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faejilly · 4 years

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I was tagged by @la-muerta & @facialteeth & @thedivinemissema for the WIP/Title Game

rules: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. send me an ask with the title that most intrigues you and interests you and i’ll post a little snippet of it or tell you something about it!

AND THEN by @shadoedseptmbr @msviolacea & @ravenclawnerd for the “stories you want to write... but for some reason haven’t yet”

so this will be a mish-mash of both? The WIPs will mostly have blurbs in this case (to fit the second meme) but you are still welcome to ask follow-up questions, if you’d like ;) Assuming you make it through the list, it is uh. Not Short.

Anyone who would like to play with their WIPs, please consider yourself tagged in either or both of these. :D

Misc Fic Folder:

“untitled document” - where I’m working on fictober fills so I have word-counts for my GYWO tracker. I am not working on these because Brains Are Dumb and also Going Back To Work Is Exhausting

I made a file called “YULETIDE!” which has nothing in it but I’m determined to finish this year so that is definitely technically a thing in the Unending WIP List of Doom worth mentioning. (Tho obviously that’s all I could say even if I had started, because anonymous.)

“coda-fics, rewatch!” -yes, that exclamation mark is important! it’s to keep me motivated! (it didn’t work). Much like untitled, this is for putting stuff so I can do word count tracking even if I don’t know what I’m doing. Currently I think it just says “MARYSE” because I was working on my SH 1x6 coda-fic and then got distracted and haven’t typed anything up yet. (Yay notebooks? Boo notebooks? Not even sure at this point.)

WNIP (works not in progress) Folder:

“TOG” - I had one vivid mental image of how Nicky & Joe met (blood-stained evil smiles?) but then no idea for a follow-up story and also the fandom is insane and I’m not sure I want to deal with all of *gestures vaguely* all that

“Shan Xia Notes” -for a TTRPG that never quite got off the ground; she was a semi-tragic selkie who was still in love with the evil queen/lady who stole her skin and I got to play her for like one session and she was surprisingly chaotic neutral, which wasn’t at all what I’d been expecting. But the game never really got off the ground, so I never had enough info to really delve into writing backstory fic

“post-Kruschev” -Kruschev’s List was the last episode of Scarecrow & Mrs King, and I was debating writing an epilogue in place of the s5 we never got, to try and tie up some loose ends, but the fandom’s three old-ladies in trench coats and I never quite worked up the gumption to get it anywhere

“Code Realize warm as silk sequel” -there is literally nothing in this file except “SEX! Only a little angst” because I wanted to write some “we can’t actually touch each other” smut but never actually did. 🤷‍♀️

BioWare (also all Not-In-Progress Anymore)

“seb/adelaide”, “Theia” & “DAI Erana” -these WIP folders were cannibalized for ficlets for the last few times I did fictober, and while originally I had ideas for longer epilogues for all three of them, at this point I don’t think any of the remaining bits could support a story any longer.

”whispers in the dark” -Maia Ryder never really got much fic at all; the cancellation of any further Andromeda stuff was really disheartening, and at this point I’d have to play the game again, and I don’t think I’m gonna manage that any time soon

”TSP” -a Mass Effect 3 Shepard AU collab project that kind of went off the rails, and our mutual brains/lives never quite seem to line up so we can try and rebuild it ”Ngaio & Tane” -my one truly ruthless Shepard (Alliance background, who romanced Traynor) whose father Tane Shepard was, I think, in PsyOps, and I wanted to figure out their complicated relationship but never really did know where I was going with it

”JE Zu & Yaling” -so I’ve rambled about my Tragic Sagacious Zu Romance Thoughts regarding Jade Empire more than once (#Icy Yaling should have most of it) but apparently I want to yell about it more than I want to actually write it? Whoops.

”CI sequel: 5 times fic?” -Cruel Intentions is a kinkmeme fill that I started and then it sat for like five years before I actually finished it, and I liked the ending, but it does leave a giant fucking question mark in terms of how those people got from there to where they are after the game, and I kind of wanted to write a proper h/c fic rather than just... leaving them wallowing in all that trauma?

But I didn’t. I don’t even remember for sure how I wanted to frame the 5/1 of it all, besides it being something sad about allowing people to see you or touch you in some way. (Prayers maybe, since I think there was definitely some Sebastian & Fenris & faith stuff going on in there.)

“candles” -Merribela prompt fill that I never was happy with? Not sure what I might do with it at this point, so it’s just sitting there all sad and lonely and neglected-like.

Shadowhunters

pt1: WIP LIST ONLY

“Persuasion” -so I keep trying to write Persuasion AUs in many fandoms because it’s my favorite Austen, but I think I like it too much, I have no real solid concept of how I’d transform it, and if I don’t have anything else to say about different characters within that framework, I have no push to actually write anything? Also this SH version of it suffered from MASSIVE scope creep when I started outlining and it got too big for me to handle so I like, killed it twice? Whoops. This one is really probably never gonna happen.

“oosdt sequel” -I wanted to write more about the Forest That Eats People and Magnus & Alec as Guardians Between Worlds, and also some background Magnus’ Found Family & Lightwood Family Feels (maybe some clizzy?) and I left a Madzie plot-thread dangling from the first one on purpose even but I think this one had too many ideas and not enough focus so it’s sort of sprawling all over a doc with a lot of “???” in it

“procedural-ish” -this was originally going to be a sex-farce. and then it turned more serious. and then maybe kind of copaganda which was uncomfortable in terms of the Everything That Is The News in 2020, and then maybe it was more a Mafia AU and at that point I had self-inflicted tone whiplash and I wished the voices in my head were a little more forthcoming about their plans so I stopped before I brained myself on my computer monitor in frustration.

“I had rather a rose than live forever” -I started a reverse!verse Malec (Shadowhunter!Magnus, High Warlock!Alec) for bingo last year, and I couldn’t quite get it together in time, so I made a moodboard inspired by the bits I’d started instead. I may see if one of my prompts from Bingo this year help me finish it?

“fall fright fest (practical magic au)” -exactly what it says on the tin! almost exactly a year old & neglected! IDEK ANYMORE (I talked about this one with the WIP meme last time tho: here)

“priest!kink theology?” -I thought it was gonna be smut? I like priest!kink. I have made other people like it and yell at me even! But then I kept diverging into demon!Magnus thinking about Priest!Alec’s faith and as usual, IDEK ANYMORE *laughs*

(If they’re remotely canon-adjacent or divergent, a bunch of these are in here because I need to rewatch the show to get the pacing/timing/tone right and I haven’t, and I don’t know why, because I enjoy the show, but BRAINS! Are Dumb! So I guess that’s it?)

“I do” -I have tried to write this damnable Malec arranged marriage fic like six different times. I have signed up for fic exchanges and bangs with it, I have rewritten massive sections, trying to change tone or structure or POV or whatever, and it basically comes down to they like each other too fast and I keep not gutting it enough to get back to a useful pace, but by the time I realized that I was on take six and kind of sick of it. I may get back to it eventually

“wing!fic” -canon divergent in early s1, trying to deal with the consequences of Simon’s kidnapping as the Truly Serious Event that it should have been. It uh. Got heavier than I expected with those consequences (considering it was originally just supposed to be Alec’s wings flirting with Magnus) and also see above re: rewatching for pacing.

“2x20 aftermath/date night/pandemonium porn“ -yes that is the actual wip title. It used to be “spite fic” because I was originally inspired by fighting against a lot of fic!Alec characterization that was clearly based more on the books and ATG syndrome than the Alec in the show, which is the Alec I know and like and want to read about. BUT, pacing and etc. again, I think. Also I have somehow entirely lost my knack for writing porn, which makes it difficult to finish something originally intended to be smut!fic. Or even teasing almost!smut.

“rubbish heap” -so this is about three different fics that I realized complemented each other really well so they’re now all in the same file as I try to turn them into the sequel of “with an if in its soul”. It includes amnesia, parabatai lore shenanigans, a s3 rewrite, and some truly awful Owl adjustments that make me wince in horrified authorly delight and pain. BUT, as with the other ones in this file, the scope is large and I normally write short-fic and I kind of just threw up my hands in exasperation. I may have to break it back up into the three different fics instead, if I ever actually want to write it. Them? But also I need to take better notes on s3 to make sure I have what I need in here.

SH Pt 2: Started posting or not yet in hiatus because it’s actually almost ready to be a thing in the real world! maybe!?

“kisses (firsts)” -I actually started publishing this one, a “series of firsts” that was supposed to be kind of relationship milestones and kind of an excuse for smut, and then there wasn’t that much smut and I lost momentum and also dear lords & ladies the timeline is stupid, wtf. I may not ever add to this one, tbqh. It doesn’t stop in a terrible place, and they’re all ficlets so they stand alone all right.

“clizzy epilogue” -this is blank atm, it’s more a reminder for me to keep poking away at my “girls who can’t breathe air, only fire” collection BECAUSE I WOULD LIKE TO ACTUALLY GET TO THE CLIZZY AT SOME POINT

"mer!alec" -pts 2-4 of a series, but apparently having an actual plan gets in the way of me *writing* the thing, and I haven't managed to throw the half an outline far enough away from my brain to be able to write again. Or something like that.

"ibhww" -if broken hearts were whole is a soulmate fic I started a million years ago, and purposefully set aside to finish some other WIPs because I thought they'd be quick, and now it's just buried under two and a half years of regret and shame so it's hard to get back to it

"iafy" -i am for you is a delightful & frothy semi-epistolary fluff piece that also just lost momentum because Life & 2020 & etc. It's far and away the most popular thing I've ever posted on AO3, which also makes me feel weird sometimes, and I feel like the fact that there's no grand conclusion planned, just a bit more fluff and settling in, might end up being disappointing? Basically, it's the first time I think I've psyched myself out about reader expectations, and until I get over that I'm going to have trouble finishing the last couple chapters. (There really are probably only two more chapters though. IT’S SO CLOSE, I wish I could just... write it. And yet?)

“fake-hating” -I do not like fake dating as a trope that much, I just do not get it, but I love outside POVs and arranged marriages and there’s this delighful tumblr post about how they wished there was more fic about people who were together but had to pretend they werent’, and uh. This may be that? Eventually? I’m not exhausted by my failure to finish it yet, so it’s still in the regular folder rather than the hiatus folder, even though nothing’s been posted for it.

AND I THINK THAT’S IT?

Not as terrible as it could be, but still. MANY WORDS THAT MAY NEVER SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY. Posting the equivalent of one’s old ratty sketchbook is always a weird feeling. :D

#on writing #writing memery #unending WIP List Of Doom

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fipindustries · 3 years

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list of comics i made so far

i already shared the list of all the novels i tried to write throughout my llife so i see no reason why not to do the same with the comics i tried to work on. no i should clarify, with my lists of novels there was a clear cut distinction between what was a novel and a short story so to parse one from the other was an easy task. it should be known that i wrote hundreds of shorts stories that i havent shared with anyone. now a similar situation occurs with my comics, i have done hundreds upon hundreds of little comics, short jokes, little skits and short lived strips through my life, so in order to give this list some weight and not make it longer than the bible the criteria i used was that it had to be something i did on a regular basis or that tells a self contained story with a beggining middle and end.

now without further ado, lets begin!

spike Vanderville (age 7)

you can tell i was way more into comics than i was into novels from a young age. done with pen and folded paper, it was the story about a young kid called spike, whose design was heavily inspired by bradley from sticking around, who had magical powers which allowed him to manipulate reality. it was a mix of harry potter and a series of illustrates short stories that came in a magazine in argentina. his best friend was a scarecrow with a pumpkin head that he had brought to life, his archnemesis was a fat bully.

curiously enough i was so passionate about this project even though i had no idea what i was doing and no talent that i actually did like three full colored issues of it. my family was really proud of me. sadly those comics are completly lost to time

andrew and the monkey (age 10)

this was the classical story about a boy and his best friend the talking animal. one page comedy strips done in pen and paper. nothing too clever, just a way for me to try lame jokes mostly stolen from spongebob squarepants. not much else to it. i tried to do like a revamp in 2014 but it was short lived, as you can see the jokes didnt get any less lame

FIP industries (age 17)

mostly done in digital. yes as you can see fip is something that has followed me my whole life in quite the variety of mediums. there were as a matter of fact multiple attempts to make this comic a real thing but time and again they would peter off as i saw that my skill was just not up to the task. i think i have talked more than enough about fip industries on this blog, one interesting thing is that if you follow the link you will come across a lot of proto ideas that i had before they cemented and took their definite shape in the novel (and even after the novel i kept retconning and retooling things over and over again, fip industries is an ongoing thing that will probably last my entire lifetime)

Disregarding Reality I (age 20)

the first iteration of disregarding reality, a humorous strip done in pencil and paper, a fairly short lived affair, lasting no more than 3 months. the entire premise of the comic was an MRA activist and a feminist live together, they are friends, they argue a lot. remember 2013 guys? back when this whole politics bullshit truly kicked off online? this was before gamer gate, mind you. but by that point i had seen more than enough of it on tumblr and i was like “someone should do some scathing commentary with wit and penache” and that someone had to be me. mainly inspired by commics like f@nboys and el goonish hive and a thousand billion others that were so popular back in those halcyon days.

i got bored of it pretty quickly and it wouldnt be until three years later than i would finally decide to re-start the project but until then...

Strangers in the forest (age 21)

here comes a rather productive era in my ouvre, ink and paper, based on a short story i wrote, its about an eldritch monster pretending to be human and a ghost girl, killed by her father. they have a dispute because the monster wants to eat the corpse of the girl but the ghost doesnt want to give up her bones because its the one thing that tethers her to the mortal plane. they eventually resolve their dispute. by this point i was actually, unironically trying my best to do comics which i felt looked professional.

Song of a nightmare (age 21)

another one based on a short story i wrote. ink and paper, a private detective wakes up in the middle of the night and sees a mermaid lying in bed next to him. he spends most of the comic trying to figure out how the hell is this possible. still one of my favourite ones and certainly one of my family’s and friends favourites as well. a rather poetic tale, strongly inspired by argentinian fiction and their propensity towards magical realism, i was reading a lot of cortazar back then.

Aika (age 21)

as you can tell i was on a fucking roll that year. ink and paper, this was a story based upon a simple and basic idea that i had in my mind for years and years. i always liked the concept behind the movie “the kid” where bruce willis mysteriously comes across himself as a kid. so of course one day i came up with the idea, what if you recieved a visit from your future self... but she was a woman?

this is probably the most aggresively trans story i ever wrote in my life, it is literally about a guy realizing they are trans and breaking down over it. here is the giant kicker, i did not realize at all what i was doing. i was completly unaware of what was going on here, i was still deep deep in the closet and not even realizing i was there. it really is astounding the honesty and the rawness with which i wrote this comic and it went all over my head. a perfect example of “im such a great ally lol”

oh also there is time travel i guess. my main impetus (beyond whatever my subconcious was forcing me to do) was my desire to make a complete clusterfuck of a story, i was a huge fan of homestuck, i had read fleek and demon, i wanted to do my own take on a hypercomplicated time travel puzzle plot. other things came out on top of it but i didnt noticed them. fucking hilarious

Hello Agatha (age 21)

a comedic strip about a wacky pixie dream girl having wacky adventures with her wacky friends, one of which is a man with a toilet for a head. what a gut buster, what a knee slapper!

there is not much to say about this one, wacky surreal comedy was always my favourite and so time and again i would try my hand at it but it is surprisingly hard to do!

The /co/ ventures! (age 20 - age25)

an ongoing project done in multiple mediums. i think i said more than enough about this in here and here. it was me practiscing comics, practiscing my humor and adding my tiny grain of sand to the 4chan culture. i am proud to say these comics were actually very well liked there and that i would be recognized without a name or signature of any kind, just on the strength of my style.

the vest kind of madness (age 22)

probably one of the projects in which i put the biggest amount of effort to make it look professional. traditional inks and digital colors. a crossover that i cant believe never happened in comics considering how obvious it is. Rac Shade, the changing man and delirium of the endless, the two flagship vertigo characters associated with madness. clearly a match made in heaven.

to this day im flabbergasted i seem to be the only one to think of this.

Disregarding Reality II (age 23)

another work where i have already spilled rivers of bytes explaining my thought process behind it. after having a no good, terrible, very bad day, finding my self aimless and without purpose, deep in denial and depression, i decided to give my self a big project to have something to get me out of bed every day. these three guys came from the depths of my mind to save me.

this time leaning a lot more on silly humor and surrealism than political commentary, still insanely proud of how much i managed to make this last, almost three years, well over 200 pages! and in here i found the inspiration and the creative energy to tackle all sorts of diverse projects of which we are about to see all about.

Mama Bird (age 24)

my masterpiece.

by far the best comic i ever did. a kid with a bird for a mom. hilarious, touching, heartbreaking. it was a concept that i had come up with when i was 21. back then it was supposed to be exclusively a humorous comic strip but then i found a dramatic angle for the story and that was when everything clicked into place. that was when i realized this was a comic i had to do. and i did it. it took me five months but it was well worth it. still insanely proud of this one

Soft boys (age 25)

a weird experimental little story where i decided to sit down and deconstruct one of the most popular superpowers. super elasticity. more akin to me just mashing my toys against each other than me trying to tell a serious story. i am actually really happy with some of the art here and some of the sequences presented. particularly the final one where a brick joke twenty pages in the making finally pays off.

Hexen Snatch (age 25)

a semi spinoff to my novel FIP industries, we focus on a side character that managed to survive after the events of the novel and how they’ll manage to survive further beyond that. insanely soaked by the magical world of pact by widbow i wanted desperatly to share my own take on magic, every page is accompanied by a little text where i expand upon the lore and the way magic is supposed to work on this world. i really like the prose on those snippets and the ideas they work almost more that the comic itself with which i was not happy at all when i was working on it. i didnt like the character design, i didnt like how the art in general was coming out, i didnt like the pacing of the story or how superficially we were getting to expore this world in the comic proper. i had to take a very long hiatus just to accumulate the will to finish the comic and once i did i feel it really petered off without much of a satisfying payoff.

on some level i blame the exhaustion and frustration that i came out of this comic with for the fact that i ended up quitting disregarding reality soon afterwards.

Maxplosive (age 26)

another project that has followed me across multiple mediums. came up with an idea for a videogame back in 2015. saved it on the back pocket for a while, used it as a story within a story on my novel fan.tastic, practisced a couple of animations with the characters and eventually decided that, if my skills at videogame making were not enough, i had at least more than poven myself as a comic artist so maybe that was the definitive medium in which this idea would have to exist.

the original idea was to tell the story in two parts, the first half would introduce the character and the videogame as if the comic was a playthrough of the game. all fun and childlike and innocent. then the second half was meant to explore the life of the main character as an adult, how being “a videogame protagonist” had ruined her body, her mental health and her life. i tried all sorts of weird stuff with the format here, using reciclable assets, static camera angles and generally presenting the whole thing as if it was a videogame.

sadly the project got too big for my breaches, i was fucking exhausted back then, swamped with a bunch of other projects, my job, other responsabilities, unsatisfied with the story and with no idea where to take it. eventually i got tired, decided to skip a day, then the day became a week and then the week became a month and by then i had to face the facts, i was just no longer able to continue the comic. and so i quit not only maxplosive but disregarding reality all together.

i still did the occasional comic here and then but it wouldnt be until the very end of 20-fucking-20 that i was finally inspired to tackle a new project, my newest one, my last one....

Lapsarian (age 27)

an interesting experiment, i decided to do the whole comic in one sit and then post it chapter by chapter on a weekly basis. a surprising result of this was that i managed to do in one month the same amoung of pages that would have taken me 5 months back when i started disregarding reality, is good to see that after al this time i still got it.

took me a while to get the hang of it again and find my own style once more but once i armed up it was smooth sailing for 40 pages all the way to the end. but what is this comic even about?

its... weird, with full disclosure and no shame, it is mostly a fetish story about big lizard creatures commiting vore. the milkman had already shown me that i could do those types of stories and no lighting would come from the heavens to strike me down so i said, why not as a comic? i like to think that beyond the fetish content it is still a decent story in its own right, an interesting feedback that i got from this is that people are suprised how earnest it is, one saying something like “this is the best pitch for a fetish that i was never interested in”

Conclussion:

looking back on this im surprised, turns out i was a lot more prolific and working a lot more regularly than i expected, in here are documented ten years of creative output that never seems to wane. it was fun to do the roundabout trip and see how my style, my technice and generally my work ethic evolved through the years. another nice thing to see is the multiple formats, the multiple tools and mediums i experimented with, i find myself constantly trying new things, new methods, new angles, new interesting ideas for how to make a comic (without even getting into what to make a comic about).

something i always knew about myself was that drawing is a fundamental part of who i am, it is something that just cant be taken away from me and that will always be a part of my life one way or the other, is good to see it so plainly, in black and white, on this list. here goes for what i might be able to do in the future

#art #writing #fip living life

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miller-day · 4 years

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hi everyone!!

during the semi-hiatus i took from tumblr i became obsessed with psych (people who follow me on twitter know) and i even started writing about it. i thought it would be so funny to see how a crossover between shawn/gus and sherlock/watson would go, so i took it upon myself to make it happen. i’ve only written 6 pages of it but i’m thinking about going forward and writing more, but firstly i wanted to know if it’s actually worth it so i’m posting what i wrote on here and i hope that if ANYONE actually reads it and enjoys it, then let me know <3

(none of the characters are mine)

“Shawn Spencer. Psychic detective.” Watson shifts his glance from the open newspaper on the coffee table to Sherlock, who’s standing in the kitchen and looking like a misplaced giant, his 6 feet of flesh and bones (or just bones) still forming a comical comparison with the small-dimensioned furniture of their apartment, most of it bought by equally small-dimensioned Mrs. Hudson. “I see you’re now interested in the supernatural?”

Sherlock scoffs. “Please. You know my demon-hunting days are long past.”

Watson waits for Sherlock to develop his last statement, even though he’s not sure he actually wants to hear more of it, but his roommate’s attention seems to have been captured by the stirring sounds he’s making with the teaspoon against the glass of his mug. “What’s this doing here, then?”

Sherlock doesn’t look at him to know what he was referring to. He goes about as though Watson’s presence in the room is as dispensable as a fly on a summer day, something you dismiss with a single hand motion and move on, and sits on his usual red sofa. Watson rolls his eyes, not yet immune to Sherlock’s peculiar way of being even after almost two years of friendship, and throws the newspaper onto his lap rather angrily, to which Sherlock replies, “Hey!”

“Shawn Spencer,” Watson says, pointing at the bold black letters on the top of the page that’s facing Sherlock, the phrase PSYCHIC DETECTIVE SHAWN SPENCER SAVES THE CITY OF SANTA BARBARA FROM ANOTHER KILLING SPREE making its loud announcement above a picture of two guys proudly smiling in front of a police station. “You were reading this.”

“How observant,” Sherlock replies, rolling his eyes. “Maybe you should be the one solving the crimes and I should be the one writing about it on my blog.”

Watson exhales angrily. “Why are you avoiding this topic?”

“It’s not so much avoiding this specific topic as much as it is me avoiding you,” Sherlock stops to take a sip of his tea. “I’m busy.”

Watson rubs his left temple in an attempt to soothe the vein he’s foreseeing popping in a couple of seconds. “If you say so.”

He ends up sitting dramatically on the opposing couch. They’re both silent for a while, Watson with his eyes closed and his head resting against the cushion, Sherlock noticing the rhythm of his best friend’s chest rising and falling as he approaches, slowly, the realm of sleep.

“Alright, fine. Do you want to discuss this?” Watson opens his eyes in surprise at Sherlock’s sudden rupture of the room’s previous quietness. “I think the guy is obviously a con-man.”

Watson blinks, noticeably distressed. “What makes you so sure?”

“Oh, come on. Please don’t tell me you believe this bullshit.” Sherlock says, his sarcastic laugh creating an itch on his roommate’s skin, then places his mug on a table nearby. “You’ve believed worse, though, so I’m not exactly shocked.”

“I just asked a question. I think the guy deserves the benefit of the doubt.”

Sherlock’s expression is void of any inclination towards an agreement with Watson and giving the psychic even the tiniest bit of credibility. Crime-solving, as far as he is concerned, is an art, a study of the human brain, a test of one’s skills in terms of impulse-control and harmony of the senses, a practice no one can ever master in its entirety, and for someone to taint its name with something so low and idiot as an alleged psychic ability only makes him furious. The worst part, he thinks, is that people aren’t contesting it at all — the guy managed to make his name go from Santa Barbara to London after all, and from the looks of it, he has the entire local police department on his side.

“Oh, don’t start,” he says, a tone of annoyance dripping from the edge of his words.

“With what?” Watson asks, a little amused.

“With your whole thing,” Sherlock gestures vaguely with his hands. “You’re free to think what you choose—”

“How kind of you.”

“—but I won’t let you waste my time with arguments in his defense. He either has someone on the inside or he actually solves the crimes, but I won’t acknowledge any talent on his part if he’s doing something so stupid as hiding under the pretense of ‘communications with the supernatural’,” he does the air-quotes mockingly, “or whatever term he uses to call it.”

“Are you jealous because the spirits like him better than you do?” Watson asks, a smile of mockery slowly taking form on his lips. “I’m sure if you’re kinder to people they might just come around to talk. Y’know, if you’re a good bloke and all that.”

“You’re thinking about Santa Claus, Watson, but given that he’s not any more real than whatever powers your little Shawn Spencer claims to possess, I suppose it’s a valid assumption.”

“He has a partner. You know that, right?”

“Who? Spencer or Santa?”

“Shawn Spencer, obviously,” Watson replies. “You said you think he has someone on the inside, and he’s not alone in that picture. He works with someone.”

“Oh, but I meant inside the police department, to give him information and such. The man on the picture is his...” Sherlock sighs. “Best friend, I guess. As if they couldn’t get more embarrassing.”

Watson throws his head back in laughter and Sherlock stares blankly at him. “What?”

“Nothing! It’s just...” He puts his hand over his mouth, then itches the back of his head, still smiling. “If you think about it, they’re kind of like us.”

Sherlock’s face has an expression about it that makes him look as though he’s taken a bite out of a lemon. “What do you mean?”

Watson hasn’t stopped giggling, and Sherlock looks at him with puzzlement, expecting an answer.

“I mean, they’re two friends who solve crimes together.” Watson replies, his tone an indication of how obvious the comparison is.

“I don’t suppose you’re suggesting I’m the Spencer in this scenario?”

“Well, you’re the one who’s always going on with the ‘you see, but you don’t observe’ bullshit. I always thought you meant it literally, but perhaps you meant something more... metaphysical? Seeing like a psychic, maybe?”

Sherlock stands up abruptly. “This isn’t funny, Watson.”

Watson chuckles. “Agree to disagree.”

“You know, I’m positive I could expose that Spencer within seconds of meeting him,” Sherlock says, and starts pacing around the room like his thoughts are too fast in his mind for him to be still. “His partner, for instance—”

“I think you meant his best friend.” The smile of mischief is still there.

“Is a pharmaceutical salesman. What does this tell you?”

Watson furrows his brows in confusion. “That he has a discount on paracetamol?”

“You’re useless. Utterly, completely useless,” Sherlock replies. “How did you even manage to get a medical degree?”

“Oh, well, they just give it around these days,” Watson rests his elbows on his thighs and places his face on his hands, a Little-Mermaid-like position that weirdly fits him. “Showing up is pretty much the only requirement.”

Sherlock ignores his roommate’s response and continues, this time more to himself than as a contribution to their conversation. “Shawn Spencer’s partner having another job is an indication that their whole business isn’t as solid as they make it seem. It might be to help with the money for rent and transportation and such, but it could also be that the financial guarantee he’s seeking is preparation for the moment when Shawn is inevitably exposed for being a fake.” Sherlock stops and scans Watson for an indication of him having been convinced. “Or he just had that job before this scam started and doesn’t trust Spencer to keep it for much longer, at least not enough to make him quit.”

Watson rests his back against the cushion again. “I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish with this bit, make me hate the guys?”

“No, of course not. I just want to show you the other side of things, the real side. But you can choose to live in this delusion as much as you want. I mean, go ahead. Keep thinking the supernatural actually exists! I’m sure it helps you sleep at night.”

Watson rolls his eyes and angrily grabs the newspaper, which, at this point, is on the floor, having been stepped on by Sherlock at least five times, and his eyes immediately fall on the picture. The one whom he reads is Shawn is on the left, plaid shirt and cocky grin giving him the appearance of an average guy you wouldn’t be surprised to see eating chicken wings or making obscure references to movies from the 80s. His hand is up as though he’s waving to the crowd in front of him, not even a little bit worried about his unconventional methods being an easy target of judgment. He looks like he belongs there, Watson realizes, and for a second he almost wishes he knew those guys. The best friend/partner, Burton Guster, is on the right, his hand placed on his chest in a gesture that would suggest humbleness if it weren’t for his facial expression, a look about him that seems equally receptive of the recognition and praise as Shawn is. He’s wearing a buttoned shirt that’s tucked under his pants with a belt, and the two of them form such a distinct contrast to each other that Watson finds it rather amusing. He can’t help but think about the many pictures of him and Sherlock that have appeared on the newspaper over the years, and he wonders if people have analyzed them the way he’s analyzing Shawn and Guster at this moment. They can undoubtedly notice Sherlock’s arrogance and Watson’s shyness from the capture of a lens, but can they also see his excitement, Sherlock’s determination, the deep and unspoken connection the two of them share but hardly ever acknowledge? Can they understand what motivates them from within, the drive for justice, the thrill of the chase pumping in their veins?

“I think you’re being too harsh with them,” Watson says simply, putting the newspaper on the couch next to him.

“How come?” Sherlock replies. “I think I’m being perfectly adequate.”

“I don’t know,” he crosses his arms. “It’s just... Okay. Let’s suppose he is indeed faking his powers.”

Sherlock points a finger at him. “Which he totally is.”

Watson ignores him and continues, “Does that inherently mean he’s a bad person?” Sherlock stares at him, silent. “He has put a lot of bad people in jail, and no doubt has saved a lot of lives in the process... Doesn’t that give him a little bit of credit?”

Sherlock takes a deep breath. He doesn’t respond immediately; instead, he walks to the window and gazes at the street below, strangers passing by with shopping bags and dogs on leashes and briefcases on hand, the sounds of London fading away as background noise as he concentrates on details of the everyday life. He notices the mark of a ring on the girl with the dog’s finger, the dust on the shoe of the guy with the briefcase, the small tear on the shopping bag carried by the woman. He absorbs all of it in, knowing none of this information is relevant to his existence, and takes a deep breath.

He’s reminded of a babysitter he used to have back in the day. Susan Carter. She was, in theory, hired to take care of both him and Mycroft, but Sherlock’s brother, even in his youth, acted like someone older than his age, someone who could take plenty of care of himself even though he was still sleeping with a night light on and occasionally peeing his pants. Sherlock didn’t like Susan very much — he actually felt that way about pretty much everyone at that time, but with her it was especially intense because she’d spend the entire day checking in on him. He couldn’t just simply tune her out diving into the depths of his mind castle, because it was a guarantee she’d be there too, her high-pitched auntie voice asking him questions like, “Do you want some tea, Lockie?” or “Want me to read you a story?” Never mind the fact that she was merely doing her job, one which he was aware she was being paid for incredibly well (it wasn’t easy to find someone willing to accept employment in the Holmes residence those days): he wanted her out of his sacred place, expelled out of his house like a virus after an antibody attack.

His will ended up being his way, in the end. Susan decided to quit after Mycroft put laxatives in her tea one day, and all of this happened because she had entered his room, without knocking, and caught him during one of his private costume sessions. Mycroft would sometimes spend hours alone in his room doing this — one day he’d be a king from the Victorian times, ordering the toys in his room to attend to his commands, and the other he’d be Britain’s first astronaut setting foot on the moon. Sherlock was never allowed in, even though he’d usually want to, much to his own dismay, and when his nanny caught Mycroft dressed up as Shakespeare in the middle of a reenactment of his own play, Mycroft decided it was best to put matters into his own hands. Or, really, the poor lady’s digestive system, which got torn to shreds after that tea. Sherlock was glad to see her gone, but it sadly wasn’t much long before another nanny stepped in to take her post, and the others after her blended together to create one amorphous being in his mind, all identities a dense cloud of memories he, to this day, associates with despair and annoyance.

What made Susan stand out amongst them was the fact that she liked tarot cards. Sherlock always thought of it all as rather stupid and tried to avoid her “sessions” as much as possible, but sometimes she managed to catch him in the sofa, staring at the ceiling or memorizing the patterns of the paintings on the wall, and she’d say “let’s have a reading, Lockie! You’re not really doing anything much now, aren’t you?”, to which he’d have no reply. He’d sometimes run away to the garden, but other times he’d admit defeat and sit next to her on the dinner table, and she’d spread the cards and explain the meaning of every one of them, even the ones which weren’t chosen by Sherlock. Surprisingly, he’d sometimes find himself enjoying those moments, especially when Susan’s eyes would sparkle with excitement and he’d wonder if one day he’d ever feel that way about anything. She’d maneuver the cards with the utmost gentleness, like they were thin pieces of glass she could drop and break at any moment, and he’d almost let himself smile. He never would, though, because he was still a Holmes, therefore still genetically indisposed for such an act.

Sherlock later in his life learned that Susan had died not long after she quit her job as his nanny. She was murdered by an ex-boyfriend who needed some money and was leeching off of her and the tiny, almost inexistent amount she had. She was stabbed eight times in her own living room, the very same Susan who would put an extra spoonful of sugar in his afternoon tea even though his mother’s orders were of strictly one. Sherlock hated himself the day he found out. When his mother told him over the phone, bile crawled up to the back of his throat and left in it a bitter taste that lasted until the next morning. Sherlock wanted to punch someone, punch himself. The murderer had already been caught by that point, but Sherlock wanted badly to be the one who had found him, perhaps because he felt like he owed something to Susan. He couldn’t catch his own eyes in the mirror for a while after that discovery.

“I think I’m going to bed.”

Watson blinks in surprise. “It’s five in the afternoon.”

Sherlock wraps the belt of his robe on his stomach. “I am very tired.” He gives the reply as though it was an act of courtesy on his part, unneeded.

“You said you were busy about three minutes ago.”

He slumps his shoulders in a dramatic gesture like there’s a sudden weight on them he can’t bother to carry, and then straightens his posture again. “Haven’t you heard of procrastination, Watson? My being tired at this very moment doesn’t exclude my desire to sleep.”

Watson narrows his eyes, bites his lower lip. “You’re planning something.”

Sherlock fakes an appalled look. “I am going to bed. Think of that what you will.”

He starts making his way across the living room and Watson says, “Tell me what you’re thinking!”

“Ask your friend Spencer to tell you that! He’s a psychic, he’ll figure it out!” He’s halfway through the hallway by now, his screams reverberating against the walls.

“You’re forgetting your tea!”

“You can have it, it’s too sweet for me anyway!” is the reply before Sherlock closes the door and creates a vacuum in the room from the instant end of the conversation.

Watson groans in frustration. “I could kill him. And I think I could get away with it. Except he’d solve the bloody thing in the afterlife. Oh, Watson, you were such a fool, left the clues right there for everyone to see!” He mimics Sherlock’s posh way of speaking.

He picks up the mug Sherlock left on the table and takes a sip. “A perfectly good tea, also. That bastard.” Watson’s tone of voice is annoyed, but as he takes another sip, there’s a smile on his face.

#psych #psych fic #sherlock #bbc sherlock #psych au #sherlock au #writing

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chemicalpink · 5 years

Text

Bonding(M)♡ Park Jimin

Pairing: Stripper!Jimin x Dom!Reader

Genre: Smutttt , Steamy(ish), Stripper!AU, College!AU

Summary: in which Jimin is known (and fawned over) for being a stripper, whereas the reader is secretly working as a dominatrix for both money and research on her psych major, until Jimin discovers her and asks her for a favour in return to not spreading her secret.

Word Count: almost 3k

Warnings: honestly… some dom on dom action and a bit of plot if you look closely

A/N: It started with a kinda ehhh plot, got lost in the middle, ended up being smut af, and the end… i just idk I kinda want to make a fluffy part 2 if you like this mess. Also, please bear with me, I just recently got into a fandom again after 5 years on hiatus. K love u. Oh! and requests are always open!

You can read Part II here!

“I heard that just by looking at you once, she has you all hardened” some guy gushed over to his friend in a quiet voice

“But nobody has really seen her face” another voice joined as you rushed by to get to your Behavioural Analysis class. 214...214….This was the third time you were late to class, work has just been too much lately, not that you were complaining, money-wise it was great, the word was getting around pretty fast, and research was just as good but sometimes you wondered if it was really worth the sweat dripping down your back as you ran from the bus station to get to class.

The door made a creaking noise and you flinched a little as you took a seat at the back of the room, next to a platinum-haired boy you, unfortunately, knew too well.

“Miss (Y/N)” the whole room seemed to turn to look at you as the professor acknowledge your presence and you felt your heart skip a beat, anticipating the worst “Its the third time this week that you try to sneak into my lecture” you wouldn’t normally care about some man’s piercing eyes towards you, it was actually a part of your job to step over that type of confidence, but this was just… not your stage, you turned to look down, his gaze somehow becoming overpowering

“I overslept. My apologies” a stifled giggle made its way from your left side and you felt the sudden urge to roll your eyes at who it belonged to… Park Jimin. It’s not that you hated him. You just hated the fact that of all places, you had to coexist with him in the same class, same campus, the same era in time.

You really weren’t sure what evil you had done that the universe just seemed to get you back ten times stronger. Having to share a classroom with Jimin was bad enough already, he seemed to make your inside bubble every time he talked, but when the professor asked for you and him to be involved in a differential, it just had to be a payback for always arriving late. You were 99% sure at any time you would implode. The case was pretty simple tho, Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Which seemed to fit perfectly to your classmate, so you thought about playing your cards in front of everyone, maybe if you were that someone that just shook their little brains, they would finally comprehend they were praising an egocentric little bitch.

You could feel Jimin’s eyes waiting for you expectantly as soon as the teacher called out your name “Well NPD would pretty much sum it all up” and there it was, the same stifled giggle from before

“Childhood trauma would also do it, Y/N” his tone was teasing you, and you knew better than to get involved but it was just not your day, your whole body turned towards him and a teasing smiled crept its way to your face

“I thought you would know better, Jimin” his eyes squinted at you “Exaggerated feelings of self-importance, an excessive need for admiration, and a lack of empathy toward other people… sounds a lot like you” the whole class seemed to quiet down as you said it. No one had ever dared to talk to THE Park Jimin that way… not with his status on campus.

“Should I keep going?” you felt your heart beating faster as you tried to keep up with his eyes-that were glued on you as he clicked his tongue and bowed his head as if asking you to proceed “Self-perception of being unique, superior, and associated with high-status people, Sense of entitlement to special treatment and to obedience from others-”

“And that would be it for today, you are dismissed” your eyes were still locked with Jimin’s as everyone gathered their things, you heart not slowing down and a boiling feeling within you, much to your surprise, Jimin was the first one to break eye contact, getting ready to stand up and leave the classroom, his right hand was already pushing the door open when he turned around to face you, still packing up your things.

“You know, Y/N, it's so brave of you to talk that way taking into account what you do for a living” you felt your heart rate quicken and you began to breathe rapidly. He-no. he couldn’t. Could he? No.

“I don’t know what you are talking about” “Sure you don’t” stop the overthinking Y/N. He doesn’t know. No one knows.

“So tell me… where should I pick you up if ...you know, I want your services” you could swear your heart stopped beating for a second just before the boiling sensation of rage took over and venomously spatted “I’m not like you” he chuckled

“Of course not, kitten. I dance for a living. You make people cum” something took over you as the last word left his mouth.

That side you didn’t use except for work, just happened to overdrive your body and within seconds you had THE Park Jimin pined against a wall. Yes, the same guy that was way too famous for making all the girls swoon over him during Friday nights after class, in a small strip club just outside campus. The Park Jimin was an overly famed dom and took pride in it.

And you- well you had your fair share of fame, but in a legend, almost mystic type of way. No one was supposed to know you were the famous dominatrix that attended every. single. need from the people visiting her small studio-like office, a few blocks away from where the boy danced his life away.

“So I guess its true then” he smiled that teasing smile of his, and you would be lying if you said it didn’t make your knees just a little bit weak “you do make any guy harden at your touch” you let your hand fall from his chest and quickly turned away as you tried to steady your breath

“Listen… no one can know about this” he smirked as his eyes somewhat darkened. You knew this look. You would have to pay the price of his silence

“Just tell me already how much its gonna cost, you perv” your tone was kind of desperate as you stole a glimpse of the classroom’s clock and realised that you were already late for work. “a hundred? I’ll get them by the end of the week”

“Actually” he paused as he looked at you as if something seemed funny to him about this whole situation “Social service will do this time. I’ll stop by your dorm tonight” you slowly felt whatever it was that possessed you a while ago. Rage? Indignation? Both? Whatever it meant that he would stop by your dorm, you weren’t having it.

“I have work tonight”

“So do I” so… there really was no way around it

“Listen, money is no problem Jimin”

“I know. But unless you’d like the whole campus to know who our beloved and mysterious dominatrix is… I’ll see you… let’s say, 2 am?” he bit his lip as he exited the room. Not giving you a chance to even consider manipulating him into getting your way, which was indeed, your speciality.

The thing was, between attending evening classes, late-night work, homework and maintaining a somewhat normal social life, Jimin stopping by to whatever he meant by ‘social service’ meant you’d have to cram your studying time.

Work went by pretty quickly. And you couldn’t help but keep on wondering what was waiting for you with Jimin. It wasn’t that you were ashamed of what you did for a living… but it would lose its spark if people knew who you were.

Your head started to ache as you started getting ready to leave. It was already 1:30 am, which meant that it would take you around 20 minutes to get to your dorm and hopefully have enough time to change out of the red kinky thigh-high leather boots your work required that day.

But boy were you one to get the times wrong.

As you entered the hall of the unit, your eyes fell on a very glittery Jimin sitting on the floor outside your studio, unbuttoned black shirt and phone in hand.

You walked up to him, exhaling loudly as an attempt to calm yourself down. You nudged his side with the tip of your boots. He looked up.

“I was about to call you, but then I realised that I didn’t have your number” great. so he was an asshole and also had lame pick up lines. You really wondered how exactly did he have so many girls falling for him

“And you’re not getting it” you opened the door and motioned for him to enter “Come on in, and may I ask, how exactly you got into the girl’s unit?”

“Ah… little Y/N. I can get any girl to do whatever it is that I please” you closed your eyes as another wave of pain hit you

“Yeah… you stay here. I’ll just go grab an aspirin” the dorm wasn’t big, as a matter of fact, your bed was just a few steps from the ‘living room’ where you left Jimin, but it did what it promised, let you crash.

You could have sworn you were gone less than a minute before encountering a semi-naked Jimin propped up on your bed, striking what he might have thought of as a sexy pose, patting the bed by his front side for you to sit “Okay. I’m done. Get out”

He sat up “No, wait. I really need this. And you too, Y/N” he smiled at you, but not that smirk you had been used to seeing, the smile that radiated confidence and ego but one that almost seemed friendly, one that made him look innocent, cute, dare you say it.

“A favour for a favour. As classmates that do kind of the same for a living” You grabbed the chair from your desk and sat in it, crossing your arms. Willing to put on a fight for as long as it benefited you

“Fine. Be quick”

“I’m just asking for a few minutes of your night, once a week. I need help with my show. And who knows? you might end up liking it” and there it was, every ounce of liking towards him that he built with the friendly smile and appealing to the sentiment of belonging to the same team. Gone

“No way”

“Fine. Then just be ready for your little secret to come out” Was it really worth it? He did say, just a few minutes every week. But the thought of having Jimin over, dancing and doing who know what in your dorm, was unbearable. Then again, he did say he needed it.

“Just a few minutes every week?”

“Yeah”

“Fine then stop by tomorrow. Same time” he smiled brightly at you “Now get lost. I need sleep”

What happened the next night though, nothing could have prepared you for it. Your assistant told you you had a new client coming, so as per usual, you were ready to test him out from simple to more complex things. You heard the door closing as some footsteps approached the bed behind you

“Just stay there. I’ll be with you in a second”

“God. those bunny ears really do suit you, Y/N” you could have sworn that your heart skipped a beat as you felt heat building up inside you, from rage. But this was somewhat to your advantage, he had just stepped in the lion’s den and had no idea

“I thought we agreed on meeting in my dorm” you said as you walked up to the bed, taking a seat behind him, with his back between your thighs

“I thought this might be more fun” of course he was more than excited to play this game, but you weren’t going to let him win.

Something flashed in his eyes. Something you have become very familiar with. Lust. And then Jimin pushes you against the wall, his fingers laced with yours, your back against the cold wall that held all of your work tools. And you saw what he was going for. Tying you up. But you were having none of it. In a matter of seconds, it was him pressed against the wall, his eyes reflecting the pink led lights from the room. You held tightly on his crotch as he tried to gain dominance over you, keeping him in his place. He just smirks.

You stay there for a moment, him locked under you, and the two of you stare at each other like you’re waiting for someone to make a move. A stalemate. And then you can’t tell who breaks it first, but somehow your lips collide in a hungry, urgent kiss. He kisses you deep, hungrily, desperately, like he wants to consume you whole. As you let your firm grip go, his touch is rough, his fingers grip so tight against your hip that it hurts, and the pain just spurs on the arousal beginning to pool in your belly.

Jimin bites your lower lip as he pulls away, his eyes scanning over your face. The room felt silent, steamy like the bright lights were invited you two to step it up, taunting you to take it forward. Your breath hisses in involuntarily as you look down at the bulge in his pants, your eyes flitting back up to Jimin’s face. He has a cocky calm look on his face, and it occurs to you that you had never expected Park Jimin the stripper to be like this.

For a moment you consider stopping, standing up and strolling out. This is a bad idea, the rational side of your brain chides. He’s… himself, the single-cell brained asshole that always sits beside you in class, the self-centred stripper Park Jimin, this is so wrong. But when you look into Jimin’s dark eyes and see the way he licks his lip while staring you up and down, the confidence that emanates from him. And all reason flies out of your head. You want him.

“C’mon spread those legs for me” he whispers to your ear and you can feel his hot breath tickling your neck. He knows what he’s doing. He knows what to say. Saying it without cockiness or nastiness but stating it firmly and calmly… sweet God.

But this is a game you are not allowing yourself to lose. The hand you have been keeping on his crotch rapidly makes its way into his pants, stroking him over his underwear. He lets out a suppressed grunt and the sound makes you smile.

Your smile widens when you stop stroking and grab him full in your hand and feel his thighs stiffen. Somehow his lips find their way to your neck, placing you in his previous stand, bot of your bottoms soon discarded, as he held both of your hands behind you, you felt a warmness near your pussy, followed by his voice.

“Tell me how much you want it”

“I don’t beg” everything that had gone thorough between you two in the past few minutes was better than anything you could have imagined. But the way he seemed so bothered by you not sticking to his dominant side’s orders just made you even wetter and weak in the knees.

And then Jimin slides inside of you.

The last thing you see before closing your eyes and succumbing into pure please was Jimin’s jaw clenching, his platinum hair all messed up. He takes it slow, likely on purpose, and you let out a cry at the feeling. His cock is thicker than what you’re used to, and it stretches you out. It’s been such a long time since you’ve had sex, and when you did have time in the past, it was always rushed. You, dominantly riding a guy until you had a quick, mildly satisfying orgasm. But it was never this – dominated, teased, sprawled under a man with plump lips and a silky smooth voice.

When he’s finally all the way inside of you, you release a long breath that you didn’t even know you’d been holding in. You hear Jimin let out a stuttering breath, the two of you are still for a moment, just feeling one another, you exchange silent glances to which you weren’t quite sure the meaning of and then Jimin starts to thrust.

He is fucking into you hard, his pace steady and at just the right speed to have you crying out his name while shutting your eyes and drawing your nails into his back for balance, or maybe just to somehow be able to feel him closer. The blood is rushing to your face and you’re slightly dizzy from the mask you have on but all you can feel is him, the loud slap of skin resonating between the four walls of the small room as he slams into you.

You can hear the vocalizations he makes with every thrust, grunts, growls, and then small soft mewls as he arches upwards and hits you at different angles. Each push of his cock leaves you a writhing mess beneath him. Just as you feel an unavoidable heat forming in the lower part of your belly, he stops. He completely stops. Steals one last glance at you, adding his signature smirk after pulling his pants on and leaves you there. All worked up against the wall, your mouth hanging open as he walks out. If you didn’t hate Park Jimin before, you were sure as hell you did now.

#bts scenarios #bts fic #bts imagines #jimin imagine #jimin smut #jimin fanfic #jimin fic #jimin oneshot #jimin one shot #park jimin smut #park jimin fanfic #park jimin oneshot #jimin fanfiction #jimin fluff #bts smut #bts jimin

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captainrandomstranger18 · 4 years

Note

My dearest Captain,

The story of Thaddeoso is much less exciting than one might think. Basically my grandpa told a story of this huge frog that hung around when my mom was young and they called him Thaddeus. Then then my cousins and I found this huge frog by the spring and my sibling suggested we call him Thaddeoso, so we did.

1. Could you maybe stop judging others and let them enjoy things in peace please?

2. All the ones I’ve seen so far (tos, aos, tng, and voyager)

3. That’s a hard one. I like all of them Janeway and Q and Geordi a lot though

4. I don’t know, I actually haven’t thought about it

5. Yep! I like most musicals, but I think my current favorites are Sweeney Todd, Singin in the Rain, and Cats (not the newer movie though)

6. Maybe maple cus we used to make maple syrup back at the first place I lived

7. You know what should be a thing? Space mythology. Like dragons who live in black holes and hoard light and sirens that mimic distress signals to lure spaceships into asteroid fields and vampires that steal the oxygen from your lungs (I have been thinking about this a lot today)

8. It’s currently tied between a black pair with neon kinda flowery/geometric shapes and a white pair with jellyfish

9. I haven’t been in public lately and I tend to tune out most of the other people in school so I don’t really have anything for this one. I hit my creative writing word count goal though! (8,000 words (everyone set their goals at 8,000 except this one kid who set his at 8,001))

I have never had a brookie, but it sounds amazing.

Yours,

Dearest L,

To continue the pattern of answering my own questions:

1. I would probably do 1 of 2 things (depending on my mood). Either I would tell everybody to treat all people with respect or kindness, or I would just rick roll everyone on the planet.

2. My favorites are also all the ones I’ve seen so far (I swear it is so hard to pick a favorite Trek! They are all so beautiful and wonderful and unique in their own ways, and its hard to compare them to each other.) These include TOS, TAOS, DS9, and TNG.

3. Data would probably be my #1 favorite, and my second favorite would be everyone else because I can’t choose.

4. I relate to Data’s curiosity and not understanding humans all the time, and I relate to Julian Bashir’s awkwardness. But the character I probably relate to the most is Reginald Barclay. Like every time he comes on screen and so much as breathes I’m like “MOOD. THAT’S ME RIGHT THERE.” I also relate to Riker because I like to put my leg up on random things.

5. I like a lot of musicals. My favorites would probably be Hamilton, The Fiddler on the Roof, and Bye Bye Birdie (I was in that one for my high school’s theater program. I was a background character.) Singin’ in the Rain is also really good, although I haven’t watched it in a while. I do remember my first time watching it, though. I was a little kid and I was at my grandma’s house and she got out an umbrella so we could dance along to it. :D

6. My favorite tree would have to be the Rainbow Eucalyptus:

I’m sending pictures of the most amazing trees, you’ll be obsessed with all my forest expertise! (Sorry that was a Dear Evan Hansen reference) (I’m not even that big of a fan of the musical, that line just popped into my head right now) (Although Sincerely Me is sincerely a bop in my opinion.) (Dang that was off topic, where was I?)

AH, yes. TREES!

I just-look at its colors. Asfshdjkds. I kinda want one tbh. Ok, fine, I really want one. The only issue is that they live in tropical climates and I DON’T live in a tropical climate so it probably wouldn’t do too well if I were to plant one here. Oh well. At least the internet exists so I can admire them from afar.

Here’s the wikipedia article on them if you want to learn more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucalyptus_deglupta

7. First of all, can I just say that I LOVE THE IDEA OF SPACE MYTHOLOGY. That’s brilliant. And you’re absolutely correct. Why isn’t that a thing? THAT SHOULD BE A THING!!!! (Side question: do you mind if I use your space dragon idea in that Existential Crisis: The Musical that I’m sort of on a hiatus of writing? Like that,,,, is such a cool idea. The musical mostly takes place in outer space btw. Also if I do use it I’ll be sure to credit you! Even though I’m not actually planning on getting the musical published anywhere any time soon. Side-side question: should I credit you as “Mysterious Anonymous Tumblr User L” or something else? Side-side-side question: I actually forgot what I was going to type here but “side-side-side” is fun to say. OK I JUST REMEMBERED. Actually I just forgot again. Goshdarn adhd. OH I REMEMBERED AGAIN. Would you like to hear what my musical is about in a future letter? That is all.)

Dang i just went off on a tangent there (This is what it’s like when my adhd medication has worn off). What was question #7 even supposed to be?

*checks previous letter* Oh, to go on a rant of any sort. I think I just kind of did that on accident. Whoops. (Sorry you had to read my stream-of-consciousness ramblings about whatever the heck that was.)

ANYWAYS, I liked your space dragon idea so much that i drew this picture based on it, here you go:

sorry the camera quality is really bad lol. I tried (and failed) to make the dragon look galaxy-printed if that makes any sense.

But dude- space mythology is my new favorite thing now.

8. My current favorite pair of socks are a pair I have that are fluffy with unicorns on them.

9. I haven’t been in public lately either lol. But congratulations on your writing goal! That’s a lot of words! :D

Brookies are, in fact, amazing.

Now for some new questions!

1. Since you mentioned previously that you liked Unnus Annus, and since I basically missed out on most of it, what happened in some of your favorite episodes?

2. Do you think reality is a simulation?

3. Do you have any cool random facts about anything? (it can be about LITERALLY anything. I like any and all cool random facts.)

4. Do you know what your hogwarts house is?

5. Do you have a motto of any sort?

6. Am I allowed to guess who you are, or should I wait for you to tell me? (I’m fine waiting, it’s just that I have a few guesses already)

7. Would you like to read my horrible Star Trek crack fanfiction.

8. Semi-Philosophical Question Time: How would you define freedom?

That is all! Thank you for continuing to write/read these letters. I look forward to them every day! To quote another musical, “Now my life gets better every letter that you write me!” (Sorry if that was dumb lol, im bad at this)

Yours Truly,

Captain

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whetstonefires · 4 years

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hey for the 40 questions thing, 9, 10 and 28??

Okay first of all, massive props to you for sending a signed ask, that’s so rare, I did the hugest double take at your not being a Nonny. 😂💗 Anonymous asks are fine and all when people are being pleasant, but it’s always a little weird because my brain flips back and forth between treating all anon asks as being from the same faceless entity and being perfectly aware that the sender is a person, may or may not be the same person as any previous ask, and may even have a name I recognize. Internet gothic.

9) Which fic has been the hardest to write?

Oof. Quantifying that is...tricky, especially if I consider all my Cirque segments as separate fics. Disqualifying those, and everything that never made it to post-ready because it defeated me in the borning....

But A Walking Shadow is sort of Earth-3 adjacent but my battle with it is the battle with the compulsion to try to hew close to canon even after very deliberately tossing it out the window in chapter 1 on the grounds of ‘too goshdarn depressing, everyone is alive at all times.’ Stg the Titans death rate is so wild, after they got the go-ahead to start just making characters up they were allowed to kill people basically whenever, because nobody else needed them for anything.

And special mention should go to the 10k ‘chapter’ of my 5+1 AU collection fic that I finally posted just recently, after several years ago it decided that it wanted to be a full-length novel. But Self (I said) I Don’t Want To Develop An Entire Economy And Political History For The FFVII Setting So Cloud Can Make His Adopted Big Brother Be In Charge Of It! So that has kicked my ass pretty thoroughly. For about four years. 😂 I finally forced the opening (where Shinra collapses and small Sephiroth is abandoned in Nibelheim and Mrs. Strife finds him) to be done, and posted that.

But the thing is, neither of these would have expanded in the way they have and managed to destroy me so thoroughly were they not, in certain ways, extremely easy to write. So they seem like they can’t be the real correct responses.

So I guess the winner is that Red Hood And The Outlaws 10K fic I still owe to an anon whom I can’t consult about specs or anything because they made the request anonymously. Because I had to read Lobdell’s vol 2 run to fulfill the request and as some of you will recall, this process slaughtered me. I cannot with Lobdell. After great suffering I ran aground repeatedly on the shoals of Brainzarro.

NONNY IF YOU’RE STILL OUT THERE PLEASE CONTACT ME I’M VERY SORRY FOR BEING OVER A YEAR LATE, WE NEED TO TALK.

10) Which fic has been the easiest to write?

Ooh, this is hard to assess for similar reasons. Sometimes stuff that took less effort wasn’t actually easier as-such, as a task, I just chose not to do it as well or as thoroughly; does that count?

Chaptered stories are inherently harder, of course, but generally the reason my chapter fics got so long in the first place was they were extraordinarily easy to write, and a great deal of them happened without too much suffering on my part. Either because the premise posed no significant complexities, or because I found it perennially inspiring.

Eventually that sort of progress always hits a wall, though, at least if you’re me. And you have to do the Work part. (This is pretty universal afaik.) I have several one-shot AUs to which continuations have been requested and in many cases sketched or begun, but not finished or posted because in addition to fleshing out the worldbuilding I have to grapple with questions like how much further I can take this concept without abandoning the particular tone in which I told the first part, and whether the tone or perspective I used is in fact the chief draw and so there’s no point.

This I eventually determined to be the case for ‘the tune without the words,’ the one where Jim Gordon runs into post-Under The Hood Jason at a bar, thinks he’s a traumatized veteran, and tries to recruit him to the GCPD.

There’s a plot there about Police Officer Jason, and the batfam reactions and interpersonal drama and whether and when and how Jason would fuck it up, and the identity porn of Batman knowing that Officer Todd Peters is the Red Hood and finding that telling Jim and not telling Jim seem equally unconscionable...but it’s not the same story as that scene in the bar. It’s the story that happens next, because of it. So I cut the bar scene loose from its hypothetical plot and posted it and it’s been quite well-liked.

But it’s certainly not the easiest, even though most of what’s in the posted fic went together fairly readily iirc, because giving up on making the subsequent story happen was such a fight.

...

What is ‘easy?’ What is ‘a fic?’ Watch me perish yet again at the intersection of epistemology and ontology. There are no simple questions there is only doom.

28) Share three of your favorite fic writers and why you like them so much.

OKAY THIS IS A DIFFERENT DIFFICULT. At least I’m not being asked to pick my Most Favorite, I’m so bad at favorites, I have to deduce my own favorite tea from behavioral cues.

I’m in the for-me bizarre position that more than three people whose fic I really enjoy are like, friends of mine and might see this. I cannot say any of them, the ones excluded would be Excluded, which I cannot do. So strangers only! Semi-randomly selected from my catalogue of faves!

Okay, let’s see. First one...AO3 user elanor_pam. We technically share no fandoms but I read their stuff for some reason (someone’s AO3 bookmarks I’m sure) and they just. They have really good sentences. I wind up caring intensely about whatever the story is about even if I have literally no idea what it is. And dialogue that’s just that really sweet balance of stylized and naturalistic.

I’m following their fantasy webcomic The Path To Timbala, which is really good so far and also I’m doing the art historian/birdwatcher thing I do with like astolat where it’s like ‘hmm, yes, I recognize that theme/story element/aesthetic preference/pacing trick from [fanwork], how interesting to see it unfiltered through anyone else’s worldbuilding!’

Second. Mm. Slightly arbitrarily and on almost opposite grounds, Persephone_Kore, who hasn’t updated in like four years but contributed to a majority of my favorite fics in the Girl Genius fandom, which is not a crowded one, and wrote a couple others solo. Good combination of humor with pretty faithful characterization. Good rhythm in sentence composition, which allows for humorous asides without breaking narrative flow.

Third...hm, I’m gonna pick metisket for the distressing ability to drag my guts clear out on almost any topic. But especially fullmetal alchemist. Mostly I like that one AU where Al is dead and Ed is homicidally insane. But like, constructively.

None of these people are still writing fic and the webcomic just went on hiatus for six weeks, I am useless as a source of recs, have a nice day. 😂💞

#ask #ask meme #qu-ucks #fanfic #fanfic writing #webcomic #hoc est meum

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jlf23tumble · 5 years

Note

Fic rec anon here, I just read through your AU recs, and I need more, holy hell!? Do you have a similar list for canon fics? What are your favourite genres? You're one of the brave souls who posts about mpreg...what other kinks do you recommend?

Yessssssssss, a chance to do part two of my prison 25, fuck yeah!!! I edited this canon rec list down, and Jesus, that’s the hardest part of it. Luckily, I can save a lot of ‘em in other categories--and I have recs in just about any category, so lemme know if anything in particular floats your boat (I tend to bookmark/save in collections like mpreg, a/b/o, omorashi, daddy, toys, panties, phone sex, dirty talk, etc., but yeah, I can hook you up with allll kinds of fic, god bless the ao3 bookmark feature).

I’ll put the full list under the cut, in length order...in lots of cases, the author has done many, MANY more, so I’ll highlight that, too! Enjoy! (Oh, and check out the postscript at the end, too...a lot of these are older, but if you want newer, just give me your parameters/needs, and I’ve gotcha, bb)

Hello, Heaven (you are tunnel-lined with yellow lights), by objectlesson, 2.9k words (E). Or, Louis buys Harry things sometimes. (LISSSSSSSSSSSSSTEN, read every single fic Phoenix ever wrote, jfc, she’s so good, the stories are so good, and this particular one was a gift to me, so I’m biased, but it combines a lot of my fave kinks into one. I edited most of her stories in this fandom, which means I literally can’t pick a fave, they’re my step-children, but this one is noice)

so wicked in the way he moves, by ballsdeepinjesus, 3.6k words (E). Harry and Louis are parents at football practice. (don’t be scared; no kids, just hot van sex and banter, and this author EXCELS at sex/banter, so lots of gold here)

She Feels So Good, by zedi, 4.1k words (E). Louis knows that voice. Harry’s used that voice in his ear more times than Louis can count, said such sweet, naughty things while popping a hip out and pressing up against Louis. That’s the voice that comes out when Harry’s in a skirt, nails done and gestures soft and flirty. (Jumpsuit Harry on the Late Late Show)

like poison coursing through me, by orphan_account, 4.1k words (E). The one with copious dirty talk, Daddy Louis, and Harry wetting himself in the shower. (pee kink, but honestly, give it a try...it’s about desperation, and it’s so hot)

took me by the wrist, by tomlinzn, 4.2k words (E). harry's twenty-one; louis still loves him. there's birthday sex. (Hima’s legacy, god, it’s beautiful)

Take a Chance, Just Feed Me, by yeah_alright, 4.3k words (E). Louis needs some time alone with Marcel, and he’s hoping Harry will play along. (MARCEL COSPLAY)

Fertile Ground, by Blake, 4.4k words (E). Or, Harry doesn’t know what comes first: the lies that shape his want, or his want, which shapes the lies. He only knows that there’s lies, and want. And Louis, of course. (ANOTHER GOD-TIER PERSON TO READ EVERYTHING THEY’VE EVER WRITTEN, and this one has a big ole dose of angst, but it’s so fucking goooood, so real, sob)

You Don’t Need Me to Show You the Way, by LoadedGunn, 6.5k words (E). Or, 2011 fic where Harry rides dick for the first time and Louis appreciates technology. (X Factor era, and I think this was the fic that made me create a whole technology tag, lmaoooo)

Only Thing That Can Quench My Thirst, by eyesofshinigami, 6.5k words (E). Louis wouldn't exactly call it a thing, his newfound fascination with the curly trail that starts below Harry's bellybutton and disappears into his skinny jeans. It's definitely not a thing. It's just... Alright, maybe it's a thing. (the entire reason for pubefest2020, tbh, this is such a fave fic, sigh)

domesticated, by sky_reid, 6k words (E). nothing gets harry going quite like mentioning a marriage licence. (fluffy but still hot five times story)

Agent Provocateur, by orphan_account, 7k words (E). Harry looks like he's constantly about to drop into subspace when he's talking to Louis onstage. (you can kinda guess from the title, but this is panties panties panties, plus more)

let the only sound be the overflow, by sarcasticfluentry, 7.6k words (E; needs ao3 account). Harry and Louis explore new kinks while staying in Tokyo. (another AMAZING author, check out the rest of their fics; this one’s based on a specific video--read the notes--and you’ll never see Louis, Harry, or clothespins the same way again)

little black dress (it’s all right), by istajmaal, 8k words (E). harry is a girl sometimes. louis loves her all the time. (this one’s part of an ahead-of-its-time series featuring genderfluid harry)

horizontal like a quarter to three, by orphan_account, 8k words (E). The worst part is that Louis just wants to get really rough with him. He's wanted it right from the start, and it doesn't make sense, because Harry's always been so gentle and understanding and sweet, and yet all Louis wants to do is fuck him up. (some serious kink exploration nicely done)

give you my fever, by beautlouis @thelovejandles, 10k words (E). x-factor era. harry's never had an orgasm before, louis gives him his first (it is as it says, and it is INCREDIBLY hot/well done, as is everything beautlouis has ever written, immediately finish this one and then go read everything else)

shit, i still love you (still see you in my bed), by wankerville, 10.9k words (E). it's valentine's day and harry wants to be fucked in his gold boots. (another author I adore!!! this one is as it says, and wow, so visual)

Let Me Be Good for You, by onlyhuman, 11.9k words (E). Niall's only birthday wish is to go clubbing with his boys in Vegas. Harry ruins it all by wearing that god forsaken black sheer shirt. (I love some good hair-related porn!! This one features the bun, sigh)

Autumn at My Window, by TheCellarDoor, 20.4k words (E). a lot of pining, Louis' addiction to Harry's scent, and a whole lot of sexual tension that might just snap loose when they decide to spend some time together all on their own. (this is one of those canon-compliant AUs where you’re meant to ignore A LOT, but it’s still a good lil story with a lot of pining)

Maybe I Miss You series, by 13ways, 26k words (E). Louis is on his way back to London after the Hits Live Birmingham concert. Harry is flying to New York for the Met Gala. They connect. (a newer series that does a good job of weaving in all kinds of real emotion for an ultimately happy ending)

Nothing You Can Do (But You Can Learn How to Be You in Time), by Teumessian, 28k words (E; needs ao3 account). Louis braids Harry’s hair. There are good times, bad times, fancy houses, supportive bandmates, secret boyfriends, small rebellions, bigger revolutions, some nail varnish, ribbons, cute clothing, and a Pinterest. (THE PINTEREST FIC!!!! and another admittedly canon-compliant semi-AU...but then again, most of them are, right?? idk, idk, i just know this one’s very visual and oh so soft)

(your heartbeat) rang true inside my bones, by flimsy, 32.9k words (E). Harry goes as Louis' date for a weekend wedding. He ends up taking the role a bit too seriously. (touch o angst, but it kind of is as it says)

Drifting, Weightless, by @dinosaursmate, 41k words (E). Harry and Louis are exes with benefits until they're not, and the Mediterranean Sea might just be the perfect place to work through some unresolved issues. (this is actually a really funny one, in addition to being emotional and hot, plus I for one would take a One Direction cruise when they get back together in 15 years, sob)

the dark and the dentist, by sunshiner, 66.2k words (E). An account of the events of November 2014. (there are actually a few really big monster fics/series that cover this particular time, but I occasionally skim this one because I like the flashes of random domesticity)

To the Ends of the Earth, by stylinsoncity, 68.4k words (E). During a yearlong hiatus, Louis visits Harry at his cabin in Idaho, where long-buried feelings ignite like the fire keeping them warm. (THE IDAHO CABIN FIC!! And if you haven’t read it in a while, check out the new epilogue from earlier this year...or buy the whole thing on Amazon! Another great one that’s emotional, angsty, soft, and hot, all in one snowball)

Untangle Me, by suicxne, 100k words (E). The one where Harry and Louis finally get it right. (this is another one where you have to ignore A LOT, but it’s like reading a beautiful movie, jesus, I’m still so weak for this fic!! One of the first ones I read in this fandom, and I still randomly think of it every now and again)

Obviously, lots of old and gold here, but that’s because it’s the canon all stars, or whatever...I love a TON of newer fic for all kinds of reasons, so if you need some recs, say the word!

#fic rec #look at all this canon gold!#Anonymous

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elizadoolittlethings · 6 years

Text

Cyberons, sexy Zygons and Mark Gatiss: the bizarre world of the unofficial Doctor Who spin-offs

An oral history of the franchise's unlicensed spin-offs with Sylvester McCoy, Nick Briggs and those at the heart of Who's fan-made films

By Thomas Ling

Tuesday, 27th November 2018 at 1:19 pm

Colin Baker, the man who played The Sixth and arguably proudest Doctor, was next to naked. But he didn’t seem bothered by the bare front peeking through his limp dressing gown. And nor by the vision of a dying Peter Davison that had caused him to collapse while presenting a live TV weather report moments earlier.

Instead, in this semi-stripped moment, his focus belonged solely to Nicola Bryant, the actor who had played Doctor Who companion Peri – and the woman currently planting kisses down his exposed chest.

The 7 biggest contradictions in Doctor Who canon

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A surprising turn, many would think, but Baker seemed completely at ease. Yet soon there would be things he couldn’t ignore.

Soon he’d unearth a plot to replace humans with a synthetic race that could survive a poisoned atmosphere. Soon he would encounter a mysterious Michael Moore-style filmmaker who took the appearance of Sylvester McCoy. And, perhaps most worrying of all, soon he’d witness an apparition of Jon Pertwee that would vanish as unexplained as it had appeared.

Of all the directions Doctor Who could have taken, few could have predicted this. Yet the above is exactly how many fans celebrated the show’s 30th anniversary in 1993: watching a half-naked Colin Baker in The Airzone Solution, a fan-made straight-to-video multi-Doctor story.

Except this wasn’t actually a Doctor Who story. Not officially, anyway. But while Baker, Davidson, McCoy and Pertwee weren’t actually playing Time Lords, The Airzone Solution was Doctor Who in all but name. As McCoy explains to us, the film was “a kind of shadow of Who. Something different with major Whovian influences.”

And although not a licenced Doctor Who production, The Airzone Solution had more of a standing in the fandom than anything the BBC had gifted Whovians since putting the show on hiatus four years earlier in 1989.

While the amateur filmmakers behind Airzone managed to reunite four Doctors for an hour-long special, the BBC’s planned anniversary extravaganza The Dark Dimension collapsed completely mid-production. From its wreckage the Beeb merely marked three decades of the most influential British sci-fi creation with a Doctor Who/EastEnders crossover introduced by Noel Edmonds.

True, this Children in Need short saw the Tardis back on BBC1, but Romana riffing with the Mitchell brothers and the Fifth Doctor crossing paths with Pat Butcher was hardly the glorious return of the Time Lords many had imagined.

So, with fans’ appetites unsatisfied, thousands fed their hunger for Who with The Airzone Solution and the string of 24 other spin-offs films that emerged in the show’s wilderness years – the decade and a half without a regular Doctor Who TV series.

They weren’t official BBC stories, but they did heavily borrow from Doctor Who mythology and featured a mix of past actors, characters and suspiciously familiar monsters (no points for guessing what the ‘Cyberons’ were based on).

More importantly, though, these films nurtured Who’s biggest stars of the revived series. Writer and actor Mark Gatiss, voice of the Daleks Nicholas Briggs and writer Robert Shearman, alongside the likes of Alan Cumming and Reece Shearsmith: all cut their teeth on these films.

And while many of these stars might look back at them with a blush, the spin-offs may well be the reason they ended up working on the revival show.

Despite their shaky CGI, shoestring Sontarans and nymphomaniac Zygons (more on that below), these films actually silently shaped the Doctor Who we know today…

The first, the unoriginal, you might say

It all started in Wartime. All 25 spin-offs were sparked by this 35-minute one-off, a fan-made story that centred on Whovian favourite Sergeant Benton. Although not a household name for modern Who viewers, Benton was a stalwart soldier of the Pertwee era of the show, a key UNIT officer who battled against Cybermen, Daleks and even dinosaurs on Britain’s streets.

Yet it’s not the return of original actor John Levene as Benton, the character’s surreal confrontation with his soon-to-be-widowed mother or even the fantastically 1980s CGI skull that stands out about Wartime. It’s the release date: 1987, two years before Who was pulled off air.

In other words, Wartime wasn’t made in response to the cancellation, but for a very different reason.

“We made Wartime because we weren’t happy with the way that Doctor Who was going and we thought we could do better,” says Wartime producer Keith Barnfather, one of the founding members of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society and former BBC and Channel 4 employee.

“That was an absolute joke considering the funds available. The only reason that [Wartime] got made was that everyone who did it did it virtually for nothing.”

With borrowed costumes, a minuscule budget of only a few thousand pounds and a filming location they had never visited beforehand, Barnfather and his newly-formed production company ReelTime Pictures got Wartime in the can in just three days – about a fifth of the time it takes to film a modern Who episode.

The result: a creaky-looking drama with questionable effects and an enthusiastic but ultimately forced performance from Levene. But all these glaring flaws weren’t important. All that mattered was it had got made. A group of fans had actually put together a real self-contained show set in the world of Doctor Who.

“I was happy – it was the first time we did anything and we actually finished it!” says Barnfather. “It’s not a bad little drama. Even today I can watch it and not cringe.”

Most importantly, however, Wartime proved that independent spin-offs were possible. It showed that Doctor Who stories didn’t require Doctor Who on BBC1. Because when the show was finally cancelled two years later in 1989, other also looked to put their own Who adventures on camera.

And this time the Doctors themselves would want in…

The Time Lords materialise

Determined, brilliant, completely barking mad: there are many ways to describe Who filmmaker Bill Baggs. Indeed, some labelled him all three after he founded BBV Pictures in 1991, kick-starting projects with some truly out-of-this-world ambitions.

Why? Although only a young video editor at BBC Nottingham, the aspiring director/actor aimed to do more than tell Doctor Who stories about background UNIT soldiers. Baggs wanted the Doctors – and plenty of them.

Staggeringly, he got one in his first film. After a script was cobbled together for short drama Summoned by Shadows, Baggs approached Colin Baker to play a lead character known simply as The Stranger, a mysterious and eccentric unnamed traveller who roams time and space with a younger companion. Nothing like The Doctor, of course.

And despite not actually playing a Time Lord, or knowing virtually anything about the film, or having met the man behind it, Baker signed up.

“I could not believe it. I was wetting myself with excitement!” remembers Baggs. “As a Doctor Who fan you have little fantasies about this, but you never expect them to pan out! I was blown away and deeply honoured.”

Although we can’t be sure of Baker’s motives for coming on board – he declined to speak to us about the spin-offs – Baggs puts forward one theory: “I think from Colin’s point of view, he was doing a lot of theatre work after Doctor Who, so why not give up a few days and potentially invest in me, fool that he was,” he says with a laugh.

“From his point of view, I had no profile. He didn’t know me from Adam, apart from being this potentially up-and-coming director. But if you show passion and desire then often people will support you.”

Whatever the reason, Baker did join the project. And despite Baggs becoming cripplingly star-struck after meeting him at rehearsals (“I asked him for a cup of tea and disappeared down the corridor!”), filming soon started in true Doctor Who style: in an empty quarry – the same one, in fact, where Baker had filmed Attack of the Cybermen years earlier.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xanrcw

Like Wartime, this drama had a minuscule budget (just £3000 in total) and, as with the majority of Doctor Who’s 1980s episodes, it hasn’t aged well. Baker’s wonderfully understated performance, however, still shines through. He’s quiet and thoughtful throughout, showing fans exactly what his widely-criticised Doctor could have been.

As Mark Gatiss later told Doctor Who magazine (issue 332) about the films: “I remember watching them and thinking they didn’t look very flashy, but in terms of trying to portray real characters they were a massive improvement on Doctor Who!”

Gatiss wasn’t the only one taken with Summoned by Shadows and what would become ‘The Stranger series’ – thousands bought the films on VHS by post and at conventions.

Demand became too high, in fact. “I had to set up three VHS machines in my bedroom and I was duplicating videos through the night,” says Baggs, recalling how he had to call on his parents to help his videotaping “mini-factory”.

Above: a clip from The Stranger: More than a Messiah

So many copies would be sold, in fact, that by 1993 Baggs had the confidence to embark on a project bigger than anything he done before: a one-off special for Who’s 30th Birthday, The Airzone Solution, the film that would eventually feature a scantily-clad Colin Baker.

Fortunately, that scene doesn’t represent most of the film. Penned by the emerging Nicholas Briggs, Airzone was an environmental thriller set in a near-future Britain where pollution forces the government to build giant filtration plants to clean the dying planet.

And in true Doctor Who style, these centres actually serve a much more sinister agenda: kidnapping and experimenting on innocents to create a new species of human.

Baker once again signed onto the project and Baggs convinced Peter Davison to jump aboard (“that was another moment of punching the air!” Baggs recalls). This was soon followed by McCoy, a monumental achievement considering he was technically still Who’s incumbent Doctor.

Like previous spin-offs, this was by no means a major project with BBC1 exposure and a large pay-packet. But, for McCoy at least, it was a way of keeping the fandom thriving.

“We wanted to feed a hunger that was alive at that time for more Doctor Who,” he says. “I knew the BBC had made a huge mistake by putting Doctor Who into hiatus. I also knew the fans loved [the spin-offs]. For the fans I thought ‘yeah I’ll do this!’”

Bring back the Doctor Who pre-credits scene!

Former Doctor Who star Christopher Eccleston threatened to sue the BBC after quitting show

Furthermore, with a TV revival appearing absurdly unlikely in 1993, McCoy considered the project the only way Who could survive on screen.

“You might find this hard to believe, but I don’t really have a Tardis. I couldn’t really travel back in time and tell everyone ‘we’re going to make a TV film and then they’re going to bring it back again!’” he chuckles.

With these three star signings, others followed suit. Actors including Nicola Bryant, original Davros star Michael Wisher and the then-relatively-unknown Alan Cumming all joined the film.

But then someone even the omni-ambitious Baggs thought too unattainable got in touch: Jon Pertwee, The Third Doctor. “Sylvester came to me one day and he said ‘I’ve been speaking to Jon Pertwee and he’s been asking why he’s not in it. He might get in touch!’” Baggs remembers.

Sure enough, the call came, with Baggs happily at the former Doctor’s mercy. “It was very charming to actually have an actor so connected to the show call and say ‘I’m in it, whether you like it or not!’”

Pertwee may have been completely unfamiliar with the script when he turned up to set the next day – Peter Davidson actually had to hold up cue cards for him during scenes – but in it he was. And for two days, four Doctor Who leads were brought together for some good old-fashioned low-budget sci-fi.

“It obviously didn’t have quite the financial support that the BBC gave Doctor Who. But it was great because the fans were so involved,” recalls McCoy “We were treated very well. We all had a great time!”

McCoy’s recollections of the shoot are all positive, whether teasing Baker “for taking his job”, filming a chase scene that would fail any modern risk assessment (“I took my glasses off and would be driving around half blind!”), or simply spending time with his Doctor Who co-stars.

“I remember filming and just sharing the day with Colin, Peter and the glorious Jon Pertwee. It was great because it was still alive. When the BBC stopped it, you thought ‘well, that’s it, goodbye’. Doctor Who is one of the great jobs,” he says.

“And although this wasn’t Doctor Who, it was very like Doctor Who.”

The Pandorica opens

As suddenly as the Tardis surfacing from the time vortex, a whole series of Doctor Who spin-offs materialised after The Airzone Solution. Some good. Some bad. All brilliantly weird.

For ReelTime, the makers of Wartime, the next Who project entailed a team-up between Elisabeth Sladen’s Sarah Jane Smith and The Brigadier (a role reprised by original actor Nicholas Courtney) in a story called Downtime featuring the Great Intelligence and some gloriously low-budget Yeti monsters.

This was followed up by adventures featuring Sontarans, a Shakespeare-loving Draconian and even former Doctor Who companion Sophie Aldred, this time playing an unnamed character with, completely coincidently, the same direct way with words as Ace.

But while these characters were typically used with the BBC’s permission, other spin-offs – mostly those created by maverick Bill Baggs under BBV Pictures – simply gave a heavy nod to Who, such as the murderous robotic machines featured in Cyberon or the aforementioned interstellar traveller The Stranger.

But despite the glaring similarities, there seemed to be little fear of the BBC shutting down production. “We didn’t care!” laughs McCoy, who starred in many of Baggs’s later spin-offs. “They deserved to get annoyed because they abandoned it and the fans!”

On other occasions the dramas blended the show’s characters and actors in ways that, simply put, just didn’t make a lot of sense – even by Doctor Who’s timey-wimey standards.

Take the Torchwood-esque PROBE series, directed by Baggs and penned by future Who and Sherlock stalwart Mark Gatiss, a writer slowly gaining success with The League of Gentlemen at the time.

This mid-1990s series centred on the Preternatural Research Bureau, a paranormal investigations unit led by classic Doctor Who companion Liz Shaw, a character Baggs had got permission to use. Original actor Caroline John even reprised the role, a casting that appeared to ground the drama firmly within the world of Who.

However, for rights reasons PROBE wasn’t permitted to mention The Doctor or most events surrounding the show – a restriction that meant Liz was forced not to recognise a non-Time Lord character played by John Pertwee, an actor she had shared adventures with during his tenure as The Doctor.

Mostly, however, the spin-offs followed new characters battling old Doctor Who baddies as they wreaked havoc over the planet. Most notable of which were the Auton films.

Featuring the likes of Reece Shearsmith and CGI that rivalled that seen in the 2005 revival show, the first two of BBV’s ‘Auton Trilogy’ of the late nineties are widely considered the best independent Who spin-offs.

“They are by no means perfect, in fact they’re horribly flawed. But I wrote and directed both of them under fairly impossible budgetary and time constraints, with a lovely team of actors,” says Nicholas Briggs. “I think we managed to create something that worked pretty well.”

However, Auton’s biggest impact on the Who fandom came just before the revival of the main show. Just as the BBC had to reach a deal with the Terry Nation estate to use the Daleks in the show (negotiations that fell through at one point overallegations the broadcaster wanted to make a ‘gay Dalek’ cartoon), they had to consult Bill Baggs, who still held the rights to the Autons thanks to an agreement with the estate of creator Robert Holmes.

“Before it restarted, the BBC phoned me up and asked me if was okay for me to do an Auton show,” laughs Baggs.

“I told this to my wife thinking she wouldn’t say anything, but it happened to be the weekend she was at the Gallifrey convention. And a bit later I got a phone call saying ‘why does the whole universe know that the first episode is an Auton one?!’ I had to apologise humbly.”

Furthermore, some have said characters created for these fan-made spin-offs may have actually inspired those that appear in the main show. Foremost of which: Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, UNIT commander and daughter of the Brigadier.

Kate appeared in Chris Chibnall’s The Power of Three in 2012 and the 50thanniversary special The Day of the Doctor – but a character with the same name, background and blonde hair first featured in fan-made film Downtime 17 years earlier.

“Let’s just say we came to an accommodation,” says Downtime producer Barnfather on his subsequent chats with the BBC around their use of the character. “I would never do anything that would hurt the programme or bring it into disrepute.”

Yet Kate Stewart aside, can we say these fan-made spin-offs really gave more to Doctor Who than they took? Did they really inspire the plots of modern Who? Considering the stories the show has produced since its 2005 revival: absolutely not.

However, what if you judge the impact of the spin-offs by the talent they gifted to the main show years later? Well, that’s when things get a lot more interesting…

Stars are born

However flawed these films were, they’re where the Who writers of today learned their craft. They didn’t just make talent like Mark Gatiss and Big Finish head Nick Briggs known amongst dedicated fans, they also gave them a platform to jump to the main show. And, even more importantly, they nurtured the creativity needed for their later projects.

Briggs is the prime example here. Through his extensive work in the world of unlicensed Who he perfected performing Dalek voices, mastering the equipment and vocal tics needed to make a convincing tinpot terror. And this meant when the BBC announced the Doctor Who revival, Russell T Davies was quick to get Briggs on board.

“[Davies] had me in mind from the moment he’d decided he was bringing the Daleks back – not just because he thought I was good at doing Dalek voices, but because he was aware that I had the technical know-how to recreate them,” Briggs explains. “In the absence of a BBC Radiophonic Workshop, I was the sort of total solution. Very lucky for me.”

However, the spin-offs did much more than offer Briggs a route onto the main show. “Any ‘turn around the block’ creating something, no matter how flawed, is invaluable experience for a writer or director or any kind of creative person,” he says.

“It’s one thing to dream, but it’s quite another thing to get the practical experience of actually creating and finishing something.

“[The spin-offs] gave us a real ‘go’ at bringing a dream to life, and helped us realise that we could not only create something, but create something worthy of an audience.

“Actually making things engenders a feeling of permission to create. That’s a big hurdle for any creative person. Do I have the right to create, to communicate, to entertain? Having practice at making something helps to give you that feeling of permission.”

Mark Gatiss echoed a similar sentiment in a League of Gentlemen blog, explaining that although he didn’t want it to be released on DVD, he had gained valuable experience writing The Zero Imperative, his first ever TV script.

“Christ, for all I knew, they were the only things I would ever get to make,” he said. “And I learned a frightening amount from working on them.”

And one of the lessons Gatiss appears to have learned is how to work with some tricky characters. Namely, Bill Baggs.

“I’m a constant meddler when it comes to the scripts,” recalls Baggs. “But Mark tolerated that really well. I remember we would sit together and improvise scenes, which I loved. I’d like to get hold of his writing sometimes and give it a tweak and an edit, but I take my hat off to him. He’s been so successful. There’s nobody else who deserves more and having that experience with him is fantastic.

“But Mark probably wouldn’t have his career in Doctor Who without BBV.”

So, why didn’t Baggs end up working on Doctor Who like Gatiss? Why is it that the man at the heart of the unofficial fandom spent, as he puts it, “a lot of time wondering when the phone was going to ring”?

Rather than being asked to direct an episode, why did Baggs fail to break through to the show, instead funnelling his energy into an alternative medicine, Emotional Energy Healing, and becoming an ‘Akki energetics practitioner’?

Despite Baggs’s assertion that he could work on the main show if he wanted to but simply chooses not to, there could be another reason behind his absence. As Gatiss once told Doctor Who magazine, although he had a “great time”, Baggs “had some very strange ideas as a producer.”

And although Gatiss was referring to Baggs’s tendency to swap scenes around “arbitrarily”, this isn’t one of the strange ideas that fans eventually knew him for.

The misadventures of Doctor Screw

We should say this up front: Bill Baggs wasn’t the first to bring sex into the Whoniverse. During the show’s hiatus years, characters such as Bernice Summerfield (written as a companion of Sylvester McCoy’s Seventh Doctor) were often portrayed enjoying some, shall we say, advanced docking maneuverers on the Tardis. Summerfield even apparently had a fumble with The Eighth Doctor himself in book The Dying Days.

However, while ReelTime Pictures kept their films PG and in a similar style and ilk to the main show, stablemate BBV and Bill Baggs became ever more proactive in bringing the saucier side of Who to screen.

That image of a naked Colin Baker we brought up before? The one where he romped with Nicola Bryant, who played Peri in Who? That was thanks to Baggs, who directed the unscripted scene (from under the bed – “I had to! There was no space in that room!”) against the wishes of writer Nicholas Briggs.

“I’m credited as the writer of The Airzone Solution, but I did not write that scene,” Briggs says adamantly. “It was irrelevant to the plot. [Baggs] seemed to agree with me. But I later found out that he just gave up arguing because he could see I wouldn’t change my mind. Then he deliberately deceived me and wrote the scene in any way.”

Baggs, however, stands by it. “Everyone had an opinion about it,” he says. “People got grossed out by it and some found no problem at all.”

But that scene was nothing compared to 2008’s Zygon: When Being You Just Isn’t Enough, dubbed by one reviewer as “the only Zygon-based soft-porn film ever to have been made”. And that’s not an exaggeration. Fortunately, it doesn’t feature the red starfish-like aliens making use of their suckers, but the 18-rated film does see the Zygons at the centre of some very NSFW activities in human form.

Although billed as a serious drama, Baggs openly says it was initially envisioned as something more titillating. “I met a guy at a convention who was into soft porn and he convinced me there was a market for it – not that I had a massive desire to produce a soft porn film, but you’re always interested as a director/producer what markets there were.”

But looking back now, Baggs concedes the project was a misstep. “It was my mistake and nobody else’s,” he adds, before quickly adding: “I’m glad I tried it, though. It was a massive learning experience.”

Zygon wasn’t quite the end of Baggs’s spin-off ideas, with BBV releasing When to Die, a PROBE drama in memory of Liz Shaw star Caroline John in 2012.

However, since then Baggs has been focused on producing theatre dramas, and although he and McCoy still enjoy times together at conventions, the sun has set on the golden time (and space) of BBV films.

A fandom regenerates

26th March 2005, 7pm. For fans across the world, this was the moment the ‘real’ Doctor Who returned to screens. After over 15 years of waiting, the universe’s foremost Time Lord returned in a regular series, captivating a whole new generation of Whovians.

But for the makers of the spin-off films, it was a bittersweet moment. Producers like Bill Baggs had spent years trying to cater for fans with nowhere else to go, fuelling the fandom with films made possible by pure passion for Who. And now it was over: the fans just didn’t need BBV.

As Baggs says, “It was frustrating on one hand and utterly delighting on the other.

“Before they announced they were reviving Who, Alan Cumming and I were actually going to do a special drama, an anniversary special for BBC South with Alan Cumming as The Doctor,” he laments. “But we ended up getting a call from a Who producer telling us we had to stop because the show was coming back – that’s when I first found out.”

Today BBV only operates a small web business and while Barnfather and ReelTime Pictures still film an occasional Who spin-off, they mostly specialise in the likes of archaeological videos in the Greek world (“We’ve got quite the reputation in Cyprus”).

Yet some still claim that fans owe a great debt to Barnfather and Baggs. “Thereason why we’ve got Doctor Who now on television is thanks to those fans who did it way back then,” says McCoy. “The fans of today should be thankful to him because he helped keep alive Doctor Who.”

But is it really true that without their work keeping the fandom alive, the BBC would have never recommissioned the show? Not everyone is convinced.

“That’s absolutely rubbish,” says Barnfather. “The programme would have come back – it’s a franchise that will never die! Even if the Doctor Who fandom didn’t exist, the BBC would have brought it back.”

“The facts just don’t support it,” agrees Briggs. “The people who made the decision to bring back Doctor Who to television had no idea that any of these things existed.”

Yet while it may not be the reason for Doctor Who’s revival, it’s undeniable that these films fostered talent that would change the Tardis forever.

Perhaps more than anything, the films represent how the fandom and the series are forever intertwined. These 25 forgotten spin-offs demonstrate that the line between dedicated fans and the show is beautifully permeable, ideas and talent forever travelling between the two.

And that’s still true to this day. Remember WhoLock, the viral video that imagined two of TV’s greatest characters together? Or the perfect fan-made trailer for Peter Capaldi’s first series? The editor of these films, who goes by the pseudonym John Smith, actually went on to work as a VFX artist for Doctor Who.

This is the real beauty of Who: its fans are constantly creating, inventing new ideas that could make their way on screen in years to come. It’s a collaboration that makes Who and its lead Time Lord arguably stronger than any other sci-fi fandom.

And sure, this symbiotic relationship might bring to light some of the stranger facets of the fandom, or a nymphomaniac Zygon or two. But, just like the Tardis, these spin-offs have often taken The Doctor where he didn’t want to go, but precisely where he needed to.

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News, photos, videos and full episode guide

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#MG #mark gatiss #doctor who #Radio Times #alan cumming #the man behind the genius #interview #all things MG #all about doctor who

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aceprosecuties · 7 years

Text

Okay, so I am still hesitant about writing/posting this, but I find that it is important based on my breakdown the other day and my desire for something like that to not happen so suddenly again. Basically I am going to go through some of my viewpoints on fandom and this website and all that.

If you would like to unfollow or block me after reading this, then that is your choice (if you read it at all…it’s quite long). I ask that you do not debate me or argue with me on anything I’m about to say, simply because I am exhausted and am not in the mood to do it. (Also I tend to not trust most ‘debates’ on this website because they quickly devolve into nastiness.)

My philosophy on fandom is very “Old Fandom,” if I had to describe it using a short phrase. In other words, I am very much against policing or censoring fictional content, because in the end, it is fictional. While “fiction affects reality” is a popular gotcha phrase here, it usually does not affect reality in the way that people claim it does. It is not really a “monkey see, monkey do” situation. If that was the case, people who play violent video games, for example, would almost always be violent people. That argument was brought up when I was a child and a lot of people considered it ludicrous.

That’s not my saying that fiction can’t affect reality or doesn’t; usually it involves affecting our emotions more than anything. While things like Hollywood movies and series can have a larger impact, fandom is…small. It seems large, but it really isn’t in the grand scheme of things. The impact one person’s fanfiction can have on the world at large, whether for good or for bad, is limited at best.

Essentially what I am saying is that things are grey. Middle grounds exist that many on this website refuse to acknowledge; living in such a black-and-white world is, in my opinion, very dangerous. It makes it so that people – who are convinced they are morally pure and therefore superior – are able to justify doing things like suicide baiting and harassment. If you’re convinced that your crusade is completely morally just, then anyone standing in its way is a dirty sinner and must be punished.

The need to be morally pure might stem from self-hatred. It is a form of perfectionism, honestly. Perhaps people are convinced that they’ll be more of a “perfect” person if they only consume things that have been deemed righteous by a mob of random internet users on this or other websites. I don’t know. I’m not a psychologist, so perhaps I am guessing.

People are shades of grey. (Most people, anyway. I would never argue that there is no such thing as evil in this world, but most people we will interact with on a daily basis are grey.) We try overall to be better, but we as human beings are not perfect and never will be perfect. We might say the wrong thing or get angry with someone for something that was inconsequential or might even have a belief that is grounded in incorrect facts or upsets others. The point of humanity is to grow, however. Maybe you will learn from your mistakes; maybe that opinion you held that was upsetting to others transforms into something else because of things you learned over time.

We all have people we like and dislike. We all have personalities and opinions we are drawn to and stay away from. But the declaration of someone as evil based on what essentially amounts to very little is…troublesome. (Note: ‘Very little’ does not include political views like nazism or the like. Those are not ‘very little,’ as they affect the real political world and therefore affect policy. That is not what I am referring to right now.)

What a person likes in fiction is oftentimes unattached to their real moral code, and declaring someone as evil or scum based on the themes they like is a highly dangerous way of thinking. It doesn’t allow people to explore the darkness in their own minds through writing or drawing. It doesn’t give them outlets that might be needed to help them escape their own world, which can be dark and depressing, really.

Personally, I am a fan of very dark themes in fiction (when people ask me what my favorite anime is, for example, I immediately say Hellsing Ultimate). Psychological torture, gore, dub-con/non-con, emotional manipulation and mental abuse, self-harm through physical acts or thoughts, etc. These things, while terrible in reality (and some of which I have suffered in reality) are just things I like to explore in fiction because I find them interesting or fascinating. Whenever I think about writing self-insert/reader fics (I have never done it, but I have thought about it), they are never…nice. They are rough and fucked up because that’s what I enjoy. I know that these types of themes are triggering to many people, which is why putting warnings on your work is important, and I believe wholeheartedly in doing that as a responsibility to your fellow fandom members.

The whole black-and-white mentality can also cause weird slippery slopes which end up with people claiming things as “problematic” and therefore “evil” that actually are not a huge problem. (I hate using this argument because most of the time I find that it isn’t entirely true, but in this case I’ve seen it happening more and more.)

I’ve seen people called pedophiles for shipping an 18 year old with a 16 year old (Otabek and Yuri P.), which is essentially the equivalent of a senior and a sophomore in high school dating. Not only does this cheapen the term pedophilia – making it oftentimes hard to recognize when someone is an actual child molester versus when someone just ships something “problematic” – but it also is just so far removed from what happens in real life, where teenagers date.

I’ve seen people called Nazis because they ship two villains and enjoy their dynamic and their individual characters (Kylo Ren and General Hux). Ignoring the fact that Nazism is not even a thing in the SW fictional universe, it also is saying that if you like these types of characters for whatever reason, then you are a bad person.

It is difficult for me to process that, since I always liked villains and anti-heroes the best. Saying that enjoying villains and their dynamics is basically condoning their actions in real life is infantilizing, in a way. It is basically assuming that I cannot differentiate between what is real and what is not.

Was I so evil and trash when I was around 10 or so? When I gravitated towards characters like Vegeta and Sephiroth? Yami Bakura and Darth Vader? If I’m terrible for liking them now, was I terrible for liking them back then, too? Would people call me an abuse apologist at 12 because I shipped Yami Bakura with Ryou?

I already have problems with perfectionism and self-hatred. The idea of standing across from a young me and telling her that she is a disgusting human being and a piece of trash because of the characters she identified with and liked or the characters she wanted to see kiss…it upsets me. Because I internalize it and wonder if it is true. Because if that is the case then I was born a broken person.

I’ve always had issues with depression. It just took until adulthood to recognize it. When I was young people asked me why I was angry a lot. I never really could answer them…I just was. My perfectionism (which started in elementary school brought on by extreme competitiveness) got so bad that in high school I cried and told myself I was a stupid piece of shit because I got an 88 on an AP Calculus test. If I did not get all As all the time I was not a worthy person. Hell, I was in the top 1% of my graduating class, and I was still somewhat upset because I was not valedictorian or salutatorian. (This was all internalized; other people were allowed to fail or mess up, but I was not allowed to.) I can’t even say that my parents or my family life brought this on. It didn’t. My parents were always very supportive. They would sit me down and ask if I did my best, and if I say yes, that is all that mattered. As long as I tried, it was okay to fall down.

My brain never really accepted that lesson.

It is frustrating. I have no reason really to be depressed and anxious (I guess aside from graduate school right now) and think of myself as terrible, but that is just my brain and it has been like that for a long time.

So now to have people screaming at me that I actually am that terrible person because of the fiction I choose to consume? It is…demoralizing.

…This has ended up way longer than I originally intended it to.

(Thanks to those who actually read the whole thing. Sorry if I rambled or anything like that.)

I sort of said this, but I do have a writscrib beta access key, so I will be setting up shop over there as well. I am wondering about leaving this place altogether if that takes off (and I’m hoping it will), but I’ll keep you guys updated on that front.

My semi-hiatus might turn into more of an actual hiatus, but we’ll see. I say that a lot, and then it doesn’t seem to happen.

#allie makes posts #this is v long #once again please do not debate me on things #I'm too tired to do that #I figured I would just write this so there would be no more surprises so to say #now people know my whole stance on this #and you can do as you please with this knowledge #this got personal

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imeugene · 7 years

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Why Does Steven Hamilton Skate?

As a kid I don’t think I would be able to grasp that nature of the answer for that that question. I think now with a bit of time under my belt, I’d hope is some level of developed thought. Get things a bit more figured out. This isn’t really a post to describe his reasonings or anything like that in a direct way. A bit more metaphorical or allegorical. Something like that. Obviously I don’t know Hamilton and all speculation is just that but I do remember wondering this question a lot.

To me Hamilton’s Trafaelio section is my favorite section ever. “Can I Eat?” and that whole time span where Hamilton and his riding really transformed everything was the bee’s knees to me. Still is. I even recall Wiz talking about how his riding is the future of BMX, which is more evidence of my Hamilton nerd-ness. In my defense it wasn’t just me, there was no shortage of hype and expectations behind Hamilton at this time... but if you know a bit of BMX history you know it didn’t unfold the way a lot of people would imagine. Somewhere in the various ups, downs, lefts, rights in his career or life, Hamilton picked up a skateboard.

You’d read the interviews and it was something he casually mentioned a bit too often. It really did seem like he put some serious time behind the deck. Being in BMX it’s kind of a strange thing in a way.. It’s either you BMX or you don’t. That’s the mentality that is kind of supported in our culture. It’s a very us vs. them headspace that is common in a lot of alternative cultures and lifestyles. For the longest time BMX liked to think of itself as a rival to skateboarding. In some places there was even a bit of animosity between the two. It’s only recently when skateboarding melted into mainstream “cool” culture and completely overshadowed everything BMX, that we put skateboarding on a pedestal. But when Hamilton was skateboarding it wasn’t quite what it is now.

It wasn’t like he was doing it at the time where it was trendy to be able to film yourself doing a skateboard trick, which in my opinion is still the lamest trend to hit BMX videos. Cause it all seemed like “Hey I got this interest that is semi-cool and I’m semi-good at it so everyone look at me get a few extra brownie points”. To the people who were really about it, well they still are and props to them. To the lames who did it cause it was thing, they’re probably doing smith nose bars and pull up bars. But back to Hamilton. It was clearly not that. He was a few years before in typical “before his time” Hamilton fashion. If there is one thing to get about him is that Hamilton is an individual through and through. His riding is testament to that. His bike which has more or less never changed.. and the changes it did see are never intimidations of recent trends, more trends from decades ago actually. He does not come off in any remotely way interested in following what’s happening today. I don’t think skateboarding was the single thing he chose to do just to remain relevant. It had to be more.

After his hiatus from media and what not, Hamilton would put out edits of him skateboarding almost as much as BMX. It was really solidifying itself into a thing he’s doing. Even today if you look at his Instagram it’s quite evident he follows the culture. When it was first happening I didn’t get it. I remember thinking this guy is the best bike rider and he’s doing this skateboarding thing that he’s clearly not on the same level. He’s so much better at riding, why even skateboard? It just all seemed like a waste of time on his end. Which is not judgement for me or anyone to make but that’s just a byproduct celebrity culture and me being young and falling into something stupid like that. Photography, film, music, and the usual outside of BMX hobbies made sense cause they either compliment BMX directly or they were so different it was like exercising a muscle that wasn’t there. But skateboarding, it was the same thing. The time he spent to get better on the board felt like time that was taken from us the riding community of Hamilton on his bike.

But like I said earlier in all this. This isn’t really about Hamilton skateboarding. It’s about the mentality of being trapped into doing something cause that’s what is expected. Whether it’s from trends, people, the world around or even standards people place upon themselves. It’s something I personally go through and I think a lot of people do too. I’ve said this before but this website is what it is. It’s not like I don’t know how to grow this in better ways. Get an Instagram tag, hashtag. Do all that jazz. Merch out. Promote, promote, promote. Go to events. Sometimes I dabbled into that thought but in the end I just end up asking myself why? It took me a while to realize why I didn’t follow through. It’s cause I could never justify the cost vs. what I can possibly achieve out of this. It wasn’t worth it and it felt BMX should certainly be worth it. I remember I had a book completed that would’ve costed me a few hundred. Could sell it at bare minimum for 18. I didn’t follow though. Same with numerous t-shirt designs and stickers. I made a few but there was definitely a lot more in the works that just never went anywhere. All that money and I couldn’t justify it, even an Instagram which would probably be the best thing for this promotion wise, I just didn’t and that would be free. That’s time I couldn’t justify. It took me some crazy level of self reflection to try to understand. It may seem easy but it really wasn’t. I love BMX and I can say for a long time, it’s all I really knew. Wouldn’t wanting more out of BMX be what I wanted. I realize it wasn’t and I didn’t really get it.

I think I was forcing myself into a box I didn’t really fit in. Not cause of any outside reason but just me and who I am. I guess somewhere in my head I knew that and I just couldn’t push myself to go that direction cause I was just doing it cause that’s what I expected out of myself. I’m not someone who dreamed of being a pro or anything like that. BMX was always just something fun to do, all the time. I was always the BMX guy in high school, it’s the only identity I ever had. All this is not about finding myself or anything like that but just me letting go and letting things fall into their own places. I realize a lot of animosity I held was cause I couldn’t do that. I was getting frustrated cause it felt like I was forced in some way to be here. Like if Instagram and merch and all that other stuff that it would take to make this place more successful was what I wanted I’d already have done so but it’s not. I like this place where I meander dumb thoughts and I like closing it when I want to and saying whatever I want as long as I feel it’s relevant. If it was more maybe it’d still be the same but outside of a few extra bucks, I don’t think I could get anymore out of it and that’s not cause I hit some glass ceiling or anything like that. It’s cause to me this right here is as good as it gets in some weird way. It’s a cathartic thing like BMX. Somewhere to practice writing with some audience. To formulate ideas and give them form. Like anyone can imagine ideas but at the bare minimum once you start writing it down, you see flaws and unseen perspectives. The articles help me practice that process which is more or less art in general.

I started filming cause of BMX, like a lot of other people. I just know it’s what I want to do and not even in filming BMX type of way but just using the camera to the fullest extent. Unlike BMX, I’m willing to compromise things to pursue it and achieve more. The hate is bearable cause I want to be there, while in BMX it’s always been why am I here type of thing. I can spend $60 on costume for a video I can’t assure will get more than 100 views but I can’t spend $60 to get hat embroidered for this site. At least not now. It’s this change in mentality where I relish everything the good, the bad, the ugly included cause it’s somehow all worth it. I never ask myself why even when I’m quite shit at it but I just know I want to keep pushing everyday to get better. As a rider after I learned the basic tricks, I honestly could care less to get better. Some days I try, most days I don’t but that’s not the case with all this. I know I could film a BMX edit and it’d be good but shifting gears towards narrative work has been a huge learning curve and pretty hard. I can see how bad some things turn out but still I do it cause its where I want to be. It’s not that I don’t think of myself as a BMX rider anymore, I still dress like one, listen to Props rock, ride when I can, try to contribute in ways I know how and most importantly see the world in eyes of a rider, something that once the videos I’ve been working on finishes will kind of make more sense. I just quit pigeon holing myself into being what I think a BMX rider should be and that made all the difference. To some people being 100% BMX is who they are and they’re better person for it but to some it’s not and that’s ok too. Which might as well be the slogan here at this point cause this is definitely the most open minded BMX corner.

So why does Steven Hamilton skate? I’ll try to take a stab at it. It’s cause he doesn’t care what people expect out of him (obviously). Cause he gets something out of it that he needs that BMX can’t provide. Cause he wants to express it, cause it excites him too. Cause ultimately BMX isn’t everything to him even if he is one of the best to ever do it. And all that is ok cause life is too valuable to waste not living a life you’re content with. It’s not gonna be perfect but it should be something rewarding and to let other people determine that isn't always a failsafe way to get the most out of it. BMX to me is perfect the way it is. Well I’d like it more if I was living in the city so I could ride from 10pm to 1am without driving cause to me nothing is a bigger buzz kill than driving to local spots.

#bmx #steven hamilton

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plvuial · 7 years

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yooo thanks @novafirst1 !!!

RULES: tag 10 of your followers you wanna know better.

nicknames: none ?? barbie...debby/debbie? debbae ??? idk call me whatever u want height: 158.5 :))) time right now: 9:08pm last thing i googled: emma watson feminism lmfao fave music artist: i mean 1d i guess? but right now it’s my boy ed sheeran song stuck in my head: hmm none at the moment last movie i watched: moana last tv show i watched: voltron!! what i’m wearing right now: pajamas ?? its just a shirt and shorts + a jumper when i created this blog: like 2015 ?? ye the kind of stuff i post about: one direction sometimes, dog videos, bad quality memes do i have other blogs?: i have a hq blog and a yoi blog but they’re both on semi-hiatus at the moment do i get asks regularly?: i’ve gotten like 1 (one) ask ever and it was a spam ask . when i saw the notif i was actually rlly excited rip in pieces why did i choose my url?: it sounds nice mostly gender: female hogwarts house: slytherin pokemon team: i dont play pokemon go whoops fave colors: hmm pastels… average hours of sleep: 6ish lucky number: 5 favourite characters: it fluctuates but kuroo, lance/keith…yuri plisetsky …. dream job: i literally dont have a clue what i want to be in the future but i hope i enjoy it number of blankets i sleep with: 1 in summer, 2 in winter following: 282

i tag @laybn @mikasargh @sherlockaddictfan @bungoustraighthome (optional ofc) and anyone else who wants to do it!!

#mine #tagged #was velvet-miasma #thanksss mayo these are fun and i rarely get tagged thank uu

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kinetic-elaboration · 7 years

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February 10: Thoughts on 4x02 Heavy Lies the Crown

I sat down to write my reaction to 4x02 and wrote basically a novel because I have no self-control. I talk so big about being barely invested in the source material anymore and then this happens. I cannot be trusted.

I wrote this before I saw any fandom reactions at all so it’s really just my unfiltered and uninfluenced thoughts.

Tl;dr version:

Team Jaha all the way

Loved the Arkadia stuff especially the Clarke and Jaha stuff and Clarke’s speech

Intrigued by the possibility of waiting out the radiation in the Ark

Interested to see Bryan develop, worried about Miller/Bryan

Legit thought Bellarke were going to kiss when they were saying goodbye

I would have voted with Miller and Monty but I also think that Bellamy’s final decision was the only possible outcome morally and narratively and that for this reason that whole story line was meh for me

A+ Monty characterization

Why does no one care that the Arkadia government has been decimated? This is some grade A nonsense.

...Jasper

I'm probably going to nit pick a lot and sound like I didn't like, but overall I actually really did. I'm never going to stop being nostalgic for what the show could have been, but I think it's doing the best it can to come back from the mess of S3.

I'm going to organize my thoughts by storyline this time since, I don’t have definite negatives and definite positives like last week.

POLIS

I have made the tentative decision to avoid absolutely as much as possible all content beyond the actual episodes themselves—that includes preview scenes and bts stuff released before the show airs, as well as interviews, Twitter statements, etc. (I will watch the trailers because I just love trailers in general but that's it.) I have a variety of personal-preference reasons for doing so but I think the opening of this episode really solidifies my episodes-only position. Because such a fucking meal was made about the glowing butterflies, and what did we get? Literally, no one lied: we did see a glowing butterfly, very first thing. But everything that glowing butterflies are associated with (associations the people doing the teasing are very well aware of)--including early S1, the glowing forest, the beauty of the Earth, a sense of calm, etc.--was missing. We get the exact opposite instead: mutilation, death, blood, loss, grief. Wow. I was not impressed. In fact, I felt very cheated. I guess one central reason I'm cutting extras out of my viewing experience is because I feel that most of them are designed to create this reaction, designed to tease and trick on the one hand, or just to outright spoil on the other. They decrease my enjoyment of the show and make me feel like I'm being fucked with for sport.

Not to make too big a deal out of it though, because I feel like my language is harsher than my emotions... Anyway I didn't like the intro is what I'm saying. I don't want to say too much because this is a larger point about the episode but one I'm not sure is fair on my part but...it felt a little too...on the nose? Rote? Like a very simple story was told very quickly and unsubtly: we know Ilian has issues because ALIE had him kill his whole family like it doesn't get shorter and simpler than that. And considering I have nothing but negative associations with ALIE, I'm a little...don't subject me to this please.

I'll reserve most of my judgment because he's barely been introduced but so far Ilian is boring and I don't care about him. Next.

Also boring: Trishanakru (sp?). Again, I know it's early, but what I got out of this episode was that, for all they spend so much fucking time on the Grounders, the PTB really do not have very many ideas for them. Because so far the total variation of the clans has been in degree of warlike qualities (average: Trikru; high: Azgeda; low: Flokru). If we hadn't been told Ilian and dead guy were part of a new clan about twenty times I would have just straight up assumed they were Trikru because they're pretty much impossible to distinguish. And I know, I'm being unfair because it's only been one episode but like...I'd always been under the impression there were real and obvious differences among the 12 clans? If there aren't I literally never have to see any other clans I mean it's bad enough I have to be subjected to those ugly white Azgeda tattoos or the Undergrad Common Room aesthetic of Luna's people.

Kane and Abby: everything's going along in just exactly the way I'd expect with them, which means that my interest level is pretty low tbh. I have a very calm sort of appreciation for them, but no particular thoughts or high emotions. Nothing wrong with two attractive people in bed. But like...the main plot point of their relationship was about Abby deciding what to do with Jake's ring and considering I've already thought about that in a fandom context repeatedly and in more depth—without even being a hardcore Kabby shipper—I was a little underwhelmed by it here. Also actually a little disappointed that she ultimately took it off. Like I know why she had to but I also thought that Kane's earlier statement about Jake being a part of her was his acceptance that she would continue to wear it, and I thought there was something rather nice about that—because Jake was his friend too, and what's really wrong with someone whose spouse is dead simultaneously remembering the deceased and having a relationship with someone else? IDK. I guess...it was all fine but not very deep.

Octavia: I have to say I'm kind of surprised by Octavia so far because I was under the impression that she would immediately cut ties with everyone and have a totally separate story line. So that she's still hanging out, at least in body if not spirit, with Kabby and that she hasn't been, like, universally shunned or even officially banished or whatever is just.. I'm not sure what to make of it. What I mean is: does no one but Bryan care that she assassinated the Chancellor? (Also tbt that time she had a big fit about Bellamy attempting to assassinate the Chancellor lol how times have changed.) I'm personally pretty ready to forget literally everything from S3 in a lot of ways but realistically stuff that happened mere days ago in the show should probably be addressed and it's just really weird to me that there's been next to no consequence for her. Also I don't think the show has any idea what to do with O now (which is also why I have an eye-rolly reaction to 'Lincoln died to further O's story line' arguments because IMO almost the opposite happened: Lincoln died and O's story fell apart.) Anyway I don't care about her.

I am STILL BOTHERED by the fact that O got a tattoo in the S2-S3 hiatus but we only got the barest hints of it in S3 and are only getting full views of it now, a season later. And no one's ever mentioned it. I mean maybe this is my Conservative view of tattoos but imo inking your skin is like kinda a big deal and even if you don't think it is in the here and now... tats are a Grounder thing, a permanent alteration of your body that only Grounders do...so it feels like her getting one is sort of a big deal within this society and I would have liked to see it, if not on screen, at least...like a plot point? Or honestly why the fuck even do it. Like literally why subject to Marie to additional make up, why take on the added burden of continuity checks about her tattoo, if it's not even remotely important to your story??

Speaking of tattoos, I forgot to say this before, but if literally everyone has tattoos (and pretty much every Grounder we've ever encountered has had tattoos, whether they're warriors or not, as far as I can tell), how does it help a Spy not to have them? I mean...if there's only one person hanging out with no tats...would you not automatically suspect that person of spying?? Also it kinda looked like Echo did have a tattoo in that fight scene with Roan, a black one on her arm, but it was hard to tell. Coulda been her shirt I dunno.

AKA the world building on this show leaves a lot to be desired but what's new.

These people are shit at keeping secrets for real.

ARKADIA

I'm intrigued by this idea that they could hide out in the Ark itself during the radiation—for a lot of reasons. I fucking love the Ark, first of all. It's an idea I hadn't previously thought of or seen anyone else think of so it's actually surprising to me, and creative, and unexpected, unlike a lot of the rest of the show at this point. It's way better than going into space, which is tragic in its comic ridiculousness. It makes a nice full circle. I think there's something O.Henry sad about it in a way too because if that's the solution they use...they'll live, but they'll never see the outside again. They're creating another Mt. Weather in a way (and I think they semi-know it: "If there's another Mt. Weather out there, the Grounders will know")--and we know how that worked out for them. (I think the lesson from Mt. Weather, honestly, is that if you can't evolve you don't get to live.) Then of course there's the lifeboat problem which, personally, at this point, is getting a little boring. But I definitely caught Raven saying at the end that only "a hundred" of them would fit without the water machine, so that's either significant or bad story telling.

Also finally my boy Monty coming back into the genius fold. I'm still a little...wary of how they're developing Monty because I remain dissatisfied with his post-Mt. Weather story but what can you do. Promising so far at least.

I literally stopped the video and laughed when I saw the Bellamy/Miller/Bryan scene because of Bryan's gratuitous shirtlessness. Like...I know the implication is not that Bellamy walked in on anything because Bryan was in pajamas and Miller was dressed but it was still fucking hilarious to me anyway because I have the sense of humor of a 12-year-old and always will. (More on them below.)

TEAM JAHA all the way. Okay, I've been thinking a little more about him and... I think it's important to differentiate between liking a character as a character and liking a character in universe. By liking a character in-universe I mean 'if X were a real person, I would like him. I agree with his choices, his sense of morality, and he has an agreeable personality.' Sometimes I dislike Jaha in-universe; I think he was objectively wrong in S2 when he chose the City of Light over getting Our Heroes out of Mt. Weather. But it also isn't important to me to like a character in-universe. Plenty of characters do bad or wrong things and if everyone always did the right thing, there'd be no conflict and no story. What I can't stand is characters who don't make sense as characters and I've been, as I said, uncertain about Jaha. I don't think the show's done him any favors by separating him from so much of the cast for so long (aside from Murphy, has he had any extended interaction with any major cast member since S1? This isn't a real question. The answer is no.) He has often just been not as entertaining as other characters because of this. And I think he's on a long arc, starting all the way back in mid-S1. Combine these things—a long arc that requires a long attention span to understand, developed slowly and in separation from most of the rest of the main cast and main events—and you have a good recipe for a widely-disliked character. I don't dislike him, but I've been frustrated by him, and uncertain how to separate in-universe frustration from badly-drawn-character frustration. BUT I increasingly think that Jaha is an excellently drawn character, probably one of the more consistent on the entire show (certainly way more consistent than Kane lol), and I'm really enjoying seeing him, the real him, again. Jaha is sounding a lot more like his S1 self. And bringing him together with Clarke is A+. More of this please. More philosophical conversations about leadership I can get behind. I love that he used to be an engineer. I love that he's unflappable—never defending himself, never self-flagellating for others' sick pleasure. I love the hair (or...lack of hair). I love the lines he's given, like the 'no leader sets out wanting to lie to their people' one. (I stg if that line doesn't make its way into fandom lore I will riot. I need recompense for every single Clarke "I bear their burdens" gifset I've ever seen.) Just...yes, more Jaha, good stuff.

I like Clarke's new/old outfit and shorter hair but I don't like that little pouf on the top. That must go. I also like, tentatively (it's always tentatively with me and Clarke because if I were to rewatch 2x16 tomorrow I'd insta-hate her again so), where Clarke is going. I like that she's still pragmatic and a little ruthless but that this is mixed in with that old idealism of hers. I do think she's becoming more of her old S1 self, while still taking into account her other experiences and how she's grown and changed. So...yeah I don't feel I have much in terms of analysis on her after having only seen this episode once, but I'm encouraged.

I know I literally just said mere hours before watching this episode that the show had abandoned the relationship between Clarke and Raven but then what do you know, a pleasant surprise: they are interacting again. I liked it. I will always want more because they're one of my favorite relationships on the show but this was so good. I like seeing Raven challenge Clarke and Clarke actually take it into account. I like the tension between them. I like seeing Raven owning her own department. And I liked the tension with Jaha because it's consistent with her general character, very hard nosed and unforgiving.

...There's a part of me that wants to ship Monty/Raven but it's just so hard to ship, in-universe, Monty or Jasper with pretty much any other character because they're so much younger. I know the show doesn't treat them like they're younger and at this point pretty much every delinquent (except Bellamy) is in the "rough contemporaries" category but... Raven is still 19 or almost 19 and Monty is still 15 maaaaybe 16, and that's a big gap, it just is. It makes me semi-uncomfortable. Especially because, even though I think difference in life experience matters more than difference in calendar age, I still think Monty and Jasper were introduced as like the little brothers of the group and it's hard for me to break out of this conception of them.

I know we didn't really see anything new with Jasper in this episode, like that wasn't in trailers or whatever (I didn't see the shower scene clip before I watched 4x02 so I that was semi-new to me), but... I still love him. He is definitely incredibly damaged and it's still fairly remarkable to me that literally no one seems to recognize that he is sick—but I have no problem watching incredibly damaged characters so I am having a good old gay time with his story. Just don't let it end in death. As always, I love any reference to him and Monty being stoner dorks and the high five did not disappoint when given greater context. Actually it got better. And I'm glad he has a spear-scar still, although—and I have no idea how spears or scars work so maybe it was realistic—I wish it had been bigger/more obvious.

I'm pretty angry that my characterizations of Jasper and Monty re: their sexualities are backwards in the angst story and almost everything else I've written of them. Dammit fandom, letting your gay!Monty headcanon seep into my brain. I have no problem with seeing Monty as gay, but there was never actually any indication that he was and, more importantly, there was indication that he's into girls going all the way back to the pilot ("Note to self: next time save the girl," and, from mid-S1: "Are you kidding me? That was there for the taking."). Anyway, it's fine; sexualities are there to be messed with in fic. More importantly, bi!Jasper becomes increasingly canon for me every day. Monty's all "I am hella uncomfortable with your nudity" and there's Jasper like "I give no fucks anymore, I'm enjoying my slow suicide and I'm going to do whatever, wanna hug???? We can get high later and whatever happens happens!"

Fuck, Jasper's taste in music is bad though. IMO. As with the Violent Femmes song in 3x01, I get that the lyrics work well and I get why this song was chosen, but I just thought both songs were obnoxious to listen to. UGH. Where's my Joy Division.

I definitely thought, when Clarke was saying goodbye to the road trippers, that she and Bellamy were going to affectionately kiss goodbye. Like, obviously I didn't think this in the intellectual sense. I just had this sudden flash of feeling: this is where the goodbye kiss goes. And then when it didn't I had to sit back and think—all this happened in a handful of seconds obviously—oh yeah, they're not established yet. That's how easy and natural their chemistry is. It's really refreshing.

Clarke's speech at the end was very interesting. Honestly... I know why it had to be her, narratively speaking, but I kinda wish in a way it had been Bellamy. Because I like his speeches more. But it wouldn't make sense so this isn't a criticism. I liked that she was responding to Jasper and Raven and Jaha all at once. (And I especially liked the call back to Jasper, the sort of delayed convo, survive versus live versus thrive.) I thought it was an interesting moment too because not only did it call back to the Ark government's season 1 decisions, but it also called back to Bellamy's early decisions on the ground. I'm thinking in particular to how he used the threat of the Grounders to inspire the camp to work and build a wall—and listen to him, of course. He instinctively harnessed the threat and used it to power the forming of the community. He was even willing to lie to keep it together: to let everyone believe Wells had been killed by a Grounder, even when Bellamy knew better. And that's what Clarke's doing, she's giving a version of the truth to the people to inspire them and to get them to work. I wonder if Bellamy sees this parallel too.

It's been 9 days since Clarke pulled the lever and now not only does Arkadia not have a council but it doesn't even have a chancellor and no one cares. NO ONE CARES. All of their government is totally gone, not just Pike but Kane and Abby (the prior de facto leaders), Sinclair (the head of a major department)...Jaha is around but he's clearly disgraced and powerless...who is running the show??? By which I mean, lol Clarke obviously. But why?? How? From where does her authority with non-delinquents derive? It's just this really weird hole in the story line imo because she's a child who 99% of the people have never met (okay arguments can be made about S2 but imo she was more Grounder-liaison than Arkadia head of state) and there's just... no...explanation...of how the community survives on the day-to-day. Except for the scene where Jasper oversees the party, which I guess, fair enough, is probably what would happen. This is all the more frustrating for me because the idea of a leaderless lawless community coming together was a major initial theme/plot of the very first episodes, and I've been missing it ever since, and here's another opportunity to engage in those themes and questions again and instead it's like...don't look over here at this humongous plot hole!!! Don't look!!

FARM STATION

I'm so tense about Miller/Bryan because in my opinion it makes sense to keep them alive and keep them together but with this show who ever freaking knows. They're the only long-term couple on the show, and the only m/m couple the show has ever had; their story's barely been told; Bryan couldn't stand on his own at this point and I feel like the pr nightmare of killing another queer kid just isn't worth it... But there have been plenty of other nonsense deaths on this show and I don't trust it. So. Anyway. I'm tense but I'm liking what I'm seeing so far. I like that we're seeing more of who Bryan is. I like that they're not forgetting where he came from or what his experiences are. I like that he's a little hard and a little on edge and a little dangerous because I think that's a good sort of person for Miller and it's more interesting. I like that they addressed his sudden change of heart last season because, while I'm not bothered really by everyone's easy forgiveness of him (I think it made narrative sense if not in-universe sense—not ideal but I can live with it), I do think that they organized that episode around the surprise of his about-face, without really explaining why he made the decision he did. Because that decision making process occurred off-screen in order to keep the surprise. I mean obviously it was pretty clear he did it For Love but I'm nevertheless glad they're discussing it.

I'm a little confused as to how Miller/Bryan ended though... I asked my mom (before I watched) if they broke up and she said no and I agree that on its face that does not look like a break up. It looks like a fight. If I were Miller or Bryan I would view it as a fight not an ending. BUT. This show doesn't really do relationship arcs, so much as it does relationship plot points here and there and you have to fill in the rest. I think. I guess it's hard to tell given how few relationships there have been, as opposed to hook ups or more informal romances, but that's sort of my feeling. A developing theory. So I guess I mean I wouldn't put it past the show to just act, next time we see one or both of them, like it's obvious they're not together anymore. I hope that's not how it goes down but I'm floating the possibility.

I asked my mom about M/H content too, so I could brace myself, and she said that, had she not known they were together, she would not have guessed based on 4x02. I agree and that makes me happy. The less of that the better. Also...while obviously I know that there's more to a relationship than just kissing or fucking, and that it's a bit silly to say "well I couldn't tell they were a couple because they didn't kiss in this episode..."—that in fact is not what I'm saying. Or what my mom was saying. My point is more that, if a couple has a basis for being a couple, like any sort of compatibility at all, you'll see it all the time, not just when they're on a date or in bed together. But what is the basis for the M/H relationship? There's nothing there to remind you why they're together when they're not...literally together...because it's random!! Because we know nothing of their common likes or interests, nothing of their way of interacting, nothing of what they like about each other, nothing about what makes them compatible—nothing! They're two names drawn out of a hat! Like the moment I thought that Bellarke would kiss even though they're not a couple...that could never happen with M/H because they have no substance! AT ALL! You can think they're cute as much as you fucking like but that doesn't give this story line any weight and I will continue to judge it harshly and bitterly until my contrary heart stops beating.

As to the actual Farm Station story line... the eternal small tragedy of high expectations I guess. I was...underwhelmed but I don't know why. I wanted to like it. I was looking forward to it. And I can't quite pinpoint what didn't do it for me in the narrative. But it seemed a little off.

One possibility is that it just didn't go into the details I most like. I am desperate for more info about the Ark, so if we're going to go to Farm Station, let's fucking go to Farm Station. Let's take a tour. Let's see Monty's bedroom. Let's take the space weed from behind the wall idc. Let's let Bryan and Monty interact even more than they did. Let's reminisce about the past. Realistically and objectively, I know that's not the focus of the show or the episode and I did get several small details of the sort I love and I shouldn't complain. I'm not complaining exactly. I'm just saying this might be a source of my personal disappointment.

Another possibility: the alleged Big Moral Decision of the Week was an easy one. Too easy. I feel a bit weird saying this because I actually came to the opposite conclusion of the majority, and not only did I come down on the Miller + Monty side of the debate (the first and so far only time they have agreed on anything in case anyone was keeping track of the State of their Relationship), but it was an incredibly obvious and easy decision for me morally speaking. Which is sort of a separate problem but I'll get to that in a minute.

However, what I really mean by it was too easy is that the actual conclusion, to save the immediate victims at the expense of later people, was literally the only place the narrative could go. Which meant that the conclusion wasn't a surprise, and the tension leading up to the conclusion was lacking. Bellamy as a character, regardless of what one thinks of the 3a massacre, cannot handle more immediate deaths on his hands, in terms of casual viewer reactions and after all of this consistent narrative shaming. He just can't be seen standing over dead bodies, literally or just-off-screen, right now in the story. So obviously he's going to save the slaves. Also it's only 2 episodes in and there's no way they can come home with the magical mystical life saving machinery this early. It's too easy. Not that one problem can't be solved and then followed by ten more new problems but that's not how this show operates. It piles on the problems, resolves some mid-season, and the rest at the very end. The only moment of actual surprise I felt was when I saw them walk out with the thing, but even then I recognized in about 0.2 seconds that it was a fake out—of the audience and of the Grounders themselves. When the seemingly deep debate is about a non-issue it loses all of its sense of importance and becomes essentially a waste of episode time instead of the center of the episode.

So that being said... I know it's a hard argument to make to say simultaneously that the conclusion of the narrative is obvious and that I came to an equally obvious opposite conclusion. And I also know that something can be obvious and still narratively tense/morally gray/difficult to watch/otherwise captivating (for example: destroying Mt. Weather in 2x16). BUT. I think there is a disconnect between how obvious it was and how obvious it was supposed to be. I think the intention was for it to be a reasonable-people-can-disagree sort of thing. I think it was supposed to cause internal conflict in the viewer and its conclusion was meant to anger at least some of the audience. But that's not how it worked out for me. Perhaps this will sound callous, but I really did not care about the enslaved Sky People. I have no idea who these people are. I don’t even get what they're doing there, like what the purpose of them for Azgeda is. I'm sure they used the word 'slave' not just to be accurate but to immediately bring up certain associations in the viewers' minds; it's a really charged term for good reason. And obviously, intellectually, I know slavery is bad, and Azgeda is bad, and these are Sky People, and Bryan et. al. know them, and that girl is really small and sad looking. But none of this resonated for me emotionally. Maybe I'm dead inside. But it felt an awful lot like being told instead of being shown. I cared about the Mt. Weather people, because I knew some of them well after an entire season and because I'd been mediating on the tragic impossibility of their situation in general for roughly as long. Their deaths were narratively and in-universe inevitable, even heavily foreshadowed, but it still hurt to see. These people? They matter less to me than saving all the characters I already know, people who may have to be sacrificed later in order to protect these Unknowns now. It's no contest. This is obviously very much a question of perspective—Harper made a good point in saying it's like them at Mt. Weather, because Jaha then wanted to do essentially what Miller and Monty wanted to do in 4x02, which is to say sacrifice a few of his own to save the many, and I thought that Jaha was objectively wrong in that instance. (Part of that is that the narrative later proved him wrong: almost all of his merry band of cultists died on the journey to the CoL. But even up front, the idea of sacrificing the main characters is untenable within the story, so he was automatically wrong.) But it's the narrative's job to shape the perspective, and it has a lot of power to make an issue morally gray or clear black and white. I don't think the narrative did its job in this instance.

I'm still not sure I'm doing a good job explaining (or defending) my lack of emotional response here. Basically, I felt like the Farm Station story, like the intro with Ilian, and like the Kabby stuff as well, was paint-by-numbers. It was 'okay let's get this done, one two three, all the bases touched, story complete.' Rote. It didn't have the nuance of the show at its best, like the last episodes of Season 2 or even the Clarke and Jaha convo in this very episode.

I did like the scene where Monty confronts his father's killer, first because of Bryan's line about this being "Monty's kill" because it speaks to how he lived for four months during the S2-S3 hiatus and that interests me, but also because I thought that scene was spot on for how I see Monty. He is ruthless in a lot of ways but he's not a hands-dirty type. He doesn't hesitate in his moral judgments and as far as we know he doesn't have much of any regrets (I've been annoyed at him not reacting enough to Mt. Weather—maybe he really isn't plagued by guilt about it at all—an interesting possibility but one I still think should be on screen a little). He's very sure of himself. But he's barely even held a firearm (like once in S2 and then a little in S3), I'm pretty sure his only one-on-one kill is his own mother...and that's pretty unusual on this show. (Clarke, Bellamy, Jasper, Octavia, Miller, and Harper, and I'm going to have to assume Bryan, have all killed, sometimes with their bare hands, and/or were consistently using firearms going back to S1.) I definitely would have been surprised to see him axe that Ice Nation fellow in the face. But I also would have been shocked to see Monty show him mercy. I thought that the route they went, having him sentence the man to death without ever touching him, was such a good choice, a powerful moment for real without being out of character.

I feel like I haven't said much of anything about Bellamy....again, wonderful. He is such a great leader with these kids. I think he really walks the line between military-style leader and just straight up Dad. (And yes I thought he was adorable with the small child at the end.) It might be more subtle than last episode, but I still think groundwork is being laid for Bellamy to fully come into his own as a leader, to the same extent that Clarke already (BIZARRELY AND PREMATURELY) has, if not more. Basically what I'm saying is Blake for Chancellor 2018.

I have long headcanoned that Farm Station crashed in Pennsylvania. It's cold and snowy enough to be "Ice Nation" territory; close enough to be reached within a day by Rover, as we saw in 3x01 (and here? IDK how long this episode was supposed to cover but it looked like a pretty short period to me); but far enough away that Pike, Hannah, Bryan, et. al. could easily be lost for 3-4 months without running into our heroes in Virginia. I still think this is a plausible theory but man, those mountains do not look passably Pennsylvanian to me. Not that I'm a Pennsylvanian mountain expert. And not that they shot in Pennsylvania honestly. Anyway my headcanon remains.

I thought the moment with Clarke meeting Riley again was really sweet. It somehow helped more than the Bryan stuff at the Station itself to remind me that these are Sky People—not just poor mistreated human beings but poor mistreated friends and neighbors. Also again this is my favorite society so seeing some more unexpected connections among them was cool. I do hope we see Riley again, not because I care about him yet, but because it's annoying to see someone obviously foregrounded as a New Character to Watch only for them to disappear. Like with Mel in season 2. Ruined expectations are really annoying and not to be confused with "being realistic" or "being shocking."

#the 100 #the 100 spoilers #s4 reactions #clarke griffin #raven reyes #thelonious jaha #monty green #jasper jordan #nathan miller #bryan #bryan the 100 #bellamy blake #spoiler alert grounders boring #occasional shit talking even though i liked a lot of it #the year 2017 #2017: fandom thoughts #2017: the 100 s4

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preciousmetals0 · 4 years

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Economy Grapples; Targeting Apples; New Great Stuff Pick!

Economy Grapples; Targeting Apples; New Great Stuff Pick!:

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

When are you gonna come down? When are you going to land?

Filings for initial jobless claims jumped by 4.4 million last week, the U.S. Department of Labor reported today … and the market rallied.

No, this isn’t déjà vu. This isn’t a glitch in the Matrix … no matter how much we wish it was.

It gets worse. During the past five weeks, the U.S. economy saw 26.4 million people file for unemployment benefits. In other words, we’ve lost all the jobs created since the Great Recession of 2008 … and the market rallied.

According to Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics, the latest jobless claims data could translate to an unemployment rate of 23% when the Department of Labor releases its official jobs data next week.

The previous peak for U.S. unemployment was 24.9% during the Great Depression.

So, with that horrendous backdrop, why is Wall Street in rally mode today?

One word: Oil.

For the second day in a row, the U.S. June oil futures contract soared, climbing more than 25% to trade firmly above $17 per barrel. International oil prices topped $20 per barrel.

Traders are betting on U.S. oil production cuts and rising tensions in the Middle East. President Trump provided the latter with yesterday’s threat to “destroy” Iranian gunboats in the Persian Gulf. As for U.S. production cuts … well, with U.S. shale oil companies on the verge of bankruptcy, this one’s a no-brainer.

The Takeaway:

On days like today, I feel like I should have stayed on the farm. I should have listened to my old man.

Practically every economic indicator points toward the worst U.S. economy since the Great Depression, and yet, Wall Street rallied. It’s bizarro world.

The problem here is that we are investors. We rely on accurate data to make decisions. Right now, that data says to duck and cover.

But, if you completely duck and cover, you miss out on potential gains in this irrational market at best. And, at worst, you lose money by betting against the market.

Here at Great Stuff, we’re convinced that the market has not seen the bottom. But you can be right and still lose money. Remember, markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

So, while you hold most of your capital in safe havens like gold, currencies and bonds, it might be worthwhile to throw a bit of cash toward the market’s insanity.

(And I realize that by tilting a little bullish, I may have just called a top to the recent rally. Ha!)

But to do this, you need to do it safely. One of Great Stuff’s major themes this year has been finding your guide.

I cannot stress this enough: The market is far from normal right now.

Going out on your own is dangerous.

You need someone to point you in the right direction, especially when looking for positive returns in the current market madness.

That’s why it pays to listen to Banyan Hill experts like Jeff Yastine — those investors and researchers who have been there, done that when it comes to bizarre, out-of-touch markets.

When sifting through Wall Street’s noise, Jeff relies on a simple formula that lets him see through the financial smoke and mirrors to predict which stocks have the true potential to soar.

Not to mention, this formula helped Jeff show his readers’ cumulative gains of 1,091% in the past five years alone. And that’s the kind of guide you want to stick with through this topsy-turvy tumult.

You know you want to learn more about this formula, so what are you waiting for? Click here now.

Good: Stay on Target

Sometimes, your best just isn’t good enough. That’s quickly becoming a common theme for corporations this year, especially in retail.

This morning, Target Inc. (NYSE: TGT) reported that month-to-date comparable sales rose 5% in April. What’s more, quarter-to-date same-store sales are up 7%, while online sales skyrocketed 275% year over year.

Considering that U.S. retail sales plunged 8.7% in March, Target really hit the mark.

But Wall Street just wasn’t satisfied. Analysts pointed out that, while sales for essential goods are up by double digits, Target’s sales for high-margin goods, such as apparel and accessories, are down 40% for the quarter.

Furthermore, the brokerage bunch expects 8.9% same-store sales growth from Target — well above the company’s projected 7% growth.

In short, Target is performing rather well when you consider the U.S. economy’s pandemic lockdown. It’s just not enough to appease overzealous Wall Street analysts.

Better: Apple Gets an ARM Up

Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) kicked Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC) to the curb. According to a Bloomberg report, the long-anticipated ARM Mac chip could arrive as early as next year.

The company already moved toward ARM-based chips for iPhones and iPads, and performance has grown significantly in recent years. So much so, that Apple’s ARM chips now regularly beat Intel’s Mac chips in benchmark tests.

According to Bloomberg, Apple already has “at least one Mac” powered by Apple chips that’s ready to go in 2021. The new chips reportedly have at least 12 cores stacked up behind their processing power, putting Intel’s four-core Mac chips to shame.

(Quick fact: Put simply, the more cores a processor has, the more tasks the device can process at once.)

The Bloomberg report also notes that Apple tapped its favorite fabricator to make its new ARM Mac chips: Taiwan Semiconductor Co. (NYSE: TSM). So, not only is this news positive for Apple, it could help Taiwan Semi move a bit further away from reliance on Huawei Technologies Co. for revenue growth.

Sorry, Intel, but you’re out in the cold on this one.

Best: Great Stuff Picks!

It’s been a while since Great Stuff has come across a company that we believe in enough to recommend buying. Today, however, we have a winner.

Citrix Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CTXS) is the consummate work-from-home company.

The firm specializes in networking, virtual apps, virtual desktops and cloud-based collaboration and file sharing. If you’re among the millions working from home right now, chances are you use at least one piece of software or service from Citrix.

Because of the surge in at-home work, Citrix saw a blowout first quarter. Net income soared 82% year over year, with adjusted earnings beating the consensus estimate by $0.56 per share. Revenue spiked 20% to $861 million and beat Wall Street’s expectations.

Citrix even put full-year guidance above the Street’s target, and that strength is poised to continue. In its earnings release, Citrix said:

In response to our customers’ need to quickly support nearly all employees working from home, we created a more flexible, shorter duration offering in the form of a limited use on-premises term subscription at a discounted price. As a result, we saw considerable upside to ‘other subscription’ reported revenue.

In other words, the company adapted rapidly to soaring work-at-home demand, and it even priced subscription packages competitively. This competitive pricing will be key going forward.

Despite a move to reopen the economy in many states, the pandemic won’t let up anytime soon. Furthermore, many companies may decide that the work-from-home model is more cost effective once the shelter-in-place directives are lifted.

As such, Citrix should continue to see impressive revenue growth through the end of the year and through the first half of 2021.

The best part about CTXS shares right now? Wall Street investors sold-off on the news. The shares dropped more than 6% despite the company’s beat-and-raise quarter. This profit-taking is our opportunity.

The Bottom Line: Buy CTXS.

You yelled “Marco,” and now it’s “Polo” time!

This week, our inbox is nigh overflowing with all the greatness you all sent in. Today, we talk about returning vets, essential faith and retro-futuristic late ‘80s rock. Now, I’ll stop yapping and turn it over to you. Here’s what Great Stuff readers are thinking about this week:

What’s Essential at Heart

My store is considered essential so I’m still working. Plus I am PRN as a caregiver. When I’m not working, I’m in the YouVersion Bible app.

— Jennifer L.

Thank you for writing in, Jennifer! No matter how dire things may seem, remember that you and every other essential worker are what’s keeping this whole perilous house of cards from — well, best not to put that bad juju out there…

Regardless, thank you for what you do and the care you provide. Your email is a valid reminder for everyone out there: Whatever you do and however you do it, keep the faith. (Like wearing matador boots and a tight pair of chinos.) Losing a few portfolio percentage points has nothing on losing your sanity.

Futures Facts

You realize it was oil futures that were negative. — John A.

Yessir. Futures. Oil. Future oil. It’s top of the page in the article linked in Tuesday’s issue, copied here for posterity.

Did you know dogs and bees can smell fear? Did you know the human head weighs eight pounds? Did you know my neighbor has three rabbits? Did you know that underneath the Denver airport — OK, I’ll stop before we “disappear.”

Warren Pieces

Mr. zevons masterpiece work “transverse city” though made a long time ago so fits [our] dystopian present situation I can’t stop playing it… splendid isolation indeed.

— Chris S.

Not to mention, the absolute quality of that album’s cameos.

Jerry Garcia, David Gilmour, Neil Young and Chick Corea?! The late ‘80s were strange, strange times. Thank you for taking me back to them, Chris. If you’re looking for some tape to spool, some wax to spin or … tracks to stream, I guess, run straight down to check out Warren Zevon’s Transverse City.

Wet/Vet Newbies

Hello Joseph your insights and information are most welcome. I’m a “rookie” mini vet (whatever that means). I guess a wet newbie who took a long hiatus who is interested in knowing how progressively bad the economic news will affect the markets. I don’t expect a fortune teller but will appreciate your insights.

— Max G.

First off, thank you for tuning in, Max, and welcome back from your hiatus!

See, the best part about Great Stuff — well, speaking for ourselves here — is that we welcome rookies and vets alike. No matter how much you know or don’t know about the market, just know that Great Stuff has the know-how to demystify any market know-nothing shenanigans … you know?

Buy, Buy, Buy

What to buy now

— Lenore C.

Why, you picked a perfect time to write in, Lenore! Check out our write-up on CTXS above. (You didn’t scroll past it, now, did you? These are Great Stuff picks we’re talking about!)

I expect to see the same scenario play out with other companies this manic earnings season. So, keep a close, discerning eye out over the next month or so. I’ve harped on this for a while now, but every company you see reports from will face some kind of COVID-19 impact — it’s just a matter of how much damage.

It’s Wall Street’s overreaction or underreaction to said damage that unveils your bargain buys.

Nevertheless, do tread carefully, Lenore, Max and all you lurking vets and newbies out there! Today’s bizarre action is just a glimpse of the rough ride ahead through earnings season.

Of course, you don’t have to go it alone. Navigating the murky market waters is always best with a guide. Click here to find yours!

I want to give a huge “thanks!” to Jennifer, John, Chris, Max, Lenore and everyone else who wrote in! I

Have you written to us yet? No?! Feel free to speak your mind — drop us a line at [email protected].

That’s a wrap for today, but if you still crave more Great Stuff, check us out on social media: Facebook and Twitter.

Until next time, be Great!

Regards,

Joseph Hargett

Editor, Great Stuff

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