#St fandom salt

[flushed-for-the-trolls]

Byler Is Toxic As Fuck And Sucks

Honestly, as of S4 Vol. 2 Byler is this toxic relationship of Will's codependency and obsession of Mike and Mike's staunch refusal to grow as a person unless led by the fucking hand (presumably by Will).

And the only other self evident fact worse than the one I just laid out is that no matter what, fans of the show will NEVER acknowledge any of this.

The fact of the matter is: If these sort of events transpired between friends, like:

(Being talked down to after your friends ignored your whole ass D&D campaign ((I don't play D&D but from what I've heard, that shit doesn't just happen on a whim and they typically take several hours to see through, so double ouchies there)).

Having your lack of a romantic/sexual desire being thrown in your face and treated as the problem when it's absolutely not,

Giving up D&D in honor of your party disbanding... Only to have them join a D&D club the second they get into High School,

Being ignored for a whole ass year,

Having your supposed best friend FORGET YOUR BIRTHDAY, then blow up at YOU at it when you're ((understandably)) upset and moody,

Having to carry the emotional burden OF said friend on 2 separate occasions, including ((and I CANNOT believe I am saying this)) giving your friend a pep-talk and painting to convince him that HIS OWN GIRLFRIEND STILL LOVES HIM

and

... Ugh... What I can only describe as the BIGGEST slap to the face. the monologue.)

You would ABSOLUTELY cut off a shitty excuse for a friend. At this point this ship is just romanticized toxicity and I've just stopped loving it.

When I see Will still simping for his deadbeat excuse of a friend I just roll my eyes. It's not cute, it's disturbing and pathetic. This isn't love, it's romanticized Stockholm Syndrome.

Will doesn't need Mike, he needs a firm sit-down on how to cut ties and move on with his life.

Will deserves someone better, and so does El, for that matter.

Anyways, this was supposed to be 100x more coherent and structured, but I switched off the tab and when I switched back to the one I was writing this on, it refreshed without my input and I lost it all, so fuck it, this is all you're getting.

Just about every ship's fandom sucks, but by God does the cake go to Byler fans, sorry but not really tbh.

I will say tho: Kinda sucks going through the Anti Byler tag, cuz it's either shipping discourse (Hell) or people being straight up homophobic (mega hell)

[jonathanbyersphd]

Also Nancy regrets her choice almost immediately after sleeping with Steve but she doesn't explicitly say that and now people ship Stanky in 2024

[thomas-jefferson-miku-binder]

i feel like a douche for saying this because fandom spaces are for fun and you can do whatever you want in them. but man it sucks a bit how star trek has so much to praise and so much to be criticized for yet all i see is. ship talk.

like i love spirk just as much as anyone else but it feels a bit… frustrating, wanting to talk about the symbolism or the writers’ prejudice and how this series makes you hope for a better time while not actually offering it…

yeah i did like domestic spirk! but is that seriously all you have to say about the city on the edge of forever?

[dizzying-faust]

I can't decide which fandom I had the worst experience in, Svtfoe or Miraculous.

[trashquisitor-shirozora]

*enables you* what happened with TLJ 👃

After all these years I still can't properly find words to explain how deeply betrayed I felt after the credits rolled and I shuffled out of the movie theater with everybody else. There was a TON of hype surrounding this movie, an absolute fuckton. I only saw positive reviews about it, the cast, the director, the plot. I got excited to see where Rian Johnson & Co. would take the ST.

The only remotely negative comment I saw before watching the movie was a fandom blog saying they didn't like what happened to Poe. Since this blog was about racism in fandom, I knew something was off. That was my only warning.

And y'know, it was like, five minutes in? Ten minutes? And Poe makes a "Yo mama" joke at Hux? I used to go into movies with an open mind and spent days gathering my thoughts about them because I was always slow to react, slow to gather my thoughts into coherent strings of words. It's how I enjoyed Michael Bay productions and JJ Abrams' love affair with lens flare. I never got actively angry with a movie I was watching, and I was fucking angry by the time the movie ended. I still remember texting a friend while standing out in front of the theater because I was so confused. The response to TLJ was so positive so why did I come out of the movie so frustrated and confused and dissatisfied with the whole thing?

It's been years and we all know how this movie divided the Star Wars fandom and just... broke Fandom Spaces in a way I never expected. We all know what TLJ did and didn't do, and how TROS provided the final nail in the coffin that was the ST experiment. But back then, all I saw was positive commentary about the themes and messages of TLJ, how it portrayed failure and the dangers of putting someone like Luke Skywalker on a pedestal, how the Force was female, how... important it was to see Poe get characterized as a hotheaded hotshot who needed to be demoted, slapped around, and stunned in order to learn some kind of lesson, how important it was to see Finn lose everything he gained in TFA so that he could relearn how not to be selfish or something while starring in a fucking incredibly tone-deaf B plot, how Rey... I'm not sure exactly what because she didn't need training anyway and then spent most of her time trying to bring Ben Swolo back to the light????? Rose was so promising as someone who grew up under the FO's thumb but she and Kelly were fucking abandoned by Disney so I don't know if Rose existing was actually a good idea if it meant giving Kelly unending trauma. Mark slipped up by calling Luke "Jake" and expressing his displeasure in front of cameras, and I was so fucking baffled and alienated by his character after knowing how his story ended in ROTJ that I couldn't connect with whatever lessons I and he are supposed to be learning. JJ set up Snoke like a mystery box and Rian just yeeted him off without so much as a fucking explanation so what was the point of that? Hux was a fucking joke. Phasma was barely there. The only character that Rian cared about was fucking Kylo Ren and Adam says years later that he was never supposed to get a redemption arc anyway.

Like, this was the movie everyone hyped up? This was the movie that didn't answer any questions left unasked by TFA and didn't bother to move forward with character development for any of the known characters? I spent money watching a slow space chase that ended on a planet made of salt and killed off Luke for Reasons? Am I stupid? Am I dumb? Am I a peasant incapable of understanding the masterpiece Rian directed, this so-called Best Star Wars Movie Since ESB?

But I couldn't say anything. I couldn't be dogpiled for hating such a empowering movie for women, a diverse and inclusive movie that had the likes of John and Kelly and Oscar. I couldn't be lumped in with the Star Wars dudebros with their raging misogynistic and racist takes on the movie, the cast, Kathleen Kennedy and Lucasfilm, Disney, etc. I couldn't be seen as one of them just because I didn't like a movie that I should like, I'm supposed to like. So I sat in silence, read meta, witnessed the fucking catastrophic explosion around some wild ass AO3 fandom essays written by a racist OG member of OTW about Finn/Poe, saw hate piled on black and bipoc fans, saw r*ylo fans come for John and John clap back at them, just saw an absolute fuckton of hate, and so by the time TROS came around I just... checked out. There was no way JJ could salvage what Rian had done and I was right. TROS was a corporate-run soulless garbage end to the Sequel Trilogy, but it ended just as The Mandalorian finished its first season and regained a lot of good will with this small story about a lonely Mandalorian bounty hunter who encountered a Force-sensitive Baby Yoda.

And then TBOBF/Season 3 of the Mando Show happened, just like how TLJ happened. All the promise, all the unanswered questions of the previous movie/season, all fucking dropped or provided with the worst, most unsatisfying answer. I'm sure others have found better answers and can live with what Star Wars gave us, but I haven't been able to. TLJ came out years and years ago, and I am still so bitter today. I'm still so bitter because TFA had such an incredibly compelling setup with such promising characters, and then TLJ Did That.

I got so heated while writing this. I'm still so mad. I'm still so bitter. I bury my head so deep in the sandbox I built for myself so that I don't have to think how Disney is twisting and contorting all these Mando'verse shows so that they all eventually lead to the ST, their precious hot potato child that just... didn't have to end the way they did if they actually had a fucking plan and fucking stuck the landing. I'll give the MCU this - their Phase 1? They fucking stuck the landing. I fell off the train tracks and haven't really watched the MCU since Captain Marvel, but at least they had a fucking plan and didn't fucking derail themselves like Disney did with the Sequel Trilogy.

I could be nice to people who like this movie but I'm not going to be. They can be nice on their own blogs.

Man, I can't even watch Knives Out or Glass Onion because my blood starts boiling. Just. TLJ did a lot to ruin what I hoped would be a positive and creative connection with Star Wars, and it took the Mando Show and the 2 minutes where Din and Luke locked eyes on the Imperial light cruiser to bring me back.

I'm gonna stop before I get way too heated for sleep.

[wakeupthemembersofbylernation]

oh no i'm not a melvin anon, but i have been experiencing some byler doubt since david harbour said that thing back in november last year. so i guess i got kinda paranoid when i saw that pic and looked a bit too deep into it.

Yeah I understand! I think we’ve all been there before where doubt seems louder than normal. David’s comments definitely didn’t spark joy, and they came at a time where the fandom as a whole was in a dark place/in shambles/going through it, so that added to the general sense of negativity.

That chaos has mostly dissipated, and Byler tumblr is a place where confidence is expected and vocalizing doubt is frowned upon (or at least it goes against tag norms), so if you find yourself in a place of doubt, it can be isolating for sure. But it’s important to keep in mind that the actors lie and tell half-truths all the time. They shouldn’t just be taken with a grain of salt. They should be taken with the whole Red Sea. Remember DH himself once said that Hopper was dead following the S3 fake-out, and look how that turned out.

What’s most important is to trust the show itself. The vast majority of Byler doubt cases have nothing to do with the narrative arc of the show or its characters, which overwhelmingly point in a pro-Byler direction. Sure, occasionally people get doubt because of the monologue or because of early-ST Mleven, but the vast majority of Byler doubt is caused by external factors such as what the actors say (or don’t say), the way the show is promoted on social media, feelings of negativity caused by the barrage of name-calling from toxic Twitter Mlevens and anti-Byler Redditors (delusional, fetishizer, sloppy seconds, etc), and just the general fear that Byler is too good to be true and that the show would never “go for it.”

But none of that is “real.” None of that should supersede all the careful analysis that has been done. None of that should challenge the media literacy we are simply applying. None of that should erase what your eyes see when watching the show, especially in S4, which is filled to the brim with Byler momentum and evidence. The show is the thing, and if something like the out-of-context brozone pic generates paranoia, it’s a sign of misplaced faith and energy.

Remember that we all watched Byler flirt multiple times in the real text of the show:

[jacquesthepigeon]

I do think st least the last few eps of S5 had more people saying 'Why are they having Marinette do/say that'? Rather than 'Look Marinette is so evil!' at least. The writers pushed their agenda and plot too hard without putting in the slightest effort to actually *craft* it at all. So...tiny win for less Marinette salt?

A shame it took this much to shift perceptions even an inch.

There’s no part of fandom that didn’t break at least a little bc of S5 I suspect

[astronicht]

20 Questions for Fic Writers Tag Game

@birdylion tagged me, thanks!

1. how many works do you have on AO3?

48 apparently. I started moving stuff over from ff.net pretty late it looks like, 2014-ish.

2. what’s your total AO3 word count?

465,791

3. what fandoms do you write for?

Various! In my heart I sort of consider myself currently a mix of mdzs and F1 rpf main, hockey rpf almost main. None of these stances reflect reality <3 I most recently posted moto gp rpf, mdzs, and hockey rpf-- so hey wait maybe I'm not totally off-base.

The WIPs I'm most active in right now are, amusingly, Stranger Things and Stargate Atlantis, with mdzs making itself known on the back burner.

4. what are your top 5 fics by kudos?

WHO IS WINNING IN THE THUNDERDOME TODAY

the field meets the wood - mdzs, wangxian. The one where Lan Wangji is kidnapped by salt merchants, and Wei Wuxian unmakes them with historical math. I think this is the best prose writing I've ever done and I'm thrilled that it's currently outpacing the other usual suspects.

pro bono - mdzs, wangxian. The vampire AU I wrote as a joke based on a thread for a few friends. Due to a couple shipwrecks and banishments, WWX and LWJ get stranded in the Italian Renaissance; Lan Wangji is also a vampire; don't worry about it. If (1) is my best prose this is the overall storytelling I'm most satisfied with.

2:08 AM, softly - mdzs, wangxian modern AU. About coming home after a bad night out to find someone you most want to see. Prose is kinda weak, alas, but I get why it's up here.

swinger of birches - mdzs, wangxian Practical Magic AU. Coolest writing experience I will probably ever have. I wrote this live, via tweets, over the course of a month. I had a little staging document but i was only two or three tweets ahead at any given time. It felt like-- oral storytelling, or something.

somnophilia in the time of vampires - mdzs, wangxian, sequel to pro bono. Pretty much entirely pwp. I set it in the same inn that Anne Rice set a scene in Cry to Heaven, as a little joke for myself.

What's interesting is that every single one of these was written either directly for someone, or because someone wanted something. I love filling a need.

5. do you respond to comments?

Yeah, some, though it's totally random which ones I get to.

6. what is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

salt and vinegar, vinegar and salt (hockey rpf) is literally tagged "hopeful ending" so it's not too bad, but it's not meant to be perfectly happy.

scurvy (mdzs, wangxian) and the fic it follows (floodplain (silt)) I wrote very purposefully to not end with a sense of ease. I care about these characters I lot, and they tend to get softened down in fanon after a while. I love them in the parts of canon when they're miserable and cruel and unable to get better, too. And I needed to write that, I guess.

7. what’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

haha probably swinger of birches (see question 1). It's a romance movie fusion, which helps, but it also leans into the "second chances to have everything you thought you lost in the war" of the canon. Plus the "hey what if we DIDN'T pass on the generational trauma" that is the absolute heart of mdzs.

8. do you get hate on fics?

Once got a serial TERF commenter who was going around. Weakling.

9. do you write smut? If so, what kind?

That's my wheelhouse, baby, that's what I'm most comfortable writing and what I like. I've covered a lot, but idk what the themes are. Except maybe the intimacy of sex in the bathroom/in the shower. I write a passable amount of kink, I guess? I also write a passable amount of lesbian sex. this is because i'm gay.

10. do you write crossovers?

No. I do AUs a lot, including AUs set in another fictional universe, but I don't like crossovers. They make my teeth itch.

11. have you ever had a fic stolen?

Hope not!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yeah! I have blanket permission for translations, so long as they link back to the original (and with a strong preference that they're on ao3). Someone did my wangxian lesbian scific AU in Spanish, which is cool as hell.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yeah! Well! Okay they're not POSTED but that's mostly my fault. I learned to co-write with @dulosis. phillyverse will take the world by storm! geoverse will be our white whale and THEN take the world by storm! we have a batshit number of words of chatfic from back when I was more active in mdzs. Frankly some of my favorite writing.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you will?

in the pines, the wangxian semi-pro-dom modern AU fic. I accidentally lived out the final scene in real life with a tinder hookup (NOT what you're thinking. I took her out to eat after one of the hookups, and I was not considering fic plots at the time), and it feels kinda bad now to try to write the wangxian version of something that actually meant a lot to me (because i am both a lesbian and NOT good at casual). I think she only reads Star Wars fic if anything, but what if she found it, you know?

Also this one hockey rpf fic that was like, very much about Leon renewing his passport and the deal with living on a continent you didn't grow up on, but also-- kind of did. That's only in the gdocs tho.

16. What are your writing strengths?

You'll know the atmospheric humidity in any given scene.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Goddamn dialogue.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

A few. I've seen a very small number of good fics where bilingual folks are doing neat cultural/diaspora stuff with it, especially in modao with chinese diaspora writers. That's cool as hell, but also not my lane. I've also seen people in hockey rpf do some neat stuff with this with, say, Leon Draisaitl, especially in the context of a non-German pov character learning some German. But in those cases, the best simulation of hearing a German sentence you don't understand is written with dialogue in English interspersed with blanks.

Instead of just writing out full sentences of dialogue in a different lang from the prose, I love being conscious of what language the characters are speaking in. I am much more interested in playing with that, and I can do that best in English. If my characters are switching between languages I switch up the English diction a bit; I remember how names will come up in sentences differently, I think about how something would sound to whisper. For untranslatable things, or stuff that sounds weird in English, I just use the word in the language, in the English sentence, and that's that. I love having to abide by the limitations and abilities of Chinese or Italian or whatever; I love knowing how dialect will affect communication.

The only time a full line of dialogue in a foreign language makes sense is if the pov character doesn't understand it. But it's very unlikely that the pov character will BOTH a) not speak a language at all, necessitating that it shows up in another language from the prose, and b) the pov character can actually ID every single word clearly enough that it makes sense to write it out. So largely I'm personally uninterested in it, because outside of some narrow applications (most of which aren't my purview) it doesn't do much.

That said, Mr Fruits Baske Sohma Shigure speaking random french is perfect. What a terrible man. Love him.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Probably Fullmetal Alchemist, but I'm not sure.

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

harsh! harsh! overall, maybe pro bono (wangxian vampire AU). today. tomorrow it will change.

I'm tagging anyone who wants to play!

[mariana-oconnor]

The Empty House pt 1

Now, in the hour of our greatest need, a hero rises to answer the call. Our dear friend John Watson provides food for our reading appetites and bravely returns to write the tales of his dearly departed* partner, Sherlock Holmes.

*all facts correct at time of writing

You may be forgiven for assuming that my silence indicated that ‘The Final Problem’ truly was the end of my association with Sherlock Holmes, and indeed of the man himself. The passage of time and many subsequent tellings of the tale has not diminished me joy in saying that it was not so.

WHAT??!

No, seriously though, the fact that Letters from Watson is going with the conceit that Watson knew when he sent the email that Holmes wasn't dead and then just went radio silent for three weeks is fucking hilarious. It's what Holmes would have wanted. I mean, he's not dead, but even so. I love the dramatic bitch energy here.

It was in the spring of the year 1894

I feel like this is as definite and accurate a date as we're ever going to get in these stories.

Also, I have definitely read this one before, multiple times. Partially for my own enjoyment when I was younger, but also during my Sherlock fandom phase where I needed to verify some original canon so I could mutate it terribly for my own personal amusement.

I definitely remember whodunnit and how this time, but I'm not sure if that's actually going to be the mystery.

Only now, at the end of nearly ten years,

So this is a story set in 1894, written in 1903, read by us in 2023.

I should have considered it my first duty to have done so had I not been barred by a positive prohibition from his own lips, which was only withdrawn upon the third of last month.

So Holmes stayed 'dead' officially for 13 years? I mean, I guess this is also sort of ACD saying 'please stop sending me death threats. Here it is. He was never really dead. I surrender I surrender.'

As I read the evidence at the inquest, which led up to a verdict of wilful murder against some person or persons unknown

Totally read this wrong at first as though the murder was against the person or persons unknown. 'We know a murder has taken place, but we don't know who, or even if it was only one person or multiple. But it was definitely murder.' But no, it's the verdict that's against them, not the murder.

There were points about this strange business which would, I was sure, have specially appealed to him, and the efforts of the police would have been supplemented, or more probably anticipated, by the trained observation and the alert mind of the first criminal agent in Europe.

It is pretty tragic to think of Watson reading the paper and sighing to himself as he thinks of how Holmes could have helped. But then also casually throwing shade at the police officers, also in tribute to Holmes' memory.

Adair's mother had returned from Australia to undergo the operation for cataract

Health tourism has a long and varied history. In a time before aeroplanes that's a long way to go and a long time to take for surgery. Did Australia really not have any opthalmologists worth their salt at this time? I mean, I don't know how good even the surgeons in London would have been with that sort of surgery, it's a little more finesse than amputations and they had enough difficulty with them. Got to assume that if you're going to take that long travelling for the surgery, there's got to be a reasonable improvement in your chances for survival.

OK, wow, the history of cataract surgery is long and I do not advise you to look it up if you are in any way squeamish about or squicked out by eye stuff. But apparently the earliest cataract surgeries known are in the 5th century BC, although modern surgery methods didn't seem to really get good until around the 1950s. Basically yes, infection was very possible and her vision would never be the same again.

That was very educational and quite unpleasant.

Ronald Adair was fond of cards, playing continually, but never for such stakes as would hurt him. He was a member of the Baldwin, the Cavendish, and the Bagatelle card clubs. It was shown that after dinner on the day of his death he had played a rubber of whist at the latter club.

I know it says that he never played for stakes that would hurt him, but I feel like being a member of three different clubs is a sign of something. Also, the fact that he recently broke up with his fiancee really needs to be relevant later because I cannot imagine why it would be included if not. At least as a red herring.

Mr. Murray, Sir John Hardy, and Colonel Moran

I wonder which of them is important? Clearly it must be Mr Murray. Absolutely could not be Colonel Moran, who is a colonel and therefore a respectable member of society who would never be associated with any crimes.

I stg ACD had some sort of beef with a colonel at some point in time. That's the only possible explanation. OTHER RANKS ARE AVAILABLE.

She had lit a fire there, and as it smoked she had opened the window.

They need their chimneys checked. Where are the chimney sweeps? I was under the impression that Victorian London was full of chimney sweeps. Was I lied to? Shove a small child up that chimney at once!

The door was locked on the inside, and no answer could be got to their cries and knocking. Help was obtained and the door forced. The unfortunate young man was found lying near the table. His head had been horribly mutilated by an expanding revolver bullet, but no weapon of any sort was to be found in the room.

Locked room mystery! Locked room mystery! Locked room mystery!

The window is open, but this is the second floor, and it's worth noting for any American readers, that in the UK the second floor is one higher than you think. We have ground floor, first floor, then second floor. So that's a pretty high window to reach.

(Unless there was already a small child lying in wait up the chimney...)

A minute examination of the circumstances served only to make the case more complex. In the first place, no reason could be given why the young man should have fastened the door upon the inside.

Sometimes people just lock doors. I automatically lock doors behind me sometimes. My brain is just like 'ooh, lock!' I made my flatmate at university think I hated her because I used to lock myself into my room, but I just... be like that.

There was the possibility that the murderer had done this and had afterwards escaped by the window. The drop was at least twenty feet, however, and a bed of crocuses in full bloom lay beneath. Neither the flowers nor the earth showed any sign of having been disturbed, nor were there any marks upon the narrow strip of grass which separated the house from the road.

So I know how this goes, but I feel there is a very real alternative solution to this puzzle that involves a circus troupe, an archer and a tightrope walker. Not sure how they'd get the tightrope back, but that can be sorted out in editing.

Again, Park Lane is a frequented thoroughfare, and there is a cab-stand within a hundred yards of the house.

Fine, people would probably notice the tightrope walking clown...

^ This guy could do it, is all I'm saying. (Although he would definitely use more than one bullet...)

since, as I have said, young Adair was not known to have any enemy, and no attempt had been made to remove the money or valuables in the room.

No one who gambles that much and consistently wins can be entirely enemy-free, that seems unlikely.

As I did so I struck against an elderly deformed man, who had been behind me, and I knocked down several books which he was carrying. [...] With a snarl of contempt he turned upon his heel, and I saw his curved back and white side-whiskers disappear among the throng.

Oh hai, Holmes. I'm not 100% that this is Holmes but lbr, this is Holmes. The snarl of contempt and abrupt about turn is totally to conceal his identity. Also I want to read The Origins of Tree Worship is it a real book? I feel like it has the potential to be the basis for a decent fantasy book.

but the window was entirely inaccessible, since there was no water-pipe or anything which could help the most active man to climb it.

I had not been in my study five minutes when the maid entered to say that a person desired to see me.

Drum roll please

I moved my head to look at the cabinet behind me. When I turned again Sherlock Holmes was standing smiling at me across my study table.

Certainly a grey mist swirled before my eyes, and when it cleared I found my collar-ends undone and the tingling after-taste of brandy upon my lips. Holmes was bending over my chair, his flask in his hand.

This surprise reveal brought to you by:

Brandy!

If Brandy doesn't save you, at least you'll die drunk!

“My dear Watson,” said the well-remembered voice, “I owe you a thousand apologies. I had no idea that you would be so affected.”

No.

Shit.

Sherlock.

Yeah, totally unbelievable that your bff who has thought you were dead for two years and probably blames himself at least somewhat for falling for the obvious ruse and leaving you alone on the cliffside to face your demise, might POSSIBLY be A LITTLE BIT affected by YOU RISING FROM THE DEAD BEFORE HIS EYES.

You are such a dramatic little chaos gremlin and it's great, but a truly spectacular lack of forethought here.

"Now, my dear fellow, in the matter of these explanations we have, if I may ask for your co-operation, a hard and dangerous night's work in front of us. Perhaps it would be better if I gave you an account of the whole situation when that work is finished.”

Casually rolls back into town, greets bff. 'Like, I could tell you how come I'm not dead, but instead we could both risk our lives first... what do you think?'

"I had no serious difficulty in getting out of it, for the very simple reason that I never was in it.”

A cliffhanger - literally??

Disappointed we only got two synonyms for the falls though: "awful abyss" and "dreadful chasm" I was hoping for some other ones. "merciless maw", "terrible void", "cruel crevasse", "fell fall", "godawful gap". Hopefully some more can be shoehorned into the next bit.

[fifteensjukebox]

tagged by @amidalleia tysm!!💖

last song: winning by emily haines & the soft skeleton has been in my head and i have whatever a photographic memory but for music is called so i think it counts. i was trying to figure out the change in timing starting about a minute into the song and my memory wasn't good enough to figure it out, and i think the last song i actually listened to was wet blanket by metric (emily's band) in the car yesterday. what can i say i love her! (the update is that I tossed this post into my drafts earlier and i have now actually listened to winning and almost figured out what she's doing but i'll have to discuss with my music theory-knowing brother)

favourite color: turquoise/mint/teal/sage/cool amethysty purples/the denim blue VW car colour (my beloved first car was a vw beetle we called lulu so that colour is now lulu blue in my house à la dodie yellow)

currently watching/reading:

rewatching btvs and angel mid s4/s1 respectively while showing it to my mom and brother for the first time! it's taking ages but we're having the best time

gilmore girls - (late mid s3) first watch w my parents! there's so much i know from here and so much i don't but i know i love jess

grey's anatomy - watched s1-17 with my family a few years ago (begrudgingly at first bc i so did not want to watch a medical show. and sooo long! but it really is that good (sometimes)) & have been watching weekly as it airs since, but we just caught up on the first bit of the current season yesterday bc i didn't realize it was back. and i love the new class of interns so much we are SO BACK

not dead yet - the only show i'm currently watching by myself week to week as it airs and of course my favorite character is the white man i hate it here... i do love the women too though!!

doctor who 12th doctor rewatch but i stopped like a month ago in the middle of the episode before the cybermen plot starts bc it's just going to break my heart to lose bill for a third time. but i miss them! missy most of all so i will get to it soon

i'm not really reading anything at the moment but i have a couple audiobooks on hold at the library (yeah this is jenny's answer exactly but it applies!)

relationship status: single and i don't go out enough so i doubt it'll change anytime soon

sweet/savory/spicy: i want to say sweet bc i loooove sugar but i add salt to everything lately, i even added it to a rice krispie square the other day, so....

current obsessions:

also still nancy drew forever and always, but honestly i don't have a fandom hyperfixation atm! it's all about furniture shopping.... i'm looking for a small chair/stool for my bedroom desk, and a bigger table to go with my living room big chair so i can have my laptop/food/whatever else i want bc i seem to spend most of my time here

and emily haines/metric music (lately i haven't been listening to much me after 2007, but i love the more recent stuff just as much!

last thing you googled: something about the st vincent rock&roll hall of fame exhibit bc i'd seen a clip about it on someones story but i couldn't find the full video (still haven't)

no-pressure tags: @redheadedbrunette @apolloamy @godofsmallthings @jemhowling @acafemmeic @electrictouchfeaturingfalloutboy @coldnightairinmylungs & anyone else who wants to! i love these sm

[flushed-for-the-trolls]

Billy Hargrove Stans Are Fucking Obnoxious.

Not gonna lie folks, getting really fucking tired of seeing Billy Stans openly cross-tagging, egging other people on and trying to guilt-trip people out of not liking Billy.

No. I do not care that Billy is an abuse victim, he abused his younger sister, tried to murder three kids and another teen. The moment he began abusing someone else, it ceased to matter what happened in his past. Billy is not a saint, not a hero, Billy Hargrove is a monster. That is it. That is all there is to it at the end of the day. Yes, he died doing something good and heroic, but he is still an abuser who hurt many.

He gave an apology? Who to and what for? Was it to Max, for all the years he had abused her? Was it Lucas for targeting him for his race? Was it for any of the others who (in a normal universe) would be traumatized at having a speeding car racing at them? Or is it just a blank apology for EVERYONE? Can we just do that now? Can he just say "Sorry" and just be forgiven by everyone? That's not how anything works.

You wanna know who DOESN'T forgive Billy? Max! Billy's favourite abuse victim, who sincerely wished and wanted Billy dead for everything he put her through.

It's funny how the oh so "enlightened" claim to be supporting victims of abuse while ignoring Will, Jonathan and Max. I guess they just don't matter?

The only thing I hate more about stupid fandom bullshit is the fact that I feel compelled to comment on it. I like to stay in my own bubble, but.

Oh.

My.

Fucking.

God!

These people just CAN'T stay in their fucking lane. There's always a Billy Stan (I say Stan specifically because I don't mind admiring villains/antagonists for their complexity or for analysis purposes, that's totally fine, these people I'm referring to are obsessed with Billy and pretend that he did nothing wrong) that's cross tagging, acting like a total ass and mocking/provoking other people.

When you try and wash away Billy's abuse, use particularly crafted terminology like "Abuse survivor/victim" to try and portray Billy as nothing more than a poor, misunderstood abused teen, then you've become an abuse apologist.

I don't personally care, but I start to care when certain opposing fandom corners are infringed upon, because believe it or not, I don't like arguing 24/7 on any of these hell sites. The blacklist/block feature exists for a reason, and it's not so you can ignore it and make your obnoxious personality other people's problems.

Get a life ffs.

Billy Hargrove is not a hero.

Billy Hargrove is not a good person.

Billy Hargove did not get redeemed.

Billy Hargrove became a monster and died as one

If any of these statements offend or upset you, perhaps that is the cue for you to look deep inside yourself and ask why it does.

[palomahasenteredthechat]

Lol con workers are volunteers, we work for free admission and a shirt. We are fandom members and just general public members. We "find small blogs" because we have always followed the blogs and the sites because we ARE FANS. You should take everyone with a grain of salt on anon but trust me we hear and see shit from celebs, teams, con-goers that would shock you lol. It's just always funny to me that the posts that get questioned are the ones that call fandoms out for questionable behavior and the repercussions lol. Someone says he slept with so and so because they're so and sons friend and it's gospel. His mom rolls her eyes at underage girls throwing themselves at her son and oooo we lie lol.

Nonny, if you want to share about other celebs you've met at cons, please do. I'm curious if you've interacted with other ST cast, for example.

[henrysglock]

i’m new to the st fandom, david harbour has a history of lying in cons? or just saying whatever?

oh yeah he’s full of shit a lot of the time. most of the cast lie because they have NDAs to uphold. take it with a grain of salt, the film is the thing and all that jazz

[dizzying-faust]

Sorry for the rant in the tags of my last RT, but I don't understand how you can say st//rco's hate is unfair when I had to witness the countless hate and threats that tomstar, jarco, and kellco stans got for their ships by said st//rco stans.

[ineffablelunatic]

earth angel (will you be mine?)

Rating: General Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply

Category: M/M

Fandom: Good Omens (TV)

Relationship: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)

Characters: Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley (Good Omens)

Additional Tags: GOmensEveryday Countdown Event (Good Omens), Fluff, Love Confessions, Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), Mild Time Travel, Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), gabriel is not around, thank god, maybe Muriel is looking after him, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens)

Language: English

@gomenseveryday Five days to go!

AO3 link if you want to read it there:

The Ritz, early evening. He hadn't been able to get time alone with Aziraphale since Gabriel showed up. The separation was starting to wear on him.

Aziraphale looked so beautiful, like a star plucked from the sky. There was a glow to him, untarnished even after so many years of being crushed down. That glow had always guided him, had been his lighthouse in the darkness.

His angel was fiddling with the gold ring on his finger, twirling it one way and then another. He wished he could have done this somewhere more private, but he couldn't carry this burden for another day. After everything, after six thousand years of treading on eggshells and glancing over their shoulders, he thought they were finally safe.

Then bloody Gabriel showed up and the precious, fragile life that he had built for himself caught aflame, and now he knew that if he waited any longer he might never get the chance.

He drained the last of his wine, warm and burning in his throat, his heartbeat sluggish, content in his chest. Aziraphale cleared his throat, half-rising from his seat, but Crowley caught his hand, stopping him dead. Palms facing, the angel's fingers soft, smooth, delicate. It felt good.

"Crowley?"

He sounded unsure. This was it, the moment. No going back now.

"Angel, there's something I've been meaning to tell you, and it's going to sound stupid and sappy, but you have to promise not to freak out."

He blinked, slow, elegant. "You know you can tell me anything, Crowley."

He could do this. He had practiced over and over again, in the mirror, alone in St James' Park, reciting it to his plants, a mantra, a spell that he cast to protect his heart. Then Aziraphale smiled at him, and his stomach flipped into his throat, and all of those carefully crafted words left his head.

"IloveyouAziraphale."

It came out as one long word, and he swore under his breath. Aziraphale's face went pale, eyes wide. That wasn't the reaction he had expected. He looked like a deer trapped in the headlights.

Damnit. Damnitdamnitdamnit. He had royally messed up this time. Nerves rose like a sea within him, roiling and crashing, salted with holy water. Undo it, undo it, undo it. Unravel the threads, try again, hope that he could do better next time.

The Ritz, early evening. Aziraphale's hand in his, but before. Before he had spoken.

"Crowley, dear - what was it you wanted to tell me?"

"Nothing important, angel. I just wanted to know - y'know, it's a nice evening, I wondered if you wanted to go for a walk in the park or something. We could feed the ducks - and - and - get ice cream."

Aziraphale's brow furrowed, bright eyes concerned. "Are you sure that was all?"

"Yes, very sure. Totally, completely sure. Certain."

---

He leaned against the railing, breathing in the crisp night air. The night was pressing in on him, the stars sitting on his shoulders like a funeral shroud. The ice cream shop had been closed - of course it was, it was 7PM at night, what had he expected?

"Are you quite alright, Crowley? You seem out of sorts this evening."

Second time lucky. He had tried once. He knew what to expect now.

"Aziraphale, what I've been meaning to tell you is that -"

Wide blue eyes watching him, innocent and soft and lovely, nothing like his own. He released a shaking breath. This shouldn't be as hard as it was.

"I know you think I go too fast for you, but I wanted you to know that I wouldn't mind spending eternity with you. If you're alright with that, that is."

"Well, we've already spent an eternity together. Six thousand years, in fact."

"I mean - not as we have been. Not as friends. As - something else."

No, that wasn't quite right. He needed time to think. He needed to be more eloquent, to be something that Aziraphale could want, could respect, could love. A snap of his fingers and the world slowed to a halt, the wind ceasing its steady sway and rustle.

Hands through his hair, pacing up and down. He ran a finger over Aziraphale's frozen cheekbone, dropped his head into his hands, pressed on his eyes until it felt like they might burst. He would try again. Another shift, the stars moving backwards in the sky.

"I really like you, angel."

"I like you too, Crowley."

"I want to be with you all the time. I would always be there if you needed help. Like I always have been. And I would buy you books and bring you cake, and I could watch you eat -"

He shouldn't say that. That sounded creepy. For someone's sake, why was this so difficult?

"I'm here, angel. Why won't you see me?"

"Of course I see you."

"Not like I want you to."

Again, again, again, watching as words failed him time after time. Damn scripts and practiced words. Damn the park and the sky and the stars and the moon that watched him from above. Damn the Almighty and her Ineffable Plan. He was too tired for this.

He turned away, shoulders shaking, blood boiling. He needed a stiff drink. He needed to hibernate for a thousand years and forget that he had ever tried this. He needed to sleep somewhere other than the Bentley, needed Gabriel to be out of his life, needed Aziraphale to see that he was right here and he always had been.

A hand on his shoulder, fitting like it was made to rest there.

"Crowley?"

"We should go home, angel."

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing." His shaking voice betrayed him.

Aziraphale turned him around, reached up, pulled off his sunglasses. "Hey. Look at me."

Soft blue eyes met his, the last trace of magic in the world, holier than anything he had seen before. Beautiful. A thumb traced the delicate skin beneath his eye, and he shook at the slight touch.

"There you are. You've been so distant lately. I've missed you."

He couldn't speak. His bones were aching, fatigue dragging him down. He didn't have enough energy to reverse time again. He wasn't sure he wanted to.

"And Crowley?"

"Hm?"

"I love you too."

That woke him up. "What? I didn't say - how did you - what?"

Aziraphale just smiled, leaning against him, a solid, comforting presence. "That little trick with reversing time doesn't work on me. If you'd given me more time to think before trying to reset everything, you would have gotten my answer without draining yourself."

He pulled back. "So why the Heaven did you let me?"

"I thought it was sweet. I wanted to know what other nice things you would say to me."

"What have I told you about calling me nice?"

"I wouldn't know. I was otherwise distracted."

His head was spinning. This didn't feel real. He wanted the ground to open up and swallow him, for the sweet release of darkness to take him in its hold.

"So you - you - really?"

"Really and truly. I think I always did, but it took me a long time to give the feeling a name. I just knew that you made me feel safe."

He regained a little of his composure. "Well, clearly I wasn't doing my job very well, then."

"When have we ever done our jobs well?"

He chuckled despite himself. "Does this mean I can stop sleeping in the Bentley?"

"Mr. Crowley, are you using me for my bookshop?"

"Certainly not, Mr. Fell. I would never do such a thing, but it's very cold out there. Since you love me, I thought -"

"Alright, you wily old serpent. You can sleep inside. On the floor."

He winced. "It's better than nothing."

One arm around his waist, Aziraphale began to pull him towards the gate. Maybe this was all some strange dream, but for now, all he knew was that he didn't want to wake up.

[heyjude19-writing]

Also praise/side note-

you have just in general with the HP christmas recs so many great recs! Ive been reading them daily and each one of them IS GREAT.

But it also impressed me on the breathe of HP knowledge u have! Ur so knowledgable!

Do you read dramione works nightly? Am I right its assuming your roman empire? or favourite fantasy fandom?

Do you also read normal novels? Gosh i would love ur fav normal recs as well if so!

ILY <3

thank you, i'm happy people are enjoying the daily recs because i am having so much fun doing these posts.

dramione is probably my roman empire lol. but i've really cut back on reading any of it lately. just haven't had the time/energy and when i do read fic, im going for drarry these days. dramione will always be my otp though, they're my first fic love. and i am also trying to read more traditionally published works. here are a few i've enjoyed this past year:

Sea of Tranquility by emily st. john mandel In Memoriam by alice winn Nettle and Bone by @tkingfisher The Hollow Places by t. kingfisher (actually, you could pick up anything written by them, i'm so obsessed with their work lately) The Salt Grows Heavy by cassandra khaw Bad Cree by jessica johns Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery by brom The Cruel Prince by holly black (the entire Folk of the Air series was a lot of fun)