#I haven’t watched the whole movie but already found some shipping material

[arnadelus]

They’re going to reach Origae-6, right? Right?

[thebroccolination]

Hey Key, do you have a favourite ship of all time or is it really hard to chose from certain couples? As I see you post about a lot of wonderful couples :)

Hi lovely Anon! :)

I got this yesterday morning and I’ve been thinking about it ever since because of course my brain went directly to WinTeam.

I mean, they’re definitely the ship I’ve written most about. 38% of the fics on my current AO3 account are about WinTeam. :’)

Buuuut there were a lot of, like, formative ships that I didn’t write much or anything about. And they’re ships I always go back to whenever I’m between fandoms or just in the mood for something familiar and loved.

Like RayK/Fraser from due South! They were a massive part of my teen years in fandom. If you haven’t seen it, please give it a watch! It’s all remastered and up for free on YouTube! They still mean the world to me, and some of my favorite fics of all time are about them.

And then there’s merthur, whose meteoric and enduring impact on fandom should be studied by science. I read Awake by Cori Lannam and cry at least once a year.

There’s klance, who are loud and annoy each other and were never going to be canon and VLD was always going to be a catastrophe (who doesn’t keep a story bible to keep track of their own show), but the components for an incredible dynamic were there and fans did what fans do best and made gorgeous, heart wrenching fanworks that surpassed anything in canon for me.

I also love Stony, but I want to clarify that, like, most of my love doesn’t come from the extremely bro-y Marvel movies. I was intrigued by Chris Evans and RDJ’s portrayal of Steve and Tony back when I first saw Avengers, so I came home, opened Tumblr, and looked for the movie fandom that surely already existed. What I found more of, unsurprisingly, was comic fandom, and the more I found out about Steve and Tony in the comics, the more I was underwhelmed by the movies. So basically, the main reason I’m not into Stucky is because Stony fans presented this canon head explosion from the comics first:

There’s also drarry and wolfstar, and I love them the same way I love klance: the source material is disappointing, but the components for greatness were there, and fandom elevated them.

Okay so! Those were all fanon ships, and I always knew none of them were ever going to become canon (though Merlin’s, uh, debatable, maybe discussable—“the man he loves is dying so he’s holding him” REALLY), so I kind of think of them in a separate but equal category to the canon ships.

WHICH ARE:

Viktuuri is one of those ships that just feels like shelter for me. Just, Yuri on Ice was made with such devotion. Not just love, but passion. There’s no antagonist, just Yuuri’s own anxiety and Viktor painstakingly learning to understand and speak a mutual language so he can coax art and beauty and sincerity from Yuuri’s exhausted and heartbroken soul. I’ll always love them extra special.

These two trainwrecks.

KongArt! The whole arc of Kongphob and Arthit’s relationship in SOTUS is just so satisfying and beautiful to me, I just rewatched it with friends in January and I’m already rewatching it again with a different friend now. :’)

WENZHOU. I’m also rewatching Word of Honor and just having a marvelous time re-experiencing just how unhinged they are for each other. “YOUR SON WAS KIDNAPPED WHILE YOU WERE ROLLING AROUND IN THE DAISIES” “ah” “thanks for killing the moment”

And honestly there are more ships I love, but that wasn’t your question!

Of all time.

Hmm.

I think it really is them.

They’re everything I love in a ship: push and pull, vulnerability, sass, unhinged desperation for each other, and two characters I love equally.

WinTeam just has me by the soul, man.

[callgespenst]

Best of 2022 Media Post

I read/watched a whole lot last year! Here’s the summary of what I enjoyed the most.

Sing a Bit of Harmony: The best new anime movie I saw last year. Usually I try and watch everything I can subbed, but I caught the dub showing for this and it was really well done. Very lived-in and real-feeling near future setting, some wonderful stuff about AI, and just a really good coming of age story. A year later it’s apparently finally getting a US BD release so I’m excited to finally watch it subbed.

Dress-Up Darling: Found this show oddly relatable (or at least, the parts about making the costumes). Wholesome in a roundabout way, and has a very true to life portrayal of how horny teenagers can be, without being weird or gross about it.

Everything Everywhere All At Once: I haven’t been hooked by a trailer for a movie like that in a very long while. Just seeing the preview I knew I was in for a great time, and it delivered. A lot of other people’s favorite movie of 2022 as well, but it’s just that good.

Creamy Mami: One of the earliest magical girl shows, and yet, goes in directions completely untouched by any of its successors. Excellent funny little mascot characters, bopping tunes, and some of the funniest episodes of anything I’ve ever seen. An absolute must watch. Still have some OVAs to go through at some point.

Thrilling Bloody Sword: the summary said “a martial arts movie based on Snow White” and while that’s technically true, it’s so, so much more from that. When the opening credits played and the movie’s main theme turned out to -literally- just be a stolen reindition of the Space Battleship Yamato opening, I knew I was in for a good time. Bonkers battles, a completely unpredictable plot, and special effects that weren’t even good at the time combine into a flawless package. Also, the male main antagonist is weirdly hot and also an incredible actor. When the special effects are that bad, you gotta really give it your all to sell them.

Glass Onion: Another popular pick, but it’s damn good. Needs every second of its two and a half hour runtime. Has a great core message, a superb female lead, and the best use of celebrity cameos in any media I’ve seen in a good long while. Hope there’s many more Benoit Blanc mysteries to come.

Spy X Family: The first anime adaptation in a hot minute that got me to read the source material. A perfect mix of comedy, action, and good old fashioned spy thrills. My only complaint is that there’s not nearly enough Yor getting to do what she does best, but I think the next part of the manga I have to read will fix that.

Dragon Ball Super Hero: Went to go see this twice! Wasn’t sure how the 3DCG would go over, but it was really well done. Got me to finally re-read Dragon Ball all the way through like I’ve wanted to for ages, so that was good too. The action’s great, but it’s really the good ol’ Toriyama humor in full force.

Symphony of the Night: Not sure what I can say about one of the most acclaimed video games of all time, but it was a lot of fun! I could feel myself getting better as I went along, especially when I got into the Reverse Castle. Had to start using my entire toolkit to get by. Think I’ll definitely play another Castlevania game for Halloween this year.

Flying Phantom Ship: Like Creamy Mami, a massive inspiration for a lot of series that have come since, and yet, I saw almost nothing that happened in this movie coming. Only an hour, but with at least three hours worth of twists and turns. Nothing I say about this film can really do it justice.

Phantom of the Paradise: Tremendously well put together movie. Great music by the legendary Paul Williams with a story you probably already know, but put together in a captivating and engrossing way. Knows it’s a story and who the main characters are, and has them interact in ways that really show off all their strengths and flaws. That said, my favorite character might actually be the man only known as Beef, I think about him a lot.

That’s everything for 2022! I have no particular goals on the media front for 2023, but I’m excited to see what it brings.

[fxndom-hoe]

So I was reading a ScreenRant article about what BBC Merlin got right about the stories and what it got wrong, but some of their explanations about the show were wrong and it was starting to annoy me. So I decided to hash it out here on tumblr and have my piece. And so that means you all are forced to hear me rant about some dumb article from the internet (or you can ignore me, I’m not the boss of you 😂).

Anyway, here's:

(I’m not gonna go through all the points, just the one’s I feel they got totally wrong.)

(Also, I’m going to try to keep this as unshippy as possible, but my own interpretations of the show are probably going to come out.)

WARNING: MENTION OF R*PE FROM SOURCE MATERIAL. ALSO, SPOILERS!!!

Ok so maybe this is my own opinion (like this whole post is going to be) but Merlin is technically a teacher. Not in the sense that Gaius is, not in the traditional “here, read this book for a lesson” sort of teacher, but he has actively tried to teach Arthur right from wrong during some instances where the royals were being stupid. Especially when Uther was trying to influence Arthur to do something that he thought was right (but since we know Uther, it was usually (always) actually wrong). Merlin was there to tell Arthur that his father was wrong, and in a way, that’s teaching/being a teacher.

Also, Merlin not being a lover is really a matter of opinion. He may not have had many actual romantic relationships canonically, but that isn’t what defines a “ladies man.” He’s attracted lots of women (and women). “Seen as inferior” my ass. In season one, Gwen had a major crush on him. In season five, Merlin had a slight flirtation with Sefa, even if that didn’t really last long. Throughout the series, we see the sexual tension between Merlin and Arthur. And Gwaine fell madly in love with him since they first met. And, of course, there’s Freya, which they already implied. So just because he’s only had one on-screen relationship doesn’t mean he’s not a heartbreaker. Also, he may not have had an actual relationship with Morgana, there’s definitely some kind of tension between them after she turns evil (whether it’s sexual or just them being enemies is up to you).

This may be me being really nitpicky, but the first time we see Excalibur IS 👏 NOT 👏 WITH 👏 FREYA 👏 This is the part that made me want to make this post. MERLIN 👏 DID 👏 NOT 👏 GET 👏 EXCALIBUR 👏 FROM 👏 FREYA 👏 Like, did the writer of this article even watch the show??? The episode where we see Excalibur for the first time is LITERALLY CALLED “EXCALIBUR!!!” And in the episode, it shows Excalibur being made when Kilgharrah BREATHED ON IT!!! Like, I don’t mean to be rude to the author, but you literally just had to watch the show one (1) time to know this. Maybe don’t write an article about a show you’ve never watched?? (Again, I really don’t wanna be rude, but this really rubbed me the wrong way.)

Again, I’m probably nitpicking, but wasn’t that the point of the show? Like, “Here’s the story of King Arthur except Merlin’s a twenty year old twink instead.” ? I mean, this really wasn’t all that big of a deal, but I need content and I had an opinion on this, so I’m sharing it. 

I mean, for the most part, this is right. We got the whole love triangle thing going on between these three. We got the tasteless “Lancelot du Lac” episode, which I just... we’re not going to talk about it.

 I think we all know, at this point, assuming we’ve all seen the posts talking/complaining about how Gwen was a princess, but instead they made her a servant. Especially because I think in the source material, Gwen was white, and when the show made her black and demoted her to a servant it was racist. Personally (and if this is racist, you guys should call me out on it), I like it because it shows a poor woman of color rising above everyone else and becoming queen, and that’s very badass of her and very empowering for WOC. (I’m not BIPOC so if I’m wrong about this, and anyone who is BIPOC found it offensive that they made Gwen a servant rather than a princess, you have every right to be.)

And now for my complaint: Gwen did actually become an antagonist for a few episodes. I mean, yes, she was technically under Morgana’s spell, so that makes her a victim more than a villain, but the storyline of Dark!Gwen makes her a temporary antagonist. So, article, you are wrong (in a way).

Ok so apparently Uther is just a despicable man no matter what story you try to tell. Just absolutely disgusting. And the fact that in the tales, Merlin actually helps Uther r*pe a woman 🤢🤮 Absolutely disgusting. 

But that's not why I’m talking about this part. The reason I bring this up is because if you watched the show, you would know that Nimueh tells Uther that they WERE FRIENDS. She wasn’t just some random sorcerer who he asked to use dark magic. She was his FRIEND who he asked for help when his wife couldn’t conceive. I think it might’ve also been implied that she was Court Sorcerer (but that might’ve just been a headcanon that I read). But either way, Uther didn’t just turn to dark magic to have a child. He asked his friend for help then betrayed her when it backfired on him.

Again, no matter what happened, Uther is just all around a terrible man.

Ok so this part I don't really have a problem with, but I am confused. I haven't read any source material, so I don’t know this for sure, but I thought Arthur did know about Merlin’s magic. Maybe not in all the tales, but is there not a single one where Arthur knows of Merlin’s abilities? Can someone who’s read up on the source material fact check this for me please. Because I thought the whole “magic is illegal so Merlin has to hide from Arthur” thing was made up for the show, but maybe I’m wrong? Someone help please, thank you! 😊 

Ooohoohoo! Again, no problem with this specifically, but I am reacting. I always thought that Merlin always played a big role in Arthur’s life (not as best friend like in the show) but like an important advisor. I thought Merlin was more than just someone who played a minor role in Arthur’s life. Like, Merlin is such a big figure in pop culture, I could never even imagine that he wasn’t that important in Arthur’s life. Is he more important in the stories than he is to Arthur himself? Is that it? How does that work? I think it might be because I’m a huge Merthur shipper (yes, I know I said I wouldn’t bring ships into this, but I had to for this one), but I really can’t imagine Merlin not being important to Arthur. I mean, I watched this three hour long movie called Merlin starring Sam Neill, and if I’m remembering that correctly, didn’t Merlin raise Arthur? I can’t really remember, but this just feels so wrong to me.

So that's the end of the screenshots, but I do want to mention that the article (which I’ll be linking in the source) talked about how a difference between the story and the show is that in the story, Merlin doesn’t have a family, and just...   HOW SAD??? That is so heartbreaking, and maybe that’s just me imagining the show’s Merlin, our sweet boy who cares about family so fucking much, without a family, and that just makes me sad. But is that true, though? Does the Merlin in the King Arthur tales NOT HAVE A FAMILY??? OOOOOFFF! That’s fuckin rough. 

All right, so this is the end, but if any of you have opinions on the article or on my own opinions, I’d love to hear them. Thanks to anyone who actually read this whole thing. It was kind of long and pointless, but some of what was mentioned brought out such STRONG EMOTIONS from me, I just had to share.

[smokeybrandreviews]

Tomorrow Should Have Died

So i was planning on reviewing The Tomorrow War because it’s a new film and i like new films i can watch without having to brave the plague. I saw a preview for this thing a while back and had real low expectations for it, figured it’d be dumb fun like Independence Day. Imagine my abject horror when it turned out to be so much worse. Okay, first things first, the good stuff. Chris Pratt is good and so is J.K. Simmons. Betty Gilpin and Yvonne Strahovski work miracles with what little they have. The sound design is exceptional, probably the best thing about this sh*t flick, and the actual effects are on point. The problem with the movie is the script. It’s f*cking terrible. Oh my god, so much dumb! Here’s a list of sh*t that made me irrationally angry, in order of plot progression.

Eleven minutes in and i hate it. How are you losing a war to anything if you have mastered the ability to traverse space-time? How the f*ck is your technology so advanced, that you have found a way to exceed the light speed limit and literally break physics, but lose to a bunch of rabid, interstellar, komodo dragons? This is the dumbest f*cking contradiction I have seen all year and i am offended that whoever decided to make this film, is asking this of their audience. Sh*t is patently absurd. These f*cking things don't even have written language, man, and you really expect me to believe they have pushed a human race that has harnessed the power of time, to the brink of extinction?

Eleven minutes, bro. Eleven f*cking minutes.

Seriously, you can create a time machine, you should conceivably have the ability to harness gravity or one of the other fundamental interactions. Why the f*ck haven't you designed a miniaturized rail gun that uses modern tech or materials to build? You have worked out the science in the future, go back to the past and build miniature or handheld doomsday devices for use in the field. Why isn’t everyone running around with f*cking Megatron fusion cannons on their arms? Why the f*ck am i fighting aliens with ARs and Glocks?? The fact that there is an active time machine built from tech on hand from thirty years into the future, means cats could have spent their time building actual weapons to kill these f*cking things instead of betting the literal human race on a time displaced draft. This movie is dumb as rocks.

The way they describe how their time travel works is dumb. I mean, it isn’t, but i can guarantee this sh*t is going to be a problem later. I can feel it in my bones. They are definitely going to contradict this sh*t because multiverse theory is the only way to make movie time travel work and they are trying their damnedest to not do that.

This f*cking thing is over two hours long and the first drags. I hate when cats attempt to develop characters and they just fail at it. I'm sitting here trying to figure out why I should care about any of these people and i still don't have an answer after half the goddamn movie is over. Like, why should i care about Chris Pratt? He’s the main character and the writing has done nothing to endear him to the audience in a whole ass hour.

Also, the reason he’s so mad at his dad is stupid. Dude did right by his kid by bailing because he would have been a terrible father. Pratt’s character would have known that as a father himself. He didn’t have to like it and, of course there’s animosity there, but you’re an adult. Your dad knew he was lousy. He did you a favor by walking out. It wasn’t like he didn’t help support you or make sure you went without. As far as i can tell, dude was there in every way by physically. Because he couldn’t. Because he was f*cking shell-shocked from fighting in Vietnam. Where they raped innocent women and set babies on fire. Holy sh*t, this cat is an unlikable protagonist after this one scene. Which brings me to my next thing...

Pratt f*cking abandons his family?? Word? After that entire scene with his dad and the very obvious trauma he has suffered, he turns around and abandons his own kid because he lost his job?? Word? Like, for real? You expect me to believe that the Chris Pratt who cussed out his pops, was willing to go on the run from his future conscription, abandoned his own family because he lost a teaching job?? What the f*ck, movie? Do you want me to like this asshole or not? More than that, how the f*ck you mess up your character so bad in what i imagine is just five pages of actual script? Nothing we know about this character would ever even hint at him doing this to his family, to his daughter, so why the f*ck would he? Why the f*ck would you, as a write, believe we, as the audience, would just accept that sh*t as a forgone conclusion?

You got ropes on a Queen and you don't kill it? How the f*ck you make it that deep into the hive to even do-si-do the b*tch to the surface? We just watched these things tear through Miami to the point that they needed a whole ass bombardment just to survive and you not only go into their hive, their home, with no heavy ammo, but you somehow lasso a queen and drag her to the surface. Alive. If you can do all of that why not just drop a nuke down there and blow them the f*ck up? Why do you need a live Queen for your science? Shoot the b*tch, take the juice of her corpse, and end this sh*t! Why is all of this stupid recklessness necessary??

Okay. Okay... F*ck everything i just said, right? Why the f*k did you bring this Queen b*tch back to your base? You don’t have a different offsite lab to do this sh*t? You gotta bring her to your stronghold? Isn’t this a military operation? Why aren't their security protocols and sh*t in place to stop this stupidity? You don’t bring the enemy home. You take them to black sites for sh*t like this, not to the goddamn Pentagon!

All of a sudden, the aliens understand science? We spent this entire movie establishing that they are mindless beasts with teeth, eating the human race into extinction but now, because the plot demands it, the Queen one understands what the people are doing? That the green sh*t they made is plague that can murder them all? How the f*ck she even know what science is? They don’t even have language, dude! How the hell she know they made a death plague for her people?! F*ck it, whatever, bro. Next you're going to tell me she let them capture her just to get inside the lab or some sh*t because these rabid f*cking animals, who have demonstrated no military command abilities or even the barest of higher cognitive functions, are tactical geniuses.

Okay, so the Queen b*tch is a tactical genius. So, in the initial future drop, the team was murdered by a bunch of these things because they were sent to a lab where they were trying to make the death plague. Now, hat i am about to say is all assumption on my part because none of this, and i men NONE of it, is ever confirmed by the movie. So, they get to the lab and everyone is dead but the green per-plague is still there. That mean they had a Queen there. It’s established after this that Queens can call for backup and the Males will lemming their way to her. I deduce that’s how this lab got overrun; Queen got loose, called for her boys, and they ate everyone. That happened. That was the first thing we see in the future. This b*tch does the same f*cking thing on the home base lab so now the males are overrunning The Pentagon. You motherf*ckers knew this was a thing because it literally already happens. Why the f*ck would you do it again? AND it gets worse... Home base, The Pentagon, is the f*cking rig where they house the goddamn time machine! You brought a hostile enemy leader, still alive and coherent, to the heart of your resistance operation, to the core of your time travel operation, knowing that at any time this b*tch can scream and have your whole ass base overrun with teeth and poison darts? Look, if the future is this stupid, they deserve to die, okay?

At least they commit to multiverse theory, even if it contradicts the entirety of their already established time travel rules.

Okay. Okay... So they create this toxin to kill all the monster things and send it back in time to be mass produced  Put that sh*t in bullets and send it back to the future or whatever. But, because of the aforementioned stupid, that plan is bunk. Time machine go kablooey. And now we are at the "all is lost" moment at the end of the second act." Solution to the problem in hand, no way to save the future because the only way back to the future was a casualty of idiocy. Right. So... just wait. F*cking just wait. You know when these assholes show up, you know how to kill them all, you even have a plague ready to be mass produced right now. You have thirty f*cking years to refine that formula, to make it cheaper to mass produced and develop variants just in case immunities start to crop up or something. There are people from the future, stuck in the past, because of the egregious future error. They have all of that intel and they are just alive. The second this dude got back to the past with that antidote, the future was saved. The war is over. Like, even if you don’t know where the ship is, you have a sure thing that will murder these white f*cks and three decades to produce, weaponize, and store that sh*t. The war is won. The Prime timeline is absolutely safe at this point. Because that's how time travel works. You have the nuclear option, right now, to averting the end of the human race, ready to be mass produced. Yo have the knowledge from the future on where these things will first appear. You still have all the future tech brought over from the beta timeline ripe for reverse engineering in order to improve the weapons of the present. There is no scenarios where we lose this war, the second Chris Pratt plops back into the present with that plague. None.

Why is everyone so dejected?? Why are there f*cking riots all over the world?? None of this makes sense. How can you assume the world ends and the war is lost just because the communication with that version of the past is cut? Wouldn’t you expect that sh*t? You just altered the entire timeline by sending Pratt back with the antidote. That future is effectively gone. How can you communicate with a place in space-time that doesn’t exist anymore? Hell, even if it’s because the time machine broke and everyone over there is dead, you have the f*cking antidote now! Multiverse theory, bud. The fact that those time displaced assholes didn’t disappear, means multiverse theory is real and you have the opportunity to Future Trunks this sh*t so why panic? Why are there no leaders n television assuring their people that this is a thing? Why are there no scientists publishing papers about how sh*t is going to be fine? Bro, I'm just so tired...

How these cats just fly into Russia on a big ass cargo plane and not get shot down? This is 2022. Putin still hates us. This sh*t would cause a World War.

So you find this ship and you don’t tell anyone where it is? You decide to just kill them all yourself? Motherf*cker, what happens if you die? Did you back up the enzyme formula somewhere or did you bring all of it with you on this stupid f*cking mission? Did you leave notes or even text your location to anyone in authority, just in case haphazard attempt goes sideways so someone else can make a more organized attempt? Or just drop a nuke on the site from orbit? If one asshole denied you funding for your mission, why didn’t you ask someone else? Why didn’t you ask f*cking Putin? Because governments are bloated down with bureaucracy? My dude, people from the future came back and interrupted the world cup to tell you that aliens are going to exterminate the human race in three decades. If you tell anyone in a position of power that you know where these little sh*ts are, they’re going to listen. Especially since everyone decided to riot because the future changed/we lost the time war/ the timeline imploded.

Why would a terrestrial saw work on an intergalactic star ship? That doesn't make any sense. This f*cking thing survived a crash landing into earth intact and a goddamn circular saw cuts it open? Fine, whatever. On to the next stupid thing.

Bro. Bro, they just blow the f*cking thing up. Motherf*cker spent the entire movie, time jumping form the past to to the future and back to the past, just to get this plague to kill them all, and a bunch of C4 just blows them all up while they sleep. Why the f*ck was everything even f*cking necessary? At this point, when the dude comes back with that claw the first time, the future is saved. Analysis on that one claw gave up the location of the hidden spaceship where these things had been in stasis for millennia. Which was blown up with C4. No plague needed. No goddamn time draft needed. No casualties needed after that first wave. The second that dude brought back that claw, it should have been  under a forensic microscope so actual f*cking scientists could figure out what a high school kid id in a matter of minutes. I hate this movie so goddamn much.

I hated this goddamn movie so much. It’s f*cking boring and the dumbest thing I've seen all year and i watched Army of the Dead. It’s pretty and the performances are decent, but there is absolutely no substance to any of this sh*t. It wants to be Independence Day and Edge of Tomorrow and The Great Wall. all in one, while infusing time travel family drama but it’s so f*cking confused trying to juggle all of that, it drops the ball on the most important part; The script. This thing must read like a fever dream induced by peyote because, in execution, it’s a wet fart. This f*cking thing is all over the place with no regard for any insular universe logic. It contradicts itself from one scene to the next and it’s goddamn offensive. I’m sure there is someone saying that i am overthinking this sh*t and that it’s just supposed to be dumb popcorn fun. I get that. However, i can’t just turn my f*cking brain off and mindlessly drool over sh*t that insults my intelligence the way this movie does. It’s dumb as f*cking rocks, man, and i want those two hours of my life back!

[ernmark]

Last minute Juno Birthday fanfic, anyone?

It’s early November when Juno decides to suck it up and be an adult.

It’s actually a week or so into December before he actually works up the nerve to do it, but at least he made the decision, so that has to count for something.

All that night he’s planning out elaborate arguments and counter-arguments, crafting strategies like he’s going to war instead of having a conversation with his ex-secretary. Even after all that (or maybe because of it), his blood is pumping hard by the time he sits her down for The Talk.

“Listen, Rita,” he says, because he’s turning forty and he can do this, goddammit. “You know how my birthday is coming up?”

Right away her eyes light up like fucking neon. “Ooh, I was just gonna ask you-- what do ya want to do? We could go--”

He stops her right there, before she can build up any momentum. “Actually, I was hoping we could just do something quiet. Like last year, you know? Just a movie with the two of us.” 

“That sounds great! And we can have Miss Vespa make the popcorn, and--”

See, this is why he wanted to have this talk early on. “Could we just have it with the two of us?” And he can see other points coming from a mile away, so he pushes past the anxiety and spits out the truth: “I’m still working on being more... okay. And that always gets harder this time of year. Especially now that...” Sometimes he can put his memories of Ben into words. Some days are harder than others. So close to their birthday and so far from Ben’s grave, he just can’t. “I just don’t think I can handle anything big right now.”

He’s waiting for the volley of protests, but instead Rita gives him a gentle, “Okay, boss.” And then, slightly more energetic: “Do you wanna pick out the movie or should I?”

And weeks worth of tension melts from his shoulders. “How about you pick one out for us? One you haven’t seen.”

------

Even with Juno taking better care of himself, there’s no getting around some of the tension. This time of year is rough. It always is, and it always will be-- full of memories of Ben’s brilliant smile and his contagious laugh, edged by the memory of their mother’s darkest moods. It winds tighter inside him by the day, and he can feel it in his roiling stomach and his knotting muscles and his grinding teeth. There’s a new fear in him-- he’s finally found a good place, a home, a weird criminal family. What if he blows up at someone? What if he gets himself thrown off the ship? What if he wrecks everything just because he couldn’t keep it together? It’s a new layer of terror, suddenly realizing that he has something to lose.

The twenty-fourth day of December arrives, and he’s wound so tight he feels like he might snap. Buddy’s all about this whole ‘family’ thing, and he knows how much she’s researched him-- if she’s planning a party or something-- god, he might lose it. 

He might lose it anyway.

He gets dressed feeling like he’s getting ready for a funeral, but he only heads as far as the kitchen to help Jet with breakfast. And it’s quiet. Calm. The big guy always is. The meal isn’t candle-covered pancakes or anything special, just the usual scrambled eggs and bacon, biscuits and gravy, like they have most days. But as he’s whipping the eggs into a froth, Jet glances over at him and says, “Happy birthday, Juno.” 

No confrontation, no big deal. He doesn’t even miss a beat. He says it like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

And Juno, because he doesn’t know how else to respond, says “Thanks.” 

And a little more of that tension unwinds.

To his credit, he doesn’t take weeks to make the next move in the conversation. And sure, it’s already his birthday, and yeah, the big guy is a whole lot less talkative than Rita is, but still, Juno decides to take the win while he’s got it.

“Say,” he begins. “You wouldn’t know if Buddy and all them were planning any kind of surprise party or anything, would you?”

Jet looks up, but only to pour the eggs into the pan. “If I were to tell you, it would not be a surprise. But no. Rita informed us that a party would be unnecessarily stressful for you.”

It almost seems too good to be true. “Did she say why?”

“Birthdays are a source of anxiety for many people. I am willing to listen, but your reasons are your own. Pass me the milk.” 

Juno does, but he moves clumsily, blinking tears out of his eye before he can make this weird. Which is stupid-- he knows the big guy wouldn’t judge him for it. Everyone cries, right? Of all people, Jet would understand how messy and convoluted and heavy emotions can get. 

And maybe he does cry a little bit, for reasons he doesn’t want to talk about and couldn’t name even if he did. Jet doesn’t comment or watch him with pity. He doesn’t even seem uncomfortable. Juno would think that Jet didn’t notice at all, if not for the tissue that materializes in his hand just as Juno’s breathing starts to hitch. 

And just like that, it’s over. Juno dabs away the last of the tears, he throws out the tissue and washes his hands, and then he gets to work reconstituting the orange juice. 

-------

Vespa says nothing. 

But when she passes him in the corridors, she makes eye contact and gives a slight jerk of her head. 

Juno nods back, feeling strangely like they’ve just had a full conversation.

-------

By the time Buddy approaches him, Juno’s started to feel a whole lot less like a cornered animal and a whole lot more human. Maybe a human who doesn’t speak the same language as the woman who smiles warmly at him and offers him a hug, but still a human. And when she gives his hands an affectionate squeeze and offers him a happy birthday, he thinks that maybe he’s starting to understand.

------

Nureyev glances at his comms and starts to his feet. “I’ll let you freshen up. I believe you and Rita are watching a movie tonight?”

Nothing’s gone wrong yet. No blowups, no breakdowns, no disasters. So maybe he’s feeling a little braver than he was before. “You can join us, if you want.”

“Oh?” Nureyev doesn’t hesitate so much as he slows, shifting his weight like a dancer. If Rita’s told Jet and Buddy, she’s told him. He knows what today means to him. But he doesn’t press a conversation. “What are you watching?”

“No clue. But I trust Rita to pick out something good.” He doesn’t say it aloud, but he knows Nureyev understands: I trust you, too.

 “I’m always up for an adventure,” Nureyev says. “But if you don’t need to freshen up, I do. Shall I bring you a drink on my way back?”

“I’d like that,” Juno says softly, and he watches Nureyev vanish into the ship’s corridor.

He lets out the last ache of tension in a long, heavy breath, and he stuffs his hands into his pockets. And there he finds a little envelope. 

It’s tiny, no bigger than a credit card, but even so, getting it there without him knowing would require a pickpocket’s deft hands. Though, really, that isn’t saying much-- pretty much the only person on this ship who can’t pick pockets is Rita.

There’s no cake, no candles, no presents. But there is the card, marked with five signatures and a simple message:

We’re glad you’re here.

[peppermint-chocolate-cherries]

Ship Analysis in TNMJ

One of my bigger spoiler elements for The Nefarious Mathilda Jones was all the ships involved in the story.  I did make a Tumblr post back in 2017, after posting Chapter 9, speaking about some of the ships that were definitely in the earlier part of the story.  I knew at that point already that most of the ships were spoiler material, which is why they were never tagged on the story itself.

Now that the story is finally finished, and all the spoilers have been revealed, I can finally discuss and tag ALL the ships that showed up in the story.  I’ll put it under a cut here, both because this will be a long post and because there will be spoilers.

If you haven’t read it yet, here is the AO3 link and here is the FFN link.  2,045 words below the cut, the TLDR is all the ships tagged on this post.

My Darling Canadian Muse

Let’s start with the story’s namesake character, because she had the most ships in this damn story.  What can I say, Canada is the muse of almost all my plot bunnies, I only have maybe a couple plot bunnies where Canada is NOT a main character.  For Mathilda Jones, I included four of my favourite Canada ships.

Russia x nyo-Canada

Yes, the true OTP of the whole story, pre-game through to post-game.  Mathilda fell in love with Ivan while they worked together in R&D, and it was because they wanted to be together that they dared to make the supercomputer, kill her family and destroy JCI.  They were willing to sacrifice everything, and to do whatever they could, in the hopes of being together.  Not much to say here, they always were the OTP.

Spain x nyo-Canada

A very interesting side to a love triangle.  It’s revealed in the story that Mathilda nearly killed herself once, and it was Antonio who saved her life.  Having Antonio protect her from Arthur’s wrath started Mathilda on her path of vengeance against Arthur, Alfred and JCI.  Antonio saw that she desperately needed him to be her hero, and he fell in love with her during that time.

Haven’t you guys ever noticed, in all those classic hero movies, that the hero always wins the damsel after saving her life?  This really puts an emphasis on the hero always getting the girl, even if he was a random stranger who showed up out of nowhere to rescue the damsel in distress.  Although she cares for him deeply, and is grateful for everything he’s done for her, Mathilda feels that sense of obligation to love and worship Antonio for his heroic deeds.

Mathilda’s relationship with Ivan was more organic and natural, with no obligation to love him, and it’s that freedom to love Ivan by her own choice that is key here.  I would say that Antonio was hurt by this at first, but learned to accept it when he saw how much happier she was with Ivan.  Mathilda’s story is all about freedom, about choosing her own life path, and she is doing exactly that by choosing Ivan over Antonio for romantic love.

Germany x nyo-Canada

Ah yes, the very complicated ship of the story.  It was all hinted right away: Ludwig was the one flirting heavily with “Madeline”, and he was the one to ask her out.  Mathilda tells Ivan she might be able to seduce someone, just to get a rise out of the police force, that victim of her seduction was Ludwig.  Ivan warns her to watch out for the man’s elder, that was a reference to Gilbert.

Mathilda’s plan was to string Ludwig along for a while, under the guise of dating him as “Madeline”.  She might get some clues out of him for upstaging the police force, and for throwing Gilbert off the edge in the hunt for her.  And hey, if it was found out that Ludwig was dating Mathilda, that would really cause a distraction, wouldn’t it?

Ludwig’s fuck-ups began when Gilbert arrested “Madeline”.  He knew his brother was arresting his girlfriend, and kept his mouth shut.  He knew that “Madeline” had escaped on forged bail paperwork, and kept his mouth shut.  If Ludwig had told his brother the truth at this point, it could’ve changed everything, especially since it was the phony bail jailbreak that made Gilbert discover her hidden identity.  What Gilbert would say later is true, they could’ve found Mathilda and re-arrested her that same day!

But no, Ludwig thought he was in love, so he goes to confront her instead and winds up being introduced to Lovino Vargas.  From here on out, Ludwig rejects every opportunity to break up with “Madeline”, which starts adding complications to Mathilda’s plans just as her group has all the chess pieces in place to destroy JCI.

Ludwig’s next big fuck-up was where he refuses to let his brother arrest him after the bank heist.  If Ludwig had turned himself in right then and there, Gilbert could’ve told him exactly who “Madeline” really was, and they could’ve caught them together.  Ludwig could’ve then brought Gilbert to the cafe, where they could explain to the others that Mathilda had been deceiving them the whole time.  In other words, the gunfight where Feliks and Yao died could’ve been easily prevented if Ludwig wasn’t such a dumbass!

Finally, the jailbreak fuck-up where Ludwig finally learns the truth.  He’s now been told multiple times that it’s his choice what to do next, and he’s set to stick with Natalya and join the others at the safehouse.  And what does he do the moment he learns that “Madeline” had been deceiving him?  He goes upstairs to find her and save her.  Mathilda and Toris are planting bombs on that floor and sneaking around past the police, having Ludwig join them is the last thing they need.  Once again, if Ludwig hadn’t interfered, Toris might have escaped with Mathilda instead of being shot dead by the police!

Don’t get me wrong, GerCan is a sexy ship, and there are other stories that show how fantastic it can be.  However, the GerCan in this story is problematic.  Mathilda does have a bit of blame, entering the relationship under the blatantly false pretenses and manipulation.  However, it is entirely Ludwig’s own damn fault for not walking away at one of his MANY MANY blatant opportunities to do so.

England x nyo-Canada

Like I said above with GerCan, UkCan is a beautiful ship in the right context.  Yes, many of my plot bunnies have FACE family dynamics where UkCan does not work, it has to be the right setting and AU technicalities to make that relationship romantic.  There are some gorgeous UkCan fanfics out there where Arthur genuinely appreciates Matthew, and I even have a long-living plot bunny exploring Arthur’s relationship with Madeline.  I’ve even written a Valentine’s one-shot of them here on Tumblr.

This story’s UkCan ship is the definition of toxic.  Mathilda was married off to Arthur by her father, completely against her will.  Arthur was an abusive control freak, so much so that she would nearly kill herself trying to do something especially triggering that is discussed in further detail in the story itself and does not need to be repeated here.  After Antonio saves her life and begins protecting her from Arthur’s wrath, Mathilda begins building her plans to separate herself from Arthur permanently.

For the record, not that he deserves any sympathy at all, Arthur was completely blindsided by what we see in the prologue.  I have it planned out that he knew Mathilda and Ivan were working on a top-secret R&D project of some kind, and that Antonio was the biggest nuisance in the world.  Arthur was flabbergasted to learn that not only had Mathilda been cheating on him with Ivan, but they planned to destroy JCI.

Through the story, we see that how he and Alfred manage JCI is restricted in Mathilda’s absence.  Booting her from the shareholders table, or other such measures to remove her 45% influence, cannot be done without a unanimous vote.  Likewise, their nuptial agreements and wills are so intertwined that Mathilda and Arthur must both agree to any changes.  There are only two solutions to the problem of their broken marriage: either Mathilda is arrested and coerced into signing everything away to Arthur, or one of them dies and leaves everything to the widowed spouse.

The Minor Ships

China x Ukraine

A very simple side ship that unfortunately gets sacrificed to my sadistic whims of killing people off.  In a nations AU, China and Ukraine are both among the older modern nations that would know what the world is really like, and have the maturity to face its troubles head-on.  Here in this AU, they know their lives are not perfect, but they are really doing their best, and finding a way to do it together.

Romano x Hungary

One of those enemies to friends to lovers situation, as they start the story in opposing mobs.  When they have to work together and find a new way to make ends meet, they unwittingly grow close enough that they do not want to separate once they have the chance to enjoy their own living spaces again.  I almost gave them kids in the epilogue, but it was starting to feel too heteronormative, especially since Liz and Lovi are too much of a power couple for that, so I left that detail open-ended.

Poland x Lithuania

One of the very few popular ships that actually showed up in this story.  As mentioned in Chapters 9-10, Toris and Feliks had some form of romantic relationship, although they didn’t put a clear label on it.  Of course, once Toris turns on Mikkel’s gang and joins Ivan in working for Mathilda, Feliks knows he can’t trust Toris anymore.  A bit upsetting that they had to break up, and I am now also disappointed that I killed off both the gays.

Veneziano x Ukraine

The end-game pairing that was dependent on another ship sinking.  Even before the cafe showdown, there were teasers about Feliciano admiring Katerina from afar.  Specifically, when he discovered that Madeline drugged Ludwig, that was after shooting down the idea of sneaking in on Yao and Katerina to get video footage of them getting freaky.  After Yao’s death, Feliciano’s priority is keeping Katerina safe, he doesn’t want to see her hurt like this.  In the years after, she does eventually recover from her grief and return Feliciano’s affections.  Even outside this AU, it’s an interesting rare-pair, as North Italy would shower Ukraine in the sweet affection that she deserves.

Prussia x Belarus

I hope you weren’t all surprised by this epilogue ship reveal, but there were a LOT of clues earlier on.  When Gilbert is looking at Natalya’s file after the phony bail, he’s making a lot of comments on how pretty she is.  When Gilbert breaks Ludwig out of jail, and Natalya opens the back door to the transport van, he calls her gorgeous.  He’s quite sympathetic to how she’s been dragged into Ivan’s poor choices, and is willing to defend her defensive actions.  This sympathy, plus the fallout of Ludwig’s bullshit, brings them together.

The Ships That Missed The Cut

Spain x Lithuania

Early in the drafts for this story, I thought Antonio and Toris could be a side pairing, during the time where Toris is working with the nefarious trio.  They would keep each other company while Mathilda and Ivan were off being a heteronormative couple.  Toris was already confirmed as gay with the PoLiet ship, all that was needed was to make Antonio bi.  There wasn’t any solid opportunity to add it to the story after all, but that would’ve been one spicy rare pair to include.

Lithuania x nyo-Canada

The four Canada ships at the top of this post have been strong in my affections since 2015, let’s get that out of the way.  My interest in this rare-pair grew after I started writing this story, as writing this more interesting role for Toris encouraged my fascination in him.  Now here in 2020, LietCan has made its way onto my favourite Canada ships, they are quite similar in temperament and would work well together.

After I published his death scene, I started thinking of ways I could’ve added more to the story if I could go back and re-write this story, and Toris is the character I would’ve given more screen time to.  While their relationship definitely wouldn’t be romantic, Toris would bring ideas to the table that Mathilda and the boys wouldn’t have considered, which would be a fresh perspective.  Honestly, Toris and Mathilda would’ve gotten along very well.

Germany x Belarus

Last but not least, the love triangle that almost was.  It was indeed in the first drafts of the story to have Natalya like Ludwig, and to worry that Madeline was manipulating him.  That part got cut, especially once I had decided that PruBela was end-game.  A few teasers are still in the plot, though, as later chapters have Natalya trying to save Ludwig from his own stupidity.

[derpcakes]

So we watched (nay, Experienced) the BBC/Netflix Dracula series

Brought to us by everyone’s favourite team, Steve Moff and Mark Gatiss, promising to be an innovative and exciting new vision of the classic novel

Boy it was definitely something!!!

First I will say: obviously Moff is not my favourite TV writer and my fam and I did go into this with a bias. I’m happy to report, though, that it’s going to be one of these shows that haunts me forever, because if it had just been bad I could have said “bleh” and deleted it from my brain. But because parts of this were genuinely cool, interesting, and fun, and parts of it genuinely had potential, all the bits that were bad stand out as so much worse and the whole thing feels as cursed as a 500 year old undead count. 

Things that were enjoyable and well put-together:

Van Helsing has been gender-swapped into a vampire-hunting nun and her cat-and-mouse game with Dracula is rife with belligerent sexual tension. I was ready to hate this, and ready for like, Sherlock and Irene Adler 2.0, but their dynamic was actually pretty fun to watch! Their power balance is kept even throughout most of the show, and Helsing is never struck down because of ~womanly failings~ or infantilised. She’s consistently really clever and, even if there are some cringey one-liners, I found her and Draccy’s playful quest to murder each other one of the most fun parts of the show. It could’ve been better, but it was enjoyable! (I also like how Helsing isn’t Young and Hot, but is a capable older lady, and her actor and Draccy’s even seem about the same age. Amazing)

The second episode is a spooky murder mystery/horror mini-movie on a ship, with a cast full of interesting characters who all had different things going on and different relationship dynamics that were compelling to watch. There’s even an interracial gay couple! And they’re like, written pretty sympathetically and to be layered and flawed in ways that didn’t feel too stereotypical! And they don’t die first!! Wack! I understand the bar is on the ground, but it’s still worth a mention

Some fun with vampire lore: Draccy absorbs knowledge and traits from people he drinks blood from (which is how he learns languages. Get Duolingo, dude, stop eating people), leading to the intriguing suggestion that myths like “vampires will die in sunlight” and “vampires are afraid of holy symbols” have kinda become real to him even if they don’t literally work, because he’s swallowed so many people to whom these superstitions and beliefs were law. I’m sure this isn’t the first time this has been done, but groundbreaking or no it was kinda neat

Things that were not enjoyable and well put-together:

EVERYTHING ELSE

Episode 1: a weird speedrun of most of the original novel, feat. weaponised nuns and a weird fixation on whether or not Jonathan Harker and Draccy boned. They did not. Dracula pops out of the body of a wolf and he’s Whole Ass Naked. Him and Van Helsing have a power play where she stands just on the threshold of a convent and calls him a little bitch, knowing he can’t come and get her. A knife is licked. 

Episode 2: aforementioned cool ship horror story. Definitely the best ep. It really makes me think about hbomb’s critique that Moff is pretty good at doing standalone stories (and pilots), but when things are tied into a bigger narrative things get zonkers. 

Episode 3: Things Get Zonkers!!

Let me just. Okay. I have the most to say about this one because this is where things really got batshit. And yet, also really boring? How does that figure? Anyway:

Dracula emerges from under the sea and finds that 123 years have passed and he’s now the star of a Modern AU. Upon setting foot on British sand he is immediately accosted by what appears to be an anti-vampire task force. There’s a helicopter. It is later explained how they knew to pounce on him at this exact moment, but holy god it was wild to watch the entire British Secret Service descend on this one wet bastard in a suit

The editing shifts aggressively in the direction of Sherlock. Mark Gattis is there playing an amazingly annoying character. There’s a fuckign.... Underground Secret Society devoted to studying vampires and they put Drac in a Designated Glass Prison for Smug Geniuses (also as seen in Sherlock). Van Helsing is dead but her great-great-grand-niece is played by the same actress and. Okay. Van Helsing, vampire hunting nun, possesses her descendent and rises through the ether to roast Drac one last time, and he’s DELIGHTED TO SEE HER AGAIN. 

And she has cancer, right, so her blood is poisonous when Draccy tries to bite her, but in the end, right, the end of the episode, right, the final shots of the show, he comes to a place where he’s willing to die, and she’s already dying, and so he drinks her blood and they die together on a table while cinematic metaphor vision shows them having sex in the middle of the sun

There was a badly CGI-ed vampire baby. Jonathan Harker falls from a tower and a scene later they flash back to this event by reversing the footage of him falling down, meaning we just see him go VWOOP up through the air, bouncing off the wall on the way. Van Helsing says the words “come boy, suckle” when she’s goading Drac into drinking her blood. The show sits in a weird middle ground where the characters talk about sex a lot (”dID yOu HaVe sExUaL iNterCOURSE with COUNT DRACULA?”) and Drac is clearly meant to be super magnetic and sexy but the characterisation and cinematography is not horny at all. People have these sexy-type dreams of their lover of choice when Drac is drinking their blood but even those are very boring and weirdly chaste, except of course for the final one where, if I  can take the chance to remind you, Van Helsing and Dracula have symbolic Mind Palace sex inside the centre of the solar system

I can’t speak too much on its quality as an adaptation since I actually haven’t read the book, but splitting the story so that some characters (the Harkers, Van Helsing) existed in the time the story is set, and some (Lucy, Dr Seward) exist in The Modern AU felt very strange. Was there any reason to set the third episode in modern times, apart from the fact that I guess they wanted to do their Sherlock thing again? Or, perhaps, because they wanted to do their Jekyll thing again?? Oh my god, that’s what the editing reminds me of - the small clips of Jekyll I’ve seen. The zooming. The slow-mo. The emphasis on The Monster Man’s weird goddamn teeth

(Also, I don’t really feel qualified to dig too deep into it, but I will say there felt something a bit uncomfortable about Lucy being black in this version, while also being written to be very promiscuous and vain. idk. Also, since it happened in an ep of Sherlock as well, “weedy white Nice Boy rescues the Very Cool woman of colour he has a tragically unrequited crush on” is now an official Moffattis trope)

Count Moffatula is an experience. Its pacing is buck wild. The speeding through the original plot and the mish-mashing of elements in the Modern AU section feels like another expression of contempt for the source material on Moff’s part. Someone says “reality is overrated” in a show set in the 1890s. Draccy quotes a Beatles song. He also makes quippy allusions to having eaten various famous figures and basically winks at the camera every time. Granted, this wasn’t as obnoxious as I was maybe expecting, but there are still too many lines of dialogue where you think “oh, the writers high-fived each other after they wrote that one, huh”. The fact that Moff has such vitriol against fan fic writers is more and more grating every day because this is so, so clearly a zany-ass fanfic that he happens to be getting paid for. The costumes are nowhere near as nice as they could have been, and Dracula’s cape looks like his mum made it for him for the school play in which he is playing Dracula. 

This show is So Much. Watch it to share in this fever dream. Or don’t, and save approximately 5 hours of your life. God. 5 hours. Who was I before Count Maffatula. Who am I now. Why was his cape so bloody ugly. Why did they bone in the centre of the sun

[tartareus]

Do you condone/ship incest? I was reading your rules and got confused about your sentence where you said if people are uncomfortable with fictional consensual incest this isn’t the blog for you. Except Incest is incest regardless of if it’s fiction

hi there, friend, how do you do?

while i'm not particularly fond of anons (nex time you'd like to discuss something regarding my rules and/or character portrayal, i strongly encourage you to do so via ims - i don't bite, and if our points of view don't quite match? that's alright, i promise i'll leave you in peace :) ) for various reasons, i'm so glad you've read my rules (that probably makes you one of the few who follow me - at least i presume you do, idk - who has done so, so thank you so much!), i cannot stress enough how important they are to me. if i happen to follow you, rest assured that i have read yours (unless, ofc, i couldn't find one in your blog - in any case, if i happen to accidentally break one of yours, just hmu or gimme a nudge).

considering that you've asked more than one question, i'll answer to you in separate sections - needless to say that while i break it down your questions, the answer might become a little longer than usual (again, i'm sorry). i'll keep this tagged, in case any of my followers don't feel like reading about this. without further ado, let’s dive in.´

“do you condone/ship incest?”

short answer? nope. but that is not a black or white question i’m afraid. no, i – nox, the human behind this blog of fictional characters – personally do not condone incest , never have and never will, and  don’t ship it. i do, however, ship consanguinamory on rare occasions, and when i do happen to write it i never do it in a good light.

for those who are not familiar with the term, here’s a little bit of info about it x && x. in short, the key difference between them is: incest is usually linked abuse (a fictional example that can be used, taking in consideration one of my very own muses, in this case is margot verger – who was sadly abused by her brother in the hannibal books) while consanguinamory (the lannisters, for example, or even the sharpe siblings from crimson peak are examples of consanguineous relationships) is the consensual romantic and/or sexual relationship between members of the same family who are of consenting age.

[ personally, i find both of them gross as fuuck irl but when it comes to fictional works i may get over this first disgust and ponder more on that && take in consideration the characters arch, plot, thoughts and the whole world they are set in. ]

i suppose the turning point here is the consent. i never, never, condone any sort of abuse – not in fiction and neither in real life – and while it’s a subject that bothers me to no end in real life, when it comes to fiction i am less inclined to project into them. i may write dark and toxic relationships, but i obviously do not condone them. that’s the point here – people on this hellsite usually mix the two together (condoning something and shipping/writing it, that is) when in fact they shouldn’t even be in the same box to begin with.

let’s say you write a fictional serial killer – norman bates, tate langdon, hannibal lecter, catherine tramell (that chick from basic instinct), patrick bateman, mrs lovett and sweeney todd, kai anderson, bellatrix, grindelwald and voldemort (the list of plausible examples could go on forever…) – here and ship with them; does it mean that you, the writer, condone every single action and choice your muse does? if writing something purely fictional equals to condoning it in real life, well… the world is even more fucked up than i first thought.

you see, in this little exercise in imagination, you could’ve easily picked a good guy or gal to write, the hero; the goody two shoes. why didn’t you? well, it’s complicated to pin point why some are drawn to darker works of fiction and characters while others are not, i suppose each individual has their own reasons && i can only speak for myself when i say that i am drawn to these sort of fictional works because they the safest way to explore dark topics that pertain to human society. on my side, it’s nothing but raw curiosity.

there’s also the issue of how different cultures see these relationships. in case you haven’t noticed, i am not from the states but actually from brazil. especially in the rural area, it’s not uncommon for second cousins to date or even marry (ew, i know, pretty gross). that’s something that is luckily falling out of practice, but you can easily find it, more so in the poor rural areas that are really far from the cities.

you may have noticed that most of the sources for the terms come from a blog that advocates real life consanguinamory – but make no mistake, i don’t support it. these were the only places i’ve found as sources in a quick look online. i don’t support it irl, but whatever consenting adults are doing amongst themselves is no concern of mine – i have no say on the matter and all in all, i don’t give a damn. i just don’t like it. everything i’ve discussed here is related to fiction, consent and is only ever related to people of consenting age.

“i was reading your rules and got confused about your sentence where you said if people are uncomfortable with fictional consensual incest this isn’t the blog for you. except incest is incest regardless of if it’s fiction”

to be honest with you, anon, i couldn’t possibly see how you’ve got confused with this. i thought i was pretty clear with that, but perhaps not. sorry, my english is not perfect. however, with the risk of sounding like a meme, i said what i said. if you personally feel uncomfortable or even triggered with fictional consensual incest otherwise known as consanguinamory, maybe my blog isn’t for you. not because i – as the mun –  condone it, but because i might mention it or even allude to it when i write certain characters. again, consent is the main thing here – you won’t ever see me writing that awful part of margot’s past, but i might mention it on some threads as it is part of her trauma but i will write jaime’s feelings regarding cersei and joanna’s love for tywin – and that should not be overlooked.

“except incest is incest regardless of if it’s fiction” 

so far so good, am i to assume that you also believe that “murder is murder, regardless of if it is fiction or not”? should we call the police on, idk, george rr martin for killing....hell knows how many characters...at this point i’m sure not even he knows. leaving my petty comment aside (it’s the arthritis, i’m always annoyed when in pain), i see where you’re coming from; fair enough.  but you missed a big point here – consensual. i do not write abuse, even to the muses who – in the canon source material – have done so    ( like jaime lannister himself – who’s in a consanguinamorous [therefore, falling under the category of fictional consensual incest] relationship with cersei – who abused his sister next to their son’s dead body [ yeah, jaime apologists, i’m out to get y’all...jokes aside, i do not acknowledge people claiming that cersei manipulated him into going to bed with her, while they are both shitty and toxic as fuck people, their relationship is mutually messed up – gag if you must but jaime lannister is far from innocent angel ] )     in the past. i. don’t. write. it. but i do write jaime’s feelings for cersei because they are canon and are also a big part of the character he became.

all of that, of course, has to do with my own position on the “war” between the people who believe fiction has a great power and influence over reality vs the ones who do not believe in that. personally, i find it hard to believe that fiction is a brainwashing tool rewiring people’s brains  - i find the idea itself ludicrous, the ones who strongly stand for that aren’t that different from flat-earthers and people who believe in reverse racism tbh – but i do acknowledge the influence media has on society. its not nearly enough to turn someone to the “dark side” alone by itself – those who claim that videogames, for example, made them violent most likely already had something different and perhaps wrong with them before the games triggered something. i don’t believe that media creates things on people, but brings buried things (fears, feelings, emotions, hopes) back to the surface. it’s all about the stimulus.

if you wanna be scared, watch an horror movie; if you wanna be happy, a comedy video.  wanna feel warm inside and live unrealistic romantic expectations vicariously through fictional characters? read a 50.000 words slow burn fluffy happy fanfic of your otp at 3 am even though you gotta wake up early in the following morning....

point is, they are not creating things, they are bringing forth responses from you that were already there in your brain (everybody has laughed before and felt fear, it’s part of human development). and how you react to certain content is entirely to you and your past. say, if you drowned as a kid on the sea - and had trauma from that - the idea of watching titanic is not so fun, is it?

it’s not my place to decide what you should do, that is entirely your own choice to make, just be aware that, as i’ve stated before countless times, i may write dark topics that may or may not be triggering to some.  i do so because it is my blog, and i don’t react so harshly to this content (in fact, i love horror, thriller and dark fictional stuff – meanwhile i dread the thought of rom coms, hell knows why??) for i am lucky to be able to separate fiction from reality. basically, whilst writing a villain, i myself do not become one in real life – that part remains in fiction only and doesn’t affect me.

that is not a constant, sure. i don’t just write dark shady stuff – there’s plenty of fluffy shit on my blog, but i like to warn people beforehand to make sure we are all on the same page. it’s for your own comfort, i suppose, because i may not understand certain points of view on fiction but i will always defend your right to be comfortable and safe.

so yes, if you aren’t feeling well at that notion, please unfollow and block me if you must – i never wish to cause any discomfort to anyone – however, before you do so (that is, if you do so) i beg you to just send me an im warning me beforehand, please? that way i can block you – and your other blogs as well – so the chances of me running into you again and causing you discomfort will be minimal. that way we’ll both be on own respective lanes and happy about it. i mass follow very often and don’t usually know which blogs belong to whom (uh, did that make sense? my latina ass is not used to using whom in a sentence....), i may follow another blog (or the revamped blog) of someone who has blocked me and never even realise it – that’s not me following you around and stalking like a total creep, that’s probably me not even remembering who you are. again, sorry – i don’t mean for this to come off rude or anything but???? its the truth? you know the drill, big following list, big followers list (well, big for me tbh, i cannot remember the name or alias of 600 people for the life of me, excuse me if my memory doesn’t serve me right), hard to keep track. there will be no witch hunts, at least on my part, because i deem them to be childish and way too dramatic for my taste. if you’d like to speak in private, adult to adult, i’m always game – i dread vague posting, i personally see it as a pathetic and weak trait. 

as long as you’re civil, so am i.

either way, do whatever makes you feel comfortable and safe on your blog – your  mental health is far more important (to me, and hopefully to you as well) than a hobby, than tumblr, rp or whatever fictional stuff someone’s writing or reading; you are responsible for your own online experience, and i am responsible for mine. that’s an empowering thing that should be reminded more often.

i truly hope i’ve managed to answer whatever doubts or questions you had in mind, if not my ims are always open and so is my discord. once again, thank you for reading my rules and stay safe!

edit; my dumb ass forgot to drop my disco handle, since i change often. it currently is   DOCTOR BITCHCRAFT !!! | 𝒏𝒐𝒙#1398

[the-girl-who-didnt-make-anysense]

I am curious, why do you ship Hannibal and Bedelia ? No judgement just that I haven't seen that being shipped !

Hi : D

me shipping non canon couple is apparently a lifestyle, maybe it's because they usually have much more potential in the fandom creative spectrum.

In this specific case, I think it's a mix of factors. Lately it's more an instinct shipping that an actual ponderate reasoning, let me explain with an example, when watching a movie or reading a book you often find yourself thinking about au and for a way or another I often come back to these two. I have to admit I'm probably more of a Clarice person, Silence of the lambs was the first time for me seeing that kind of dynamic between the "hero and the villain". I still haven't read their final book so I can't judge Clarice' complete arc but what I could notice is that she was shattered between various characters of the tv show, mostly Will and Bedelia. I'm actually trying to remember why I started the show in the first place, because it was definitely out of my usual zone, I don't remember if it was because I was studying psychology or maybe because I wanted to see someone with Gillian in it or if I was suggested by some list for its peculiarity what I know is that it definitely changed my view on anti-hero, aesthetic and drama show. I probably started it when season 3 was ending, I had already heard something about Hannigram and just a little bit of Bedelia. To be honest, at the beginning I didn't get it what everyone was excited about, Hannibal was without a doubt manipulating Will and didn't look like he cared much for him, With the first episodes I actually didn't trust anybody on the show except Will, he was fighting alone with his demons trying almost his best to stay sane aaaand he's soft with dogs. Then episodes 7 and 8 came and I kinda started to see why people shipped Hannibal and Will, when he found out Will is alive he looks really relieved, we have a first hint that Hannibal is capable of emotions that maybe he can care for another human being and that's the same time when Bedelia appears. There's something magnetic when Gillian and Mads act together that definitely had to the characters dynamic. Here we have again another side of him, Hannibal often lies but the "I feel protective of you" really got me, it's almost an intimate confession for him, and this time it doesn't look like something said just to be manipulative. The series leaves much unspoken about them, it's probably the couple you can theorize the most which on one side leads to let the fandom have more freedom with them but on the other side not much canon material to make them stand out to the general audience, explaining why they are a rare couple to hear about. 

From the little not-spoken on the show it looks like Bedelia is his longest relationship, they'd probably be around each other in various different stages of their life, he considers her a friend, an intimate friend, that's why he keeps coming back to her, why he doesn't get offended if she doesn't go to his dinner party, because he probably knows that she has her own reasons, that's also why he keeps inviting her, genuinely hoping for a positive answer one day. And that's another thing that intrigues me about them. Hannibal looks like the type that when he wants something he goes and gets it and when he can't have it well it probably ends like the mess we had at the end of season 2, but with Bedelia seems different; even when she scolds him he comes back to her, keep trusting her advices (where his impulsive behavior leads him is another different business). He would here and there bring back her attack with their common patient but it doesn't look like he's forcing her to become something she's not, he's not pressuring her to go around and crushing every wounded birds. It's pretty clear that she controls her instincts much better than him but still she's one of the few that can see his various shades and even after seeing behind the veil she's there, listening to him; I think this for Hannibal is a whole new level of intimacy because it doesn't look like many people stayed longer in his life, especially with this kind of closeness. At the beginning of my discovery outside the canon show, I stumbled across some fics written before s3 aired, some of them dealt with Bedelia having panic attacks, sometimes linked to being assaulted by her patient some other simply because she has her own demons to face, which I think would have been an interesting subplot to develop for the show but we had already established that the series has many flaws towards its female characters so back to the point, in these stories we see him let him go his mask, allowing his softer side to be seen leaving Bedelia to ponder till what limit she can hold on and let go because despite his tenderness she knows he's dangerous and to come back to the tv show and sum up this speech that's probably what drew me to them in the first place, their dancing around each other in this complex play in which sometimes they adjust their armor to stay as emotionally distanced as possible but on the next step they could melt dancing into each other arms. 

This rumbling went totally out of control, I may have gone out of theme and probably not really answered your question but all this thinking got me curious so if you’d like I’ll be really interested if you’d tell what are some of your favorite ships and why you ship them : D

[aeide-thea]

tagged by @crushcandles​ in a beautiful circle of reciprocal memery!

birthday: august

zodiac: virgo sun / taurus moon / cancer rising; i don’t, like, Believe in astrology except in the way that some of tumblr did, for a while, which is to say, as a sort of mystical lens through which to focus one’s self-examination, but i’m told the above triad translates into ‘is a perfectionist who tries to hide eir own messiness, values stability and security and beautiful material things, has a lot of Feelings,’ which sounds about right!

last song listened to: i’ve had the amazing devil’s the horror and the wild on repeat for the last... many days, as i know many of us have, but for some reason tonight i got to thinking, all sweetly-nostalgic, about the music an almost-lover shared with me in 2014, and so the answer to this question is actually, a little anachronistically, dave carter & tracy grammer’s ‘tanglewood tree’ (i yearn away, i burn away, i turn away the fairest flower of love, which, oof is that triad painfully on point).

hobbies: …does blogging count as a hobby? i’ve loved and left a lot of art forms in my time, including poetry and classical singing; i really enjoy bicycling, and rock climbing although i haven’t been in ages, and figuring out how to use the largely exorsexist language of fashion to represent my nonbinary gender, which if not a hobby as such is definitely a project! would love to incorporate some more Making of Things into my life, though, particularly in this next housebound stretch of time—might work on turning that fannish ~queer persistence~ design concept into an actual patch or shirt or something, maybe?

last movie you watched: babel (2006), with the fam, which i wouldn’t say was exactly a Representative Viewing Choice—that said, i liked it a little more than i’d necessarily expected, although i kind of felt as though the film, idk, gestured grandly in the direction of some ideas that it wasn’t ultimately quite deep enough to fully encompass?

dream job: lmao that sure is a question! teaching, maybe? i used to tutor and i loved that to bits. previous, mostly-given-up-on answers to this question have included: classics professor; poet (not, as it turns out, actually a Job); carpenter à la @carpentrix​; and just, like, being ian bostridge.

meaning behind url: any classicists reading this have already rolled their eyes and skipped to the next question, because wow did i make a basic-bitch choice of url when i made this blog, but! it’s from the iliad, whose first line in greek is μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος (mēnin aeide thea pēlēiadeō akhilēos), or in english ‘sing, goddess, the wrath of peleus’ son achilles,’ though why i felt, twelve years ago, that my perblog needed an ~invocation to the muse~ (since the two words i pulled are specifically the ‘sing, goddess’ bit), i cannot for the life of me tell you. tl;dr the sporadic firing of my so-called synapses is actually the ragged fusillade of the western canon.

top 4 ships: god, never ask me my favorite anything, i invariably stall out through a combination of ‘i’ve suddenly blanked on everything i’ve ever liked in my life’ and ‘are these really the most representative options out of Literally Every Possibility Ever, please hold while i do this optimization problem…’ having said that, one possible answer is something like: rms carpathia; the dawn treader; eärendil’s ship vingilótë; and then maybe skíðblaðnir from the eddas, for all your edc needs (since it folds up so it’s pocket-sized)? with honorable mentions going to the argo and to arthur’s ship prydwen from the preiddeu annwn, because i do love me some welsh-flavored arthuriana. but that response is admittedly something of a jade’s trick!

reading: uh, mostly a whole lot of geralt/jaskier fanfiction, lately! and then also the romans: from village to empire, for my sins. (the last Published Fiction i read, since i think that’s what this question is angling for, was ben aaronovitch’s false value, which—spoilers or whatever—i personally found to be much less fun than any of its predecessors, for a number of reasons including (1) insufficient nightingale (and therefore insufficient opportunity for generation gap banter, which has historically been the engine powering these books), not to mention (2) a disconcerting choice wrt how to present a trans character in text, namely ‘having the POV character actively misgender said character in their head until he introduces himself, at which time the narrative switches pronouns’: my personal feeling on this was, why not just skip straight to the introductions, and leave out the mental misgendering altogether? happy to hear out differing reactions, though.)

what food are you craving right now? not super-hungry just at the mo, but i’d take some kind of fancy sweet bun situation—a kardemummabulle, maybe, or else a yeasted bun swirled with, idk, orange and pistachio and some sort of light floral honey? or, ooh, speaking of pistachio, i could totally go for a pistachio financier, maison kayser makes a pretty great one if ‘going outside for frivolities’ is ever a tenable course of action again…

tagging: god, i don’t know, who are new people/people with urls i want explained/people i didn’t tag in the last meme? @oatplant? @giantsquidastern? @the-mirador​? @designatedloveinterest​? @raisedbyhyenas​? @leighway​? @pinehutch​? @reinvent-and-believe​? @obstinatecondolement​? anyway no pressure, obviously, do the thing if you want and don’t if you don’t! <3

[crapitskizaru]

Kidbad™️ x Reader (Sinbad!Eustass Kid)

I thinks after many glorious kidbad edits we need a scenario with his s/o from the movie 😂.Maybe the part when the island comes to life when they stoped to repair and arguining I can see them doing that.

Warning: dumbass kiddo cuz this is how im trying to comfort myself after dino disaster™️

Word Count: 1,6k

He caressed the ship’s side with affection, as if he was sharing an intimate moment with his lover.

“How did one person do so much damage?” he muttered more to himself than to the dog but Spike responded anyway, wiggling his tail enthusiastically. 

“You like them, don’t you?” Kid couldn’t help but pat the dog’s back. “You damn traitor.”

The island they temporarily stopped at seemed promising - at least from afar. They determined there should be enough wood to repair the damages; even though Kid knew the ship would have been fine without any renovations, his eyes hurt whenever they landed on broken pieces of once-impressive and, far more important, expensive mahogany carvings lying around the deck. 

“All right, listen up. We’re here for ten minutes,” Killer announced. “You get lost, you get left.” 

With a deep sigh, the captain gathered himself from the floor. His crew was already leaving the ship, mostly to feel a steady ground beneath their feet. Repairing their captain’s beloved ship was one of the lowest points on their list of priorities, but Kid couldn’t complain - as long as they brought the essential materials. 

“So I’m going to need a full set of chisels, the jack plane, and about a cord of cut wood.” 

“You heard the captain. Find some logs and be quick about it.” Killer grabbed a bucket and started getting off the ship himself. He wanted to add some comforting words at the sight of Kid’s pained expression when the man discovered yet another scratch on the ship’s side.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Your voice made Kid flinch halfway through patting the damaged railing. “You only need a little tree sap, and she’ll be as good as new.”

“When I want your advice, I’ll-” he stopped abruptly when you jumped onto the island’s ground, ignoring his words, a bucket in hand. “Hey, hey, hey! Where do you think you’re going?” 

Kid tried to suppress the incoming wave of anger when all of the response he got from you was silence - and your back turned to him. 

“Well, fine. At least take someone with y-” 

Words got stuck in his throat and got smothered away as soon as he spotted the rest of his crew surrounding you, stupid grins plastered on their faces.

“Why, thank you,” you chimed, putting on a little act just to see the hateful expression of your captain’s. “How nice to see some men haven’t forgotten a little common courtesy.” 

Killer was about to leave the ship but he stopped at the sound of someone gritting their teeth. 

“Common courtesy,” Kid muttered. “Not so fast, Killer.” 

“But you know they’re right. The tree sap would be perfect for-” 

“Just. Stay with the ship.” 

Kid didn’t like the suppressed sigh of his first mate - this kind of sigh a parent lets out when their child keeps whining to get a new toy. Kid didn’t like the island either; the sun was shining just too brightly, the trunks of trees too thin to make use of, the ground far too dry. 

And them. Still accompanied by Kid’s dumb mates, they wandered around with that annoying, innocent expression on their face. Kid struggled to keep up on the steep hill of the island. 

“I already said ‘thank you’!” he yelled after the group. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?” 

“It’s about repairing the ship.” You approached the first tree you could lay your eyes on. “If I break something, I fix it. Um, knife, please.” 

“Oh, yeah, like I’d give you a weapon?” 

Never before had Kid felt so betrayed by his crew than at that moment. The knives they always spent so much time on sharpening were now eagerly offered up to literally the worst person that ever walked on the planet. 

“Thank you, Heat,” you smirked flirtatiously and grabbed his knife. It took a lot of effort, but eventually you managed to cut through the tree’s bark and catch the flowing stream of its sap into the bucket. 

“You know, you really need to be more courteous, captain. He, he.” Heat didn’t get a chance to react when his captain’s fist landed directly on his face, sending him backward. 

“Oh, great,” Kid murmured. “Now I’m getting etiquette lessons from a fried bilge rat.” 

“Well, they did save the ship, captain.” 

“Why, thank you, Wire.” 

“And now they’re helping to fix it!”

“Very handy, I say. And brave-” 

“This...disaster of a person wouldn’t know how to fix a broken fingernail!” Kid snarled, waves of heat circulating through his chest. They already destroyed his ship, stole his crew, even his dog, with their stupid remarks and bravery. And charms. And their quick wits. And-

“Honestly, you’re the most boorish, pig-headed man I’ve ever met,” they complained, piercing him with a glare. 

“Oi, kitten. I’ve seen the highborn boys your type hangs out with...and I’m the only man you’ve ever met.”

By the shocked gasps his crew must have faked, Kid figured he may have gone too far - his worries evaporating in a speed of light as soon as a bucket hit the back of his head, cold, slimy liquid running down his spine. 

He turned around with a smirk. Did they really want to start a fight with him? 

“Oh, no. No, no-” You had to stop and close your mouth so that you wouldn’t swallow a missile of stinky mud which hit your face with surprising strength, making you stumble. 

He was unbearable. He was awful. He was just the worst.

“You...you...” You searched for an accurate adjective while wiping the mud off of your face. “Egoistical...” 

“You spoiled...” 

“-disrespectful,” A particular, and also quite unfortunate, lobster crawling around seemed just right to be used as a projectile so you picked it up. “Pretentious, pompous-”

“Deluded!” Kid shook his goggles to get rid of the tree sap inside of them. “High and mighty...” 

But you were already too pumped up to care about anything he wanted to say, now throwing every little, or not so little, thing that had been unlucky to lay within close proximity. “-self-centered, untrustworthy, ungrateful, impossible, insufferable...” 

“At least I’m not repressed!” Kid yelled, finally stopping your rant. 

“Repressed?” The question ended up being gritted through your teeth. “I’ll show you repressed!” 

You snatched a plank from the ground - it must have been attached to a root, but the boiling anger in your gut gave you a surge of strength as you lifted it up and was about to poetically slap your captain across the face and knock away that stupid expression. 

But before you made your new dream come true, the ground shivered underneath your feet. 

“What the...?” 

All the trees and bushes suddenly disappeared, as if sucked into the island. You were blinded by a sudden light and a lantern, a huge ball of white, moved towards your group. 

“Put it back,” Kid ordered, separating the words, and for once - you listened. 

If the island turned out to be an enormous sea creature...Your chances of making it back to the ship were dropping with each second. 

The ground moved again, revealing an eyeball the size of a swimming pool; and it was staring straight at you. 

“Ew!” you couldn’t help but flinch. 

“Ew!” Heat grimaced as he lost his balance and fell right onto the eye, landing on a slimy substance. “Ew!” he exclaimed once again when Spike started to lick the mucus with awful enthusiasm. 

“Run!” Kid’s roar snapped you out of the paralysis as all of your crewmates - including you - suddenly discovered their hidden talent in sprinting with the speed of light. “It’s a fucking fish! Killer!” 

You were far too scared to care about Kid practically shouting into your ear, your legs seemingly lifting you off the ground and into the air, gusts of wind blowing around your whole frame. 

Kid noticed the gap between the fish’s flipper and its body before you did. “Jump!” 

And so you jumped, not paying attention to how wide the gap was - for all you cared, it could be the size of the Grand Canyon and you would have still taken a leap - what mattered was getting to the ship in one piece and sailing away. 

You lost your balance on the other side, stumbling forward and into the arms of the most annoying man on Earth. But he did soften your landing, so you sent him a thankful smile. 

He was about to say something but you were soon whooshed away by the rest of the crew making it through the precipice, all of you sliding down the fish’s side - you were blinded by speed, tearing up, the rush of air knocking the breath out of your lungs. 

With the corner of your eye, you noticed Killer guiding the ship in your direction. 

Thank you, God, for Killer, you managed to think before you were once again launched into the air. 

You were already starting to worry about getting your face smashed into the wooden deck before a pair of arms caught you, and you found yourself in the embrace of the worst captain the world had ever seen. But you wouldn’t ever swap him for any other captain, no way. 

Landing on two feet beside Killer, you and Kid watched in awe as the giant fish moved from its previous spot, preparing to swim away and sending a whole wave of salty ocean water into the deck of the ship. 

As the fish submerged, only the creaking of the railing and the annoyed groans of the crew disturbed the silence. 

“I don’t know about you,” Kid panted slightly, taunting you with a raised eyebrow. “But I ain’t ever doing this shit again.” 

[comickergirl]

Alright. Let’s give this a shot.

SPOILER-Y DISCUSSION OF CAPTAIN MARVEL, INCOMING:

I figure the best way to do this is chronological; my prior attempts have not been chronological, which might account for their feeling a little...all over the place and unorganized.

This will also be a good test to see how much of the film I remember.

RIGHT THEN: First and foremost, (and we gleaned this from the trailers, obviously) MEMORY-LOSS PLOT. Which is Classic Carol™. She’s lost her memory like. Four times.

(her poor brain D:)

All of this to say: The premise of the movie, a kind of reverse origin story in which Carol figures out who she is, in a very literal but also figurative sense, was a great way to go, IMO.

Love all the moments from Carol’s past. I was admittedly surprised that we didn’t get more of that? But what was there was effective and given the amount of ground the movie had to cover, I think it was sufficient.

So after the dreams** we get the early morning fight with Yon-Rogg (who I was absolutely certain was Yon-Rogg, in spite of all the back and forth speculation and Marvel attempting to ‘hide’ his identity) and there’s exposition, obviously, and the set up of Carol’s struggle with Yon-Rogg’s forced Kree values clashing with Carol’s humanity but MORE importantly...

PHOTON BLASTS.

Love the way they render the energy pulsing just below the surface of her skin. Looks so cool. 

Then: Chit Chat Time with The Great Intelligence!

I thought for sure it was gonna be Helen Cobb.

BOY WAS I MISTAKEN. (More on that in a sec.)

Favorite Visual #1: The slow pan of Starforce and the excellent shot of Carol’s helmet as they swim to shore on Torfa.

The whole rescue mission sequence/Carol’s kidnapping is...Truly a Highlight, in my opinion.

I mean!

She’s running around the enemy ship! Without her boots! Pummeling the Skrulls with unwieldy metal shackles! And growling in their faces!

#BOSSOFSPACE

Also, comic connection alert: Carol was kidnapped and experimented on by the Brood, which resulted in her stint as Binary.

So, back to the movie:

Talos man.

TALOS.

We’ll get to him later.

Okay what month of 1995 does Captain Marvel take place in? Because I was honestly offended that no one, and I mean NO ONE made a Buzz Lightyear joke re: Carol’s outfit and being a member of STARCOMMANDFORCE who checks her wrist communicator to try and make contact.

(Toy Story came out in November so if this takes place in the summer I GUESS I will let it slide.)

But otherwise dug all of the 90s references.

The little Gameboy sound when she calls Yon-Rogg!

(Also, train chase was great but I’m trying to save time though I do feel inclined to mention Kelly Sue DeConnick! Bringing some quality side eye! Very nice.)

Young Fury + Carol = excellent buddy cop combo, 14/10 would take an entire spinoff of their wacky 90s road trip adventures.

‘You look like someone’s disaffected niece’ might be favorite line in the film.

Let’s pause for a moment and appreciate the score, shall we? Pinar Toprak CRUSHES IT; the Captain Marvel theme feels like something out of The Rocketeer but with about 400% more sci-fi synth and I LOVE IT.

**Love the piece of score played when Carol wakes up. (Appropriately titled “Waking Up” I think, on the soundtrack.)

I also like the songs they picked for the movie? This is probably the complaint I’ve seen most often, that they feel obvious and easy, but. I dunno. I was never expecting something like Guardians of the Galaxy? So I wasn’t mad about it. 

(In related news, I’ve been listening to “Connection” on repeat ever since the special look trailer dropped.) 

Anyways.

GOOSE.

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSE.

MY GOOD FLERKEN GIRL.

(So, yes, breezing past the bar interrogation--though I do like the ghostly images of Carol’s past that crop up--as well as the trip to Pegasus, again in the interest of time.)

(WAIT. NO. THE TAPE JOKE.)

(Okay for real. Moving on.)

So then. THEN.

The Rambeaus. And the feelings.

Unpopular(?) opinion: I love that this big budget action movie focuses on female friendships and platonic relationships instead of romance THERE I SAID IT

ALSO LIEUTENANT TROUBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I spelled Lieutenant right on the first try. Just sayin’.

But in all seriousness, I love the time we spend in Louisiana. We get a lot of good stuff. Carol getting answers from Maria, Talos arriving with his soda (milkshake?) The standoff with Goose.

(Oh, and how could I forget Maria bidding farewell to the neighbor, shutting the front door as Carol continues to glower???)

‘What’s happening?’ ‘It’s loading.’ XD

Favorite Visual #2 (Chronologically, but actually the one I like best in the movie) The Pysche-Magnitron Light Speed Engine explosion.

(Thank you, Marvel, for changing it to ‘light speed engine,’ which is much easier to spell than Psyche-Magnitron)

But yeah, that was the visual that sold me, in the earliest trailer. I wish I had some profound reason for that, but the truth is I just love blue-glow-y stuff.

BUT ALSO

(And, okay, an additional spoiler- warning because this is a big one. Like. Big.)

...................................................................

...................................................................

...................................................................

Seriously, go away if you haven’t seen the movie yet.

................................................................................................................................

MAR-VELL iS A WOMAN

LIKE THIS WHOLE TIME. EVERYONE WAS SO FOCUSED ON JUDE LAW. And then there was that blip, right before the release, when Annette Bening revealed she was the Great Intelligence, again after months of secrecy so we were all like, HA we know the TWIST.

BUT NO. NO WE DID NOT.

Well played, Marvel. Well played.

This was something I was thinking about before the film came out; I just kind of assumed, because of the lack of an apparent ‘Mar-Vell,’ that Carol would be the first and only Captain Marvel in the MCU. And she basically is, b/c we have no indication that Dr. Larson was moonlighting as a superhero, but regardless this is SO COOL. SUCH A GOOD TWIST.

(A quick Google search on how many ‘L’s are in Mar-Vell led to a serendipitous discovery: an article on the gender swap decision, and apparently it came very late in the game. Like. ‘Already looking at guys to play Mar-Vell’ late in the game. *insert themoreyouknow.gif here*) 

Right, okay, back to Feelings:

When Carol’s like: You don’t know who I am! I don’t know who I am!

I was. Emotional.

(Brie Larson is perfectly cast and does a wonderful job.)

Maria’s pep talk? Also caused emotions.

And Maria got to come on the mission! I was pleasantly surprised, and really glad that the visit there wasn’t like. Just a pit stop, you know?

RIP Science Guy, we hardly knew ye.

Again, jumping ahead, but may I just say: It was truly an Experience, watching this movie with folks who had no idea what a ‘Flerken’ was.

Both my friends at the first screening I attended, and then like. Half the theater at the second one. XD

The whole row was like: WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT when the tentacles came out.  

So yeah, Talos and the 180 on the REAL villains: Nice. The enduring complaint leveled at the MCU is a lack of compelling villains. (I guess Talos technically doesn’t count as a villain by the end of this, but. We’re going with it.) And Carol’s commitment to helping the Skrull refugees lifts plot elements from my favorite portion of the DeConnick run, so. YEP. LOVED IT.

(I was also trying to determine if Talos’ daughter was perhaps meant to be like. a Tic expy. Did it say ‘Tic’ on the pinball machine? Or ‘Tig’? Or something else entirely?)

Loved the...mind prison? sequence. All of it. “Come as You Are,” the Great Intelligence rockin’ out in the jacket, Carol’s Big Damn Hero moment. Brilliant. Spectacular. Amazing.

“My name is Carol.” 

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSS

(Or does she say her full name? I can’t remember.)

And then the subsequent fight scene where Carol’s like. Simultaneously kicking butt but also enjoying all this newfound power/strength? A+++++

Favorite Visual #3: Carol sitting on the railing with the lunchbox.

Sad to see Minn-Erva go, but. Was so cool that Maria gets her own hero moment.

And then this big ol’ fight scene where Carol DESTROYS SPACESHIPS WITH HER BARE HANDS. 

Favorite Visual #4: Carol going Binary in the red, blue, and yellow suit with the helmet FLYING THROUGH SPACE, LOVING EVERY MINUTE OF IT.

All of the visuals from this portion are so on point it’s like they’re pulled straight from the comics.

Favorite Visual #5: When Carol’s staring down Ronan and she like. Does that thing, where you hit your palm with your fist? (IDK the technical term there) And there’s this awesome energy burst and AGAIN, BLUE GLOW-Y THINGS. I love.

I’m pretty sure there’s an interview where Brie Larson talked about watching Indiana Jones? And wanting to be the female equivalent of that.

WELL, that’s the movie I immediately thought of when Carol blasted Yon-Rogg into a boulder, mid-goading.

(Y’know, like the scene in Raiders where Harrison Ford was too sick/tired to do the fight choreography, so he just. Shot the bad guy.)

ALSO, when she drags his sorry butt across the desert? I was IMMEDIATELY reminded of Kara dragging Astra into the DEO.

DANVERS GIIIIRRRRRRRRRRLLLLLS

*ahem*

THE FAMILY DINNER AT THE END?????

LITERAL FOUND FAMILY OF ALIENS AND SOLDIERS AND SUPERHEROES JUST. HAVING DINNER. PLAYING UNO. WASHING DISHES AND SINGING "PLEASE MR. POSTMAN”?

Thank you, Marvel, for this beautiful gen fic material.

 WHOOPS I forgot the costume colors bit. (Admittedly confused it with the ending wherein Monica gives Carol her jacket back. Sans ketchup stain.)

So backtracking ever-so-slightly...

Let’s see if I remember this right: We get

Red and gold (Binary send-up, possibly? Or maybe the original Ms. Marvel costume?)

IDK what to call it....Lite-Brite? (♪ makin’ thi-ings with lii-iii-ight ♫) 

Black and Gold (bathing suit costume?)

White and Green (original Mar-Vel/Kree colors) 

That last one’s the only one that’s like. Obvious and deliberate. I’m just guessing with the others.

BUT CLEARLY I am ABSOLUTELY ONTO SOMETHING with the Lite-Brite.

BACK TO THE ENDING Lt. Trouble gives Carol her jacket and that’s my fav look, out of all the costume variations we see in the movie. I mean. I love the black and green, admittedly, and the helmet looks SO GOOD for being something that should be ridiculous, but my go-to answer for superhero costume design is: add a leather jacket.

Favorite Visual #6: Carol in the suit and flight jacket, floating above Earth, ready to go save the day.

AND THEN SHE’S OFF.

Ooooh, ooooooooh, but we can’t forget the scene. The scene that I’m certain ticked off The Continuity Police. (You know the types.)

See, remember when Marvel was like, ‘Carol’s the first Avenger!’ and haters were like, ‘UH HELLO IT’S STEVE????!????’ 

And then Marvel was like, oh ho ho ho, we meant LITERALLY the ENTIRE INITIATIVE IS NAMED AFTER HER CALL SIGN AND SHIELD STARTS LOOKING FOR SUPERHEROES BECAUSE OF HER ERGO SHE IS THE FIRST die mad about it.

That was so very, very satisfying to see.

(Also I guess she’s a literal Captain in the air force? If the rank on the jet is legit. Pretty sure she’s a Major in the comics, though. But I assume this change is to help sell the ‘Captain Marvel’ name.)

And then, friends. And then.

I was fully prepared to leave the theater, uncertain of when we’d next see Carol.

EVEN AS THE MID CREDITS SCENE PLAYED. I was like. ‘Well, they’re gonna cut it off before we can see anythINOHMaNTHERESHEIS!!!!!!’

‘Where’s Fury.’

*insert aesthetically pleasing keyboard smash here*

BRING ON ENDGAME.

And before we wrap up here, one final note:

The Space Stone, sought after by Trickster Gods and Mad Titans alike, was for a brief time, nothing more than a glorified furball.

FIN

(Nope, wait. One little anecdote before we go: of my core group of buddies, I am the Comics Nerd, and thus I am often consulted after we’ve watched a Marvel movie. So I had to explain that YES, Kara Danvers had the last name Danvers first, but she was adopted, and her GIVEN fake name was Linda Lee, so in all fairness, the same-name thing is a little less plagiarize-y, b/c ‘Linda Lee Danvers’ does not necessarily match up as well as ‘Kara Danvers’--which wasn’t even used until really recently--to ‘Carol Danvers’. ...Honestly, I was just really happy they called out the connection MY WORK HAS NOT BEEN IN VAIN XD )

Also, I sometimes get replies on posts like this which is totally fine BUT, I would ask that folks keep really spoiler-y stuff out of ‘em. At least for a little while.

[geniedocroe]

Can I get a borhap and Queen ship? I’m 5’3, blonde, blue eyes, I Have a super broad music taste, I want to be an actress, I love to sleep as well as run (I’m probs the only person in the world) and I LOVE movies!

I ship you with Brian and Ben! I hope you enjoy 🖤

One day you saw Brian in a record shop. You couldn’t believe your eyes. Was that really Brian May? You loved Queen and you were sure it was him.

When you tried to take a closer look you noticed he was buying his own record. You couldn’t help but laugh. You didn’t notice that your laugh was way louder than you expected. Brian looked at you and wanted to die. You had never been more embarrassed in your life.

“Something funny?”

“It’s just that . . . isn’t that your record?”

He smiled so brightly at you that you couldn’t help but feel happiness spread through your chest. You’re whole heart swelled and after that you couldn’t really remember anything. You knew he asked you out and that your very first date was normal but you also knew that you’d want to go on many more dates with him.

Everytime you were stressed about Brian being away you would run. You’d run for miles. Wether it was daytime or nighttime, you were running. It gave you time to think and process your day.

When you weren’t running you were sleeping. You’d sleep from 6:00 pm to 11:00 am. It was so peaceful for you. You’d come home, eat dinner and sleep. You loved it.

Of course you loved hearing about what Brian liked. You’d listen to him for hours. Even though you didn’t really understand what he was talking about, you still found it so interesting. Brian found it adorable that you listened with so much interest.

When Brian asked you about the perfect date you couldn’t help but squeal. You’d want to stay at home, watch movies, eat popcorn, cuddle, and sleep. It was everything you wanted.

After work you came home and Brian was already there. Popcorn was set out on the coffee table, a movie was playing on the TV, and a blanket fort was built for the two of you. You almost cried at the sight. It was everything you wanted.

Brian and you had watched around 3 movies before he went to get something. You sat there for 5 minutes whilst nearly falling asleep. Brian came back to the fort and knelt beside you. Then he proposed. You screamed out the loudest YES you could.

The fort collapsed around you as the two of you went tumbling down from your hug. Brian has dropped the ring in the mess of fort materials. The two of you laughed about it and started to look for it. There really was such thing as a perfect date.

Not once did you regret walking into that record shop and laughing at the man that easily towered over you.

You had met Ben on the very first day of filming Bohemian Rhapsody. Gwilym was one of your bestfriends and he wanted you to be there with him. You were introduced to Ben but you didn’t have any romantic feelings for him at all.

As time progressed you started to feel something. Everytime you’d accidentally bump into each other your heart would jump and heat would rush to your face. You were rarely embarrassed by these things but Ben made you feel a m a z i n g.

Ben never really had romantic feelings for you either. About a quarter of the way through filming he started seeing a different you. He started seeing the real you and that’s who he fell in love with.

Everyday he’d come over and wake you up from your deep sleep which caused him to get hit with many pillows. Then he’d force you to get ready and run with him. You’d try to refuse but you loved running so you complied.

One day the both of you stopped in a park to sit on a bench and chat. You could see Ben glancing down at your lips every so often. Then you just kissed him.

That was the best decision you had ever made.

You tried to keep your relationship a secret but it was difficult. You wanted to scream that you loved Ben and he wanted to do the same. But you were afraid your friendship with Gwil would be damaged because Ben was his friend and he probably didn’t want his friends to date.

Hiding the relationship was really easy until you got pregnant. You and Ben had been together for a couple of months at that point. It was near the end of filming when you started to show.

Ben was so ecstatic. He desperately wanted to be a father. He’d try to spend every moment with you. As he would talk to you, he’d be getting dragged back to set.

Joe thought this was so funny. He didn’t know you were together and this caused him to tease Ben endlessly.

“Dude you’re obsessed with her!”

“Shut up Joe!”

You couldn’t hide being pregnant forever so you and Ben invited all the cast and some of the crew over to your house. Towards the middle of the night you stood up. Every turned in your direction.

“I wanted to announce two things.” You would glance at Ben and he stood too. “We both did actually.”

Gwil shot up and hugged you so tightly that you could’ve suffocated.

“I’m so happy for you both!”

“We haven’t even told you.”

“It’s obvious. You’re pregnant and you’re dating dating.” Lucy spoke up.

Apparently everyone had known for a long time but didn’t want to ruin everything. They loved having you around and they wanted you to be comfortable. You and Ben were shocked to say the least.

After your child was born, you asked Ben about marriage and the both of you agreed to get married.

Ben was the only person you could ever need. You were so happy to be starting a family with him. Your life was perfect.

[jesbelle-writes]

Well, that’s that.  I’ve been writing Mary Sue Saves the Galaxy since February of 2018.  It’s been a project, and now that it’s done, I’d like to say a little something about it.

Actually, I think I’d like to say a long something about it.

I struggled with describing this fic.  I know everybody says that, but I really haven’t found a way to make an elevator-pitch-style summary.  

So here’s the long version.

Last winter, when I was trying to come up with a plot for my next long fic – a process that requires lots of pacing and talking to myself – I couldn’t stop thinking about early Star Trek fandom.  I’d been following @spockslash and reading accounts of old fandom shenanigans on Tumblr and elsewhere, and all my brain wanted to do was imagine what it would be like to just hop in a time machine and go back there.

“Brain,” I said.  “This is all very amusing, but it’s not getting our next project underway.”

“Maybe this should be our next project,” said my brain.

“I don’t think anyone wants a fic of me getting high and discussing country music with DeForest Kelley. And besides, RPF gives me a hard squick.”

“Maybe we could fictionalize it.  You know – change the names to protect the innocent.”

“Somebody already did that, Brain.  It’s called Galaxy Quest.”

My brain waited patiently for me to catch up.

“That could work,” I told my brain.  “I could write a fic about a long-time Galaxy Quest fan… who travels back in time… because the aliens, whaddayacallem, also watched a time travel show… not unlike Quantum Leap… and they have a time machine… and the fangirl… who also writes fanfic… has to go back in time to save the show so that the whaddayacallem can build the ship… AND SHE COULD TOTALLY BANG ALAN RICKMAN’S CHARACTER!!!  MULTIPLE TIMES!  BRAIN!  IT’S PERFECT!!!”

“Glad you like it,” said my brain, buffing her nails on her shirt front.  “As a fic writer writing about a fic writer who saves the day with some preposterous bullshit, everyone’s going to call the character a Mary Sue.

“Screw ‘em.  I’ll just lean right into that.  Mary Sue Saves the Universe!”

“Make it ‘Galaxy.’  Let’s keep it humble.”

So I bought the movie because the movie gods have decreed that any movie I want to watch will not be streaming on any of the four services my roommate pays for.  While I waited for my DVD, I made some decisions about the story.

1.  I would squeeze in as many tropes as I could.

2.  I would sneak in a bunch of 5 and 1’s.

3.  Mary Sue would write 5 fanfics, each centering around a different member of the crew.  I posted those fanfics on their own under The Collected Works of Thalia Z. (Mary Sue’s nom de plume) -- you know, in case you want to read something shorter, but they’re also in the main fic.

4.  Mary Sue would be actual self-insert. Every time I start a project, I have something in mind that I want to learn.  I came to writing kind of later in life, and I missed writing those early wish-fulfillment stories – except for in my head, I mean.  It seemed to me that it might be instructive to make a character that’s a somewhat (I couldn’t bring myself to go whole hog) idealized version of me.  I think I was right.

I also poked around the internet for Galaxy Quest materials.  It turns out that there are a few comic books, but that cost money and I was already out $2.89 for the DVD.  I also found several deleted scenes, and the eye-stabbing wonder that is Travis Latke’s Galaxy Quest Page.  An E! mocumentary on YouTube rounded out my source material.

Travis Latke’s episode guide was particularly helpful since information about the show Galaxy Quest is really scant.  Poor Chen has one line in the movie.  It’s not much to go on, you know?  And my point is that TPTB behind Travis are responsible for the mpreg.  I just ran with it.  

I’ve got no one to blame but myself for the tentacles though.

[bettsplendens]

Character profile: Five-Alarm

Five-Alarm is a fairly buff medic. His parents were fire trucks, and they thought he would be, too, when his sirens started coming in. Hence the name. Yeah, turns out he’s an ambulance. Same general class of rescuer, though. If all had gone well and there hadn’t been a war, you’d have found him hauling people out of burning buildings and avalanches and the like. 

He’s a bit over TFP Ratchet’s size, same general build but more solid through the midsection, similar color scheme. White, a few hints of red. Lots of bright bio-lights tracing around his frame that flash an undulating pattern of red and blue when brightened up, signalling to anybody he’s just hauled out of rubble that they don’t have to panic at him. He also has a set of relatively large winglets that lift up and flare out, their plates separating evenly to uncover holo-generators, and produce hardlight ‘feathers’ in the same patterns as his bio-lights. The whole thing is basically meant to blast a new patient with “hello I am a medic do not punch me” signals as fast and loud as possible so they calm down. His light bar is flexible and wraps around his shoulders, so if you’re looking at him from any angle, he’s basically just got a giant neon sign over his helm saying “MEDIC”. 

His alt mode is the sort of thing you’d expect to see if someone was designing an ambulance to have land mines thrown at it. Large enough to carry someone small in his cargo bay, heavy tires, heavy armor, stocky build, wide wheel base, the whole nine yards of “don’t even bother fucking with me” features that one can put on a technically civilian vehicle. 

He has this neat feature where some of the overlapping plating on his chassis sorta folds outward, expanding out of its flat structure and uncovering a few layers from his spark chamber. His chamber is still pretty well protected, but the area around it gets thinner, which looks a bit odd until you see the structure it makes as they unfold. They wind up parallel to his side plating, meaning he has something of a hollow in his general chassis area. He can lean over someone with his chassis like that, protect them from just about all angles, and use himself as armor for them, or put them in it and fold things up a bit. It only fits small bots, but they’re the ones who need the extra armor! 

Besides all that, his hearing is sharp, albeit a bit iffy now that he’s been around a lot of explosions, and he has infrared vision that he can turn on at will to try and spot hidden fires or buried potential patients. It’s not quite functioning at full precision in one optic, though, and his long-range vision is pretty shoddy. Medics can’t see very far even when they haven’t been near explosions. 

He carries a war hammer in a specially modified subspace pocket designed to hold just one or two large objects. It has a joint between head and shaft designed to limit the amount of the force of impact that gets transmitted between the head and shaft, though- medics’ servos can’t handle the recoil of such a large hammer swung by such a strong frame. All the force that doesn’t go into the target has to be dissipated against springs to avoid numbing and damaging his servos. The parts of the shaft not used as a handle are a sort of trophy case- badges and weapon triggers from opponents or just from people who pissed him off real bad, fangs and claws from animals, glued in place and then bound with wire to keep them from jostling loose. 

His whole frame is a bit beat up. Plating dull from stress, covered in scars from cuts that never quite healed right, joints that creak a bit oddly now and then, probably some shrapnel in assorted places. 

And his mind is a LOT beat up. 

Five-Alarm has been a medic through the whole war, for obvious reasons. Like every other medic, he was badly overworked, pushed so far past the end of his rope he couldn’t have found it if his life depended on it. Had to start assessing any potential patient with an optic for if he could save them, if he could save them but in an amount of time that would leave too many others to die, or if he wouldn’t be able to save them with the supplies, time, and situation that he had. That’s not great for someone’s mental health, not on a daily basis, not with this lingering idea that if he could just move faster he could save them.

As the war went on, he started taking stimulants so he’d need less sleep. Relatively mild things at first, then stronger, increasingly makeshift substances, with increasingly strong side effects. 

He also started jump-starting his patients with his own spark. He was strong enough, after all, large enough and durable enough and with enough spark energy that his frame could boost someone’s guttering, desperately grasping spark and regenerate afterwards. It worked, sometimes. Often as not, though, the spark that was guttering already flickered and died against his, but at least they weren’t alone, at least they knew someone was here, was trying to help, was with them. 

Somewhere along the way, he started hallucinating. Not too badly at first, flickers and moving shadows and half-heard voices. The occasional thing that someone might mistake for a ghost, if they weren’t a medic with enough scanners and instruments to determine that what he was watching didn’t actually exist. He did have to check that it wasn’t some kind of spark-echo trapped in his own chamber, of course, but he quickly arrived at the realization that he wasn’t actually seeing anything. That it was probably related to stress. That it was fine, it would go away on its own once things were safer.

Then he wound up on what should have been a fairly easy posting. A smallish group of bots, dropped off in a newly constructed base on a moon rich in resources, with no job other than manning the machinery and otherwise collecting resources to be distributed. 

What his superiors didn’t realize was the reason why they couldn’t find any other settlements on that moon. It was inhabited by various organic animals, they knew that much, but they didn’t know what the worst of them was. A fairly large creature, easily the size of most Cybertronians, adapted to both hunt organic prey or dig for energon deposits. A species that wore bone and meteorite shards as armor. Not sapient, but fairly clever, prone to moving in packs. Nocturnal, repulsed by light, initially repelled by the noise and spotlights of construction. Once the main ship was gone (never to return, though no one involved would have known it), the creatures got bolder, and the workers found themselves in their own little horror movie. 

Their first losses were at night. They didn’t know, couldn’t have known, not to go out at night. 

The next, dawn and dusk. They had to learn from bitter experience that the creatures can and will run between shadows if sufficiently curious, or if they smell even a drop of energon from the tiniest cut. 

They stopped going out at any time other than midday, but even that wasn’t enough. The creatures had already torn down their little transport-ships, learned that they liked the taste of Cybertronian-purified energon, and were trying to figure out how to get in. The base had never been made to defend against attacks by a thing that feared light, the spotlight coverage was spotty at best. But it was enough to let them see the creatures, the things that crept up to the edge of the lights to watch them, the things wearing shards of corpses as armor and looking for a way to get more.

The sensible response was to seal off most of the base as thoroughly as possible, even cutting some of it down to remove the potential for shadows, and rig every spotlight they had to cover their existing base. The creatures wouldn’t go through a band of enough light, and that was what it took to keep them out while the remaining crew tried to figure out a way to leave. 

Until the lights failed. Until an electrical storm that shorted out their power, and the discovery that the creatures, if given the chance, could and would rip through doors and walls alike. 

Alarm would have saved the others if he could. He always would have. But he wound up being surrounded, and by the time he’d hammered a couple of the creatures to death, the others were dead. They weren’t even soldiers, most of them, poor things. 

He spent the night crammed into a closet with every portable light he’d been able to find, most of them rigged to plug into his own frame in various ways to keep them running, fully aware that to sleep, to let his headlights and his display-lights dim, would mean he would die too. 

The creatures left back to their burrows in the mornings, having drained every bit of energon they could find, and took much of the material from the bodies with them. That left Alarm, on his own, in a base that never should have been maintained by fewer than 5 bots, with full knowledge that letting anything crumble meant the creatures would be back to eat him. 

He brought the spotlights back online, he found as many lights as he could get to keep right next to his berth, he hauled his chemistry kit into the single room he was keeping alive, and he cut away every piece of base that attached to that one to be sure its own shadows wouldn’t let something up close to him. 

That’s about when things started to unravel further for Alarm. He couldn’t sleep during the day because he had to spend all his time repairing the base’s lights and the generators that kept them running, because if any of it failed, he would absolutely die. He couldn’t sleep at night because it was dark, because he had to be awake to carry out disaster scenarios if something failed, if another electrical storm or something worse put things out of commission, if the radio still running in the background got any signals that might indicate some kind of hope to get free, if, if, if, and on and on and on. 

By the time anyone found him, he was a mess. Hyped up on a very makeshift injectable stimulant to keep him awake, keep him moving fast enough to do everything he needed. 

Hallucinating almost constantly, to the surprise of no one with any information on his circumstances. Ghosts, primarily- echoes of bots he couldn’t save. Bleeding from various wounds, crushed, broken, mutilated, occasionally outright on fire, but never acting like it. Watching him, even talking now and then, about nothing in particular. 

Or the not-ghosts. The images of bots he did save, reappearing now, possibly as some kind of coping mechanism, so he could talk to them and they could tell him about important things he’d seen but hadn’t consciously registered. 

Or fragments. Corpses scattered across the floor, energon pooling around his pedes, enough to mistake for something real if it hadn’t been for the lack of tactile sensation. 

When someone else finally found him, he didn’t realize it. He assumed the big, healthy-looking bot standing in front of him was a hallucination, someone he didn’t remember seeing, and, not in the mood to talk, tried to walk through him. 

It didn’t really work, of course, he ran smack into Bracer and fell on his aft. And, after a few moments of prodding to be sure he hadn’t run into, what, a stack of crates, he immediately clung onto the first bot he’d seen in who knew how long and insisted that they leave, now, now, now, before nightfall.

Bracer is a smart bot. If someone is alone, thoroughly haggard-looking, and marked up with scars of claw and bite marks that haven’t healed right, and they’re insisting that everyone leave before nightfall? He will do that. 

It took a long time in deep sedation for the stimulants to work their way out of his system. That took the worst of the hallucinations with it, but he’s still seeing things. Mostly relatively benign things- ghosts, or bots he saved at some point, turning up to talk to him. Occasionally something more concerning, like wounds appearing on the frames of actual people. Every now and then, if he’s especially stressed, shades of the creatures that tried to eat him and just barely failed. 

Five-Alarm is still not exactly what we’d call stable. Paranoid, overly concerned with the welfare of others, their need to be in ideal shape, to the point of harassing other bots whose scars he deems too likely to cause trouble. He’s trying to help, he really is, but anxiety and mania can make him too pushy. 

He’s definitely still hallucinating!

And he doesn’t sleep. Not by any force of drugs, but mostly out of anxiety. He doesn’t sleep, he paces, and occasionally crashes and naps for a little while crammed into whatever corner was nearest when he crashed. Usually clutching a weapon of some sort for protection against... nothing, actually. 

He can’t convince himself that he’s safe. And he can’t sleep, he can’t, it’s not safe, something might get in, he needs to be awake, to be aware, but dear Primus it’s getting hard to exist. The only reason he isn’t back on stimulants is because he’s not allowed to have them, or the structures to make them. Probably a good idea. He’s not inclined to argue too much with it. 

He’d probably, definitely sleep better if he had someone to sleep with. Contact would help. 

And, not shockingly, he’s terrified of the dark. Not just because of the uncertainty, not just because he can’t see what might be here. Because he knows, he’s already made the associations, that the darkness brings death with it. 

He should really be on antianxiety meds. He isn’t, he’s afraid they’ll dull his senses, but he really, really should be.