#ARABELLA STRANGE + meme.

[amberkendslacy]

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell Memes for Volume 2

(I made these memes before reading the last chapter of Volume 2. I'm not okay...)

Volume 1 Volume 3

[sgt-farron]

For the BG3 ask meme! 8, 21, 41 OR 44 if there’s a question that appeals more 😘

8. Do you have a favorite member of the Druid Circle? Is it the same as your Character's?

I didn't have an answer to this before lol. I guess I'd have to say Rath as he was very immediately on-board with not punishing Arabella with death for her mistake so I was like, "you have some sense!" While I think most of the druids are super weak willed for insisting their hands were tied because they cared more about their hierarchy than justice, I was glad he wasn't entertaining it.

In general I'd say the same for my Tav, Alder'ren if they had to choose. Druids were super in the wrong and were stupid for letting the bad apples spoil the lot, but they managed to resolve everything peacefully.

21. What are your Character's thoughts on the strange artifact that was in Shadowheart's possession? Did it jump to your pack because you changed her out of your party? Fun fact: Shadowheart has never left my party😂 I am currently mostly done with act 3. So no, she still has the artifact in her inventory.

Alder'ren was very curious about it of course, but while they are very charismatic and a very persuasive person, they also respect people's boundaries and right to have their secrets. Maybe it's because of their natural charm, but Alder'ren tends to believe that the important stuff will be shared in due time with trust and it'll all come out in the wash. 41. Is your Character accustomed to being on the road from before the events of the adventure? Yes, Alder'ren as an elf is older than they look and have been around. They were away from Baldur's gate in Yartar laying low, trying to shake a tail from their past when they got snagged up by the Nautiloid. Before spending time in Baldur's gate before the story, they had been a bit of a monster slayer. While in Baldur's gate, they used their dexterous hands act as a thief - specifically specializing in art heists. They could never hold down a regular job. 44. Asker wants Blogger to choose a question from the list.

Oh how fun! I'll answer number 1. Tell us about your Tav! Name, class and subclass, race, pronouns. Do you have a headcanon for where they're from? Their family? Are they a Dark Urge? Or did you choose an Origin Character? Was it an easy decision? Alder'ren (The Crimson Tempest) Storm Sorcerer/Rogue High Elf They/Them

I am not super familiar with forgotten realms lore so I wouldn't know where to canon them being from specifically (thought it would have been a full elven community), but they were definitely at odds with their family and community as a storm sorcerer as they did not fear the destructive nature of their magic and instead leaned into it. It wasn't a bad separation and there was no inciting incident, just a parting of ways as they matured. I do imagine they used their strengths to take of monster threats in places where folks really wouldn't stand a chance to stand against.

Fun fact: in their original conceptions as my ttrpg dnd character, they are a eladrian elf - storm sorc/blood hunter. BG3 is a much softer, well adjusted version lol

[flo-nelja]

Shipping Meme: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell ?

One True Pairing Ship: The Gentleman/Stephen Canon Ship: Jonathan/Arabella <3 “If this happens I’ll stab my eyes out with a spork” Ship: The Gentleman/Arabella maybe “I’m one sick bastard” Ship: The Gentleman/Stephen(/Emma) “I dabble a little” Ship: Segundus/Honeyfoot “It’s like a car crash” Ship: Lascelles/Drawlight ^^ “Tickles my fancy but not sold just yet” Ship: Emma->Arabella “Makes no canon sense but why the Hell not” Ship: Childermass/The Raven King maybe “Everyone else loves it but I just don’t feel it” Ship: Childermass/Segundus “When all is said and done” Ship: Jonathan/Norrell <3

[slow-burn-sally]

[lovehurried]

TAG DROP  •  Arabella Strange (4/4)

ARABELLA STRANGE  *  verse 008.  ( padua ) ARABELLA STRANGE  *  verse 009.  ( post canon ) ARABELLA STRANGE  *  verse 010.  ( post canon au ) ARABELLA STRANGE  *  verse 011.  ( modern au ) ARABELLA STRANGE  *  verse 012.  ( wicked au one ) ARABELLA STRANGE  *  verse 013.  ( wicked au two ) ARABELLA STRANGE  +  answered ask. ARABELLA STRANGE  +  starter call. ARABELLA STRANGE  +  plotting call. ARABELLA STRANGE  +  open starter. ARABELLA STRANGE  +  wishlist. ARABELLA STRANGE  +  meme. ARABELLA STRANGE  +  dash game. ARABELLA STRANGE  +  interaction.

[lacnunga]

(from tgarnsl)

🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

Well the meme did say random, so here's some lines from a jsamn au fic where Jonathan takes on Segundus as a manservant and then later a magic apprentice:

He was a shabby looking creature, Jonathan decided. He looked exactly like the kind of man Arabella would take one look at and then seek to improve. In fact, he could almost hear her now:

Oh, the poor man; doesn't he look pitiful, Jonathan? Come, has there ever been one so in need of our charity?

Well, he addressed the phantasmagorical Arabella, it is all very well giving someone money, but he will soon be out of it with food and new things and so on and where will he be then?

Though it was odd that this man should be out of employment, for the hands that brushed off his coat were certainly much better about the whole business than Jeremy ever was (it should be noted here that the stranger was very much not better than the trained manservant - however, Strange was still suffering somewhat from the pique of the abused servant's apparent desertion, and was not as appreciative of his services in that moment as he might otherwise have been).

As he was thinking all this, Strange was perfectly unaware that, in the back of his mind, a crazy idea was taking a good runup.

[ohveda]

7 and 9 for the fic ask meme please!

Thank you!

7. Were there any ideas you had for [insert fic] that you couldn’t make work? What were they?

I'm going to answer for "On Trust" here. In that fic I was orginally going to have Segundus give his soul to Mrs Lennox, and Mrs Lennox then gives it to Childermass as the only person who can help. In the end I left it out because it would have made the word count too long. And I'm glad I left it out now. It feels much more emotionally poignant for Segundus to give Childermass his soul directly, I think.

9. Are there any fics you’d love to see but don’t want to write yourself? What are they?

Ooh. Interesting question! I would like to say "All of them!" but let me be more specific. I would love to see a fic where Segundus becomes Strange's secretary and so ends up being pitted against Childermass in a way. And Segundus is desperately in love with Strange, and then Strange is in desperate need of comfort after he loses Arabella, and it ends up really messy and horrible because Strange only wants brief comfort while Segundus wants a life-partner, but there is also a slow burn Segundus/Childermass in the background. It would take so so many chapters to do it justice, which is probably why I'll never get round to it. For another idea, a Segundus/Childermass/Uskglass fic would be verrrry interesting. I'm not sure how it would work, nor whether Uskglass would only be a shadowy figure in the background or whether he would actually be present, but it would be a cool idea to explore.

[throughscreendoors]

i may destroy you 2.4

I’ve just been reminded of how great things can be. Was watching some Fran Lebowitz interviews on YouTube and she was commenting about how little great art there is, and how expecting masterpieces from artists is insane. If an artist creates one masterpiece, that’s an exceptional achievement—and many artists get worse over time, not better. Also many artists and writers never make a single masterpiece, let alone a single good or great thing. By extending her thinking there’s very little great anything, which is harsh but true—but I May Destroy You was great.

America teaches us to measure ourselves by what we consume. The high schooler who likes the obscure band tells everyone about it until it isn’t obscure anymore, and he has to find another one to brandish. Digital media disrupted that, because there’s no consensus or mainstream taste to snipe at from the fringes.

Algorithms have deconstructed the taste pyramid into a horizontally organized structure of some kind. We’re all ensconced in our own permeable bubbles, sure, but we don’t really make those bubbles anymore. Spotify or Netflix suggests things to us based on limited data points, we select those things and think we’ve chosen them. I thought for a while that irony died in the early 2000s, but it actually just got sharper; now you can ironically and unironically like obscure and popular art at once from a kind of superposition. Carly Rae Jepsen comes to mind here—she’s simultaneously recognizable pop icon and marginalized indie darling, authentic new voice and post-ironic pastiche.

There is no irony or sincerity anymore. They’ve welded together in an atom-wide scalpel that slices everything all the time in our words and preferences and values, so subtle we don’t even feel it. We recombine before we slide apart into a pile of flesh cubes.

That flattening of tastes has meant every created thing—whether widely recognizable or obscure—must fit into some algorithmically imagined category (or be made to fit one). Perhaps subconsciously fighting that trend, endless new meme formats have risen in response (a kind of organic algorithm, perhaps). A VSCO girl wears these shoes and takes photos from these angles; this is the lonely divorced dad starter pack; here is stock market boyfriend explaining GME and AMC to his astrology girlfriend using images created on 4chan for incels.

As algorithms slice us more and more precisely into bits and we reassemble those bits more and more astutely into formats we can understand, something strange is happening. New categories and dominant values are springing up that seem unassailable, protected by these two alternating currents—particularly around the messiest subjects. People who overcome trauma are heroes; the world can be divided into abusers and victims, oppressors and the oppressed. Implicit is that nobody really disagrees with these statements anymore, they just wield them as truths for different ends. The positions can be inverted, in other words, but those are the positions.

Part of what makes I May Destroy You so great is that it tears those unassailable categories down. On trauma and sexual assault, those in-the-know understand that trauma constitutes a reorganization of the brain. Memories can disappear and suddenly reappear. Our emotions can fluctuate wildly. People can pursue dangerous situations they wouldn’t otherwise; they can reverse on things they knew to be true for years instantaneously.

On the other side are people who don’t understand or refuse to learn these facts, people who trot out the same debunked arguments (why wouldn’t you report right away..., how is it you now conveniently remember..., why did you go along with it for so long..., etc). The beauty of the show is it uses that idea of the unassailable category against the viewer, in case they are skeptical. We follow Arabella’s consciousness; it behaves like it behaves. It’s our job to follow its oscillations and make sense of it.

By taking that simple stance, the show paints every character as both hero and villain, victim and abuser. It is nearly overwhelming how interconnected and interdependent everything in the show is—swallowing it all threatens to destroy the characters, as it does our own minds. It’s not a coincidence that the bar where much of the worst that happens in the show is called Ego Death.

There’s a new-age positivity that has seeped into the culture lately that we can heal from anything, we can infinitely grow and expand beautifully into ourselves and into the future. The show skewers that point astutely. In truth, you don’t heal from trauma—it’s a rupture in our consciousness, in the very structure we use to interface with reality. We don’t “heal” from these things, we die to the old version of ourselves. We reach forward and backward at the same time, experiencing joy and agony at once as we’re sliced into millions of pieces and recombined into a new structure. As we scan over that inner structure in our minds, we’re liable to come across pieces that don’t belong next to one another. That’s what we mean by “processing” something, be it a memory or ourselves. We may cry and laugh in the same breath.

It’s a real challenge to use art to deconstruct the entire cultural moment, while also offering a deep and rich representation of inner and outer worlds that aren’t seen very often on TV. It reminds me of the horror in the futuristic surrealism of Random Acts of Flyness, but more optimistic. It’s more generous in spirit than that, and it reaches into dangerous areas. The conclusion of the show threatens to infuriate the primary fan base the show is made for (in one of the truest artistic risks I’ve seen on television in some time). It has nuanced takes on feminism, veganism, consumerism, social media, consent, race and modern alienation, and it does it all in consistently experimental way with an amazing soundtrack and a huge heart.

It’s interesting to watch a British show as an American with all this in mind, as I think the majority of Americans don’t leave that phase of consumption. It’s tempting to hail a show like I May Destroy You as a way to call attention to yourself; it’s challenging, nuanced, empathetic and so on (and because I like it, I must also be those things, etc). I think watching the show is more of a wake-up call than that, and it feels false to use it that way.

Artists have such a privileged place in society. They are the most interesting and the most inspiring, and now everyone wants to be one. But there’s a difference between being creative and being a good artist. I don’t think being a good artist is an intrinsic thing in the way racists allege that race is intrinsic. Still, I do think good art has to come from some kind of novel experience of the world—and even that isn’t enough. It must be matched with virtuosity of some kind. Possessing both of those qualities is exceptionally rare.

Michaela Coel made something that feels entirely for her with this, and it’s incredible that she managed to. The pressure to give in to outside influence, to make things more digestible, to accept money for a lack of control is nearly overwhelming in my own experience; I assume it must be for others as well. I think maybe this is another mark of real artistry—when your desire to say something so outweighs the social pressure to stop you from saying it (obviously, this isn’t the only mark, just one of them).

What inspired me most about this is it’s a show that makes good on its promise. It makes you think about the darkest, most shameful parts of yourself that you would least like to share with the world and challenges you to start sharing them. It encourages the kind of self-examination that truly might destroy you—even if you’re not a victim of sexual assault. It’s a terrifying feeling, but the grace note of it all is that "you” are always being destroyed by outside forces, and you are also always recombining. What “you” means always contains its opposite, it seems to argue, and for that reason, we ought to be dangerously kind.

[softeranimals]

PERMANENT STARTER/MEME CALLS

DC

christopher smith / peacemaker, peacemaker, dceu cliff steele, doom patrol edward nygma / the riddler, gotham flex mentallo, doom patrol harley quinn, dceu khione snow, the flash ralph dibny / the elongated man, the flash rita farr, doom patrol

DISNEY

anna agnarrdatter, frozen evie grimhilde, desdendants lela dane, teen beach movie mabel pines, gravity falls sammy smee, descendants sox, lightyear

FILM

barbie roberts, barbie bethany walker, jumanji evie jackson, the invitation frankie stein, monster high kd6-3.7/joe, blade runner 2049 ken carson, barbie lucy billington, the invitation walter de ville, the invitation

LITERATURE

kit snicket, a series of unfortunate events neve valedren, the wilderwood duology by hannah whitten raoul de chagny, the phantom of the opera redarys valedren, the wilderwood duology by hannah whitten sally beckett, lost boy by christina henry

MARVEL

doreen green / squirrel girl, squirrel girl, marvel cinematic universe ikaris, marvel cinematic universe steve rogers / captain america, marvel cinematic universe sylvie laufeydottir, loki, marvel cinematic universe vision, the visions, marvel cinematic universe

NETFLIX

cat king, dead boy detectives charles rowland, dead boy detectives john b. routledge, outer banks monty finch, dead boy detectives niko sasaki, dead boy detectives reggie peters, julie and the phantoms

STAR TREK

q, the next generation q junior, voyager saavik, the original series t’pring, strange new worlds trip tucker, enterprise

THE CW

landon kirby, legacies nancy drew, nancy drew samandriel, supernatural sebastian durand, legacies

ORIGINAL CHARACTERS

arabella van pelt, descendants kaylee thompson, fandomless witch

OTHER FANDOMS

carly shay, icarly kit baxter, the red panda adventures lucy albright, tell me lies malia tate, teen wolf max wolfe, gossip girl proinsias cassidy, preacher rikki chadwick, h2o: just add water unikitty, the lego movie, unikitty!

[calamity-bean]

favorite women meme

I was tagged by @thebeautifulsoup​ to list my top 10 women from 10 different fandoms and tag 10 people! Adding gifs was not part of the requirements, but I love making posts long and unwieldy just so they can have pretty pictures. Thanks for the tag! <3

1. Amelia Scanwell (Harlots)

2. Anna Strong (Turn: Washington’s Spies)

3. Anne Bonny (Black Sails)

4. Arabella Strange (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell)

5. Beverly Katz (Hannibal)

6. Gerri Kellman (Succession)

7. Nadja (What We Do in the Shadows)

8. Orla McCool (Derry Girls)

9. Sansa Stark (A Song of Ice and Fire)

10. Vanessa Ives (Penny Dreadful)

And I shall tag... @mercurygray​, @montmartre-parapluie​, @following-the-drum​, @justsomeghostofme​, @beau--brummell​, @marieduplessis​ aaaand that’s enough cause I’m bad at thinking of people to tag! Only if you want to, of course.

[aflamethatneverdies]

Tagged by @melle93 for 10 characters from 10 different fandoms meme. Thank you friend!! :D

Cosette (Les Miserables)

Momo (Momo)

Adora Belle Dearheart and/or Moist Von Lipwig (Going Postal)

Lieutenant Uhura (Star Trek)

Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes)

Arabella Strange and/or John Segundus (Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell)

Eugénie Danglars (The Count of Monte Cristo)

Abigail (Three Fingered Jack- Champavert)

Porthos (The Three Musketeers)

Snufkin (Moomins)

Also special shoutout to Mina Harker who is amazing despite everything.

[wolfinthethorns]

For the meme: I don't know how many you're willing to answer from one person, but take your pick: Arabella, Norrell, Lascelles, the Raven King, Stephen Black, the Gentleman?

Well, I’ve already done Stephen, so... I’ll do the first two off the list?

Arabella Strange

How I feel about this character

Only sane one among them, tbh, although I think this is more because show!Arabella is rather more proactive than book!Arabella

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Jonathan, obvs. Emma Wintertowne, to an extent, but I think Emma would be a lot more into it than Arabella, who I fear would have a bad case of propriety. I’ve also seen some nice post-canon explorations with Major Grant.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Not contradictory to the above, Emma and Grant. I think those could go either way. I also like the idea of her becoming friends with Childermass in a shared-grief sort of way.

My unpopular opinion about this character

Jonathan genuinely loved her, she loved him, and they were a good match. I dislike that this is apparently an unpopular opinion.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

Arabella leading Flora Greysteel, Miss Redruth, et al, to Bletchely Park the Raven King’s secret code. I don’t know when the cryptic crossword was invented, but Arabella seems the sort to absolutely nail that sort of thing

Gilbert Norrell

How I feel about this character

A certain exasperated sympathy - he did some awful things, and he did some stupid things, but I think he was always acting out of a love for magic. He was just woefully out of his depth where people where concerned.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

I don’t - I headcanon him as aro-ace, and probably sex-repulsed. I think the nearest is a queer-platonic love for Jonathan Strange.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Childermaaaaaaassssss!!!!

My unpopular opinion about this character

See one and two above, I suspect.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

That he’d had a chance to say goodbye to Childermass like Jonathan did with Arabella.

[cruciatvsaa]

tessa birch and arabella figg.

@delirixms​ asked me for an angsty starter           meme. – accepting.

It was strange, to look back and realise that less than a decade ago, Arabella Figg had barely had any ties to the wizarding world, when she had so many, now. So many people she had met through the Order, who had settled in her being before she could even stop them from doing so. And now they were dying, one by one, and all she could do was grow heavy with grief and feel powerless.

Arabella was stood in the new headquarter’s kitchen, scrambling to find tea bags, frustration building up in her chest. It had been a week since the former order headquarter’s had been blown up, since that explosion had killed four fellow members, and now Arabella couldn’t find the tea bags in a new kitchen. And it felt stupid to cry over teabags, when there was so much else to weep over, but she still did sinking down on a chair, head burying itself in her hands. Sometimes she was afraid that her grief would swallow her whole.

A door creaked, and she got up, resuming her search for tea bags, the kettle now whistling loudly. “Fuck,” she muttered, wiping at her eyes. When someone entered the kitchen, she turned around with a slight smile, trying to radiate warmth rather than whatever she was feeling. “Tessa, hi.” Her red-rimmed eyes softened, as she turned to turn off the stove. “I was just making tea. You mind summoning the bags? I can’t bloody find them.” 

[littlestsnicket]

For the shipping meme: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell?

ahh! i just completely forgot half the characters names! let me go look this up!

lowkey otp: Norrell/Strange, the way they are obsessed with each other is such a classic ship dynamic, but it’s also not super interesting? Norrell needs another magician to challenge him so badly, but mostly he needs another person to just... see him. (but also, definitely only if the Strange’s are poly and Arabella is ok with it.)

highkey notp: Sir Walter and Lady Pole. Just... yuck. There may be worse things someone has decided to ship but I am not aware of them. 

[softly] don’t notp: Lady Pole/Arabella Strange; John Childermas/John Segundus. I feel like these are both pairings I could get really into but haven’t given that much thought. All four of them have been overlooked in a way but are so important and they deserve love.

highkey otp but i’m scared of saying it because it’s not a very popular choice: The Gentleman/Stephen Black; that’s more a scary thing to say because it’s super disturbing and given the power imbalance there it is not going to be informed consent 9 times out of 10--but we’re adults? it’s ok to be fascinated by things that are bad sometimes? but the part that is interesting is that Stephen is holding way more than none of the cards and develops quite a bit of skill in constraining the Gentleman and mitigating some of the damage. It’s still obviously not ok but...

highkey otp: Arabella/Jonathan Strange, I very rarely ship canon heterosexual romance, but i just really really love them. 

once i make some progress on my book list, i’m going to have to reread this--it’s such a good book (and a pretty decent tv show). 

[lovehurried]

@runedcross​ said:          ❔

•  MEME  •  Send ❔ & I’ll list some muses I’d like to throw at yours!  •  accepting!

Arabella Strange.  Arabella is both used to and wary of magic and all things weird / supernatural thanks to her husband, and I feel like she’s exactly the kind of compassionate person Hanna could do with having around. She also has personal experience dealing with an evil / magical supernatural being, and could probably do with having someone to talk to about it.

Barbara Maitland.  This is self-explanatory, right? Let Hanna have a friendly ghost mom around, rather than the nonsense he usually has to deal with.

Emily Elena Cortez.  And then there’s Elena. She’d arguably completely get a lot of what Hanna deals with, even if her temperament is fairly opposite to his. That said, I think they’d bring a lot of good out in each other, too.

Leading Player.  Here I am talking about how Hanna should have nice people around, and then I do this. She is a literal nightmare, but I want this interaction anyway. Sorry, Hanna.

[justlikeeddie]

otp meme

List your Top 5 Canon and Top 5 Non-Canon OTPs. Then, tag 10 people to spread the love, and so on and so on…

I was tagged by @rcmclachlan! It’s fun to excavate your fandom history!

This is a GOOD QUESTION in that, y’know. What is a canon OTP? (What is a pairing? What is canon? What is ‘is’?) The answer, for this post, is “whatever made it easiest for me to split these into two sets of five”.

CANON OTPs

Aziraphale/Crowley, Good Omens

This is canon. “Fight me”? No need. Fight Michael Sheen.

Do say: “And when I’m off in the stars, I won’t even think about you!”

Don’t say: Hey, have you thought recently about the fact that Crowley’s snakeskin shoes might actually just be his feet?

Look at an art: A little ancient Grecian collusion by @seraph5

Read a fic: nothing but the wild rain by @singlecrow

Have I written it? In a desperate exercise in exorcism immediately after watching the show, yes: Going Native and Riding in Cars With Demons. And I have about five WIPs in charliekellypepesilvia.jpg frantically plotted notes stages. Watch this space. (For some time. I’m a bizarrely slow writer.)

Flint/Thomas, Black Sails

Do say: “People can say what they like about you, but you're a good man. More people should say that. And someone should be willing to defend it."

Don’t say: I was enjoying the show so much that I ignored the fact they made captain flint gay but to wrap up the series on the notion he would put his sword down to pick daisies with his male lover is just too much to bear. I miss the 90’s

Look at an art: Journey into the Dark by @riisinaakka-draws

Read a fic: Unaccommodated Man by @septembriseur

Have I written it? Yes, although astonishingly, I only ever finished one fic: Some Affair.

Strange/Arabella, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

Do say: “The excitement of it was very much to see how you would look at me. The excitement of life was very much to see how you would look at me.”

Don’t say: HE WAS A MUCH WORSE HUSBAND IN THE BOOK AND HE LET HER DIE AS A TREE (I know. I know)

Look at an art: Padua by @cobbledstories

Have I written it? Not as a foreground pairing, although I do have a very detailed Strange/Arabella/Grant fic that lives eternally in my head in the hope it will one day fit a Yuletide request.

Morse/Joan, Endeavour

Do say: “You mean the world to them. You mean the world…” [trailing off in tears]

Don’t say: You do realise he’d make her miserable and she deserves better? (I KNOW)

Cry at a simple gifset: :′′(

Have I written it? No, happy to let the show itself continue to take anything that Morse might hold dear and crush it into the dirt, no need for me to help.

Jake/Amy, Brooklyn 99

Truly the opposite to Morse/Joan in every possible way, aside from the involvement of law enforcement personnel

Do say: “There’s a typo in this crossword puzzle.”

Don’t say: …Title of your sex tape. (Or anything about Season 6, which I haven’t seen yet.)

Look at an art: Jake & Amy by @ivy6am

Have I written it? No, because Brooklyn 99 is an example of that rare and complete joy, Show That Textually Contains Literally Everything I Want From It And Then Some.

NON-CANON OTPs

Sam/Gene, Life on Mars

My “formative” tag on Tumblr is probably overused, but, like. Extremely. Formative. Truly the ur-fandom in terms of my future trope and fic interests. God bless you, weird mid-00s genre experiment broadcast at a particularly impressionable point in my teens.

Do say: Gene Hunt constructs intricate rituals that allow him to touch the skin of other men.

Don’t say: The ending of Ashes to Ashes is canon.

Watch a vid: There Is Too Much Light In This Bar by AbsoluteDestiny

Read a fic: Tangible/Intangible by @lozenger8

Have I written it? I went back to this fandom for Bent for Yuletide a few years ago, but everything else was written when I was literally 17, so caveat lector.

Merlin/Arthur, Merlin

Genuinely wondered whether I should have included this in the canon list. Two sides of the same coin? Merlin's mum desperately trying to get them together about halfway through the first series? “I was born to serve you, Arthur”? As ever, in thinking about this, I’ve just made myself furious again that this objectively fucking stupid children’s TV show remains one of the most emotionally and erotically resonant pieces of media I’ve had the misfortune to consume.

Do say: “I could take you apart with one blow.”

Don’t say: “I could take you apart with less than that.” (It’s been nearly eleven years since this exchange aired on children’s TV and I’m still reeling)

Watch a vid: Alone by sisabet

Read a fic: Past Imperfect by @thehoyden

Have I written it? Yes, although, again, I was a teenager and didn’t really know how to words: Cross You Off My List. I also have a passionately-planned and half-written epic about the ten years of their evolving relationship from boys 2 men (not the band), and its delicate balance between private interaction and public performance, which I thought I was finally going to finish for the ten-year anniversary of the show last year, but at this rate, might be done in time for the twentieth.

Fraser/Kowalski, due South

Do say: “Partnership is like a marriage, son.”

Don’t say: Anything that will wake the Vecchio anon.

Watch a vid: Goody Two Shoes by @laurashapiro-noreally and pipsqueak

Read a fic: Kowalski is Bleeding by @cesperanza

Have I written it? Weirdly way less of it than makes sense for the amount of time that this was my primary fandom, but yes, published some time after the fact: Homecoming and Poles.

Strange/Grant, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

Surprise double-entry for JSMN! Except not at all a surprise, because I am into so many aspects of this book and show that I could probably have filled most of the ten entries with JSMN rarepairs. (Please, talk to me about the criminally underexplored sexy class politics of Strange/Childermass.) But anyway, Strange/Grant was, somewhat to my surprise, my takeaway pairing from the TV adaptation.

Do say: “There are any number of magical things my friend could do to prove it,” while looking like you’re about to combust from how excited you are by the prospect.

Don’t say: HE WENT TO VENICE IN A PUDDLE WITH NO GOODBYE (I know)

Look at an art: Major Grant by erebusodora (technically only one half of the pairing, but it’s just a very nice painting)

Read a fic: Wilderness by @the-omnishambles, ie The First Strange/Grant Fic On The Internet

Have I written it? Yes, went a bit mad in 2015. A peculiarity of the Iberian Peninsula (long, slightly sad); An England that is dead (shorter, sadder); and Sound and Vision (no redeeming features).

Charles/Erik, X-Men

Again… IS THIS CANON. Explain any single thing that happens in any of the X-Men timelines if this pairing isn’t at LEAST unconsummated canon

Do say: “I couldn’t disobey you even if I wanted to.”

Don’t say: Sorry, what exactly was the plot of X-Men: Apocalypse?

Look at an art: A sketch by loobeeinthesky (the watch!!!)

Read a fic: Wisteria by by @columbinepurples

Have I written it? Yes: The Width of a Circle.

In turn, but only if you’re bored and like making a list as much as I do, tags for:

@confusinglyamusingly

@butteronmyroll

@johnnyvod

@the-omnishambles

@sixohsixoheightfourtwo

@cribins

@septembriseur

@itsmapes

@deputychairman

@drawsaurus

(You don’t… have to go into as much detail as this… I think you’re just supposed to say who the pairings are, but listen I’m staying with my parents this week and I have a LOT of tumblr downtime)