#speculation and fanon before anyone comes for my ass!

[blorbocedes]

Seeing how things are between Lewis and Alonso today, i wonder how thing would be between Brocedes if Nico were still racing. Could they eventually reconcile?

absolutely, if Nico was racing and was gracefully going in circles in a midfield/back of the grid like Seb in the Aston, Lewis would talk about how they used to be friends as kids and had some pretty great battles on track but always respected each other blah blah, because Lewis can be nice to you if he's beating you

you have to realise fernando BRIBED his own team and demanded they prioritise him over lewis. like cannot be overstated the rancidity and mind games, esp to a rookie!! but then lewis got to beat him year after year after year, racking up WDCs while fernando was in the shit mclaren and alpine that broke down every other week. even his friendship with seb got really strong once it was evident he was not winning a wdc in that ferrari. nico never gave lewis the chance to beat him after 2016, he left wearing the crown. and racing was their whole relationship, since they were kids, so in a way nico leaving racing was nico leaving lewis, and like a true Capricorn lewis will never say his name publicly again

[canonicallyobserving911]

“I’m still in love with you but... I needed to learn how to love myself too!”

Fanonwriter2023 on AO3

Where CANON and FANON collide!

Season 7 FANON Speculation

Buddie Multi-Chapter Fanfic - Hiatus Reading

Chapter 4 is now available on AO3.

“I’m still in love with you but... I needed to learn how to love myself too!”

Currently 4 chapters completed: 82.3K words Rated: Mature

One chapter will be posted at a time.

___________ Here are two snippets from chapter 4 because Eddie’s in El Paso and Buck’s in L.A. ___________

Eddie’s offered a job with the EPFD

A few minutes later, Captain Franklin walks around their ladder truck and says, “Eddie Diaz, I’m so glad you decided to take me up on my offer”.

“No, no I’m just here as a courtesy.  You asked if I would come by and I’m here.”  Eddie replies as he keeps shaking his head no.

His response doesn’t seem to affect Captain Franklin because he’s still smiling. “Walk with me and I’ll give you a tour of the firehouse.

Fifteen minutes later, Eddie’s standing in Captain Franklin’s office and he’s not even sure why but he feels like he should at least hear what the captain has to say.

“Have a seat.”  Captain Franklin motions for him to sit in one of the chairs located in front of his desk.

“What do you think about this station?  It’s brand new… it’s only been opened for a couple of months.”

“It’s nice and it reminds me of the 118 because the floorplans are practically identical.”

Captain Franklin nods then says, “I was serious yesterday when I said there’s a spot for you here.  It’s yours if you want it.”

“But I haven’t even applied and it’s mine, just like that?”

“Just like that.  I saw all I needed to see yesterday.  You’re a hard worker and anyone who can handle a situation the way you did yesterday is more than qualified.  I’ve been doing this job for almost 20 years which means I’ll be retiring soon and I want to leave this firehouse in the hands of someone capable.”

__________

Buck argues with Taylor

“I—I uh, apologized for cheating on you and you said we were starting over so don’t blame that bullshit on me because you forgave me remember?”

“Yeah, I remember but I decided while I was sitting in my car with no place to go that you needed to be taught a lesson.”

“A lesson… what the actual fuck, Taylor?  You’re not in a position to teach anyone anything with your unethical ass.  You rushed the Jonah story, you made both the 118 and the LAFD look bad and now the public doesn’t trust us.”

A merciless laugh escapes her.  “Oh, spare me Buckley, please.  Can someone queue the violins for this act Evan Buckley is portraying?”

He huffs because this is ridiculous.  “It’s the truth but you don’t care about that do you? And since you brought up something that happened five years ago, why didn’t you mention how Bobby told you the public has to be able to trust us?  But you only remember the parts you deem worthy, right?  This is bullshit and you’re full of it.”

“Cry me a damn river.  That’s the story of your life, isn’t it?  It’s always about poor Buck the man who always thinks everyone’s out to get him.  The man who thinks no one likes him or better yet the man who believes everyone leaves him.”  She smiles brightly after those words leave her lips.

Buck pulls back because that hurt.  He told her those things about his insecurities in confidence but now she’s throwing them in his face.

“Well… at least people like me!  And I have friends but you steamroll everyone you meet.  It’s no wonder you didn’t have anywhere to go when you walked out on me.  Where are your friends, Taylor?  Oh, that’s right you don’t have any with your mean ass.  So back the hell up off me.”

___________

Fic Summary: Months after Buck and Eddie were hit by the same lightning strike; they’re still struggling with the aftermath of it.  But before they make their love confessions, they’ll spend time getting to know themselves as individuals first. Eddie learns to enjoy the simple things in life as he participates in activities on his own and with new friends while Buck learns the rest of the 31-year-old deep dark family secret about his conception and birth. Their journey to forever is still a work in progress but once they finally admit they’re in love with each other, everything that follows their love confessions will be cataclysmic.

__________

Chapter Summaries

Chapter 1 - Eddie makes a new friend while Buck receives devastating news regarding the sperm donation he made for Connor and Kameron.

Chapter 2 - Buck does a lot of research to learn more about the abnormalities found in his red blood cells and Eddie starts a new therapy journey that’s all about him and not the traumas he’s experienced.

Chapter 3 - After more than a month, Buck and Eddie finally spend time together outside of work but it doesn’t end well and they part with a lot of uncertainty regarding their places in each other’s lives.

Chapter 4 - Eddie has a few realizations about his life which causes him to consider moving back to El Paso, TX while Buck continues to be reminded of his past which causes him to take an impromptu road trip across America.

__________

Read chapters 1, 2, 3 & 4 are available on AO3.

Continue reading on AO3

[bakugouisabitch]

What do you think Ryou's soul room looks like?

sorry for the late reply. I honestly had some things to do lately and I knew it would take me some time to reply to this, anyway

I’ve seen many posts speculating about Ryou’s soul room and from what they say overall they mostly see it as this room of a simple boy, ofc, but with some dark traces or secrets hidden away thanks to the influence of the ring (see here and there) - which is a very realistic way of seeing his soul room imo because no matter how many times they try to deny it (in canon itself) the spirit of the ring has 100% been a big influence in Ryou’s life . period. It left an impact, for sure, and naturally so, otherwise, it’s just sloppy characterisation which is a common bad habit with the Bakuras I noticed anyway I am digressing...

Drawing conclusions from the fanon’s pov, I also tried to analyse some of the canon content... In the anime we were blessed with that wonderful, good-quality animated episode 79 which is literally just a Bakura filler cause none of it is shown in in the manga and in that episode (if you watch the sub version cause it was cut out in the dub) we can see, before that moment where Malik and Yami Bakura are talking “inside Bakura’s host”, a transition that goes:

...from Ryou’s dreaming face -> to Domino City -> to outer space -> and then this:

I’m 99% sure this is the animators’ idea/theory of Ryou’s soul room - which looks very similar to Yugi’s in fact.

You can clearly notice that it starts with an “opening of doors” sequence, almost like we’re entering a room, and it ends with another set of opening doors as well in the same ancient style of Windows Moviemaker. What i guess we can decipher from that, is that Malik was looking around for Yami Bakura, entering Ryou’s soul room at first and then leaving it. The next “room” we see might even be Yami Bakura’s soul room - even if it looks just like a vast space/infinite sky.

Here we see Malik in the middle of this infinite space. The “opening of doors” that precedes this setting is a clear sign for me that we are NOT in Ryou’s soul room anymore here. Also cause Malik says:

“...found it.” So he was probably looking around for Yami Bakura’s soul room, proving in fact that he was in Ryou’s before that. We even see Yami Bakura “flying” and coming from somewhere else to reach Malik:

...so we can’t even imagine how big and vast and almost infinite Bakura’s soul room might be (the concept of it being infinite even makes sense when you think about how big/endless Atem’s soul room is - the labyrinth of stairs)

Yami Bakura’s first reaction to that is:

which proves to us even more that Malik really managed to enter their soul rooms in this scene. Also because it makes sense since he gained access with it through the Rod. I like the idea of Yami Bakura having to fly to talk with him because I think his soul room is so vast and has more to offer than anyone can imagine...

ANYWAY, sorry i am digressing again - we were talking about Ryou here:

Ryou’s soul room looks pretty similar to Yugi’s: a room full of scattered toys of their childhood. What is peculiar about Ryou’s is that, between all the toys of cars and Godzilla and a big ass soldier, we see what looks like some sort of Barbie dolls:

here is one, and another:

One could, of course, conclude from that that Ryou liked to play with Barbie dolls as a kid (which is fucking CUTE) BUT i have to say that seeing that second doll placed right next to a figurine of a plane with a broken wing kind of feels like... telling to me... I know these are all headcanons but what if these dolls are supposed to be Amane’s toys?

What we know about Amane - Bakura's deceased sister - is that she died at a young age, with her mother, in a car accident - so it’s no reach to think that this plane and the fact that it is broken might even suggest that some of these toys might have even belonged to Ryou’s little sister at the time of the tragic incident?? And he keeps them in his soul room as a memory of a past long gone in which they used to play together and he was more happy ofc and careless?? fucking tragic, i know.

So... what I’m gathering from that animation sequence is that the toys in Ryou’s soul room do NOT ONLY symbolise some sort of innocence in him - kind of like in Yugi’s case - but they give me more of a nostalgic meaning, because in fact if we have to point out the difference between his and Yugi’s childhood, in Ryou’s case it’s marked by memories of a past long gone, a state of being he never got to live again ever since the tragic event. But the fact that he keeps them in his soul room symbolise like a longing, imo, of that peaceful state of mind he used to know back then, only as a child. *cries*

So, in conclusion, if you want to hear my version of Ryou’s soul room it would in fact be very similar to what the animators did there: A scattered pile of toys and objects of his past, his innocence, and his nostalgia. More objects that allude to his sister cause let’s not forget he still writes letters to her in heaven like shown in the manga and his mother, and the natural grieving that comes with it. Plus, i would add some duel monster cards and most of all some figurines of his DnD campaigns, cause they left an impact on his life as well. I’d imagine most of them are placed neatly inside a glass case, like a proud collection, but the ones hidden in the back are stained with blood and have cracks on their surface - cause a big portion of traumatic events that happened in his life were, unfortunately, alluded to these DnD figurines.

Since we can also see walls in some depictions of these soul rooms (like in Anzu’s case we can see them belonging to a dance room), I like to imagine Ryou’s walls to be transparent, made of glass, and reflecting onto that vast sky-like place that seems to belong to Yami Bakura’s soul “room”. Cause as much as it might be painful for him, he is always fully exposed to the spirit. Whatever goes on inside his room, or his head, is for the spirit to see and control, whereas he still has no clue from where or what that spirit comes from - and it’s portrayed in that infinite space he can only gaze upon but never venture in. But I like to think, by the time the Millennium World arc took place, most of his DnD figurines were immersed in sand, and the vast space he gazed upon changed into that of an ancient village, wrecked and abandoned, but for Ryou finally clear to see.

sorry this got so long omg

[littleoddwriter]

BoP!Roman Sionis has BPD (in my opinion) | Headcanon

Disclaimer: This is purely a headcanon with some “evidence” from the film. I have been diagnosed with BPD. This is by no means meant to invalidate any other headcanons (like the Bipolar one, which I’ll also mention here). Please don’t come for my ass, thanks!

Personally, I headcanon BoP!Roman Sionis to suffer from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). For one, I have been diagnosed with it, so I feel more connected to him through that (so, I may be projecting a liiittle bit). But he also shows quite a few signs for it, albeit it probably wasn’t intentional, nor does he have to have a specific disorder assigned to him anyway. Still!

I saw a lot of people assign Bipolar Disorder to him from the day the movie premiered, and while I can’t deny the possibility, nor do I want to take away anyone’s headcanon, one reason why I was always a bit “Hhh, idk” with it is because his mood swings are way too rapid. They happen in such quick succession, whereas Bipolar Disorder is known for- not gradual, but more long-lasting and slower changing moods/mood swings. BPD on that note happens in moments, almost. You can be feeling like you’re on top of the world, a God even, in one  moment, and the very next - usually because of a trigger - you plummet, you feel everything at once, it is overwhelming. Most common are anxiety, guilt, or anger. Rage. Which Roman displays. He is also quick to calm down after an episode and act as if nothing has happened at all, which is also quite common in people with BPD.

It is of course possible that he has Bipolar and BPD. I’ve met some people who suffered from both (and more). It’s possible and quite common, since BPD often comes with other disorders anyway. They don’t cancel each other out. So, if anyone headcanons him with Bipolar, then that’s what he has and you can do whatever you want with that, I support that. I just feel as if sometimes people reached a quick verdict because the mood swings were so potent that they might have immediately connected it to Bipolar, because that’s pretty much all that people usually know about it. Or someone who suffers from it has seen Roman and thought “I see myself in that” and that’s super valid because that’s basically what I’m doing here, too. I still thought I’d bring it to attention, since it almost became Fanon at one point and I just felt as though the more plausible answer has been overlooked all this time, I’m not going to lie.

Onto the signs/”evidence” of Roman suffering from BPD that I found/have personally interpreted that way (again, you can interpret/headcanon whatever you want):

Please note that there are 9 Symptoms of BPD that are used to diagnose people. You have to show at least 5 of them to qualify for a diagnosis. It can’t be diagnosed before the age of 18, and it’s important that the symptoms have been going on for a long time in a certain pattern that aligns with BPD, rather than anything else because most BPD symptoms are ones that show in other disorders as well.

Intense fear of real or imagined abandonment and frantic attempts/efforts to stop said abandonment from happening: Roman is shown to 1) not handle rejection well at all (example: Keo, Dinah’s betrayal - and his reaction), 2) cling onto other people (example: Dinah), 3) need reassurance that he’s not being betrayed/abandoned (example: Dinah), etc. You get the idea. He reacts extremely to these things. Mr Keo rejects him? He gets murdered. Dinah betrays him? He breaks down completely.

Intense mood swings: What I said above - his mood swings are quick and extreme. He’s agitated, even raging, in one moment and in the next he jumps up, is giddy and excited, as though nothing ever happened.

A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterised by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation: Just like moods, and helped by the black/white thinking, opinions of other people can change in a heartbeat. Also characterised by a BPD-exclusive thing, called Splitting. One moment you’ll love someone to the moon and back, then they make one mistake, change their tone, anything, and you hate them, they’re evil, you want them gone. Sounds as unhealthy and exhausting as it is. Again with Dinah - she used to just be a singer in his club, which he was fascinated by. She comforted him. Suddenly, he made her his new driver and his opinion of her didn’t necessarily change, but it intensified, he “loved” her more than anything, or anyone else at that time - idealised her (I’d say that she momentarily was his new Favourite Person (FP, also BPD exclusive), even though Zsasz has been his FP for over a decade by then). Then she betrayed him and while he didn’t want Zsasz to kill her immediately, you could say that he may have wanted to do it himself. He definitely hated her at that point. She was evil, a betrayer. She needed to be gone. 

Distorted and unstable self-image or sense of self: Basically, I’d say that his carefully constructed vain facade is part of it. I think he built this flamboyant, outgoing persona to appeal to others and be able to socialise better. He lives off of approval and attention, and the best way to get it is to be loud and eccentric the way we know him in the film. And he is narcissistic to a fault, which you could attribute to BPD as well, but also his lack of a clear sense of self, therefore forcing it by idealising himself almost. Just my thoughts, though. The more valuable evidence for this is Black Mask. Roman has this different persona, both as protection, and as a means to let go, to get away from himself, to be even more cruel, etc. But he doesn’t always make use of it, hell, for all we know, the end of the movie really was the first time (in a long time, perhaps) he’s actually been Black Mask. I believe that he doesn’t really know who he is, or who he wants to be. Black Mask knows it, though, and he is better in ways that Roman can’t push himself to be. At least that’s my take on it. I just feel as if Roman’s very flamboyant and eccentric persona is something he consciously built, that it’s someone he pretends to be, even though deep down he knows he’s not that. Or maybe it’s just a part of him that he amplifies because he doesn’t know what else there is to him, doesn’t see anything else significant to himself. You know?

Impulsive and often dangerous behaviours: Roman abuses substances (he takes drugs, drinks alcohol), especially when he is trying to cope after being rejected (Keo). Other things would only be speculation, so I won’t list them, but it’s safe to say that he does show this symptom.

Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, or recurrent physical fights): Not much to say to that, if you’re reading this, you have seen the film and know exactly why I say that he clearly shows this symptom.

Paranoia and Dissociation: It’s not an entirely clear thing, but I’d argue that it’s safe to say that he shows clear signs of dissociation and paranoia. [I’d also say he is shown to be psychotic (he’s definitely delusional and has auditory hallucinations, so- psychosis).] For the paranoia, I doubt I have to say a lot about this, but- Black Canary again. “You wouldn’t betray me, would you?” after he’s already been betrayed by Harley and then Erika, who he thought has been laughing at him. He can’t trust anyone. Not even Zsasz, apparently. Because when Victor told him Dinah is a rat, he asked him “Are you sure?”, making it clear that in this very moment, he didn’t trust him either. I feel like he probably doesn’t even trust Victor as blindly as we were made to believe anyway, due to his paranoia. [Now for the psychosis: You can hear too loud and distorted laughter when Keo rejects him, when Erika supposedly laughed at him, and when Victor tells him Dinah is a rat. I’d say that it’s safe to assume that he hears this laughter in his head - auditory hallucinations.] He also dissociates, when he becomes Black Mask, and when he is having an episode because of the diamond being stolen. Only Victor could ground him by intense physical contact and seeking just as intense eye contact. 

As you can see, I can assign 7 of the 9 criteria to Roman (the two that have been left out were self-harming/suicidal behaviour and chronic feelings of emptiness, both of which I can’t determine through what we’ve been shown in the film, so). 

Still, to me, he may as well suffer from both BPD and Bipolar, which would make his psychosis even more likely (psychosis can also be caused by BPD, but actual hallucinations are less common, usually we are more likely to “only” experience delusions).

If anyone’s even read all of this - What are your thoughts on this? Do you think it’s plausible? Did you have a wholly different opinion? I’d love to hear anything people have to say, as long as it is respectful!

[ckret2]

So I've been deeply pulled into the Radiosnake pairing bc of your fantastic writing! Problem is, now I have fic ideas but no knowledge of the Hazbin background. Can you tellI me where I can get more Hazbin info? I've only watched the pilot and read your stuff. I heard there were comics??

That is an excellent question anon, because right now it is really hard to get Hazbin background easily.

Okay, so, the canon info on Hazbin Hotel can be sort of sorted into four tiers, from most to least canon.

Tier 1: The Definitely Canon

There is, of course, the pilot. And then there is an Angel Dust prequel comic, only seven pages of which have been released so far. We’ve been told it’s gonna be finished and we’ve had glimpses of in-progress prequel comics for a couple other characters—most prominently Alastor’s and Charlie’s—but so far that unfinished Angel Dust comic is the only one that’s been officially released.

Finding the in-progress comic pages is... a challenge. Nobody, as far as I can tell, has been specifically collecting all of the pages we’ve seen so far. I was able to scrounge up:

Couple more Angel pages

some Alastor pages

another Alastor page

a random Alastor panel

another random Alastor panel—I’ve seen the full page of this before, Alastor goes “Hello ladies!” and they go “HELLO ALASTOR~<3″ but I can’t find the full page now

There’s a smattering more canon panels on the artist faustisse’s twitter, but I haven’t dug them all out, and some of the posts I’m gonna link in a lil bit have a glimpse of another panel.

If you haven’t already heard of Helluva Boss, I recommend looking into it as well. It’s a second series being created by the same folks, different cast of characters but set in the same version of Hell, so any canon details we learn in Helluva also apply to Hazbin.

Helluva’s pilot is here. Plus a cute music video here.

Earlier this month, during a BLM charity stream hosted by show artist Ashley Nichols—she runs regular streams under the title “HuniCast”—they released a few sneak peaks of future Helluva scenes, all compiled here.

And that’s it for canon. Two pilots, a music video, a smattering of future scenes, part of one comic, a few WIP pages/panels from other comics.

Tier 2: Pseudo-Canon

Everything else we currently know about Hazbin (and Helluva) are things that the creators have told us. Consequently, they’re all pseudo-canon—and likely subject to change in the future as the shows and comics are further developed and released. Some details that were released/described in the past have been contradicted at other times, or else radically changed by the time the pilot came out.

(For example, when Alastor was first created years and years ago as an OC with no plans for Hazbin, he was a demon deer who could shapeshift into a human shape—now he’s a demonized human with a few deer traits. And Charlie and Cherri Bomb used to look very different.)

So until and unless they make it into canon, all these pseudo-canon details are subject to change and should be taken with a grain of salt—but, they also comprise most of what we know about the characters’ backstory and the as-yet-unaired characters.

Pseudo-canon info on Hazbin is scattered mainly between two sources: the creators’ twitter accounts, and livestreams where they take questions and talk about the making of the show. If you and livestreams do not get along (my ADHD and livestreams do not get along), or if you don’t want to wade years and years back into twitter accounts to dig up every scrap of info on the characters the creators have ever mentioned, collating all the pseudo-canon info is gonna be hard. (It’s gonna be hard even if you do want to sit through the streams and dig through all their tweets.) Lots of fans, me included, depend on the absolutely heroic work of various fans who are willing and able to watch hours-long streams and collate a list of canon factoids released during the streams. I’ve reblogged as many of these posts as I’ve been able to find:

Alastor’s sound design (on twitter)

Alastor's Sound Design (post I made with screenshots of weird—but very interesting—subtitles slipped into the aforementioned video)

Sir Pentious and Cherri Bomb’s sound design

Niffty and Husk’s sound design

Charlie, Katie, and Tom’s sound design

Intro song’s sound design

Happy Hotel’s sound design

details from Faustisse (including a pic of a couple costume designs. Most of these posts come from zatyrlucy, who’s been doing a fantastic job of going stream-by-stream to get lists of details from the regular streams by Ashley Nichols and by comic artist Faustisse.)

more details from Faustisse (including a pic of the Von Eldritch family dining room)

Faustisse 3 (better look at that table)

Dollymoon’s Hazbin Hotel Facts - PART ONE (Shoutout again to dollymoon for compiling these, we’ve never spoken but I am eternally grateful for this service. Dollymoon’s posts are THE single most reliable compilation of Hazbin Hotel’s nebulous pseudo-canon facts that I have found to date, including both links to the sources and timestamps where applicable. Dollymoon’s URL has changed since making this post so the “read more” link doesn’t work but the “source” or “reblogged from” links direct correctly to the new blog. Incidentally, the risk of other blog creators deleting their blogs/posts or changing their URLs is why in info posts like these, I always link to my own reblogs rather than their original posts—their original posts might vanish without warning, but I know I ain’t gonna delete my posts, so these links will still work in the future.)

Hazbin Hotel Facts - PART TWO

Hazbin Hotel Facts - PART THREE

Faustisse 4

HuniCast - Australian Wildlife Relief charity stream

I think this was a faustisse stream (the original source deleted these posts, so the comic pages that were originally behind that read more cut are now gone.)

Faustisse stream 6?

And those are all the masterposts of factoids I’ve managed to collect. If anyone has more masterposts, chuck ‘em at me.

Even this isn’t all the knowledge that’s been released about the show. The posts that dig the farthest back are Dollymoon’s, and even they don’t comprehensively cover all of Hazbin’s production. A couple of these characters, Vivziepop created as a teenager, so there’s some truly ancient concept art floating around out there that will have details that probably aren’t canon anymore... but might still be until something happens to actively contradict them.

Tier 3: The Wiki

The wiki is kind of an absolute mess. It’s a chaotic blend of things actually seen in the pilots/comic, things mentioned at some point in some stream somewhere, and wild fan speculation based on what they headcanon as plausible based on the above, all mixed together with very little indication for which is canon, pseudo-canon, fanon, or speculation. Most of the statements on the wiki don’t have citations.

(And, on top of that, half the main characters’ info gets split up into separate tabs instead of just having a normal-ass wiki page, AND their image galleries are on COMPLETELY SEPARATE pages that are linked to in one of the tabs, and the most important characters all have TWO SEPARATE GALLERIES. Which doesn’t have anything to do with the quality of the facts hidden underneath those tabs, but nevertheless drives me up the wall.)

Some things on the wiki were added according to info released so long ago it’s probably changed by now. Some are possibilities that got reported as facts. Other things on the wiki have unambiguously changed, or else are just flat-out incorrect. (For instance, at this moment Alastor’s page still lists him as an overlord, even though it's been confirmed that Alastor is not an overlord despite his power level because he isn’t interested in and didn’t pursue that position, per this stream. For a little bit, somebody’s fanart of their headcanon human Alastor got added to the wiki as concept art.)

tl;dr: the wiki should never be trusted as a primary source. The wiki’s better than it used to be. Even so, at this time, it’s only trustworthy to fill in the gaps of what you already know is true from other, better sources.

The thing it’s good at is it more or less compiles all the known info all in one place. Trying to figure out who the hell this Vox guy is is really hard if you’re reading for mentions of him in compilations of a dozen different streams, much less if you’re trying to comb through those dozen streams yourself, plus a dozen more, plus three different artists’ twitters. In comparison, it’s really easy to, say, just go look at Vox’s wiki page, where all the trivia is compiled. (And Vox’s page is actually one of the better cited on the wiki. Look at all those numbers!)

So, if you need to find out who this character is you’ve never heard of before, if you want to see a full list of the thus far named characters, if you don’t remember whether Alastor likes coffee or tea, if you want to know what Angel’s twin sister looks like, if you need a reminder of Sir Pentious’s death year... check the wiki. It’s an okay starting point.

But, if you see a “fact” on the wiki that you yourself don’t remember from straight out of the pilot, and it doesn’t have a citation that links to a tweet or a stream... regard it suspiciously. And do not trust it unquestioningly as fact until and unless you have seen the source.

Tier 4: Noncanon Creator Shitposting

I’ve mentioned Ashley’s HuniCast streams a couple times. The biggest draw of them is that she usually gets several of the voice actors in the streams, where they’ll happily say nonsense in their character voices. For the most part, they’re not sharing any actual canon info they’ve been given on their characters, just goofing around pretending to be their characters. Nevertheless, a lot of the things that happen in streams get accepted as broad fandom headcanons, like Alastor being into dad jokes. (My favorite, for obvious reasons, is this one.)

It’s easy to find the source audio for all this wonderful nonsense by searching youtube for “HuniCast highlights,” and then rummaging around for animatics people make out of the audio. The only one noncanon video of this sort I can think of that didn’t originally come from HuniCast is a lone one from Alastor’s singing voice (who’s a different voice actor than his speaking voice).

So, obviously, none of these are canon. But they do come from some of the people actually involved in the creation of the show, and they are in the characters’ canon voices, so a whole lot of people treat them as semi-canon anyway. (Even the wiki lists “dad jokes” among Alastor’s likes, which to my knowledge hasn’t come up anywhere except for HuniCast streams.) Since they’re so broadly-known, they’re worth knowing about as important sources of fanon, even if you don’t want to adopt them into your own headcanons. They’re basically the same level of canon as blooper reels.

[gascon-en-exil]

Lords and their Knights: When FE Chivalry Goes Gay

@mwritesink prompted me to write about my favorite tropes in FE and how they evolved over the course of the series. I already crossed a few others off in an earlier post, but this one is a particular favorite of mine where M/M romance in this series is concerned and one I felt had enough examples to constitute a piece of its own. Let it not be said that this is merely the gay variation on the well-worn heterosexual romance trope of a lady and her knight (ex. Eirika/Seth), because negotiating the fundamental power imbalance in this type of relationship takes on different dimensions when both parties are male. I draw a closer comparison to courtly love, which in the traditional sense is also socially transgressive (being adulterous) and not consummated via marriage or other public means...which in FE terms means an S support and possibly a eugenics baby. A vassal in love with his lord rather than his lord’s wife is not only cutting the female intermediary out of what can already be a very homoromatic scenario, but it’s directly tangling together a kind of martial romantic love and ideas about what knighthood/vassalage even is or ought to be - two topics FE loves to explore. I’ve therefore compiled a few of the most notable examples of this trope across the series to talk about in more detail, because if one is willing to be liberal with subtext there’s surprisingly quite a few to pick from.

(And yeah, this is also in part because I like hot rich men who take orders, and this series already has plenty of gay or otherwise ambiguously non-straight mages, thieves, archers, and their ilk without my help.)

The Sad Gay Knight: Quan/Finn

This one I’ve talked about before in a fair amount of depth, from my hopes for how a Genealogy remake will treat Finn to speculation on just what Quan got out of this relationship besides a devoted retainer and (we may assume) a nice piece of ass. The summary here is that Finn’s love for Quan supersedes anything he’s shown to feel for any of the various women he can hook up with and quite frankly astonishes in its ramifications for the future of Leonster and Thracia as a whole. It’s poignant, adulterous (but Ethlyn’s probably ok with it?), and messy as all hell once you factor in whatever’s up with Glade and whatever Lachesis wasn’t feeling about the whole situation. It is also, naturally, very sad; Finn loses his lord when he’s only around eighteen, and with their kingdom collapsing around him and the entire continent consumed by war he dedicates the next twenty years of his life to raising Quan’s son to be the king Quan himself had wanted to be. And for all his labor he apparently derives no lasting satisfaction, spending his epilogue wandering around the Yied desert and at last returning only to (possibly) pen the history he’s helped to make. 

Finn is the embodiment of knighthood loyal unto and beyond death, and that paired with all the romantic and erotic subtext surrounding the two of them - Finn as Quan’s treasured favorite, his catatonia after Yied, the obsessive polishing of the brave lance that Quan gave to him, his inability to satisfy women in some vague way - makes them the defining example of this trope in Fire Emblem. I look forward to seeing how remakes will handle them; Finn’s presentation in Heroes is definitely cause for hope there. As for the issue of yet another story in media of gay men beset by tragedy and death, I did draw up a long headcanon on the technically crack pairing of Diarmuid/Tristan that specifically plays into the lord and knight trope while also allowing Finn a chance to pass his experiences on to a later, happier generation. IS is free to take notes, just saying.

Pretty Blond Twinks and the Men Who Love Them: Perceval/Elffin and their lasting influence

Moving on from Jugdral, I’ve got to say that I’ve really been sleeping on the original gay Elibean duo. Before Raven and Lucius (but chronologically after, because these games are out of order) there was another feminine young man with long blond hair beloved of a severe-looking warrior. Binding Blade gives us the bard Elffin, who in another life was Etruria’s Prince Mildain and Perceval’s liege. The Knight General takes Mildain’s alleged accidental death about as well as Finn takes the death of his lord and lady; he turns grim and humorless, and without a dying dream to guide him he follows the command of the corrupt revolutionary faction of Etruria with little protest. It takes learning that Mildain is alive and in Roy’s army for Perceval to drop the halfhearted Camus routine and switch sides, and the strength of his fealty not to his nation or even to his king but to the prince he’d thought dead is absolutely touching in the moment not to mention incredibly useful since the guy is one of FE6′s best units. 

Binding Blade doesn’t give anyone but Roy and his harem paired endings, but there’s still a fair bit to be gleaned from their support lines, both what is in them and what isn’t. Perceval and Elffin each have supports with women, but nothing remotely romantic - Perceval’s support with Larum is particularly amusing since he clarifies that her, ahem, dancing does nothing for him. Also worth noting is that neither of them can support with Clarine, even though one would think they’d make fine romantic choices for her given their statuses and physical resemblances to her beloved brother. Their own support line is quietly intimate. Elffin has changed since his near-death experience, and Perceval is still struggling to accept that their relationship can’t be as it was, that in fact for the time being they can’t now be a knight and his prince. Perceval also frets over Elffin’s refusal to see his father the king, and he later extracts a promise from Elffin to come home to Etruria after he’s done traveling the world as a bard, in one of the series’s several instances of writing what sounds like a marriage proposal in ambiguous terms. Per Elffin’s ending, he’s only gone for a few months after the war, so their promised reunion isn’t long delayed. I’m interested to see what a remake would add to their relationship, because as it stands Perceval/Elffin has an established romance arc that deserves a paired ending or at the very least more suggestive epilogues.

Further compounding their underrated signficance, it’s not too difficult to trace a line from Perceval/Elffin to a number of other M/M pairings in the two later GBA games and in Tellius that present some variation on this theme:

As mentioned above, Raven/Lucius is physically similar and performs a nearly identical gameplay function, with the pretty blond waif again responsible for recruiting his surly but protective boyfriend from the ranks of the enemy. 

Gerik/Joshua meanwhile borrows the character of the end of their support line and turns it into a genuine paired ending, with a prince incognito recruiting a swordsman to come work for him. They being who they are however, it’s all handled a bit rougher, with Gerik being impressed by Joshua’s “swagger.” Take that as you will.

Ike/Soren may be the defining seme/uke dynamic in Tellius’s overflowing fount of queer subtext, but Tibarn/Reyson smashes that trope together with this one and FE’s power couple unit archetype plus a dash of whatever the avian equivalent of furries is for wholly unique results. Although both of them are technically royalty, only Reyson is a prince by heredity whereas Tibarn presumably became king of Phoenicis by beating the crap out of any rival contenders as most laguz prefer to do. One can therefore read shades of a courtly relationship in Tibarn’s decision to zealously take up the cause of justice for the Serenes massacre in Reyson’s place. Combine this with Reyson’s characteristic edge that even Tibarn is forced to rein in at times and their relationship comes off as surprisingly more egalitarian than the sum of its parts. Oh yeah, and blond waif dancer + premade OP unit with ludicrous physical stats and movement again.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the conflict of the Tellius games Zelgius -> Sephiran explores what would happen if a gay Camus archetype chose instead to dedicate himself to an antagonistic lord. Sure, you can still recruit Sephiran via a convoluted and unintuitive process, but Zelgius is doomed no matter what.   

They Can Say It, But They Can’t Do It: Awakening and Fates

Ugh. If I must....

I’ve made no secret of my ambivalence toward FE13 dragging the series into open acknowledgement that same-sex attraction is a thing that exists, handled as it was with a lot of explicit homoerotic denial and an assortment of cheap gay panic jokes and...whatever the hell Victor and Vincent are supposed to be. Chrom/Frederick, hot though it may potentially be in fanon, is one of those jokes, making a parody out of a knight enamored of his lord and leaving it to mean absolutely nothing since Awakening’s relationship endgame is invariably S supports for time traveling eugenics babies. FE has taken cracks at the overly dedicated knight before - see just about everything involving Kieran from Tellius, up to and including his overzealous devotion to his superior officer - but Awakening plumbs the depths of Frederick expecting Chrom’s nude image to raise the army’s morale. Just..what do you even say to that, apart from the awkward sputtering that comprises most of their support line?

FE14, for all its stumbling steps toward something less completely offensive, fares little better in this particular regard. Leo/Niles is a deeply troubled albeit thought-provoking callback to the subtextual lord/knight relationship, one where it’s hard to imagine them finding a healthy way to navigate the power differential. Then there’s Ryoma/Saizo. It’s nothing special in localization, but the never-localized festival DLC involves Saizo’s ardent desire to warm Ryoma’s clothing in his cleavage. That sounds like absolutely normal behavior for a servant and not a rehash of Frederick’s shenanigans, uh huh. Fates may indeed be said to be slightly better about playing palpable homoerotic tension for drama rather than comedy...but only slightly.

Paving the Way for an OT3: The Deliverance

This is, incidentally, yet another reason to appreciate Echoes for doing so much to redeem the 3DS games in the realm of (male) queer content. Yes, there’s a large and unaddressed divide between the openly gay and very modern Leon and the heavily subtextual faux-historical queerness of the Deliverance, but taken independently the two presentations work for what they’re each separately aiming to be. Among Clive’s gay entourage are not one but two men who’d dearly love to be the knight to his lord, and Forsyth’s strong desire to put Clive on a pedestal evokes the earlier spoofs of this kind of relationship precisely because Forsyth is that kind of vassal, the kind that would read Ribald Tales of the Faith War and cry like a heavily erect virgin bottom getting his first taste of dick at the brief interludes of tender manly love between Quan and Finn. He’s played for comedy just as much as Kieran or Frederick are, and yet Echoes comes across as less down on the concept as a whole for several reasons, being that

1) Python’s snark over Forsyth’s attraction to both Clive and Lukas is genuinely funny, much more so than when it’s the object of these affections quietly groaning his way through them,

2) Lukas is also there, and his desire to be Clive’s beloved knight is not played for comedy at all but is allowed to be unrealistic and unsatisfying because Clive will never get it,

3) everyone wants to screw Clive for some reason, not just his subordinates but also his sister and the estranged BFF who dies in his arms...and the guy is shown to be unworthy of all of them, and

4) all the characters involved are allowed other avenues for romantic attraction outside of a lord who’s just not that into them. Forsyth has Python, Lukas has both of them as friends and possibly more later, Clair has Gray (...at least he’s not her brother?), and Fernand has a bad rebound that goes to hell in the manner of Zelgius and Sephiran but at least ends with him getting to reconcile with his former friend before he dies. 

The setup for the Deliverance’s overarching queerness is a bit strange as it rests on all these characters somehow finding Clive attractive, but nonetheless it makes for an unexpected and refreshing critique of the lord and knight trope, given a situation where the lord just isn’t that into it and in fact doesn’t seem to realize that he can be into it. It’s a good reminder that this isn’t a particularly good dynamic for a stable and lasting relationship, and that as hot as it can be it takes more than impassioned one-way devotion to make it work in the long term.

The good news if you’re into this kind of relationship like I am is that it’s a trope with some life in it yet. Echoes came at it strong, and prerelease information on Three Houses suggests a few possibilities for this dynamic in that game. I’m especially keeping my eye on Dimitri and Dedue, whose relationship appears to contain echoes of the original duo of Quan and Finn. I highly doubt there will be anything on the level of S supports acknowledging this type of attraction, but I’ll settle for some suggestive A supports.

[simplyonehellofahokage]

Can I ask you why you don’t like Minakushi?

I put this under the cut because it got RIDICULOUSLY LONGJC.

I don’t necessarily dislike it. When it’s well-written, orfor some reason just jives with me I think it’s one of the cutest and arguablyone of the healthier ships in the series. For example, if you are the same anonthat sent those two MinaKushi asks, I thought they were rather fun. Othertimes, depending on the source at best it inspires apathy and at worst, createsa certain dislike for one or both of them. I think my conflicting feelings stemfrom the difference between how their individual characters are portrayed in canonverses how fanon portrays them. Please keep in mind, all of this reflects myown personal experience and nothing more.

When it comes to canon, I don’t have a lot of problems withit. True, I don’t care for the damsel in distress bit but I argue if Kushinahadn’t had the cunning to leave her hair as a trail no one would’ve found her.So she played a large part in her own rescue. Minato also suffers from theHinata complex of watching her from afar and not really doing anything until itescalates from school yard bullying to international incident. I understand hisreasoning, not wanting to infringe on her right to defend her own honor (let’sbe real she’d probably kick his ass if he tried to play her hero back at theacademy), but he could have at least let her know that he didn’t dislike her,as she had assumed. Maybe I’m nitpicking (I probably am, I hate themisunderstood/miscommunication trope I really do) but it isn’t the only issue Ihave with it.

It was speculated for a while that Minato was Naruto’s dadbefore it was officially revealed and that just drummed up the mystery of whohis mother could be even more. With that, came my own expectations and guessesand when Kushina was finally revealed…she didn’t exactly match what I imagined.She wasn’t a bad character by any means, in fact I found her rather fun but thedissonance between the reality and what I thought kind of stayed with me. Itdoesn’t help her full potential wasn’t really allowed to bloom. I have so manyquestions about her old home, about her that are never really answered andgiven the narrative, it’s understandable why. She is long dead before the firstchapter and it’s all thanks to ninja bullshit we even get to meet her but itleft me dissatisfied.

The video games that included her gave more crumbs but notones I necessarily liked. Let me be clear, there is absolutely nothing wrongwith being a housewife. It’s one of the hardest, most underappreciated jobs inthe world and it doesn’t have the usual benefits like a retirement plan or paidvacation. People are always judging. That being said, why would you make one ofher attacks be slapping the shit out of someone with a frying pan? I thought ‘oh,well that’s amusing at least. I wonder what her main attack is’ and….it wasjust the same thing she did as a kid. Turning red, hair floating and justbeating the shit out of the poor NPC you picked for that round. We are told shehas a unique ninjutsu style and uses fuuinjutsu….so why weren’t either of thoseused instead? Why wasn’t this used as an opportunity to learn more about her? Ilike Kushina, but I wished more had been done with her.  

Minato suffers from the same problem in that we have some informationbut not enough. I still don’t know what his motivation was for becoming Hokageto this day. There are aspects of his personality I don’t really care for, butthen it may make me pettier of a person if I’m being honest. I don’t like thathe forgave Obito so easily, the man was responsible for not only his death butthe death of his love, and nearly destroyed their home. Also he nearly killedNaruto and made him an orphan. I don’t hate Obito but the dude did a LOT offucked up shit both in and out of the Land of Fire and Minato just….forgivesthat and even takes responsibility for it. It makes it hard to connect with himas a character that way because dude has to be a saint to do all that. I alsodon’t really care much for his naïveté when it came to sealing Kurama inNaruto. He grew up with Kushina, who was bullied just because she was from adifferent village. He should have known that Naruto would have it worse, butmaybe his blinding optimism is both a negative and a positive of hispersonality. His choices are also bound by the plot of the story, and becausewhat happened that night is told so far into the series, Minato’s hands arefairly tied so that the timeline stays consistent …even if it doesn’t exactly painthim in a positive (or always intelligent) light. I may not like any of thesethings but I can live with them and work with them.

Fanon portrayals can, in my experience, can either make thecharacters and the ship great or take one of their aspects and just…twists itfurther. It gets to the point where they are unrecognizable from their canoncounterparts. People are allowed to write what they want, I will never, ever tell anyone what they canor can’t write or what topics they can or can’t explore. But I take responsibilityfor my own happiness and health, and won’t read fics where Kushina is reducedto an overbearing bitch or ones where Minato is reduced to someone viler than theseries’ worst villains. Or the ones where they are the neglectful parents, apopular troupe in the Naruto and Harry Potter fandoms and I get the appeal, butthere is only so many times I could read it before I wanted to bang my headinto a wall because their actions crossed from cruelty into outright stupidity.These examples, I must admit, have left quite an impact on me.

In the end I suppose, I take it case by case when it comesto MinaKushi. I’m willing to role play it but I ship primarily with chemistry.Just because its canon isn’t a guarantee it will happen and I don’t want toforce a romantic involvement if for some reason the muses aren’t clicking. Itgets awkward fast. Romance isn’t the only aspect of their relationship I wantto explore either. What about them as friends? As rivals? As enemies? Asteammates? How would things change and how would they differ if they were in anAU?  All avenues are open and I’m willingto walk down them at least once.

[demenior]

I'm v interested as to what fanon Ulaz will become, and so I just wanna throw my 2 cents into the void before He Becomes 

Cut for length, and a little bit of Uliro/Shulaz speculations at the end:

Ulaz is a doctor, actually. He's very smart and doesn't prefer combat, though of course he's expertly trained (Ulaz Lives! aus should have him take over as The Medic Who Can Kick Ass)

He's always been arrogant and a little more than reckless. Older members of the BoM assumed he'd be dead several times over

The running joke is that he’s too tenacious to die. He’ll live if only to spite everyone he doesn’t like (which is... so many people.)

He's the guy that is Always Right, and has to make sure you Know 

Honestly he's so obnoxious there's a reason the BoM had him stationed alone and it's because no one wants to spend more time than they have to with him because he micromanages and is insufferable to live with. 

He spent a lot of his younger years alone because of this which only made his abysmal social skills worse. 

He's gotten better as the years go by- now he just stays quiet and Avoids (that's when you know he likes you. If he doesn't like you he'll say so) 

Does the 'you know I'm judging everything you do' look so much it's actually his resting facial expression 

He's always been really thin/lean for a Galra which is a less-desirable trait in attractiveness, and then on top of that he's an arrogant asshole. He's never been with someone longer than a few weeks, and has more-or-less resigned himself to being someone who is just meant to be alone 

Ulaz is also Old for a Galra. Or at least, he's well middle-aged. If he were human he'd be in his later 40s to early 50s. He's war-weary and has no patience for optimistic youth or stupidity 

His age gives him a lot more leeway as his having lived so long Fighting That Good Fight and also being a very important medical doctor makes him a legend amongst the BoM. It's why they tolerate his weirdness. 

Were he human he'd be a lean, weasel-y tall dude who is very confident in every thing he does (in a condescending way) but meticulous about things and has this air about him that even though no one says anything you know He Queer 

He often comes across as much meaner than he intends to be (he's just blunt. He doesn't like mincing his words) but also sees no point in correcting any misunderstandings so long as things are done how he wants them) 

He's a doctor. He wants his work space SPIC AND SPAN. If anything is out of place he'll be furious for days. 

He’s so fussy about his appearance. He needs to be Presentable at All Times and this means meticulously clean and with crisp, clean clothes. He’s the kind of guy who folds his socks and has a well-organised sock drawer, if he wore socks

 ~Uliro Relations~ 

Idc what age you hc Shiro to be, because Shiro is the Hot Young Thang in this relationship ok 

This is the May-December alien relationship we all need 

Shiro has to suffer so many sugar daddy jokes 

Most aliens they meet don't understand because everyone likes Shiro and also Shiro is so beautiful that he could be with literally anyone!!! Why did he pick the old, angry Galra???? 

It wasn't ~love at first sight~ for either of them because they're both practical rather than emotional, but they connect on a level of understanding about trauma and things they've seen/experienced that they can't talk about 

What really made them fall for each other is how fast they Trusted each other

Also huge mutual respect and admiration for the things each other has done, while also thinking they haven't done enough to warrant the praise or trust the other gives them 

What I'm trying to say is that they're each other's biggest fan and then realized maybe they should date instead of sit around and make eyes at each other while they throw compliments back and forth

(”Fucking finally” Pidge says when they accidentally walks in on the two of them making out. Shiro wants to scold them for language but he’s too mortified to face the rest of the team. And even more mortified that everyone knew he was flirting with Ulaz. He thought they were being subtle.

“You weren’t. Even Keith knew,” Lance tells him later at dinner, “and Keith didn’t even know when that Arusian was hitting on him.”

Keith nods in agreement, “It’s tru-- wait, what?”

[mizjoely]

Because insomnia has beset me yet again, I present a recap (strictly from memory) of (mostly) busted theories and speculation I remember from before the first two episodes aired (and a couple of things people got right), in no particular order. (Oh, and feel free to toss things on that I may have missed!)

Someone dies!

Unfortunately anyone who guessed “Mary” and “because of canon” was right.

DI Stella Hopkins is “obviously” a love interest for Sherlock (or Molly). Or possibly a mirror for Sherlock because of the way she dresses.

Welp, we only got a coupe of scenes with her in TST and she interacted more with Gavin Greg than anyone else so any “love interest” possibilities will have to be strictly fanon. As for the way she was dressed...gosh, a woman DI dressing in a professional manner shouldn’t really be such a surprise to people. (Yes, I’m rolling my eyes on the “yet another woman claimed to be a mirror for one of the male leads” theory.)

Oh, and “Mary is ‘obviously’ a mirror for Sherlock because she has curly hair and is wearing a suit in the promo pics.”

I just put this in here to roll my eyes at it, to be honest. Sorry not sorry if that offends anyone.(That holds true for ANY ‘insert female character name here’ is a mirror for John or Sherlock BS.)

““What’s the very worst thing you can do to your very best friends? Tell them your darkest secret.” Culverton Smith is talking to Sherlock (or possibly John).

Seriously, how could ANYONE have guessed he wasn’t talking to any of the regular cast, but was instead about to reveal his own dark secret to a bunch of his friends (and his daughter) while they were being drugged with an amnesiac?

The scenes with the Black Ops team is a memory/flashback from Mary’s past!

Also one folks got right. Go Mary, you badass!

Sherlock in the morgue looking stricken/distraught is because he’s seeing the dead body of John/Molly/Mycroct/someone who died because it was his (Sherlock’s fault)

It’s because he never met Smith’s actual daughter and he was freaking out about it

The line of nurses is a memory/mind palace scene/flashback to Sherlock being in some sort of institution. Bonus: One of the nurses is Mary (after TST: Mary isn’t really dead!)

The nurses were real, no, Mary wasn’t one of them, it had nothing (directly) to do with Sherlock at all.

The scene with the people with the IVs in the middle of the street was a mind palace scene/memory/flashback, and they were patients of some kind and it was connected to the nurses.

It was a mental reconstruction of something Sherlock had been told and related to a case, and it was connected to the nurses, but who could have possibly guessed it was Culverton Smith’s friends and daughter being given a drug to wipe their memories?

Sherlock is eating chips with a woman! She must be his love interest! No, she’s a client! She’s Victor Trevor! She’s Harry Watson AND possibly Sherlock’s love interest (he’s been romantically linked to another self-declared lesbian, after all)! It’s not a real scene, it’s a mind palace scene!

Kudos to all who insisted it must be a client, but of course no one guessed it was Culverton Smith’s daughter. 

They’re filming in a church, it must be John and Sherlock’s wedding! No, it’s a christening!

Well, we all know which of those two theories was true.

The sillhouetted figure in a hospital room is John and the person in the bed is Sherlock.

Yup, that one was true. Of course some folks thought it was Smith and some folks thought the person in the bed was Mary, even after she’d been killed (in that case it was “because she didn’t really die” and MAN do I wish that guess had been true!)

John is slamming Sherlock up against the wall in the morgue scene because it’s his fault Mary died.

Sadly this one was true as well.

“Thatcher. Sherrinford. Smith.” Thatcher will have to do with Margaret Thatcher, Sherrinford has something to do with “The Oher One” and “Smith” means “Culverton Smith” from “The Dying Detective”

Yes on all three counts. This was actually the easiest of the one-word clues they’ve given us, at least in my opinion.

This doesn’t technically belong on this list because it’s not based on trailers or setlock, but what the heck: The baby will be named fill-in-the-blank (my personal favorite was Isabelle).

Seriously, I don’t think I saw Rosamund or Rose as a name for the Watson baby in any of the fics I read, but I do recall at teast on Sherlolly baby with that name. My crack theory on that is that Moftiss had an intern scour a bunch of fics and make a list of names people guessed so they could eliminate them from contention.

Also, I don’t think anyone guessed that “Mary” was actually part of Mary’s real name. Or that she named the baby after herself! I love that she did because hey, men name their sons after themselves all the time, why shouldn’t women do the same?

The burning house in one of the trailers is Sherlock’s parents’ house.

That one was quickly debunked and has been replaced by speculation that it’s Sherrinford, the place where Eurus was being held, which remains to be seen.

The third Holmes ‘brother’ is actually a sister.

Awesome job on that one, everyone who guessed it!

And last but not least on this rambling list... “The Kiss will happen in this season.”

Well, so far it’s two strikes on THAT theory.

The women will have larger roles this season because of Sherlock’s speech at the end of TAB (and Mycroft’s assertion that “this is a war we have to lose because we are wrong”).

Mary had a lot to do both before and after she died. Molly so far has been shown to be important in John and Sherlock’s lives by being named one of baby Rose’s godmothers, and by being the one Sherlock asks to bring an ambulance to John’s therapist’s house. And come ON, who could have possibly guessed it was Hudders behind the wheel of the Aston Martin? Or that she’d have Sherlock handcuffed in the trunk? That bit was bloody BRILLIANT! And the Big Bad is not only a woman but also a Holmes, what’s not to love about that?

On the other hand...Molly’s only had one scene per episode so far (well, two very small ones in TST and one longer one in TLD). Not nearly enough, in my opinion!

Sherlock is faking his illness/drug use in TLD because he did so in “The Dying Detective”.

Alas, he was actually using, albeit under Wiggins’ supervision. 

Sherlock gets some kind of conditional/temporary pardon because of the Moriarty broadcast (yes, this wasn’t a setlock/triailer speculation, but it’s something we all feverishly theorized about), and we’ll see a lot of detail on it because it’s so important considering how HLV and TAB ended.

LOL LOL LOL Nope, Mycroft fakes some footage so it looks like Sherlock didn’t actually shoot Magnussen and instead a trigger-happy anonymous Spec Ops soldier did. Sherlock gets a free pass and goes his merry way.

And related to that...the Moriarty case will be front and center from the very start!

Yeah, about that...and seriously, did Sherlock actually mean it when he said “And I know what he’s going to do next” at the end of TAB? Because unless the answer is “absolutely nothing for a long-ass time” he was full of crap.

OK, that’s it for now. If I think of others I’ll revise this post. And again, if you have your own “no one called it/we totally called it” moments, please feel free to add them to this!

Sherlock looking all wild-eyed and pointing a gun at someone/something in his flat is actually him in his mind palace. (Hell, ANY guess of “mind palace” since virtually every scene was labeled “possible mind palace” at one point or another).

Nope, it was real. And it was him shooting at his case wall out of drug-fueled frustration. And who the HELL could have guessed he’d be quoting Shakespeare whilst doing so? Dayum!!

[canonicallyobserving911]

WIP Wednesday

Fanonwriter2023 on AO3

Where CANON and FANON collide!

Season 7 FANON Speculation

I’m still working on chapter 4 of my multi-chapter fic titled “I’m still in love with you but... I needed to learn how to love myself too!”

I’m enjoying writing this fic because it’s giving me the chance to unravel the mess that was 6x18 for Buck, Eddie and Chris.  Also, it’s taking them places the show refuses to go including Buck facing his past (Taylor’s book just bit him in the ass at the end of chapter 3 and Eddie doing a self-evaluation journey so he can try new things, some of which he believes he missed out on when he was younger.

Chapters 1, 2 & 3 are already available on AO3 and chapter 4 will be posted soon.

The closer I get to completing chapter 4, the more excited I get and my goal is to finish editing it soon so I can post it by the end of the week. ___________ Here are two snippets from chapter 4 because Eddie’s in El Paso and Buck’s in L.A.  ___________

Eddie

“I’m Captain Stanley Franklin with the 324 here in El Paso and did I hear you correctly when you said you’re a firefighter and a medic?”

“Yes, sir.  I’m a firefighter and a medic with the 118 in Los Angeles.”

Captain Franklin nods his head then says, “That’s fine work you did to help this young man and those dressings you applied look great.” He tilts his head to the side but he doesn’t take his eyes off Eddie. After they stop shaking hands, he says, “Our station could benefit by having someone like you join our team.  We just opened a new firehouse and we’re in need of more paramedics.”

Eddie raises his eyebrows because he wasn’t expecting that at all. He was just doing the thing he does every day, helping someone who was injured so this is quite a shock to him.

“Thank you, Captain Franklin but I…”  He doesn’t have a chance to finish because Captain Franklin interrupts him.

“I have a spot open for you…”  He says with so much confidence Eddie wonders if anyone on this team tells their Captain no. “It’s yours if you want it. So, do me a favor before you say no.”

Will Eddie return to L.A. after his vacation ends or will he take the job Captain Franklin of the 324 offers him with the EPFD 👀?

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Buck

He pushes the button on his radio and says, “Dispatch, this is firefighter Evan Buckley with the 118. I’m man behind and our engine and ambulance were dispatched to a call a couple of hours ago. Please send an RA unit to this firehouse to assist with a choking toddler. I performed the procedure to dislodge the item, the toddler is crying but I would prefer it if a paramedic checks him out to be sure he’s ok.”

A dispatcher whose voice he doesn’t recognize responds. “Copy that Firefighter Buckley, an RA unit is down the street, less than 2 minutes away and they should be there shortly.”

“Copy that dispatch and thank you.”

He lifts the toddler who’s still crying and says, “There, there.  You’re going to be ok.”

“Buck?” The mother of the toddler calls.

He thinks he recognizes her voice and when he raises his head to look at her, it’s like he’s looking at a blast from the past because Ali Martin is the woman looking back at him.

“Ali?”

How will Buck handle it when he comes face to face with Ali Martin and her son 👀?

_________

Fic Summary: Months after Buck and Eddie were hit by the same lightning strike; they’re still struggling with the aftermath of it.  But before they make their love confessions, they’ll spend time getting to know themselves as individuals first. Eddie learns to enjoy the simple things in life as he participates in activities on his own and with new friends while Buck learns the rest of the 31-year-old deep dark family secret about his conception and birth. Their journey to forever is still a work in progress but once they finally admit they’re in love with each other, everything that follows their love confessions will be cataclysmic.

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Chapter Summaries

Chapter 1 - Eddie makes a new friend while Buck receives devastating news regarding the sperm donation he made for Connor and Kameron.

Chapter 2 - Buck does a lot of research to learn more about the abnormalities found in his red blood cells and Eddie starts a new therapy journey that’s all about him and not the traumas he’s experienced.

Chapter 3 - After more than a month, Buck and Eddie finally spend time together outside of work but it doesn’t end well and they part with a lot of uncertainty regarding their places in each other’s lives.

Chapter 4 – Will be posted soon.

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Buddie Multi-Chapter Fanfic - Hiatus Reading

Read chapters 1, 2 & 3 on AO3.

No pressure tagging: @spotsandsocks​ and @shortsighted-owl.