try to only use canonical tags for the Fandom, Relationship, and Characters fields). That means that your tag is gonna be made a synonym of a canon tag. For example: the non-canonical “(Past) Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers” tag that a few people have used is a synonym of the canon “Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers” tag. That means that those past Peggy/Steve fics appear in the Steve/Peggy tag. Are people looking for Steggy fics likely to want to read past Steggy fics? You tell me...

If you’re tagging with the canon tag, but the couple is only a side/minor pairing, it might annoy people who are looking for fics in that tag and keep seeing fics that are not about their ship. This is especially true if the ship is less popular in the fandom.

So TLDR in my opinion: tag your main couple (if you’re writing a romance) or your main friendship/platonic relationship (if you’re writing a Gen fic) in the Relationship field, and tag everything else in the Additional Tags field.

POV

You can specify from which POV your fic is written from. Personally, I would pay attention to this mostly if your POV differs from the classic “3rd person” Steve or Bucky POV. Some existing tags tags to give you an idea:

POV Steve Rogers

POV Bucky Barnes

POV Sam Wilson or POV Natasha Romanov, etc.

POV Outsider or POV Original Character

POV First Person or POV Second Person

POV Alternating

POV Multiple  

What

This is pretty self-explanatory, but you want to tell your readers what’s in your story! What’s happening? What’s the plot about? What are some specific subjects/themes your story contains?

Genres

When I think about genres, I always picture the FF.net categories lol XD. But it’s actually a good way to look at it!Here’s a few examples on AO3:

Action/Adventure

Angst

Character Study

Crack

Crimes and Criminals

Crossovers & Fandom Fusions

Family

Fluff

Friendship

Humor

Hurt/Comfort

Love

Mystery

Pining

Porn

Romance

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Sexual content

Smut

I wouldn’t say these are the most essential tags, but they can give your readers a general idea of the tone/content of your story.

Relationship

On top of that, we want to know what kind of relationship your ship has in this fic! What are they to each other? What’s their progression? Here’s a few examples:

Boss/Employee Relationship

Break Up

Childhood Friends

Enemies to Friends to Lovers

Established Relationship

Fake/Pretend Relationship

Friends to Lovers

Friends With Benefits

Getting Together

Long-Distance Relationship

Strangers to Lovers

Triggers

It can be hard to know what to tag with regards to triggers. I’d say better safe than sorry, and be open to suggestions and comments from your readers, especially with triggers. 

Here’s a few examples to give you an idea what to tag for, which are taken from this great triggers list, but I definitely suggest you take a look at this post and bookmark it for whenever you need to tag your fics!

Violence:

Death: main/minor character death, animal death, child death...

Suicide: suicide attempt, suicidal thoughts, suicidal “insert character name”, ... 

Abuse: child abuse, domestic abuse, sexual abuse, emotionnal abuse, gaslighting... 

Assault

Torture

Kidnapping

Stalking

Sex:

Rape/Sexual assault/Non con

Dub con

Incest

Specific sex acts: like @kiragecko says in the post I linked: “some people search for, others want to avoid”. 

Specify if your characters are being Safe Sane and Consensual or not when engaging in kinky sex.

Health:

Drugs and/or Alcohol

Food

Illnesses (physical or mental)

Pregnancy: mpreg, miscariage

Self-harm

Panic attacks, PTSD, dissociation

Phobias: 

Any phobias that your character(s) have and are specifically mentioned/depicted in your fic

Common phobias: spiders, clowns, hospitals...

Gross content:

Gore

Bodily fluids

Smut

I’ve said it above in the triggers section, but you can tag sexual acts appearing in your story as a way to both attract readers who are looking for them and help readers who want to avoid them. 

If your story has a lot of smut, you might be reluctant to tagging all of them in fear of making your tag list very long. I would always at least indicate in your tags that there’s Sexual Content in your fic; then, you could do like I’ve suggested with the Warnings and add something like “more info about specific sexual acts in the author’s note” to your tags, and make a detailed list of sexual acts in your authors’ note.

Here’s a few generic tags about smut, and here’s a link to all the different canon “sex” tags (350 at the moment!)

Angst and Fluff and Smut

Angst and Porn

Emotional Porn

Eventual Smut

Fluff and Smut

Identity Porn

Mild Sexual Content 

Mild Smut 

No Smut 

Non-Graphic Smut 

Porn with Feelings 

Porn With Plot

Sexual Tension

Unresolved Sexual Tension 

When

MCU

In my post about Stucky tags, I made a list of a lot of tags regarding the MCU movies. Not all of them of course, this list was mainly focused on movies where Stucky would appear, but you get the gist. We want to know WHEN in the MCU your fic is happening.

I’m not gonna list every single MCU movie and all of their tags, but basically you have a few options:

Pre-movie

Movie

Movie mid/end credit scenes

Post-movie

Movie compliant

Not Movie compliant

Canon divergence

Canon divergence - post movie

Some movies also have specific tags for their trailers. I would recommend using the trailer tag if you are indeed writing your fic based on the trailer of a movie that isn’t out yet (you could also add the movie’s specific “spoiler” tag too while you’re at it!) in order for people to be able to avoid spoilers if they want to.

Moreover, in the case of movies that are canonically happening in another time, you could also add the relevant tags if it’s pertinent! (for example, with The First Avenger: 1930s or World War II). You can also refer to events that happened within the MCU (example: Battle of New York (Marvel)).

Alternate Universe

Whatever era or time your fic is happening in, there’s probably a tag for that! There’s a tag for every decade of the 20th century and pretty much every century too. Is it a Victorian, Ancient Rome, or a Future fic? 

But even if it’s just a simple Alternate Universe - Modern Setting with No Powers … there are tags for that too! :P 

If there’s a specific historical/fictional event that your story is centered around, you could tag it too! For example: PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics, World War I, 2008 United States Presidential Election, Battle of Hogwarts, 75th Hunger Games, etc.

Don’t forget your holidays! Christmas, Valentine's Day, Halloween, to name a few...

Where

Self-explanatory again, but where is your story taking place? :P Again, maybe not the most important tag category to consider, but I would use it especially if the story is taking place in a specific/unusual place for the canon or your ship. See examples below!

MCU

Avengers Tower

Avengers Compound

Red Room (Marvel)

Sanctum Sanctorum (Marvel) 

Wakanda (Marvel)

Asgard (Marvel)

Alternate universe

(Reminder: There’s sooooooooooo many different Alternate Universe tags!)

If your AU is taking place in a different country/city, you can mention it! You could either go with the AU tag or just the tag for the place itself. For example: Alternate Universe - Canada or Canada. 

But it can also be even more precise than that! Stuck in a cabin during a snowstorm? There’s Cabin Fic! Steve and Bucky are men of the Night’s Watch? Maybe tag Castle Black! You get the gist ;) 

And lastly...

Format

(inspired by this post from @salt-of-the-ao3 on tumblr)

If your fic has a specific format, you can specify it! Here’s a few suggestions:

Drabble

Epistolary

Songfic

Poetry

Reader-Insert 

And I think that’s it folks! All you need to know to tag your fics the best you can! :)

See Part 1: A Comprehensive List of Stucky Tags here!

See Part 2: Rating, Warnings, Fandoms, Relationships & Characters here!

You can also access a handy bullet-point checklist that summarizes these posts on Google Docs here! 

[calliecat93]

Since I can't go to RTX and they aren’t streaming it this year but I wanted to do a masterpost of something RvB related, I decided to write a wrap-up of this interview with Jason Weight on The SHizno RvB Podcast. Please go check it out because there was now ay that I could fit everything in here and there’s so much good stuff in it. SO please go and check it out! But anyways, here we go:

Joe had told Jason about the plan for a Donut and Wash season back at RTX, which Jason at first wasn't on board with. But once he began writing it, he got into it and became very attached to Donut. 

When rewatching the show to prep for S17, one scene that took note of was in the caves when Grif was making the Reds not look at Kai when naked… except for Donut since he just paid attention to the Blue’s base. It felt like he had depth in those kinds of moments and it got him to like him. He was very happy to see more people join Team Donut after the season. He feels like only the surface has been scratched for him.

He confirmed that Donut’s innuendo in the finale was intentional (even putting ‘tongue and cheek’ in the character notes) and any made after will likely be intentional by him.

When they talked about Donut and Tucker’s development, Jason joked that Simmons would be next to receive development. So it seems that Jason is at least aware of our desire for a Simmons season XD

The Everwhen was devised essentially as another method of time travel different from the previous methods seen before since doing it the same way again would have been boring. 

The timeline after the paradox in the Writers Room was called Schrodinger’s Ass. 

The version of time travel we got was the third version. Jason spent a month on Verison One, but Burnie had rejected it. Then he, Joe, and Miles devised a second version, but near the end they threw it out and the third version that included The Everwhen was made.

How it worked in previous versions was that Chrovos has made the alternate Blood Gulch as a containment unit type of thing to contain the Reds and Blues as she went backwards in time, giving them a limited amount of time before she reached the beginning of time and… honestly, IDK how to type the whole thing out. But to put it simply, it was very convoluted and thus The Everwhen was made. The first version was also rejected due to being too similar to S9.

Jason is on Red Team! His explanation? “Red Team is an actual team.” 

He really liked the direction that Joe took Wash, especially since him now having a disability gives him a new unique perspective that, even if he doesn’t get to write in the future, he looks forward to seeing the direction that Wash is taken. He also believes that if they focus on Wahs’s rehabilitation, Caboose should have a major role in it. HIRE HIM RT, DANG IT!

Simmons original nightmare was the same scenario and the same joke… except that the one int he UFO was his dad. The higher-ups rejected this since it could come off as, well… incestuous/pedophilic. Which while I think the ‘dad’ bit would have made more sense… yeah, I… can’t blame them for that one. Jason DOES say that in his mind, Simmons feels that he’s in his father's shadow and the scene was supposed to be in a Freudian reference to those feelings.

Genkins was originally not as intimidating int he script. Much of it came from the direction, especially in Episode 10 after he got skewered by the golf club. Same with Wash and Carolina’s scene in Episode 9. He greatly loved seeing the direction that Austin and Josh took with the scenes.

Miles had toyed with having a scene set directly after S13 (he says 10 but I think he meant 13), but Jason felt that it was best to leave that area alone since it had ended on such a perfect note and talked him out of it. Jason also toyed with having the guys see Epsilon’s final message ala Princess Leia hologram and Tucker picking them up/explaining Episolon’s nature. But it was too talky nor did it really affect anything, so they instead went with Tucker re-living Crash site Bravo which was done by Miles.

If RvB ended up a Seinfeld-esque comedy, Grif and Simmons would live together with Grif trying to get Simmons out of his shell. Sarge is essentially Dan DeVito. Tucker would live alone and use his sword to open up beer bottles. Donut would live in a gym due to, in his mind, him having severe allergies and is why he wears the Power Armor all the time. Carolina and Wash would live together and have a dog, and they both suck at dating due to judging the other’s dates (which Jason feels their relationship is brother and sister). Caboose owns the building they all live in. Lopez is maintenance. I want this show now.

Jason reads all the comments after all the episodes, including on Tumblr (I’m going to be so much more paranoid over my reviews now...) and one post he really liked was the idea of an RvB Road Trip since he used to be a roadie.

Jason doesn’t know how the whole Shisno thing came about since it was Joe’s idea. He does say that it used to be spelt ‘shizno’ until they found out how it’s officially been spelt as ‘shisno’. Whoops. They DID consider involving Wyoming’ time distortion unit in the story, but with all the other time shenanigans they felt it would make it too complicated.

Koen Wooten, a 3D Producer at RT, joked about putting time travel into every show from now on. Miles and Jason were unamused XD

He had a lot of fun with things like writing The Labryinth and Kai messing with Tucker

The hardest part was balancing out the time travel and figuring out what to look into and what not to. 

Jason is very used to being a director due to his own show, Starship GOldfish, and his scripts for himself are MUCH longer and detailed than they end up being in the final draft. For, he had a specific way that he wanted to have Chrovos done, so he was Skype’d in to direct Lee Eddy. Speaking of, he pushed for her after seeing her do Gwen from Camp Camp live at RTX 17 and he really wanted to have her in the show in some form.

For RvB Movie Nights, Jason thinks that Grif would like Caddyshack, thinks that Carolina is terrified of horror films like Paranormal Activity (which makes Wash confused) and ends up panic stabbing the TV, Simmons and Donut both do documentaries, Lopez liked Mr. Bean… then after going back to the beginning of time, he hates that kind of media and just watches an aquarium screen, and Kai likes Alien.

For Halloween, Jason would want to dress as the Fishman from S3 of Camp Camp. 

When questioned about the show potentially hitting serial escalation after the Cosmic Powers stuff, Jason talks about how they feel that they have now sealed off from that and can move more laterally again. But he does also feel that there are larger threats out there that affect you more personally, such as everyone trying to kill you which he thinks could be much stronger than fighting some ultra-powerful God. But we’ll have to see where things go from this point.

He believes that moving forward, Doc can be more important since he now is a nice guy with the danger of O’Malley in him. 

He also has seen that fans feel that the Reds and Blues need a rest, which he agrees with. One idea he likes that he did in PSA’s was do some Grif and Sarge bonding since he feels there’s plenty left unexplored there, Caboose helping Wahs rehabilitate, giving Simmons an arc, and Donut exploring the universe to do some world building. He and Joe liked the idea of maybe doing a mini-series, especially since Halo 6 won’t be out for quite a while and doing one can explore some new options. He also brings up ideas for the future like Locus on trial, Wash’s rehabilitation, and Tucker seeking out Junior to bond with him more after what happened in The Labryinth. I mentioned that RT needs to hire Jason ASAP, right?! RIGHT?!

He also feels that there would, ideally, eventually need to be a new villain… and suggests himself cause of him being British. HA! He also really loves villains and if he got to keep being the writer, he would absolutely voice the villain like Miles did as Felix. Although he does bring up the ‘self-insert’ critique but thinks it would be okay since as the villain it would be okay to hate him!

At the end of the interview, Jason talks about how collaborative the entire process had been and how Miles greatly helped him with the writing as well as Josh and Austin’s direction, who he hopes will still be on it. He says to thank them.

Well, that was fun! I will say, Jason hit all of the right buttons for me and I do legit hope that he can come back. But even if he can’t, this was so great and having his contribution was amazing. Thank you again for everything Jason~

[douxreviews]

The Good Place - ‘The Book of Dougs’ Review

By Lamounier

"We're four Oreos from heaven."

It turns out the Soul Squad landed on a side sector of the Good Place, just not the main area.

And that was enough to make Eleanor super anxious. How can you be this close to heaven and not make it? After all they have been through (and she just remembers a tiny portion of it), it's understandable that all she wants is just to rest in peace.

But there is more going on in Eleanor's mind, and it's brought to the surface when Chidi tries to cheer her up (by dressing up as a mailman and looking damn fine) and she bursts into tears. Because she has never been this happy and she fears it will go away. Eleanor never had a meaningful, lasting connection with anyone in her lifetime like the one she has with the members of the Soul Squad, especially with Chidi. She freaked out earlier in the season over the possibility of losing them, and her insecurity pops out here again. But as Chidi tells her, she should focus on the now. I love that quote by Tolstoy because it's so truthful. The past can't be changed and it's naive to think that we can assure the future will be a certain way. We never know what's coming next, and best we can do is live the now, the only time we have any power over. Eleanor gets the message, and since she can't guarantee she will be with Chidi forever, she decides they better off consume their love while they can. And so they hit the sheets.

Another character who has trouble dealing with her emotions is Janet, and it happens after she learns that Jason and Tahani discovered she has feelings for him. She's still exhausted from keeping the four humans inside her void and doesn't want to deal with emotions while pretending to be a Neutral Janet. I loved Tahani trying to take care of the situation, particularly her misguided attempt to end her marriage with Jason. Her certificate was adorable, albeit incorrect. I mean, death literally didn't part them, in fact, it brought them together in the first place, but, okay, that second part she doesn't remember.

I liked the resolution to that subplot, which focused more on the ladies and less on the man in the middle, and I also liked how the three of them just ended up group-crying, no matter how silly Jason's inclusion in the moment was. These people can keep being rebooted and they'll still grow the strongest ties to one another. Although, since we are talking about it, this season better not end on another reboot.

While the humans and Janet worked their issues, Michael continued his journey to save humanity and it was a rather frustrating experience since the Useless Committee of Uselessness did nothing to help him. I mean, 1,400 years to select and align an investigative team? I know the writers were poking fun at endless bureaucracy and supposedly good people that just sit around and do nothing useful, but come on. There you have a demon trying his hardest to save humanity against a bunch of self-proclaimed good guys who do nothing more than pass memorandum to each other saying how concerned they are (that was totally a jab at social media activists, right?). Are those guys just that clueless or are they not really good to begin with?

In any case, Michael realizes through a quick chat with Tahani that the Bad Place isn't tampering with the points system, but in reality the world has become so complex and people so interconnected that being a good person became harder. Buying your grandmother roses would earn a few points 500 years ago, but now it will actually lose you some points, because such an action will indirectly condone pollution of the planet and slavery.

Okay, so, I want to nitpick this a little bit. First, even though we are very connected now, there are still a few groups who are largely disconnected or completely isolated. I understand that the writers of The Good Place live in the super connected side of humanity, but that's not how it is for everyone. However, this is a fantasy show and I can let that issue slide if I assume that in the world of The Good Place everyone is connected, no exceptions. My biggest problem with the logic behind Michael's realization, though, is that our stand against slavery, for instance, is rather new. 500 years ago, slavery was normalized and voices against it were dissonant noises, not the choir. So if today the biggest problem for humanity is how complex the world has become, back then it would be the lack of a more consolidated notion of human rights. In both eras, though, I can see a handful of people making it to the Good Place.

But, again, this is a fantasy show and I'm probably being too dense, because, leaving logic aside, I was rather fascinated by the concept of how far the ramifications of our actions should be taken into our account. People become vegan when they stop and think about how much their eating habits contribute to the abuse of animals. I have a colleague at work who is a vegetarian, so not really a vegan, but he told me he has a few rules, such as buying the most expensive eggs (according to him, the cheaper the egg, the more the chicken suffered). But he'd still be totally forked in the points system, because transportation of the eggs probably polluted atmosphere and so on. We have been speculating for a while the likelihood of the points system setting the bar too high, and now we have proof that's exactly what it does. However, in our real world, should we put our actions under the microscope? Are we to blame for the unintended consequences of our good deeds? I love how this show keeps asking some really interesting moral questions as it takes us along the ride.

Favorite Things/Smells

Eleanor: Typhoon Falls, her favorite water park. "Chlorine, suntan lotion, Band-Aids and a thick cloud of teen hormones."

Chidi: either warm pretzels or the smell of absolute moral truth. They do smell alike, Janet confirmed.

Jason: Black Bortles holding the Super Bowl MVP trophy. Also, weed.

Tahani: a curtain closing between first class and economy.

Doorman: frogs, obviously.

Bonus: Eleanor's tears tasted like the nacho cheese from her favorite movie theater.

Too bad we didn't learn what Janet's and Michael's favorite things/smells were. Janet's would certainly have something to do with Jason.

Other Bits

- There is only one door for humans to enter the Good Place, the official entrance.

- Everything Eleanor used to try to unlock the other door to the Good Place turned to glitter.

- Jason spoke of the time they were in Janet's void as if it had been ages ago.

- Janet worried that her emotions would come out of her butt.

- Michael's jawline is indeed great.

- I'm usually annoyed at characters who are too naive, but Gwendolyn was adorable.

- The note on the champagne Eleanor and Chidi opened said: "Gwendolyn, here's some champagne for you for thanking me for thanking you for thanking me for thanking you for thanking me for the champagne you sent me." I wonder how many champagne bottles Gwendolyn and the writer of that note gave one another.

- Was it me or Jameela's delivery of "but we really didn't deal with my thing" was very Buffy-esque?

- Next stop: IHOP, Interdimensional Hole of Pancakes.

Quotes

Tahani: "Are you sure we're in the actual Good Place? It's rather carpeted."

Jason: "What kind of messed-up place would turn away refugees?"

Tahani: "Jason, you seem thoughtful. And that concerns me."

Jason: "It's nice to know I can talk about girls with my wife."

Chidi: "It's like when my parents would go to a symposium and I would sneak into their office and read the unabridged dictionary." Eleanor: "I can't believe I'm attracted to you."

Chidi: "Is this a horny cry?"

Chidi: "There is a quote I like by Tolstoy. 'There is only one time that is important. Now. It is the only time when we have any power.'" Eleanor: "I know that quote. An unverified Tyra Banks account posted that meme on Instagram." Chidi: "Well, now I hate it."

Michael: "The Titanic is sinking, and they're writing a strongly-worded letter to the iceberg."

Tahani: "There are so many unintended consequences to well-intentioned actions. It feels like a game you can't win."

Janet: "Why are you crying?" Tahani: "I don't know. I'm British, I never cry."

It's so unfair that there are only two more episodes left this season. Three out of four closed doors to heaven.

[marjaystuff]

Elise Cooper Interviews Maisey Yates

The Heartbreaker of Echo Past

Confessions from the Quilting Circle

Maisey Yates

The Heartbreaker of Echo Past, coming out in June, and Confessions from the Quilting Circle, coming out in May, by Maisey Yates, are great reads. Both stories delve into family and how relationships, misunderstandings, secrets, communication, and love affect the dynamics. People must come to grips with their past.

The Heartbreaker of Echo Past is a novel where Yates has outdone herself, hitting a homerun.  It is the story of Iris Daniels and how she has come into her own.  After her parents died in a plane crash, she became the de facto mother to her sisters Rose and Pansy.  Giving up her own dreams until the sisters were grown, she has felt unappreciated and not special. But after her younger sister Rose tried to set Iris up with a nerd, she decided to make a life for her own. Wanting to set up a bakery she must convince the building landlord, Griffin Chance, to lower the rent. To do this, Iris travels to find the mountain man landlord offering to cook and clean for him in exchange for a lower rent. After weeks of seeing each other, it becomes obvious that there is a connection.  The bond that grows between them becomes a friendship that turns into a romance. Both share the grief of losing loved ones.

A bonus is the novella Solid Gold Cowboy that sees Gold Valley’s bartender, Laz Jenkins, getting his happy ever after. Laz has been in love, for years, with his best friend, Jordan, the coffee barista in the previous books of the series. After she becomes a runaway bride and accepts Laz’s invitation to stay with him sparks fly and both realize they were meant for each other.

Confessions from the Quilting Circle is based on Maisey’s own family.  It has three sisters and their mother coming to grips with their grandmother who has just died.  Each has lived most of their adult lives separate and apart from one another. Lark, the youngest, is an artist and someone who pretends to let issues roll off her; Hannah, is a concert violinist who is very sarcastic; the oldest Avery is the fixer but cannot fix her own marriage; and Mary, the sister’s mother, must come to grips with her abonnement by her mother, the girls’ grandmother. While cleaning out their late grandmother’s attic, they discover their grandmother’s fabric swatches. They decide to finish the guilt using those squares. Having turned the candy shop into a café, they meet weekly to sew the quilt, but also to share their secrets.

Both books delve into family loss, long buried secrets, and suppressed emotions. Readers will take the journey along with the characters.

Elise Cooper: Because Iris was such a beloved character did you feel any pressure in writing the story?

Maisey Yates: I wrote it before people wanted her story.  By the time Logan and Rose’s story came out I received more email about her than any other character I have ever written. I must admit, I was a little worried that readers would like the storyline.  I edited the first hero out because he was too blasé. I thought of this mysterious mountain man who was a loner.  It was a very challenging book to write because both characters had very emotional issues.

EC:  It had a lot of what you are known for, great banter, but it was more of an emotional story?

MY:  I have written over hundred romances.  I am trying to figure out how to do something a little different, while keeping the things that are essential to my romances.  But with these characters, Iris and Griffin, the story just seemed to happen.  Yes, it has a different kind of feel.

EC:  How do you write the banter? The scene where Iris tells off her sisters is hilarious!

MY:  Although I don’t have sisters, I am very close to my friends. After I met author Nicole Helm, I literally felt she was the sister I never had.  We have so much in common.  I do have a sibling and know how we can push each other.

EC: How would you describe Iris?

MY:  Everything that she loves I love including knitting, baking, and British mystery shows. She is a nurturer, homemaker, introverted, but not innocent and fragile.  She is strong, quietly determined, capable, and seems to fly under the radar. She feels second best, not appreciated, and does not feel special.

EC:  How would you describe Griffin?

MY: Broken, a disaster, a very good man.  Unlike many of my heroes he did not have a terrible childhood, but as an adult had this devastation. It stole all the hope from him.  He can be intense, a hermit, and a loner.

EC:  What about the relationship?

MY:  Iris was the one who always took care of everybody, and now is looking for an adventure, not a boring man. They were right for each other.  Both have grief and need to realize they must move on.  They would never go back to who they were before. She is the complement to who Griffin has become.  They understand each other and Iris is a good listener.

EC:  There is a very powerful quote in the book, “The hardest part is when everybody else forgot.  But we hadn’t.”

MY:  Although other people’s lives change for a while, those that experience loss have their lives change forever.  They must take the pieces of what is left and move forward. In the end, people go on with their lives. Many times, people do not know how to handle sadness.  Right now, because my mom is in hospice, I am experiencing that rush of support.  But eventually, everything will turn quiet, and that person is left with the sadness along with the reality of permanence that the person is never coming back.  

EC:  You wrote a novella Solid Gold Cowboy?  

MY: I had Jordan Whitfield as the heroine.  She was the background character in many of these books.  I made up her fiancé Dylan.  I wanted to give the bartender, Jax, his happily ever after. He knows everyone’s secrets and had to hear/see their drama.  It is about time he had some happiness.

EC:  The women’s fiction book, Confessions from the Quilting Circle, also deals with sadness?

MY:  I based it on my mother’s mom.  Her half-brother, George lost his father in Normandy during WWII.  His mother, my grandmother, never got over her first love. Although she remarried, she told my mom she was never in love with her husband, my mom’s dad.  As with the grandmother in the story, both were broken by the past.

EC:  This is a good book for Mother’s Day?

MY:  Yes, because of the relationship between mothers and daughters.  

EC:  Can you describe each sister?

MY:  On the surface they are different, yet all the sisters are running away from their life.  They were not able to share until now. The oldest, Avery, is organized, efficient, a homemaker, and a fixer.  Hannah is a concert violinist, independent, and angry at times.  Lark, the youngest, is an artist, a businesswoman, an optimist, and has a façade that issues can just roll over her.

EC:  What about their mother, Mary?

MY:  She is the most like one of my cowboy heroines.  She was raised without a mother and found a man to accept who she is.  She must face issues incrementally, handling mother abandonment while raising her own children. One of her daughter’s commented, “The same woman who was a wonderful grandmother for me…was the same woman who hurt my mother deeply and desperately.”

EC:  A powerful quote is about victimhood?

MY:  You are referring to this one, “I’m not a victim because I’m weak.  I’m a victim because a person that I trusted very much took advantage of that trust.”  Avery’s husband crosses the line.  She thinks of him as two different people. She was vulnerable because she hung on to the idea of who she thought he was.  He took advantage of her trust by selling her a bill of goods.

EC:  What role does the quilt play?

MY:  I love crafting although I knit, and do not quilt. The scope of their history is in the fabrics that they decided to make into a memory quilt.  The women’s circle allowed them to speak freely and expose their secrets.  The inspiration is how their history was women into the fabric of the book.

EC:  Can you tell us about your next books?

MY: There is going to be a third book with authors Nicole Helm, Megan Crane, and Jackie Ashenden. It is about half-sisters who start a farm store on their grandfather’s ranch.  It will be out in April 2022.

The last two books of the Daniels family are out later this year.  The first one out in October is Cousin Jake’s story and is title Rodeo Christmas At Evergreen Ranch.  Out in December will be cousin Colt and Mallory’s story.  She is the sister of Griffin. It is titled True Cowboy of Sunset Ridge.

The women’s fiction titled The Miraculous Ruby McKee will be out about this time next year.  It is about an abandoned girl who looks for answers to her past.

I am also starting a new series out in 2022 titled “The Four Corners” that is a cross over with the “Copper Ridge” series.

THANK YOU!!

[omegangrins]

[Kingsmen 3: The Golden Service] Harry Hart turns "villain"

TL;DR: The Lepidopterist is the *perfect* name for a "colorfull" megalomaniac who's trying to save the world via villainy.

I've allways had a nagging feeling that Colin Firth's Harry Hart is destined to become a villain. Like Valentine and Poppy, our Hart will break.

Why do I think this? Let's start simple:

1) "I always felt that the old Bond films were only as good as the villain. As a child, I rather fancied a future as a colorful megalomaniac."

Now you could take it as face value veiled metaphor in their cat and mouse game. A game recognize game moment. Though when you look at it from a character angle, it is rather apparent that Galahad is not lying here. Look at the giddy nature in which they both talk about the subject. Almost lost in a moment of childhood nostalgia. Neither man is lying. So if Valentine tried to save the world like his younger self wanted, then it stands to reason that Harry has that childhood dream himself.

Harry even has a flair for the dramatic already. "Manners maketh man" is all about him causing a dignified scene to teach a lesson to all watching. In the Freebird church scene, you can see it BEFORE he starts fighting because of Valentine's machine.

Feels like a simple "I'm going to the bathroom" or "I'm hot and need to breath outside for moment" would have sufficed and gotten him out of there without hassle from the crazy Baptist and he KNEW that but didn't care. Arthur implies this subversiveness in their conversations about choosing candidates. Then there's the *way* in which he kills everyone there. Not just defense or trying to kill quickly but lots of slow, painful, and fucked up deaths. The killing is Valentine but the style is ALL Harry. It's part of the reasons he's disgusted. Not the enjoyment, but the ease with which he turned so gleefully. That slow motion fade in smile in the middle is proof of this. Harry *wanted* to punish those people the same way Valentine did. That's proven by what he says at the start. (Don't blame him either, just character commenting. Fuck those people.) Part of me thinks the Freebird is playing in *HIS* head. He's a bird freed by blood.

2) The Lepidopterist

I know the clip is from Venture Bros but it's meant to show how two "good guys" became bad. Kinda the perfect coincidence. But I digress... it was a shameless plug to #SavetheVentureBros. 😎😙😍

The hobbyist collecting of insects, fauna/flora, and what-have-yous has looooong been a trope of "colorful megalomaniacs".

Then there's the added bonus that The Lepidopterist sounds like the *perfect* name for a Bond villain.

Butterflies even symbolize death and rebirth and the violence inherent in transforming something for the better.

Is Harry's butterflies a set-up foreshadowing to his coming transformation from "hero" to "villain"?

"I doubt whether I'd work for anyone who drowns their employees. I want to go home. I want my butterfly collection. I want to see Mother."

3) As we know, all the best villains are ones we sympathize with and understand WHY they do what they do. Valentine was trying to solve over-population and save what he could of the species so it wouldn't happen again. Poppy wanted drugs to be legal, partially for vanity reasons but mainly for anger at global government hypocrisies (the same governments which had their heads blown up for trying to kill humanity for their own gain). Wouldn't it fit perfectly for Harry Hart to have seen the horrors inflicted by the world governments and the corruption of not only Statesmen, but his beloved Kingsmen themselves, and say "No more." What's he gonna feel when he finds out Arthur sold the Kingsmen's soul and got him killed? How long has the "shoot the dog" exercise been in practice? Why is trying to drown someone thought of as a reasonable way to help them? Does the rot go to the core? All things any reasonable person would ask after being shot for an organization that was just blown up by a drug dealer.

"When I was shot, can you guess what the last thing was that flashed through my mind? It was absolutely nothing. I had no ties. No bittersweet memories. I was leaving nothing behind. Never experienced companionship, never been in love. And in that moment, all I felt was loneliness and regret."

Who's to say what he would do or the methods he would take, but villains are merely people casting shadows in the way of the light.

4) I put this last because it's more pun than the others and because I only realized it while writing their names out loud. Valentine. Poppy. Hart. A valentine is love, poppies symbolize death, and a heart combines both (a Hart is also the name for an adult male deer over the age of five but I'm not British enough to understand what the fuck that has to do with anything.) There's also Richmond Valentine/Rich Man Love (Rich dude saving the world). Poppy Adams/ Poppy of the Earth (Death of the World). And finally Harry Hart/Harry Heart. An attacking heart. Yeah, that's the old definition of "harry". To harass. (Or Power Ruler of the Five Year Old Male Deer. This isn't an exact science 🙃 ). Honestly, as I write these out, the puns become the hardest piece of proof for me. Brits love a good wordplay foreshadowing.

"... this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

AND what else do they have in common? They're all things associated with the color red. And what's red?

BLOOD.

Sorry, couldn't resist the touch of drama. 🤣

P.S. I know it's not really related but I also subscribe to the Poppy is a former Statesmen theory as well.

Making this an even more thematic connection. Good guys gone villain because of shitty situations.

Edits

5) HE'S WEARING AN EYEPATCH!!! How autistic am I that I missed that in my explanation. Eyepatches just seem that normal to me but they're like the ultimate villain accessory. Unless you're a pirate.

6) /u/Bespoke3 pointed out how the one thing keeping this from happening is Eggsy and Harry's relationship, and I contended that it was true. While making an interesting movie, you need a sufficient reason for those two to be on opposite ends of each other. And in rambling through comments, I found it. This is why you write shit outloud:

It's Princess Tilde!

The first movie showed that world leaders would gladly sell their souls to save themselves, Princess Tilde being one of the few exceptions. The second showed that even after those figureheads exploded (see what I did there 🤣), there was still terrible people left in charge making even worse decisions.

What if Harry's plan is to attack all of the "leaders" of the world as a way to show people they have the power to govern themselves. This would put Princess Tilde, and moreso her family, directly in the line of fire and force Eggsy's hand to intervene and choose.

Save the girl or save the world.

7) As /u/baddestmofointhe209 pointed out, Harry *was* shot in the head. That kind of thing does tend to mess with people after the fact. Maybe turning villain isn't such a stretch. Not evil, but morally grey.

7) As /u/baddestmofointhe209 pointed out, Harry *was* shot in the head. That kind of thing does tend to mess with people after the fact. Maybe turning villain isn't such a stretch. Not evil, but morally grey.

8) My wife was telling me about how Colin Firth has allways wanted to play the villain too.

"Whenever you take on playing a villain, he has to cease to be a villain to you. If you judge this man by his time, he's doing very little wrong."

“I’d never rule out a part in Doctor Who or Torchwood – especially Doctor Who, I’d also love to play a villain like Moriarty in Sherlock Holmes."

9) Thanks to some pushback from /u/The-Reddit-Giraffe, I decided to Google Kingsmen 3 rumors and stumbled on this little nugget about it, and specifically the Harry/Eggsy relationship:

"I'm really not allowed to say anything, but there is a script. It's a really neat idea."

Outside of it telling the finale of Eggsy and Harry Hart's story, we don't know all that much about the plot for the third movie.

"People will either freak out in a good way, or freak out in a bad way, but they will freak out," Vaughn teased. "We're literally finishing the script off as I speak – but they go on a journey that, if anyone sees it coming, then I'll give up."

To which I would like to thank YOU. This is why I love being shown how I could be wrong. I can't help but feel like this is EXACTLY what they're talking about. You don't have a script finished that fast if you didn't already know where you were going with the first two.

It HAS to end like this. Now I can't see any other way. Maybe The Rock is the Big Bad they have to team up to stop at the end but I will say with 99% confidence that Harry Hart will turn rogue for the first 2/3 of the movie.

10) This wouldn't be the first time I was right about something like this either.

[justincaseitmatters]

When He Wasn’t The Last Jedi

Before he helmed Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Rian Johnson made his name writing and directing intriguing little films like Brick and The Brothers Bloom. In 2009, he was here in Kansas City promoting the later, so I talked with him for The Kansas City Star, our paper of record.

In this conversation, Johnson talks about making his earlier films and the challenging sequences in them that prepared him for tackling a Star Wars film. He also briefly discusses what became his 2012 breakthrough film, Looper. It’s too bad we didn’t get to talk about that or the fact that he directed three of the best episodes of Breaking Bad: The Fly, Fifty-One and the nail-biting Ozymandias.

I hope to catch The Last Jedi this weekend. Until then, here’s Mr. Johnson:

Director Rian Johnson's career is in full 'Bloom'

Kansas City Star, The (MO) - May 28, 2009

Author/Byline: DAN LYBARGER, Special to The Star

Edition: 1

Section: NO_MAPWORD

Page: D17

Readability: 8-9 grade level (Lexile: 1080)

Writer-director Rian Johnson became something of a cult-film auteur with his first movie, "Brick," a quirky murder mystery set in a high school. It cost all of $500,000. For his second film, "The Brothers Bloom" (opening Friday), Johnson had about 40 times more money -- around $20 million -- and a cast that included three Academy Award winners. But a bigger budget didn't mean his second film was any easier to make, Johnson said during a visit here for Kansas City FilmFest. "We still needed all the sense that we could muster," he said. "It was more of a stretch making a movie like this for this budget than it was making 'Brick' for $500,000. We were able to fake everything without doing big green-screen setups or something." Though the story jumps all over the globe, all the filming took place in Eastern Europe, so Johnson and his crew had to get creative. For example, a beach in the Balkans stands in for a Mexican resort. "Bloom" stars Mark Ruffalo and Oscar winner Adrien Brody as sibling con artists trying to bilk a lonely heiress (Oscar winner Rachel Weisz). Their scheme involves a taciturn Japanese explosives expert (Rinko Kikuchi of "Babel"), a mysterious Belgian who claims to be an art curator (Robbie Coltrane from the "Harry Potter" movies) and a fearsome con artist known only as the Diamond Dog (Oscar winner Maximilian Schell). Both "Brick" and "Bloom" are about crime, but the feel is different. "Brick" often seemed grittily nightmarish; "Bloom" is more whimsical.

The central theme has Brody's character reluctantly getting involved in one last scam dreamed up by his manipulative brother. But it's hard to know who's conning whom, especially after Weisz's somewhat daft heiress decides that she wants to become part of their grifting team. "Bloom" has precedents in films like "The Sting," but Johnson said he wanted to give it an original, unpredictable feel. "It's tricky because the audience is coming in with the expectation that somebody is going to screw someone over in the end ... and we in the audience are going to get screwed in the end as well." Brody's character serves as a sort of proxy for the audience, Johnson said. "He feels like all this is fake. If you make that the character's issue, you can also bring the audience along on the ride, breaking that down, bit by bit, until the ending is not like a con man movie at all. It kind of goes off the tracks." Johnson cited "Paper Moon" (shot in Kansas and Missouri) as a touchstone for his own film. "That's a con-man movie where you can point to the relationship and the emotional attachment that develops between Ryan and Tatum O'Neal. And to me, it's a magical movie. It's one of those movies where it's so incredible I can't analyze it and pull it apart and say how it accomplishes what it does. I don't want to."

The hardest-working cast member may have been Weisz, who had to perform on musical instruments ranging from the accordion to the violin to the banjo. As a poor little rich girl, her bored character has taken on an intimidating number of hobbies. "It's cut so fast you can't really tell," Johnson said. "But each of the things she's playing is a snippet of music from a different con-man movie. There's 'Paper Moon' on the violin, a little (Scott) Joplin (from "The Sting") she's playing on the guitar."

The British actress also performs an intricate card trick while delivering a long monologue in a convincing American accent. Careful viewers will note that the entire trick is performed in a single uninterrupted take. Weisz did it all herself. "As a director, it's like sending your child out on a tightrope alone, and you can just stand there and sweat, basically," Johnson said. Johnson recognizes that his films polarize audiences. " 'Brick' is remembered as this critics' darling. It really wasn't. There was a very mixed reaction. ... Rex Reed called for 'Brick' to be burned, which is my favorite review of all time, actually." Johnson is working on a time travel film, and his Web site ( www.rcjohnso.com) features a blog about the release of "The Brothers Bloom," including links to scathing reviews. But Johnson knows he can count on at least one admirer. "My mom is an Internet junkie," he said. "She has the Google alerts going. She's forwarding me all this stuff. It's really nice to hear her say, 'This seems exactly the same style you've been doing since you were 12.' "So my mother gets it."

[encyclopedia-victoria-blog]

History Behind the Story - Was Prince Albert Illegitimate?

Shocking revelations on this week’s episode of ITV’s Victoria seemed to suggest that Prince Albert might not have been his father’s son. 

Who was Albert’s mother? Could he have really been illegitimate? Read some of the evidence and decide for yourself.

Prince Albert’s mother, Princess Louise, was only sixteen when she married the 33-year-old Duke Ernest of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld in 1817. Louise was a great catch, not only was she young, vivacious, clever and beautiful, she was also the only child and heir of the wealthy Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. Her husband, on the other hand, was a notorious womaniser and already had at least two illegitimate children. One of Ernest’s mistresses, Pauline Panam, (who was only fifteen when their affair began) later became a famous Parisian actress and publicly humiliated the the Duke and his family by publishing a kiss-and-tell memoir in 1824. Pauline and Ernest’s illegitimate son, also called Ernest, referred to himself as a Prince of Coburg until the day he died.

Miniature of Duchess Louise, date unknown. (via flikr)

Louise quickly gave birth to two sons (Ernest in 1818 and Albert a year later) but Duke Ernest continued to be unfaithful. Louise, who was still just a teenager, was popular at court and had many admirers. In June 1820, one of her ladies-in-waiting accused Louise of having an affair herself, with one of the Duke’s friends, Count Alexander Solms. The rumours found their way back to her husband, who (in a case of textbook hypocrisy) was furious. Solms was banished from court and Duke Ernest launched a bogus investigation that went on for years. “You will laugh when you hear it,” wrote Louise to her childhood friend Augusta von Studnitz, ‘but it has made me cry’: 

If he [Ernest] had been sensible he would have laughed [...] but he took it seriously, and was angry with me. We talked about it and it all ended in tears... Now he watches me, which he has never done before... and he misconstrues everything.

By 1824 Ernest and Louise were separated and Louise exiled from Coburg. ‘You have dreadfully deceived me’ wrote Ernest to his estranged wife, 'I can affirm before God that you have had my heartfelt love [...] We shall hardly see each other again. May you not become so unhappy as you have made me.’ Two years later Ernest divorced her, naming the young army officer Lieutenant Alexander von Hanstein as her lover in the official divorce proceedings. Louise never officially confirmed nor denied the accusations, but she married von Hanstein almost immediately after the divorce was granted. Ernest married again too, this time to his own niece Duchess Marie of Württemberg.

The legitimacy of the children, Albert and Ernest, was never brought up in the divorce case. Louise’s affair was reported not to have begun until 1822 or 23, when Albert was already three years old. Duke Ernest, as the acknowledged father of both boys, was automatically awarded custody. Louise wrote:

Leaving my children was the hardest, most painful thing of all. They have whooping cough and said, “Mamma cries because she has got to go, now, when we are ill.” The poor lambs. God bless them.

She never saw her children again. Louise died in Paris in 1831, probably of uterine cancer, at age only thirty.

Louise, Duchess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, with her sons, Albert (right) and Ernest, painted by  Ludwig Döll, c.1823-4. 

If Duke Ernest had seemingly never questioned Albert’s paternity, then where did the rumours come from? 

One explanation lies in the fact that Victoria and Albert introduced haemophilia, an inherited genetic disorder, into the royal families of Europe. There had been no recorded haemophiliacs in the British royal family before their son, Leopold, was born in 1853, and two of their daughters, Alice and Beatrice, were carriers of the gene. As a result there was speculation that the royal bloodline must somehow have been “tainted,” and both Albert and Victoria have been rumoured to be illegitimate. (We know now that in about a third cases haemophilia is caused by a spontaneous genetic mutation, and it seems likely that Victoria was unknowingly born a carrier).

Another source of the rumours was that Prince Albert seemed not to resemble either his father or brother in either looks or personality. While Ernest was dark-haired like his father, Albert was ‘lovely as an angel with his fair curls’. The boys’ tutor wrote that while Louise was still alive she had:

made no attempt to conceal that Prince Albert was her favourite child. He was handsome and bore a strong resemblance to herself [...]

Both Ernests - father and son - were notorious womanisers, while Albert was shy and generally disliked the company of women. In the early years of his marriage he had caused grave offence by failing to pay enough attention to the senior ladies at court. He was disgusted and horrified by his elder sons’ sexual escapades, writing to the Prince of Wales in 1861 that his behavior had ‘caused me the greatest pain I have yet felt in this life.’

But simply being different from his father does not necessarily make Prince Albert illegitimate. The most likely explanation (in my view) is that rumours about his paternity were stirred up by the xenophobic English press when Albert first emerged as a potential suitor for Victoria. Albert was the second son of a minor German Duke, while Victoria was Queen of England, the richest and most powerful woman in the world. The press lampooned Prince Albert as a gold-digger and they printed lewd jokes suggesting that all he had to offer Victoria was a sausage. 

“Shutting up the Sausage Shop” - Prince Albert and his father are shown closing down the family sausage business because Albert has acquired England’s ‘splendid fortune’ by marrying Victoria. The whole Saxe-Coburg family will ‘skin the English for the rest of our days.’ Cartoon published 18th January 1840 in Cleave’s Penny Gazette. (British Library)

The press poked into Albert’s family background looking for dirt. They discovered that his stepmother was a Catholic and accused him of being one too. After Victoria and Albert became engaged she was forced to write to him asking for him to send ‘as soon as possible’:

a short History of the House of Saxe-Coburg, who our direct ancestors were, and what part they took in the Protestant, or rather Lutheran, religion [...] for a few stupid people here try to say you are a Catholic

What’s more, thanks to Pauline Panam, all of Europe knew about Albert’s father’s affairs and his parents’ divorce. It didn’t help that while in London for his brother’s wedding, Ernest had become seriously ill with syphilis and their father had very publicly tried to seduce half the ladies a court. In this climate, it is not surprising that people began to gossip (there was talk that Lord Melbourne had only okay-ed the match after he learned that Albert was not Duke Ernest’s biological son), and equally unsurprising that a humiliated Albert became sensitive about moral standards of behaviour.

Although the records of Ernest and Louise’s divorce suggest only one lover - Alexander von Hanstein - by the 1920s another possible father was being suggested. A 1915 biography of Pauline Panam entitled “A German Prince and his Victim” suggested that Louise may have had an affair with:

A certain Baron von Meyern, Chamberlain at the Court, a charming, handsome, and cultivated man, of Jewish extraction, much to her senior 

This rumour was subsequently repeated in an antisemitic pamphlet published in Berlin in 1921, which argued Prince Albert was ‘without contradiction [...] half Jew’ and that ‘since his time Jewish blood has been circulating in the blood of the English Royal Family.’ Lytton Strachey, who wrote one of the first biographies of Queen Victoria (also published in 1921), drew upon both of these sources and reignited the gossip about Prince Albert’s paternity. Strachey wrote: 

The ducal court was not noted for the strictness of its morals; the Duke was a man of gallantry, and it was rumoured that the Duchess followed her husband’s example. There were scandals: one of the Court Chamberlains, a charming and cultivated man of Jewish extraction, was talked of; at last there was a separation, followed by a divorce.

Queen Victoria (seated) with Prince Albert (second from left) and King Leopold (right) in 1859. (Royal Collection)

Leopold, who was Duke Ernest’s younger brother, was not seriously suggested as potential lover until much later. When historians began examining Louise’s correspondence they discovered that she had been extraordinarily close to Leopold. In a letter to her friend Augusta, Louise had admitted she had a crush on him, writing naively:

Tell me quite frankly, which do you think the most handsome, him [Leopold] or Ernest? I shan’t tell anybody, and as I love them both - only in different ways - I shall not mind a bit what you say.

When Prince Albert was two, she wrote lovingly that:

Albert adores his uncle Leopold, he doesn’t leave him for a moment, looks at him tenderly, embraces him at every opportunity, and does not feel content except when they are together.

After she was exiled from the Coburg court Louise had asked to remembered to Leopold: ‘I should not like him to forget me completely,’ she wrote. 

Writing in the 1970s, historian David Duff conceded that it was ‘possible’ for ‘a man of Leopold’s character’ to have fathered a child with his brother’s wife. Leopold was in Coburg at Christmastime 1818, nine months before Albert’s birth the following August. He had just lost his own wife, Princess Charlotte, who had died in 1817 giving birth to their stillborn son. Perhaps Leopold and Louise did turn to each other for comfort. Or maybe the calculating and ambitious Leopold had grand plans to father another child who might one day share the English throne. After all, Leopold did always take a strong interest in his nephew, and was one of the chief architects behind his marriage with Victoria.

This is pure speculation of course, based entirely on circumstantial evidence. Most historians agree that it is unlikely that Prince Albert was illegitimate, and even less likely that Leopold was his biological father. But we can never know for sure. As David Duff writes:

It is difficult, if not impossible to prove that a young man and woman slept together a century and half ago. If they had so chosen it is probable that it could have remained their secret, and theirs alone [...] It is hardly likely that a neat confession would have been filed away for the benefit of some researcher much later in time.

So, what do you think? Was Prince Albert really illegitimate?

Further Reading:

Albert & Victoria by David Duff

Albert: Uncrowned King by Stanley Weintraub

Victoria and Albert by Hector Bolitho

[lone-hand]

THE MANY, DIFFERENT FACES AND VOICES OF UNCLE PHIL

UNCLE PHIL, CHURCH OF AQUARIUS, BORN WINNER...Personas or caricatures from the mind of Phil Osborne . Phil is a musician, artist, film maker, animator, and general renaissance man. His music and art all come from the same world, it’s Gremlins meets Carpenter meets Pee Wee’s Playhouse meets Monty Python meets Uncle Phil. Phil lived inside this world in his Monster Party Galleries (1&2) in Victoria BC and now he is living in Montréal. Here we talk about his Church of Aquarius album Obliged with Tact and Etiquette::::

“I think there's as much truth, if not more truth in something comedic.”

When/where did you start recording Obliged with Tact and Etiquette?

I started writing and recording material for it in the summer of 2012. I went to Victoria BC to visit some friends and wrote the first song, high as a kite, out of nowhere to make my friends laugh, a sort of fake british psychedelic pop song. I was trying to sound like monty python trying to be early pink floyd. I recorded a simple demo of it and everyone loved it.

After I had that first song done, I started thinking i should do a whole album as an homage to all things british i love. Music with that sensibility I love so much, pipers at the gates of dawn and syd barrett are the main influence, the beatles too of course. The voice I use is pretty much my impression of the Jeremy Hillary boob phd character in yellow submarine. I threw in some fake Shakespeare in humbug,your majesty, I even put a tea brake in the middle of that song. 

Over the next 4 years, I wrote lots of music for it. I re-recorded some of the songs more than 3 times to get it just right. I also got help from my friend Leigh Newton ( daiquiri, major entertainer, the sun through a telescope,world war 4 ect..). he’s an amazing musician and can play everything. He re-did high as a kite his way and gave it more kick. I released that as the 7 inch with the b side sung in french.

So OWTAE is your “British” album?

Besides the brit stuff, the music from the quebecois tv show passe partout is another one it's like folk and electronic. Pierre f. brault wrote the tunes. I rediscovered the show and the records and the whole thing is serious genius. Plains of Avadoon is a tip of the hat to them.

Are the stories told on this album true stories or is it all fictional?

They are all a bit autobiographical. I used the feeling of being 19, lost and stoned as a guide for some of the songs. Going to see the magician is about those nights I spent with a friend as we walked across town or drove to go see this drug dealer ( the magician ). We always had to avoid running into police in my small town of Gatineau, they are insane and can easily stop you for no reason (watch out, there's pigs in the dark..) Past the train tracks and the tombstone sea is about the secret passage i use to go to my parents house, a path i have walked so many times since i was a teen.

Would you say OWTAE is a comedy album first and foremost or does that even matter? 

I tried to keep all the songs in a good mood. It's supposed to be an upper. If it makes someone laugh and smile, it's a good thing. 

Is music too self serious right now?

i think there's as much truth, if not more truth in something comedic. Something serious can often make you laugh anyway, so is there really a difference? As for bands being too serious, let's be more specific and describe them as bands that aren't trying to get laughter as a response. That's definetly the popular approach out there and it gets stale after awhile. We need a bit more wackyness in our music. At least some contrast, damn it! I want to hear different moods in a bands set. i don't want the same song 12 times, and upping the tempo ain't good enough. Do a dumb song and follow it up with a sad country tune. Why not? Aren't we all kind of moody people? Sad on Tuesday morning, wacky on Wednesday night?

Amen. So then how do you decide if something is an Uncle Phil/Church Of Aquarius/Born Winner recording?

At first i couldn't decide on a name for my music since it was just a crazy mix of styles with 60s to 90s influences. I just called it Uncle Phil, real simple. Then I decided to split my influences in half : church of aquarius for all things 60s and 70s, born winner for all things 80s and 90s. I'm gonna use the uncle phil music name as the music publishing name just for fun instead.

“I used the feeling of being 19, lost and stoned as a guide”

Are these characters you or do you always write music in character?

I'm not even sure there's a difference. I end up doing so many takes of the songs, I live the stories and I become one with the characters. It's serious shit, yo.

But does your music and video and artwork more or less exist in the same world?

i like to think it doesn't. A big part of the fun of making art is you get to create new worlds. Of course every world needs characters and stories. Every song, robot toy, puppet or drawing is a diferent character and sometimes they inhabit the same world. I make the albums like they're movies. Each song is in a specific order. 

Your writing is almost like a stream of conscious, and everything is done at home with efficiency and speed, can you explain your recording process a little?

It usually starts with a song title and the words flow out right after. The melody comes when I read the lyrics over and over again. Walking outside helps with that. The mood of the lyrics defines the melody i hear in my head. It's basicaly either funny, dark, wacky or mysterious. Sometimes I write an instrumental part on guitar or keyboard and then i keep that on the shelf. I write some lyrics way later and then remember that part i wrote a while back and it fits with the lyrics. the real work is not writing them. it's getting the right sound quality, arranging and then mixing. That last part in the song birth process is the hardest and least fun for me. It usually ends with a deadly migraine! I gotta hire help for that at some point.

Did that process change in any way during the creation of OWTAE?

This lp is more intricate with arrangements than past things which were usually done on the spot. I learned that sometimes a simple demo of a song has more magic than a refined recording of the song . That’s why im putting out diferent versions of the album. Demos and alternate mixes, at least on tape, made available at shows. Kenneth J. Maclaurin made me an amazing cover for it and each tape will be a diferent colour variation of it. One for each season.

“Making movies is like trying to express yourself in slow motion. In quick sand. Music is a nice little walk in the woods.”

Is your work an homage or was everything always an homage? 

I would say all of my art is pretty much all an homage and there's nothing wrong with that. The music i'm making is for sure, the sound and references are specific to time periods. I think we all try and alter the things we love in the art we make, we celebrate it. I guess a person or band is original in the sense that instead of just doing a byrds cover or something, you write a song that kind of captures their sound. Maybe you add another influence in there if it feels right. So what started as a sort of attempt to imitate created an original piece. that's good. I think imitation is usually not as conscious and mechanical as the word makes it sound. The song you wrote that sounds like a band you like came out of having their music in your blood. It's gonna come out of you when you least expect it. It's natural and healthy and then you can do so many alternate combinations with music, it never gets boring. You can make that imitation byrds song and stick a distorted tuba or a vocoder in there to switch it up. Go nuts! 

On the topic of art, have you got other art projects you are working on right now? Any animation?

Mostly music related stuff every day lately but i need to continue making and selling toys now that i know what works and what doesn't. I'm getting back into that, gotta move these robots and monkey paws again! I’m working on a short called douche bag. 

I’ve done animated videos for a fair amount of bands. daiquiri, giallos flame, babysitter and fuck the facts among them, but animation is literally back breaking work and when I get involved with that again it's as a writer or director. Drawing thousands of drawings is dangerous for me. I’m more interested in puppets now since you dont have to animate every frame of a character's mouth moving. I have many projects in mind for puppets and they are slowly coming into this reality. 

(for music) Born winner as a one man live act is in the works, more church of aquarius shows, albums for both projects on the way, an album of me covering some film music such as empire strikes back....

What's happening with ghoul street?

Ghoul Street is a short feature puppet horror comedy i'm working on. It's bigger than my other projects. This involves getting a fair amount of people to help. Some human actors, lots of voice overs etc... It will see the light of day at some point, it's just a matter of time. Most of the puppets are made and are all waiting in an attic somewhere...

Is music your favourite art form? How is making music different from making a film or drawing? 

I get to express myself quickly with a song. The song's words and melody come out naturally, lyrics are nowhere near as complicated as writing a story. I get a lot out of it. If there's a chip on your shoulder, writing and singing a song about it takes care of that better than any other art form. You can make music pretty easily with just your voice or one instrument, you don't need much. Of course, that simple demo must evolve into a carefully arranged and well played recording but it's still easier than animation. Making movies is like trying to express yourself in slow motion. In quick sand. Music is a nice little walk in the woods. 

[sanguinarysanguinity]

rabbit & like a bat family, for the ask meme, whichever questions you feel comfortable answering

(Questions)

Like a Bat-Family

(Elementary; Martha & Kitty & Joan & Sherlock; part of Rolling Remix)

1: What inspired you to write the fic this way?

I received my copy of “Like Family” for remixing and groused and whined and cursed its author, because like hell did I see a way into it. The obvious thing would have been to flip the pov to Kitty, but “Like Family” might already have been a pov-flip from whatever came before it and I didn’t want to risk just flipping it back again.

I finally decided on a slumber-party-like variation of the mutual nail-painting, probably featuring Martha. Then once I had Martha and Kitty in the same mental premise, I realized they had probably built some kind of relationship during their mutual time in the brownstone, and thus that Martha should be added to the list of people cheated of a proper good-bye with her. (And not just cheated of a good-bye, but of the entire history of their relationship!) So this became a reunion/closure story for not only Joan-and-Kitty, but also Martha-and-Kitty.

I set it during New Year’s at the brownstone mostly out of cussedness. I’d already remixed a story for the exchange, which meant I knew there was a cluster of NYE stories at the beginning of the chain. I thought it’d be hilarious to re-introduce the New Year’s theme at the tail end of the chain, too, in the hopes that it would mess up some of the guessers.

2: What scene did you first put down?

A scene that no longer exists: Joan on the roof New Year’s morning, ostensibly cleaning up after the party but mostly staring at the river, and being surprised by Kitty’s entrance. The energy was never quite right, somehow, and the whole story stalled there until I switched povs and began over with Martha. However, the scene still indirectly exists in the current version of the story, and the original image of Kitty appearing from nowhere like Batman was the genesis of the Bat-Family motif.

The only part of that now-deleted scene that I was really sad to lose was the color scheme:

[Joan stood at the roof edge, looking out at] the desaturated, wintry grays of the city, contemplating the rough slate of the East River and how it reflected back the platinum sky above.

Happily, I was able to salvage the bones of that description for Nostoi:

Beyond that streak of white, there was nothing but grey all around us: sky and rain and sea-water; iron and silver and slate.

3: What’s your favorite line of narration?

Joan and Sherlock argued silently with each other, a flurry of mulish mouths, jutted jaws, and raised eyebrows.

4: What’s your favorite line of dialogue?

“Alfred,” she whispered, and all three of them cracked up into giggles.

5: What part was hardest to write?

Ugh, gah, cramming in the backstory and off-screen bits. Backstory and flashbacks are always a struggle to incorporate smoothly without overexplaining or messing up the narrative flow, and this story was written so quickly, with so little opportunity for editing… Meh.

6: What makes this fic special or different from all your other fics?

My first and only story from the pov of a trans character? More unusually, I didn’t have the time to ask someone who is trans to look it over – that’s usually something that I take care to do when writing a marginalized identity outside of my own experience. But once again, the turn around time was so fast… I hope I did no harm, and I own it if I did.

9: Were there any alternate versions of this fic?

I was going to bring back Joan’s accordion from the first two stories, which – when joined with Kitty’s clarinet and Sherlock’s violin – would be the foundations of a Klezmer band. (Martha would be on drums, because.) When I later saw that someone in the exchange had written a Band AU I kicked myself so hard that I hadn’t done it.

Rabbit

(TSCC; Jesse Flores; 5+1)

1: What inspired you to write the fic this way?

The Terminator franchise centers itself so strongly on Southern California and the Connors, I craved to know what that franchise looks like if you don’t presuppose John Connor as the center of the universe. Further, I am fascinated with the way the timelines fold back on themselves in that franchise, the way Judgement Day is forever shifting, the way futures keep reaching back to rewrite the past-to-be based on whatever has been going on in the current timeline.

A 5+1 seemed a convenient way to explore what successive futures might look like when one is half a world away from the causes, experiencing only the after-effects; it also allowed me to build an argument that John Connor may not always be the single most important person in the future. That is, that there might be futures where other people become more strategically significant.

I also had the very misguided idea that a 5+1 would be a short, simple, and easy structure, and would get me out of having to build and plot a full-blown story. Ha fucking hah.

3: What’s your favorite line of narration?

There are a ton of narrative lines I love, mostly in the final section. But have this one out of the fifth section:

Jesse stared at the farmboy, her gaze flicking to where the dolphins should have been on his chest. Jesus Fucking Christ. A whole crew of nubs. They were running a deathtrap.

4: What’s your favorite line of dialogue?

“You are not a god, Derek. You made choices, I made choices, John Connor made choices. We all made choices. Hell, there’s a twelve-year-old Jesse out there somewhere, making choices. Whether to swim at the leisure centre or swim at the beach. For all you know, the war hinges on the choice she made today.”

Tied with:

“What do you want me to say, that it could have been anyone? That the only reason Skynet went after you—the only reason your family died—is because Goodnow tells a good story and Skynet fell for it?”

Because I have opinions about the Terminator franchise, and how everyone is running around making choices based on stories they were told. Skynet, the Connors, everyone from the future who gets their hands on a time machine, everyone they meet in the past: everyone has heard a story, and now they’re all making choices, and the entire future history of the world is gonna hinge on those choices. Talk about a universe that runs on fucking hearsay and gossip.

But mostly my favorite line is this:

“I’m Jesse!” she screamed at it, to make herself breathe. “I’m Jesse fucking Flores!”

Because Jesse fucking Flores. :-D

5: What part was hardest to write?

All the Australia bits. :-P

@lastwingedthing put in a good chunk of work on this story, correcting language and helping me with geographically appropriate choices for stuff. (That olive tree in the first section began life as a prickly pear, which is invasive in Australia – I wanted an invasive plant for thematic reasons – but it’s invasive in a different part of Australia.) However, the challenge with writing something that will later be Ozpicked (or Britpicked, or whatever) is that it’s not enough to eschew Americanisms in your draft, you have to put in geographically specific stuff, too, otherwise you’ll end up with a bland and non-specific story. And while a generous Ozpicker can and will help with that, you can’t expect them to do the bulk of that work for you.

For an example of what I’m talking about, consider my own The Case of the Six Marmalades against @scfrankles’ The Case of the Deceased Marmalade Thief: they’re nicely matched in terms of fandom, genre, and topic, and I consider Frankles a peer in terms of our respective skill. But notice that Frankles’ use of idiom in her dialog is much, much richer than my own (in part because she really is just that good with voices), but also in part because she’s English, and has a much larger mental catalog of appropriate idiom to select from. In contrast, I’m forever rejecting language as “too American” and then finding I have nothing interesting to replace it with. Consequently, my dialog has a linguistic blandness to it that hers doesn’t. This is the kind of thing I see a lot with American vs. British authors in British fandoms: the British authors have a vibrancy to them that American authors seldom manage to attain.

And this isn’t to run myself down, or to suggest that Six Marmalades is a failure of a story. (It’s not.) It’s simply an illustration of how it is with stories written by outsiders: even if they manage to eschew errors and stereotypes, they often end up with a generic, non-specific blandness that’s difficult to overcome. *shrug emoji* Either you never write outside your own specific cultural context, or you accept that you won’t manage the vibrancy that your story deserves. Choose your poison.

Anyway, back to Rabbit: I had to come up with Australia-specific stuff to put in, but I was starting from near zero. I watched all the Australian post-apoc films I could stomach; I played Australian talk and comedy shows in the background while I did chores; I listened to a series of Australian podcasts for English-language-learners during my commutes; I spent a fuckton of time browsing anAustralian slang dictionary (where I learned more usage via the crowdsourced definitions than in the nominal terms being defined)… Just, trying to pick up idioms and usage and rhythms and words, both to reduce the load on my very generous Ozpicker, but also trying to make sure that when she was done removing my Americanisms, my language didn’t end up blandly generic nowhere. (If nothing else, I could give her possibly-wrong Australian slang that she could correct to something more appropriate, yeah? And she did a bit of that: “yobbos” became “sad bastards,” for example.) So the language was a fair amount of up front work, even with her polishing and fine-tuning it for me.

And getting the Australian bits right was more than just language, of course; there was the usual ton of googling random shit. Who runs public swimming pools, the history and composition of the Australian submarine service, what plants are invasive, imports/exports from Perth… Again, she corrected and fine-tuned a bunch of stuff (and sometimes pointed out issues that I hadn’t thought to question), but there was still a chunk of work involved in giving her something that could be corrected and fine-tuned.

I wanted to set Rabbit in Australia, a place that is distinct from America, and that ultimately was the hardest part of writing the story.

6: What makes this fic special or different from all your other fics?

At the time, it was my only fic set in Australia, my only go at action/suspense, my only 5+1, my only “heroine against the world, framedaround a strong central metaphor, ending when the showdown begins in earnest” kind of story structure. I’ve since repeated all of those things, because I wrote this a long time ago, and I’m as repetitive as fuck.

As to what makes it still unique among my stories…

Um…

It’s the only one with submarines in?

8: Did any real people or events inspire any part of it?

I grew up in a Navy town, outside a nuclear submarine base, and one of the members in my origfic writing group served on a submarine, back in the day. So all the submarine stuff is strongly influenced by my hometown, the kids whose parents were in the Navy, my own dad who worked for the Navy, my schoolmates who went into the Navy themselves, the submariner who I dated when I was faaaaar too young for him (and the shit my dad pulled to scare him off), the tours I’ve taken on out-of-service submarines, the time I’ve spent fucking around in boats while sharing the same waters as submarines, plus all the time I’ve spent editing my friend’s submarine novels based on his own service.

None of which is actually the same as actually serving on a submarine myself, of course, but there are a number of submarine details that were inspired by spending a chunk of my life submarine-adjacent.

(Navy showers! My father enforced Navy showers on us when we were kids. Although not the same way that they’re enforced in the actual Navy, because that would have been child abuse. But you know. You run across random shit in your life, and it eventually ends up in a fic.)

[queen-of-deans-booty]

All Along the Watchtower

Characters: Reader, Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester, Mary Winchester, Kelly Kline, Castiel, Lucifer, Crowley (mentioned)

Word Count: 1,402

Warnings: major character(s) deaths, angst, spoilers for season 12 finale of Supernatural, seriously guys, I was sad writing this

Request: Can you do a Winchester bros x sister reader where the reader was engaged to Crowley and they comfort her after the events of the s12 finale?

Author’s Note: So I know the anon wanted it to be CrowleyxReader but I don’t write Crowley. So while I did add him in there a bit, this fic focuses on the bond of family. I hope if didn’t disappoint. If you want to be tagged, leave an ask or message and I’ll add you! Same goes for my Series Rewrite! If you want to request a fic, please send them in! I love writing what you guys want!

Feedback is always appreciated

Tags at the bottom

Spoiler gif below the cut!

“Mary, can I talk to you for a second?” You asked, standing in the doorway of the room where her and Kelly was. Yes, Mary was your mom but your mom died when you were 9-years-old. The Mary you knew was dead and you didn’t know if you could call Mary your mom anymore.

The Mary you knew was way different than the one you remember. The things she’s done with the British Men of Letters was unacceptable. You understood that she was trying to make things right but you tried to warn her time and time again that these Brits were dangerous. Now a lot of Hunters were dead. Not necessarily because of her but you couldn’t believe the things they’ve done.

You couldn’t believe how the world you loved is now in shambles. You tried to save everyone you loved but you couldn’t. You tried to save Eileen because her and Sam seemed to hit it off and Sam, after Jessica died, hasn’t been in a relationship with anyone. You didn’t worry about Dean since he wasn’t a relationship kind of guy anyways.

“Sure.” Mary stood up but Kelly grabbed her hand.

“You’re coming back, right?” Kelly asked in a worried tone. Kelly was due to have her baby any second now and you knew she was nervous. You knew she would die from having this baby. You tried to get her to get rid of the baby because this was Lucifer’s child. He would either destroy the world or save it.

Cas seems to think he would save it, putting the Earth in paradise but you knew that was a load of bullshit. But you would take each day as it is. You and your brothers always did that. You couldn’t ask for a better family. Sam and Dean were such amazing younger brothers.

Mary smiled and nodded at Kelly, walking over to you where you lead her out into the hall.

“What seems to be the problem?” Mary asked, furrowing her brow.

“I’m really worried. Sam and Dean have been gone for a while. Cas and Crowley went with them and I have no idea when or if they’ll be back.” You bit your lip to keep yourself from crying.

“Y/N, I’m sure they are fine. Your brothers are exceptional hunters. They know what they’re doing. Castiel is an Angel, he can take care of himself. Crowley, I’m sure can handle himself. He is a demon. This wouldn’t be the first time he’s escaped death.” Mary assured you.

“Yeah. I’m just worried about him.” You looked down at your left hand and saw the shiny ring he gave you. You were engaged to the demon and you’ve never been more happy. At first, Sam and Dean hated the fact that you were dating the King of Hell but they got over it once they saw how happy you were.

You made Crowley a better man and he made you happy. Recently, Crowley decided to make you his Queen and you hoped to become the Queen of Hell soon. You wouldn’t be in hell for the most part since you were human but that doesn’t mean you would be stopping by every once in a while.

“I understand. I’m worried about my boys. But I know they will be okay. They always are from what I gathered.” She said softly.

“Yeah, because I took care of them.” You muttered. After your mom died, John was a mess and you were raising your younger brothers from the start. You became a mom for them at such an early age, you didn’t know what it was like to not worry about anyone.

Before your mom died, she would always take care of you, Sam and Dean. She was the best mom anyone could ever ask for. She would always protect you and promise to keep you safe. But then she made a deal with Azazel and that all changed. She lied to you. It was fair.

“Y/N…” She sighed.

“Don’t. It doesn’t matter now.” You said, stepping back from her.

“I’m trying to make things right.” She said with a sigh.

“Yeah, look how well that turned out. Look, I’m glad you’re back because Sam, Dean and I miss our mom but it’s not the same. I changed completely when you died.” You sighed. Mary didn’t get a chance to answer because Kelly’s screams interrupted you.

You and Mary rushed into the room and she was clearly in pain.

“It’s time. He’s coming out now.” She said with tears in her eyes. If you were anywhere near her when this child was born, he would kill you.

“Mary, we need to go. It’s not safe for us here.” You grabbed her arm and she looked at Kelly with sad eyes.

“Your son will remember you.” Mary said before leaving the room with you. You ran out of the house and looked behind you to see a white light inside the house. You knew from that moment, Kelly was dead. You didn’t know where her baby was but you had more pressing matters with.

All you knew was that your brothers, Cas, and Crowley were in this other dimension that the baby created. Suddenly, you saw Sam and Dean appear from the portal and you breathed a sigh of relief. You ran over to them and gave them a big hug each.

“I was so worried about you two. Where is Cas? Where is Crowley?” You asked, worried for both men. Before they would answer, Castiel appeared behind your brothers with a worried look.

“Cas!” You smiled but lost it when you saw him widened his eyes. A bright, white light shot out of his mouth and eyes.

“No!” You cried out. You knew what that meant. Castiel fell forward, falling on the ground. Lucifer held an Angel blade with Castiel’s blood on it. Castiel was dead. Lucifer smirked and he dropped the weapon, looking at you and your brothers.

“Now, who wants to play a game?” Lucifer said with a smirk. You couldn’t focus on Lucifer though; your eyes were glued to the dead Angel on the ground. You got tears because he was part of your family. You counted him as one of your brothers.

Dean, on the other hand was devastated. Cas was his best friend. Sam was just as shocked as you and Dean. Castiel was a dear friend but Lucifer killed him. Suddenly, Mary ran in front of you and pushed Lucifer into the portal, sending her and the devil to the other dimension.

The portal closed and there was no way to get them out.

“No! Mom!!!” You screamed out, running to where the portal was. You fell to the ground, having lost two people that was dear to you.

“Where is Kelly?” Sam asked, trying to focus on the bigger problem of all this.

“Dead. I don’t know where her baby is.” You said with a shaky voice. Tears ran down your face and you looked at Dean. Sam nodded and ran inside the house to see if he could find something.

“Where’s Crowley?” You said, afraid of the answer.

“Y/N…” Dean said sadly.

“No, don’t tell me he’s dead too.” You sobbed, sulking into the ground more.

“Y/N, he wanted you to know that he loved you with all his heart.” Dean said, walking to you and crouching besides you.

“No! This can’t be happening.” You sobbed loudly, your heart breaking into pieces.

“I’m so sorry, Y/N. If I could take this pain away, if I could somehow switch places with Crowley, I would.” Dean said, pulling you into his chest. You were the oldest but even sometimes, the oldest needed the comfort of their younger brothers.

“No, Dean, I couldn’t bear to lose you. You and Sam are the only family I have left.” You looked at the dead Angel and crawled over to him, brushing his hair away from his face. You let your tears fall, sobbing quietly.

You always took one day at a time but this may be one of the hardest days in your life. Yes, you lost Crowley but you had Sam and Dean. Your mind wouldn’t let you believe Crowley was dead. You knew that he would somehow find his way back to you. But in the meantime, you needed your family.

That’s all you had left.

Masterlist // Buy me a Coffee? // Series Rewrite Masterlist

Forever tags:

@@crowleys-hell-queen @maddieburcham1​ @ginamsmith @mogaruke @jarpadandjensenaremyheroes @whit85-blog @inlovewithbja

Other tags:

@jensen-jarpad @notnaturalanahi @deathtonormalcy56 @27bmm

[grizzbe]

A Mid-Winter’s Reprieve - Ch. 3

So, I suppose this’ll need a note beforehand, yeah? First off, I’m sorry this took so long! I was on track to have this finished before Christmas, but then the comic came out and I found myself unsure as to whether I should proceed or not. After receiving a few messages from people encouraging me to continue I decided to do so (thanks to those of you with the kind words!), but by then I was super busy with Christmas. Before I knew it, it was New Years and then I just got completely swamped with work. But I finally caught a break and got to finish this!

In regards to the comic and the canonicity of Tracer’s sexuality, I’d like to say that this fic (and any other fic I’ve written/will write) is not intended to be an attack on it in any way, shape or form. I wholeheartedly support Lenily, that comic was cuteness overload. I merely like this little ship of mine (I’ve been shipping it basically since McCree was announced as a character) and enjoy writing it.

Anyways, now that that’s out of the way, I hope you enjoy this! “A Mid-Spring’s Reprieve” will probably come around April or May. In the meantime, if you have any one-shot requests for “Shots In Time”, feel free to message me and let me know!

The Gunslinger put on his most charming smile as he held the British Sprite by her waist, “Well, that depends, what did you get me?”

“Nu-uh, that’s not gonna fly, Cowboy,” said Lena, smiling right back. Her hands began rubbing his back underneath his serape in a way that Jesse didn’t find unpleasurable before he realized she was searching for her gift. “I asked first! Now it’s time to put up or shut up!”

It wasn’t often that McCree found himself nervous but this whole situation was certainly trying its hardest to raise his heart rate. He had survived losing his family as a kid, survived being a part of a bike gang since his mid-teens, survived Gabriel as his boss for Chrissake. Now, faced with the prospect of giving a subpar gift to the woman that was quickly becoming the brightest part of his life, he found his palms getting sweaty.

Or maybe it’s because you still have your gloves on?

That might have something to do with it.

Jesse took his gloves off and slipped them into his back pocket before bringing the small gift bag out from under his serape. Lena’s eyes lit up as she gingerly plucked the gift from his hands, her smile growing into a beaming white grin as she opened the bag.

That right there made all this trouble worth it.

Hopefully you earned it, Cowboy.

Will you just enjoy the moment for once?

Lena’s smile wavered for a brief moment as she brought out her gift, the picture of the two of them playfully fighting over his hat that Ana had taken at the Halloween Festival resting nicely in the picture frame that Lena had mentioned she liked.

Oh yeah, she loves it.

Of course she does. Why did you ever doubt yourself?

“Why you little GIT!” exclaimed Lena, the look of mock consternation on her face.

Oh shit.

“I left my present for you on the table but you weren’t supposed to actually look at it!” said Lena, slapping McCree’s shoulder playfully. “It was supposed to inspire you! Not convince you to copy my gift!”

From behind Lena, she produced the fancy bag that Jesse had seen earlier that afternoon and quickly brought out the gift that she had gotten for Jesse, the photo of the two embracing each other on top of the hill in front of the airfield that Ana had taken just before she took the one he had.

Oh shit.

Is she mad or charmed? This is important.

Yeah, not sure, that slap on the shoulder was pretty hard.

But she’s smiling?

“See here, Darling, I didn’t look!” pleaded McCree, Lena’s smile mixing with her fiercely set eyebrows still thoroughly confusing Jesse. “I read your note and thought of my gift without peeking!”

“Is that so??” interrogated Lena who, at the very least, was enjoying putting the screws to an increasingly bewildered looking Jesse.

“Look, I swear! Gabe can back me up!” exclaimed Jesse, waving over the Blackwatch Commander.

Gabriel, holding a plate of Christmas cookies in one hand and a mug of black coffee in the other, made his way over to the couple.

Is Gabe wearing… reindeer antlers?

Focus, big guy. You need to clear this whole fiasco up if you ever want to take advantage of that mistletoe again.

Right. Present.

“Gabe, tell her that I didn’t look at the present she got me when we broke into her apartment,” said Jesse as Gabe pulled up next to the two.

Gabe finished his bite of snowman cookie, “Yeah, I didn’t really get it. He made us go through all that trouble and didn’t even bother looking. Especially after you left it out for him.”

“What? You expect me to trust the Cadbury thief??”

“Okay, about that, I have two replacement bars sitting in my fridge right now,” said Jesse. “But he’s telling the truth! I didn’t look! I read your letter, saw that you didn’t have any pictures of us anywhere and remembered you had said you liked this frame! That’s the God’s honest truth, right there.”

Lena bit her lip and pondered on McCree’s pleas of innocence before turning to Angela, “Whaddaya say, Mercy? You believe ‘im?”

Angela will have your back.

Are you kidding? Angela is one of Lena’s best friends.

You’re right. Bust out the puppy dog eyes.

McCree gave Angela the best pleading look he could muster as the Doctor looked from him to Lena, “I zink I believe him, Lena.”

McCree thrust his fists up in victory, “Thank you, Angela! I always knew you were the smartest woman I know.”

“Don’t push it, Cowboy,” said Angela, giving McCree a wry smile as she hugged Lena and went off to join the rest of the party.

“I suppose I believe you,” said Lena, holding the two frames in one hand as she grabbed his sweater with the other and drew him near. “I guess great minds think alike.”

Their faces were close enough that Jesse could feel her warm breath against his neck and he found that he couldn’t help himself, drawing her in close for another passionate kiss, only vaguely aware of the small voice in the back of his head wondering if this was her plan all along. The two enjoyed the taste of each other for a moment before separating, Lena looking contentedly at Jesse through half-lidded eyes and a wispy smile.

Lena leaned into McCree, putting her mouth next to his ear and whispered, “The rest of your gift will have to wait till later.”

She pulled back again and took in the blank slate that had become Jesse’s face and patted him delicately on the chin, “Now go enjoy the party a bit, love!”

Wha-what?

Oh, she’s devious. How are you supposed to just enjoy the party now?

Maybe sing a few Christmas carols?

Jesse watched Lena walk away before she turned her head back to him and gave him a devilish wink and grin.

And maybe some hot cocoa.

With some bourbon.

The Cowboy made his way to Jack’s kitchen where he found the hot chocolate and grabbed a mug. He took a sip while rooting through his cabinets looking for where the Overwatch commander had stashed his whiskey.

Angela must’ve made her Ovaltine again.

Or given the recipe to Morrison.

Either or, it’s delicious.

He finally found a bottle of the brown liquid hiding behind the flour, only briefly confused as to why the commander of Overwatch had a fully stocked kitchen in his house when he was almost always busy with work and poured a couple fingers into his Ovaltine.

“You know, you’re supposed to put schnapps in Ovaltine, McCree,” said Angela as she came up beside him with her own mug.

“I figured I’d make it a little more America s’all, darlin.”

“Uh-huh,” said the Doctor as she grabbed the bottle from his hands and poured some into her own drink. “You’d better put this away, Jack doesn’t take too kindly to ozzers sneaking some of his own supply.”

Jesse put the bottle back in its hiding place and the two turned around, leaning their elbows on the counter and taking in the rest of the party. Lena had managed to convince Winston to get on the impromptu stage with her to start an interesting rendition of Jingle Bell Rock. To his credit, Winston only looked slightly uncomfortable.

“So, did you look?”

“Oh come on, Angela. You don’t believe me?” asked Jesse, a mock-pained look on his face and his hand pleadingly pressed against his chest.

Angela gave the Cowboy a long appraising look before coming to her conclusion, “I suppose I do.”

The two stood in amiable silence, taking sips from their warm drinks and enjoying Lena and Winston make fools of themselves. As their song came to an end, Jack and Gabriel jumped up with them, motioning that they keep their place. Gabriel turned around and searched the crowd.

He’s still wearing those ridiculous antlers.

But he seems to be really enjoying himself!

Gabriel finally found who he was looking for, immediately making a face at Jesse and Angela, pointing at them both before rather aggressively motioning for them to join him and the rest for a carol.

Dammit.

“Dammit,” said Angela. The two put back the rest of their Ovaltine and started making their way to join the four others. When they got there, Jack and Gabriel motioned for the group to get into a huddle.

“Gabe, this is ridiculous,” said Jesse in a whisper.

Wait, why are you whispering?

I don’t know, it’s a huddle.

“Shush your mouth, McCree,” said Jack.

“Hey now, Jack, he’s Blackwatch. Only I get to talk to him like that,” said Gabriel. “Hush your mouth, McCree.”

Lena let out a little snicker at that and the others smiled before Gabriel brought their attention back into focus, “We’re going to sing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

“Does this have anything to do with your antlers, love?” asked Lena.

“What it has to do with is being an absolute Christmas classic, Miss Oxton,” responded Jack.

Jesse and Angela groaned a little bit, Winston, surprisingly, appeared to be totally on board. The Gorilla apparently had taken to caroling after singing with Lena.

The gang huddled for a moment, seemingly unsure on what to do next, “So, are we supposed to shout ‘Break!’ and clap our hands?” asked McCree

“Don’t be ridiculous, this isn’t football,” responded Morrison, before hitting a button on a remote that had seemingly materialized out of thin air. The opening beats of the song started coming through the house’s speakers and their huddle fanned out, the six of them lining up with their arms around each other’s shoulders.

They were surprisingly good, Winston and Gabriel providing a good bass for the others to work off of while Angela and Lena harmonized. The rest of the party quickly joined in and the house filled with Christmas Cheer.

The party moved seamlessly into another carol when Lena grabbed Jesse’s hand and pulled him to the side, “Well, I think we’ve had enough of this party, don’t you think?”

Yes.

Hell yes.

“I guess so, Darlin,” replied Jesse. “What’re ya in such a rush for?”

“Just thinking about that kiss earlier, is all,” said Lena in her worst Southern drawl as she batted her eyes. “Now come on, back to my place.

The couple stealthily made their way out the front door and raced through the snow back towards Lena’s quarters. Once inside, the two kicked the snow loose and made their way towards her couch. Lena took great care to ensure her newly framed picture of the two of them was placed perfectly before she turned the lights off and switched her monitor over to a crackling fire.

Lena climbed onto the couch and snuggled herself into the Cowboy, Jesse putting an arm around her. The two shared a lingering gaze before leaning into each other and sharing another passionate kiss. When their lips finally parted, Lena’s half-lidded look was back as she bit her lip.

No need to sneak off now, Cowboy.

Merry Christmas.

[galitballi]

Author Interview: Serina Adham

Welcome to Coffee n’ Notes Lounge. Today, I’d like to welcome Serina Adham, author of Lulu’s Balallam-Bam-Bam Grooves, for an author Interview.

About the author:

Serina Adham drew on her experience as a dancer and dance instructor to give you this fun new adventure with Lulu and all her animal friends. She hopes that Lulu will teach children to enthusiastically follow their dreams but also consider the effects they have on others.

Adham lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. In addition to teaching dance, Adham has also worked as a jewelry and clothing designer and an interior designer. She has one fearless, dancing and singing daughter of her own.

Contact Details:

Website: Adham Books  Goodreads: Serina Adham Goodreads

Hello, Serina. Thank you for being here today at Coffee n’ Notes 

Please tell us a little bit about yourself. (This can be a quick blurb of the kinds of books you write, etc.)

My name is Serina Adham and I am a newly published author of a children’s book called, Lulu’s Ballalam-Bam-Bam Grooves, which by the way is the first edition of much more to follow. I also have a young adult novel I have been working on that is on hold at the moment while I finish writing and publishing the children’s books.

How long have you been writing for?

Around ten years.

What is your writing process like?

It’s about picking the character I would like to work with and building up from there.

Do you have a writing routine? If so, what’s a typical day like for you?

I prefer writing in the mornings, with a nice cup of tea, at a sweet spot in a café.

What motivates you to write?

It’s like painting or creating a piece of jewelry. An idea hits me and I just have to create it.

What was the first thing you did when you found out your book was being published?

I actually had no patience for the whole process of submitting my book to a publishing house then wait for 6 months for a response or none at all, so I decided I would self-publish on Amazon. I am very excited to see the outcome.

Are you currently working on anything new?

All the time. I always have a few different projects on the go. But the next one in line is another children’s book about a giraffe.

If you weren’t a writer, what would your career be?

I Have not yet completely switched over to a full-time writer just yet, I hope I will soon, I am optimistic. My other career or careers I should say were as a designer/artist and dance instructor.

What is the easiest part of writing for you? What is the hardest part?

The easiest has always been coming up with an idea. The hardest has always been the editing, although sometimes, I do enjoy doing that too because it might lead me in another direction.

What’s one thing you learned through writing that you wish you knew before you started?

I wish I had started earlier.

What is your favorite book or genre? Is there a special book that made you realize you wanted to write?

My favorite book has to be The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul, written by Douglas Adams. I realized I wanted to write when I felt I needed to express my creativity in a different way.

What advice do you have for aspiring writers?

I would still call myself an aspiring writer, but I can say one thing, write every day, even if it’s nonsense.

Is there anything else you would like to share?

I would like to thank everyone that took the time to read this interview and for those of you who will give Lulu’s Ballalam-Bam-Bam Grooves a read.

Thank you, Serina for visiting Coffee n’ Note 

About The Book:

There is nothing Lulu loves more than dancing by herself. With each new song, she practices the “Ballalam-Bam-Bam Grooves.” She slides her feet, claps her hands, and bumps her hips against a tree trunk. There is just one problem. Lulu is a gorilla! When she stamps her feet and shakes the trees, she ends up disturbing all the other animals in her jungle home. Poor Squin Squirrel cannot even sip his nut tea without Lulu’s dancing rattling his tree home. Squin and the other animals try to tell Lulu that her dancing is disruptive, but they cannot get through to the gorilla. Then, Lulu’s loud music and dancing ends up waking up the mighty king of the jungle. The angry lion Jhawfors then confronts Lulu with the problem. Will the animals be able to find a compromise? This rhyming children’s tale imparts valuable lessons to young readers. Lulu does not want to stop doing what she loves, but she needs to understand that her actions affect others. Through Lulu, children will learn the importance of respect, compassion, and compromise.

Book Links:

Amazon: Lulu’s Ballalam-Bam-Bam Grooves

Goodreads: Add Lulu’s Ballalam-Bam-Bam Grooves to your TBR list

My Review: Look what I thought about the book

As always, thank you so much for reading ❤

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