#which means I end up going way too hard on the shippy suggestiveness and making it too obvious

[22degreehalo]

Me: Ahhhh, I love slow burny type romances so much, where you can just Feel every tiny little incremental bit of growth in their relationship from strangers to closer than anyone...!

Also me, trying to write the earlier stages: okay so this is when they become desperately attracted to each other, right

[burberrycanary]

I, too, want to procrastinate right now so thanks @zenaidamacrouras1 for the tag <3333

Rules: Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass this onto other writers. Let’s spread the self-love 💖

I’ve been on a writing streak lately and I’m usually most excited by what I’m currently working on. But, taking a look back, here are some works I’m proud of.

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Still Left with the River (The Paradox of Motion) - 14k | G | Steve/Bucky, MCU

Summary: Coming back from as good as dead to a changed world is easier the second time around. But then Steve supposes that, like with most things, you get better with practice. 

A post-The Falcon and The Winter Soldier Stucky Endgame fix-it where even if you can’t go home again, you’ve got to go somewhere.

This is part of my massive labor of love stucky end game fix-it and probably my favorite story in the series, viewed individually. As I was writing this I went: no one is going to want to read a G-rated post-TFATWS stucky fic that doesn’t provide pretty immediate shippy gratification. But I love watching Steve have to pick himself up and go on after making a huge mistake that deeply hurt the people he loves most. While it can be cathartic as a reader to watch the people Steve left behind be furious, chewing him out until Steve has suffered some amount that’s “enough,” what I wanted to focus on is how hurting and disappointing the people closest to you, who continue to love you painfully through the hurt, creates such a complicated mess of damaged relationships. Steve, re-isolated by so much death and his own mistakes, now has to deal with repairing what he put wrong, if he can and if he’s given the chance to. But as the paradox of motion title would suggest, crossing that distance isn't easy.

This story is a quiet complicated love letter to New York City while this whole series is a massive intricate love letter to Bucky Barnes. Plus, Steve quietly pining is so my jam I can’t even. Come for Steve pining, stay for Steve making things right again.

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What the Living Do - 10k and counting  | G-E ratings | Henry/Alex, RWRB

Series Summary: This story is set a few months post-film and in a better universe than ours. Henry divides his time between New York and Kensington Palace. Alex is a second year student at Georgetown Law in Washington D.C. and lives in the White House. The distance is hard, but they're making it work.

We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss—we want more and more and then more of it.

The epigraph of this series is from Marie Howe’s What the Living Do, which is a poem she wrote to her brother who had died from AIDS. It beautifully balances grief and living.

I’m drawn to characters who aren’t going to immediately tell you everything they are thinking and feeling—and to performances where so much is conveyed through micro-expressions that you don’t need dialogue.

Which means this RWRB series is an interesting challenge for me as an author that’s involved writing a lot of very direct communication all the way up to out-in-out Relationship talks. And a lot of fluff. But thanks to the series being told from Henry’s POV, it’s fluff in a minor-key mood. So if you like your bantery domestic fluff shot through with slowly healing grief and the lingering impact of spending years in the closet without a supportive family only to be traumatically outed, then this is the series for you.

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The Art of the Possible - 9k | M | Sharon-centric, TFATWS/MCU

Summary: Maybe whether you’ve picked the wrong side depends on where you’re standing—but if you can’t tell who the sucker at the poker table is: it’s you.

Sharon before, during, and after Madripoor.

I had so much fun writing this with @village-skeptic though it is absolutely not a story for everyone: non-linear and less than straightforward without the hook of a popular ship. Maybe I’m just drawn to characters the MCU keeps doing dirty (cough Bucky cough), but the incoherently bad writing of TFATWS created openings to tell a story that focuses on the bleakly dark aspects of the thematic and subtextual storytelling that is foundational to the MCU. And Sharon was the right character for telling that story.

But for anyone troubled by the politics of the MCU? This is a story for you and I hope you give it a try.

The trick to telling a story with heroes is knowing when to stop and what to leave out.

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I Leave This at Your Ear - 5k | E | Betty/Jughead, Riverdale

Summary: They sort of break up again on February 17 and definitely get back together on March 15. They barely talk between “the Valentine's Day massacre and the ides of March,” he jokes later, sitting next to her in a booth at Pop’s and hoping that she’ll slide closer to rest her head on his shoulder like she used to.

Ah, the brief golden age of Riverdale when that sandbox was fun to play in. This is probably the single best expression of my style as a writer: lyrical, a lot more show than tell, starting in medias res with people talking around strong feelings that are conveyed without being directly mentioned much of anywhere. I’m drawn to focusing on the hard and messy parts of relationships without the big drama of external angst or the relatively easy knots to untie that are misunderstandings—a Marmite tendency, I know. But I love thinking about the part where you go, ok, but how do we actually live with everything that’s happened? Getting back together is easy in comparison to going forward afterward—that is what’s hard.

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Exactly the Contents of One - 6k | M | Starsky/Hutch, Starsky & Hutch

The day's smoggy and breathless, already in the mid-eighties with the weatherman promising worse tomorrow, but as long as they keep moving it's not so bad.

(Or, becoming Starsky and Hutch.)

I definitely have a type: two characters who are very different people but share common values and are fighting for something bigger than themselves—idealists who get all mucked up and worn out in the trenches while loving each other too deeply and too much, generally in ways that are at odds with the society around them. Yeah, that’s my ship type. 

This is a throwback pick for an old fic, but I’ve always been interested in how slash developed as a genre and a subculture. I ended up taking a tour of some OG ships from the 60s and 70s, including going pretty deep down a Starsky/Hutch rabbit hole (the 70s TV series and not the film remake, I cannot emphasize enough). I was nervous about signing up for this because there was a 5k minimum word count and at the time I’d never written anything near that long. So, wow, I’ve come a long way.

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I'm not sure how long this game has been going around, but if @skarabrae-stone, @sullypants, @beaarthurpendragon or @controlofwhatido haven't played yet and would like to, please have some self-rec love 🥰

[leonawriter]

My Personal Takes on Stormbringer:

Without a full and accurate translation to go through in one sitting, it’s still hard to get a handle on things properly. That said, thank you to everyone who’s working on it. 

Now.

(please note all quotes are my memory of translations I have read, and are not verbatim.)

-Asagiri, please, you do not need to make so many coding analogies with regards to Chuuya and Verlaine. They don’t work.

-It often feels - not just in this book but also in 55 Minutes, where there are tight restrictions on a time travel ability - that Asagiri limits abilities based on how scientifically accurate they are. However, this doesn’t make sense! why should it! Literature should be an expression of freedom. There should be rules - the same way the Page has rules - but in the sense of Magic A is Magic A. You make up the rules and then you don’t break them in future. Why have Kunikida able to create something with a mass heavier than a piece of paper out of a page of his notebook, but then say you can’t do [x/y/z] because it’s scientifically unviable?

-I have no issue with how skk treat each other. they are chaos teens. let them be. like... this is the beginning of their actual trust. they’re also in the mafia, and in a dark time in their lives. it’s fine. (it isn’t, but at the same time, it kinda is.)

-I feel like Chuuya taking things from other people and making that thing “his” fits him as a character? he had nothing before, so when you have nothing, all you have is what people give you. If someone gives him a bike, then that bike is his now. He has to learn to look after it, love it, and respect it, and he’ll remember that friend by it. Same goes for pretty much anything else. Also, it’s a show of how well Chuuya adapts to things, and what things he chooses to pick up.

-The hat. I do not like how the hat was treated. Making it into the key that helps Chuuya be able to activate Corruption cheapens the meaning and weight of having been given the hat as a memento of the first person who told him to live as a human being. Why not have the hat be a reminder of his humanity in a purely sentimental way? I’m going to ignore anything canon about this and just say it’s sentimental. Which, like, it could have been a safety blanket type thing, not pseudo-science.

-The coding in Chuuya’s body is a bit... of a reach? How do you put that in there? I don’t get it. Just say that there’s a possibility he might die if he uses Corruption, or that he’ll never become “Chuuya” again. That he’d lose himself utterly. The log history can be either on a chip (insert Dazai making “lost dog, if found return to the mafia” jokes here) or on something else that could easily be destroyed during the course of the story (or not).

-Dazai living in the shipping container reads to me like an extreme version of “I do not want to be found I do not want to be helped I am worthless trash and what’s the point in having an actual home if I plan on dying any day anyway.” Verlaine asks what drove him there, and Dazai says “you” and tbh that offers up so many questions (like, was the shipping container thing recent, was it temporary, or what). There’s the possibility that Dazai doesn’t always live there, because otherwise he’d suffer from hypothermia and get pneumonia in the winter! But above all, Mori had nothing to do with this. He was probably terrified to go too close in case he got killed. Stop saying Dazai lives here because “poor baby was abused :(” that sure was not it.

-Dazai goes all this way - plotting for ages, since before the beginning of the book, having been number one on Verlaine’s hit list, just to get the truth about Chuuya’s humanity and to preserve it - because “I want to see Chuuya suffer as a human being” is him saying he doesn’t want to see Chuuya become like him, or inhuman, because that’s not Chuuya. (dude, there ain’t a straight explanation for this...)

-following on from the previous, Dazai refusing to just let things be the moment he realises that it’d mean double suiciding with Chuuya. I personally see that as a shippy moment because Dazai had already given up on Chuuya being alive (if I read the translation right) and in that case, dying would just be letting go. But Mori says “yeah but I don’t think he’s dead yet?” and that, along with the “double suicide” thing, makes Dazai go “absolutely NOT.”

OK a related thing - as far as I remember, when IRL Dazai attempted double suicide, right up until his actual death it would result in either a failure or... his partner dying and him surviving. The cold potential of this happening in BSD if Dazai had just given up reminded me of that.

-Regardless of my thoughts on how it was handled, Stormbringer reinforced my previous ideas about how Chuuya basically IS Arahabaki. It also suggests that Arahabaki was more of a sentient ability than a true “god” but... that’s fine. For me, all I cared about was that all those “Arahabaki is an evil being that is constantly trying to take over Chuuya and Corruption is Arahabaki being let out” takes are not true. It’s... basically Chuuya taking the lid off his power. I joked at one point that Corruption is Chuuya going “I’m so pissed off I’m gonna kick the door open and throw away the key” and Dazai going “go for it babe, I got your key.”

-Rimbaud and Verlaine are... very complicated characters? They’re not easy to get a handle on. I sometimes find myself liking them and sometimes find myself disliking them, and that’s something that’ll be easier when I have a full translation available - and one of Fifteen. Rimbaud was held back by seeing Chuuya, at first, as nothing more than an empty vessel to Arahabaki’s power, while Verlaine was so taken over by grief without understanding how to handle that, that he became a monster up until the end of the story. Neither of them were good people. That said, their relationship to each other? It’s very complicated and reminds me of their IRL selves to a point but without the skeevy nature and without it going so far, so kudos to that.

-Adam. Knowing his creator was a ten year old girl makes so much sense when you look at the things he says and does. He doesn’t get so much. He’s very logical, but doesn’t understand that a game of billiards isn't as much of an icebreaker as he thinks it should be. Surprised by bubble gum. Games like “strange things humans do” are very much like the word games kids play in the car. 

-Verlaine being the fifth executive was something I did not predict at all, whatsoever, and I can’t stop thinking about it. Like... how did he get to that point. Only so much can be said in a few paragraphs (it seems) of “this is [x] number of years in the future where Chuuya’s an executive now.” 

The last we see of him, he’s overcome by grief, hatless, and he seems to have only just realised how much he wished he could return what Rimbaud gave to him. (Ironically, by being able to grieve like that, it shows that he is capable of what he thinks he can’t do - same as Dazai.)

But how does he become an executive? Do they come to him slowly at first, and they gradually build up trust? Does he stay in contact with Chuuya? Do they see each other properly as brothers now, or not? I can’t help but feel that as it’s a long time - six years, in fact - between Stormbringer and canon, some bond of trust must have been built. The mafia protects Verlaine from the authorities and from the outside world just the same as Kouyou says that she wants to do for Kyouka, and the same as they’re there for Chuuya, too. So. A Verlaine who trains the mafia’s best assassins not because he’s forced into it, but because he feels the same loneliness as Chuuya, and finds that it helps? A Verlaine who learns slowly that he can care about more people than just Rimbaud and Chuuya? Holy shit yes please. A Verlaine who is loyal and protective and who you should be glad is in a (probably) gilded prison of the mafia’s basement, because otherwise he would actually do so many things to those who would harm his family.

Let’s just say - if I think of Arahabaki as a guardian or protector god who is just plain destructive because it can’t help that, then Chuuya and Verlaine looking and acting in similar ways because they share that same “parent” in a sense, makes sense. They are no longer just Arahabaki, they’re “Chuuya” and “Verlaine” - but they also share traits such as “Papa Wolf” and “lonely” and “violent,” among others.

-At least twice, pre-Soukoku Dazai and Chuuya refer to how they’re constantly thinking of each other. No, they don’t mean in positive ways, but they’re chaos teens and it’s still strong emotion. Chuuya mentions how he’s thought of at least 190 ways to punish Dazai for the things that he does (which also implies how their relationship is equal, and Dazai doesn’t call all the shots, and doesn’t get away with everything scot-free), and Dazai says that Verlaine can’t possibly win against him, because Dazai “spends all of his time, waking and sleeping, thinking of ways to annoy and harass Chuuya,” (quote not perfect.) 

We also have Chuuya having Dazai appear to him first in his hallucinations, which I see as Chuuya’s inner Dazai-voice saying all the worst things, and ironically not actually saying or meaning things that would get across what real Dazai would want him to feel; in other words, that’s Chuuya’s view of him, or his mind searching for the one person he’d believe it to realistically come from.

As well, Dazai saying “there’s no way Chuuya could be an artificially constructed personality, because no one could create a personality that I [hate/that annoys me] so much.” Which, like... sure... you tell yourself that, kid...

Basically, they’re all the kinds of things that teenagers who don’t really get how strong feelings like these work yet, who are still figuring themselves (and their orientations, probably) out, would say if they don’t even like that other person that much, but they’re still attracted to them. A strong “why does it have to be THEM?” haha. And yet, as others have pointed out, Chuuya seems more on the oblivious side than Dazai, since as said, Dazai goes to all this effort and seems fond (but only when Chuuya’s not looking, dumbass) but Chuuya just... doesn’t get it.

A shorter summary of my thoughts and feelings?

Chuuya suffers, but is ultimately happier for it no matter whether he’s one of the clones or whether he’s the original (it’s arguable either way, and I don’t mind either way) as he’s still Chuuya. His bond with the mafia is also stronger than so many people think it is. They’re literally his adopted family. Even if he chose to leave, he’d still see them as family. I can’t see him leaving. He’s just... they’re family... don’t tear them apart...

The skk is strong, no matter what people say, because this is the start and it’s the end of their first year in the mafia and it’s not supposed to be a healthy time, for fuck’s sake. They’re both all sorts of messed up. They’re allowed to be. This is a time when that’s kinda the point of the book. But yeah, the trust and the bond is real.

Verlaine. I am now fascinated by Verlaine. I was so sure before the spoilers and translations came out that I’d hate him. I no longer do. He confuses me but I NEED TO KNOW MORE. 

[callonpeevesie]

Things that bother me about Percabeth

Warning: this is going to be long and I'm not even sure if this will make sense. Also don't read this if you aren't open to criticizms of Percabeth.

Percabeth is a good ship, or at least has potential as one, but it has many legit flaws (this and this go into the flaws. By the way, go check out @takaraphoenix's Riordan crit) and I have some personal grievances. I'll write this out to understand my stance better because I need to get this off my chest.

I believe most people wouldn't agree with me on all this, but this post is entirely self-indulgent and I'm doing this for catharsis, so don't come at me. This isn't an objective analysis, just me trying to clear my thoughts. But feel free to share your opinions if you want.

Evolution in PJO

This is a pretty general point. I love the evolution of their dynamic in pjo. Their bickering, them opening up to each other and becoming so important to each other, the slow and steady buildup, it's great. Heck, I love slow burn. They have some good moments in pjo: Annabeth opening up to Percy on the zoo express, the scene with the sirens, Percy doing everything he did to save Annabeth in ttc, their conversation after Annabeth took the knife for Percy in tlo. (The underwater kiss is not one of my favourite moments, I'll come to that later.)

The romantic evolution, though, I'm not sure. I enjoyed it in ttc, there were small subtle hints like Aphrodite's scarf, or Aphrodite looking like Annabeth to Percy. But it became kind of tiring in botl onwards. Annabeth was extremely possessive and awful to Rachel. And in tlo things became a bit over-the-top.

I think Rick tried to establish them as the Most Important Person to each other. I don't like that. This is more apparent in HoO. I'll come to hoo later, but there is one instance of this in tlo: Percy seeing Annabeth in the Styx. Like one of the posts I've linked above says, it's shippy nonsense. It comes from the idea that one's romantic partner must be the most important. It doesn't make sense. I think Percy should have seen his mother in the Styx. It would make sense for Sally to be Percy's anchor, considering how much she means to him.

In short, their enemies-to-friends evolution was great, their friends-to-lovers evolution started out fine but became too much for me, and their friends-to-Most-Important-Person-to-each-other evolution was unnecessary and forced.

Luke

Luke and Annabeth's romantic subplot didn't need to exist. This isn't exactly Percabeth, but I'll say it here anyway. First of all, there's a seven year age gap, so Luke returning Annabeth's feelings is creepy. And it seems pretty unnecessary to me. It's also a bit of a mess. In tlt Annabeth blushes when Luke is around, and Luke says 'She's like my little sister.' In tlo Luke asks Annabeth if she loved him, and she says 'You were like a brother to me.' This part feels like Rick trying to add last-moment tension to Percabeth by making Luke a potential 'rival' to Percy. In the Staff of Hermes Percy says Annabeth had a crush on Luke, and as she got older, Luke had a crush on her too. Just ... Why?

They and Thalia were each other's first friends. Annabeth looked up to Luke and Luke was fond of Annabeth. That is enough reason for Annabeth to be hurt and for Luke to care about Annabeth. That is enough to set up their post-betrayal dynamic. The romance thing was completely unnecessary.

Rachel

I absolutely hate the way Annabeth treated Rachel. If there is one thing I despise about romantic subplots, it's justifying bitchiness with romantic jealousy. I guess it's okay to feel a little jealous or even possessive, and I can kind of see where Annabeth was coming from, but treating someone like shit because of that, especially in the middle of dangerous quests, is not okay. It's petty and immature. (It could be argued that Annabeth was mad because Rachel got to lead her quest, but let's be honest, she wouldn't have been that mad if it were anyone else. She specifically treated Rachel like that out of jealousy.) It was never called out and Annabeth never seemed to regret it. This bothers me so much. Fanfiction is a good coping mechanism, I suppose, but I'm here to complain about canon, not cope with it.

Speaking of Rachel, Perachel could have been a good ship. A demigod looking for a normal life and a mortal with clear sight. This elaborates on that pretty well. At the end of tlo it really felt like Rick had to get Rachel out of the way to make way for Percabeth.

Annabeth seems to be too demanding

Annabeth's attitude towards Percy bothers me sometimes. She's a good character and has a strong dynamic with Percy, but she's a bit tiring with regards to Percy (in a romantic sense; she's fine as his friend). I mean look at this quote from tlo:

I can't pretend I hadn't thought about Rachel. She was so much easier to be around than ... Well, than some other girls I knew. I didn't have to work hard, or watch what I said, or wrack my brain trying to figure out what she was thinking.

Percy feeling that way about Annabeth - his best friend of four years - just doesn't sit well with me. Percy straight up admits he's more comfortable with Rachel than with Annabeth.

There's more: Annabeth punching Percy when he asked who he should dance with in ttc, the way she treated Rachel, the way she behaved towards Percy regarding Rachel in botl, judo flipping him in moa. It's pretty tiring in general. Now that I think of it, this wasn't a thing before the romance showed up. Their dynamic was better in the earlier books in general.

Also personally I'm not a fan of Annabeth constantly calling Percy Seaweed Brain. This and this nicely sum up how I feel about that. Annabeth making fun of Percy's intelligence even after getting to know him makes no sense, especially as he was insecure about his intelligence. (And yes, I know she thought he was intelligent, as she said in the Demigod Files, but that doesn't cancel out the million times she called him stupid to his face.)

They became too couple coded

I've seen people say that Percabeth is better as friends than as lovers, and honestly I agree, and I've done some thinking to figure out why. I think it's because of the way they were written after they became a couple. They could have been fine as a couple, if they were written differently.

They started out not being able to stand each other, then gradually, they went through a lot together, got to know each other, learned to work together, and became a team. That was a great evolution, like I said before.

And like I also said before, everything I dislike about Percabeth showed up with the romance. Annabeth became catty and possessive. They became a couple. And it was as if the friendship wasn't there anymore, just the romance. They became like a cliche unreasonable girlfriend and clueless boyfriend. This is especially obvious in the beginning of Percy Jackson and the Staff of Hermes. Where's the friendship? Where's the comfortable bantering? Where's the known-each-other-for-years soundness? Hoo Percabeth just doesn't live up to pjo Percabeth at all.

(Also this is a personal bias of mine, but I'm partially romance repulsed. I can't stand cheesy romantic coded stuff. I only like lovers if they're also friends. So I guess I'm kind of pissed about Percabeth becoming so couple coded after becoming a couple.)

Their HoO dynamic

This is a related point. Like I said, hoo Percabeth doesn't live up to pjo Percabeth. All they care about is each other. They literally don't think about anyone else at all. Percy loses his memory and he remembers Annabeth. Why? Does Hera ship Percabeth? If he remembered anyone, it should have been his mom, like in the Styx. The only reason Percy remembered Annabeth, i.e Annabeth was made out to be more important to Percy than everyone else (including Grover and Tyson and Sally 'best person in the world' Jackson) is that she was his romantic partner. Again, it's shippy nonsense.

And there's this reveal that Annabeth had a crush on Percy all along. Are you kidding me? It completely retcons the enemies-to-friends development. Are you telling me that the Percabeth evolution in pjo where they learned not to hate each other was a lie? That Annabeth gradually opening up to Percy and coming to appreciate him was her acting out of a crush? I'm not believing that, no way.

I'm probably not making any sense, but my point is that Percabeth in hoo in cheesy and can't go one day without each other and people love it but I don't. It kind of messes up their previous dynamic, which is a shame because I liked pre-hoo Percabeth.

Rick seems to go overboard sometimes

I'm about to get a little controversial here. Many of the Percabeth posts in those tumblr screenshots going around social media are about the campers shipping Percabeth, or Arachne making Percabeth fanart, things like that. My theory is that part of the reason Percabeth is so popular is that the characters ship it. And Rick kind of goes overboard with that - not just with the in-universe shipping, with the ship itself.

Prime examples of going overboard are Percy seeing Annabeth in the Styx and remembering Annabeth when Hera took his memory, which imply that Annabeth was objectively the Most Important Person to Percy. I've already ranted about these above so moving on to the part about the in-universe shipping. Like I said, I'm not a fan of the underwater kiss. It's because of the situation involved. The campers just won a war and lost their friends and siblings, Clarisse just lost Silena, you'd think they'd have other things to care about than Percy and Annabeth kissing, at least for one day. And why did Arachne make fanart of that? How did she even know? There was also the matter of moving to New Rome - them wanting to move halfway across country to live together, away from New York, doesn't really make sense to me. This post elaborates on that and suggests better alternatives.

Of course, the author has complete control over the narrative, and the author wants you to believe they are making sense. And when the characters believe that too, it becomes harder for readers not to. When all the campers ship Percabeth, it's enough to convince half the readers to ship it too. (And of course, the pjo fandom has an unhealthy thing with canon ships.)

It's pretty much kept up by the fans

While we're at it, let's talk about the out-of-universe shipping. The fandom has always shipped Percabeth, partly just because they are the male lead and female lead of a series. Percabeth was set up to happen, so when Rick introduced Rachel, who actually made Percy feel good about himself and let him be himself around her, and whom Percy was interested in, he had to get her out of the way. I'm not sure I can explain it, but the Percabeth ending in the first series feels very fan service-y to me.

Platonic Percabeth vs romantic Percabeth

I think everything I've said above just explains why Percabeth worked better as friends. The had a great friendship arc and became two friends who know each other inside out, butt heads a lot but love and respect each other deeply. And then when the romance happened, Annabeth began to show these romanticized but actually toxic girlfriend stereotypes - being jealous and possessive, expecting Percy to read her mind and getting pissed when he can't, etc.

The fandom thinks those traits are okay, because they are normalised in society. People think that's how couples should work (it's not). And so the reasons I don't like Percabeth are the same reasons many people do. The date in the beginning of Staff of Hermes makes me cringe, because they were friends first and friends don't work like that. But no doubt there are many people who find it cute because society loves to romanticise the unreasonable girlfriend and clueless boyfriend trope. There are plenty of people who romanticise Annabeth judo flipping Percy or treating Rachel like shit, because things like that are normalised but I personally can't stomach them at all.

Anyway, those toxic traits come with the Percabeth romance as a package deal and there's no getting rid of them. That's why Percy and Annabeth worked better as friends, and why I feel things would be better if they just stayed friends. There was none of that tiring crap pre-romance. I can't stress this enough, I really loved their friendship in tlt or som. But when their dynamic evolved to romance, it messed up their friendship. There was a specific moment in botl when Percabeth began to feel off for me.

'She will calm down,' Chiron promised. 'She's jealous, my boy.'

'That's stupid. She's not... it's not like...'

Chiron chuckled. 'It hardly matters. Annabeth is very territorial about her friends, in case you haven't noticed. ...'

I don't know why this moment specifically, but this kind of marked a change for me. This is where Percabeth became seriously romantic, and I didn't like the related developments. This was the beginning of Annabeth's jealousy.

So what would I prefer?

I'll be honest, I shipped Percabeth for a while, probably because I love some friends-to-lovers. So I was going to make a list of things I'd change about Percabeth. I wanted to make some self-indulgent UAs (universe alterations) to fix the things I don't like. But then I started writing this thing and read up on other posts and stuff and I realised the list of things that bother me is huge and I could never make Percabeth work for me without messing everything up. So I just gave up shipping it entirely.

What I would prefer is an AU where Percabeth stays platonic forever (@elf-loving-dragon has been encouraging that idea as well). They were great as friends and I want that back. It would be so refreshing to have the male lead and female lead not end up together. Annabeth could end up alone, and still get her something permanent with her friends and camp. It would be so beautiful if something completely romance-free was specifically stated as permanent, because friendships in media deserve as much love as romance.

As for Percy, he could end up either alone or with Rachel. I don't ship him with anyone else rn. While I have made it obvious that I like Perachel, I still don't know if I actually ship it, and the idea of Percy ending up alone is not too bad either. (Update: I stan platonic Percabeth and qpp Perachel now.)

I promise I'm done now. Whew. If you've made it to the end of this long repetitive introspection, congratulations. If you agree, feel free to tell me, and if you want to argue, go ahead, I wouldn't mind listening to others' opinions. If you read this and hate me because of this just keep that to yourself. I have no patience for people who attack those who don't agree with their ship. K thanks, bye.

[icykalisartblog]

Why Bilbo Baggins/Gandalf OTP

All right, here’s my big post on why Bilbo/Gandalf is OTP. This is half-joking but should include some genuinely valuable analysis! Much of this is cribbed from a paper I wrote in about queercoding in The Hobbit.

The Hobbit tarot deck has them as the Two of Cups, usually signifying soulmates and romantic attraction so this seems like a good image to start the post with... soulmate AU, anyone? XD

Without further ado:

Bilbo Baggins Big Queer

Usually when I see queer readings of Tolkien’s works, it’s centered on The Lord of the Rings, and for good reason. But I believe the most likely character to be queer in Tolkien’s work is in fact Bilbo Baggins. When reading Tolkien’s works with this idea in mind, Bilbo, Tolkien, and the world of Middle Earth take on a new dimension, especially The Hobbit.

Bilbo Baggins is an unusual Hobbit due to going off on his adventure to win back the Misty Mountains from the Dragon Smaug, but at the beginning of The Hobbit, it would seem that he should have represented an ideal wealthy landowning Hobbit in the eyes of his neighbors and family members.  The narrator of even states that the Baggineses were highly respected. However, we know from the very end of the book that Bilbo was not particularly well-liked even before he ever did anything exceptional, by the eagerness with which his family members auctioned off his belongings and presumed him to be dead. It is not just jealously over his wealth that caused the other Hobbits to dislike him—his mother was Belladonna Took, and the Took family was known for going on adventures, though the narrator explains that after marrying Bilbo’s father, she never did anything unexpected again. Interestingly, the narrator suggests that “...although he looked and behaved exactly like a second edition of his solid and comfortable father, got something a bit queer in his make-up from the Took side, something that only waited for a chance to come out.” Also from this page, we know that other families of Hobbits thought that one of the Tooks had taken a “fairy wife” and that Tooks would occasionally disappear, but that their relatives would try to quiet the rumors. If you’re going 👀 at queer make-up and a fairy being mentioned, you should. These terms were already being used as queer signifiers and pejoratives in the 30s when Tolkien wrote The Hobbit, plus Tolkien was well... a philologist. 

Enter Gandalf

So Bilbo’s Tookish side is being linked to his queerness, and the other Hobbits think the strange behavior of the Tooks might have been caused by one of them taking a “fairy wife.” Now, if you are very familiar with Tolkien’s works, you’ll know that the closest thing to a fairy that exists in that world is probably what Gandalf is—a spirit known as a Maia, which all the Wizards are. Maiar (that’s the plural) are usually conceived of by critics as angelic beings because they serve the gods and Abrahamic God equivalents, but they have fairy-like qualities as well. And Gandalf is going to serve as the catalyst who brings out Bilbo’s, well, queer side. 

When Gandalf arrives in The Hobbit and introduces himself, Bilbo simultaneously gushes and rants about him, and gives special importance to Gandalf’s fireworks: “They used to go up like lilies and snapdragons and laburnums of fire and hang in the twilight all evening!” he says, and then the narrator remarks, “You will notice already that Mr Baggins was not quite so prosy as he liked to believe, also that he was very fond of flowers,” as if Bilbo’s secret desire to be unique and his love of flowers were of close to equal importance. Gandalf mentions that for the sake of the Old Took and “poor Belladonna” he will take Bilbo on an adventure. The only reason we are given for Belladonna Took being unfortunate in any way is that she was somehow repressed after being married. A critique of heteronormativity?

Bilbo turns Gandalf away and denies his not-so-well-hidden desire for an adventure but invites Gandalf to come have tea with him the next day, an action Bilbo himself does not understand. In fact, the Bilbo is so shaken by the invitation he himself gave that he thought “a drink of something would do him good after his fright,” despite this scene taking place right after breakfast . Gandalf is left standing outside of Bilbo’s house, laughing. He takes the “spike of his staff” (...!) and draws a “queer sign” (...!!!) on Bilbo’s door.

I think it’s worth noting that in Tolkien’s unfinished writings, Gandalf initially didn’t want to go to Middle-Earth. He feared Sauron and thought of himself as too weak to be a proper emissary, but that’s exactly why Gandalf was the right Maia for the job of protecting Middle-Earth. Gandalf’s origin was thus very much the same as Bilbo’s... he’s been through all of this reluctance, too. 

The Two Together

After Bilbo’s adventure, he is ostracized, and the beginning of The Lord of the Rings makes it clear that he had “no close friends” among Hobbits, and that the only ones who appreciated him were young children who would not understand how he was non-normative, and poor Hobbits to whom Bilbo gave money. In fact, the narrative begins with an argument between the Gaffer and Mr. Sandyman about Bilbo’s and Frodo’s “queerness,” which includes Bilbo’s adoption of an heir as opposed to having children biologically. With a queer reading in mind, Bilbo’s request that Gandalf take care of Frodo makes Bilbo and Gandalf appear to be caregivers of an adopted heir.

The text that I feel makes it hard to deny that Bilbo Baggins is queer is a version of “The Quest for Erebor,” an unfinished account from Gandalf that gives his perspective on the journey of The Hobbit. “The Quest for Erebor” was written at the same time that Tolkien was working on The Lord of the Rings, but was not ultimately included as part of the narrative (only an abridged version was included in the appendixes of The Lord of the Rings). I will quote Gandalf’s words from the unabridged version, regarding his choosing Bilbo for the quest (emphasis mine):

I learned that he had never married. I thought that odd though I guessed why it was; and the reason that I guessed was not that most of the Hobbits gave me: that he had early been left very well off and his own master. No, I guessed that he wanted to remain 'unattached' for some reason deep down which he did not understand himself - or would not acknowledge, for it alarmed him. He wanted, all the same, to be free to go when the chance came, or he had made up his courage. I remembered how he used to pester me with questions when he was a youngster about the Hobbits that had occasionally 'gone off,' as they said in the Shire.

As one can see from this passage, Gandalf, who has a very close relationship to Bilbo, does not believe what would be the obvious explanation for Bilbo’s remaining a bachelor—that he was a wealthy landowner, and thus did not need to. Rather, Gandalf believed that it was Bilbo’s latent desire for adventure that led to his never marrying. As I have pointed out, the call to adventure is connected to queerness. Gandalf also quotes other Hobbits as referring to those who had adventures as having “gone off.” To “go off” obviously indicates leaving the Shire to go somewhere else, but this phrase could also mean exploding (and fireworks, something that Bilbo remembered Gandalf for, go off), or to go bad—in the sense of food rotting or becoming moldy and inedible.

I think it’s also worth pointing out that Gandalf felt supernaturally compelled to bring Bilbo along on the quest. It’s likely that this was the Tolkien equivalent of Abrahamic God intervening in the events of Middle-Earth—something that rarely happens! The relationship between Gandalf and Bilbo is really important!

All of the points I have made signify that Bilbo Baggins’s story is applicable to the experiences of queer people, and his relationship with Gandalf suggests that Bilbo himself in fact has a queer romantic orientation—that he is queer in more than the sense of being non-normative due to going on a quest to retake Erebor. The friendship between Gandalf and Bilbo develops throughout The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, as Bilbo learns to trust and appreciate both Gandalf and his own adventurous side, and Gandalf learns more about kindness and true strength from Bilbo, Gandalf visits Bilbo many times afterward. Finally, they both care for Frodo and leave for the West together. Their friendship is heartwarming, and I would argue that this queer reading of it may be even more so—while there is an enormous age difference between these two characters (Bilbo is fifty-one at the start of The Hobbit, Gandalf is thousands of years old), Gandalf treats Bilbo like an equal and they both teach each other a lot (and Gandalf does not act like he is thousands-of-years old, he lost a lot of his innate knowledge and power when he was sent to Middle-Earth, after all).

Other Details

Close to the end of The Hobbit, after they retake Erebor from Smaug, Bilbo and Gandalf travel together, just the two of them, and the narrator doesn’t elaborate on this. This sounds like peak shipping and adventure fanfic fuel to me! 

I’m not a fan of The Hobbit films, but they do contain some great shippy moments with the two characters. There’s some hilarious snarking, like this exchange: 

BILBO: Are there any?

GANDALF: What?

BILBO: Other wizards?

GANDALF: There are five of us. The greatest of our order is Saruman the White. And then there are the two Blue Wizards... you know, I've quite forgotten their names.

BILBO: And the fifth?

GANDALF: Well, that would be Radagast the Brown.

BILBO: Is he a great wizard, or is he more like you?

And then Gandalf is like 😮 XD

There’s also a really heartwarming moment where Galadriel asks Gandalf why he chose Bilbo: 

GALADRIEL: Mithrandir? Why the Halfling?

GANDALF: I don't know. Saruman believes that it is only great power that can hold evil in check. But that is not what I have found. I've found it is the small things, everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keeps the darkness at bay. Simple acts of kindness and love. Why Bilbo Baggins? Perhaps it is because I am afraid, and he gives me courage.

I remember there being other movie-only sweet moments too, but it’s been a long time since I’ve watched them!

[writingwife-83]

My 2020 Sherlolly Self Interview

Thanks for organizing this fun activity @sherlollyappreciationweek! 🎉 I’ll start out with a very brief “about me” section-

I live in the northeast area of the USA, I’ve been married for seventeen years, have one teenage son, and I’m in my *gulp* late thirties now. I do volunteer ministry work and also work part time from home. Among other leisure activities, obviously I love writing! I started writing original fiction when I was a preteen, but I’ve been writing fanfic under the pen name “writingwife83” for over six years now. I discovered fanfic and the world of online fandom after becoming obsessed with BBC Sherlock in 2014 after s3 aired. I read The Full House, fell in love with the whole concept of fanfic, specifically for sherlolly, and couldn’t help but give it a go myself. And as they say, the rest is history!

Below the cut I’ll talk about some of the topics and fics suggested by followers/readers. Buckle up cuz it’s a lot lol...

Ok, first up to be kind enough to give me some feedback is @readstoomuch. You said- “what inspires you. Any story (I love them all!). Who do you love writing? Who is hardest for you? And which is that one story that you had fun doing?”

As for what inspires me, first and foremost it’s the show and characters itself. Watching those two on screen, it’s not hard to be inspired! But beyond that, I find a lot of inspiration in music and art, and just generally in other creative works and people. I think for a while I had my own internal inspiration and no lack of it, but as months dragged into years lol, I have found that the rest of the shippers are invaluable in filling the gaps when I lack inspiration and motivation. Some prompts I’ve gotten from others have taken on a life I never would have expected, and that’s pretty great. I honestly don’t think writing works best as a purely solitary activity. I know myself and although there is an aspect of my writing that will always be “for me,” that’s absolutely not all it is. It’s the fun of creating with others and it’s the fun of sharing with others.

As for who I love writing and who’s hardest, I think I’ve always felt pretty comfortable writing the main characters in Sherlock. I probably especially love writing Sherlock himself because he’s fun to break down and really dig deep into his emotions and thought processes. There have definitely been times some of the side characters have overwhelmed me and made me nervous about conveying their voices accurately. For instance, Mycroft can be tough if it involves pulling him out of his shell in a way that still feels believable and true to character.

That one story I had fun doing? Well there’s no way I can say just one. 😆 As far as reader response, there’s no other fic that can compare to the fun of I Told You So, that’s for sure. But as far as the actual plotting and creating, I think the fics I’ve had the most fun with are the multi-chapters I’ve done since becoming good friends with @thisisartbylexie. Having her as a sounding board, plotting buddy, and editor has absolutely increased my creating fun and has definitely also made me a better writer.

Thanks so much for asking @readstoomuch 🥰

Alrighty, @thisisartbylexie, you asked- if there's a fic that you ever wanted to go back to change in some way, which one would it be and why? Which one do you feel "oh wow, did I write that?" in a super positive way?

Idk how to choose just one fic. There are plenty that could use some changing lol! One I’d like to fix though, would be Pleased to Meet You. I know (because I’ve been told) that there’s inaccuracies in that one seeing as I’m not personally familiar with university settings in the UK. I did actually attempt research and I thought I got the idea, but apparently it didn’t work out terribly well. But the plotting and progression of that fic is one I’ve always been happy with, so I guess I feel like it’s a shame if it came off messy in some general ways and distracted from the rest of it. I like how I was able to weave that one into the canon of the show up to that point. And tbh it actually still fits as a uni backstory for them without any conflicts to the canon. As much as I enjoy canon divergence and AU, I also have a big soft spot for fics that simply connect seamlessly to what we’ve already been given.

As for “oh wow, did I write that?” I think one of my proudest accomplishments has been Zephyr. That fic kinda has it all lol. The tropes, the pining, the romance, the Victorian setting...ugh I love it. And there’s a climactic kiss moment in that fic that’s one of my faves I’ve written. I’m so glad I wrote it because of the Sherlolly Remix Challenge in ‘16, and at your suggestion, Lexie. But I will also be forever sad that I had to release that fic all at once on AO3 once completed. That fic would have been great fun to be writing and posting as I went along! And on top of being happy with the fic itself and how it came out, I’m awfully proud of the fact that you were excited enough about the fic to illustrate it, and that @goodshipsherlolly enjoyed it enough to record it as an audio fic. Honestly, what more could a writer ask for? 🥺

@mizjoely, you said you’d like to hear anything about The Queen’s Man. Okey doke, you got it lol!

I actually went back and read through most of that fic when I got this because it had been a long time since I’d looked at it. I gotta be honest that in hindsight...I’m a little surprised it did as well as it did.😂🙈 As some may remember, it started because I saw a magnificent manip and wanted to write something to go with it, and then because that was well received, somehow it just kept going. I did very little world building and development of characters in that fic. It was largely just one shippy, romantic, pining scene after another lol. At the end I did kinda tie it all in and wrapped the story up ok, but it was definitely one of those self indulgent fics where I didn’t feel like doing the hard parts and really just wanted to write the fun stuff. Don’t get me wrong, I loved writing it, and I’m so glad it got the positive reception that it did! But it just kinda makes me laugh because it goes to show sometimes you don’t know what’s going to do really well. You could agonize over clever plotting and world building and character development etc, and be so super proud of the finished product and all your hard work, but then you share and the response is like “meh.” And then other times you legit just throw something together with barely any careful thought, and the crowd goes wild! But aside from all that, the visuals in my head of that AU are just too drool worthy to me. Molly in Medieval royal attire? Sherlock in dark armor with a Purple Tunic of Sex™️ underneath? The two of them lingering in the dimly lit hallways and rooms of a castle and gazing endlessly in mutual pining? Yes to all.

Thanks for asking @mizjoely 😘

Ok wow, see what I mean? That was long! 🤣 If you read all the way through this whole thing, *Moriarty voice* thank you...bless you. Honestly, this ship is amazing and I don’t think I’ll ever have a writing experience anywhere else like I’ve had here. I’ve seen the other side of things in another fandom now, so I can all the more so confirm that there’s no ship quite like sherlolly. The warmth, reception, and longevity is mind blowing and I’m just awfully happy to have played a part in creating for the beauty that is Sherlock Holmes and Molly Hooper. 💕

[thorin-is-a-cuddler]

Getting to know them

A/N: Alright, I love The Old Guard and ofc I adore the messy one the most: Booker 💗 I wanted to write something slightly shippy for him and Andy, so it‘s definitely suggested in this One Shot. :) Nile asks the gang a question: what is your weakness? I‘m sorry, I can‘t do the „keep reading“ thing

Nile looked around with curious eyes, scanning each and every single member of Andromache’s so called army. All of them were male. All of them seemed a little mysterious and suspicious to her. Except for Nicky with his gentle smile. And Joe, too. Basically the only really suspicious looking person at the table was Booker.

There was a milky fog in his eyes that seperated him from the rest.

Nicky and Joe gave off a warm, welcoming aura that was too honest to be anything but real. There was the sharp piercing coldness in Andy’s eyes that was scary at first, but eventually appeared to Nile as the natural look of someone who had been alive for ages and eons - and had seen horrors beyond imagination. But in Booker’s eyes there was nothing readable or analyzable going on. Sure, there was a certain amount of sadness and possibly tiredness visible in that milky fog. Apart from that nothing really invited Nile to look closer.

He was friendly enough. But he also seemed the most reserved among the group.

What Nile did notice was a short lively flicker in his gaze when Andy entered the room with a new bottle of Scotch. He straightened out his back and seemed a lot more attentive all of a sudden. Nile wasn’t capable of telling whether the outlook on more booze or the sight of Andy herself was causing that slightly more vivid reaction. It definitely caught her interest.

Especially since Andy’s attention upon entering the room was directed at Booker first. It was short and seemed like an uncontrollable impulse on her side. But both of their faces were grazed with a short blink-and-you-miss-it smile when their eyes met. Almost timid.

Nile turned her head to check Nicky’s and Joe’s possible reactions to this quiet exchange between their „boss“ and colleague (?). But the two of them were pretty busy with staring into each other’s eyes. Nile was close to rolling her eyes. Please, someone assure her that she didn’t stumble into a group of immortal lovey-dovey couples.

She crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair. Her mother would have called her posture „sulking“, but none of the people in the room were aware of that luckily. „So.“ She sternly said, raising everyone’s attention towards her.

Andromache took the seat next to Booker - aha, suspicious enough - and put the bottle down on the table in front of her. She raised her brows and had another silent exchange with her neighbor who was smirking pretty obviously now.

„So.“ He repeated, crossed his arms and sat back, eyeing her with what could have been called challenging, but most likely was a mix of slightly drunk and generally tired. She was seated next to him on the far end of the table and had a good look on everyone. They all seemed very eager to hear what she had to say.

„I feel I have quite the disadvantage in this group of ours.“ Nile almost stumbled over the word „ours“. It didn’t feel natural on the tip of her tongue yet.

„Why’s that?“ Nicky asked, listening attentively with a kind look in his eyes. He reminded her of her brother which was why she quickly had to look away. She gulped and tried not hold her own hand too tightly.

„I don’t mean to be rude, but since you all are so much older than I am and have known each other for so much longer, I feel like I should get to know a few things about you all.“ Nervously Nile bit down on her bottom-lip, before she concluded with: „We are going to sleep in the same room after all.“

Booker unexpectedly started to laugh after that last sentence. He had a deep voice that made his laughter sound very pleasant. They all seemed to have nice laughs, though, which Nile could convince herself of in that specific moment as they all joined in on Booker’s low chuckles. Nile blushed against her will - as blushes tended to happen - and gritted her teeth. But no one looked at her with ill intend. They all seemed to get where she was coming from.

She relaxed a little, when Andy nodded at her with a smile. „Of course, you can ask us whatever you want.“

„Ah,“ Joe interrupted and gave Nile a meaningful look, „everything above waistline.“

Nicky scrunched up his face at that and made a slightly put-off noise as he closed his hand around Joe’s atop of his armrest. Joe laughed as Andy and Booker made similar grossed put noises. Andy additionally decided to throw a napkin in his direction. It was all in good humor and Nile couldn’t help but let a small smile appear on her features.

„Ask away, Nile,“ Nicky encouraged her and pushed Joe’s shoulder with his own to make his giggles die.

Nile looked at every single one of them and leaned in closer. „Okay, since we are making ourselves very vulnerable in this constellation, the question that first comes to mind is: what are your weaknesses?“

Again everyone’s similar reaction was to groan. Except for Joe who was still giggling just the littlest bit. Despite that big wave of nope, Nicky was the first and quickest to answer: „Joe. That is not a hard question for me.“

Booker rolled his eyes, as Joe’s giggles stopped altogether and he turned his head to look at his lover with devotion and fondness. Andy didn’t look at them, but she was smiling.

„I hope it does not count for less, because I am saying it second. But for me it is Nicky. Nothing is certain. And my world, my life revolves around him.“ Nicky extended his hand in response and touched Joe’s face with his fingertips, gently moving them down his cheek. Joe leaned in closer to steal a soft and tender kiss from his lover. For Nile this characterized the two of them as deeply loyal and overwhelmingly in love. It was hard to imagine how deep their love for each other truly was. Since it must have rooted deep, deeply into the earth, closer to the core than any love before had ever reached.

Andy raised her voice and matter-of-factly said: „My weakness is baklavas.“

Booker squeezed his eyes shut and started laughing again, shaking his head and grumbling: „That’s not fair.“

„It’s the truth though.“ Andy held against his claim with a smirk, pulling something out of her jeans pocket and unfolding it in front of Nile’s eyes. Nile could see that the wrapping paper had contained a little dessert. Andy held it close to her nose and inhaled. She smiled. „Mhhh.“ Carefully she wrapped it up again, storing it back in the pocket next to her knee. She glanced up at Nile. „I’m not sharing this with you ever.“

Nicky and Joe laughed at that and somehow seemed to have gotten even closer to each other than before. Nile was really looking forward to sharing a room with them…

„Which leads us to you, Booker.“ Nicky pointed out, making a movement with his hand in the blond man’s direction.

„Yes, Booker, what is your weakness?“ Andy asked with a sort of flashy smile, moving a bit closer to the man in the chair next to her who was cluelessly raising his arms and shrugged.

„Uhm… well… maybe the booze?“ He asked, toasting to Nile and downing his drink, looking at the others for approval. Which he didn’t get. Andy shook her head vehemently and seemed very focused on him now. Nile watched the two of them like a movie. They seemed comfortable around each other in a way that was similar to Nicky and Joe - at least potential-wise.

„No, that doesn’t count. That’s just a terribly bad habit.“ Andy told him and put his glass out of reach to allow him no refill.

„Ah, pardon, but the baklava counts?“ Booker exclaimed, pushing Andy’s shoulder and meaning to grab for his glass again, which was easily pushed even further out of his reach by the leader of the group.

She grinned and put her hand against his chest to keep him from getting up. „Baklavas are basically art and I doubt that can be said about Scotch.“

„Oh, I am ready to defend the arts of Scotch, Boss. I believe I even studied them back in the day of-“ Booker’s ironical soliloquy was stopped abruptly during the tame wrestling fight against Andy when the formerly worshipped godess shoved her hands under his arms and started tickling.

Nile’s mouth opened in awe, as Booker immediately crumbled on his chair, trying to defend himself with his elbows close to his ribs and his body twisted uncomfortably. His eyes were squeezed shut, the tip of his tongue was poking out between his teeth and the smile he wore was one of utmost joy. It suited him impossibly well and Nile was shocked to see the difference between his formerly displayed smiles opposed to this one. He hadn’t made a sound up until that point, as silent laughter had taken over his bodily functions. This changed though when Andy pulled at one of his elbows to get more vulnerable space to her attack.

„NONONONO!!“ Booker shrieked, in the husky voice of a man who didn’t usually laugh that outgoingly. His deep giggles had a desperate ring to them, an out-of-breath undertone that was absolutely contagious and forced Nile to grin at the chaotic pair.

Joe and Nicky were looking at them with similar looks on their faces. It seemed very affectionate. Obviously it wasn’t the first time that this situation occurred.

„STOP STOP STOP!! NOHO PLEASE AHAHNDY!!“ Booker started kicking a bit too violently, meeting the table with his shoe and making it shake vibrantly, leading to Nile’s drink falling over.

„See, that is a weakness, Booker,“ Andy stated as she reduced the mysterious man to a snorting, giggling, wheezing mess in his chair with skillful fingertips and a steady knowledge of his most ticklish areas.

Nile couldn’t stop grinning, as Nicky and Joe made it their job to save the rest of the food and drinks on the table by placing them on a table further to the back. This only seemed to make the new option of tilting Booker’s chair available to Andy and in no time they were rolling onto the floor, with Booker eagerly trying to rob away on his back and Andy very eager to keep him from doing just that. Booker’s laughter was getting a hysterical notion to it when Andy came close to him again, threatening him with more vicious, unbearable tickles which really seemed to be his number one weakness from what Nile could tell.

„Wait wait wait wait WAIT!!“ Booker barked out as he extended his hands in front of his body in order to defend himself against Andromache the Scythian. A very adorable tactic really. And one Andy herself wasn’t necessarily impressed with. With a big smile she quickly latched on to Booker’s sides again, despite his struggle to keep her away.

And Booker was an instant mess. Andy’s thumbs wiggled into his hips, making Booker’s entire body buck up and shake with the unbearable feeling this attack sent through his nerve ends all the way up to his brains. He was wheezing with laughter and couldn’t get away from Andy’s tickling fingers working their way up his stomach and ribs as if his defenses were a joke to her. „THIS ISN’T FAHAIR!!“ The poor man squealed as his cheeks started to blush from the effort of laughing this incessantly.

„No, it isn’t,“ Andy agreed with fake sympathy before she started wiggling her fingers into a spot below Booker’s armpits that made his laughter kick up a notch, „but it’s fun.“

Nile watched with amusement as Booker was reduced to a giggling pile on the floor and Andy was having the time of her life turning him into it. They both seemed to be rather comfortable in their position. Even Booker didn’t exactly fight for his life to get out of the tickle hell Andy was putting him through. When Andy’s fingertips were scribbling up Booker’s chest, nearing his neck, he started fighting a bit more, giggling a pitch higher than before and actually starting to beg. „NONONO PLEASE NO, I GIVE UP, I GIHIVE UP!! AHAHANDY STOP IT!!“

„Oh, alright, alright, I’m stopping, I am.“ Andy quit her ticklish attack with a sombre smile on her lips, moving her hands away and holding them up innocently. Booker was wheezing on the floor, folding his arms over his chest and shaking his head at his boss, as little giggles kept pouring out of him.

„No more,“ he huffed, a smile on his face, as Andy started laughing at him, seemingly enchanted by his defeated, weak little self. „No more, Andy.“

„I think Nile got an answer to her question.“ Andy calmed him down and affectionately rubbed his arms which he did react to by relaxing more. With an imploring, cheeky look she fixed his eyes and added: „I think she also understood that you don’t exactly mind this little weakness of yours.“

„What!!“ Andy grinned at Nile as she got off of Booker.

„Your other questions might just have to wait until tomorrow.“ She said and winked at her, before walking over to where Nicky and Joe had retreated in the big room.

„Are you implying that I like this?“ Booker turned on his stomach and yelled after her, trying to grab for Andy’s heels, but failing. With a loud sigh he allowed himself to roll over on his back again. He looked at Nile out of the corner of his eye. „I do not like this. Not at all.“

Nile nodded completely convinced and felt a wave of affection flood her stomach when Booker closed his eyes and started snoring. In that very moment he didn’t seem suspicious in the least. She took this as her cue to join the others at the east side of their room as well. Of their shared room.

Ours.

The word didn’t sound that threatening anymore all of a sudden.

[captain-aralias]

@super-duper-twelve you asked for these: 15, 16, 27 and 30 - if you haven’t answered them :)

thank you :D work was hard, and this is a nice brainless activity to do while i think about how i should eat something and maybe write. 

15. was there a point where you wanted to give up on a work but didn’t?

two examples that i dont know if they quite meet the brief, because i did give up on them. 

Indecent Suggestion (Blake/Avon) - they get hypnotised into acting on their sexual desire for each other. brilliant prompt! i wrote about half of it, and then stopped for 3 years. i liked it so much though, and i’d invested time and thought into it, that eventually i did pick it back up again. 

the same is true of...

The Sound of Silence (SnowBaz) - i wrote the first section for baz immediately after finishing the Mage’s Heir, and then wrote Keep Calm and Sex & Blood instead. didn’t have any other carry on ideas after that, though, and thought - well, i might as well go back to Sound of SIlence. i did also really really think about not finishing it even after i’d re-started, as it was so hard going writing baz’s half. as soon as i posted that first chapter, though, and switched to Simon POV, it all came together. i wrote that first half over months, the second half... a week.

16. what’s a comment/piece of feedback you received that really made your day?

this is always a kind of awkward question to answer - because i dont want people to feel like their feedback isn’t appreciated if i don’t call it out, becuase i LOVE ALL COMMENTS and feedback. i often say that you dont need to write comments, and its true, but i love it when people feel they can. 

i’ll just say in general terms - there are people who i send my writing to (you are one of them!) while i’m doing it and people who beta me, and that’s super appreciated because that’s the time when i’m most alone and craving attention   er, input. just knowing people are interested enough in what’s happening helps me keep going. 

and that i love comments. they always make my day. well, i mean - they sort of ruin it too, in a way, because i usually post towards the end of the evening and then constantly check my phone during the night to make sure people aren’t leaving more comments. i pretty much always have a sleepness night after posting a fic, but not because i’m nervous - because i’m just rabidly interested in what people think. 🤣

27. most self-indulgent fic you wrote 

oh man, i dont know. another question where the answer could be ‘all of them’. maybe something like Goodbye, Norma Jean (very NSFW), which is for someone else, obviously, and to the prompt, but is basically me being willing to write exactly the same thing as i’ve already written several times before AND those other things were super self-indulgent. Sex and Blood is now probably the most popular thing i will ever write (unless i join an actually large fandom, ever) but at the time it felt like - lol, about 3 people want vampire pon farr, but by god i will write it. 

most things i wrote for b7 were pretty self-indulgent because you had to write basically for yourself and the other three people in teh fandom because that’s who was there! something like Portions of the Soul of Man - my first real blake/avon - fic felt super self-indulgent because it didn’t feel like there were any other blake/avon shippers at that point. and it’s based on one of the audio dramas, rather than the episode, narrowing the pool further. there are more comments on it on LJ where i originally posted, so it’s not just the two comments on AO3, but... i wanted to write it. that audio is SO shippy <3

30. a fic your younger self would get excited over

i did answer answer this :) it’s a nice question, though! answer here, but - spoilers - i said ‘keep calm’.

asks from this list of accomplishment asks.

[demonofthechili]

A Few Good Drinks - Cliff Booth x OC

A/N: THIS POST GOT MORE THAN ONE LIKE SO... HERE IT IS. Some Sam and Cliff shippy shit to hold y'all until I get requests out!

TW: Just some bros DEFINITELY not having repressed attraction.

---

The night's plans were simple enough; the pair had decided to grab a few drinks at Sam's favourite bar (where she knew the staff and owner, and was quite friendly with the regulars) as per Cliff's suggestion after Rick had cancelled their plans for a script reading with his new director.

They enjoyed their few drinks, laughing and talking all the while, before enjoying a few more for good measure. They hadn't spent time like this together "for too long" as Cliff put it when asked about his decision over their third drink. That was satisfactory, apparently, for Sam offered a jovial grin and toast.

[[MORE]]

Cliff, despite the pleasant company, hadn't allowed the stare from across the bar to go unnoticed - - a pair of emerald eyes that glanced their way far too often for it to even be considered subtle. Still, he didn't mention it. It wasn't his place. It was innocent enough. Still, he stopped at his third drink, a Bloody Mary to commemorate his withdrawal from the drinking.

Sam didn't stop at three, and went on to have five and a quarter drinks that night. She wasn't a lightweight by any means, but fuck. She didn't exactly look sober, and that alone should've signalled the stuntman to end the night there.

It was when he was ordering her a glass of water from the bar did the emerald eyes wonder to Sam in person. Cliff didn't know what was being said, nor did he need to know; her brows furrowed, lips etched into a frown, and the mystery man seemed to be getting a little too far into her personal space.

The tell-tale signs of physical retaliation was blooming like a rose within Sam, exemplified as a second mystery man of the night joined the first. Deciding now was the time to call the night quits, Cliff approached.

He didn't know what he expected, honestly. If maybe he thought they'd be polite, or maybe if he thought they'd just leave when he went to collect Sam. But either way, he found himself arguing (rather politely considering who he was, especially when mixed with however much alcohol). He lightly dragged Sam from the booth they sat, finally offering a final farewell, and then guided her out of the bar.

It became apparent that Sam wasn't going to make great time by walking on her own. So, he supported her all the way to her Chevy, and took the keys from her in spite of her urging that she could drive. After taking the wheel and ignoring her, she slipped inside, suddenly not bothered by the fact he was driving.

The car ride back to her home was oddly quiet. The occasional joke and fumble with the radio, but other than that? Nothing. Cliff made sure to keep an eye on if she was conscious. She was. He chalked it up to the alcohol.

Upon pulling into her driveway, Cliff turned the engine off and watched Sam climb out. She leaned against her car door for a moment before raising her hand, offering an 'I'm good!' before slamming it shut and trotting wobbly up to her door. Cliff followed suit, locking the vehicle before joining her side.

He watched as she patted herself down for her keys whilst leaning against the door, amused by this, before shifting through her key chain which he held. He found her front door key, which was a hard task considering the darkness, and inserted it into the lock. He twisted it, pulled the handle, and stepped inside.

With a 'thump' and soft gasp, the actress fell to the floor on her side. Cliff shook his head lightly and took a step, bending down before a deep growl made his ears perk up.

"Woah, boy," Words accompanied a raised hand to show that he wasn't a danger, "It's me. It's Cliff. I'm just tryin' to help your mom. Let me," Falling silent, he felt around for a light switch, flicking it on when he found it.

Suddenly illuminated, Cliff could see the gorgeous dog he had grown to absolutely adore. Whiskey was a delightful German shepherd, husky mix. Well trained, a cuddle fiend, and, apparently, a bodyguard.

Whiskey's snarl softened as he properly saw the stuntman, blue eyes easing as his ears slowly rose. Sam sluggishly reached up to place a hand upon his head.

"I'm good, baby. Just kinda fucked. Sorry," Sam spoke softly, an affection to her tone that had Cliff's heart fluttering lightly.

Now able, he moved to help her up, closing the door behind them. He supported her to the couch before helping her collapse to sit, pulling away so that he could go to the kitchen and grab her a glass of water. The sudden feeling of fingers around his forearm stopped him dead in his tracks. He looked back and down to her.

"You saved me," Sam breathed, as if that was the most unbelievable thing to ever be said.

"Nah, nah. I didn't save you, Sam. I-"

"-you totally saved me from those assholes at the bar. Holy shit. You're like-- you're a Godsend, man. Fuck."

"Are you done being drunk so I can get you a glass of water?" He asked, amusement heavy in his words.

"I-I-I think I love you, Cliff. Like-- I mean, really. I've been embarrassed about it, but I really love my boyf-boyfriend. Technically that's...that's what you are. Because you're a boy. Who's my friend?"

His grin softened into something much more sincere, a twinkle dancing within his blue eyes that spoke volumes neither of them could quite make out. He swayed gently on the spot.

Whiskey wormed his way between them, moving so that he jumped up slightly to lick at Sam's face. Cliff took this moment to carefully pull away.

"I'm goin' to grab you some water and then head home before Brandy misses me too much. Has Whiskey eaten?" He waited for a reply, to which he got none as she fussed sluggishly over her pet.

Cliff watched them for a moment longer before retreating to the kitchen, the warmth from his smile spreading to his heart. He was her boyfriend indeed.

[mittensmorgul]

I'm still having a hard time understanding your definition of "canon relationship". Endgame material? Essentially happy? Featured in many episodes? I think most people simply consider "canon" = "it happened in the show/book/film". And Sam and Eileen have canonically had feeling for each other, on screen. What those feelings were and how much they may have been manipulated by Chuck, neither seems sure, but it doesn't make them any less of a thing that noticeably happened. Therefore canon.

When you need a semantic debate to somehow validate your favored ship, and you feel the need to debate semantics with a stranger on the internet in order to “win” and be proven “correct” in some way, we’ve all lost, friendo.

You’re absolutely right, with your definition of “canon.” It’s what has actually happened, in the case of Supernatural, on screen in the show itself. That’s not up for debate. You’re trying to introduce a strawman into this conversation.

I’m attempting to define, from a watsonian perspective, which means from WITHIN THE NARRATIVE, how the CHARACTERS THEMSELVES would describe their relationship. You’re giving me the doylist perspective, from outside the narrative, the fact that Sam and Eileen have a relationship of any kind-- romantic or otherwise-- in canon.

You’re attempting to conflate the two things, for the sake of winning an argument on the internet.

By your definition, Dean and Cas are canon, too. Which, I mean... they are, but that’s not the debate here, and it adds nothing to the fact that Eileen herself, in canon, has stated that she doesn’t feel her relationship with Sam is even real.

Yes, it happened in canon, but that’s not the whole story, either.

I mean, let’s use a completely non-shippy example here, to hopefully illustrate why “but they’re canon! it happened in canon!” is... an entirely irrelevant point in context. Let’s look at a canonical friendship to illustrate the point.

Canonically, Garth has tried to kill Sam. That happened, in canon. Garth wolfed out and attacked Sam. Sounds awful, right? Should we lose all sympathy for Garth? Should we believe that he did that of his own free will, and is an “evil” character now, because that very much did happen in canon? Or are we supposed to use our brains and understand that Garth literally did not have a choice, because he was acting under a form of mind control, being puppeted by Michael into attacking Sam? Are we supposed to have a better understanding of what actually happened in context, and correctly see this as “Michael tried to use a trusted character to harm Sam, playing on their preexisting friendship/relationship in order to lure Sam in to his trap, and using Sam’s trust and friendship with that character to harm him?”

Mary has canonically tried to kill Sam and Dean (in 12.03). Are we to assume that she obviously hates them and wanted them dead? Because canonically her actions would say we should! She tried to hurt them! Oh, but... she was possessed by a ghost, and wasn’t in control of her own actions... maybe we actually need to think about what that means... maybe Mary herself doesn’t actually want to kill her own sons...

Or if you’re a Mary hater and are willing to think the worst of her, how about the canonical fact that Dean has tried to kill Sam. That Dean has canonically told Sam that he wished he were dead? There you have it, Dean canonically has said “your life sucked the life out of my life” to him. Dean canonically rejected any sort of care for Sam. Are we supposed to take that at face value, just because it happened in canon? Or are we supposed to understand that Dean was a demon, and Honestly. >.>

Cas canonically kissed Meg that one time. Obviously they’re canon, right? What, they’re not? Oh, right, Dean even lampshaded the fact with the “give you an hour with Meg first” comment, to which Cas replied “Why would I want that?” Does a kiss make a couple “canon?” What does that even mean? “going canon” is a practically useless term in cases like that. The goalposts for what any one person would consider qualifies a romantic couple as “canon” are eternally shifting all over the field.

Let’s be better than that, and instead understand that we’re all talking about our individual interpretations of the same canon. We’re just seeing different things, because we are different people with different experiences and understandings of the characters and the overarching narrative.

I have repeatedly explained my understanding of Sam and Eileen’s relationship as canon itself has defined it. I have explained that my understanding of the relationship they had, offscreen and undefined by canon, between 11.11 and 12.17 has shifted dramatically since Eileen’s return in 15.06. I had, before this season, been willing to HEADCANON that Sam and Eileen could’ve had an established offscreen relationship based on the nature of their relationship we saw onscreen in 12.17. It was cute! It was exciting thinking that Sam had grown so close to someone!

It was... proven in s15 that the offscreen relationship we’d all headcanoned in s12 was... nothing more than a happy headcanon, and had not actually happened! THAT is what I mean when I have talked about what is ~not~ canon about their relationship. Let’s be very clear about that, because 

(gif source)

So, the debate over what is canon or what is not canon, to me personally, is an entirely useless conversation. Dean canonically hates chick flick movies. Also, he canonically loves chick flick movies. Sam canonically does not like bacon (15.06), and yet he canonically made a huge pile of bacon with Eileen in 15.07, but then was back to eating salad by the next episode. You can point at a lot of things that are “canon” to try and prove your point. To whatever end, or for whatever motive you may have in attempting to do so. That’s called “cherry picking.” (pay special attention to the section on Confirmation Bias) You have to be aware of what exactly canon is showing us as a whole, though, for it to have any actual meaning. 

At this point, after 15.09, Eileen has canonically chosen not to pursue a relationship with Sam, after she was canonically manipulated by an outside force into attempting to pursue a relationship with Sam.

She could, in canon, return to pursue a relationship with Sam! I am not here to speculate on that! It could happen! But it would be based in their canonical history, that is almost entirely muddied by Chuck’s interference in their relationship to this point. That is literal, actual canon!

But they had a cute relationship in 12.17! Chuck didn’t make them do that!

I have not denied that! That is obvious! But I’m not going to ignore everything that happened in s15 that has been (in canon! again!) defined as “not real.” As “not their own choice.” And I’m not going to suggest we just handwave the canonical fact that Eileen feels used, feels violated, by how Chuck attempted to manipulate her into seducing Sam, despite their canonical past interactions.

I mean, Sam carried out a two season canonical romance arc with Ruby. Their relationship is canon. He canonically had feelings for her, trusted her, fully engaged in the relationship with her. That’s not up for debate, but the in-canon CONTEXT of their relationship was a lie, you know? She lied to him for two years, with a specific goal in doing so. She manipulated him into all of that to free Lucifer from the cage. The fact that their relationship is canon is entirely irrelevant to any ANALYSIS of said relationship, and understanding it in context, and what it means for the characters.

So when you apply the context to Sam and Eileen’s relationship as it stands in s15, the fact it ~exists~ isn’t up for debate. The fact that they canonically interacted in a flirtatious fashion on screen, the fact they did anything together on screen isn’t up for debate. The reason WHY Eileen engaged in any of this, though, is also not up for debate. Chuck made it all happen, from the moment her ghost appeared in the bunker to the moment she told Sam she needed to leave, all of that is under a pall of Chuck’s influence. That... is also canon.

So anon, what do YOU mean when you say “they’re canon.” Do you mean they have established a mutually consensual romantic relationship? (because if so, then they are NOT canon) Do you mean “they have interacted in a way that can be interpreted as insinuating there is romantic interest between them?” Because I could give you that one. They definitely have potential in the future. Do you mean “They kissed on screen!” Because heck, what does that even mean?

Sam’s canonically kissed a lot of people! Jessica Moore! Lori Sorenson! Sarah Blake! Jo (well, he was possessed by Meg at the time, so does this one count? Their mouths touched...)! Madison the werewolf! Ruby! Amelia Richardson! Dr. Roberts! Amy Pond! Becky (though he was under a love spell for that one, so does that count? from how skeeved the entire fandom has always been by that one... even if Becky thought they had real feelings for each other “deep down,” does anyone think Sam actually consented to any of that?)! Annie Hawkins (self-reported by Sam, and we take his word for it)! That woman who propositioned his body while he’d been body swapped with Gary, so does that even count because only Sam’s body was used there? or did they even actually do anything beyond tying Sam’s body occupied by Gary to a bed and getting out the flail...)! And if we’re going meta, then Genevieve Padalecki in the French Mistake!universe! That hippie chick soulless sam had sex with when Dean was abducted by “aliens” that one time! and speaking of soulless sam, the hooker he was with in 6.03, and the apparent string of women he was with that we only learned about tangentially via 6.13!

Does that mean Sam has a canonical relationship with all of these women? YES. But... like... you can’t look at this list (which is probably not even complete) and suggest that all of these relationships are of equal canonical import, or that they are equivalent in emotional weight for Sam as a character. That’s... idiotic, frankly.

So, to me, the discussion of “what is canon” is like... irrelevant to anything I’m actually here for. The actual understanding of what the canonical relationship MEANS and how it informs character is what is actually important to me.

So please stop trying to undercut an actual discussion of canon with a semantics strawman. Thanks.

[tothedarkdarkseas]

Headcanons about what Stu got up to when Muds was in jail? Headcanons about how the Now Now came about?

(Thank you so much! I’m getting looney today, it’s nice to have a distraction. Behind a cut again for length!)

So while Murdoc’s banged up in merry old England, the band seemingly relocates to California for at least a part of this phase, which is interesting. I do wonder how Stu liked that Venice lifestyle and I do wonder how much he can compartmentalize being on the Pacific. (Better by TNN’s inception than by The Fall’s inception, I would assume.) Being both a shipper and a Sad Sack I don’t necessarily subscribe to the idea that Stu was living his very best life, but I don’t buy that he was cooped up crying in his room all day. I don’t think he’d give Murdoc that much, for starters. I think coming back together around the start of Humanz was… sort of morbidly nice. No one’s doing anything too drastic, Murdoc’s older and more remorseful and Stu’s older and less emotionally volatile, but there’s a palpable sense of Everything lingering, there’s an understanding of things likely never being “right” between them. If we’re sticking semi-closely to canon and Murdoc’s really just gotten locked away unexpectedly for parking tickets, I’m not too sure Stu was devastated by the news– if anything I think he was irritated and inconvenienced, it was a reminder of what Murdoc is like, the sort of person he’s been all his life, and who he might just be too set in his ways to quit being. I don’t think Stu’s glad for it, but I don’t think his life stops.

As for P5, all his quotes are gold and Peak Stu, this is how I’d like to think he really is all the time. I think he and Murdoc both intentionally say things in interviews to annoy the other, they mischaracterize each other and their relationship purely for the satisfaction of knowing the other will see it and say “oh, piss off” out loud. Whether he’s out shagging girls in LA is irrelevant, but he is. Stu really should’ve had a string of C/B-list dates over Phase 5, that would’ve been great. In my perfect world, Stu in Venice buys a longboard and starts making his own kombucha (and makes himself very sick, at which point Noodle coincidentally starts fermenting and sharing) and has a few flings, none of which he’s lying to Murdoc about. There’s an understanding. They still aren’t really something, they’re just… not nothing. I guess my thoughts sort of break off from what is common and logical here because, in my mind, he’s already had this time apart between PB and Humanz to be on his own and be his own person, and it did ultimately still lead him back to Gorillaz and to Murdoc. This time, it’s… different. There’s a foregone conclusion to this. The band is still happening, right now, and there’s a certainty, a finality to having a clear-cut date for when Murdoc will be released and back in his life. There’s not such necessity in finding himself, because he’s already had damn near 10 years between the island and Detroit and he’s found that unfortunately, Murdoc’s fingerprints are burned down to the bone. So… I think he does what he can to enjoy it. He has his fun with the girls, has his time re-acclimating to the beach, does yoga and drinks nasty craft beer sometimes and performs. He enjoys not the process of finding himself, but the vacation from being someone he’s already, with much reluctance and a failed escape, come to terms with being.

With that said, I do think there’s a certain… “suspended” nature to their relationship at that point, and there’s some focus toward making it something a little less nebulous. They’ve been back in each other’s orbits and they’ve grown weary enough to accept certain things, and as his journal and all of TNN would imply, Stu’s definitely spending some time during the phase reflecting. A huge portion of this time clearly does go to deciding how he wants stay with Murdoc (as he knows he will, in some form or another) and what that means about him, where he is, the person he’s shackling himself to being. I think the album just comes from that, both from resentment and frustration over the situation, from the “freedom” his history with Murdoc has made him feel rather alienated from, from wanting to make a statement, to Murdoc, to himself; it is somewhat to the public, but at the end of the day, the very act of making a public statement is still for him.

It’s tough to give great answers because I’m of conflicting opinions on where exactly their relationship was when the incarceration happened. It’s pretty hard to deny that TNN is an album about Murdoc, and it’s an album with quite a few love songs on it– but for me, the bigger (and wonderful) thing is that those love songs don’t really make TNN a romantic album. There’s absolutely a confession in there, but… maybe it’s just me being committed to their maladjustment, but I don’t strictly hear it as a confession of something good. In a lot of ways, it’s more about finally saying what he doesn’t want anymore, what he isn’t satisfied by, and what he doesn’t want his life to be forever. For my purposes I think it’s fitting that the album Stu made for Murdoc, the gift Stu made for Murdoc, would paint a picture that quite honestly condemns them in many ways. One that is teeming with regrets and discussion of isolation, of personal failure, of distance, of feeling inhuman, of wanting to try something else to feel human again. It doesn’t paint everything they’ve been through as an epic romance but a broken relationship. And then it leaves where that goes open. I’m a bad 2Doc fan and I’ve gone on record as having Souk Eye Fatigue for a couple months there, but on its face I do think it’s super interesting that the sentiment of their big love song isn’t explicitly “I miss you” but “I still think about you.” There’s no denying this is still something very honest and something that matters in how they acknowledge themselves and their relationship, but I’ve got messed up priorities, and I hear the driving sentiment of the album as “I can’t get rid of you.” However, it’s also an acceptance of that being on both of them, for better or for worse.

I just really enjoy the fact that, while I agree it is a shippy album, TNN is also an album written to and for Murdoc where the chief message is “I am not happy.” I don’t think it’s necessarily suggesting Murdoc will “make him happy” but I think it’s… a reality he’s finally willing to admit. That all of this doesn’t work for him at 40. That living without Murdoc isn’t better for him now, not the way it might’ve been better 20 years ago, and the clinging to that idea of might’ve, the blaming, the running away, it’s just not doing him any good. It’s not making him happier. It’s putting their past on a shelf, still in view and in reach but off the table they’re sitting at. For me, TNN’s about simply saying, with neither joy nor hatred, that Murdoc is too much a part of him and he knows being rid of Murdoc just isn’t what he wants, and he doesn’t want the rest of the life he’s bound to to always look the way it does now. And maybe that’s not quite romantic enough, haha, maybe I look like a dour Daria-type to interpret it that way, but I think there’s a beauty in honesty and in not sugarcoating things to yourself and the people in your life. I think there’s something very cathartic about writing and releasing an album that feels like a slap in the face as much as it is an offer to finally… be something else. Something more than just not being nothing.

[mysterylover123]

Datte Atashi No Hero, aka the BKDK Theme Song: meta

“ ▪ While writing the song, LiSA imagined what it would be like if Izuku Midoriya were to sing his honest feelings to Katsuki. In a way, this is a song dedicated to Katsuki from Izuku.”

-BNHA Wiki entry on Datte attashi No Hero (Link: https://bokunoheroacademia.fandom.com/wiki/Datte_Atashi_no_Hero )

For those not in the know, Datte Atashi No Hero is the 3rd ED of BNHA. The one with the Fantasy AU theme. The lyrics by Lisa are explicitly stated on the wiki to have been written about Izuku’s perspective of Katsuki. I’m not used to hearing that an OP/ED in anime was specifically written to be about the story at hand - they usually seem to be songs off the singer’s album that happen to fit with the theme of the story (see: Again by Yui, FMAB OP1). So if we’re reading the translations of the lyrics, offered on the DVD release of BNHA S2, with this in mind, I can only come to the conclusion that studio Bones and Lisa must ship BKDK at least a little, because damn, these are awfully suggestive for platonic rivals. Let’s get into it:

The Lyric: “I can’t imagine you ever giving up”

Opening line of the song. Now, I can imagine this line being from many different perspectives: Izuku on Bakugo or All Might, Uraraka on Izuku, any of Baku’s friends on Baku. But it is still a bit of a stretch to apply this line to anyone but Izuku watching Katsuki, and since we know it was written that way…The line fits really well too with the Final Exam arc bit where Deku socks Kacchan in the face and chastises him for accepting loss.

The Image: This is paired with Fantasy AU Izuku leaving home and waving goodbye to Inko. This situates us in Deku’s POV, which is reinforced by the rest of the ED. This song is definitely Izuku’s point of view. Pairing this lyric with this image, I think, means Izuku is inspired not to give up by Bakugo’s determination - inspired to leave home and pursue his dreams.

The Lyric: “But I’m sure you’ve had days that were empty and miserable”

This line establishes that Deku has empathy for Bakugo, and sees him as human and fallible - connecting with him over their shared feelings of misery. Again, I can think of a few BKDK scenes this pairs well with, especially DVK2 (“Why was I the reason for All Might’s end”).

The image: Deku trips over himself. I guess this is relating to that empathy idea I had earlier. Both Deku and Baku have times where they’re empty and miserable. Deku is greeted then by Uraraka and Iida, symbolizing the moment in the series where he meets them (At the entrance exam), and they pull him up and support him. (not BKDK related but it is cute, and helps establish the ED as a metaphor for the story so far - and in the future).

The Lyric “If you think you’ll have many once in a lifetime endeavors/Then I want to see those moments”

This one also translates into something like “I want to be with you/around you” in different versions. Basically, Izuku wants to be around Katsuki, to see what he becomes and what he’ll achieve. He wants, in short, to be with him.

The image: Shoto on horseback, greeted by Iida Uraraka and Deku. Deku looks super urgent and Shoto, after looking a little bewildered, smiles and joins them. They cheer. Obviously, this symbolizes the Sports Fest w/ Todoroki; Deku (and later Iida in the Stain arc) bringing Shoto along on the mission to become great heroes. It’s paired up with the lyric about ‘endeavors’, also, which might be a coincidence but probably isn’t. For BKDK, there’s a difference in the way Deku interacts with Shoto here (urgent face, all business) to the way he does with Kacchan in the next scene.

The Lyric: “Even if there’s only one lifetime there are many chances to BE TOGETHER.”

I capitalized the last lyric; it follows on the last line about being together. This one is very shippy sounding, like something straight out of a wedding vow or marriage proposal. Again, this was written to be Izuku expressing his genuine feelings about Katsuki.

The image: Fantasy AU Bakugo pops up looking dramatic. This image is paired with this lyric, making sure you know he means Kacchan. Big close-up on Kacchan’s eyes, zooming out to reveal his badass, shirtless, dragon riding glory as the camera pulls back to make this look extra awesome. This is Deku’s POV on Kacchan, as something mythical and larger than life, that starts out close to him and pulls away.

The Lyric: “You’re the strongest, giving me, with absolutely nothing, meaning in life.”

Yep. This could only apply to All Might or Kacchan in Deku’s life. To quote from DVK2  again “It’s precisely because I had nothing that I kept chasing after you…your sheer amazingness at everything you do was so brilliant to me it was blinding.” I’d imagine that Lisa had this line in mind, because DVK2 was published long before Season 2 of the anime. Kacchan was the one who inspired Midoriya and gave his life new meaning.

The image: The quartet stare at Kacchan (cept Todoroki, who’s worried about his horse). Iida, with glasses blocked out, looks offended; Uraraka looks flabbergasted, Deku looks…in love. He even has his hand over his heart (holding his pack). We get Deku, in profile, presumably asking for Kacchan’s help, and Kacchan, also in profile, acting annoyed - but when the monsters pop up, they both turn to notice. This seems to be Deku reaching out to Bakugo to fight villains together and Bakugo rejecting him, which happens a lot, but the villains showing up will force the two to cooperate (USJ, Camino Ward).

The lyric: “Hooray, hooray, what’s this ability you have to make me say this over and over? “

So Kacchan has the ability to make Deku believe. He gives Deku faith and power, makes him say hooray. This is Deku’s feelings of inspiration when he looks at him, the Symbol of Victory idea. ‘Hooray’ is what you say when you win. Deku tries to speak like Kacchan when he wants to win. And being around him makes him happy.

The image: Basically just Class A fighting, particularly Deku with a sword and some quick flashes of the others. I guess this is Bakugo and Deku’s ability to inspire each other seeping out to the rest of the class, like Aizawa highlights in the Twin Stars speech.

The lyric: “Keep standing your ground and giving me courage”

Pretty simple I guess. Bakugo must keep fighting, and this helps Deku believe.

The image: Nice panning shots of Class A. I think this is the symbolism I mentioned before, Aizawa’s Twin Stars speech, all of Class A taking inspiration from their passion. Deku glances back at Class A and smiles, showing how he takes inspiration from others.

The Lyric: “Hooray, hooray, even all the insignificant things are calling out” I’m not as sure what this means - what are the ‘insignificant’ things? I guess that around Bakugo, to Deku everything, even the things he didn’t notice before, becomes better.

The Image: Shoto sword-fighting followed by Bakugo sword fighting. Again, this part is a little vague, but we do have a compare/contrast invitation for Shoto and Kacchan - one then the other, both riding something. Horseback and Dragonback. Paired with this lyric it has…kind of an anti TDDK slant, (“insignificant things”) but I don’t like anti-shipping so I won’t go there.

The Lyric: “When I look at your eyes, I can run too”

(all my instincts, they return/and the grand facade so soon will burn…in your eyes) Sorry, I had to. Anyway, the top lyric (which could also relate to a certain famous song that goes with everything) from the ED says explicitly that looking into Kacchan’s eyes gives Deku the strength to run, to move forward. This is easily the most romantic sounding line in the whole thing; it’s really hard to interpret ‘Looking into your eyes’ platonically. And if you have any doubt that he means Kacchan…

The Image: Deku and Kacchan, panting and out of breath. Deku looks at Kacchan, who looks back. He means Kacchan. He means looking into his eyes. This moment, and the following, probably symbolizes both DVK2 and the pair’s future as the ultimate Wonder Duo, who inspire each other to become the greatest heroes.

The Lyric “I want to try carving out the best finale”

I hope the finale of BNHA is good too! OK, more emotionally, Deku wants to do his best because of Kacchan. He wants to fight by his side to the end. He wants to end up with him. Paired together with…

The image: Facing the fight, Deku and Kacchan stand side by side, with big smiles, fighting together. They’re meant to be together, as a team, to face down the villains side by side and make each other stronger. Some day they’ll be unstoppable.

The Lyric: “Cause you’re my hero”/Datte attashi no hero”

Now of course this applies to everyone. But again, this song is about Kacchan. And Kacchan is Deku’s hero. This line right here says it, loud and plain. And DVK2: “All Might was my hero but you were the one actually in my life/To me you were an amazing person, much closer to me than All Might”. To sum it up, obviously All Might is Deku’s favorite pro-hero, but Kacchan is a different kind of hero. Plus another lyric that we tend to associate with romance (“did you ever know that you’re my hero/and everything I would like to be…oh dear god wind beneath my wings is way too fitting for this, go look up the lyrics it sounds like BKDK).

The image: Everyone watches on as Deku uses All Might’s sword to fight villains. Now we do see Bakugo on the sidelines, despite them working together before - but paired with the lyric, I think this is just reinforcing that Kacchan motivates Deku to be his best.

[ryuutchi]

Dearest Yulegoat [Mirrored Yuletide Letter] 

[General]

To start with, if you're writing fic for me, I love you. I'm going to be happy just to be able to share my fandom love with someone. You'll notice I throw a lot of ideas out-- feel free to take one, take many, take none. I know how hard it can be to settle on an idea once the assignments come in. So I'm offering a bunch of options that I will enjoy. None of these suggestions are hard and fast requirements. They're here to give you an idea of what's going on in my head and what my preferences look like. My current blog is ryuutchi, over on Tumblr. I can't promise it will be helpful, but in the interest of helping with the stalking process, feel free to check me out over there. I like: Plot, adventures, banter and dry humor, happy endings, over the top AUs (steampunk, noir, organized crime, rum-runners, harems...), casual physical intimacy, emotional interdependency, bad decisions and poor coping mechanisms, hurt/comfort and whump-with-comfort, loyalty and morality confusion, worldbuilding, identity porn, questionable healthy attachments, seeking out physical affection, accidentally caught feelings,  power-play, porn, gen, slash, femslash, het, any rating you feel comfortable with (for violence and/or sex), bittersweet things that are heavy on the sweet, Happily Ever After/Happily For Now endings I don't like: Deathfic, gratuitous angst, character-bashing, introspective character pieces, five times fics, mommy/daddy kink, A/B/O universes, contemporary social issues as the main focus/issuefic, sad or hopeless endings. (Also the standard DNWs: scat, watersports, necro, mpreg, homophobia, transphobia, etc) No Game No Life - Kamiya Yuu: Sora, Shiro The Series: They are both NEETs and Hikikomoris… but on the internet, the genius gamer siblings Sora and Shiro are known as the undefeatable “__” (blank). Sora and Shiro’s talents and skills are so abnormally good they are considered as urban legend.  One day, they are challenged by the god of games to chess and are victorious. As a result, the god summons them to Disboard, a reality which revolves around games. Intent on maintaining their reputation as the undefeated gamers, Sora and Shiro plan to conquer the sixteen ruling species and to usurp the god of games... NGNL is a series of light novels, of which 6 have been translated (PDFs can be found here, or bought legally at any online bookstore). The No Game No Life anime can be found on Crunchyroll here. Request: The fact that Shiro and Sora literally cannot be separated from each other is one of the dynamics that I like about the series. I really enjoy codependent siblings as a Thing. So I would be happy if you played with that dynamic. Plotty gen for this series would be great-- it's always fun when one of them is much better than the other or they have to separate and execute plans while relying solely on the intuition of what their sibling will do. Alternately, someone kidnapping Sora and Shiro having to play a game to get him back while they both battle their inability to get anything done alone... I'd love background on them, where they tried to separate or were forced to separate and failed to function, or where one or the other tried to interact with other people (maybe a gamer who tracked them down) but were either terrible at it, the other one quietly sabotaged the budding relationship,  or the third person got way too freaked out by the way Sora and Shiro act around each other. Future fic would also be great-- King/Queen Blank or even the Gods Blank, after they've beaten Tet. What does that look like? What kind of world are they making for themselves and each other? I ship them, but do not expect other people to, so if you want to write shippy fic (with aged up Shiro!!!) for them, I will be surprised but happy. I will happily admit to wanting kinky sex games. Extra Details: For reference, I've read through volume 8 of the light novel, watched the anime and the movie. I am not precious about spoilers for this series, so feel free to use later information. I know this series isn't everyone's cup of tea, with the sheer amount of fanservice and Sora's utterly otaku personality and the pseudo-incest thing with the 12 year old. Personally, as is probably obvious from the request, I'm less interested in the fanservicey characters, and much more about the dynamics of Shiro and Sora's relationship. I love the way they know exactly what the other is capable of and trust each other completely and whole-heartedly. Whether you write something small and domestic or big and plotty, for me the core of NGNL is that they love, care and respect each other in a way that is beautiful but also extremely unhealthy. If you want to go the shippy route, again, Shiro needs to be aged up appropriately-- it's always been interesting to me that Sora understands that it is inappropriate to sexualize his underage adopted sister, while Shiro goes out of her way to help sexualize other women for Sora's entertainment. There's a part of me that wonders if she's planning ahead for when she is old enough to be an "appropriate" (in age, if nothing else) sexual partner and is trying to get Sora to lose his virginity ahead of time. selector infected WIXOSS: Aoi Akira, Igarashi Rumi | UlithThe Series: WIXOSS is a popular trading card game in which players battle against each other with fighters known as LRIGs, using cards to support them. Certain LRIGs are able to communicate with their owners, and the girls chosen to wield them are known as "Selectors". Selectors are given the chance to have any wish granted by winning battles against other Selectors, but should they lose three times, their wish will be reversed into a curse instead. The main series, selector infected WIXOSS, follows a girl named Ruko Kominato, who becomes a Selector after receiving an LRIG that she names Tama. As she and various other Selectors battle it out for the sake of their wish, Ruko finds herself drawn into the dark, sinister world of WIXOSS, discovering that, win or lose, there is always a price to pay. The anime can be found on Funimation here Request: So, you know how in my "general likes" I said I don't like "gratuitous angst"? In this fandom, there is no such thing as "gratuitous". Darkfic is absolutely welcome here. The thing I am most interested in here is the manipulative, awful relationship that Akira has with Ulith-as-Iona. Like, I love them all, and for some reason in this fandom, that comes out to "please break them". Exploring their adult lives and how their relationships and the Wixoss game affected them in the future would be amazing. What else happened to them? What are their careers like? What are their home lives like? Are they... living together? Does some sort of magic continue to be a theme in their lives? Feel free to write in-universe plot or no-powers universe, or some horrible Madoka or Yurikuma Arashi  or other magical girl thing, where they can all be horribly manipulative lesbians together because that's magical and wonderful. OTOH, if you want to write codependent-but-vaguely-functional adult Akira and Iona/Ulith being horrible assholes and having adventures of some sort (magic, detectives, idk) that is ALSO A+. I mean, I like happy endings, and if you can come up with something heartwarming (or "heartwarming") I'm not going to complain. Extra Details: Evil lesbians are Problematic, I know. But Akira was one of my favorite characters from the word go and (if you're paying attention to my fandoms as a whole) I really really like codependent or unhealthy relationships. I love her love/hate relationship with Iona and with Ulith, and the way those two characters sort of get mixed up for Akira specifically. If you want to play with Iona and Ulith's personalities and interactions as well, that would also be pretty fun. I'm also down for other types of AUs, like they have to get their shit together and track down someone who is killing Selectors, or they become selectors as adults and not girls. I know they're young, but given that this is a super-fucking dark canon, I am totally cool with dubiously consensual sex either on or off-screen. FANDOM: Yoroiden Samurai Troopers | Ronin Warriors (Shuu Rei Fuan | Kento Rei Fang, Mouri Shin | Cye Mouri) The Series: Ronin Warriors, known in Japan as Yoroiden Samurai Troopers (lit. "Legendary Armor Samurai Troopers"), is a Japanese anime series and manga adaptation created by Hajime Yatate. It's the story of five teenage boys, given mystical armor to protect the world from the evil Arago. 1000 years ago, Arago nearly succeeded in taking over the human world when Kaosu managed to defeat him. Although Arago's soul is banished to the demon world, his armor is left intact. Kaosu divided the armor into nine separate armor suits. Each armor will choose its bearer, and together they will fight Arago. At least that was the original intent... Although Arago manages to corrupt four sets of the armor, the last five remain safe. It's a bit like Power Rangers, only grounded in more serious traditional Japanese cultural trappings. Being created in the 80s, the art style is a little wonky, but it's an enjoyable thriller and is somewhat more focused and serious than a lot of sentai shows. The anime can be found on Crunchyroll here Request: I love Shuu/Shin with Shin being snarktastic and Shuu being smug and solid and dependable. I used to frequent the Minkland archive back when this fandom still kinda existed, and was forever disappointed that the skinny pretty boys got tons and tons of fic and Shuu was just sort of there in the background. (If you used to read Mink and Jink's fic, I will be so happy I could cry if I got that sort of cracked-out porny fic with Shuu, okay. Due to that formative influence, if you want to GO FOR THE AU, GO FOR IT WITH GUSTO. I've always wanted nanshoku/samurai AU. Or, you know, hooker fic, or dark!troopers fic, or harem fic or something like that. I also like found-family fic, gen-ish mysteries and adventures-- more fighting Massive Cosmic Evil, and curtainfic. Futurefic is also awesome, where they get on with their lives, maybe together or maybe trying to keep their friendships intact when there's no massive Cosmic Evil to keep them close. Extra Details: If you used to read Mink and Jink's fic, I will be so happy I could cry if I got that sort of cracked-out porny, possibly AU fic with Shuu, okay Fics I especially enjoyed from that archive: The Grand One The Clit Club Chronicles The Harem Vinyl Wagashi Cherry Zima Threesome Theater of Magic Due to that formative influence, if you want to GO FOR THE AU, GO FOR IT WITH GUSTO. I've always wanted nanshoku/samurai AU (see this image). Or, you know, hooker fic, or dark!troopers fic, or harem fic or something like that. My usual ships are Shin/Shuu, Shin/Ryo, Touma/Seiji and Ryo/Nasuti. But I multiship and am willing to run with anything-- I'm a Sex With All Teammates sort of person, so fivesomes and alternate pairings are not a problem for me. Dragon Prince Trilogy - Melanie Rawn: Ianthe of Princemarch, Sioned of River Run The Series: To blatantly steal someone else's review on Amazon: "Melanie Rawn created a world and a people that gives everything you could possibly want in a fantasy world. It gives love, hate, peace, war, magic, royalty, commoners, children to take over the next generation and best of all; dragons." I want to say "if this wasn't the matched fandom you should go out and read them right the fuck now', because I have read these books So Many Times.  They're high fantasy novels about politics and the prince of a desert and magical people who communicate via sunlight and can conjure fire. AND DRAGONS. Also a lot of interpersonal and romantic maneuverings. It's a high fantasy politics and romance romp of somewhere ~550 pages. If that sounds interesting to you, pretty much every used bookstore I have ever been to has at least one copy of these books. I think they spawn on bookshelves or something. The books are also available in ebook form here (Kindle) and here (Nook) for 3 bucks. Please read them. (TW for rape in the first book) The Request: I love everything this series chooses to be. It's fun and cheesy and fantasy, which the best thing in the world. I've always thought that Ianthe had a serious hate-crush on Sioned and part of the reason she was so vicious and fucked up was that whole "you must marry a guy and expand the empire or your useless" thing when maybe she didn't want to do that. Ianthe's always been one of my favorite characters because she's brilliant and ruthless and clearly takes joy in clever plans that go well. Of course, being the villain in a cheesy fantasy, she got no depth whatsoever, aside from that whole sexually liberated, taking male consorts thing (which is AWESOME, okay.) Sioned is also awesome and brilliant and kick ass. Her hesitance in the first book while she decided what she really wanted to do was pretty great, as was the fact that she promptly made friends with Tobin and pretty much every character not designated "villain". It seems like up through Ianthe's death, they're playing a game of brinkmanship. (Which isn't to say I don't like Sioned and Rohan together. They're bookTP and totally awesome.) As for prompts, I normally prefer plotty fic to introspection. I feel like the whole sunrunner thing lends itself well to espionage, so political thriller, or murder mysteries or something would be great. If you want to do plot-what-plot involving these two-- either sex or just the sort of dancing around/pigtail pulling that would be great. Threesomes with Rohan-- also acceptable! Hell, if you want to do an AU where they end up together instead of Sioned marrying Rohan-- or alternately, an AU end to the trilogy, where Ianthe never died in the fire and ends up taking over as High Princess and making the Desert monarchs' lives hell and discovering her powers. Or something where she knew about her powers all along. Or Sioned, I don't know, realizing she kind of did think Ianthe was attractive. I also really enjoy Pandsala, but I didn't find her dynamic with Sioned and Rohan quite as engaging, even though she also did some bad-ass stuff in the long run. Her weird push and pull backstabby, politicized sisterly thing was interesting, though. Extra Details: Okay, like I said, I think this series is the cheesiest fantasy series in the WORLD and in a lot of ways it's one of my first nostalgia fandoms. If you haven't read them, they are kind of ridiculously long (Like, GRR Martin-long), but they're quick reads despite that and rather less depressing than a lot of high fantasy. It's silly in the way that "adult fantasy" that takes itself way too seriously can be. A lot of the main protagonists actively enjoy each others' company and that's as much integral to the book as the politics and dragon-slaying. That said, I kinda asked for a semi-serious plotty story. But if you want to run with the "it's cheesy fantasy" and want to write about Ianthe rescuing princesses or Sioned running away to be a knight and abducting Ianthe away from her toxic father, or something silly, I say get down with your nerd self and run with it. I've only read parts of the second trilogy, and the second generation aren't really very interesting to me. If you want to write future-fic, I would prefer that it continues to focus on the original generation (no matter how much I love Andry, Pol just seems like kind of a jerk).

House of M - New X-Men: Academy X: Any The Series: I'm surprised it took me so long to nominate and request this fandom. I love New X-Men and was GUTTED when Decimation forced them into killing off so many of the characters. If you've never read it, New X-Men: Academy X was an X-Man title in the mid-00's, focusing on entirely new students at Xavier's Academy, being taught by the more established characters. Some of the New X-Men have managed to escape and become general Marvel characters in their own rights (David Alleyne, for example), but for the most part, they were just teenagers at school who rarely got caught up in larger plots. 616 New X-Men were about teenagers fighting, and coming to grips with the fact that they're being raised and taught to go sacrifice themselves for a Greater Goal. They're all wonderfully, horribly traumatized teenagers with powers. The plots were fleshed out and realistic, and when they weren't they were still interesting or fun. This request isn't technically for that. It's for the House of M megacrossover from 2009. Wanda Maximoff, mutant reality shifter and sometimes-crazy-lady, decided that mutants should run the world. SO THEY DID. And suddenly the lives of our young students become very different. Half of them after still "New Mutants", working towards peace, and the others are "Hellions", SHIELD trainees in a violently anti-homo-sapien state system. I've always felt that House of M as a narrative concept has been dismissed too easily by Marvel fans, because there are so many pieces of worldbuilding left unbuilt. I'm most interested in seeing it from the eyes of younger participants who are being trained or have been trained for their places. What does that world look like? New X-Men: Academy X can be found online here: https://viewcomics.me/comic/new-x-men-2004. The House of M crossover runs for issues 16-19. The Request: There's a lot here to play with because the authors never really got to play in either the Academy X OR the House of M sandboxes long enough to do all of their ideas justice. So I'm going to lay out some of the stuff I liked most about NXM in general and HoM in particular. The nom is for HoM, but I think HoM is most interesting in conversation with the standard 616 universe, alongside having the fun YA action stuff and the complicated interpersonal relationships. For example: in 616 Josh joined the Reavers and pretended not to be a mutant until he was confronted with Laurie nearly dying. I can imagine a bunch of different scenarios for House of M that would lead to where we see Josh and Laurie in the HoM comics (Laurie undercover with the New Mutants, and Josh working as an interrogator alongside Kevin). Laurie's introversion in 616 juxtaposed against her brazen treachery and clear control over her skills in HoM. HoM shows Kevin in a full decontamination suit, but we know in 616 that his ability is blocked by wearing synthetic fibers (I imagined this to be a interrogator scare tactic, but it could be any number of other things). Kevin and Josh's relationship in 616 is fraught, especially with Josh's previous experiences with anti-mutant activists and the fact that Kevin killed his father when his powers manifested. But they seemed to work together well in HoM. And speaking of Kevin-- how did his powers manifesting actually pan out in a universe where mutants aren't seen as a threat? I have to wonder whether there's some concept of "acceptable casualties" because some peoples' powers clearly manifest first in dangerous situations. Alternatively: Fluffy Josh/Kevin with a backdrop of torture, murder and state violence. I ship mostly Josh/Kevin because rivals-to-lovers and boy-who-kills-anything-he-touches/boy-who-cannot-be-killed is Great For Me. I also love the abuse of powers and manipulation involved in being interrogators/torturers(/murderers?) for the House of Magneto. They work together, they hurt people together, but maybe they also... smooch? THAT SAID! Adding Laurie to that ship is always a great way to fuck up and destabilize them! Especially in HoM, where we know she's already keeping secrets and can and WILL use her pheromones to fuck with people. And David! OH, DAVID. The only real New Mutant in this request. Does he have previous relationships with Josh and/or Kevin? I don't mind David/Noriko, but I also ship David with Kevin and Josh, and also Tommy and Teddy from Young Avengers, if you feel like exploring other parts of the HoM world. I have never considered David/Laurie before, but if you want to give it a whirl, I'm down. As for David-- His responses to state violence (as evidenced by the Hellions and SHIELD) are clearly different from the rest of the requested characters, and it would be interesting to explore David and his experience of this universe. Are his powers still restrained the same way? I know he supposedly dies at the end of the HoM mini-arc, but we never see them die, so feel free to write David managing to crawl off and plan to take down everything and everyone. A specific DNW for this fandom is Josh/Rahne. I don't mind the relationship having existed and impacting the characters, but only as a past relationship.

Extra Details:

SENSORY DETAILS. When it comes to magic and meta powers-- especially ones that aren't battle-oriented-- is what they feel like. What does it MEAN for David to be able to know anything someone else knows? What does the emptiness and fullness of it do to him? Josh's powers are all tactile and his body actively changes after trauma (in 616, first by turning him gold, then by creating black spots on his skin after he kills someone for the first time). Does his power always alter him, but usually in unnoticeable ways? What can he know and feel from a touch? Same for Kevin-- does withering sate a hunger, or make him feel worse? What would it feel like if he touched Josh? And Laurie... I'd love both her thought-process and the sensory details of what she's doing. Can she smell her own pheromones? Do they ever affect her? What does she feel like when she's manipulating people so subtly that they barely notice a passing smell? If you want to bring in other 616 knowledge and see what it looks like in HoM, that's cool. So is bringing in other HoM storylines. There's a throw-away line in Luke Cage's HoM crossover that the Runaways are known as an organized crime group. Cage himself runs a resistence cell (and given the end of the NXM crossover, David seems like he'd be willing to throw in with that lot). Young Avengers, the other New X-Men who weren't given much screentime in the HoM crossover-- I'd love any of that. Young Justice (Comics): Match, Tim Drake

The Series: Comics are confusing! This request is for the late-90s version of Young Justice by Peter David, which consisted of Robin, Impulse, Superboy, Arrowette, Secret, and Wonder Girl, along with others. It's very much a young-heroes-trying-to-make-their-way. Unlike the newer show, this Young Justice tended to be left on their own without much of a guiding hand. It was a very 90s comic, with very 90s fashion and a lot of nod-nod-wink-wink in-jokes. I love it because it's a series that always wore its humor on its sleeve. It's an affectionate look at young superheroes, and allowed them to react to teen problems alongside the more standard superhero tropes. There's the possibility for angst and darkness (and once they graduated to Teen Titans especially, that came up more), but they were allowed to be both hurt and upset AND fun and cheerful. The comics weren't available collected until last year (it took them TWENTY YEARS JFC), and it's well-worth buying from your local retailer, but you can also find them online here. The character I'm requesting first appeared in Superboy's solo series (starting in issue #35), which can be found here and again in the first volume of Young Justice: Sins of Youth. The Request: SO! I have always loved Match in the original YJ and Superboy comics, and the writers gave him really short shrift. We have a clone of Kon, who is as smart, if not smarter, can pretend to be Kon for extended periods of time— but every time he tries, people get hurt or die. I’ve always wondered how Tim felt that he literally couldn’t tell his best friend from an imposter. And then Match went and ran off and disappeared and no one ever seemed to consider what he was doing, after thousands of his/Kon’s siblings/clones were murdered essentially in front of him and the Agenda fell apart. (I’m not entirely surprised that Kon didn’t pay attention to all of those clones of him dying, but think about it from the standpoint of someone for whom those were supposed to be an army of his siblings. What a way to get survivor’s guilt.) Did Match go to Lex? It doesn’t seem like it, but given that as Kon’s clone, he’s technically Lex’s son too, it’s a possibility. Or alternately! He got himself out of the superhero game and did something else! What was it? I’d also love for a story about him wanting to be a super and have that family that Kon and Clark have, but being shut out of that world because he’s a “villain”. Or him getting that family after so long. Or him showing up at the Kents’ place because “fuck it, if Kon can have this, so can I” and it goes… well or poorly, depending on you. Or him finding his own family in a place that is separate from the who superhero thing, and Kon or Tim or Clark stumbling on him. Or Lex trying to use him— whether or not it works is up to you, although I’d love for it to touch on Match’s need to be part of something larger— after all, he was built and trained to be the vanguard for an army that was summarily murdered in front of him. Tim's refusal to even vaguely hint about his real identity during this time is fun too-- we have two boys who are both hiding their identities in different ways. It makes me wonder if Tim COULD have figured Match out, if the Sins of the Youth plotline didn't happen or was delayed somehow, because he seems to have all of the pieces of information. Or maybe Match-as-Kon was the only person Tim revealed part of his real name too, and has to deal with the ramifications of trust. Actually, Tim and the Issues Of Trust is the YA novel that I'd love to see Tim and Match (and Kon and the rest of YJ) star in. Bring back Mr Sarcastic (PLEASE bring back Mr Sarcastic) and Alvin Draper. Bring back the way that Tim hides by burrowing under identities and performances, and collects information on everyone he knows. I love detective stories and, out of all the Bats, Tim has always struck me as one of the best actual detectives, rather than crime-fighters. So Tim getting lost in a mystery will always make me happy. There's also something interesting about a group of young teens fighting for their own autonomy and identity. At this point in Tim's story, I think he was still thinking of the Robin thing as almost an extracurricular, and probably grappling with how hard it is on him physically, as well as mentally. So, I guess struggling for a coherent snse of self and agency are really interesting touchstones in this fandom. ALSO, MY DEEPLY HELD RARE PAIR FROM THE 90s: Tim/Match! See above, re: Match being present for Identity Crisis instead of Kon. I’d love Match to be trying to follow Kon’s footsteps re: Cassie, and being way more into Tim, which leads to Tim being confused and into Kon. Also any of the above prompts can include Tim (maybe Tim tries to help cushion a meeting between Match and Kon or Clark! Or maybe he just ends up Match’s sugar daddy. I’m down.) Although this request is ripe for dubious identity weirdness with Match pretending to be Kon, I'd really prefer that you focus on Match getting to be his own person, even if there's some pretending-to-be-Kon in there. Extra Details: This has been a lowkey love of mine for literally decades. My absolute favorite gift of all time was original pages from one of the Superboy issues where Match appears for the first time. And as I've grown older, my love for this rare, obscure character has deepened. Also, as I've grown older, I've begun to want more adult!Match, or growing up!Match just because the idea of growing up in the margins of superhero culture after everything that happened to him is really interesting. He was straight-up groomed and brainwashed, and then the Agenda was gone, so how did he cope? What is he doing now? What kind of adult does he make? This request is specifically for the mid-90s comic, so feel free to stick to that. But if you read the 2010-era Teen Titans and want to explore some later story choices-- like Match becoming Bizarro-like, Slade making him part of Titans East, or his fear that Jericho would hurt the Titans in his body, or save Match from Superboy-Prime, I'm not going to complain. (Personal headcanon time: I think Slade was trying to mind control Match with the same stuff he used on Rose, and it caused the Bizarro-like symptoms). I also love Elseworlds and mirror!verse stuff too. As I've said elsewhere in the letter, I really prefer Happily Ever After/Happily For Now stuff, and I prefer my bittersweet fics heavy on the sweetness. Please give Match the love and affection he's always deserved. But also, please feel free to make both Match and Tim HURT first.

[raeofalbion]

ETA - June ‘19 Edition

Wow, I haven't done one of these since last October, wtf me. Anyway. The momentary return of the least appropriately named part of this blog just to give a brief overview of what’s going on. -sad confetti canon-

Blackout - I’m gonna aim for 2 - 3 chapters being posted before July cuz I’ve been really shitty about updating this year and I’m really sorry about that. Given the fic is done and edited and all I really have to do is check formatting and typos and fix last minute changes, it just feels really inexcusable to me that I’ve let myself get so far behind. So I’m gonna try to do a little bit better.

ACoIaS - on hiatus still. As I said at the end of last year, I’m on a slight break from Fable (other than Blackout) to avoid burn out and also just to keep from stagnating so much when I get back to it. But if I’m feeling very Fable-y come November, I’ll probably finish up at least the first part during that NaNo. If not November, then next April’s NaNo. I haven’t lost interest, it’s not abandoned, I still like it and I have the entire fic outlined (and most of the second outlined, as well), I just need to take a little break and eventually write it.

Gothic Horror AU - I’m having a hard time figuring out my conclusion to this which is keeping me from making good progress, but I’m planning on returning to it next month and maybe I’ll make some progress. We’ll see.

Shorts & One Shots - I’ve got a handful of one shots started; can’t really go into detail because I’ve just got so many in progress things that it’d be impractical to list them all here (unless y’all really want a super long list here? Idk, I need to redo my In Progress page so maybe I’ll do that there). But I’ve got the next two of the Numbers fics (Three and Five) started and a few other things I know I’ve talked about (the robot fic, anyone?) so still poking slowly away at those. I’m hoping to get a few done soon.

- The Noir AU (& Other Sherlock Fic Ideas) - I know I mentioned plotting this out, but I wanted to put this to a majority vote: would you like me to prioritise this, or any other bigger Sherlock ideas I’ve mentioned, over the Gothic Horror AU? Because I have a lot of interest in a lot of those ideas, but I’m trying to keep an eye on not doing too much at once. So, quick summaries: * Gothic Horror AU is focused around a case that begins about a month after TEH and also deals with questioning reality, repressed trauma, and possibly actual ghosts. Sheriarty, but the ship’s very much background except where it nudges against the main plot. * Noir AU is very trope heavy, but very much on purpose--a noir retelling of various episodes and ACD’s stories, but Sherlock’s actually aware of what all the tropes are and mean and no one else is (so it can get a little cracky and a little dark, but mainly intended to be fun). Ship tags for Adlock, Sheriarty, and Warstan which will all impact the plots in various ways, though the retellings will, of course, be the focus. * That (Probably Sad) Very Gay Victorian Fae AU...which I’ll just link to here. The only problem with this idea is how much research I’ll have to do. Not for big things, I’ve researched a lot of the big things for other projects and for fun, but for all the little things that will need a lot of looking into. So idk. * Writer AU which is best detailed here. If you’ve read MoI (which I doubt unless I’ve discovered some Sherlock fans who also like Fable?), I’m thinking that level of balance between shippy stuff and plot? But yeah, those are the main big ideas. If anyone has one they’d really like me to prioritise, lemme know cuz it really helps to know what readers are into. <3

Prompts - Not listing for practicality’s sake, but I’m prioritising the most recent ones and making decent, if slow, progress. I’ve also shelved a couple dozen really, really old prompts (like verging on 3 yrs old) that didn’t have ships/characters in the ask. Or that I’ve lost the ask for. Or, worst of all, have characters but don’t have what prompt it’s for added to them (which, LOL, good luck me figuring out which prompt list that’s for 3 years later). It’s actually a really weird relief to shelve those? Feels a little less overwhelming. Still a lot to do, but with time, right?

Some personal stuff below the cut.

I don’t usually do personal stuff on etas, but I figure y’all should know why I’ve been so slow writing lately. I’ve never tried to hide that I’ve got pretty severe depression and BPD on top of that, both of which have been complete assholes lately. Unfortunately, I also get really badly heatsick and my depression is worse in the summer so, now that summer’s happening in full, I’ve been feeling just...bad. Also physically bad in a way that suggests I really need to see a doctor, but, every time I’ve brought up these symptoms to my doctor, he’s shrugged them off, told me to lose weight (and to basically cut my calorie and carb intake down to nearly nothing which...doesn’t work and is a horrible thing to tell someone, so fuck you, doc), and then did nothing. And he seems to be the norm, attitude-wise, for doctors in the area. So I don’t really know what to do that’s practical in my current circumstances. But I’m pissed off it’s affecting things I enjoy and it’s just...ugh. I’m tired. I’m really tired. I want to enjoy my writing and my gaming and all that the way I used to but it just kinda feels hopeless at times. Gotta keep at it, I guess, but fuck if it’s just mentally and emotionally exhausting.

[professortennant]

Sam/Jack Rec List, Pt. 1

This is mostly for me in case my bookmarks are lost but yeah! I’ve gone through like 90% of AO3, a good chunk of ff.net, and I just dived into LJ. But since I have 103 fics already bookmarked, I’m just gonna put this list up first and then add to it later. 

Plz read the tags of each fic to avoid stuff you don’t wanna read. If you read something and love it, GO TELL THE AUTHOR SO THEY WRITE MORE.

Absolute Fucking Favorites (aka I have read these more times than I feel comfortable admitting)

We Made It Series: A series of connected episode tags beginning with Forever in a Day. Sam shows up on Jack's doorstep with a six pack of beer, a bottle of cheap wine and a package of chicken breasts. Jack's confused. They cook dinner.

Taking Christmas Off: How Sam and Jack end up spending Christmas alone together every single year, accidentally at first, and then very much on purpose. A fluffy/shippy Christmas fic in eight parts, with spoilers through season 8.

The Dreams We Left Behind: The day Sam Carter marries Pete Shanahan is not the worst day of Jack’s life; he’s already lived that day. But that doesn't make it easy.

Like Kissing a Stranger: There is not one day he spends on this planet, or any other, that his mouth doesn't get him into trouble.(An episode tag for Point Of View.)

Retrospective: Sam doesn’t give it a name, this feeling. She doesn’t even think about it much, preferring to glimpse it obliquely from the corner of her eye. It’s a secret delight that she shares with no one, scarcely even herself.One story in eight parts charting Sam and Jack’s relationship from the start of S1 to the end of S8.

The Short Straw: She hadn't set out to cheat, certainly, but had thought that she'd at least be able to interpret her own work in a way that would lead to victory. (Tag for Shades of Grey)

Post-Eps/Episode Tags (except for Threads, which is its own category)

The Price of Edora: Sam suffers the consequences of pushing herself too hard in order to bring Jack back from Edora. 

For Just One Taste of This: After that, though, things got tricky and dangerous because they pushed a little more and went a little (a lot) further off that deep end, and soon it was the two of them alone in the empty barracks and this wasn’t wrong, was it, just sitting side by side in the darkness? (Post Divide and Conquer)

Let Your Demons Run: (here can't be that many eyes in the building that haven't noticed her. Post-ep for Entity.

Midnight at the Oasis: What if Abydos wasn't destroyed, and Jack and Sam really did go to Skaara's wedding? A short AU based on the wonderful (!) exchange among the three at the beginning of Full Circle.

Thyself, Unknown: And then they were strangers again and their world was brand new with signs of aging. Beneath the Surface 

Unlearn your Stars: Thera turned her eyes toward the ceiling, as if she could see through the miles of earth and snow to the sky beyond. Something about her seemed to yearn, and for reasons he could not fathom Jonah felt like Thera belonged there. Among the stars. (Beneath the Surface)

Transcendental: Alternate Sam and Jack who got stranded in the alternate timeline in Moebius. 

The Fundamental Theorem of Samantha Carter: Samantha Carter knew precisely what she wanted. And then she didn’t. S.8 Full Alert through Threads with references to Gemini.

The Rainy Season: Tag for The Light. Their arguing was beginning to grate on her nerves.

Icarus Ascending: What if Jack and Sam didn't keep it in the room after all? A/U tag to Divide and Conquer. 

The Space Between: There's a little space between them on the bed. Small enough to be close, but enough space to remind them where the line should be. (tag for Death Knell.)

Mimesis: Jack tries to help Carter deal with her time spent with Fifth and the Replicators.

A Rush of Blood to the Head: "You volunteering to come with me, Carter?" Sam and Jack deal (or don't) with the creation of mini!Jack.

The Breaking Point: Daniel’s ‘death’ in Meridian forces Sam Carter to reevaluate her life and what really matters to her.

Window on a Room: The first time around, Sam had found that face the Colonel was making to be endearing, in the increasingly problematic way she found pretty much everything he did to be endearing. The second time, she had found it alarming - not the Colonel specifically, of course, just the fact that she’d already experienced that exact moment not ten hours earlier. She went from being alarmed on the second loop to being frustrated, baffled and discouraged in subsequent loops as their attempts to stop the looping had all failed. And now that they had settled into this routine, with Sam and Teal’c, loop after loop, learning to translate the altar text themselves, well now she was just tired. Not even the Colonel’s problematically endearing face was helping.Another loop, she thought to herself. Here we go again.

black holes and revelations: It’s late and dark and as far as she’s concerned, the world has stopped for them (they’d done the Earth a few favors, it's time one was returned).

Lifelines: Everyone expects her to be so resilient--but beneath her calm exterior seethe emotions beyond her control and understanding. Months post "Beneath the Surface", Sam finally has to face it all, and find a way to accept the way things have to be.

Reflections on a Broken Surface: Episode tag to Beneath the Surface. How Sam and Jack became a couple in the ep. 

Tilting at Windmills: Jack's struggling to deal with the events of Euronda and Alar's people. Angry, depressed, and alone, he needs Sam's help to find his way home, literally, and figuratively.

untitled: Sam/Jack, word prompt- 'never' Episode tag to Death Knell

the art of reincarnation: Detoxing in a Goa’uld palace, Jack struggles with something he can't let go, and Sam struggles with everything.

Cracks in the Glass: Doctor Carter has stepped through the mirror-seeking refuge from her ravaged world. Her presence forces Sam and Jack to question their own decisions. Sam and Jack focused episode enhancement to "Point of View".

Before the Invitation: A chance meeting in the commissary leads to some unintended revelations. (Set just prior to 'Nemesis')

Threads

Full Disclosure: She looks at him with that complex expression that’s punctuated their relationship ever since Pete barged onto the scene. The one that looks like a question, or a plea – the one he’s never really understood and has never dared pursue.

Down to the Bone: She knows now, what’s essential.

Sooner: Some bonus scenes for "Threads," because a lot went on in and around that episode that we just didn't get to see.

an angel came down: The first Christmas after her father dies is rough. The second Christmas after her father dies is better.

Breathe In: It wasn’t an immediate thing, despite what people thought. They didn’t jump each other the second SG1 was on vacation, with her emotionally vulnerable after her father’s death and no longer engaged, or him now free of SG Command and DC-bound.

Sam or Jack are Tortured/Abused (but it ends happily)

Primary Emotion: After seventeen weeks of torture in a Goa'uld prison, Samantha Carter is rescued by SG-1. In the time that follows she must relearn how to relate to her team, reassess her relationships with both herself and others, and decide whether or not she'll continue to step through the Stargate. Luckily she's got the benefit of a good psychologist and the love of a great man.

Character: SG1 is kidnapped by an alien king who needs Sam to perpetuate his bloodline & will do anything to possess her. The team must find a way to escape before she pays the ultimate price for her defiance. 

Compos Mentis: After Colonel O'Neill is stranded on a seemingly friendly planet, it's up to his team to rescue him. Who they find, though, isn't the man they left behind.

Crawl from the Chasm: After Jack's experiences in Ba'al's Abyss, he struggles to find peace. Angsty Jack/Sam Ship.

After All: They’d been trapped for a month. He’d been tortured within an inch of her life. And then their roles had been reversed.

All We Need of Hell: Jack is captured and tortured and when he returns, he just doesn’t see the point in following the regs anymore--Sam is essential. And he convinces her to forget the regs, too. (Dark fic). (chap 2)

Aliens Made Them Do It

Auctions and Consequences: Slavery has been abolished for good reason, but apparently not everyone got the memo… landing Sam and Jack in hot water.

Auction and Reaction (sequel to the above): Jack manages to get himself captured and Sam is sent to negotiate for his freedom. Unfortunately, the matriarch in charge of the male slaves is unconvinced of her claim and threatens to keep Jack as her personal slave.

Relief: How they'd managed to gate to a planet right in the middle of their annual fertility festival was beyond him.

in doorways and dreams i run to you: They had stepped through the gate together. They were looking for something.Light.There had been a blinding light and then nothing. Nothing but the heat and the taste of his skin on her lips. And now he was on his knees and she wasn't stopping him from sliding a hand underneath her.

Beautiful Far Away: While on a routine exploratory mission, Colonel Jack O'Neill and Captain Samantha Carter get caught up in a children's game that turns out to be the beginning of Rorilian marriage rites. When seismic activity starts to rock the village, the local leaders demand the ritual be seen through to its natural conclusion to avoid further angering their gods. Sam's equipment suggests the tremors are caused by an unidentifiable metal, but her science seems to be a point of contention amongst the leaders. She's convinced she needs just a little more time to figure out what is happening on the planet. Unfortunately, that means she's jumping into a ritual marriage with her new commanding officer. What could possibly go wrong?

Xanadu: The team travels offworld to take care of some mining negotiations, only to meet with an unanticipated challenge on P3X-427.

5 Times Fic

Five Times Jack Sees Sam Out of Uniform

The Nature We Leave Behind Us: 5 Times Daniel (and Teal’c) find out or suspect about Sam and Jack

Five Times Jack Came Close to Breaking the Frat Regs with Sam

Desperation: 5 times Jack kisses Sam

Ambient: 3 morning-afters that they miss and 1 they don’t.

5 missing ship scenes from s9/s10

5 times jack asked sam out and 1 time he didn’t have to

Stranded/Retired/Moved Off-World

My Scars Healed (aka the Cottage AU): Abandoned off-world, living is about more than just survival.

In Media Res: When Sam and Jack are taken captive and put to work in a mining camp, that turns out to be the least of their troubles. Forced by circumstance to live in close proximity, their time as captives has consequences neither one foresees.

Compliance: The end comes fast. One moment it’s a normal day with paperwork and bad coffee and the next it’s a scramble for the event horizon as the Mountain comes down around them. The base empties out with surprising efficiency, and by the time Jack hangs up the red phone on the last conversation he’ll ever have with the President, only Carter and Daniel and a couple techs are still in the gate room, the last of the supplies being sent through to their fall back site.

I Love It When a Plan Comes Together: Dear Airline, I was marooned on an alien planet…

And then I dreamt of yes: The universe has really bad timing, but neither Sam or Jack is ready to give it the last word. 

The Final Straw: Sam's injured and trapped off-world. 

Twilight: General O'Neill gets ansty to do some Gate travel, but a natural phenomenon on another world causes problems and changes things

Bird Stealing Bread: Jack had actually imagined being stranded off-world quite a few times. But he really, really, really hadn't counted on being stranded off-world with Sam. And Pete.

Under the Sun: ABANDONED FIC BUT IT’S SO GOOD. When lightning strikes the DHD and strands Sam and Jack alone on a planet, they must rely on one another to get through until help can arrive. Soon, though, they discover they're not alone on the planet and things change. Suddenly they're thrust into local politics and Sam is drafted to help save the locals' lives. Perhaps, if they play their cards right, all of it can help them get home.

Total AU

String Theory: Dr. Samantha Carter joins the SGC and discovers a life she never expected.

Imprimatura: Even in a completely different reality, where a strictly enforced color-based caste system stands between them, some things remain the same.

How to Start a Fire: She denies it's physical attraction. He denies it's anything but. Sam/Jack. Changeling Universe.

Convergence Series: Jack O’Neill is a man waiting to die, and she’s the only one brave enough not to look away.

Right as rain: Jack never went on the Abydos mission. Charlie never died. But when Jack accidentally activates a device that Kawalsky brings by the Academy, he catches the interest of a certain Major Carter. Soon he finds himself in for one hell of a ride, and if aliens and space travel and weird DNA weren't crazy enough, he might actually be falling in love with a theoretical astrophysicist...

The Dating Game: Catherine Langford had been instrumental in getting AU Sam/Jack together in There But For The Grace of God

Defining Family: Set after "Ripple Effect". What happens to Janet and the rest of the alternate SG-1 team after the episode? How does it affect our reality?

Worlds Apart: An Ancient device sends Jack and Sam to a world where everything is just a little bit... wrong. Why? Can they cope with the differences? And, most importantly, can they find their way back?

I don’t know what to categorize these as but they’re amazing

Deep City Lights: He picks her up in a blue convertible. (Road trip fic where they say ‘fuck the regs’ and then remember the regs)

we build then we break (and build up again): Sam’s last mission on SG-1, and the life that follows.

the slow revelation of self: In the beginning there was sex. And it was good.

untitled: on a mission, sam and jack are painting their mark on a wall.

things not dreamed: Daniel doesn't understand their need to fly. 

Cultural Drift: Six days before the shit hit the fan and nothing was ever the same again, Daniel fell over a tablet on P3X-324. That was two years ago.

Concentric Unto Thee: Her attempts at normality have never worked before, and Jack won't stand for any attempts to apply the logic of command to their relationship.

the lesson: Jack and Sam haven’t wasted the three years they’ve been cut off from Earth…and though the price is high, they manage to teach that lesson to another couple who badly needed to learn it. 

Escape Pod: "I just need," shift, "to move," shift, "a little." (Accidental Stimulation fic) Tonight: It's been too many years of it, the death, the resurrection, the sheer and aching loneliness, the hurt that comes from walking away.

Rocket Fuel: Sam and Jack get together after Heroes but also AU + Christmas.

Home Economics:  He would never have imagined that the biggest problem Sam Carter would have with his house would be his toaster.

Atlantis/Continuum

Gravity Always Wins in the End: After Sam is held hostage, Jack takes an impromptu trip to Atlantis.

Backlit:  Carter turns 43 years old on day 6 of a 14-day run to P98-007 aboard the General Hammond. The only events that mark the occasion are the little note Daniel must have stuffed into her pack before she left, a cheerful "Happy Birthday, Ma'am" from her second over a morning cup of coffee, and a long stare at herself in the mirror after she washes her face before bed. It's not like she expected more.

Yesterday’s Life: She feels frayed and faded, like a scrap of fabric accidentally discarded and forced to weather the elements. S/J, spoilers for Stargate: Continuum.

Distance: Sam contemplates the difficulties of a long distance relationship with Jack on Valentine's Day...

Post-Series

Look Again Into Your Heart: It's not that cold, not by the standard of some of the places she's been in the last decade or so of her life, but then again, she's not used to braving the weather in heels and an evening dress.

Follow the Star of the North: When Jack talked about losing himself in Minnesota, Sam never really understood the appeal.

Radio Silence: “It’s Mitchell.”He grabbed the phone out of her hand, smiling at the horrified expression on her face when he flicked it open and held it to his ear.“This is General O’Neill. Is the world ending?”

Rainy Days: Sam and Jack spend a rainy day at the cabin

The Lies You Feed Yourself: They simply aren’t part of each other’s worlds anymore. They haven’t been for years. Jack and Sam three years after they leave the SGC.

Bygones: He's a man of few words. Sam, however, wants to hear a couple of specific ones - at least once. It takes another woman to help her understand just how her husband communicates. 

Twelve Years Two Weeks: She had finally 'switched off'. It had taken her a few days to rid herself of the itch that she was neglecting a to-do list the size of her arm.

DC Series: SG-1 is moving on, but Sam is standing still.

Interlude: Jack turns up unexpectedly, and he and Sam make an important decision.

fly me to the moon: Jack is baffled. What do you do for a woman's 40th birthday when she routinely explores alien planets, has blown up a sun, and raced in the Loop of Kon Garat? Give her the moon of course. 

Folding a Map: Distance makes Jack an unhappy camper.

Taur’i Whispers: "He likes her throaty laugh. He likes that her voice has dropped and softened in the years he's known her." - Sam/Jack, romance and a bit of angst and hurt/comfort

Blue Dark: The sun’s barely peeking above the horizon and already she’s up, perched on a stool at the breakfast bar in his kitchen, her index finger circling the rim of her coffee cup.“And we have to go to this?” she asks, taking a sip of the hot beverage.

Un-fish: “Caught any un-fish?” she asked softly.Their lives would never be normal because of little things like fish that were or were not there and sometimes he wondered who had done what exactly to his pond to drive the fish away. He knew better than to ask, unwilling to listen to her explain to him the various possibilities of… whatever.

Real Life: This was what she'd been waiting for, held out for all those years. Someone -- him -- to come home with every night, to sink into after saving the world or spending three days dug in on an alien planet with fifty-odd Jaffa between her team and the 'gate, someone who knew just how she liked to be touched... She rolled onto her back, offering sleepy kisses when his lips crossed hers, sighing when his wandering hands brushed across her belly... 

[noddytheornithopod]

MML New Episode Commentary Dump

There’s a lot of them soooooo

Lady Krillers:

“You recast all the men as women? You got a greenlight.” Ugh, it’s gonna be one of THOSE episodes.

Melissa is the voice of reason of course

“I had the most horrible dream... they were making a Krillhunter movie without Tobias.” Narrowly dodged a bullet there. And it continues through the episode. Too close, guys.

Tobias is wealthy, your gag just ruined any investment I had in this. :V

“Milo’s friend girl” bleh

Melissa is joining in, so much for voice of reason.

Okay, the alien fight in the background was funny.

“Lindana” we get it, Phineas and Ferb was a thing.

That song montage... it was uncomfortable. I’m cis so I’m an oblivious weirdo, but I do think there’s a couple of things that are kinda transmisogynist in here, with stuff like the shaving and the “lol ‘she’s’ strong ‘she’ put a guy down”. Not to mention it feels so sexist in that he has to be a woman in the most conventionally feminine way possible, bah.

Tobias puts on a shitty “guy as woman” voice, of course he does.

Okay this Cavendish and Dakota subplot is so forgettable I was literally zoning out. MML, what happened?

Tobias Trollhammer is embodying male entitlement, seriously.

The whole “she’s just like a female Tobias” thing is dumb too, it feels like it casts people out to want the exact same thing but women. These reboots are always new takes, or even outright new characters. And like... that’s the issue. Tobias isn’t irrelevant, he still has a fuckton of Krillhunter movies. I’m not interested in some whiny old dude with a million dollars. :V

He’s cast as the villain, ha ha ha.

“We do what we want with no regard to plot or character or making sense to the people watching.” MML, are you lowkey admitting something? ;P

The bison thing at the end is so lame. Seriously.

Okay... Tobias is actually satisfied with being the villain, and Milo is only concerned about the sudden character change. For a rather stupid episode, this is a surprising compromise. I’m not quite sure how to feel about it, TBH? It’s better than what I expected, but I’m not sure I’m satisfied.

Still though, this episode is dumb. The end.

The Goulash Legacy:

Goulash dude is meh.

“Humans and machines had a friendly relationship.” oh, so there IS some robot uprising at some point.

That kid finding the idea ridiculous seems to be the audience surrogate. :V

“Let’s go outside and see what Dr D is up to”. THIS IS TOTALLY NOT PNF GUYS

Doof sung the Moon ice-cream song... we get it, Phineas and Fe- oh wait Doof is here in general.

Norm is back... huh. He seems irrelevant though, just another invention.

Okay, chicken-replace-inator is eh, but Doof being insistent on how it works is kinda funny.

“Did that man just kiss his chicken?” What’s wrong with showing affections to pets, Miss Chase? :V

Zack is going in to get an inator even though they always fuck up... is Jackie supposed to be here again? Seriously, this feels so OOC. No reason for it, and he’s meant to be the most cautious.

Norm seems like he’s just a gag for now. Meh.

Diogee has four feet, why do his forelimbs have human feet now instead of usual dog feet, or even dog hind feet????

Zack is really carrying the idiot ball in this episode. You deserve better, man.

Diogee has hands... okay, that actually made me laugh.

Recurring raccon isn’t dead. SIGH.

So the Goulash robot comes to life. Okay.

“Paprika!” That’s going into outright so bad it’s good territory.

Love Handel. Seriously.

And the fucking robot gets stuck in a time capsule and also comes to life and is the statue at the start. Okay then.

Yet another “meh” episode. I kinda feel like the show is trying too hard to be weird now, TBH? Also seriously, Norm feels like his character is reduced to a punchline again and Zack was an idiot.

Also... I kinda feel like they treat MML on the same level as PnF too much when it REALLY isn’t.

The Dog Who Knew Too Much

Diogee episode, huh.

Lol I wonder why the museum of sharp objects doesn’t attract families

Perry is here at the talent show. Okay then.

Oh great, Doof being a pain at home, just what I want. Also... Sara has a few clothes lying around too even if it’s mostly Doof. :v

The mum thing is now even worse with Brigitte saying Doof is Sara’s brother. Ugh.

“Why does he live here again?” Because the writers said so.

The cops are targeting Murphys. Well then. Poor Martin though.

So Perry and Diogee escape from new random dudes because Diogee ate the USB shaped like a cookie. Okay.

Doof is still mad at Perry, and he just leaves. Okay.

Oh it’s that old lady again. K.

omg the eye balls lol

And Milo returns at the end. Wow.

Another meh episode, you know how it goes. Guess if you want a proper Perry and Diogee team up you might get something out of it. But eh.

Adventure Buddies:

OH HI VANESSA, YOU ACTUALLY STILL EXIST

“You’re spending too much time alone.” Just outright say he’s fucked off for too long and forgotten about you until now. :P

Oh, Vanessa reminding Doof of Perry, hmm?

The breakup drama, it’s glorious.

Vanessa is now gone, RIP. Guess like Norm it was literally just a “hey I still exist” moment. :v

Vanessa casually walks out and says hi to Brigitte. This is so fucking weird. So she’s visited before? Okay then. I mean good that Vanessa and Norm still exist, but it feels weird they’re still really neglected.

Doof is looking for Diogee now, K.

Milo looking dreamily at Zack- oh wait it’s just him having a thing written in someone’s book he’s happy about.

Brick and Savannah on Pistachio Duty is much funnier than the majority of the stuff I’ve just watched.

Doof waving to Vanessa at the start and saying to Milo to tell her he found an adventure buddy is sweet, not gonna lie.

Doof going on an adventure with Scott. Okay then.

Zack suggests a tetanus shot. Vaccination is good, kids! Vaccinate! Don’t listen to those Walking on Water founders or Greg Cipes, vaccinate!

I was starting to be lost on the Adventure Buddies thing but... Doof misses Perry and Scott with Mildred (who are clearly presented as a couple, mind you) doesn’t help things.

And they butt heads over it, with Doof even making his own girlfriend. Ooooh.

Professor Time mention. Fun.

Doof goes back home and he goes back to being all “I’ll go where they accept me” and it’s the Murphys. Granted they’re not into him being covered in sewer water, but this episode was setting up him realising how much he misses Perry, I swear.

This episode I felt was better... but then the ending came and fucked it up. So another to the mediocre pile regardless of Vanessa and Perry moments (which again despite being nice are still “why is there so much PnF?”).

Ride Along Little Doggie:

“Late in the season when the writers are tired.” Bleh.

Milo gets Amanda a drink, heh.

“I’m nominated for most tolerant friend.” “Is that a joke?” “Don’t push me lady.” WELL THEN.

Also... Zack pulling Melissa away when she was getting feisty. Kinda shippy if you ask me. :P

Elliot is fun thankfully.

Okay, I’m kinda tired of the Zippy gag now.

The recurring raccoon appears without the annoying theme song. This is a first. :V

Don’t tell me Diogee is gonna be a fucking cop dog.

Bradley is back with the stupid plant arm for a green thumb gag. Meh.

Yep, Diogee is a cop dog.

Murphy’s Law really stopping the award lol.

Greatest perseverance, what a surprise. Also lol, she kisses Milo and before she caught him. Are they a thing now?

Where the heck did Melissa go? And why wasn’t she staying around with the Murphys, nevermind Zack?

It was okay I guess? Pretty forgettable, but I had less issues than the other episodes. Milo subplot actually wasn’t too bad, it still had quite a bit that was just average but it had a few nice moments.