#I just write stuff so people can mindfuck their faves

[heartbreak-sandwich]

beep boop I am on the verge of finalizing this Gator ficlet, and I am so afraid to post it, honestly. Terrified.

[eveninglottie]

write what you want regardless of the genders. it's better to spit the story out and then go back and revise then get hung up on whether or not every interaction or plot point could be part of an 800 word call-out tweet-longer that briefly trends on fanfic twitter. everyone comes at fiction from their own distinct background. you could write the most 'pure' romance ever, regardless of the genders, and it could still inadvertently trigger someone or raise concerns. comfort can be misleading.

so I don’t want you to think I’m disagreeing with you here, because you’re right. people spend way too much time thinking out the possible doomsday scenarios of what they might do instead of just doing it to see what happens. I am one of those people, for sure, it’s stopped me from doing pretty much everything I’ve ever wanted to do my whole life, so we’re on the same page here with both the concept of not worrying about what other people will think and also how no one holds the magic gatekeeping key which dictates what is problematic or not. every person is different and some things will upset people in a way that doesn’t upset you. that’s just a given. 

but I think that’s not really helpful when you’re trying to figure out your own motivations for doing something. 

like, yes, is a lot of this affected by how I think other people will react to things I create? of course. everything i do will be affected by how I think other people will react. that’s just how my brain works, and it’s my job to keep growing more confident in myself to counteract that (because the older you get you really do give less of a fuck and boy it’s so nice!!) what I was trying to bring up in that post was my own reasons for feeling more comfortable writing one thing than another. 

because I just think it’s fascinating and complicated and I’ve mentioned more than once to friends that it really just surprised me how freeing writing m/m has been vs m/f. it’s like my descent into sk was this moment of enlightenment when I realized “hey this is a hell of a lot easier to talk about when there are two boys involved!” like I realize that the majority of my writing the past two years has been on my own, and even though I can tell you’ve I’ve written well over 500k words and only posted maybe a fifth of that I can’t prove what I’m about to say so you’re just going to have to take my word for it, BUT I’ve included so much more discussion about sexuality and how characters express it and grow with it and figure out for themselves what they are. like it was never a thing I thought about a lot when I was writing my m/f fics (even tho all the women were still bi but that’s a whole other barrel of monkeys). it was never me sitting down and interrogating my choice for writing that pairing the way I did. I just did it. (I didn’t stop to consider the gender is what I mean, I thought about literally all the other things but gender and sexuality were not included in that) but now there’s a whole other sphere of characterization that I keep finding myself drawn to, and even without realizing it, it becomes a big part of how I write certain characters. (like deciding to write keith as demi while still being sexually and physically attracted to shiro has been really eye opening for me as someone on the asexual spectrum.)

because like, for example, I wrote a fem!bilbo fic, right? so clearly I was thinking about gender a bit, but most of that had to do with me having always reimagined that story (and lotr) with female protagonists. that’s what I did with a lot of childhood faves, actually, eragon, harry potter being two of the most prominent, and thinking about fem!bilbo and how that would change the story especially if she was in a relationship with thorin and the shire was maybe a bit more stifling for a woman, etc. - BUT that was one of those pairings that I’d never been drawn to when it was m/m. I couldn’t really get into it, and I was not a fan of the hobbit movies at all, honestly, and I tried, and it was only when I switched things around did that fic click for me, but I wonder a lot if I were to have come to hobbit fic later, after I’d gotten over my aversion to m/m (not in general, just me writing it, because reasons), would I have written it with bilbo as a boy? would I have been less likely to imagine bilbo as a woman? or was it a number of factors that led me to write that fic which really couldn’t have existed in any other incarnation, and would it have been a different fic entirely?

(the hp thing in particular is SO WEIRD to think about now because a lot of what I’ve been grappling with in my drarry fic is very male-centric? not like in a bad way, just thinking about the rivalry and bonds between boys and how boys look up to their male mentors and authority figures in very different ways than they do their female counterparts and also what does being interested in other boys do to one’s internalized and very misogynistic/homophobic ideas of Legacy and Family and Proper Gender Expression specifically when it comes to sex with other men like it’s Very Gendered in my head and it’s hard to separate that from what I used to be interested in which has expressed itself in other ways, specifically roslyn as chosen one in ascendant which I’ve said before was the result of a decade of rewriting those boy heroes as girls because I felt so connected to them and wanted girls to be every bit as important as boys, like I could draw a straight line from me writing bits and bobs of girl!harry as a fourteen year old and me writing roslyn in ascendant and wow I kind of want to punch myself in the face for how long I’ve rambled on about my own stuff but you know what no this is my tumblr and I get to obsessively and exhaustively talk about my own fictional worlds if I want to)

so it’s been a bit of a mindfuck trying to reconcile this shift in my own interests with the fact that I am a woman who identifies as largely asexual. and I think it’s important to sit down with yourself every once in a while and really look at the things you produce and do some self-examination. because I do wonder a lot if my comfort writing m/m now is because of this lack of pressure I normally feel when writing female characters or if it’s because I don’t have to interact with Me As Author so much when I write about boys because I am not a boy or if it’s because I feel a lot more comfortable identifying as queer when for the majority of my life I’d forced myself to be straight even though it didn’t feel right. 

then there’s the whole conversation about women writing m/m and how a lot of queer men feel they’re being fetishized or that their stories are being appropriated by women, in the same way that white people writing stories about people of color can be appropriative, men writing about women, straights writing about lgbtq+, cis people writing about trans or genderqueer people, et cetera with literally any minority being written by someone not from that minority, right? 

and I think it’s a bit reductive to say that it doesn’t matter. because it does matter. you’re right in saying that it matters to someone and I think the job of anyone who creates any kind of content is to think about that and be mindful that you don’t create in a vacuum. your art has power even if you don’t think it does, if you don’t want it to, and that’s something no one should take for granted.

now, I am not saying that certain people do not have the right to write certain stories. no one has the right to write anything, just as no one is forbidden from writing anything. and no one writing anything should be harassed for writing something that people perceive is out of their wheelhouse (because a lot of marginalizations are not visible! abuse, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, whether you’re neurotypical or not! and there’s no requirement that you make public your trauma/identity to provide cred! in fact it’s kind of horrific that anyone thinks this!) it’s a complicated dynamic but the more we talk about these things the easier it is when a marginalized person says, “hey this thing you wrote is kind of bad,” the writer can go “oh man I’m sorry, let me think about it and see what I did wrong so I can do better in the future” OR “oh wow I see what you mean, but this is important to me” and the reader can go “I respect your right to write what you want and in the future I’ll do more to shield myself from this kind of content” instead of Cancelling someone because they didn’t effectively prostrate themselves before the ultimate judges of problematic content, a bunch of randos on the internet.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, yes, I agree with you that it’s not necessary to worry about this stuff, and that a lot of it is energy wasted especially when you’re worrying about theoretical responses from people who read your stuff, but that’s not helpful to me, because I think that’s disregarding the fact that we live in a society with weird power dynamics that are constantly shifting. I think it’s my job as someone who is mentally capable of dealing with this kind of self-examination to push back on some of these things when I can. because if I didn’t challenge myself every once in a while, I wouldn’t grow as a person or a writer and if there was one mantra I would live my life by besides the assertion that I would be blissfully happy if I downloaded my consciousness into a robot body, it would be that You Have To Be Okay With Critique and It’s Good When People Call You Out In A Safe Setting, like everyone is a dick and an asshole and a Bad Person and pretending you’re not is the most useless battle you could ever fight. we contain multitudes and some of those tudes are downright ugly.

quick sidebar: I would not have been able to have this kind of conversation with myself four years ago, and something I have not even talked about is how my shift toward more m/m content began at the same time as I was getting used to getting medical treatment for my grab bag of mental illnesses, like it’s pretty obvious that I got into sk right about the time I settled into my meds so what does That even mean?? so many THINGS to consider!!

idk. I know when I write stuff like this people think I’m beating myself up over it, but I’m really not. I just like talking about it sometimes and this tumblr is where all my neuroses go to live forever more in the annals of this blue hell until I chicken out and delete them the next day. I guess I know that when I read other people talking about things I’ve also been thinking about, it’s nice to hear. and as this is something that is still new to me, fandom in general is still bonkers to a part of my brain because I came into it as an adult, the whole conversation (if there even is a conversation because there might not be but there’s one going on in my brain) about women writing m/m is interesting complicated and something I think about a lot. clearly without any real focus or conclusions to be drawn, because I dropped out of college and never learned how to make my point in a concise and understandable manner. 

anyway I hope you don’t read this as me arguing with you nonny, I just wanted to clarify what I mean in the original post

[mswyrr]

lucifer s4 trailer

I think it looks really good! It looks like they’re digging into character and theme stuff I’ve wanted them to handle in depth.

Chloe

They started out well in S1&2 balancing the romance but I think that they delayed the reveal just a little too long with the stretched out S3, so here we’re getting the chance to catch up with important elements of Chloe’s side of things. Notably, her moral/identity struggle. It’s been limited by her lack of knowledge and that worked at first but leaning too heavily on Lucifer’s POV tends to lean towards pedestalizing her. She’s not actually PURE (tm) or else she wouldn’t find him so attractive as a person. As I mentioned in my meta post here, telling a “monster romance” like this, from the monster’s pov, does have that weakness of potentially not giving enough material on the fact that the heroine is attracted to the monster as a way of relating to her own darkness/suppressed desires.

And that is, I think, what she has to cope with here: she’s drawn to this person on a deep, soulful (in addition to physical lol) level. (When it was just physical, she wasn’t into him. She’s genuinely into him as a person.) He speaks to something in her deepest self... and now she has to deal with the horrifying moral/ethical/existential mindfuck of it turning out that this person she rings so true with--who is something to her no one else has ever been, who touches her heart in a way no one else has been able to reach--is, you know, SATAN lmao

Not “canon Satan” but still... And she just had a horrible clusterfuck of a relationship with Cain, so Biblical Evil is not exactly looking that shiny right now.

Linda never rang true soulfully with the guy like that - they just banged, you know? They’re good friends and they used to bang. And her self-identity isn’t structured so strongly around a fundamentally moral worldview as Chloe. Sure, Linda is a wonderful person! But her pov is more interpersonal/psychological, whereas Chloe really centers herself in her own deep thinking on what Right and Wrong are - something she’ll go against the tide of other peoples’ opinions to defend. She can be so strong! BUT the one thing that can absolutely destroy her is if her foundations are shaken...

Without that core she’s lost. She has to rebuild it from the ground up.

She’s an intensely moral atheist thrown into a world where all this supernatural crap is real and btw... this figure she was so drawn to, this trickstery sweetheart, kinda nuts but at his worst a self-destructive “homeless magician” is something far, far different than she thought.

Her foundations are how she manages to be so strong for others. That core of truth she’s worked out for herself. And that’s been ripped away. 

Lucifer is himself, with all the issues we know so well, so he’s really focused on his own self-worth stuff but IMO her conflict isn’t exclusively or primarily about whether she loves him enough, it’s about her own identity issues and this big question of “What even IS right and wrong in this new world?” and “Am I allowed to want this?” “What does it say about me that I love this person so much?”

Eve

This show is good about letting female characters be flawed and even do awful things but still be treated with narrative sympathy. I think Eve’s “You don’t have to change. You’re already perfect.” is clearly setting her up as representing the antithesis of the entire damn show, textually and meta-textually. It’s all about growth and redemption and change and she’s planting her flag against that.

IMO her classical role with Lucifer has been reversed: this time *she’s* the one offering the temptation.

And it’s not even about sex, drugs, and such. It’s just: give up and stop doing the painful work of growing. It hurts, why bother?

But I also trust that she will be handled with as much care as, say, Mum was, so I’m SO TOTALLY down for her. What she’s telling him is probably a lot about herself and her own issues - in choosing to have Eve show up they’ve got a female character who has been as misrepresented and vilified as Lucifer himself, which is going to be significant (since apparently she’s very no1curr about him killing her son??? LOL Okay, hey, if I had a son like that... /snort/).

Like, Eve was used to justify the oppression of women for centuries in the West. It was no joke. Early feminists actually had to reinterpret her in order to articulate their position. (“Eve’s Apology in Defense of Women” from 1611 by Amelia Lanyer is a personal fave of mine, in terms of women’s literary work and women’s history.)

I really hope that this show will give her due respect as a female mythological/religious/etc figure. In their wonderfully stylized totally bananas way ofc! They have a good track record on BONKERS theology and writing complex women, so I have every reason to be optimistic.

Overall Themes

For her part, I think the images of Chloe walking into the Catholic church and talking to the spooky religious guy is all about her being tempted in the opposite direction. Eve is all: go wild! Stop trying to work to be better, just be the perfect devil you are! And Chloe might very well be tempted by the comforting absolutism and clear “hard work” of the forms of false certainty people offer.

They did a really good job showing self-righteousness as a sin with Amenadiel’s fall and I think it would be really cool to represent moral certainty as a kind of “apple” that Chloe-as-New-Eve is tempted with now that her foundations have been ripped away.

Again, like with Eve--but doubly so because the writers love Chloe--I am confident this will be handled well.

IMO the core of the show is a kind of humanism/human goodness. Lucifer was broken by the cold absolutism of the celestial vision of goodness. And the fact that evil very much isn’t his thing either. Heaven and hell weren’t home, as he said to to Mum. LA is the only place he’s found belonging, and it’s explicit in the canon that it’s not just the place, it’s a person.

The warmth of the kind of fierce humanistic morality and love Chloe embraces, that feels like home. Humans let you be messy and incomplete and still worthy of love. They embrace struggle. They come up with genius things like “therapy.” They glory in all their contradictions.

They can, like Chloe, believe there is no God and yet be incredibly decent and loving.

She’s off-kilter because of the reveal and so too is he, each in their own way. They’re supposed to balance each other so when one is struggling the other will too. The goodness the show is aiming for can be compromised either by a truly selfish hedonism that doesn’t care about trying to do better by others or also by a moral absolutism which is harsh and unkind. This is because self-righteousness is ultimately also putting your own satisfaction above the well-being of others, just like a selfish hedonism is. The pleasures of the two are superficially different, but at core they’re the same. I think it’s cool paralleling if they’re tempted by these respective sins in the show’s moral vision.

The idea of them both being tempted and struggling and then coming back together could be really amazing. With the clearly increased budget for visuals, I am hoping we get a really great poetic visual moment of them coming back together. That could make for an eXCELLENt arc.

[hydrospanners]

a writing year in review: 2k18 edition

So I’m taking a minute to look back at all the writing I did this year and it has been a pretty spotty year for fanfic for me. Lots of long, blank spaces between weird surges of productivity. But! I did a lot of work on my original projects and also the boring adult responsibilities in my life (I changed jobs three times!!! I changed my name!!! I started going to therapy!!!!) and I pushed out some fic I really liked this year in spite of all that so, all things considered, I’m calling this one a win.

Without further ado, here is the breakdown of all the fic I’ve written this year plus a sad breakdown all of the geriatric WIPs looking at me with their big sad eyes, crossing their fingers for 2019. Hiding most of it under a cut because the rankings and WIP snippets got long.

2k18's Publication Stats for Fun & Profit:

This year I published 16 fanfics, all but one for SWTOR. 10 were brand new, started and finished in 2018, and 6 were old WIPS that have been marinating for Force only knows how long. That number is down from the 29 fics I published in 2017, but close to the 14 I published in 2016. 2015 was only 3 fics and 2014 was only 2. I have a total of 64 works published on AO3.

This year I published 34559 words for an average of about 2160 words per fic. This is extremely above my overall average of about 930 words per fic with a combined total of 59569 words published since I started posting fic publicly back in 2014.

So the number of fics may be lower this year but the number of words total and the average words in the fics I did publish went up! Please enjoy a review of the shit people liked most according to AO3 and then the stuff I personally liked most because I'm allowed to like my own writing, sue me.

2k18's Most Read Fics:

1. spoonful of sugar: Everyone gets sick sometimes; even big damn heroes. These are vignettes about the Jedi Knight's crew getting sick, getting treated, and getting better. (SWTOR)

I started writing this one when I got really sick during the summer of 2017 and I finally finished it this year! There's another part that I cut because it got way out of control that I'd like to one day add back in as a second chapter but I am okay with calling this one complete and maybe never doing that. This one is a nice combo of funny and a little bit sweet that I think is refreshing, like a cold, fruity drink on a hot summer's day. Here is my very favorite line from this whole fic because it is so delightfully dumb:

“Scourge,” Rhese tries and fails to sound as though he has some degree of command over his own voice right now. “Get off my dick.”

2. filling the table: They have a saying back on Corellia that the only way you can ever really know a man is by taking his credits. They also have a saying that you should never play cards with a Corellian because Corellians always cheat, but she's betting Doc never heard that one. (SWTOR)

I think I started this one all the way back in like 2014 or 2015. I can't remember now but it was a long time ago and this piece of shit has morphed a million times since then. I must have rewritten the ending about a million times.

I really wanted to capture the desperation of the Balmorran Resistance while I was doing the character work with this, the sense of limited resources and hard living, and I am pretty happy with the result. I'm also pretty happy with the characterization work here, the little snippets they are both revealing to each other and the bigger snippets they aren't. I'm still not entirely happy with the white spaces in this one. I feel like I was a little too sparse and there are lots of places that don't flow if you don't already know what isn't being said, but I am more or less happy with this one! Here is my favorite bit because of the doublespeak foreshadowing their future relationship that was definitely on purpose:

Four hands later, she’s fifty credits richer and Doc is rooting around in his pocket for something to scribble another IOU on. She knows he’ll never make good on it, but Rea’s happy to accept his empty promises if it keeps him playing the game. She’s overdue for a bit of fun.

3. take back what the kingdom stole:  Alliance Commander Nirea Velaran has always had a talent for burning bridges. When Theron comes to her after Nathema to pay for his sins, she finds herself wondering whether some bridges can't be repaired. (SWTOR)

Hey look! Something I started and finished in the same calendar year!! This one grew out of a very stupid joke that I ended up not even making until the end of the fic. At first I wanted to draw that bit, but I got frustrated with my lacking artistic talent so I wrote it instead and it turned into one of my fave things I've written. It has nice scenery and character growth and intimate friendships that have a real impact on their emotional lives! Hurt feelings aren't just for romance fam!! Anyway here's my favorite bit because it's one of the most Rea moments I've ever written:

He shoved her off his shoulder none-too-gently, scowling as he looked skyward, as if searching for another fleet of hostile ships to arrive and grant him the sweet release of death. When none came, he settled for another hearty gulp of whiskey. He had to be halfway to knackered by now. “You’re insufferable,” he grumbled.

“I know.” She smiled a smile that felt damn near genuine and collapsed back against the grass, swinging her legs out over the crevasse.

“I don’t even feel bad about all this anymore.” Theron complained. “You deserve it.”

Rea only laughed. A real laugh, all the way up from her belly, and it felt so fucking good.

Theron looked at her from the corners of his bloodshot eyes, suspicious and too clever by half. “Fuck,” he swore, shaking his head. “You just mindfucked me, didn’t you?”

2k18 Author’s Choice:

1. when the wicked play. After witnessing his first real lightsaber duel, Doc reflects on the contradictions of what the Jedi are supposed to be and the realities of fighting a war. (SWTOR)

This might be one of my very favorite things I've written ever. In case it wasn't clear by now, I am pretty preoccupied with making myself feel the weight of the violence and uncertainty and war that plagues you in this game. It all feels so clean and sanitary in the game because it's a game, but it's something I always want to explore and make visceral in the stories I tell about the game. I am also obsessed with Jedi and the mythos and conflicting ideas that must surround them inside the story's universe. This was a fun way to marry the two and do a bit of character work at the same time. I'm also pretty proud of this one structurally, with how contained and bookended it is. [high fives self] Anyway here's my favorite part because it's some of the only action I've written that feels like it captures the brutal urgency of how I imagine actual lightsaber combat and also says a little bit about my girl Rea via the way she fights:

Rea is little more than a blur of blue light as she collides with the Sith across the field, her sabers swinging too fast for Doc’s eyes to track. She’s hammering her enemy from every side, pushing him back and back and back. Her assault is savage and relentless and there is nothing like grace or elegance in any of it. It isn’t beautiful; it’s violence. Ugly, brutal violence.

The whole thing is over in less than a minute.

Blue meets red meets blue meets blue meets blue meets red and then the Sith’s head is hitting the floor with a muffled thump. It happens so abruptly Doc doesn’t even realize it’s ended until the rest of the body collapses a heartbeat later.

2. shadows settle on the place that you left. In the wake of her father’s death, Nyria Ryder tries to reconcile the man she knew with the shadow he left hanging over her. (Mass Effect: Andromeda)

Look! Something that isn't SWTOR! (The only thing I wrote this year that wasn't for SWTOR.) I have a whole bunch of feelings about Alec Ryder and had a really good time porting Rea over to this game and seeing the ways his presence in her life altered who she is and the ways that it didn't. Also I have a lot of feelings about SAM. This is probably peak self-indulgence but I still feel like this is some efficient sketching of Nyria's character and Alec's and their particular relationship and I'm pretty proud of it. Also I'm always a slut for complicated familial relationships. Here is my favorite bit because it's such a nice illustration of who Ria is and an important turning point for her character:

She decided to be kinder to SAM than the universe had been to her. He was her brother, just as much as Rhys, and she was all he had. She would have to make sure herself was enough.

“He believed in us both,” she told him what he needed to hear, even though it wasn’t true. Then she made a promise she could not keep, because she knew he needed that too: “You and me are going to figure this thing out. Just you watch. We’re gonna make Alec proud.”

3. take back what the kingdom stole:  Alliance Commander Nirea Velaran has always had a talent for burning bridges. When Theron comes to her after Nathema to pay for his sins, she finds herself wondering whether some bridges can't be repaired. (SWTOR)

All the same stuff I said above applies here still. Glad we can all agree this one was nice.

State of the WIPs

Just for fun I did a dive into my WIP folder to see what I'm setting myself up for in 2019! Only it wasn't very fun at all because there is so much really old stuff in here!!!!!! Good luck to future me because past me really left you with the bag girl! Good luck carrying the weight of hopes and dreams and stories unfulfilled!!

I have a total of 48 fics in progress right now. The fandom breakdown is as follows, ranked from the most to the least: Star Wars: The Old Republic (35), Dragon Age (8), Mass Effect: Andromeda (4), Fallout 4 (1). And because I'm a masochist, I looked at the dates on all this shit too. Here's the breakdown of what year all of these things were started:

2014: 4 fics

2015: 9 fics

2016: 15 fics

2017: 11 fics

2018: 9 fics

That sound you hear is me sobbing in the distance. 2014!!! What the fuck!!!!! I am gonna finish those four fics this year if it kills me. We aren't living like this anymore. Please enjoy some samples from the WIP folder with absolutely no context:

“You carry sleeping pills in your pocket?”

“For my wife. Maybe you’ve met her? About this high--” Doc raised his hand half a foot over his own head “--brown hair, blue eyes, great ass.”

Ignoring the commentary on his sister’s figure and the extreme overestimation of her height, Rhese nodded. “I may have seen her around.”

“Well if you see her again, you tell her to come home. Her family’s worried.”

Do you hear that Rea? Your family is worried. Rhese wondered if she could feel their concern, their anguish. Was she searching for them as they searched for her? She’d always been good at hiding, but she’d never vanished completely before. A hole in the Force where her warm, fervent energy should have been.

He felt cold. Really alone for the first time in his life. Careful what you wish for, Liss had always said. You might just get it.

Ossus is important.

Rea feels it when she falls out of hyperspace, that shift, that tug of something just behind her navel. The familiar weight of destiny, settling like a stone in the pit of her stomach. It leaves her breathless, white-knuckled and gripping the shuttle’s controls, her skin prickling under the cold caress of dread.

She wasn’t expecting this story to have a happy ending—a colony of Jedi on the eve of war? she’s danced that dance enough times to know the steps by now—but she wasn’t expecting anything so bad as the draw of destiny.

Fate has never been anything but cruel to her. Feeling it here, now? This is going to be worse than she imagined.

This is how you deal with failure.

You just do.

You get up in the morning and brush your teeth. You train until your legs wobble beneath you. You choke down your nutripaste and ask Simms about his niece. You congratulate Tarinik on her promotion. You laugh too loud at Vortena’s shit jokes. And when Beniko’s eyes follow a little too close, you blow her a kiss like it doesn’t matter at all.

You keep moving forward because standing still will kill you. Because life is a race and if you slow down for even a second, death will catch up.

Nirea Velaran is not ready to die.

She is not maleficarum, but she is changed. Something is awake inside her now, and the whispers are louder each time she touches the Fade. Sweet, coaxing whispers full of promises. Some of them sound like her mother.

Take care of your brother, Niria. You’re all he’s got.

In the morning, Qarric wakes with a pounding head and an empty sleeve. He never asks, but he watches her more sharply, reprimands her more often, demands more of her in training.

When she is fourteen, blade tucked into the top of her worn boot, he gives her a warning. “You aren’t as strong as you think,” he says. “No one is.”

“Is it much farther?” Ria jabbed the bladed end of her stave--a fancy enchanted thing Vivienne had insisted on--into the sodden ground and squinted through the trees, praying for a glimpse of the promised coast. The air smelled of salt and death and the sea, but she hadn’t seen a single crashing wave yet.

“A few more miles yet,” Blackwall answered irritably. Ria had elected to blame the weather for his foul mood. “Same as it was five minutes ago, Your Worship.”

“And five minutes before that,” Varric added.

“Conditions are much safer inside the ship, Nyria.”

“Didn’t come all the way out here to be safe, SAM.” Another rock plinked hollowly against the wall of the prefab. “We came to see new planets and shit. That’s what I’m doing.”

“There is not much to see at night.”

“Not much to see during the day either. Sure as hell nothing worth dying for.” She huffed a bitter not-quite-laugh.

She spoke before he could even open his mouth to ask the question. “You’re overthinking it, little brother.”

“We’re twins,” he said, mostly out of habit. “And I’m taller.”

“Your hair is taller.”

“This is serious, Nyria.”

“So is your hair.” She reached out almost absent-mindedly to ruffle it, eyes still fixed on her omni-tool, but he dodged out of the way.

[vol-au-vending-machine]

Eleven questions

Post the rules.

Answer the questions given to you by the tagger.

Write eleven questions of your own.

Tag eleven people.

Tagged by @dreamsofghostsandstars, thank you so much! Good questions!

1. Is there a fandom that you’re surprised isn’t bigger?

This question took some thought, but actually you know what? The Indiana Jones fandom. Star Wars has 64k works on ao3. Indiana Jones? Less than 300.

2. What book or book series do you really want to see adapted into a TV series/miniseries?

Hunger Games, I know it has been adapted already into like 10 hours of movies but I think it should have been maybe a 13 hour miniseries. For one thing: it's ABOUT a television show. The extra three-ish hours could also have been used for worldbuilding and character development. I just love the world of Panem and I’ve hungrily devoured all of the knowledge of the worldbuilding Collins gave us (ie NOT ENOUGH) and I wish we could have had more. 

For personal reasons, I’d love the Hermux Tantamoq books to be an animated children’s series. Maybe stop-motion, or like with the people who made Fantastic Mr Fox? It’s such a colourful book series, the visuals would be amazing. 

3. What couple/trio/group was/were your first real ship?

Remus/Tonks from Harry Potter. It was in googling them that I came across this strange website called Fanfiction.Net, and my journey began...

4. Do you prefer period costumes or futuristic fashion?

Futuristic fashion is usually all minimalist and clean lines. Period costume! Pearls! Headdresses! Long sleeves! Velvet! B R O C A D E!

Also I’m a history student

5. What’s an underused period of history that you wish more media focused on?

Lol, did you know I was a history student before you wrote these questions?

Medieval period stuff is all about kings and outlaws. Monks are underrepresented given how important they were to the intellectual history of Europe. I want more monks. Monks sitcom. Monks romcom. More monk murder mysteries. Monks Coffee Shop AU. Monks tattoo parlour AU. Monks High School AU. Monks buddy cop. Monks road trip movie. 

On a more serious note, I want a biopic of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. He lived through it all: WW1, the 30s, WW2, decolonisation, the Sixties, the Cold War. He was JFK’s uncle and he sassed Khrushchev at the UN. Also, of all my historical faves, (I have many) he is the most unproblematic. All the evidence I’ve read suggests he was a real-life cinnamon roll, so making him a hero wouldn’t be bending the facts as much as for other historical figures.

6. If you could drill one fact into sci-fi writers’ heads, what would it be?

I really don't know. I can forgive Star Wars for forgetting gravity works in space. Maybe, that there are geographical consequences for having multiple moons/ suns? Like... that should affect the tides and seasons and flora, ne?

7. Have you ever written a novel-length fanfic?

More than once! 175th Hunger Games: Seven Days was 119k words, The House that Leah Built was 88k, Marion’s War Diaries was 79k and The Mary Sue Hunger Games was 45k. 

8. Do you prefer biopunk, steampunk, cyberpunk, or dieselpunk?

Steampunk. I love cogs and gears and I’m not at all familiar with the other 3.

9. What’s the one big historical mystery you wish you could solve?

Again, history student. How can you ask me to choose O N E?

I’ve studied the colonists of Roanoke, so I’d love to know the answer to that mystery, but I think the Marie Celeste has to take the biscuit. That mystery’s a real mindfuck. 

10. Where do you fall on the dubbing vs. subtitles divide?

Depends on the language and the media. I prefer to watch Death Note dubbed rather than the subtitles as I find the Japanese distracting for some reason I don’t even know. I did watch an amazing Korean historical drama with subtitles and I was fine. My stupid ears must be just weird. 

11. Is there a conlang that you have learned or would like to learn?

Interestingly not many of my fandoms involve conlangs. Maybe Valyrian for the awesomeness of the words, or Elvish for the beauty of the script 

My questions for: @mycrawft @orsino @ramainen-elvie @obsidianbutterfly @theyaremydivision @sciosophia @chizuu @lovelydisarray @hazeleyedjedi @dreamphoenix1016 @gotochelle

1) Best Disney Villain? (If you're not into Disney, best villain of a children’s film)

2) Your favourite hero/ine duels your favourite villain/ess. Who wins? Who dies?

3) Pick one: a big pile of dishes to wash by hand OR a massive pile of laundry to wash in a washing machine. (You can tell what I’m procrastinating right now can’t you?)

4) Pick one: You write a masterpiece, but it isn’t acclaimed until 200 years after you die and your authorship is disputed, OR you earn fame, fortune and fans  in your lifetime but because your work is So Bad, It’s Good. 

5) Goriest/grossest death scene you’ve ever read/watched? (For the sake of spoilers, feel free to say how they died but not who died)

6) The book/movie with the best plot twist is:

7) Name a song that lifts your mood 

8) Your best fanwork? Your least best?

9) The year is 2576. The dust cloud clears. One meme is left standing. It is:

10) On the spectrum from hero---->villain, which character sits most exactly in the middle, neither one or the other?

11) Your favourite trope/cliché?

[mild-lunacy]

Here be Dragons (and S4)

Soooo... my thoughts. Let me show you them.

So I’ve watched it, and my coconspirators were... less than impressed. I can only imagine what fandom’s like right now (noooo, don’t tell me.) Anyway, things out of the way: I enjoyed it. Quite a bit! Loooove the plot of TLD, some of the best stuff in any season. Wonderful mindfuckery. Awesome creepy villain. Devoted bab yet badass Sherlock. Great action scenes. A lot of Angst(tm). And (I’m sure) a lot of people reevaluating everything they ever knew-- about John, Mary, the Holmes brothers, possibly Sherlock, etc etc. Just as bad as we thought, eh? Except not in the way we thought... except I guess for Mary being Birdy-like. That’s definitely there... though I’m still not sure we’ve seen the whole story.

Anyway, TST:

Love the intro reel of case scenes and Sherlock acting like a brat at all times.

Was horrified (and pissed) when Sherlock told John he preferred Mary as partner. Seemed Wrong with a capital W, even if correct on its merits. That was Not A Good Sign. But then John eventually just accepts it and tells Mary to go first (even worse sign).

Jesus Christ, that John!balloon. Oh John. Yikes? Also wow.

Overall, pushing Mary into an investigating threesome was just so wrong and bad and painful. But necessary to demonstrate how good it... isn’t. Also, John wasn’t so happy with that, and the whole Sherlock+Mary investigations thing doesn’t really work ‘cause while Sherlock wants a partner, Mary... doesn’t. In fact she runs out of the country *just* to stop Sherlock from being her partner, more or less. And then he follows anyway. It was a bit cringey, honestly.

Anyway, AGRA = a whole team is a great surprise. Employment by Mycroft foreshadowed in TAB! (Look in TAB! TAB shall save you! Remember the waterfall scene!)

Thought the way they handled the unhappy marriage to be really interesting and subtle (splitting the Antichrist scene in half). John lying, etc (though... as we find out next ep, not all is as it seems! but from John’s pov, he really did want to cheat and he did, to some extent). So basically, they both didn’t want the baby, and John wasn’t any happier than he ever was. Established.

They did banter just a bit about Rosie’s evilness, but this was then contrasted with John using that opportunity (and any opportunity) to disconnect. The intimacy was a sham.

Do I think John’s lie and Mary’s lies were *equivalent*? No. Was it all All Mary’s Fault? Also no, clearly. Set up for guilt.

As I said, Sherlock was clearly way too obsessed with keeping the vow, which Mary didn’t even seem to want. Of course not. But very heroic of him. She doesn’t want Sherlock to save her, unlike the way Sherlock and John are. Saving someone is something one has to *want*. It can’t-- shouldn’t-- be forced. Another Not So Good Sign.

I love Sherlock fighting the guy in the water hardcore. I really wanted badass Sherlock, and got him. Take that, unbelievers! haha

Sherlock’s problem is his cockiness about his mental prowess. So... he makes the same mistake again! But this time he (finally) learns, as he tells Mrs Hudson about Norbury. But it’s too late... or is it?

I’m not as horrified at Mary’s Birdy-ness as some, I’m sure. It was always an option. This is consistent in terms of Moffat’s style, and insofar as I never thought Mary was like, Moriarty material in the first place. She’s just a rogue agent. And she quit because she wanted some peace and quiet. She also kinda misses her work and wishes Sherlock would stop ‘helping’ (I mean, she even shot him to prove that point, from her pov). This was always canon. It remained canon, more or less. Am I that disappointed? No. It just means there was a reason the surface narrative existed.

I was just happy Mary was dead. Finally! Finally! gaaaah.

Do I think Mary’s throwing herself in front of Sherlock worked? Yes and no.

Yes, because I can see it balancing. They had to get rid of that storyline somehow, and it *was* imbalanced. If she’s not gonna go full evil, then you need some kinda atonement. Amanda said early on she wanted to die in John’s arms. So far, so predictable.

No, because I’m still not sure *why* she did it. Like, okay, I believe she always liked Sherlock, and felt a bit sorry, but sacrificing yourself doesn’t seem like Mary’s... thing. So... jury’s still out. John’s response, ditto.

Amanda’s performance as Mary at the end and/or the writing was kinda iffy. I didn’t really find it believable, but it’s not a deal-breaker. I am kinda confused, though.

I *will* say that the growling and lashing out seemed over-the-top. More like rage than grief, so it’s not really comparable to Reichenbach. Saying he mourned ‘more’ isn’t as relevant as saying it’s just *different*. He made Mary’s death about Sherlock, even if in terms of fault. Somehow it was about Sherlock (even though he later acknowledges that it was Mary’s choice in TLD... indirectly confirming that he’s irrational). Seems silly to really compare. The response is pretty different, and completely irrational. He thinks Sherlock’s literally superhuman, and that belief has finally come home to bite both John and Sherlock on the ass, big time.

*Given* that’s what John believes, though, his later avoidance and extreme (apparently semi-psychotic?? or otherwise facilitated?) break makes sense. As for Mary and Mrs Hudson and Molly all acting as go-betweens, that’s par for the course (same for Irene... the women are always the conduits, and so Mary serves that function even unto death).

There’s a plot thing going on. I dunno *what* plot thing, but some things are not as they seem, and I cannot tell you what I think of John’s behavior without knowing what mindfuck we’re dealing with. Speaking of Moffat’s style, the one thing I feel sure of is that ‘our’ John’s devoted to Sherlock. That is a central truth, and I mean outside of the canon Johnlock thing. Still, I can see John breaking because of guilt and rage and just... everything, and needing to be saved. I can also see Mary predicting this, and knowing that John can always be counted upon to help, to save Sherlock Holmes. She was there at the wedding speech. And it’s true that John wouldn’t accept help. So... John hits rock bottom, loses himself, starts hallucinating (as does Sherlock-- but Sherlock does drugs). We don’t really know what John does. But I believe he acts the way he does for a reason, and even the hallucination thing must have a reason, especially in an ep where there’s lots of mind-altering drugs floating around and reality’s not super firm.

So I’m not super certain what Really Happened. I wouldn’t go so far as to say TLD wasn’t ‘real’. I think the plot happened. I just think we don’t know  *everything* and things are deceiving. I also think that the waterfall scene (’there’s always two of us’) is gospel in terms of representing the center of how Moffat and Gatiss think. So the fact that it’s both threatened and highlighted in TLD-- John needs to save Sherlock, Sherlock needs to save John, but neither quite succeeds-- should tell you that we’re not supposed to be satisfied. It’s quite obvious Sherlock didn’t save John-- John’s life is literally more in danger than ever before at the end of TLD. And John says he didn’t want to save Sherlock till Mary pushed him-- though Mary’s repeatedly said to be a part of his mind. A part that teases him about Sherlock, while John represses and avoids. John doesn’t think he’s Sherlock’s John-- but (as we saw with hard proof when Sherlock predicts his behavior early on), Sherlock demonstrably *knows* him. John doesn’t even think he’s Mary’s John-- he thinks Mary idealized him, and he’s not ‘that man’. So he’s lost all faith and doesn’t know who/what to believe. But again, neither do we-- we’re right where John is. My coconspirators have also lost faith, and don’t know what to believe anymore, along with John.

Something’s going on with the hallucinations, whether Sherrinford or Mary. But there’s got to be an explanation. Like for example, how is the paper real? Why did Sherrinford know all that stuff (or did she)? How did Sherlock seem to know about Mary, the specter at the wedding, so to speak? I don’t know, but I want to. Something really weird is going on.

The one thing I do know, the one thing I cannot doubt, is that John Watson always saves Sherlock Holmes (and vice versa). One suggests the other, as TLD states explicitly. So if they’re making us question it, they’ve definitely got something up their sleeve, as I said. This isn’t about canon Johnlock; John and Sherlock’s devotion is at the heart of their partnership. TAB is a great foreshadowing and/or set-up in that regard. We know that when John acted callous and uncaring at the grave site, this wasn’t the real John. That was only two eps ago. So... yeah. 

More thoughts on TLD:

What a mindfuck! It’s glorious. So tight, so well-plotted. Just really wonderful. The whole critique that begs itself is that John’s not John-like, but then you have TAB and that cliffhanger. So... to be continued.

The whole set-up of the confession that’s set up to be forgotten is really ingenious. The cereal killer stuff is amazing. They just had so much fun with the plotting here, and it shows. My fave villain besides Moriarty. Genuinely creepy and fun. Both traumatizing and fun in the old-school evil sense. It’s great.

The way Mrs Hudson shows up with Sherlock in tow, her having that crazy car and owning property in central London, Sherlock predicting everything John does (including Molly) two weeks away... Jesus. That was amazing. Mrs. Hudson is amazing.

I’m here to tell you I was immediately irritated by Sherrinford. Yeah, even on the bus (seemed weirdly fake and pushy!) and then like, you know, that’s a weirdly fake and pushy psychologist, too. Acting a bit like TEH Mary, actually.

Everything’s a series of lies, no less than TAB, except the stakes are higher. Sherrinford’s a prime example of a character who’s constantly twisting and changing, like ripples in a pond. Really really well done. The initial scene at Baker Street with Sherlock was so great as characterization. ‘Fuck off’. ‘Bollocks’. Sherlock being pouty. It’s just so painful, too. God, that whole scene was killer, so painful it’s exquisite.

Poor Sherlock. Babs. :( He misses him so much. :(

Also, we were right! Take heart, we’re right about the things that count, and also: Mofftiss are liars. Sherrinford says Sherlock’s so nice, and then of course Mrs Hudson says Sherlock feels things, operates on feeling. I just. Wah. Also, Sherlock really is nice. I was really touched.

Sherlock being so willing to believe he just made up his meeting with Sherrinford, like... boy thinks he literally has magical powers, haha.

The joke (”joke”) about Sherlock and/or Mycroft dying in weeks also foreshadowed in TAB.

John beating up Sherlock at the morgue was brutal though. Jury’s still out on a lot of things, however. Some weird stuff was happening in that scene, ‘cause this is after that whole episode of losing it after thinking of Sherrinford, weird camerawork, time-skip forward to Lestrade and so on.

I know that a lot of things about surface HLV have been seemingly proven real... but even there, I’m not totally sure. This show is amazing. I do think we know that Sherlock somehow convinced himself he trusted Mary. We also never see John reject Mary to the degree he rejected Sherlock, in large part ‘cause Sherlock went out of his way to prevent that. Still, HLV didn’t have this much drugs floating around.

I kinda love the plot resolution, I have to say. The recorder in the cane is interesting tho. Was John in on it? Did Sherlock put it in afterwards? I dunno, don’t ask me, I just work here. I will say that Something is going on, and parts of the set-up (working partly with and partly without John) reminds me of TRF.

Here be Dragons: John and Sherlock’s conversation at Baker Street, and Sherrinford. We pretty much know nothing about Sherrinford except that this casts parts of John’s characterization/behavior in TST into doubt. He was obviously being manipulated, to some degree. To what degree, I don’t know.

The conversation is obviously yet more heterobaiting. *Is* it obvious? Well, it’s not usual. It’s the sort of thing we’ve seen before. Is it painful anyway? Yes.

Great to see Sherlock move to comfort John, though. He’s definitely progressed and grown a lot.

John’s whole thing about not being Mary’s John, his lost faith in himself, his insistence that Sherlock needs a woman... I just can’t take it at face value. Call me naive. The whole thing rings hollow. It’s not the whole story, certainly. Can I imagine John saying this at the end of his rope, though? I mean, he even cried. Very confused. (Funny how Sherlock sort of awkwardly tiptoed about the whole Irene thing). John’s clearly still breaking. Still unsaved. Go on, Sherlock. Save John Watson. It really is (almost certainly) the real Final Problem.