#tbf my day has been terrible

[mavriarch]

I came to Tumblr for a 10 minute, mindlessly scroll, brake and instead I've spent the last 30 minutes obsessively booping anyone I can in my dashboard and I almost forgot I'M STILL AT WORK

[roguerogerss]

Wanted To Have You

Pairing: Thomas Shelby x Reader

W/C: 3.7k (i think i didn’t check tbf)

Warnings: mention of smut (no actual smut though), swearing, arguing

(welcome back babes, missed you. tommy has been on my mind all the time recently so i decided i’d bang something out and post it. it’s basically just word vomit tbh but hope u enjoy. LOVE a lil bit of angst when it comes to peaky blinders and hope u do too!! luv u the most b back soon)

***

Birds chirped, the sounds of the market opening began, golden sunlight poured in through the window. The morning had come too early, but Tommy was always a sight to see in the morning.

Laid on his back, one arm curled loosely around her waist, the other on his chest, right above a bullet scar that Y/N had helped Polly to stitch up in early January. His lips were parted slightly, chest rising and falling, dark lashes settled on ruddy cheeks.

She smiled and traced the tattoo on his chest ever so lightly with the tip of her painted fingernails, her way of quietly waking him up. It always worked, and today was no exception. He sighed as he stirred, a small smile making it's way onto his face.

"G'mornin', love." How she loved the way that his voice sounded in the morning. Heavy with the day before's cigarettes, low and gravelly, Brum accented. "Sleep okay?"

"Slept great." She was so tired from the night before's antics that she couldn't have stayed awake another second after they'd collapsed onto the mattress and he'd pulled her close underneath the sheets. "Did you?"

Tommy hummed, "Mm, slept alright. Wasn't great, thinkin' a lot."

"Thinkin' about what?" Her fingers absentmindedly wandered from his tattoo to the back of his neck, tugging at the short hairs that gathered there.

"Business stuff, darlin'. Nothin' for you to worry your pretty little head about." He gave a soft, bleary-eyed smile and pressed a hand to her cheek, thumb stroking back and forth.

"Tommy, you always say it's just 'business stuff'. Why won't you just tell me what's going on for once?" She wasn't angry, really, but the pout on her face might've said otherwise. Business stuff was the closest that she ever got to knowing anything about Tommy's personal life.

But rumours fly, and she'd heard a lot from the people of the town that made her think that her Thomas wasn't as innocent as she thought he might be.

"I've told you. It's not important, nothing you'd want to hear." His voice strained as he stretched, biceps flexing as he raised his arms above his head. "Would bore ya, honest."

"You don't bore me, Tom." She looked up at him through her lashes and he gave a short-lived chuckle and ran his fingers soothingly through her hair.

"I have to get up." He ignored her statement and gave her a quick kiss on the top of the head, before rolling over and sitting up. He was still only wearing his underwear, and so she marvelled at the way that the muscles in his back flexed as he moved to grab his previously ironed button-down shirt from the side table.

She almost forgot that she was angry as he got up and pulled his slacks on, shirt still unbuttoned and the light hitting his toned torso just right. "I'll see you later, sweetheart." Tommy leaned down to place a kiss on his girl's lips, barely taking a second to enjoy the feeling but really only doing it so that he could continue to taste her on his lips for the next hour or so.

"Family meeting?" It was obvious that Y/N was unimpressed, but Tommy either didn't notice or was pretending that he hadn't, because he didn't comment and simply nodded. "And I can't come?”

"Told ya." Tommy tucked his shirt into his slacks and knotted his tie, eyeing Y/N all the while. "Would bore you."

He wanted to tell her about what he did. He really, really did. But he also wanted to keep her, and he knew that he couldn't do both. There was no way that she'd want to stay with him if she knew about all of the terrible things that he'd done, and so he'd made everyone who worked with him agree that she was never to know.

He supposed that she'd get suspicious at some point, but he hadn't expected that point to come so soon. It had been a year, and he figured that the towns people spoke and that she heard, but he was dreading having to actually let her know by himself.

"And I've told you," Y/N had gotten up, pulling her silk robe around her small body and padding lightly across the floor to where Tommy stood. She fixed out his jacket and smoothed down his shirt affectionately. "You don't bore me."

"We can talk later." Tommy smiled softly, hand smoothing Y/N's hair against her head as he pressed his lips to her forehead, then the tip of her nose, and finally her lips. She made him linger for a second, hands grabbing at the back of his neck and holding him in place as their lips moved together.

Tommy chuckled and pressed his forehead against hers. "I have to go.

"Fine." She pecked his lips once again and then let him go. "Go about your business, Mr Shelby."

"As I will, Miss Y/L/N." He smiled and then he was gone, unlocking the bedroom door and slipping out of the room.

**

Y/N was furious. That was really the only word that she could think of to describe the sheer anger that bubbled inside of her. Thomas Shelby is a Peaky Blinder.

And she knew that the statement from the woman at the market wasn't a lie. What other reason would he have to hide everything from her? To never tell her about his life or where he'd been or why he would often come to bed at ungodly hours?

She stormed into their shared home and, upon seeing him sat at the kitchen table, cigarette in hand, decided that she couldn't deal with him. And so she threw him a look and then took off up the stairs to their bedroom.

Tommy followed, of course he did, yelling her name and asking what was going on. But she ignored him, simply sitting down on the bed and waiting for him to join her.

"What's wrong, love? Did someone do something? I swear, I'll-"

"You'll what, Tommy?" She stood then, still keeping her distance but crossing the room only slightly. "Cut them? Kill them?"

"What the hell is this about?" Tommy sighed. He seemed bored already, unprepared to listen to her ramble because, oh, Thomas Shelby knew that his girlfriend could ramble for hours.

"Let me see your hat." She knew what the Peaky Blinders were, she knew fair well what the name meant, and she needed to confirm what the townsfolk had told her. "Where is it? Show me it!" She started searching for the hat, opening drawers and cabinets, she knew that she had to find it, because she had to know.

"Y/N, calm down, for God's sake." Tommy clasped a hand around her forearm, but she yanked it away and simply stared up at him, tears threatening to fall from her already glassy eyes.

"Are you one of them?" Her voice was almost a whisper, so quiet and timid that maybe Thomas wouldn't have heard her if they weren't almost chest to chest. "Are you a Peaky Blinder, Tommy?"

And now she was really crying, tears smudging the makeup on her cheeks and clouding her vision as Tommy's piercing blue eyes stared down at her. He was thinking, thinking about whether it was best to tell the truth or to leave, and thinking about what the consequences of each would be.

What would she do if he told her? Would she yell? Hate him? Would she leave? And what if he left? Would she let him back in?

But she looked so vulnerable, was crying so hard because she already knew the answer. And Tommy wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms and kiss her head and wipe the tears from her eyes. But it was his fault that she was crying, he'd caused the tears and the hurt. And he had to tell her.

"Yes." Her heart felt like it might've stopped. Because Tommy was the only person that she trusted, and now she felt like she knew nothing about him.

The room fell silent, she stared at him and waited for words to come, and she waited, and waited. Thomas wouldn't break eye contact with her. In truth, because he was scared that, if he did, he'd never look into her eyes again, she'd leave and she wouldn't come back, she'd go back to Ireland, back where people told her things because that was the right thing to do, because they weren't afraid of what the Peaky Blinders might do to them.

She decided, after a few beats of standing still, staring at him, heavy breaths coming from both of them, that she couldn't look at him anymore. She'd been waiting for him to say something, anything, that would mean that this had all been some sort of sick joke. He'd start laughing, tell her he was kidding, that the woman at the market had told her that just to see how she would react. She'd be angry, yes, but it'd only be short lived, and it wouldn't change anything.

But he didn't, and he wouldn't, because she already knew there was no hint of a lie in what she'd been told. She took a last, deep breath, and then departed to the other side of the room, where she turned her back to Thomas and took a few more deep breaths.

"Listen, love, I...I wanted to tell you-"

"Don't, Thomas."

"I really did. I wanted to. But I knew you'd react like this-"

"And so you thought that keeping it from me was right? You thought that holding the threat of the Peaky Blinders over the entire town's head to keep them quiet, was the right thing to do? You thought I'd be happy when I eventually found out?" Thomas found himself falling silent, speechless. He was never speechless.

"I was hoping to tell you myself."

"Well, you missed the opportunity to do that two years ago, Thomas." She'd picked up her handbag now, and Thomas noticed that tears had pricked his eyes and were threatening to fall. "To think I worked for you, as your secretary. I signed off your fucking books, I made phone calls for you, you involved me in this without even telling me, you didn't even ask me if that was what I wanted, Thomas."

"I know, and I'm sorry-"

"Pack your things."

"Love-"

"Pack your things, Thomas. And don't you ever call me anything other than my name."

And with that, she'd gone. To where, Thomas wasn't sure, but he found himself watching her, almost in slow motion, as she stormed through their bedroom door. He could hear her heels clicking as she hurried down the stairs, the brief pause as she pulled her coat - the one he'd bought her for their anniversary - around her body, and then the click open and slam shut of the front door.

He lowered himself onto the bed, placed his head in his hands, and sat for a few minutes in silence. The window was open, and so the sounds of the bustling street below floated upstairs, and he tried not to listen. The thought that she was out there, inconsolably upset, with every intention of leaving him, because of a mistake he'd made off his own back seemed entirely too much to handle.

So he closed the window, lay back on the bed, and lit the end of a cigarette. He needed to figure out a way to make things right by her, after all, Thomas Shelby didn't care about opinions, but what she thought of him was the most important thing in the world.

**

She'd gone to the Shelby's family home, mostly to try to seek comfort from either Ada or Polly, but also to berate the brothers for not thinking to tell her their secret.

She burst through the front door, to find Polly and Ada at the dining table, each smoking a cigarette. They jumped up when they saw her, womanly instinct coming into full effect, knowing that something must've been wrong from the way she'd stormed in, and the look on her face when she had.

"What's he done, my love?" Polly was always best at being able to tell when Thomas had messed up, and she was always on the right track when it came to guessing what he'd done wrong. His aunt knew him better than anyone, as much as he'd hate to admit it.

"Did you know?" She was breathing heavily, trying not to let the tears that were threatening to fall from her eyes slide down her cheeks.

"Know what, love?" Ada had come to Y/N's side now, guiding her to sit down at the kitchen table, and had shooed the men away, into the drawing room, after Arthur had come mooching for a bottle of rum.

"Did you know what he was doing?" Her eyes were full of tears now, making it hard for her to see properly. She placed her elbows on the table and used the sides of her palms to wipe the tears as they fell. Polly pulled her chair over so that she was sat close to Y/N.

"Calm down, sweetheart." Polly placed a tentative hand on her arm, "What has he done?" His aunt could feel her heart drop in her chest, from the way that Y/N was speaking, she was almost certain that her nephew had cheated on his girlfriend.

"Did you know he was a Peaky Blinder? Is that what they're doing through there?" Y/N was really crying now, looking that horrible, vulnerable way that Tommy hated. Arthur had opened the door a crack, and he, John, and Finn were peeking out at the women sat in the kitchen.

Ada sighed and ran a hand over her face, and Polly seemed to erupt into anger, "We bloody told him, didn't we Ada? We told him you'd find out, but he listened to these bloody idiots," She jabbed a finger at the doors to the drawing room, which made Arthur crack up like a child, provoking Polly to pick up a teaspoon from the table and throw it at his face. "The women in this house are apparently the only ones with any sense in them."

"Why wouldn't he tell me, Polls?"

Polly took a long pause before answering. Thomas's reasonings had never been clear, behind any of his madness, and, even while having known him his entire life, she often wondered what the method behind the goings-on in his life was. "Listen, love, you know he loves you, yes?"

Y/N nodded slowly, a puzzled expression crossing her face. "Then you know how he protects the people he loves. Yes, he does all of this bad work, but he doesn't want you to know because he's scared something will happen to you if you know too much. And he doesn't want you to see him as this monster, Thomas Shelby, the leader of the Peaky Blinders. Sometimes, he just wants to be Tommy. Do you know what I'm saying?"

Polly, as always when she assumed anything about Tommy, was right. He'd liked Y/N from the moment he'd hired her to work as his secretary, but he knew she wasn't the type to turn a blind eye to his work. He supposed it was selfish, not telling her, but he wanted her to know him for who he was, not what he did.

She let out a sigh, partly letting go of all of the anger she'd built up towards Tommy, and partly because she was relieved to hear what his aunt had to say about it. "I know what you're saying, Pol."

A long pause followed, with only the bustle of the drawing room keeping the place from being in dead silence. Polly's hand was still resting on Y/N's arm, and Ada's on her back, and she found herself able to forgive. The Shelby women certainly had their ways.

"What do you want to do, love?" Polly broke the silence that had settled on the room.

"I don't know." Y/N couldn’t even think of anything else that she could say, she truly didn’t know what she wanted. Polly’s face contorted slightly, and Ada rubbed her hand up and down over Y/N’s back.

"Well, are you going to tell him it's over?" Ada asked, voice quiet, so as not to alert the men in the other room that anything too serious was being spoken about. She thought for a moment, feeling a pang of sadness come over her at the fact that she had to even think about whether or not she wanted to end things with Tommy.

"No. No, I'm not going to do that."

Polly breathed out, a breath that she didn’t even know she’d been holding, and wrapped an arm around Y/N’s shoulders, pulling her in and squeezing her in a way reminiscent of a mother holding her daughter.

"Okay. Okay, good. He does love you, so much, you know that?” It was a rhetorical question, and Polly didn’t leave enough time for Y/N to even answer. “Do you want to go home? Or will Ada boil the kettle and we can have a brew?"

"A brew would be nice."

**

The air was almost cold when she left the Shelby house to start the walk home. Summer was coming to an end now, but the sky was still bright past nine. She'd begun noticing things that she hadn't before, after finding out Thomas's secret. People would greet her profusely as she walked down the street, some even going out of their ways to let her past. They'd hold their children back from walking in front of her, the men working at the furnace would shield her from any soot that might come her way.

It felt strange, like Thomas was king of Small Heath and she was his Queen, and god forbid anyone see what might happen if they disrespect the Queen. She made an effort of smiling and thanking these people, showing that she didn't actually need them to be doing these things for her, but they did them regardless.

When she reached the front door of the house she shared with Thomas, she stood for a moment, simply staring at the front door. The mark was still there from the nail Thomas had banged into it months ago now, so that she could hang a holly wreath there to celebrate Christmas. He'd called it unnecessary, but they'd only just moved in together and she'd been so excited for their first Christmas in their new home, she'd come home from work one day to find the largest wreath Thomas could find at the market, hanging on their front door.

She smiled to herself, suddenly feeling emotional with all of the memories of their time together coming flooding back. She opened the door.

She was pleased to find that, when she got home, Thomas's hat and coat were still hanging on the coat stand at the front door. His pocket watch on the mantelpiece, shoes still placed neatly at the door. He hadn't gone anywhere yet.

"Thomas?" She called, and was met with the sound of soft footsteps in the bedroom.

"Upstairs." His voice was quiet, small, something that hurt her to hear. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him truly upset, even after two whole years.

She placed her handbag on the floor and draped her coat over the coat stand, then crossed the hallway and climbed the stairs to their bedroom, where Tommy was sat on the bed, head in his hands, suitcase at his feet. She felt a piece of her heart chip away upon seeing him.

"I'll be gone soon enough, I just-I didn't want to believe that-"

"Do you want to leave, Tom?" She took a few steps towards him, and Tommy lifted his head to look at her for the first time. His eyes were red, and she knew that Tommy Shelby strictly did not cry, except when it came to her.

A pause followed, Tommy simply staring up at her, opening and closing his mouth every now and again, thinking of the right thing to say. Was there a right thing to say?

"You know I'm not really religious. But I've been praying all day that you'd come home and we'd be fine again." A small, sad looking smile had settled on his face.

"Maybe you should start going to church, then." She placed her house keys down on the bedside table, she was here to stay. Tommy felt a weight lifted from his shoulders as she gave him a small smile and held her arms out to him, letting him back in, “Come here."

He didn’t hesitate, pulling her into his lap and wrapping himself tightly around her. Please don’t leave again, he was saying, eyes closed and cheek pressed to her stomach. Her arms settled around his neck, one hand drawing comforting patterns on his shoulder and the other smoothing his hair.

"I wasn't doing it to upset you." He needed an explanation for her, he owed her that, especially after she’d come back when he wouldn’t have blamed her for walking out of the door and never having a thought of him again.

"I know you weren't." He hated how forgiving she was. He hated that he’d done wrong, and, instead of just leaving like she deserved to, she’d come back and was comforting him, making him feel good about the lies he’d fed her. But he knew her all too well, he knew deep down she’d have forgiven him, because she wasn’t one to deal with things in any way other than graciously.

"No, sweetheart, I know I've been selfish. I know I’m not fair to you. But I'm only selfish because it's you." His hands roamed her back, underneath her dress, feeling every dip and scar, memorising them again, “I just wanted to have you, loved you since the minute I met you, I swear. Couldn't have you thinking of me as this cold, relentless monster. I just remember thinking you were too pure to know, thought I’d only ruin that if I got too close and you knew the truth.”

“I know you better than you know yourself, Tommy. You’ve got a heart in there, you know.” She gave him a small smile while he looked up at her, bright eyes piercing through dark eyelashes, “I don’t understand why you did all of this for me, you could’ve chosen another woman, one who you could’ve even helped you with your work all this time, but you chose someone who you felt like you had to hide everything from.”

“Told you already, I just wanted to have you.” He pressed a kiss to your cheek, then one to your nose, and then your lips. “You, not anyone else, not a woman who’d do my work for me, not someone easy, I wanted to have you. And you know I’m selfish with things that I want.”

You were really smiling now. Tommy always knew the right things to say, always knew how to make you happy. You wrapped your arms around him again, and, while Tommy didn’t like to admit it, he felt safe with you, something that he didn’t feel in many places.

“Thomas Shelby, you’ll always have me.”

[superfallingstars]

Hello, do you have any marauders fic recs? I’m a big marauders fan but I’m so tired of reading fics where they feel completely out of character, and I feel like you might know something I don’t

Aw man I’m the wrong person to ask for this, I don’t really read fics very often lol. I’ll try to enlist the help of some people whose Marauders opinions I trust and who might have better recs than me (tbh I’m also curious to hear), but I’ll share the few that I’ve come across, too. Apologies if you've already read them.

I think my most relevant rec is The Night Will Always Win by betweenfactandbreakfast, which is a canon-compliant Marauders era fic from 1975-1981. Admittedly I haven’t finished it – tbh I liked it so much that I had to stop reading it, which sounds so incredibly dumb now that I wrote it out, but I was legitimately getting pissed off that I had to do things in real life instead of reading it lmao. Time to take a step back...! Either way, I’ve really enjoyed it so far. And I’ve seen @seriousbrat's inbox turn into a battleground of endless Snape vs. Marauders discourse, so I know their feelings on the characters are pretty similar to mine lol (and hiii I know you have been in this fandom for much longer than I have, so maybe you have some good recommendations?). Basically this is a good fic if you want everyone to be a terrible person <3

The other fic I can rec is Have Your Cake and Eat It by cunegonde, aka my favorite fic of all time (that I could scream about literally foreverrrr but I’ll try to reel myself in!). This is a good fic if you want everyone to be a good person. Also this fic has time travel in it, so it’s like, kind of Marauders era, but not quite? Even though it’s kind of cliche, it’s also incredibly earnest and thoughtfully done, and it has interesting (and imo, realistic!) characterizations of each of the Marauders. Tbf I’m definitely biased toward this author’s work because they basically only write Snupin (my personal fave pairing), but reading their stuff is like, genuinely why are you writing Harry Potter fanfiction and not a full-length original novel, because holy fuck I think you could actually pull that off. Like, I loved this fic so much that I (person who doesn't read fanfic) immediately read everything else they wrote and finished it all in two days... Also this fic made me cry for literally an hour straight (probably the strongest emotional reaction I’ve had to any piece of media ever lol) – even though I knew what was coming. It was just that good.

Unfortunately that’s literally all I got lol. I’m going to tag some people who I think have similar takes on the Marauders as I do – @seriousbrat @remus-poopin @big-scary-bird @saintsenara – hiii, add on if you’d like. And anyone else who has recommendations of Marauders fics with good characterization, feel free to chime in!

[fulgurbugs]

Opening the 2024 Howliday draculaura and clawd!

i got these two preordered a little bit back, when i realized that they were selling faster than say, winter clawdeen and would probably not go on sale like her before they were gone. so i preordered them, and once the 26 hit they were extremely quick to get to me, with me getting them shipped and delivered same day. here they are in box!

different backdrop today, i opened them downstairs, instead of in my room

i am planning on putting this adorable box into storage so i was more careful in opening it up. on the back we have the collector certificate, as well as two stands

once again, we have more of these infuriatingly terrible plastic head tabs. i’m gonna need them to find some other way to do this, because every time i’m scared that i’m going to cut a dolls hair. they’re the worst.

here’s them freed from their prison! first impressions are, as usual, the ghouls outsell the mansters, unfortunately. however, i do still really enjoy what they’ve gone with for this clawd. tbf bell bottoms and funky patterns are such a serve, and more interesting that the safer choice of a suit or something. i think i would have gone with black for the mesh top, though. it might make it a little more cohesive. the other thing is i feel like clawd needs just one more accessory. maybe a gold necklace? just something. for draculaura i absolutely love her outfit as well, but honestly i though it might have been really cute if the red bodice of her dress was the same pattern as one of clawds clothing pieces too. i really love the silhouette of this dress a lot, though.

the shoes. they’re very detailed molds. with lots of stitch detailing on clawd’s adb a moon detail on the side, and draculauras heel-less heels are very valentines but make it spiderweb. with of course, adorable bat wings. the shoes are both completely solid colors, however.

here’s a random thing i was seeing that i wanted to make sure i made a note of. in clawds stock images, his wrists were edited to look like they were smooth and unarticulated. they are articulated, however, so it seems like kind of a bizarre choice on the photo editors part. draculaura’s hands are cast in black to give the appearance of gloves, with little plastic cuffs on her arms. they do not have a gap when you pull them down.

here’s the accessories! they come with a rose and a coffin-shaped gift box, a bag for draculaura, and a parasol. also rubber banded in like accessories were these little paper valentines hearts, though i’m not sure what to do with them. they’re very cute, though, and clawds one to draculaura is also for her birthday, which is valentine’s day!

with accessories! i couldn’t really find a good way for clawd to hold the box, but he holds the roses fine. the parasol comes with an additional piece that attaches to the stand to hold it up, so that draculaura can look like she’s carrying it.

facesss! clawd has a longer mohawk of short curly hair, while the sides are flocked. i think i might have liked to see a little facial hair on him? like maybe some painted sideburn details. or even some more intense eye makeup. he does look a little bit plain

draculaura! her signature heart has a moon in it for clawd, which is super adorable. i love the lip colors they went with for her as well,

and that’s the 2024 valentines howliday two pack! faboolous pets drac has found a new spot at the bottom shelf, where i’ve given clawdeen back to her, since if clawd can come to the draculaura shelf clawdeen is allowed as well. they’re not chilling on the bottom and i’ve decided the top shelf will have my g1 style ghouls on it for now. thanks for reading!

[godihatethiswebsite]

Books Tag Game!

Tagged by @dragonnarrative-writes.

Point of order: I'm a picky bitch. The amount of books I've read vs the books I'd actually put on a bookshelf are like.... maybe 20, taking into account most of them are part of a series. Tho tbf most of the 'good books' I want aren't on KU and I'm kinda fucking broke. Also yes, the early days of booktok got me back into reading after a 10+ year slump in case that wasn't about to become insanely obvious.

1) The last book I read:

Fake It Till You Make It by Flora Quincy. Been on the hunt for more omegaverse books, but this one was terrible >< DNF'd.

2) A book I recommend:

I don't know how not to sound like a basic bitch broken record, but for the love of god go read A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas. Just stop after book three in the series.

3) A book that I couldn’t put down:

Blood and Ash by Jennifer L Armentrout. Binged the first three books (that were out) in two days. Wish I could afford the rest.

4) A book I’ve read twice (or more):

Hi. Basic bitch again :) A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J Maas. You have no idea what this book meant to me the first time I read it and the strength it gave me to open my eyes and see that I was worth so much more.

5) A book on my TBR:

Currently there are about 28 of varying excitement to read (most of it is what I refer to as 'junk food'), but I've got an upcoming release in September for the fourth book in the Beasts of the Briar series by Elizabeth Helen called Broken By Daylight I'm looking forward to.

6) A book I’ve put down:

Exodus by Kate Stewart. I was prepared to put this series as one of my all time favorites with the way I felt falling in love with Sean and Dom, but after that... refused to read more. Genuinely devastated, still not over it. Haven't looked at rainy days the same ever since.

Also just because it still bothers me - House of Flame and Shadow by Sarah J Maas. What the fuck girl?! The first one was so good and I praise so much of your work! But it's like ever since ACOTAR book 4 came out you've just dropped the ball...

7) A book on my wish list:

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros. Hopefully it's better than some of the other dragon books I've tried recently.

8) A favorite book from childhood:

The Sight by David Clement-Davies. It's a fantasy book that follows a pack of wolves and their daughter who has visions. Have tissues on hand.

9) A book you would give to a friend:

Depends on the friend >>; We talking a cute hockey romance like Weak Side by SJ Sylvis... or is the freak flag flying with Shantel Tessier's The Sinner?

10) A fiction book you own:

Death: A Life by George Pendle. Not my usual fare, but it's a fun 'autobiography' about the grim reaper.

11) A nonfiction book you own:

Does a high school yearbook count?

12) What are you currently reading:

Just cracked open Baby + the Late Night Howlers by Kathryn Moon, but I'm expecting to probably close it within the first few pages (seriously, my kingdom for a good omegaverse that I haven't already read 😭).

13) What are you planning on reading next?

God, idk. Most of the books on my list either cost money, aren't out yet, or are titles I know are most likely gonna be mid at best.

No pressure tags: @cosmicpro, @void-my-warranty, @all-purpose-dish-soap, @stuffireadandenjoy, and @rememberwren

[lunar-years]

THESE TAGS YES.

i loooove jamiekeeley (whichever way u wanna read that) however i think jamie was firmly over her in a romantic way by then. also re roy i just think of that one post like “everything is about football except for jamie except jamie is actually about keeley. but keeley is also about jamie so.”

and then we kinda cement royjamie’s relationship as positive with roy forgiving jamie and by the end 100% they are friends. roy getting close to jamie and being vulnerable with him and then saying he’s proud of him only to follow with “btw back off from keeley”….. [jamie voice] ok! awesome! i feel so great about myself and whatever we have going on. which is fucking nothing. apparently. cuz u were just buttering me up

this is so poorly written and nothing no one hasn’t already said. i just needed to rant -_- and then roy comes out looking like the bad guy but he’s literally not. he’s just repressed & even with keeley being the one to choose she’s still just a prop. which ok tbf with rj i can see how that happens ngl,, but that doesn’t mean i have to like it LOL

Me forced to look at my own spelling /grammar errors because its so annoying to add tags on this damn tumblr app 🫣 *roy springS

Anyway YEAH!! The only thing I don’t agree with you about is that I do very much think Jamie is still in love with Keeley romantically in the finale and I think he was being genuine to Roy when he told him as such. I just also think he’s in love Roy!

To me that scene is entirely about royjamie rather than keeley at its core. The whole reason Roy arranges it is because he loves keeley and wants to get back with her but he also loves Jamie (and probably doesn’t realize it yet, but DOES know he can’t stand the thought of Jamie not being in his life). he’s downright terrified being with keeley is going to change his relationship with Jamie and he quite essentially Can’t Deal With That. So he’s trying to preemptively tell Jamie how it’s going to be, because it NEEDS to be that way in Roys head since he wants to have both Keeley AND jamie as part of his life and this is the only way he can see himself getting that. He’s not intentionally trying to hurt Jamie (well, up until Jamie rightfully pushes back and Roy gets egotistical and pissy about it!). I think he really thinks he’s doing the right thing and being the bigger person by asking Jamie to back off?? Which is obviously so absurd and misguided but also so very Roy. Of course it doesn’t go well because he’s a repressed AND entitled asshole about it and thereby hurts Jamie in the process. But like. I think the intentions were warped but coming from a good place?

Meanwhile from Jamie’s POV he thought he was having literally the best day of his life, where crush #1 Keeley agreed (and was extremely excited about) going to Brazil with him AND crush #2 Roy finally asked him to hang out outside of training!! On possibly a date!!! And then he’s telling Jamie he’s PROUD of him, which is like, literally what Jamie has been waiting to hear from him!! Jamie must fully think he’s dreaming because DAMN. But then Roy (seemingly randomly) pivots to talking about Keeley and acting like his relationship with her was so much more Important and Real than Jamie’s (which. It wasn’t. Not in Jamie’s mind, certainly). I think Jamie is SO hurt because he thought he and Roy were really friends on the verge of more and then Roy instead decided to like. Be a giant dick again! Out of nowhere! So Jamie says what he says to hurt him back just as much.

It’s about keeley but it’s not about keeley, if you will. And the lines are all crossed.

Which is to say, I don’t hate that scene as much as most people. I think it actually exemplifies (in the messiest way imaginable) how deeply royjamie care about each other and how goddamn terrible they are at successfully communicating it to each other, let alone learning how to navigate those feelings together.

I do hate that Keeley lacks onscreen agency in her big “choice,” because there really IS no choice with royjamie behaving like that (though I think she’d have turned them both down regardless). And her telling them as much happens offscreen with no follow up!! Which sucks!!

[yeyinde]

the notes of indigenous flavor in your last fic… 🤌 magnifique 🤌

i have been on a days long sickness induced fic binge and was just thinking how super unlikely it would be to find anything in this fandom with an ndn spin (understandably, i must admit lmao) RIGHT before i found it. it was fate! it was… super weird! literally heard the mgs alert! sound in my head at the first frybread mention fjnkejvn

even apart from that, that was one of the best fics i think i've ever read. we loooove a character study, and your style is gorgeous. i've been going through your entire fic catalogue, and every single one has me staring at the screen w full on chinhands like 🥰🥰🥰 because the writing is just so GOOD

thank you sooo much for sharing your beautiful filth ❤️❤️❤️ (and also for giving me the inspiration to finally lock tf in and actually write the terrible makarov/ghost threesome from hell that's been bouncing around in my head for the better part of a month lol)

ahhhh, thank you so much!!! i'm so glad you enjoyed it!! and the fact it inspired you to write is so unreal to me! i really hope you finish the fic. i'd love to read it if you do, but no worries if you're not comfortable sharing! 🖤

and i get thatttt. i think it's just a bit harder with reader inserts to find something that specific since it's supposed to be vague. though, tbf, even ocs have been pretty hard to come by.

to get away with it, i usually just cheat by trying to be super sneaky with the references (focusing on vague mythology instead, certain colloquialisms or ways of speaking, or food) so that way it can be enjoyed by everyone. but!! this one was mostlyyyyy for me lmao and it was funny thinking about someone like Price in my grandma's kitchen eating frybread (w fried ham and cheese on top, absolutely phenom) while she called him moniyaw (affectionate). i couldn't resist adding it.

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

Vetinari for the character ask game? :)

ahhhh everyone's favourite dictator.

First impression

I read Hogfather first, and so I didn't think much of him at all. Downey left way more of an impression on me, obviously. Then I read Guards! Guards! and I thought him mildly entertaining, though perhaps a bit boring and predictable.

Overall, I think my takeaway was: What a stupid nerd, love that for him, but he should be more of a weird freak.

(Do I have Downey's approach to Vetinari? Possibly.)

Impression now

I'm not sure my impression has changed too much. While Vetinari does change a bit as a character over the series (though in the last few books he's pretty OOC, in my opinion), it's not distinct enough of an arc for me to really alter my opinions on him.

(tbf I do stop accepting canon at a certain point, because there are some books of Pratchett's that shouldn't have been published because they weren't up to standards due to the whole mental decline. Let him write all he wants, just don't publish them. Jesus.)

Like, Pratchett doesn't write deep characters for the most part. Vimes and Granny have depth to them - but they're POV characters so I would hope they have depth. But side characters, not so much. Which is reasonable, you know. Pratchett was writing satire and pretty basic political commentary, he wasn't doing character studies or deep literary explorations.

So, I think Vetinari is a fun spoofing of the stereotypical villainous dictator wherein he's still a dictator but he's not terrible. He's sort-of benevolent. (He still has a scorpion pit and has Problem People assassinated and locks away others who he likes but doesn't want out in the open for various reasons i.e., Leonard. Still very much a tyrant - don't get on his bad side or you'll disappear. But he's nicer than Snapcase and Winder. Low bar but he crosses it.)

I like that he's very weird and has an idiosyncratic sense of humour. That delights me. Also his fastidiousness and clear foibles and ticks are charming. That he refuses to leave treats on Wuffles' grave that Wuffles didn't like in real life is a nice detail on some of the innter softness that is in him.

That said, he can be a hard one to get into the interiority of his head because he's so...untouchable, in a certain way? He always has a trick, he always has an answer, he is always able to turn a situation to his advantage no matter what to an implausible degree, etc.

Like, Vimes I understand. I can get into his head. Same for Angua or Carrot or Downey or Sybil. But Vetinari is on the harder side. I can do it, but it's not as easy as it is for others.

It's the perfection, I think, because TP needed Vetinari to never not be in power therefore he has to be impenetrable and able to always maintain control, or reclaim control in a Cool Fashion should it have been wrested from him in some manner.

We also just don't spend much time with him, compared to others. (Barring Downey, but Downey is disastrously human so I get him.)

Favorite moment

Probably most of his vacationing with Colon and Nobby during Jingo. That was all rather entertaining.

Idea for a story

I feel like I've written all the stuff I want to with Vetinari? I'm not sure I have something off hand that I can think of.

Unpopular opinion

He ain't the woke leader fandom sometimes weirdly projects him as. He is High Tory who does progressive changes only when he thinks it will best suit him to maintain stability within the city, overt control of Ankh-Morpork as a whole, and/or to ensure the city's broader hegemony within the region.

In Night Watch he isn't written like a sixteen/seventeen-year-old and I wish he had been.

Favorite relationship

Downey lol. I mean, come on - those two have history and it's going to be Stupid and Ridiculous.

I also like him and Madam and wish we saw more of that, especially in present day as an adult.

Favorite headcanon

Other than Madam being his mother? His leg wound is an actual disability and will steadily get worse with age and Vetinari's seeming lack of a lot of physical activity.

Pratchett sort of writes it off as a whatever/funny point/something that isn't an actual problem for Vetinari (because Vetinari can't have real problems due to the need for him to be perfect so he never has to write political changeover in the city in the present day) - and I always found this annoying.

So yeah, the leg wound is a real problem and his cane is an actual mobility device and not some "aha, you thought I was weak but I'm actually not!" gimmick.

----

Thank you! <3

[gayleviticus]

assorted thoughts on the two new doctor who episodes (spoilers below)

space babies

Weird concept but I think it worked. i dont think the token political allegory had a ton of depth but the stuff about stories is interesting enough i feel like i need to think abt it a little bit

my biggest issue is it feels like the doctor and ruby do a very jarring 180 on sparing the bogeyman at the end. like, i think in some ways it was predictable, but it happens so abruptly after they show zero concern for the bogeyman even knowing the truth of its origins I was super confused. like, i was just content to dismiss it as literally a pile of snot and not a living being.

ironically given the pro-choice vibes in the episode, this actually reminded me a little of kill the moon, where the episode doesn't spend any time actually fleshing out what the Bogeyman is, whether it has consciousness, its degree of sentience etc, the characters just decide killing is bad.

since this episode doesnt try to make a moral dilemma of it it feels less bad than kill the moon (altho I think unfair moral dilemma is a very deliberate choice on KtM's part to make you empathise w Clara aginst the Doctor) but I think it makes the 180 more baffling given the episode seems so uninterested in the Bogeyman as an actual being? if that makes sense?

the devil's chord

to be honest, while it was a fun watch at the time, this felt like an episode that ran out of ideas midway and the more I think about it the more I sour on it. at least scripting wise - i do think this was a very strong episode presentation wise!

Based on this and the Giggle I genuinely don't think RTD knows how to write godlike adversary; both these stories generally collapse into just 'godlike enemy hams it up and does goofy things while the doctor tries random stufff to save the day.' Like, as soon as Maestro turned up it felt as if the thread of narrative logic snapped and it just became a random events plot. And I felt the same with the Toymaker.

I think the issue is that these episodes overplay the power differential so much the Doctor doesn't have any kind of plan - but because these godlike entities like to toy w their victims it means neither the protagonist or antagonist are really driving the plot? i think the fact Maestro read as hammy rather than threatening also didn't help.

I also think these episodes don't set up clear enough rules. If you're going to have godlike aliens with gimmicks confronting the Doctor, the obvious appeal is that it's a story about manipulating the rules of the game to come out on top. It's like dealing with the Fey - or even Weeping Angels; the tension is in figuring out how to rules lawyer the godlike alien out of existence. But instead too much is made of the Doctor not knowing the rules and not attempting to discover the rules and it becomes boring. And if you take that aspect away what actually is the appeal of Doctor vs godlike alien?

They should have played devil went down to georgia during the music battle smh

The Beatles saving the day felt cheap, but it would have been incredibly cheap if they weren't real life people. Like can you imagine any other Doctor Who episode where one-off characters dismissed in the first 10 minutes save the day?

ngl while the ending song was fun and not lyrically terrible... it did feel like the lyrics were ironically the same kind of thing as the bad songs they were lampooning at the start of like, just perfunctorily rhyming random things together? idk. i guess it wasn't as pedestrian but i found it a bit funny

both

i feel like these episodes had a bit more of a return to a kind of procedural investigation format of Doctor Who - characters turn up to a new location and slowly have to piece together what's going on, the rules. which we also had previously in Wild Blue Yonder tbf, but i think it's interesting.

I like how there were moments where Ruby takes charge and says something a bit Doctorly - like when they enter the recording studio in devil's chord she says something like "Right, let's go!" and leads the way. It's a small touch but it just subtly chips away at the dynamic where the Doctor is always In Charge yknow?

Space Babies riffing on End of the World and Devil's Chord riffing on Pyramids of Mars for exposition scenes is perfectly justifiable (esp in the latter case given Pyramids of Mars is like 50 years old now), but I did definitely feel w those scenes that I'd seen it all before? Like, it's one thing to reuse a tropey scene because it's an efficient way of moving the story along, but I felt w both those scenes as soon as I knew what was going on I'd seen it all before. Nothing new. I could go to the toilet for a couple minutes

The magical realism is interesting (the handling of godlike beings aside) but i especially like the ideas of memories, songs hidden in Ruby's soul, and the snow appearing - that's very cool!

[raksh-writes]

✨ people I wanna know better! ✨

Tagged by the lovely @roxannes-love-letters thank you, hun!! 💗🥰

Last Song? I got into Sabaton recently (like, two days ago 😂) and went for a greatest hits playlist on spotify yesterday to check more of their music, so the last song there was "In the Name of God". A really good listen, y'all definitely give it a go if you like heavier sound! I sure missed it.

Favourite colour? Violet! Or, I guess most people say purple, but for me it's the more blue-ish shade I associate with violet, and that's the one ^^

Currently watching? Nothing much, I'm not exactly a tv shows person, and if I end up watching one, I usually binge it (which hasn't happened since Kinnporsche: the series tbh), so for now it's mostly gameplays and let's plays on yt or streams of games Im interested in ^^

Last movie? Oh, I can finally answer this! 😂 I actually caught up on three movies I wanted to watch for quite some time last week. The last-last was Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, which hasn't sucked me in quite as much as I was expecting until the back half of the movie (tbf I usually watch animations with polish dub and this I watched in original, so maybe that had smth to do with it too?), but overall a very lovely movie and the ending was *chef's kiss* and two days earlier I caught up on John Wick Chapter 4 (Hiroyuki Sanada's parts were Amazing and absolutely my fave in the whole movie 💗💗 yes, Im biased, sorry not sorry xD) and I Finally watched Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among thieves too and y'all... Y'ALL, it was so good 😩👌 I LOVE IT! You can feel so much heart went into it, the humor was super fun, the characters Lovely, it Really felt like a DnD session in play and Holga my absolute beloved 💗 It actually managed to jerk a few tears out of me too 😂 Overall such a lovely movie, absolutely give it a watch if any of y'all hadn't already, it's definitely worth its time 💗 (Also, I'm surprisingly in the mood to catch up on some more movies, any recs anyone? ^^)

Sweet/spicy/savoury? Hm, out of these options, probably savoury. I've been trying to accustom myself to more spicy dishes too and it's slow going, but so far I'm liking that more and more too ^^

Relationship status? Single. Have been for years, unfortunately 😔 I miss having that sort of connection with someone terribly, but so far, no luck.

Current obsessions? Sad to report Im lacking a proper brain rot rn 😔 It was Astarion from BG3 for a while, but I kinda fell off the game after making a 100h in a couple weeks and now Im searching for a proper obsession again. There IS this new survival-building LotR-themed game but I Really don't need another one I'll play for a week or two and abandon forever, not to mention I shouldn't chip away at my savings any more than I absolutely have to now that I'm not working. So... We'll see if I'll cave in or not 😂 (for now I got Shadow of Mordor on sale so I might finally check it out tonight, who knows!)

Last thing you googled? Sabaton - 40:1 'cause I wanted to check the lyrics (and it's currently among my faves from Sabaton and no, not only because it's about polish history! it's just that good ^^)

Selfie? I'll do you one even better! Look at our lovely pupper:

It's an older photo, but shhhh, no one has to know! And she's still looking good ^^ (better even, without the eye buggers!)

Friends I wanna get to know better: @dual-desires @fleet-off @asexualannoyance @the-cookie-of-doom @theflowergirl @livingbythewords @oenothera5 (This is no pressure tagging as always!)

[butch-reidentified]

I have to apologize to everyone bc over the past several months-yearish, something has happened within me that defies my separatist sensibilities (though tbh our recent urban separatism attempt ended horrifically 🙃): I have met and platonically fallen for a man who I truly believe to be good and reasonable. I know the phrase "platonically fallen hard for" sounds unusual, but it's really the best way to describe the situation - the 3 of us (him, me, and my wife) went from first meeting to a close and deeply meaningful friendship in a startlingly short time period (for us anyway, as none of us tend to open up easily). I'm talking chosen family/introducing each other as family to new people. I don't attach terribly easily, and I don't CARE at this level for people easily at all, but this is someone I've become intensely protective toward in a matter of under a year. My wife and I are both legitimately baffled by how much and how quickly we've come to care for him, and he's expressed the same. My wife and I are extremely selective with people, and though we can get alone with just about anyone, it's extraordinarily rare for us to meet someone who we can genuinely relate to. We have a lot in common (and what we have in common are things 99.999% of people simply can never understand bc of the life we grew up in & are still in), but the three of us being so vulnerable and honest with each other, being able to be real with each other in a way we just can't with anyone else (bc of said life experiences), genuinely letting someone in on that level and caring about their wellbeing in an actual emotional and not purely cognitive way, is surreal and lowkey a bit unnerving to me. Especially considering how minimal the vast majority of my emotions are. He is always there for us in ways none of our friends really have been before. Even this past week, when my wife & I had a severe covid infection, he was the only one who showed up for us, without needing to be asked, cleaned the house, took care of the animals, and looked after us. So it was nice to have a person around with basic decency for once, but since then he's been going well above and beyond decency or even what a typical actually good friend would do.

My wife & I had promised ourselves no new male friends, but this has quickly become among the most important relationships we presently have to both of us (though tbf he's also our business partner, so that's pretty important). He's also helping us reopen the lesbian-focused bar near our house that closed last year. He was already a really good guy before we met, and I noticed almost immediately how his behaviors differ from other men I've known & how quick to call other men on their behavior he is, even in circumstances where doing so will negatively impact him or his life. Since becoming friends with us, he has been an active participant in our conversations about feminism, always wanting to listen and learn, fully takes critique and feedback to heart, and shows that he is committed to being a better ally to women every day through his behavior. I've known some fairly decent guys before, but they were always men who would be seen as soft/effeminate, and certainly didn't come from the life context we do (honestly one of the hardest contexts to be pro-woman in, even for women). This guy couldn't be further from that, yet is simultaneously honest, vulnerable, and deeply altruistic and caring. the whole situation is making my brain short out.

[coldflasher]

Salty ask list, 9 & 16? 👀

9. Most disliked character(s)?

Dion. Fucking Dion. I hate that bastard SO MUCH. I hate the entire forces plotline and basically all of season 7 but there is something about Dion in particular that I just LOATHE. Tbf when he was first introduced in his first ep I was okay with him but the more they leaned into the all-powerful force god side of things, the more my hatred grew... if Dion has no haters, I am dead

I also HATE that snide reporter (Taylor?) who works for Iris. The ep where she tries to sacrifice that one woman to those terrorists to save her own neck and outs Allegra as a metahuman and then by the end of the ep we're supposed to be cool with her? NO. I HATE HER.

Then there's Nash wells. My least favourite Wells. I hated him sliiightly less on my last rewatch but he's still the worst Wells. He literally led to the destruction of the multiverse because of his own stupidity. Like whyyyy did we keep getting lumped with all these increasingly irritating Wells doppelgangers when we could have just had Harry. And then Harry AND HIS WHOLE UNIVERSE gets erased BECAUSE OF NASH. I HATE THAT MAN.

And you know who else I... not hate, but find highly annoying? Khione. I actually think she could have been interesting if she had been a fusion of Caitlin and Frost and we actually got to see a version of the character that had grown and embraced both sides of herself instead of having these fractured identity states, but instead they just erased them both and gave us the most boring, insipid, flavorless replacement. Khione is such a Mary Sue. She's sooo perfect and kind and powerful with her magic nature powers!! Don't you love her? NO. NO I DON'T. We had 8 seasons of Caitlin and 7 of Frost (in some form) and I found it cheap and disrespectful of both their characters to kill them both off at the last minute and replace them with some wishy-washy hippy version with no personality and expect me to care about her (bear in mind that i haven't seen the end yet and i believe there is a bit more to the storyline that i havent got to see yet but either way i find her so annoying)

I feel in the early seasons there are no characters I actually hate because most if not all of them either had redeeming features or were compelling to watch but the later seasons were rife with insufferable characters who we're meant to like but just absolutely boiled my piss. like of these, only taylor was meant to be a villain and even then she gets a "redemption arc" of sorts but it wasn't enough for me. i wasn't buying it. taylor they could never make me like you

16. If you could change anything in the show, what would you change?

I mean the obvious answer is stop Len leaving, or at least bring him back, but barring that I would make Andrew Kreisberg not be a piece of shit so that we could have stuck with his original vision for the show and had it be good forever. Like. They were setting up some seriously good and interesting shit and there were so many cool plot threads and he seemed to have planned so many things years in advance but sadly he's a diabolical person. the industry is well rid of him for that reason but if I could wave a wand and make him be a good and normal person then I would do that. why are good showrunners so often terrible people >:(

barring that... i'd redo crisis entirely. i think they totally bottled that storyline. having it tied up with oliver was a HUGE mistake, they'd been building up to crisis and barry's disappearance since day 1 of the show and the way it went down was such an unbelievable disappointment and a disservice to the show as a whole imo.

also, i love them but i would seriously cut down bart and nora's role in the show, because it made the dynamics weird and aged westallen way before their time. just give them a spinoff or something. and i would get rid of any and all plotlines related to the forces but that goes without saying

[zmediaoutlet]

hello liz!! happy wincest wednesday!! can you do a director's commentary on the constant vow? like what inspired it, how the story changed along the way, what you had to leave out, stuff like that?

helloooooo happy wincest wednesday, and we shall all politely ignore how many wednesdays ago this was sent [ 😓 ]. To slightly fuck up my most-quoted line from the West Wing: let's forget about the fact that I'm late to the party, and embrace the fact that I showed up at all!

Tricky q, though! It's a lot of just like... sheer volume of fic to comment on, haha. But I'll use your questions as a starting-off guide, and given that it is wincest wednesday (wincest week, wincest life), I'll keep that in mind. So --

what inspired it?

What inspired it was how I was reading like every single genderswap/sex curse/etc etc fic that had been written in fandom at the time -- the time being roughly when s8/9 was airing, so... like ten years ago, lol -- and noticing a trend, and also getting kind of increasingly annoyed at that trend. To wit: isn't Dean Winchester just the most terrible womanizing horndog, and doesn't he just really need to be narratively punished for his Crimes? The answer to both is... uh, no. Not at all. So: a fic, haha.

Fandom takes Dean's whole womanizing naughty boy thing as received wisdom a lot of the time and I find it completely bewildering. It's subverted in episode 2 (if you didn't notice it was a total act in episode 1). Like... hello. Use your eyes and ears, friends. But what's more interesting to me on that level is that Sam takes it as received wisdom, and while it's also tempting to ask Sam to use his eyes and ears it's a lot more excusable for him to be confused about that whole... thing. Dean performs it very well in public -- and tbf, he does fuck! Not like he's not getting tail -- but womanizer is a very particular kind of pejorative and one I pretty roundly reject (for interesting and good reasons I'm right about that I've gone into elsewhere). But so many of those fics had both the flawed womanizer assumption at the heart and also a Sam who tended to buy it, even if justice was asserted by the end, and it was just driving me slightly nuts, lol. And because the only reason I ever write a fic is because I want to read the one I actually want, it went on the list. To be very eventually written, haha.

(more babbling below the cut)

how the story changed along the way

Things I always knew: I wanted the witch to be stupid/bad at magic, because I was also getting tired of Oh So Wise Arch Bitch Witches who somehow manage to laser-focus a punishment spell. (Can you guess that I found Rowena tiresome, lol.) I always knew I wanted it to be a reset every day for a month for the iterative game of 'there's no getting away from this, we have to keep having sex, and how will the relationship evolve as we do?' I always knew I wanted it to be a True Love game, a) because it's a classic of the genre but also b) because it'd be fun to see them circling that inevitable conclusion, especially given that c) I wanted Bobby to have to try. Just to be mean to Dean, basically. :)

That said: in the ten years of contemplation I really went back and forth on the setting being s2 or s7. I knew all along that I wanted it to be true first time, i.e. neither of them had any secretly pining wincest wants (beyond what's true of their codependency in canon), and for it to be a slow coming together over the course of the curse. s2 first time is one of my favorites because of the seismic effect John's loss has on their relationship; s7 is one of my favorites because of the weird sense of true freedom they've got, when Sam's mind is back in place and he's all whole and he's still standing right next to Dean, exactly where he wants to be. (Gah!) But what I realized is that s2 was just... too early. They're babies, still untested. If the story's about True Love then... I'm just not interested in their early-seasons True Love, frankly. It's nice, it's intense, but it lacks the tempering of real tests that'll come in s4/5/6. There's a reason I'm a mid-seasons girlie.

Of course, then I realized it was better to shift it back a little more to the second half of s6. You still get most of the revelatory pleasure of s7's unspoken We Choose To Stay vibes, but without the added complication of Lucifer talking to Sam throughout (did not want his color commentary on Dean's pussy of the day), or the Leviathan plot ramping up. Eve's just out there doing her thing in late s6; it provides a nice narrative breather. Not that they realize it, haha.

what i had to leave out

Very little, actually. Over 120k of decompressed sexy navel gazing you can cram in a lot of stuff, lol. But one thing that did keep coming up and I kept very deliberately cutting right up to the edge of it so you could see the shape but not the thing itself: gay/bi Dean.

Obviously it does come up, with Sam's very careful questioning that starts in the cabin -- Dean dropping hints himself; Sam having little fireworks going off in his brain. I think in those OKC conversations it's a little more bald, in a way that I think/hope was appropriate for that stage in the relationship -- once you've slept with someone like 28 times it's reasonable to ask more about their background, I guess.

Given, though, that a lot of the fic is circling around the concept of Dean-as-object, I really wanted to keep some opacity in him. Some little bit of mental privacy, especially with how he's being cracked open physically. I hope that in all that's not being said there's a lot of room for all kinds of history, stuff Sam might learn more about (or not!) as they continue. Obviously prostitution was part of it, but to what extent? Did he hook up with guys just because he wanted to? (Was Dean/John ever a thing?) All stuff that the fic needs to be aware of, e.g. in how it informs how he does not want to open that door with Cas, but that doesn't need to actually be on screen.

Oh, I also left out period sex and pregnancy kink. Both wildly tempting but would've dragged the fic to yet another place.

random this-fic trivia

I had no idea how the curse was going to get solved until the day I wrote that it was going to be solved in 'two parts' and went, oh fuck. Now I gotta come up with the two parts.

I initially hated Denise and then she became my bestie. She makes really good lasagna. :/

In a lot of ways the most important part of the whole 120k is the line Dean has about saying that even the cure is stupid -- because he loves Sam, and loves making him feel good, and so what's good for Sam is good for Dean, so how do you differentiate? Sam and Dean are both bibros, news at 11.

For me the sexiest part of the fic by far is one of the middle nights at the cabin where Sam wakes Dean up in the early morning to be fucked and then is just playing with his body after, wide-awake while Dean's sleepy, vaguely possessive and smug. It's just a good look on them both.

Not-on-screen headcanon from me: Dean was treating it like prostitution even through the first 'date' where Sam asked him not to, and it wasn't until Sam tried to kiss him at the beginning of ch5 that the careful mental shield of it being a 'job' cracked, and never repaired. No going back, at that point (even if he had another mini-crisis over the blowjob, later).

Future headcanon for the fic: Dean is way less shy about showing Sam his lingerie kink. In contrast, Sam develops an almost-crippling breeding kink. (Dean is delighted when he finally figures out why Sam's acting so weird.)

[jmoonjones]

Do you write fanfics? if so, i feel like id really enjoy reading your fics based on how much i like your art :)

I love fan fiction as a reader, and I used to write a lot of it too - back in the days when lemon meant spicy. 

I've been gradually rediscovering my love of writing lately, and spellcheck has improved so much that hardly anyone can tell I'm dyslexic! 

Long story short:

I was a copy writer for many years. I've been the social media voice for a wide swath of brands (eg. liquor, beauty, movies, cpg, etc!) during my time in advertising. For years my writing was consumed by a voice that wasn't mine, and while I could juggle writing for several different properties at one time for my job, my own voice somehow got lost in the process.  Writing for work kinda kills writing for pleasure and makes you terribly insecure about anything you manage to scribble down.

Especially when you're just writing puns all day. (Brands love puns)

Years later (and thankfully no longer a copy writer) I'm still working on recovering and finessing my lost voice. 

But practice is, of course, what helps the most and what better practice is there than writing fan ficiton?! 

I don't have anything I'm anywhere near confident in sharing right now, but I'm hoping that will change as I continue to practice! 

(I said 'long story short' but ignored my own advice lol)

(tbf, there is a much longer version of the story but I've already rambled enough)

[paperandhis-paper]

Arc-V Month Day 11: Legacy for the Future

(Is that a motherfucking Jojo reference?)

Ok, so, I've spent most days of @arcvmonth so far gushing about the show, so warning: negativity ahead.

I'm overall mixed on the Legacy characters. I don't think they ruin the show as some people claim, but I happen to have problems with... all of them? There are also positives, ofc, so ANALYSIS TIME!

Crow: he's... fine. His screentime is fine. His role in the plot is fine. Everything about him is just fine. My only real complaint is that I wished Shun had won and gotten another duel with Yuya, but it's whatever. He's really only part of the Lancers because he's a legacy character, as I don't think he's the most interesting Synchro character.

Jack: by far the best Legacy character, Jack somewhat takes the role of rival from Reiji, down to having 3 duels with the protagonist and a 3000 ATK ace. Giving him the role of a mentor is an interesting take on the character, although it was weird going back to 5D's I don't know how people feel about him beating Sergey (I know some people hated that when the episode was first announced), but somehow it works fine? It's an interesting subversion, because you'd think Yuya would be the one to do so, but instead Yuya's role is to be the one to unite the people together. My only problem is that it's... kinda weird that Jack just lets the City remain a shithole. Like, do something my man! I also wonder if Yusei wouldn't have been more fitting for his role, but I understand they didn't want to have the protagonists so Yuya wouldn't be overshadowed.

Kaito: I never cared for Kaito in Zexal (granted, it's been a long while since I've seen it), and Arc-V Kaito has similar issues. Namely, being a bit too powerful. He never has a solo loss, and here's where being a legacy character begins to hurt. He had a reputation for being unbeatable (Tron cheating aside), so the writers know they can't have him lose easily. He even almost beats Yuya! The best thing about him is that he provides a mirror for Shun; he's basically edgy-bird Shun from the beginning, but in some ways worse. He steals spotlight a fair bit, but his most egregious case of this is to another Legacy Character, so whatever.

Speaking of...

Asuka: done dirty, and so unnecessarily. Seriously, let her duel Dennis! Him vs Kaito isn't a TERRIBLE set-up, but she needed a big win so her presence doesn't just feel like fanservice. Her getting carded also sucks, but I get the writers kinda had to (can't have a Ritual duelist face Zarc, after all), plus it gave Yuri some much-needed depth.

But at least she got a win, even if it was against mooks. Unlike...

Edo: oh boy. See, I don't actually have much issues with his arc. It works, so long as you ignore that it has basically nothing to do with Edo's character in GX. No, what I wanna talk about this is his duel with Yuya.

I'm gonna be blunt: he should've won that duel. For one, he didn't get a single win in the series (tbf, his opponents were strong, but still), but most importantly, earlier on we saw with Kaito vs Shun that even if you lose you can still reach your opponent. And Edo got development himself by accepting Entertainment Dueling and grabbing an Action Card. The fact that Yuya wins by grabbing an Action Card of his own just rubs salt on the wound. Plus, I just like the idea of Yuya never beating an arc villain (other than Zarc, sorta), his role instead being another (then again, I guess then people would use that to claim Yuya is a weak protagonist and whatnot, so maybe it was for the best).

Also, both him and Kaito interrupting Yugo and Yuri's duel is dumb. Saving that rant for later.

So yeah. Legacy Characters were a mixed bag. I think the writers struggled with giving them the prominence they deserved without outshining Arc-V's massive cast. That's a very fine line. But hey— we got Legacy Support! That's always a good thing, right?

[4chanandchill]

My body has really been choosing violence lately

> Pulled a muscle my back because I hyperextended it while throwing up; hurt real bad for about a week, hurt to lay down (in any position) and would cramp whenever I stood up from sitting for almost a month

> Got gluten-ed just as my back was getting better, had really bad symptoms for a week and moderate symptoms for a further week. All the fun stuff too, brain fog, terrible headaches, fatigue, joint pain etc.

> Got better but still had lingering symptoms, pretty sure I’ve got some vitamin deficiency or maybe even anemia

> Hurt my knee the second I recovered from the gluten (tbf that was my fault; I knew walking down a steep hill with a heavy backpack was a mistake but I did it anyway)

> Got a terrible cold less than a week after getting better from the gluten and only a day after my knee stopped hurting

> Got cubital tunnel (like carpal tunnel but in my elbow, so it’s my entire arm from shoulder to fingers that hurts) before I even finished recovering from my cold

This is really starting to piss me off ngl. I’ve got celiac and EDS but it normally plays nice, idk why it’s in such a bad mood lately.