#because if i tag him the fandom of his source material will drag me to the crusher

[scarycranegame]

> be me

> see one of those "imagine your f/o abusing you" posts

> hellyeah.mp4

> "he would totally say AND do that"

> realize that i'd beat the shit out of him before he could even raise a hand to me

the struggle is real..

antis dni, this is about abusing fictional characters and not real people so you probably wouldn't get it anyways

proshipper/comshipper/profiction/etc. safe!

[lemonsrosesandlavender]

How do you choose which POV to write from?

What fic do you wish you got more of a response on.

Something you hate to see in smut.

Something you love to see in smut.

I would ask more but I don't want to overwhelm you.

POV?

I usually start in a fandom by echoing the POV of its source material - so, in BG3, second person, Tav's POV. It’s typically an unconscious move though. 

After that, I might branch out. Second person is great for immediacy, and especially smut; if I’m writing second person POV, it’s always the person I want to project into (confident/strong woman fucking Rolan stupid, usually). However, the more detail and specificity an OC picks up, the harder it is to persuade a reader that they “are” them.

Writing third person allows you to play with the difference between what the character perceives, and what the reader perceives, in a way that’s not really separable in 2nd person POV because the reader is the character. So that leads me to write in 3rd person often too. POV-wise, I stick to the romance MCs, and write third person limited; I like being close to a character’s thoughts and immersed in them for long periods of time.

Picking a POV for third person then  gets more tailored to the story. In Planar Tears, Catrin has secrets and feelings that I wanted to unspool gradually, so it’s all Rolan’s POV. Plus, we’re all immersed in the modern world, so it’s much more fun to see it glimpses of it from Rolan’s perspective, rather than having it be the window through which all the story events are framed. 

I am kind of tempted to write an excerpt for it at some point that’s from Catrin’s POV though, because I think it would be fun! Maybe once it’s finished :) There have been a couple of times where I was frustrated by the limitations of Rolan’s POV - times where most of the story was the struggle going on in Catrin’s head, and I didn’t feel that dipping over randomly for one chapter was right for the story - but it was definitely then challenging to keep Rolan’s side of things engaging. I hope I succeeded!

In Service of Magic on the other hand, has a dual POV. Phaere has MAJOR secrets, but I’m enjoying leaving the breadcrumb trail within her POV and then we’ll be weaving in and out. The dual POV here is partly for smut reasons - I like imagining a whole load of deliciously subby thoughts and feelings in Rolan’s head, and seeing him horny for Phaere when she’s not around, but I ALSO like projecting myself into Phaere’s head as she thinks about how fucking hot he is and how good it feels to fuck him. (It’s also kind of humanising, hopefully; we’ll see she has her own issues and isn’t just some aloof, mysterious dominant. Don’t get me wrong, that’s fun too, but this is going to be a romance in the end so I want her to feel real and sympathetic!)

Rolan’s POV is just always a delight to write. He’s so opinionated and judgemental, and frequently misreads or assumes the worst in people. It gives you a lot of room to have fun!

Fic I wish I got more of a response on?

I would never say no to more eyes on In Service of Magic! I know the kink tags, crack-taken-seriously concubine premise and “eventual mpreg” are not everyone’s cup of tea, so this is very much not whining - I’ve always known the audience would be limited. But honestly, I think I’m doing a good job of making it fun and sexy, keeping it in character for Rolan despite the crack premise, and also working in a wider storyline about kink and acceptance. (Lia in particular is not amused that Rolan dragged them all the way to Firgenstrame without being honest about why - but Rolan’s also got a lot of shame about what he secretly wants, and having his siblings react badly to the idea only further drives a wedge between them that has to be resolved). 

So if you** ever do fancy reading about a whole load of femdom filth and a surprising amount of plot, then check it out here ;) Chapter 5 is in the works at the moment; it’s hard balancing all my WIPs!

** “You” at large - I know you’ve read it Rev! 💜

Something I hate in smut

I answered this in Jessica’s ask, but I’ll add a silly one here, that YOU cursed me with knowledge of: “gummy walls”. Whoever invented this phrase should be burned at the stake. It conjures gummy bears, and the thing is they’re actually quite DRY?! Urgh! It’s such an evocative image… evocative of all the wrong things, that is.

(Also I gotta be real with you Americans: I like actual fisting in stories but if you’re writing about a character “fisting the sheets” or their jumper or whatever that is just going to crack me up and take me out of it, because then I’m picturing the character rolling it up into a tube to shove their arm inside. Utterly a personal issue, but the image is indelible).

Something I love in smut

Creative new ways of showing off how much one character needs or wants another. That’s a solid chunk of kink for me. 

I do love some conflict and stakes throughout the story. It’s not necessary, I enjoy PWP, but OH when they’re arguing and then they’re fucking, and through fucking/cuddling they work it out? S tier. Delicious.

[mauveberries]

You know what, you're right about it being your opinion, I'm sorry if I offended you. I was just having a bad day 😭 and when I decided to scroll through tomarry tag all I see is your posts dragging harry for no reason and somehow putting Voldemort in this high pedestal while just kicking at harry and that just made me sad— I feel like everyone is entitled to their opinion and that doesn't mean one is more right than the other. At the end of the day this is all fanon and there is not realistic canonical way for this to happen. So, I just wanted to point that out because I have seen you time and time say how one way is just unrealistic but so is your way? Everything in this fandom is unrealistic if we follow the actual canon? Realistically, V is an one dimensional character that fandom has given depth to. So you calling others V unrealistic is funny because they also created something they loved, maybe that's how they envisioned him? So I guess I just wanted to point that out. I hope you have a good day <3

oh, it's alright. i'm not putting voldemort "in a high pedestal," in fact, canon itself puts voldemort in a high pedestal. he is canonically one of the most feared/powerful wizards to have existed, people are afraid to say his name, dumbledore isn't keen on going against him etc.. i'm just expanding it towards tomarrymort, and since voldemort is already such an overwhelming, powerful character in canon, comparing harry to him may seem like i'm dragging harry, which.. i'm not.

"I have seen you time and time say how one way is just unrealistic but so is your way?" i am not saying only my way is realistic. i am saying my way is more realistic than some of the adaptations of him i have seen. you say everything is equally unrealistic when compared to canon and that is not true. there is a source material. if you say all adaptations are equally unrealistic, then there will be no need for a source material. some adaptations are more realistic than others, because they are developed with more traits taken directly from canon. for example:

"voldemort is a cold, unfeeling person, who is prone to negligence towards someone who is his s.o"

vs.

"voldemort is a romantic towards the person he loves"

both are headcanons. one is more realistic than the other. the first statement has plenty of evidence that can be taken from canon: (mass murderer, horcruxes are neglected because they can be easily found as they have been given to people who were untrustworthy, he is unkind to bella despite her loyalty etc.)

the second statement is also a headcanon, but it is less realistic than the first, simply due to the lack of canon evidence.

as much as you want to say voldemort is a one-dimensional character in canon, there is still a lot of info we have from the way he acts. it may seem one-dimensional, and that's because it is. he's just filled with pure evil. he's not gonna have a massive soft spot for someone he 'loves.' it's just like that. he's just like that. you can add to it, but you can't change it. you can't do a 180° turn from canon and expect it to turn out realistic. you can't say he waxes poetry to harry and act like everyone universally agrees with it when it is not at all hinted at in canon that he likes poetry.

yes, people can envision him differently from myself, but that doesn't mean that all depictions are objectively not ooc. some depictions are better than others when compared with canon. it's just how it is. (i'm not dragging anyone when i'm saying this, please understand that.)

hope you have a lovely day <3

[marley-manson]

20 Questions For Fic Writers

I was tagged by @majorbaby, thank you!

I'm tagging @beansterpie @undecimber-of-joy @hetakiba @ofdemonsandangels @yeehawkpierce @hawkfawun @nimuetheseawitch @ofmdmash @quordleona03 @pomegranate @actingcamplibrarian and anyone else who sees this and writes fic and wants to do it, please do and tag me.

1. How many works do you have on Ao3?

7 fics, 15 works if we're including vids.

2. What's your total Ao3 word count?

68,280 words!

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Mash and Berserk are the only fandoms I've ever finished fic in.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Refraction, Snowmelt, Presumed Dead (though that one may be off slightly because it got hit with a kudos bot for a couple hours before I privated it for a day :| Still, idt it's inflated by much), Army Style, and Under the Influence

5. Do you respond to comments?

Yep!

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

Toss up between Army Style and War Bonds, but they're both variations on the same theme of Hawkeye's friends dragging him into army conformity. Army Style is probably a little worse actually since I do subtly imply that his post-war life is impacted too.

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

Presumed Dead and Snowmelt are the ones that end with happily ever after vibes. Snowmelt might be the happiest just in contrast to the source material lol, plus Presumed Dead does have a reminder of the issues they still need to overcome, while I kinda breeze past those in Snowmelt.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Not to my knowledge. Never gotten any mean comments.

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

I have 2 fics I'd consider smutfics, but I don't think it's really my wheelhouse. I feel like I can write sex okay, but not when the point is just to be sexy. I'd classify the kind of smut I write as thematically driven lol, or character driven. I need there to be a point, even in basic smut, or I can't write.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

No lol I don't have the imagination for it.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not as far as I'm aware.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope.

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

Nope.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

idk! I still go back to Fraser/Vecchio every few years, my love for them just doesn't die for some reason. Griffguts definitely wins in terms of content I've created though, if you put all my meta about them together it's probably encylopedia length.

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

My apostle Guts concept. I'd love for it to exist in full, but I just don't think it's something I can write. Even if I have the ability, I don't have the drive or the creativity to expand it into a full longfic, which I think it needs to be.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I think I'm pretty good at characterization and character voice. I've got a solid handle on grammar, and I think I'm decent at general flow with my prose. I feel like my fics are reasonably readable. And I can be funny imo. I also think my lack of ~poetic soul~ can be a strength, at least for myself, because I personally am not very into particularly poetic writing. I like concrete, in-the-moment action rather than more abstract vibes, and I think my writing reflects that.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I feel like I'm bad at conveying emotion lol. Others have said that they found some of my fics effectively emotional and I'm very happy about that, but if so I think that's incidental of what I'm writing, rather than how I'm writing it. My lack of poetry here is maybe more of a flaw than a strength.

I also worry about my prose being dry, feeling like a slog to read, and/or ungrounded in descriptive detail. I'm inclined towards talking heads floating in a void exchanging dialogue and I have to work to add a sense of setting.

And I have a dismal work ethic lol. I write when and what the mood takes me, I can't sit and force myself to knock out a few hundred words. I have many wips going at once so that when inspiration for one dries up I can turn to another, but I often go long stretches without writing at all. It took me like 2 years to write Army Style.

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

Idk. I guess I'd say do it if it makes sense for the character and you speak the language or know someone who can effectively translate what you want to say, rather than relying on google translate? Though I feel like you shouldn't include a translation if you're doing this lol, unless it's like, a Discworld or Good Omens fic where end notes are part of the prose style and you're doing something funny with it. It's just clunky in terms of reading experience. Make the meaning obvious through context, or irrelevant but a bonus for multi-lingual readers. Or just use translation convention.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

I guess it'd be Harry Potter lol, scribbling mary sue marauder-era fic ideas out in a notebook back when I was 12.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

It's Army Style. I'm still kinda coasting on a warm glow of pride for finishing it lol. It's the longest thing I've ever written, a fair amount of research went into it (albeit reading I was doing anyway because I enjoy it lol), and imo it's honestly pretty good as a Hawkbi character study that balances real history and Mash vibes. Better than I thought I'd ever be able to write a few years ago.

[apoptoses]

DA here and I just wanna say A FEW THINGS 💭

First of all I hope you're feeling better now! Read about you having a horrid week and my hear broke for you. Sending nothing but hugs, horses, kind words and the sweetest summer breeze your way🫂

Onto smuttier thoughts, I read the final chapter of Come Get Your Knife and I'm IN AWE of you as usual. Perfect ending to a perfect story. The pool scene was incredible and it reminded me of those pictures of people taking their very old dogs with arthritis for a swim and just holding them in the water while they have the most peaceful, trusting, loving expressions in their faces. That was Armand with his boy right there 🥹

Armand finally doing for Daniel what Marius couldn't do for him was nothing short of a healing experience. Also some of the best smut out there 🥵 The mirror, Armand coating his fingers with his blood and and putting them in Daniel's mouth 🥵🥵🥵, "faking" a real human orgasm and smearing Daniel's come on his own cock jfc. She NEVER misses.

My favorite bit: “Did you know there’s a rare songbird, and when people eat it they cover their faces with a cloth so as to hide the shame of their pleasure from God?” Armand murmured into Daniel’s back, voice just loud enough to be heard over the little wet gasps he dragged from Daniel every time he rolled his hips. “I should cover your face, Daniel. I should hide you from God so that he doesn’t see the pleasure you take in being fucked by a dead man.” INSANITY!!!! Also was this a Succession/Tomgreg reference (yk that scene at the restaurant) or am I just That person now? 😭 perfection either way.

Finally, I read your last ask abt that anon seeing Armand/Daniel hate all over town and lmao SO IT WASN'T JUST ME. I mean I'm not doing myself any favors here because I do check their tags constantly. I'm sadly like a rabid hound when it comes to them, sniffing around in search of good food and yeah most of the time the takes are rancid but other times I find one ☝️ good take and some amazing fanart and I tell myself it's all worth it dsfhsjfk. The way some ppl treat their extremely personal headcanons and projections as undeniable canon facts is nuts. Ship and let ship is my motto but damn some of the things I've seen... and I wouldn't blame the show per se, but the massive influx of fans that a mainstream tv show gave to an already existing fandom has been a contributing factor to what we're seeing imo, where very few people actually bother to read the source material (which is okay really, no one actually has to read the books and the show is almost nothing like the books anyway) and then start treating out of context quotes and scenes or headcanons or summaries of events they heard from a friend of a friend of a friend or plain incorrect takes as canon. it's like a bad (horrifyingly bad) game of telephone around here 🥴 wtvr tho it's literally fiction, and not that much of a big deal (someone tell them that tho lmaoo).

xoxo ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ 

Dungeon anon, I wondered where you were ♥ Thank you for the kind words, things (seem to be) getting better.

lmao armand as an arthritic dog floating in the pool. It's accurate though, his old body needed a rest and I needed them to do something cute before the filth began. I feel like he would enjoy swimming, not for any particular reason. It's just a chill activity for him that he can do like any mortal.

listen i just needed them to fuck while daniel was still mortal and i was hellbent on making armand find a way to 'come' in daniel 😂 and tbh it's nastier for him to put daniel's own mess back inside him, daniel probably liked that better than he would anything armand's body could produce were he able to do the deed. it reminds him this is an artificial experience, it's not natural at all (and thus hotter)

and hell YEAH that is a wambsgans reference lmao i knew about orotolans long before succession but tom reminded me of them, and i just really wanted to write armand threatening to cover daniel's face from god (also it feels like something marius may have said to amadeo, and that armand would put his own twist on and later repeat), i couldn't pass up the opportunity.

see i have no courage to check the tags, i only trust what people i know reblog or the content of people who follow me 😂 i don't even wanna know what's out there.

but yeah, people do some WEIRD projecting, there's some weird head canons people insist are book canon fact (like guys daniel never did hard drugs on page in the books, not even once, the blood was his drug of choice lol but some people will go TO THE MAT and fight you about this like book!daniel was baby leo in basketball diaries, prostituting and railing heroin)

and the taking quotes out of context thing is way out of control. it's so easy for someone to screenshot some text on their ibooks app and then write whatever meta they want and then people who haven't read that book take it as gospel and just...it's very frustrating lol even the stuff from the vampire companion gets treated as gospel as that's a book written by FAN, it is FAN META with a few quotes from anne sprinkled in. ramsland calls armand a black hole who doesn't love anything and people take that as fact and just...no lol anne didn't write those words, those are ramsland's interpretation of the first five VC books circa 1991!

i'm lucky that everyone who likes the show who happens to follow me and read my fic has been outrageously nice, so i have no clue what happens in the more tumultuous waters of amc fandom lol but i really hope people give the books themselves a chance, even if only to read their blorbo's chapters because they're good and it's worth knowing the context in which things happened in them!

ANYWAYS DA, the fic you inspired me to write with armand learning dirty talk will be posted tomorrow, i hope you're hyped ♥

xoxo

[mintchochipkookie]

Why does hating Zuko and willfully misinterpreting his character seem to be the trendy new thing to do in this fandom?

Oh my godddd!!!!!! The mere fucking THOUGHT of Zuko slander makes my blood boil why do you do this to me lmaoo. But, as I’ve mentioned earlier, I would see this stuff in the tags just when I joined the fandom and didn’t realise that there is a slight possibility that someone could not adore Zuko with every fibre of their being. I see people refute them on my dash from time to time, but I just scroll past any stupid ass i-hate-zuko takes because I simply refuse to subject my eyeballs and brain to that nonsense.

The TL;DR version is: The hoops people need to jump through to justify ‘zuko was bad actually’ is exhausting. It’s such a stupid take, that disproving it requires you refuting so many untruthful interpretations of the source material, it’s almost impossible to untangle all the knots in their logic. (Also, I don’t wanna act like fiction and real-life have one to one parallels, but since antis like to pretend that it does, I figured I could take a few shots at the British Empire.)

Rest of my thoughts below the cut.

I gather that this is a new phenomenon, since the resurgence of the show’s popularity. I feel like it’s a result of younger people watching it now, who grew up with the internet and cancel culture (I don’t completely disagree with cancel culture, I just think there’s a very clear line that it frequently crosses). By that I mean, this mindset that if anyone has or has associated with someone who has said or done something vaguely not PC, they are a bad person forever now. This is a much more complex topic, and I do not think the intent behind the current mindsets are bad, quite the opposite. But no one seems to want to strike a balance anymore or view anyone or any piece of media with any kind of nuance. It’s the thought process of ‘since this book has racism, it is condoning it’ like no, maybe sometimes a book has racism because it is about racism and is trying to portray the horrors of human society.

There also seems to be a new take on the 2010s Tumblr hipster attitude of ‘i liked it before it was cool’ to ‘anything popular is probably not that good so we must drag it to hell and back even if that means distorting the actual themes and writing and disregarding context’. Personally, I don’t even think ATLA is as good as everyone told me it was, it has a lot of shit writing moments (on top of the uncomfortable racism and misogyny, but it was another time, so the standards were different), but I DO think it’s an overall enjoyable show and Zuko is one of the most perfectly written characters to exist (barring 2 very specific moments but we don’t need to get into that right now). Have we considered that maybe, just MAYBE, the reason Zuko is so widely considered to be such a great character is simply because he IS. Not every popular opinion is a good one, but a lot of them are popular for a reason. You don’t even have to particularly like Zuko, but if you cannot see the absolute beauty in his character and his journey, then I just don’t trust you.

I am an extremely character-driven person. I still maintain that had Zuko not been on the show, I never would’ve finished it. Zuko starts as a bratty hot-headed prince but here’s the really important thing. He’s shown in a very sympathetic light almost right away. E3 (or whenever that bitch Zhao shows up) all we’ve seen so far is Zuko trying to capture our protagonists and throwing temper tantrums, but you still feel for Zuko. My partner and I looked at each other after that episode and were both like ‘so they’re clearly setting him up for a redemption arc right’ (and we knew nothing going into the show idk how I'd avoided spoilers). They make it pretty obvious that he’s been through some shit and I think Zhao was a very clever idea. This is some old man in a position of authority over Zuko, mocking him for being a disappointment. It’s clearly unfair, and it’s just another Fire Nation imperialist who thinks Zuko is worthless because he has a conscience, probably. Zuko is consistently put in these positions of powerlessness, interspersed with flashbacks from his past, and he consistently pushes against it. He fights against it all and tries to regain some amount of control over his life.

The thing about anti-Zuko arguments is that it requires you to flat out pretend that a lot of the explicit dialogue on the show didn’t happen. Since this was a show targeted at kids, they go out of their way to say the key defining moments out loud. Ffs Iroh is literally just there to spout words of wisdom for Zuko so that his journey is made even clearer. The most common argument tho, I presume, is the one that Zuko personally is a coloniser and let me just heavy sigh do y’all even know what words mean anymore? Look, I’m the first person to jump on the ‘fuck colonisers’ train. Like, I constantly shit on the British. Trust me, I get it. But here’s the thing. I don’t actually think that every individual British person is a coloniser. Do y’all see the fucking difference????? The country absolutely is, and I will continue to hate their guts till they have the decency to accept what they did and pay for it, but most of the common people are not.

This btw is also a theme on the show. Multiple times. Hama’s (I have thoughts on how she was treated, but that’s not relevant rn) whole thing was exactly this. She was an actual victim of the Fire Nation’s cruelty, but her wanting to take that out on the FN citizens was wrong. For exactly this reason. You can’t help where you were born. Katara, the person antis love claiming was the biggest victim of the FN’s imperialist agenda and hates them SO much, goes out of her way as the Painted Lady to protect their citizens. Like. People see this right? They understand that Katara, the person who hates the FN so much for taking away her mother, still gets this distinction and acknowledges that the people responsible are only the ones who are actively colonising and killing people.

Anyway, I can bet the follow up to this argument is ‘but Zuko was Fire Nation royalty’ and I repeat. You can’t help where you were born. I know people are gonna point to S1 Zuko but again, nothing he does is out of malicious intent or for the betterment of the Fire Nation’s rule. People joke about how Zuko screams about ‘honour’ and then just completely miss the point of it. He was a child fighting to get his dad’s approval. He even says this out loud multiple times. He doesn’t get the horrors of colonialism, because he was raised in the FN. Do people just not remember his monologue when he’s confronting Ozai???? They explicitly tell us that the FN lies to their kids to make them believe that they are the greatest country. And he was raised in the actual palace, where would he have gotten any information to the contrary???? There are grown-ass adults with complete access to the internet out there who still believe that Winston Churchill was a great man and not a white supremacist because that’s the garbage narrative the West feeds y’all but a child raised in the royal family of a colonising nation who didn’t realise the lies until he left home is the idiot. Okay.

Now, had Zuko gone out of his way to torment people, simply chosen not to care, or was too scared to fight against them, that would be a whole other story. And funnily enough, these traits all exist in other characters - Azula, Mai, Ty Lee. Azula is also a child of abuse and I think it’s clear from the flashbacks that she always had a streak of cruel, but she was groomed by Ozai, Ursa didn’t seem to give Azula the same kind of attention and love that she gave Zuko, she didn’t have Iroh to guide her as a teenager, so she simply did what came naturally to her and promoted the FN agenda. Mai also comes from a high ranking family that is very much on board with the whole ‘Fire Nation First’ rhetoric and she helps, but only because she is apathetic. That’s her whole thing, she just doesn’t care. And when Zuko leaves, she calls him a traitor, so she clearly is loyal to her country to a fault (again, she was a kid who didn’t have someone to tell her better, I’m not hating on her). Ty Lee I think is closer to the representation of a citizen or maybe a soldier. They don’t explore this thread (a wasted opportunity imo) but in her introduction, it seems that she has no interest in this war and only ends up joining because she’s scared of Azula. It’s her way of survival. She knows she can’t take a stance against Azula and escape unscathed.

I think Zuko at some point goes through all these stages, but he is by nature, more caring, a fighter, and he makes his own destiny. Remember, that thing that’s said out loud???? Zuko’s journey is so incredible because he has to confront all the lies he’s been fed and the hand he may have had in the destruction, as collateral or via complicity, head-on. He has to live in the Earth Kingdom and listen to people talk about what they’ve been through and he is clearly horrified. He tries to protect them and when they find out who he is, they turn on him. I love this choice actually (as much as I hate to see Zuko hurt) because clearly, the show itself is aware that Zuko just claiming that he’s not like other Fire Nation royals isn’t enough for him, or for others. Zuko has to work his butt off to get anybody’s approval (re, the Gaang) because of course people are gonna be sceptical of him.

He has a bumpy road to redemption which is what I fucking loveee because life is messy, and your journey to being a better person is going to be too. You can’t expect yourself to just have a linear trajectory from Point A to Point B, because are people familiar with the concept of humanity. It’s going to look more like a bunch of messy scribbles and you’re always gonna mess up and I cannot stress how much I ADORE that they wrote that into his arc. You can do some dumb things but aren’t beyond forgiveness. BUT. They also acknowledge that just because you’re sorry now, doesn’t entitle you to someone’s forgiveness now, or later. And Zuko doesn’t expect it so he works tirelessly towards making amends. He goes above and beyond and he still doesn’t think he’s worthy of being forgiven all the time (like when he’s nervous to go see Iroh).

AND (oh my god there’s so many ands but he’s such a complex character and there are so many layers to his redemption I’m sorry I’m gushing) most importantly. He takes a fucking stand against the Fire Nation. He does all these things till he finally makes his way back home. He thinks this is what he wanted, he has his father’s approval, he’s got his honour back, he’s the crown prince, he has a FN girlfriend...so then why is he unhappy? (Again, these are literally his words asdfghjkmhngbfds.) Because he has changed. Because he actively disagrees with their ideologies now. Before he was banished, he clearly didn’t agree with their ways, but now he doesn’t want a part in it. We see his empathy and inner conflict again when Ozai asks his opinion on taking over the Earth Kingdom. See how that works? He had every chance to be a colonising little shit, but he didn’t take it.

I can’t believe the amount of strength it took for Zuko to walk away from this life of comfort and prestige, face off against that abusive dickhead who calls himself a father, and then just...join the “enemy” to defeat them. And he wants to defeat them because he hates what they stand for on a FUNDAMENTAL level. Seriously, did people just turn off the volume during that scene in The Day of Black Sun? This is what I mean by blatantly ignoring the dialogue to come to these conclusions. Zuko, as a fucking teenager, had the courage to fight against his own family because he believed the world could be a better place and he recognised that that meant his own family needed to be defeated. He was literally willing to die to take them down and protect the people that he cares about, good GOD I cannot deal with this. That’s more than any Brit ever did, but go off. I guess by this logic, no irl white person is allowed to be happy ever, because y’all probably have some ancestor who colonised a country or was a slave owner or something, sorry. Oh, also, antis who love harping on about Zuko’s ancestors and family - did they also forget that he’s the literal descendant of Roku too? You know, the Avatar, the guy who tried to fight and stop Sozin too? Or does that just not fit their narrative, so they decided to only pick the parts of his lineage that do?

[bao3bei4]

i have basically covered the material in this post several times on my twitter. but this is, in my opinion, the only s*xy t*mes with w*ngxian take you need. 

(cw transphobia, transphobic slurs, antiblack racism, mentions of csa and bestiality in fiction)

edit 6/10/21: hi! i’m realizing people are still reading this! this was written in response to aja romano’s vox article on the fic that was published in late february of this year. i had been frustrated with how their article seemed to miss the point in many ways, because they never talked about the substance of the fic. which, i mean, fair. i wouldn’t want to read a 1million word fic either.

but i already had, so i thought i’d write about some things that i believed needed to be part of the conversation. namely, that its author wasn’t a harmless troll, but a person i genuinely disliked who i believed should be deplatformed.

i think virtual1979 is a bad person. 

i think a lot of people mainly know about sexy times the phenomenon more than they do sexy times the fic itself. i have the dubious honor of being one of the few people who has actually read large portions of the million word fic, and that’s why i wanted to write this meanspirited hit piece. 

the fic is down right now and the author’s notes and comments have both been deleted, which is why i cannot provide screenshots. however, these are all quotes i have saved from when the fic was online, and i’m happy to talk with anyone if you feel any of these quotes are mischaracterizations of the fic. 

i also want to be clear this is not a “callout post” and i’m not trying to “cancel” them or whatever. i am just explaining why i don’t like them, why i don’t feel bad they’re being harassed, and why i do not find them sympathetic at all, and perhaps why you should also adopt these stances. 

let’s start with transphobia. 

sexy times with wangxian is transphobic. this much is apparent from the tags. virtual1979 tagged the following: F*tanari, d*ckgirl, Sh*male. they use this language in the chapters that include a character with both a vagina and a penis. 

they refer to this character (wei wuxian) with the pronouns “he-she.” the following excerpt is a fair representation of how this wei wuxian is referred to in the chapters where wei wuxian has a vagina and a penis. 

[Lan Zhan] would never be turned on by a female, and he would actually be turned off by a drag queen - but this… this Wei Ying, it’s Wei Ying, and he-she looks [...]

i know these words are common in porn categories, but they are also slurs. virtual1979 also uses hermaphrodite to refer to this set of anatomy, which is not strictly a slur, but definitely a stigmatizing choice of language. 

they have repeatedly made clear they are not open to criticism. they have also since removed the comment section. making an intersex character for the express purpose of using transmisogynistic language towards them in your million word porn fic isn’t annoying the way their tags are, it’s actively fucked up. 

fanfiction has a transphobia problem, and if we’re talking about sexy times with wangxian in any capacity, we must be clear: sexy times with wangxian is part of that problem too. 

secondly, virtual1979 is also complicit in ao3’s racism problem.

i think the way they write about chinese characters and settings is annoying and racist, but they are a malaysian chinese person, so i do have some sympathy for them. i am committed to having some patience for people who are annoying if they themselves are working through the prejudice they have faced. 

they’ve commented as much: 

Not gonna lie, this fic has been a steep learning curve for me despite my roots being Chinese as well, but I have absolutely zero knowledge in some of these aspects!

and i’m happy on some level they can get in touch with their roots. who among us has not been cringe and diaspora. any criticisms i have of their portrayal of chinese people will stay private and be made to other people of color.

i’m going to be clear here i don’t think the actual comment they made makes them super evil or anything. but this essay IS clearly in response to That Article, which did mention racism in fandom. so.

i think we have all seen the infamous karen comment they made, in which they compared people who criticized their tagging with “Karens,” equating antiblack state violence to... mean comments on ao3? and “SJWs,” which, eye roll. no ageism but you’re 41 why the hell are you complaining about sjws

anyway. i am deeply frustrated by the co-option of the word karen. a stand-in for a particular type of racist violence white women specifically can and do inflict has become fused with that reddit-type mommy issue “can i speak to the manager” internecine white resentment. 

so their trivialization of antiblack racism is another reason i don’t like them. again i KNOW it’s petty to point this out here, but this to me shows that virtual is afflicted with the same kind of fandom brainrot that aja is, where everything comes back to that same sort of self-centered bullshit. 

sorry for that jab. julian told me that aja thought that cql was about callout culture and all i could think was “wow! just like virtual thinking that--” because i also have spent too much time on twitter this week. 

this is just like. part of this ongoing pattern i’ve noticed with virtual, where they’re aware enough of real problems to acknowledge they exist (police violence, accessibility issues caused by their tagging) but are determined to double down on their minor relative persecution as king, shittily drawing parallels between like... real problems and fandom problems. equating the two or allowing the second to take priority over the former is like... par for the course for this type of person! 

third, this is just another clarification on more parallels between ao3 discourse and sexy times that went completely unremarked on by That Article. 

i would rather DIE than get into discourse. but why did they write this sentence: 

Lan Zhan’s rational mind finally broke with a tsunami of pedophilic lusts [...]

by the way that is the start of a 430 word sentence. and yes this fic does contain hundreds of thousands of words of aged down wei wuxian. make of that what you will. 

also why would you make wei wuxian teach baby chickens how to sexually pleasure him. do you hate these characters. what’s going on. i think mxtx should be able to sue virtual for that one. 

there’s a very obvious connection between mainstream ao3 discourse and sexy times that went completely unremarked on in That Article. sexy times contains multitudes and some of those multitudes are bestiality and explicit childfucking. 

this is not unrelated to fannish culture, they are not unfamiliar with fannish norms, blah blah blah. this is just normal fandom. they’re not subverting shit, they’re just a normal fan who unlike 99% of fanfiction writers on twitter, spends more time writing than posting. this has taken their fannish tendencies to cartoonish heights. 

finally, they don’t care about mdzs or wangxian. they’re literally just horny and spiteful that’s it. this isn’t a question of like... “ohh they were a good faith participant in fandom until they went joker mode” and the REAL villain is society/ao3. like no they wanted to write shitty porn, and when they found out they were annoying people, they decided to double down because they could be the main character of the mdzs ao3 tag every time they found a spare hour to write. 

here are some select receipts on that topic:

they do not care about canon: 

MDZS has quite a complicated and expansive plot and history, and enough content that one can choose to tune out certain parts and still get to the end of the story in one piece. Also, because of its source, some fans may not fully realize the nuances, cultural aspects (ooh, cultural appropriation is another triggering topic) or the full breadth and depth of the source material, such as a person like me, who is half-baked in terms of knowing what the canon universe is all about. So I end up playing with characters and settings technically borrowed from the story, and make them do things that would otherwise run counter to the original source material - and that draws quite some flak from those opinionated people I mentioned just now. It's part of what makes the fandom toxic. It's like they're the self-appointed guardians of the source material and they act like they own the rights to question such questionble fanworks, and dare I say, try to take down those that cross certain lines too.

they are just horny: 

After that giddines of extra drunken Lan Wang Ji scenes at the beginning, I'm blessed with Lan Wang Ji (Wang Yibo's, actually) fuzzy nips! Bless Bless Bless, and Amen! muahs the nips on the screen

anyway they did get nuked over wishing covid on people. 

so yeah. i want to be really clear. this is my thesis: i do not feel bad for them. you should not either. i do not like them. you should not either. that’s ALL!!!! 

[snarkwrites]

Title: snowbound pt 2 of 3

Theme: holiday party

Fandom / Character(s):Ben Solo/Kylo Ren x Earth!FemaleReader.

Warnings: Honestly, if you read the first part, you knwo already. I am not a medical professional, nor am I a hardcore Star Wars fangirl, merely a casual fan. There is no blood!tw here, but.. There is still an injury!tw, because he ain’t just gonna heal over night. Oh and if you can handle reading my own personal take on Ben Solo (his father’s son, fyi) then you’ll be okay with him being construed as OOC. If not, sorry? Pls don’t murder me?

Word Count: 4k. Shit. I got carried away again, didn’t I?

Okay, so here’s the thing... That first part really got me in the mood to write a follow up. So, here we are. Even if it’s the biggest flop on my entire goddamn blog, I got these ideas out of my head and... materialized somehow. This is my second daily entry for my bb @champbucks over on the @12daysofchristmas challenge blog...

OH YEAH.. for the sake of a timeline here.. This part takes place  two and a half weeks later and part three will take part a day or so, maybe two, after part two. Trust me, this needed to be said.

Also, again.. I made the banner for this. Don’t steal or repost.

TAGGING:

@andie01 @helluvawriter and @kyleoreillysknee 

@champbucks and @12daysofchristmas

[ about my writing | masterlist | multifandom tag doc ]

“Are you even listening to me right now, Katie?”

My sister’s question and the annoyed tone she asked it in had me shifting my focus from watching Ben chop firewood down in the yard to at least making an honest attempt to keep up with our conversation. I rolled my eyes when I heard her annoyed sigh.

It took everything in me to remind her that I wasn’t a child.

She’s always been like this, and frankly, it has everything to do with why I don’t try to see her more than once or twice a year, when she insists on all of us siblings gathering at Grandma’s cabin to have a family dinner and pictures.

“What?” I asked, gazing out the window already, distracted all over again. Ben had shed the black thermal shirt now, it was tied around his waist. Each swing of the axe sent muscular arms and broad shoulders to flexing and that had me more than a little mesmerized at the moment. I tried to tear my eyes away. 

,, just like this morning when we had that awkward moment in the bathroom.” my mind taunted me and I sighed, turning away from the window and wandering into the kitchen. “I gotcha. You’ll do the turkey because I can’t cook. It’s already baking and you guys will all be here at 4:30. I need to have the oven turned on so things can finish. I’m not stupid. We do this every single year.”

“I’m doing you a huge favor, trust me, Katie. You wouldn’t be interested in all of this stuff. You’re barely listening to me now. Did you get the girls what I told you to get them both for Christmas?”

I glared at the phone in my hands, dragging one of them through my hair, tousling it a little. “You do realize I actually cook. And I’m pretty good at it. Oh and by the way… I’m not a child. I’d prefer it if you called me Katherine.”

She paused, hesitating. “I’d… really rather not risk the Christmas dinner on your hurt feelings. I’ll prepare most of it, you can do the potatoes!” she said it cheerfully, as if she were offering an olive branch.

She made it seem as if I were incapable of the simplest tasks. She probably didn’t even trust me to do the mashed potatoes either and that thought had me exhaling sharply in irritation as I pinched the bridge of my nose and grumbled to myself about her always doing this. And honestly, I didn’t care if she heard me or not.

The chopping stopped outside and I saw Ben walking from the pile of wood and up onto the porch. The door creaked open and Ben leaned in the doorway, filling it, gazing at me with a brow raised and arms folded over a bare chest.

I held up a finger and turned my attention back to the phone conversation with my older sister, pacing the area right in front of him as I did, lightly kicking at the little wooden table beside the door when she sighed again and for the fourth time, she reminded me calmly, “We’ll have it at 5. Like always.”

Ben tensed a little nearby and he eyed the phone in my hands as if he were picking up on my tension and current level of irritation. I mouthed to him, “It’s my nag of an older sister. The one you heard me talking to last Tuesday?”

He spoke up. “Katherine, I’ve gotten the firewood cut.” an amused smirk played at lips I’ve only dreamed of kissing practically every single night for the better part of two weeks now.

And almost immediately, I froze, biting my lip. Now, I wasn’t dumb. I knew that I’d have to explain Ben being here to my older sisters, but I just… I hadn’t bothered to do so as of yet.

“Is there someone there with you, Katie?”

“Again, it’s Katherine. And yes. My boyfriend, actually. He’s been staying out here with me. But you wouldn’t know, because you only call before Thanksgiving or Christmas and every night until we get together for those occasions. Now I’m gonna get off here. That oven’s not gonna turn itself on. Bye.” I said it pointedly and before my sister could ask anything else or bother me further, I disconnected the call.

I could feel the weight of his stare, I didn’t even have to be looking at him. And honestly, I didn’t dare.

Instead, I made my way into the kitchen, fuming out loud as I turned on the oven. Then again, as I rummaged through cabinets to find pots and pans and my grandma’s old recipe book.

I was so caught up in my tantrum, I didn’t hear Ben slip into the kitchen behind me.

I turned abruptly and found myself body to body with him.

“Why do you insist on putting everything out of your reach?” Ben smirked down at me as he stepped closer, reaching out to grab the pot that I’d been trying to get. He held it out to me and I swallowed hard. I tried to answer his question, but nothing was coming. All I could focus on was how close we stood. And of course, the way he was staring down at me right now.

I shrugged in lieu of an answer and put the pot to the side. For a few hot and heavy seconds, all either one of us really did was stare at the other. Finally, Ben spoke.

“Boyfriend, hm?”

,, think, think, oh my god, holy shit, think..” my brain was going into panic shutdown mode. I eyed him and gave a sheepish shrug. “It was the first thing I could think of. Trust me, my sister is NOT someone you want knowing exactly what happened to you. She’d probably break her neck to go report it to that damn base. And they’d be down here, breathing down everyone’s neck. It’s… Better this way.” I licked my lips, swallowing hard as I stared up at him intently.

He chuckled, shrugging himself as if it didn’t bother him at all. And why would it, you absolute goof? My brain immediately saw fit to remind me, this is just a ruse. When he’s healed completely and he’s got his ship going again, he’ll just leave.” and the thought had a pout forming. I was staring down at the old wooden floorboards.

Or at least I was until Ben’s fingers tucked beneath my chin and he made me look right up at him, that shit-eating smirk plastered on his face as he did so.

I’ve learned over the course of the past two and a half weeks… Ben’s a little on the cocky side sometimes. When he’s not being all broody and quiet. Or almost borderline teasing me on occasion.

“If it keeps this military you speak of out of my way, I’ll do it.”

And the exact second that his tongue trailed over his lips and he gave that smirk again, it was all I could do not to melt.

I digress, I will be a raw bundle of nerves before he’s all healed and he’s gotten his ship repaired.

We were doing it again, that thing where we wind up migrating closer together. Hips brushing against each other. I cleared my throat and glanced down at the walking cast that Doc had swapped him over to at the beginning of the week. “Excuse me, sir.. But I distinctly recall Doc saying to stay off your foot as much as possible.”

“And I would if I hadn’t seen that our heat source was about to run out, woman. How is someone so small still somehow so bossy?” Ben chuckled, that hint of teasing in his tone. I gulped and managed to grumble a little as I shrugged in answer to what he’d said. 

“Go sit down.”

“You come sit down too. If she’s so determined to do it all herself, let her.”

I tensed a little and eyed him. Pretty sure my anger was written all over my face because he chuckled and eyed me, making himself taller. “You let her get to you.”

“I’ve always let her get to me.” I sighed, shrugging it off as best as I could. We were inching closer all over again and my breath caught in my throat as I felt his hand lingering at my hip. “Perhaps you shouldn’t.”

“Oh trust me. After you’ve had her around a few hours later tonight, you’ll see exactly why she gets so far under my skin.”

“Or maybe, she just needs someone who knows how to get under her skin.”

I laughed a little, eyeing him. “Oh, you’re confident now. But her royal naggingness has not arrived yet, either.. Neither have the other two, Margo and Cecilia.”

He chuckled, leaning down a little, his face almost well within kissing distance. “Did you just challenge me,hm?”

“Nope. Just know how crazy my older sisters tend to drive pretty much fucking everyone with their micromanagement and overall nosiness and assholery.” I dared to raise up a little, my face inching just a smidge closer to his. To a point where we lightly bumped noses. But Ben still wasn’t backing away. In fact… If I didn’t know better, I’d almost swear he moved just a little closer. And smirked down at me the entire time he was doing so.

The sound of a vehicle idling outside had me swallowing hard and turning a little, groaning almost the second I realized that apparently, Cecilia had decided to get here earlier than Margo or Dinah. “Well shit. This is a first.”

Ben’s gaze followed mine and he nodded towards Cecilia. Who as usual bought wine and a few presents and was wearing clothing that I honestly didn’t see how she wasn’t going to catch her death in.

“Margo and Dinah are gonna have a field day now. Dinah will have an absolute shit fit, because she wants us all to dress similar in the photos she’s gonna make us take.”

“Photos?” Ben questioned, a brow raised. I held up my cell phone and explained with a shrug, “It’s basically the same thing here as what you all do with your data pads back where you’re from, I’d think.” 

The door was being knocked on and I caught eyes with Ben, taking a few shaky breaths. “And we’re up… Are you sure you’re okay with this, Ben?”

“You said this was the only way. And from what you’ve told me about this military, I’d really rather not have to deal with them. Make no mistake. I could, easily. But I’d rather not.” that cocky smirk was back and there was this look in his eyes that I couldn’t quite get a proper read on.

It had my knees feeling as if they were going to go all weak and rubbery on me.

XXX

My sisters had finally all gotten to the cabin. My nieces and my nephew were running all over the yard, with my sisters husbands outside to supervise.

Ben had kind of wandered outside himself, leaning against the side of the cabin, arms folded over his chest as he watched my nieces and nephew laughing and playing. And I felt bad for him because I knew exactly just how much of this kind of thing he didn’t have as a kid. His early years had been all about training. Control.

Dinah cleared her throat and I turned around, facing my sisters. “What?”

“Boyfriend, huh?” Cecilia mused, giving me a teasing grin. Of my three sisters, Cecilia was probably the one I got along with decently. So I knew when she said it, it was kind of her being wistful because she is a magnet… For all the worst guys.

“You’re always saying you’re too busy. And your internship takes up all your time.” Margo echoed, giving a suspicious gaze in Ben’s general direction. I bit my cheek to keep from snapping out an answer at her, because as usual, Margo seemed to be almost accusing me of something.

Dinah eyed Ben and then looked at me. “Where on Earth did you meet him? I mean… He doesn’t seem like your type, Katie.”

I shrugged. Why was it their business? Anyway, I’m at least 90 percent sure that a man like Ben can have his pick of women. It’s highly illogical to think he’d choose me to begin with. And I knew that. I guess that’s why it bothered me so much because my sisters questions since all of them arrived seemed to further imply and echo my own thoughts.

I cut my eyes at Dinah and gave her a dirty look. “It’s Katherine. And what the hell does that mean?”

“Well,I just mean that I always pictured the guy you wound up with a little more like… That guy from X files.. And not an actual hunk.”

“Fox Mulder is a hunk, by the way. But what the hell does that mean?”

“Are you sure you really know him? I mean it seems sudden.” Dinah went quiet, biting her cheek as she shuffled her feet and eyed me expectantly. “You never mentioned him and then Bam, today, you’re telling me you have a live in boyfriend.”

“Oh my god, wait.. You two are living together?” Margo’s eyes widened as she looked at me.

“And she barely knows him.” Dinah interrupted, irritated because whatever she’d been trying to say without saying before was obviously being interrupted and cast to the side.

I glared at Dinah and shrugged, answering Margo. “Kind of. It’s temporary. Kind of like a test drive?” I did my best at being convincing, but the entire time I was saying it, the feeling of dread I’d been having about Ben’s upcoming departure rushed right back to the forefront. But I shoved it down again. I already know I don’t have a shot in hell there, there’s no sense in dreading it or letting it get to me.

Not when we were already such good friends. Anything further would be risking the total ruin of that. And I didn’t want to.

“Since when? And are there more out there like him?” Cecilia asked quietly, staring dead at him and fanning herself as she did. 

“Since like… a week after Thanksgiving?” I scratched my head as I thought back. Had it really been that long? My mind was blown because it honestly felt like only yesterday that I was finding the crash site for his ship.

The weeks following seemed to have just flown by. And the realization of just how much time had really passed only made me stop and think about just how much I was dreading Ben’s departure.

“You two don’t act like a couple.” Dinah spoke up, insistent. Margo glared at her and I sighed, shrugging. “Not everybody is into over the top PDA. Why do you always insist there’s more to something than there really is?”

“Yeah, Di? Can’t you just let Katherine be happy?”

“If she didn’t have crap judgement..” Dinah trailed off, glancing at me awkwardly. I tensed and rolled my eyes. “If you ever wonder why we never talk more than twice a year, Di? This. This is exactly why. You’re not my mother and I’m not a fucking child.”

I don’t know what got into me, but I was snapping and storming away before I could bother to censor myself or stop. And it felt so good. I stormed into the house to check on the food and just be alone for a few minutes.

To my surprise, Ben cleared his throat from the doorway of the kitchen before stepping in and sliding the doors closed.

“Are you alright? I heard what your sister was saying.”

I took a deep breath and shrugged. “Just ready for the afternoon to be over. She’s second guessing the whole thing and if she pushes too hard, digs too much I’m afraid that she’ll... “ I trailed off, going quiet. Ben swallowed hard and nodded, giving me this look that showed he understood.

And from the doorway, Dinah’s throat cleared.

“I came to talk to my sister.”

Ben tensed.

“She’s got nothing to say to you.”

His tone came out so calm and yet so angry that it had me glancing up at him. He was glaring at Dinah. Dinah’s mouth opened and closed and she looked from me to Ben. I gave her a half hearted smirk and she eyed us both, almost like she were determined to believe that we were lying and she wanted to dig the truth out.

Ben’s arms slipped around my waist and before I could stop myself, I gasped quietly, sort of melting right against him. “Katherine, all that’s wrong with your sister is that she’s jealous. She’s always been jealous.”

I eyed Dinah and a brow raised when I realized that Ben’s words had hit a very tangible mark. She flinched and her mouth opened and closed, and then when she had nothing to say, her lips pursed and she grumbled quietly, “I don’t trust you, Ben.”

“And I don’t particularly care for you, Dinah.” Ben snapped, giving a shrug when she gaped at him as if she were shocked that he’d dare to speak to her that way.

“You’re going to let him talk to me like this?” Dinah gaped at me and I shrugged, snuggling myself against Ben just a little bit, gazing up at him over my shoulder before turning my attention back to her. “Why wouldn’t I? You’re the one who’s acting like an asshole.”

“I literally cannot deal with you. I’m leaving.” Dinah stormed out of the kitchen, calling to her husband and my nieces. “Kids, get in the car.”

Margo and Cecilia eyed my sister and gave each other a look before hurrying inside, shutting the door behind them.

“Whatever you two did, we’re gonna need you to do it again next year.”

Ben chuckled, shrugging. “I just pointed out that she seemed to be jealous of Katherine.”

“Oh, damn.. That went well.” Margo laughed, smiling as she shook her head. Cecilia turned to me and nodded her head back at Ben. “I like him.”

“Wait.. you two weren’t on her side every single time?”

“What? No.”

“I just never said anything because I know she’s been having problems in her own life for years.” Margo mused and this got her a look from both Cecilia and I. Margo gave a shrug and explained calmly, “Her husband’s leaving her in January. For the secretary at his firm. Not only that, she’s got laid off last year and she decided to do the stay at home mom thing and it’s been depressing her. And when we were kids, she was jealous of you and Cecilia because you two were always doing things and she never really got to do any of that… Especially after dad died…”

“She didn’t have to take care of us? We had grandma. Everything was fine.”

“She didn’t think so. You know what a control freak she is, Katherine.” Margo sighed and shook her head. “I have wanted to tell her to grow up and get over it for years now. Just never had the heart to because I knew why she was like that.”

Cecilia and I shared a look.

Ben cleared his throat.

“Is the food in the oven supposed to be burning? Because it smells like it’s starting to.”

“Shit.”

“Listen.. We all know Dinah’s turkey is dry every single year. Let’s just find a pizza place or something?”

I nodded, laughing. “If she were here, she’d be throwing a fit.”

“You three can’t even wait until I’ve actually left to let everything go to shit?” Dinah wandered back into the kitchen, opening the oven and glaring at my sisters and I.

“You let the turkey burn?”

“I thought you were going home.”

“And I was… Until I realized that grandma would be disappointed in all of us. Me, especially.” Dinah was squirming. She’s never enjoyed apologizing. I laughed and shook my head. “Listen, if Jim is going to walk out, let him. The guy’s a fucking jerk anyway. I just never said so because I thought you liked… that kind of guy.” I advised.

Cecilia dug around in the drawers for the corkscrew to open her wine and Margo spoke up after a few seconds. “Just let everything go, Di. Life’s too fucking short, okay? We’re literally all we have left now.”

Dinah mulled it over, nodding. She eyed Ben, who was hanging back, leaning in the doorway with his arms folded across his chest. “Maybe I was wrong about you. I just… I got suspicious because that one,” she nodded towards me, “Doesn’t typically get involved with anyone, let alone let her guard down enough to trust.”

I could feel Ben’s eyes on me, but I didn’t dare look up to meet his gaze, instead, I focused on pouring myself a glass of wine.

XXX

I shut the door behind me and leaned against it. “Thank God. That’s done for another year.” I laughed out the words and Ben chuckled quietly. “Wasn’t that bad.”

“I mean..” I trailed off, going quiet. I knew from the little bits about himself that he’d told me, he’d never really been that close to his family. And when he’d chosen the path that he’d chosen in life, they’d only gotten further apart.

I got the feeling there was so much more to it than that, but I didn’t push. It wasn’t my business. Even though I hurt for him, because there had been points throughout the day that I could look at him and tell that he longed to have a family, even if all they did was fight. Like… maybe he regretted whatever he’d done immensely.

I sank down on the couch beside him, staring at my hands for a few seconds, nothing but the sound of the fire crackling in the fireplace filling the room.

“I’m almost healed.” Ben muttered. I glanced up at him, biting my lip and nodding, forcing a smile. “You are! Hey, if you want… I can get one of Doc’s friends to come out and move your ship back to the cabin… So you can use the garage and the barn out back to work on it?”

Ben nodded after a few seconds, muttering quietly, “Yes.”

After he’d fallen silent for seconds that seemed to stretch into hours on my end, he spoke up again. “I’ve actually enjoyed being here.”

“Honestly, I’ve enjoyed you being here. And I’m not really a people person.”

Ben chuckled. “Neither am I.”

I scooted a little close, tentatively leaning against him. “Sorry you got pulled into all that crap.”

He shrugged. “Wasn’t that bad.” as he chuckled and asked quietly, “Is it like that every year?”

I shook my head. “No, because usually, Margo and Cecilia and I just ignore her. Or do whatever she’s nagging at us to do. Just to keep the peace.”

“Oh.”

“But it’s fine, she honestly needed to hear everything we were all saying earlier. She’s always been… Overbearing.”

“Overbearing is just one word.” Ben mused, making me laugh and reassure him quietly, “I’m fine. I have a thick skin.”

He chuckled and nodded in agreement as he eyed the glass of wine I was sipping. I held it out and he took a sip, spitting it out.

“That’s awful.”

“It’s not!”

“It’s utter swill, woman.” Ben dragged a hand over his mouth and my eyes caught on the movement. I gulped and stood abruptly. Because if I didn’t, if I kept sitting there, I was going to do something dumb.. Like kiss him.

And if he’s going to leave soon, that’s the last thing I want to do.

I’ll only wind up getting hurt if I keep getting too close. I have to remind myself of that a lot lately.

[captain-of-the-historicfuture]

~hello~ !! For the meta asks!: 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, and 25 :))

Hello!! Thank you for sending these; I was really excited to see that ask game and I was hoping somebody would send some in. It still took me a while to actually answer them though, and for that I apologise. But without further ado! Some meta answers (under the cut because they ended up being fairly long, whoops):

3. What is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (Consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway.)

I thought of a few examples, but they could basically be grouped together under a common theme: whumpy/angsty scenes that were self-indulgent as all heck. The whole self-indulgent aspect often required the characters to be just the teeniest, tiniest bit OOC and/or necessitated rather unrealistic plot circumstances. So it was simply easier to keep such scenes as maladaptive daydreams, rather than trying to think of explanations for the character/plot issues…or exposing myself to judgement for them LOL.

Receiving permission to write/share one such scene anyway is an opportunity I can’t let slip by though. It might be because I’m writing this while running on zero (0) hours of sleep—let’s hear it for insomnia, y’all!—but I suddenly couldn’t remember any of my newer ideas under this category. However, I did recall a one-shot I had started writing a couple of months ago that sort of counts? “Sort of” because I could actually be arsed to write it since I was, ya know, writing it. Only got about six hundred words down though.

…should I share those six hundred words…?

………nahhh. I don’t think I’m quite ready for that yet.

But here’s the gist of it: Coulson and May (because of course it’s Philinda) were married for quite some time before the Attack on New York. But then Coulson DiedTM and then got ResurrectedTM. But gasp of horror, he had to lose his memories of his romantic relationship with May because reasons. (I actually did have some ideas for those reasons but sshhhh this is about me yeeting context and setup.)

The first half of S1 still happens as normal (except MayWard doesn’t happen because??? Vows) and it’s now post-E20 “Nothing Personal”. The morning after (or a morning soon after, whatever) the T.A.H.I.T.I. reveal! May’s mom—who doesn’t know about GH.325 and whom May fed a cover story about Coulson divorcing her or something equally as oof, IDK—shows up at the hotel and starts ripping into Coulson for breaking her daughter’s heart, then dragging her back into the field with her ex-husband (him), then accusing her of terrible things and forcing her away again.

Poor guy’s confused as heck, and so is the team, and soon enough so is Lian. The only one who understands what’s going on is May, and she’s freaking dying off to the side like why is this happening to me and eventually everybody’s like! Explain??? (Was thinking about including something from Coulson like, “Are you still keeping things from me?” Just for that extra smidge of angst, yay!)

So yeah then May gives a, like, two-sentence debriefing that elicits more questions than answers. Coulson decides to take May aside and they have a heart-to-heart. Lots of feelings and angst and hurt/comfort and at some point plenty of kissing too. Just! May hiding her feelings for Coulson’s sake but really magnified, plus some actual apologies and consideration of the grief May’s been through on Coulson’s part.

And uhh yeah that’s basically it I dunno hdsjncjshd. I warned y’all it’s OOC, plot-bendy, and very self-indulgent!

6. What character do you have the most fun writing?

I don’t think I could name a single character for this. I get different things out of taking on different voices, you know? I guess recently I’ve found myself gravitating towards more taciturn and introspective points of view, like JQ from my original novel Rosewood or M. Yisbon from my…other original novel Temple.

Generally, however, I like tackling stories from an outsider’s perspective. That’s why I so rarely write my more “substantial” (serious? demanding? for lack of better words?) projects from the PoV of my “preferred” character. This usually means writing from their love interest’s perspective, but not always. With shorter fanfic, using a more removed/unconventional/niche PoV can be really fun. Like, I once wrote a canon compliant ficlet purely(-ish) about Philinda from Tony Stark’s perspective. That isn’t always sustainable with stories that demand more character development or closer character studies, however, which is why it’s a good thing I like writing drabbles!

9. Are you more of a drabble or a longfic kind of writer? Pantser or plotter? Do you wish you were the other?

My word counts tend to run long, but I usually only write one-shots for fanfic. If I’m even inspired with a novella- or novel-length story idea for a fandom, you already know I’m in deep with them. And if I actually find the motivation to plan and execute that idea? Dangg. That’s only ever happened…twice, maybe thrice, and I’m in a lot of fandoms.

At times, I wish I could go for more of a middle ground ’cause, like, you know what I love to see? An AO3 dashboard with several completed novellas for my ship/character of choice. I mean yes, I hecking love >90k fics, but sometimes I’m in the mood for quick reads…and what am I supposed to do when I burn through all the drabbles and 2k one-shots? (Besides despair and/or reread my faves desperately.) Novellas are basically always safe for me LOL, and I’d hope to be able to give as much as I take.

Ultimately though, I think I’m okay with where I am with regards to that. I wish I could write more in general, but I’d be okay with “writing more” just meaning “writing more one-shots”, ya know? More than okay, really. I have mad respect for fic writers who have, like, a hundred or more one-shots under their belt for this one ship. The fandom ecosystem would be incomplete without them (as well as every other type of writer, but sshhh that’s the type of writer I’m closest to being right now).

I’m definitely a plotter, and I definitely prefer it that way. It’s cool having such a detailed record of my process. I like feeling like a frazzled genius on the brink of a major discovery with all of my different outlines and colour coding and many drafts and various websites.

12. Do you want your writing to be famous?

Not exactly. It might be cool if my original works were recognisable in the world, but I don’t think I’d want to be recognisable. As for fanfic, I’d low-key enjoy gaining a place in that fandom’s community as a fic writer. Like someone who gave and got fic gifts from fic writer friends, who participated in challenges and GCs, who received writing prompts on Tumblr, whose name was known for doing a certain trope/genre a bunch of times… Ya know what I mean?

Unlikely to happen when I’m so hecking hesitant to publicly (i.e., outside of AO3) claim credit for my writing, but fjnskfsjhfjs. A writer can dream, right?

15. Which is harder: titles or summaries (or tags)?

Of those three, tags are the easiest for me, for I have a reliable system for figuring out those.

Next easiest would probably be titles. For fanfiction, I like to use titles that are a quote from the source material. You should have seen all of my old Hamilton fanfic… I was really proud of some of those titles. And I don’t mean, like, whole lines—usually only two to five words. It’s a unique type of wordplay that I just love dabbling in.

And lastly, summaries. Sometimes inspiration strikes me and a snappy and intriguing synopsis just jumps out—one that I’m quietly pleased with—but most of the time I’ll spend way too long trying to think of such a synopsis and eventually just go with whatever I’d come up with so far. And live with my quiet dissatisfaction for the rest of time.

18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (Plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations...?) Tell us about them!

Typically, no. If I have deleted scenes, I save and publish them separately, but that’s about it. I sometimes think of AUs for my own work and might talk about them in my author’s notes—might even talk about writing them—but I never really do anything with them.

Although…

It’s not uncommon for me to decide a plotline isn’t working for a certain story or to think of an interesting but undoable arc for a certain character, but what I’ll do is make a whole new story for those ideas. Once I’m done developing the original idea and the branched-off one, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell they grew from the same roots. Does that count?

21. What other medium do you think your story would work well as (film, webcomic, animated series, etc.)?

That depends on the story. I’ve actually written stories in other mediums—movie screenplay, musical stageplay, poetry, TV show scripts, play scripts, roleplay—but the novel does tend to be my comfort zone. Sometimes, if I have an idea that I think could work, or would even work better, as another medium, I’ll label it as such in my folder of ideas and decide not to write it as a novel.

Most of the time, my non-book projects are collaborations. I’m working with five different people on six different story ideas: two webcomics, one stage musical, one anime, and two animated TV shows. Little concrete progress has been made in any of those, mind you, but they’re still fun to discuss!

24. Would you say your writing has changed over time?

Absolutely. But I’ve been writing stories since I was five years old, so we would hope so, huh?

I wouldn’t say my writing’s changed completely, though maybe that’s just my insider’s perspective.

25. What part of writing is the most fun?

Oh gosh, I can’t believe you’d make me choose. Writing is just such a wonderful experience for me; I love just about everything to do with it. Admittedly, not all the time, but. Since that barely qualifies as an answer, however, I’ll give you this—

The endings. Not only that intense feeling of rightness when you wrap up that last sentence, but also the moments before. The adrenaline of knowing you’re almost there but you gotta push just a bit more to actually get there. And also the part right after—the real wrap-up, honestly: the revision and the editing. Heavens, I love revising and editing my work.

Which is not to say I don’t like writing it out for the first time, too—there’s nothing quite like seeing your cursor scroll to the next page, like going from a blank expanse to a Oh man, how many more lines are even going to fit on this page?, like watching that page counter tick up another number. However, there’s something cathartic about finally ironing out those problems I had to force myself to stop worrying about earlier because “just finish the first draft dangit”.

I guess that’s not really the end of the writing process, but whatever. Close enough (as fic writers are wont to say).

Another thank-you for these asks, and feel free to come back with more at any time! ;P

Send in fun meta asks for your friendly neighbourhood writer!

[houseofglass]

Ramblings on Supernatural’s final season

Once upon a time I couldn’t open Tumblr unless I saw the episode of Supernatural first. Otherwise, I’d be inundated with gifs, reactions, play-by-plays, and commentary. And that’s all from people that didn’t tag their posts. The tagged posts showed as simple white bars on my feed, alerting me to the deluge of stuff people posted about the show.

But now, today, I jumped on Tumblr as I do first thing in the morning and there was barely a ripple about the previous episode. I haven’t seen it yet, I had plans the previous evening and will watch it tonight, but the spoilers are, well, meh.

I know many people I follow have moved on to new obsessions, delights, and entertainments. I see their posts and wonder who these characters are and wonder if I should invest some time in checking out the source material. This is a good thing, people evolve and seek out shiny new things. But it’s sad too. This Tumblr of mine was created solely because I fell into the Supernatural fandom and I have a pang of longing for the days of excitement and new material to feature.

This is the final season of Supernatural. I’d been waiting for this season for five years. I really believed it was best to end the show as it was getting a bit long in the tooth. Now, here we are.

But then the pandemic slipped into our lives and disrupted everything. Filming stopped. Life changed. The season put on hold.

What a horrible end to the show, I thought, to have their final season so badly disrupted. Fans will leave, lose interest, move on. And they have, if my dash is any indication.

Unfortunately, so have I.

There is no excitement for the show anymore. Not for me. The last episode, 15x14, sucked pretty hard for reasons that surprised me. I liked the character of Mrs. Butters a lot. She was interesting, prim, and a breath of fresh air. But she was also the central focus of the episode. Once upon a time, Sam and Dean were the focus of every episode. Now, they’re merely background characters to some wood nymph in the bunker.

Did the show have their funding slashed? Is that why they stayed on set in the bunker? Is that why there was little CGI of monsters? And when did Jensen start phoning in his acting?

Yeah, I know that’s a remarkably unpopular opinion for those that have read this far. But really, Dean didn’t feel like Dean in 15x14. Who was that man? Who was that character? Who wrote those lines he had to say? Who told him to act like an idiot and flash his brother, then act like he did when he noticed his hemline was too high? Jensen didn’t act like Dean. Jensen acted like he had no idea what he was supposed to do so he acted like a goof. It fell flat.

And on that topic, I must say that Jensen is looking beat up and old these days. Yes, I’m aware of his actual age and that people grow old as time marches on. But Jensen (or Dean) looks tired, drawn, wan, and, well, hungover. To be fair, so does Jared. They both have that look of prettyboys who are trying to deny their prime has passed. Or maybe they appear this way because the show refuses to allow them to age, to show grey hair, to acknowledge the character’s hard lives.

Maybe my attitude has shifted because I’ve been enjoying new shows like Utopia, The Boys, and Lovecraft Country. Those shows have an element of intelligence to them, each in their own way. Two of them have twists I didn’t see coming. All three fill up their allotted time so much that my mind feels full after watching, like there was a fair bit of information to process and let my mind chew on.

Supernatural is the opposite.

The show has become empty. Each episode a waste of 42 minutes. I remember little or nothing from them as not much new information is presented. Earlier episodes felt fuller, full bodied, well rounded. Now, I feel like I’m watching a half hour show that’s been stretched to fill an hour.

What a sad note to end on. What a dim spark to guide us to the final episode. It’s as is if the writers, showrunner, directors, and actors gave up about a year ago and are just going through the motions now. It’s hard to dredge up excitement, it’s hard to care. I honestly can’t even remember the first half of the season. Something about fighting with Chuck? About a bullet in Sam’s shoulder that mirrors pain? About monsters let loose? I remember it felt bad, watching a show I enjoyed as if it were a reunion show ten or twenty years into the future, created with a shoestring budget with the original aging stars in a last gasp for fame.

Please, please, please just get to the end without looking like the actors were dragged out of bed too early, and without looking like the costume department has no money, and without forgetting who the main characters are.

Goodnight Supernatural. You can rest your weary head now. You’re done and have been for a season or two. I’ll limp through to the end purely for loyalty’s sake. Sleep well in my memory.

[nijiirorhyme]

NaruMitsu/WrightWorth Fic: Lights, Camera, Action! Chapter 2

Sorry for the double upload!

NaruMitsu/WrightWorth Fic: Lights, Camera, Action!

Fandom: Ace Attorney

Ship: Mitsurugi Reiji | Miles Edgeworth/Naruhodou Ryuuichi | Phoenix Wright, Ayasato Mayoi | Maya Fey/Karuma Mei | Franziska von Karma

Warnings: None

Tags:Alternate Universe - Actors, Other Additional Tags to be Added, More characters to be added

Description: Rookie actor Phoenix Wright can not believe his luck as he  scores his first major acting role in one of the most anticipated movies  of the year. But, what was better than starring in one of the most  anticipated films of the year? Starring in one of the most anticipated  films of this year with famous actor Miles Edgeworth.

A Wrightworth acting au where two dorks (eventually) fall in love!  

Chapter 2/?

Alternatively, it can be read here!

Text below cut!

Act 1 Scene 2  

October 6th, 10:10am

 Global Studios: Conference Room

Phoenix shifted in his seat, the heavy formal atmosphere unfamiliar to him. This was his first time ever having to properly sit down with the director of the movie and read through the script together. He needed to remind himself to breathe, and his nerves weren’t exactly aiding him to do so.

‘“Thanks for joining us today.” The director spoke curtly, but nonetheless it caused Phoenix to jump from his own hyper-awareness. “You all know why you’re here, so I’ll cut to the chase before I’m finished with my fourth cup of coffee”

‘Four cups of coffee?’ Phoenix thought. ‘We aren’t even five minutes into the meeting though…’

Just as Phoenix thought that, the strangely dressed director’s assistant smoothly pushed another cup of coffee across the table, comfortably sliding right into the director’s hand. He took a sip, “Make that five, Trite.”

Phoenix swallowed, ‘... I didn’t even say anything… And it’s “Wright”, not “Trite”...’

He soon found out that the director’s name was Godot. A strange name, if you asked Phoenix, but it must be a pseudonym. From then on, Phoenix’s first impression of the man felt like some bizarre dream. It almost felt as if it wasn’t real because every time he opened his mouth, Phoenix couldn’t comprehend anything he was saying. It was like that one incoherent dream he had where he was locked in a bedroom and this one talking pillow spoke to him in riddles about how to find the key.

No Time for Turnabouts, a suspenseful action movie which follows an elite detective known for solving any case he’s assigned to, Detective Kyle Solvit. After years of  dedicating his life solely to his career as a detective, he is tasked with his biggest operation yet; taking down the biggest underground crime group, the Liss Family. He carefully crafts an elaborate plan to go undercover as one of their own members in order to take out the group from the inside. However, Ruth Liss, the head of the Liss Family, catches wind of the detective’s plans, causing the entire mission to backfire on him, but not before he is saved by a carefully planned uprising amongst those he caused to turn against them.

Detective Solvit had no time or room for this mission to fail, thus the title of the movie reflected such. The ultimate reason as to why he had this mission in the first place, was not only for the greater good, but because of someone he absolutely needed to save. Years prior to when the movie takes place, Solvit had his first run-in ever with Liss over the debt his family had accumulated and left him with. With absolutely no money in his pockets to repay the debt, Liss takes his older sister as payment, making her his wife. She is never seen again. It is for this reason that Detective Solvit became a detective in the first place, waiting for the day he could see his older sister again.

When Phoenix first auditioned, he auditioned for the part of the super charming and cool detective, Kyle Solvit, but his dreams were dashed once he finally heard the news as to whether or not he passed the auditions. It turned out that they actually casted him as the heartless head of the Liss family. Though it was a shock at first, Phoenix was nevertheless ecstatic to be casted in his first major role… even though he had absolutely no idea how he would portray such a character.

Ruth Liss was a heartless man who prided himself on the fact that he would use anyone and anything to get what he wanted. No matter how many people put their faith in him, no matter how many people pledged allegiance to his family, he was willing to sacrifice anyone and anything to achieve his goal. He kept those who worked under him in line by making them fear him, and those who personally knew him were afraid to even breathe around him, which unfortunately, happened to be the complete opposite of how Phoenix was in real life.

An actor’s job is to portray the characters they are assigned to regardless if they have the same personality as the person portraying them or not, but for Phoenix, this differentiation was hard for him. How could a man who couldn’t even hurt a fly portray someone who would probably kill the fly, then as overkill light its carcass on fire in a way that dramatically displayed his power?

Whatever the answer was, Phoenix would do it. Not only so this movie would be a success, but so he could make his old mentor proud and perhaps… show a certain someone that he was worth at least some respect.

-

During the meeting, Phoenix remained stiff. From his renditions of his lines to every single time he spoke, he could feel an intense and aggressive stare assaulting him. He only noticed this from the corner of his eye, but the moments he did speak, he started to see Edgeworth’s eyebrows sink lower and lower in displeasement. However, on the contrary to Phoenix’s behaviour, Edgeworth was a natural. He would tell the directors what he would be doing for what scenes, gave constructive criticism on where he thought parts of the script could be improved, and even acted out some of the lines in order to get a feel for the ones he wasn’t necessarily keen about. Phoenix was in absolute awe. The fact that Edgeworth could flawlessly play a character in any genre of movie showed Phoenix how versatile the man was as an actor. Though Edgeworth was particularly mean to him just minutes ago, he was certainly admirable.

Phoenix, on the other hand, couldn’t seem to grasp his footing. As soon as he felt like he finally got it when he tried to interject or give his opinion much like Edgeworth successfully did, it would often fall flat as it would be countered by the man himself. After that, he knew that it would just be better if he didn’t talk after he embarrassed himself by suggesting that Kyle Solvit should perish by the end of the movie to which Edgeworth told him that they wanted to respect the original source material and killing the protagonist after all he went through would simultaneously kill the suspense the rest of the movie spent building up. Not like it was possible to alter the script significantly to begin with, so any of Phoenix’s suggestions were already null and void the moment he opened his mouth to speak.

12:13pm  

Once the meeting was finally over, Phoenix took in the deepest breath he had ever taken. For some reason, that meeting was a lot more emotionally draining than he thought it would be, but it felt as if a weight had been lifted off his shoulders, making him feel a bit lighter. Sure, he had a lot to do in order to prepare for the days they actually started shooting, but that was a problem for tomorrow’s Phoenix. Right now, the only thing that was on his mind was to go home, kick back, and relax-

“Nick!” Maya’s voice was so loud that it caused his ears to ring and almost spooked him right out of his seat. “Guess what I just did!”

“Something good hopefully?” He cautiously asked in a rising tone.

Maya nodded and gave him a smug look. “Well, I’ve been thinking… Since you and Edgeworth hate each other…” She trailed off.

‘Hate him? I’ve barely even spoken to him enough for me to hate him!’ Phoenix thought.  

“I talked to his agent and… guess who’s going out to grab coffee with the two of them!”

Phoenix froze, suspended in the motion of getting up from his seat. He was in utter disbelief. Coffee? With the two of them? How did Maya even get them to agree to this? Was it possible to cancel?

For some reason, the thought of interacting with the man intimidated him. Edgeworth didn’t seem like he was the talkative type, meaning that Phoenix would have to carry the conversation. Every time he thought of that fiery glare the man gave him when he was displeased with the rookie actor, it was enough to send a chill down Phoenix’s spine and send goosebumps all over his body.

One look at Maya told him that she was stoked for this opportunity. She spoke with such pride in her voice and with sparkles in her eyes that even Phoenix had a hard time making up an excuse as to why he couldn’t go. Besides, Maya was involved in almost every aspect of his life which included knowing his schedule and the fact he had nothing planned after this, so making one would be useless regardless.

“When? And how did you get them to agree to this?” He asked, perplexed.

“Now!” Maya grabbed him by the wrist, then started to drag him out of the room and down the hall. She looked over her shoulder right back at him, Phoenix barely being able to keep up with his ecstatic agent, “And I have my ways.” She giggled.

Phoenix didn’t know what strings she pulled, but needless to say, he was not looking forward to this little outing.

 October 6th 12:09pm  

Global Studios

“Hello, Ms…Von Karma, it’s nice to meet you! I’m Maya Fey, Phoenix Wright’s manager.” Franziska saw a shadow looming over her open binder as she was packing up to leave, an outstretched hand entering her vision.

Franziska looked up, finally making eye contact with the overly friendly girl. “It’s nice to meet you too uh… Ms. Maya Fey…” Hesitantly, she took the other girl’s hand, shaking it firmly. Franziska wasn’t used to this openly expressed friendliness.

“Maya’s just fine.” She said, shifting her own binder to sit more comfortably underneath her arm. A beat of silence passed before she spoke again. “This meeting was interesting! I’ve never been to anything like this before.”

“Indeed…” Franziska responded. “This is your first time being at a pre-production meeting, correct?”

Maya nodded, “Yep, and Nick’s too. We could have gone to more of them… but Nick’s never gotten any main roles besides this one…”

“He does seem like a foolish man.” The manager inwardly cringed when she thought of his suggestions throughout the meeting. Who would have thought that that foolish fool would foolishly recommend something so foolish? Asking if Kyle Solvit could die at the end of the movie… who did he think he was?

“Yep!” Maya affirmed. It seemed that Phoenix Wright was actually the fool she took him as. Then, she added, “That’s how he normally acts, but it’s okay! Somehow, it always ends up working out for him.”

“Somehow?” Franziska inquisitively raised an eyebrow.

Maya stroked her chin, pondering. “Well… there was this one time where he was an extra for this movie and he broke one of the props on set. The director was really mad, but!” Franziska flinched at how loud her voice became to emphasize the word.  “Luckily, they made an extra, so all he got was a scolding!”

…

Franziska looked down at the whip neatly wrapped around itself in her hand. If the man was here right this moment, she would not hesitate to strike him with it for being the fool he was.

“Anyways, speaking of Nick,” she continued, not even stopping to question why she had such a weapon. “I came here to talk to you about something.”

Usually, Franziska was not one for ideal chit-chat. If she mentally categorized someone as irrelevant, then she would cut the conversation short-- let alone have any conversation at all-- but, for some reason, she couldn’t turn the girl down. For some reason, Maya Fey intrigued her.  “What is it?” She asked.

Franziska felt awfully self-conscious of the woman in front of her, watching her as she pushed a stray piece of her long black hair behind her ear. “I was wondering if you and Edgeworth would want to come with us for some coffee or something? After all, I don’t think Edgeworth likes Nick all that much. It’d be a good chance for the two of them to get along.”

Franziska shut her thick binder with a resounding slam, Maya flinching ever so slightly. This caused her to feel slightly guilty, she didn’t mean to scare her. Then, she reached for a smaller notebook--her planner--and flipped it open to today’s date. Giving her and her little brother’s schedule a glance over, she closed it, looking back up at the woman. “Indeed, my little brother and I are not the biggest fans of that fool, but we would be happy to accompany the two of you.” Miles Edgeworth may complain to her later, but this could be considered a professional outing. If they wanted to make this movie good, they needed to cast away their disdain for the other man and get along. Perhaps, this was necessary.

“Yay! Thank you, Franny! I’ll go tell Nick right now! Mr. Godot gave me your number, so I’ll text you the details in a few!” As fast as she entered, just like that, Maya Fey left the room.

Filled with a bit of confusion as she processed the interaction she just had with the woman mere seconds ago, the only thing she could process out of all of that was the fact her heart skipped a beat when she heard Maya call her ‘Franny’.

She smiled to herself. Maybe scheduling this little outing with the two of them wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

[grimmseye]

A Bird in the Hand: Chapter Six

Read on Ao3 here!

Rating: T

Fandom: Critical Role

Relationships: Mollymauk Tealeaf/Essek Thelyss, Mollymauk Tealeaf/Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast (eventual)

Chapter Characters: Mollymauk Tealeaf, Essek Thelyss

Chapter Tags/Warnings: Molly Rez, Amnesiac Mollymauk, Oh My God They Were Roommates, Existential Topics, Essek getting excited by both Mollymauk and his weird magic, Mention of Torture (in literally like the first sentence)

— — —

The scars littering Mollymauk's body weren't a result of torture, as Essek had first assumed. Blood magic was still fairly taboo, but he knew it had its merits. The life force was a powerful source of magic, and drawing blood was safer than drawing directly from the soul.

Most blood magic came in alteration and control. One could use their own blood to change themself, to augment their power by manipulating the force that defined them. Or, they could take another's essence, claim it and use it to collar its source. Blood made scrying simple and curses into child's play. It was a very useful component, and Essek preferred to stay quiet about his own applications of it.

What Mollymauk did, he theorized, had to do with sacrifice. There was power in that, too. The giving-up, the exchange of something to gain, or to take from another, was a form of magic that dated back to its most ancient roots. Before there was wizardry, druids, artificers, those who learned their craft and honed it through study and training, there were those who made pacts with something else.

The question then became what Mollymauk was sacrificing to. A god, a demon, a devil? Or simply to the Weave itself, using his blood as the guidelines to tangle its threads in new formations.

It was all very exciting.

So was watching Mollymauk, though he was ashamed to admit it. He hadn't asked the tiefling to undress, but Mollymauk had been more than happy to divest himself of his shirt. It left him in loose pants, the material fluttering in the cool wind that blew past. He'd taken up blades in Essek's backyard at Essek's own request. One of his swords was wet with his blood, and illuminated with a radiant glow.

The radiance took a point away from Mollymauk contacting of the negative planes, though Essek knew better than to negate it completely. Tieflings had infernal heritages, it was entirely possible that all the oddities of Mollymauk's body were tied to a single source. It was doubtful, but it was also worth noting.

Essek did just that, writing down his thoughts, knowing he'd be glad to have them later. A stream of consciousness on a page was better than neat and tidy notes that lacked detail and most importantly context. He seethed when thinking of the number of projects he'd had to abandon all because he hadn't marked down a late-night thought.

"You have another of these, you said," Essek prompted. "The other sword does not use radiance?" It was difficult to look at the blade directly with its sunlit glow.

Mollymauk twirled one scimitar with an idle air, catching it in his palm. "Yeah. Ice for that one."

Essek moved forward, wanting a close look. He muttered a word, burning the first-level slot to sharpen his gaze to magic. "Activate it, please."

Without missing a beat, Molly obeyed. It made his insides shiver to see the blade come up, cutting neatly into his skin. It was shallow and precise, drawing a scarlet line along the edge of the blade that beaded and dripped over Mollymauk's collar. Molly held it still against his chest for Essek to watch as the blood crystallized, frost crawling over the surface of the blade. It was evocation that brought the ice to the surface, and that brimmed off the blade's glowing twin.

A hint of necromancy burned in Molly's blood, and suddenly Essek had the thought: what would he find if he drew some from Mollymauk's veins, was the blood under his skin inherently magical was he built from necrotic energy, he'd crawled his way out of a grave so what did that make him. Surely he wasn't undead, or the way magic interacted with him would change, the spells Essek had cast on him wouldn't work, but he couldn't count as mortal, either.

So what on earth was Mollymauk Tealeaf? The question had a giddy sensation roiling up in his stomach.

"What's up with your eyes?" Mollymauk asked, and Essek blinked back to himself.

It took a moment to remember what he meant. The spell gave his eyes a kaleidoscopic appearance, reflecting colors that shifted madly in the presence of magic. "Ah. I cast a spell on myself, it lets me sense magic in the vicinity. Do you know about the different schools of magic?"

Mollymauk closed his eyes, arms swinging at his sides so the sword blades dragged in the dirt. "... No," he concluded, with a definitive nod. "I really don't know shit about magic as a whole. I don't know why or how this happens, but cutting myself makes my swords fancy."

Essek remembered the way blood had burst in a gnoll's eyes, blinding them, making the snap of their jaws only seize the air. "Is there anything else you can do?" He pressed.

Mollymauk gave him a long, withering look, and snorted. "Wizards. They tell you I know a place and then spend the time quizzing you about your blood curses. Yeah, if I cut a bit deeper, I can affect other... things. People, monsters, whatever. It's only temporary, but it can be enough in a pinch. If someone's about to get run through with a sword..."

Mollymauk's gaze went distant. His breath hitched, and he lifted a hand, putting it on the ragged scar on his chest. "It might be enough to throw them off."

Essek let him linger, uncertain what had captured his mind but hoping that maybe this would help unlock the rest of his memories. If he could return Mollymauk to the Nein, safe and happy and just as they'd found him, then maybe he could relieve the weight of his guilt. If bad and good were opposites, then surely if he just did enough good, that would eventually outweigh the bad.

He knew that logic was flawed. If that were the case, then the teleportations would have eased the pressure. But that was small, not necessarily easy for him but simple enough, something he could do for anyone. This was different. This was special. This would mean something, and then he could be forgiven, even if they never knew of his betrayal.

Eventually, clarity returned to Mollymauk's eyes. He shook himself, his expression pensive and tail coiling. Essek prompted him with a quirk of the eyebrow. Each time this happened, there was the hope that maybe he was fixed at last. And as was true each previous time, it didn't seem to be so — Mollymauk only gave a yawn and stretched his arms out, mindless of the blades he held. "So, yeah. Blood curses. Can't exactly demonstrate them without a target, though."

Essek sighed, but let himself be swept into a new focus. In time, he soothed himself. Mollymauk would regain his mind in time. Regardless, letting the memories filter back gradually seemed to treat Mollymauk better than forcing the issue, even if Essek was still looking for a more direct way to unlock those memories.

He tapped his own temple, refocusing. What Mollymauk said was true, there wasn't a target to use for a demonstration. Unless —

"You said the effects were temporary," Essek checked.

Mollymauk gave a shrug. "Far as I've seen."

"No lasting effects?" The question got him a shake of the head, as expected. Magic usually wore off without a trace. To call Mollymauk's abilities a curse was likely a stronger word than was accurate, too small and too brief to qualify. Curses clung and festered, even a blindness spell was likely to have more effect than what Mollymauk could do — except that it wouldn't come through in a split-second of need, by the time Essek was finished pulling his components and conjuring the sigils in his mind, a sword would be through Mollymauk's chest, through Caleb's, through Jester's.

Life for life. Perhaps it was a more equal exchange than he'd believed.

"In that case..." Essek drew the words out, giving himself a moment longer to consider. "Target me."

Mollymauk's face contorted into bewilderment. "Are you sure?" He prompted.

"As long as what you said is true, and the effect is only temporary, then yes." Even if the thought did make his skin prickle, remembering how blood spurted around the eyes. He wondered how badly it would hurt. Essek could fight, but it did not mean he was comfortable with pain. Not like Mollymauk.

The tiefling shrugged, shifting his weight between each hoof. "Ready?" He asked. Then he broke out into a sudden grin, saying, "Honestly this is weird. It's always a split-second thing for me, I've hardly had to think about it."

"Would it help if I attempted to strike you?" Essek pulled a curl of ice between his fingers, crystalizing purple magic that was so dark it bordered on black. Mollymauk watched the movement of his fingers, teeth sinking into his lower lip as he grinned.

"Talented hands," Mollymauk commented, and then cleared his throat. "But uh. You know what? Fuck it, why not. Give me your best shot, Thelyss."

Mollymauk slunk back, and the shift to his posture held Essek's gaze where it didn't belong. Mollymauk typically held himself lofty and large, filling up the space around him. That meant this change made for a captivating view, to watch as he became a serpentine creature, one who curled one way to the other and then lunged in to strike. He wasn't attacking Essek, though, was only on defense, swaying in place with a hypnotic flow.

Essek watched him, biding his time, a stalemate. He counted the seconds, learned the pattern of Mollymauk's weight, found the point when he'd struggle to shift his movement and then —

Crimson splashed in his vision. Essek gasped, a hand flying to his face as the burn began to settle in at the corners of his eyes. Blood trickled from his tear ducts in heavy drops, sticky as they rolled down his cheeks. The sensation was nauseating.

Necromancy, he recalled. That had been the magic that flashed the second before he lost his vision. He cleaned the blood away with a few casts of prestidigitation, blinking his eyes to find Mollymauk standing much closer with streaks of blood on his own cheeks, and not so much as a speck of frost on his skin.

"Handy trick," Mollymauk commented, as the blood wicked off of Essek's skin. "You mind...?"

He swallowed his nausea, saying, "Of course." Essek cupped Mollymauk's jaw, sliding his thumb across his cheek to where the peacock feather was inked to clear the blood away. He only realized a moment later he hadn't actually needed to touch Mollymauk.

"Thank you," Mollymauk all but purred, and Essek would swear the tiefling pressed into his hand before he pulled it away.

He drew in a breath, and as he let it out he forced his muscles to unwind. "Thank you," Essek returned. "I have some interesting points to consider from that."

"Oh, yeah?"

A smirk twitched at the corner of his lips. "You wouldn't understand it." It wasn't meant as an insult. Or, perhaps it was a bit of an insult, but mostly just a statement of fact.

"True enough," Mollymauk shrugged, and to Essek's disappointment, he didn't bother prying.

In the distance, the sky began to change. The change in the light was enough to draw both their gazes. The clouds that cast the city in darkness had begun to spiral open, an eye dilating over the Bright Queen's palace to let in a light that made Essek wince even from so far away.

"I suppose we will have to pause this," Essek said, turning away to head into the house. "I prefer not to willingly blind myself."

"Please think about what you just said," Mollymauk drawled as he trotted up beside him, tail flicking against the back of Essek's calf.

He had to snort. "You have something of a point, but that was performed as apart of an experiment. Learning, studying, improving, not just..." He stopped himself and just huffed out a breath.

"Oh?" He could hear the smirk in Mollymauk's voice. "That means something."

Essek considered how honest he wanted to be here. Mollymauk was not a subtle individual — to call him such would likely be considered an insult. In that same vein, Molly had shown little if any regard for social norms and standards, often to a frustrating extent. "I am only frustrated," he said. "What you see there is apart of worship of... something they do not understand, and treat as a deity because of that."

"Lot's of folks don't understand me but I've yet to be treated like a god. Shame," Mollymauk sighed. "So it's some kinda ceremony? They wouldn't be having a festival, would they?" His expression lit up.

Essek actually felt bad dashing his hopes. "No, it is not the kind of ceremony you would want to partake in," he said. "It is... reverent, to an alarming degree."

"Wrong: I'd love partake in that — just as long as I'm the center of attention." Mollymauk's comment dragged another chuckle from Essek's chest. He'd been laughing more in general, since meeting the Nein. It followed that one of their early members would be much the same.

Mollymauk continued, "Really, though, what's going on? You conjured a big spooky cloud to keep the sun out, didn't you?"

"You have not heard of our Beacons yet, have you?" Essek prompted. They stepped across the threshold, Essek drawing the curtains that ideally would have only been for decoration.

"I've heard 'em mentioned?" Mollymauk shrugged. "That's — lemme guess, beacon of light?"

"That is the idea, yes." Essek lowered himself into a chair, while Mollymauk all but threw himself into another. He wrinkled his nose as the furniture creaked under the tiefling's weight. "There are these... dodecahedrons. They were found, and so were some of their properties. They found that when one is consecuted — I would say attuned, but they use consecute — their soul enters this Beacon upon death, to be reincarnated at a later time."

As Essek explained the beacons to Mollymauk, the tiefling's gaze grew distant. Snippets of conversation pulled to mind, pieces falling into place for Essek. He nipped his own criticisms of the practice short, circling around to say, "That is reason why your friends are so revered in the Dynasty. They —"

"We found one," Mollymauk interrupted. His voice was distracted. "No. We met in the sewers — Thuron."

The name pinged in Essek's mind, one of those sent to retrieve a beacon. He hummed, quiet and prompting, not wanting to break Mollymauk's reverie.

"He was killed. The guards took it, but we —" A smile pulled at his lips. "Caleb and Nott, those fucking bastards. Can't trust either of them, clever assholes'll stab you in the back at the first sniff of trouble."

Essek swallowed a protest as Mollymauk trailed into silence. Molly's brow furrowed and he shook his head, a hand coming up to cover one eye. "Gods," Mollymauk groaned. "So we'd been lugging around your god in a lead box."

"Allegedly," Essek couldn't stop himself from breaking in. He bit back any further words, but the moment had passed. Clarity returned to Mollymauk's gaze. He gave it a moment before continuing, "I have my doubts that it is any sort of deity. I think they need to be studied, not worshiped. By I am in the... extreme minority, in that regard. And I would prefer these words not be repeated."

Mollymauk gave him a crooked, tired smile. "What's a little blasphemy between friends, Mister Thelyss? And honestly, I don't blame you. That reincarnation thing, that sounds like a nightmare."

The words were alien enough to shock Essek. He cocked his head, leaning forward. "You wouldn't want to be consecuted, given the chance?"

When Mollymauk only scrunched up his nose he added, "Theoretical immortality. Death is no longer an object of fear, as it becomes a delay, not an end. That doesn't appeal to you?"

By his expression, it definitely did not. Molly's voice was rough when he spoke. "What you said about how the souls... awaken. What about the person they would have been? Is it really even their soul, or are they just suppressing someone else? I wouldn't..." Mollymauk pulled his legs up, tail curling around his shins as he rested his chin on his knees. He looked small, in that moment. His voice shook. His eyes were wide. "I don't want anyone else's memories. I don't want anyone else's thoughts."

Essek stood up. The movement was sudden enough to snap Mollymauk out of it, leaving him blinking at Essek with wide red eyes. He wracked his brain for something to say, a way to interrupt this descent, and landed on Caduceus' voice: "Would you like some tea?"

Mollymauk stared at him. Then he laughed, hoarse, and pushed himself to his hooves. "Sure," he croaked. "But there's not a chance in all the hells that I'm letting you make it."

They were silent as they moved to the kitchen, Essek standing begrudgingly aside to let Mollymauk make a mess of things. He was a good cook, but hardly a considerate one.

And maybe it was poking the sleeping owlbear, but Essek couldn't deny the questions that lingered on his tongue. "It would, theoretically, still be you," he said. "And who is to say that the person you become is not influenced by the person you were."

Mollymauk snapped his head to look over his shoulder, pinning Essek to the spot with a near-snarl. With teeth bared and ears pinned low, he looked a beat away from outright snarling in Essek's face. Then the fight drained from him. He breathed a sigh through the nostrils, drawing himself upright as he poured water into a kettle. "I am the last person to yuck anyone's yum," Mollymauk said. "If someone wants to go body hopping to the end of time, they can be my guest. But I want no part of that. It's just not for me."

Essek hesitated before dipping his head in a nod, even if Mollymauk couldn't see. "That is fair," he murmured. "I do not think it is for me, either."

"You were pretty pushy about it." Molly clicked his fingers at Essek and pointed to the stove. Essek just sighed and touched the runes, igniting a fire for him to set the kettle atop.

"You can do that on your own. Regardless, I was curious," Essek said, leaning back against the counter. "You are so against having another person's memories, but you want your own back. What is the difference there?"

"It just is." Molly started taking out the tea — all of it, in tins and bags and boxes. Most were blends that Caduceus had given him, but some came in his grocery order. Essek hardly understood the difference between them all. As Mollymauk worked, his tail lashed. It would betray his agitation if the tension in his voice hadn't already. "It feels different. Right now I'm missing pieces of myself. Those people, your people, the Nein, they're important. I don't know why, but they just are. But there was something before them."

Mollymauk turned, the anger in his face now resembling fear. Dread, maybe, or horror. It left him pale and clutching the edge of the counter, looking at Essek like he expected him to sprout fangs and lung for him. "There was something else, and I don't want it. This is my body now, my life. He gave it up. He doesn't get to take it back."

Essek remembered the haunted sheen in Molly's eyes when he'd called him by a different name.

Mollymauk.

Lucien.

"If that is true," Essek said, giving up on any further inquisition, "then you have nothing to worry about. He is... whoever he is. And you are you. You cannot become him."

It didn't work that way. He was making a statement with no backing, barely even understood what it was Mollymauk feared so terribly. But whatever he'd said, it seemed to work, with Mollymauk's shoulders going loose and a sigh expelling from his chest. "Yeah," he puffed. "Yeah that makes sense. Good thinking, Mister Thelyss."

"I am... happy to be a help to you."

And though it was said with a dryness in his voice, Essek found the words rang true.

[iamanartichoke]

Why do you feel that way about fandom? (In regards to your latest reblog)

Ah, I’m not sure if I know how to explain it, but I’ll try. (This got long, so I’m really sorry.)

The thing is, I first got into the Loki fandom early in 2018, so I’m coming up on about two years of being active here. That first year was so fun and exciting; I was elated to be able to discuss my Loki theories and meta with like-minded people, and I was so happy (and surprised!) at the attention my fic was getting.

I was also still at a point where I believed IW was going to blow our minds, so there was that extra kind of thrill of suspense (and a bit of fear but, when you believe in the MCU and haven’t yet lost faith in its writers/directors, the fear is surface-level and adds to the thrill - there’s not really the accompanying dread and despair). 

IW was a crushing blow to that, of course, but even though we were all devastated, we were all devastated as a fandom. We were still in it together; we had one another to vent to and cry with and share fic with. “Loki is alive bc reasons” became kind of an unwritten rule in most post-IW fics; we all agreed that Loki deserved better. 

In 2019, two things happened: one, I was underemployed and dragging my feet on finding better employment due to my mental health, which ruined my life for a little while. I had to move back in with my parents, which (I love them and am grateful they were willing to support me, but) was a toxic environment. I was too depressed to indulge in my escapism the same way (fic and fandom) and my progress on my stories slowed way down. I’ve never quite been able to get back the momentum I had when writing Sanctuary, but that’s another issue. 

The second thing that happened was, obviously, Endgame came out and whatever theories and hopes the fandom was collectively holding onto about Loki were crushed. Not only that, but the portrayal of Thor seemed to amplify the divide in the fandom between the pro/anti Ragnarok argument. 

It seems, to me, that what was a series of battles or skirmishes only became an all-out war after Endgame. That’s only my perception, of course, but I do feel that the latter part of 2019 saw the divide grow larger and larger. Everyone had opinions on what the “correct” portrayal of Thor was, and how it related to Loki, and whether fanon Thor and Loki’s relationship was founded in canon or not. Everyone was defensive of their own point of view; bullying and name-calling and anon hate became more widespread. 

Again, this is just my observation. Those who’ve been on the front lines since Ragnarok came out probably have a much different perspective; I’m only talking about what I observed bc it directly impacts how I feel about fandom these days. 

So here we are in 2020; like I said, I’ve been here about two years. I haven’t rewatched any of the Thor movies in ages (although @delyth88 and I are talking about it), because they make me so sad and also so angry. Sad for what we had, angry for what could have been. So much wasted potential. Loki’s horrific end hangs over everything, as does Thor’s radical character change, and I don’t have the same excited outlook about the characters and the meta potential anymore. 

Not having watched the movies in a long time, along with that feeling of “ugh” around them, impacts me creatively bc I’m not actively feeding my writing inspiration. For me, fanfic writing comes from being so full of feels about the source material that I just can’t get enough and I need more. I draw my inspiration from things like watching Loki’s facial expressions, catching subtle moments between Thor and Loki, analyzing the way they speak, thinking about the story choices happening, and so on, and so on. 

My source of inspiration has dried up, in other words, which has made it hard for me to keep a good writing momentum going. I was feeling great when I rewrote Sea, and then my inspiration kind of plummeted again - this time, bc I felt that I did such a good job rewriting and the response was so positive, I didn’t know if I could finish the rest of the story as well. Like I was already setting up the second half to fail, bc it would be much more “rough draft” than the first - revised and polished, yes, but not gone over with a fine-toothed comb the way the first part was. 

The truth is, I carry a lot of stress and anxiety around my writing. I am always incredibly anxious that no one actually likes my fic, that no one is reading my fic, that people think it’s stupid or pointless, that my quirky humorous touches are ooc, that my plotlines are convoluted and boring and my sex scenes awkward and non-existent. 

I’m having trouble with the Valki relationship bc I haven’t watched Ragnarok in so long, I’ve forgotten how much chemistry was between them and how it made me feel. I’ve forgotten why I chose to pair them up in this ‘verse in the first place. And I worry about that, too - that the people who read my stories for the Valki are walking away unsatisfied. 

So that’s where I am with fic writing - slow and steady, still trying to find my footing, still secretly assuming what I write is shit.

This is on top of feeling more and more isolated on tumblr, mostly because of the aforementioned tensions and overall negativity that’s erupted in the fandom. I have been unfollowed and blocked by people who were once mutuals; I have been blocked by people I’ve never spoken to before. 

There’s so much stress surrounding the things I post now - I’m constantly thinking, have I worded this correctly to convey my meaning without shitting on someone else’s opinion? Is this post going to be the one that makes this or that mutual unfollow me? Am I tagging correctly so my pro Ragnarok mutuals don’t see my criticism, and vice versa? Can I still post pictures of Chris Hemsworth, who is possibly the only man in the world I am definitely attracted to, which is a shame bc I agree that he’s kind of a douche now? But he’s so beautiful, but I have to disclaim that it’s just his face I’m attracted to? If I reblog this post about Loki that I think is hilarious, but is also founded on the flat stabby villain characterization, will I alienate my anti friends? Does it imply I don’t understand or appreciate Loki and that, by reblogging the thing, I’m endorsing a shitty characterization? 

And so on. It makes scrolling my dashboard uncomfortable and un-fun, bc I end up saving tons of posts to my drafts without reblogging them, and after awhile I am not enjoying myself, so I stop scrolling. 

But this means I miss tons of mutuals’ posts, and I was trying to check individual blogs for awhile but I kept falling further behind, and there were more and more posts I’d missed, and I’d get overwhelmed and then feel like they probably hated me anyway at this point for being a shit mutual, so I might as well just keep lurking on the dash for ten minutes and call it a day. 

On top of that, I haven’t read fic in awhile bc of this mindset, so I haven’t commented, and then when I don’t get comments it’s like, well, maybe the story’s not shitty but no one’s reading it bc what do I expect when I’m not reading theirs? You’re not special, Charlotte. 

The worst part about all of this is that none of it should diminish (and hasn’t diminished!) my love of Loki as a character. I am excited about the series, but I am also very anxious about it - about the story not being good, yes, but also about the inevitably divide that will further split the fandom. 

No matter how the story goes, someone’s going to be upset. You can’t please everyone, and trying only makes for worse storytelling. So the wank will continue. 

But I love Loki. I love everything about him. I am interested in writing about him and reading about him and thinking about him. I am invested in him and always will be. It’s just that, right now, I’m kind of falling further and further out of fandom and I find I have less to say. 

And so I either have to wait it out, or work on my own mindset, or keep on keeping on. I just don’t know how long that will take or if I’m even liked enough here to try to bother. 

tl;dr: Fandom has made me cynical and jaded, and it has dampened not my love of Loki, but my love of interacting with the Loki fandom.

(I know you didn’t ask for this hot garbage pile of my feelings, anon, so I’m sorry.) 

[some-cookie-crumbz]

Crumbles’ Big Dump of Upcoming Fics

Happy New Year, everybody! I certainly hope that so far things are going well for you all. I had been meaning to make this post a while back but things got kinda… delayed. Between a lot of really painful personal tragedies – including the death of my dad – and a stressful schedule with work and school, I’ve been a little all over the place. 2017 has been, by far, the cruelest and loneliest year of my life. My dad’s death has shattered me in a lot of different ways, but it had a huge impact on my ability to write, which crippled my usual coping mechanism. He was always really invested in the original stories that I work on as well and was also so supportive of my works. It made writing – something that I have always relied on as a stress relief and outlet for my negative emotions – painful and challenging and it, in turn, made me bitter and resentful at myself and at him. I’ll make another post about where I’ve been in my own mind fully just to get it all out eventually, but for now I just want to offer up an abridged version.

Most days I didn’t – and, honestly, there are still days where I don’t – feel like myself at all. But I feel that, at this point, not writing would be a disservice to his memory.

In the last few weeks I’ve felt a bit more clarity and I’ve been able to find my voice again. I don’t want to stop writing and I have no intention of doing it. In fact, my imagination has kinda jump-started back to near-normal capacity and I have a lot of ideas I’m really excited to share. This post is about the ideas I have in mind and when I intend to upload what. I want to put myself on a schedule because I feel like setting goals for myself will be a good way to get me back in the swing of things.

In preparation for this, I’ve actually gone ahead and made myself an AO3 account – which can be found [here] - because the ideas under the “Read More” are all going to be multi-chapter projects. I’ll still make posts here on tumblr when any updates go live (and should have schedules for when each fic will be updated), I just don’t want to post full chapters here, since I tend to write long chapters. I am also adding the disclaimer here that one-shots (with some exceptions)/ requests/ and other things of that ilk will not be listed here because those have no real schedule in mind.

Ships to Expect: SasuSaku (Naruto), SoMa (Soul Eater), Hance (Voltron), and a whole mess of Kidge (Voltron) because I have no control.

The Shrink Treatment 3: Voltron (Kidge): I am almost done with this one and, surprise to no one, there’ll be one more part after that to just wrap it all up. Regardless, though, I should be able to finish this short series up before the end of the month! Release Date: January 11th/12th, 2018 Update Schedule: Once (Part 4 will hopefully be done within two weeks from whichever day I upload Part 3)

Request 5: Voltron (Kidge): Leaving this vague, because I still want it to be a surprise, but the final of a list of requests I received a few months ago! This, much like The Shrink Treatment, ended up getting away from me. I relaly loved the idea and it’s taking me a while to get it finished. Release Date: February 14th, 2018 Update Schedule: Once (Valentine’s Special)

Like Treading Water: Voltron (Kidge): Love isn’t exactly an emotion that is easy to explain or acknowledge if you aren’t actively looking for it. Little nuances will stick out as something irregular and strange, but can be easily shrugged off when a mind applies logic or sound reasoning to it. You can blind yourself to something that is so obvious to those around you simply by virtue of coming up with other explanations. This is a chronology of how each Paladin realized that Keith Kogane and Pidge Gunderson were falling for each other; including the two Paladins themselves. Note: I started working on this back in October of 2015, shortly after I watched the first season and became Voltron trash. As such, I’m currently having to re-read what I’ve written so far to assure that it falls in line with the canon of the series thus far. Release Date: February 14th, 2018 Update Schedule: Once (Valentine’s Special)

Keidge Month: Not a multi-chapter story, but I just want to say I have every intention of participating in Keidge Month in March; in fact, I’ve already started to work on some of my prompt fills. I’ll post all my prompt fills to both here and AO3, just so that people can choose to read it on whichever outlet is more comfortable for them. It’s my number one ship and it happens to take place during my birthday month, so what kind of smuck would I be to not participate? ;3c Release Date: March 1st, 2018 Update Schedule: Daily (Month Long Event)

Cherry Bomb: Naruto (SasuSaku) – After an accident in the facility that she is interning at, Sakura Haruno gains super strength and an accelerated healing element. With the help of her role model, Dr. Tsunade Senju, she learns how to control and harness this power to help protect the denizens of the city. She is thrust into stopping a plot by other humans with genetic mutations to take control of the city using intimidation and force while also trying to keep her secret identity hidden from her photo-journalist boyfriend, Sasuke Uchiha. Note: I’ve been planning this project for roughly three – Hell, almost four – years now. This is going to be my final Naruto project – excluding any requests I get – and I want it to be something really special and significant to not just anyone who reads it, but also to my own growth as a writer. Naruto has been one of the longest fandoms I’ve been in and SasuSaku was one of my first really big ships; I want this to be a final love letter worth my time to write and worth everyone’s time to read. Release Date: March 2nd, 2018 Update Schedule: Bi-Weekly

Kidge Week: Again, not a multi-chapter thing but I really needed to say I have every intention of participating in this as well! My goal is to finish as many of my prompt fills for Keidge month before the prompts for Kidge Week drop in February as possible so that I can start working on that ASAP. Release Date: April 15th, 2018 Update Schedule: Daily (Week Long Event)

Hance Month: What do you know, I had way more things to list as non-multi-chapter fics for the first half of the year than I thought! Another extended event I have every intention of participating in because I really want to produce more content for Hance. It’s really such an great, under-rated ship that deserves more love! Release Date: May 1st, 2018 Update Schedule: Daily (Month Long Event)

Lance McClain vs. The World: After getting involved with a charming young engineering student named Hunk Garrett after meeting at a bar, Lance McClain finds himself getting dragged into a series of events that seem to be ripped right out of a comic book. He is given a warning from the leader of something called “Team Voltron”; a group of Hunk’s ex-lovers and close personal friends, dedicated to determining the worthiness of Hunk’s suitors through various competitive means. Never one to back down from a challenge, Lance agrees to the terms and is forced to learn various new skills and talents in order to compete with the roster of powerful opponents he faces. Note: The fact that there aren’t more Scott Pilgrim AUs in any of the fandoms I like is really disappointing, so I decided that I’d fix that problem myself. While I’ll be following the basic formula set up by the source material, I intend to take a very different approach and keep it fresh with some ideas of my own. So if you’ve actually seen Scott Pilgrim? This’ll be of a different flavor, so don’t assume you know what I have up my sleeve. ;3 Release Date: May 10th, 2018 Update Schedule: Weekly or Bi-Weekly.

Bodyguard AU (Title TBD): Voltron (Kidge): After publically calling out the shady business practices of Galra Tech, acclaimed actor Keith Kogane finds himself the subject of both an attempted assassination and threat of blackmail. Undeterred, he feels no fear at the prospect of making an enemy of the powerful conglomerate. Worried about his safety, both physically and his privacy being violated, his agent, Allura LeAltea, calls upon the help of an old charm school friend of hers. Enter Katie Holt; renowned tech prodigy and secret hacker known as Pidge Gunderson, hired on to be Keith’s personal bodyguard. The only catch? The two must pretend to be dating to assure that Katie can tag along with him wherever he goes without cueing Galra Tech into knowing their threats have had an effect. Note: I love Bodyguard AUs. I love Fake Dating AUs. I love deviating from the expectation. On top of that, an amazing Bodyguard AU one-shot has already been written by the talented Camphalfgalra on AO3, in which Keith is the bodyguard and Pidge is his client, so I decided to flip the roles for my own version of the trope. Release Date: June 15th, 2018 Update Schedule: Weekly or Bi-Weekly

Twilight: Voltron (Kidge): One night, Matthew Holt disappeared from his room without a trace. In the time that he’d been gone, his younger sister, Katie Holt, has been frantically pushing for more action to be taken in bringing her brother home; believing he has been whisked away to the deadly mystery of the forest around their small village of Kerberos. With her brother missing, her mother’s health rocky in her grief, and her father away to help a neighboring village with a fast-spreading illness, she is struggling to maintain not only all effort to bring her brother home alive, but also keep the family farm up to its normal functionality. The Head of the Village Guard, Thace Kogane, insists that she accept the help of his two children, Keith and Allura, to assist her with the farm. Initially cold and distant, Katie slowly warms up to the duo and finds that they may be able to offer her more help in finding her brother, as well as unraveling the mysteries of the dark forest just outside the fences of their small village. Note: I basically just threw the Voltron cast into the universe of one of my own stories – The Tragedy of Helena and Jeremiah – and went with it. Pidge is a pseudo-replacement for Helena and Keith is a pseudo-replacement for Jeremiah, though they have drastically different personalities from my own characters, and as such the story goes in a much different direction. I also borrowed some elements from another project of mine - Sweet Tooth - which The Tragedy of Helena and Jeremiah is a prequel to. Release Date: August 17th, 2018 Update Schedule: Bi-Weekly or Monthly

SingleParent!AU (Title TBD): Soul Eater (SoMa): Soul Evans has been struggling with life as a single father for roughly three years now; working two jobs and odd hours to support himself and his precious daughter, Harmony. Upon the announcement of his older brother, Wes, getting married, he is begged to return home to help with preparing for the ceremony and to be his brother’s Best Man. Feeling that he’ll have better opportunities with his family’s support and more time to spend with Harmony, Soul agrees to moving back to Death City. Through fate and circumstance, Soul meets Maka Albarn, the writer of his daughter’s favorite series of children’s books and intended Maid of Honor to Liz Thompson, Wes’ fiancée, and the two get along pretty well. And, perhaps from there, more will develop between them. Note: Bodyguard, Fake Dating, and Single Parent AUs are my fucking weakness. On top of that, I really want to write something that kinda messes with the typical tropes of Single Parent AUs that I’ve read. Hopefully it’ll be a fun ride for everyone! Release Date: September 28st, 2018 Update Schedule: Bi-Weekly

[xadoheandterra]

Title: Salt and Sugar (Cont. 2) Fandom: Overwatch | Marvel Characters: Reaper, Sombra, Widowmaker, Soldier 76, Tracer, Jesse McCree Tag(s): Reaper reaping random people, slight disassociation of self references, reaper contemplating being reaper, sombra being sombra, old people falling asleep and being grumpy, references to mind control shit Summary: Winston really should’ve performed a routine check up on Tracer’s Chronal Accelerator. Maybe then this wouldn’t have happened.

Widow did not wake, and while at first that bothered Reaper much like an itch, the way Sombra continuously moved to check on the woman brought her continued state of unconsciousness into light. Whatever the hacker’s reason to keep Widow unconscious, Reaper didn’t doubt that it had something to do with the fact that neither wanted to risk a fight in their less than stellar states. Reaper was perfectly content in letting Widow further sleep if it meant not having to worry at this moment about the woman Amélie Lacroix became.

Reaper didn’t like to admit it but he had no idea how long Amélie worked for Talon; he had no idea as to her general state aside from the pervading apathy she showed unless in the thrill of the hunt. Reaper couldn’t say one way or the other if Amélie killed Gérard and mourned him, or if Gérard was killed because of Amélie, or if whoever killed Gérard and took Amélie turned her into this. He didn’t know if Talon had their fingers in Overwatch’s pie back when Amélie disappeared the first or second time, or if their attention to the fallen peacekeepers was more recent as of Reaper’s addition to their ranks.

The lack of knowledge rankled Reaper, he would admit, and he could tell it bothered Sombra something fierce too. Reaper might’ve lived off intelligence, but Sombra positively thrived from it. The fact that the girl didn’t have the information when she seemingly had everything else worried him. The part of him that was still Gabriel Reyes pulled alarm bells, screamed in the back of his mind that this meant something else positively existed in the shadows. Something else tugged at their strings.

It reminded Gabriel, and Reaper too, of everything that lead up to the fall of Overwatch. The bitterness of it pooled into his throat like bile. Oftentimes it wanted to consume him as much as the ever pervading rage did, wanted to envelope him and take him over into something further beyond Reaper, beyond Gabriel, and that he refused. Long ago Reaper admitted to himself that he’d always been this fucked up mess; the anger and the hatred coiled within him and took him over. He once considered it to be an extent of how much SEP fucked him over, but after dying, after being resurrected in the way that he had, Reaper could admit he’d been this cloud of seething hatred for far longer than SEP.

SEP merely gave Reaper an outlet.

Against the wall, by the window, and nestled comfortably in the shadows Reaper glanced over toward Widow on the bed where she rested calmly. Sombra sat next to her, small screens in front of her, Widow’s head in her lap, and her free hand coming through the other woman’s hair. He didn’t question what Sombra worked on, he had no doubt it had to do with something with Talon and Widow herself. His gaze behind the mask slipped over to Jack who sat in a chair and seemed to be half-falling asleep given the way he’d jerk his head back from where it rested on his palm and stiffen his spine.

Oxten and McCree were curled up together on another bed, completely asleep. They’d only landed in the small forest in New York just a few hours earlier, but the work it took to even get their group to function together, and then find a place to hole up in while they figured out what to do next, took a lot out of the entire group. Reaper glanced back to Jack and watched, and waited, half-smoke and half-person in the shadows. He drifted his gaze back to Sombra when the man still twitched himself back awake and sighed breathily out of his mask.

Reaper noted the way Sombra’s lips moved, how she seemed to be almost singing something softly to Widow. Almost faintly he could catch a few Spanish words were and there. Some sort of lullaby from what little he could pick up. Soothing in its cadence at the least. He wondered if she sang it for Widow, or for herself. His gaze drifted back over to Jack, finally slumped down, not-quite-yet snoring. Reaper waited until the breath picked up from Jack’s mask, a soft snore with the tinny quality that came from the electronics set to pick up and project his voice clearly.

When Jack’s snores reached upwards and over a minute did Reaper ease himself up from his own chair. Already he felt himself drifting off into smoke and towards the slightly cracked window. He glanced to Sombra.

“Contact me if he wakes,” Reaper rasped. Sombra waved her fingers and gave him a sly smile in response as he fully shifted to smoke and slipped from the room. The burning edge of hunger ever since he smashed into the tree, overtook the rest of his thought process. For now Reaper needed to feed; perhaps one, maybe two, would do until they had to move. Given that he had no knowledge about this place—this world—Reaper knew he couldn’t draw any sort of undue attention to himself or his activities.

He ghosted through the streets and ally’s and searched for someone, anyone, that would be suitable for his needs. Homeless, criminal, random bystander it didn’t matter. Even a rat would do at this rate, although Reaper much preferred something with a bit more sense of self than a mere rat. Eventually, just a few blocks from the hotel, Reaper came across something lively on his senses. He didn’t know what or who it was—homeless, criminal, random passerby—but all they were pinged as meat. Like a swarm Reaper ducked, dove, and wrapped himself around the person.

Black mist and claws clung tight to the human form beneath him. He rode out the high of sudden life beneath his fingers, the feel of a pulse with a breathy sigh. He didn’t fully form; he let his hands and his face come close, breath in the sickly sweet of that which he lacked, he let himself dive into and around the creature that he’d grabbed. He felt them choke on the mist that made up most of what he was now. He could feel the energy slip back into him, their life, their soul for lack of any better term. When he let them go they dropped to the ground a withered husk.

Reaper stared dispassionately down at the body. Normally he’d ghost along, seek out another source of food after his first meal when he hungered like this. Normally he’d leave the meat behind for someone else to clean up. Now he hesitated. There was no Talon here to sweep random deaths under the rug.

“Oh? Gabe?”

Reaper huffed a growl. “I thought I told you not to call me that, Sombra.”

“Sorry, sorry. Just wanted to remind you to clean up after yourself, papi. We don’t want to draw any attention.”

Reaper snarled, “I know.” He figured that much already, but then the girl just liked to get on his nerves.

“Well that was all!” Sombra cheered sweetly and Reaper rolled his eyes.

Clean up after himself; Reaper scowled. At least he wasn’t a messy eater or that could make cleaning after his kills so much worse. He sighed, dragged the body up, and debated what to do with it. Fire cleaned away most evidence easily enough. Acid did well too, but he didn’t have any chance to get a hold of any acid right now. Fire would have to do. His training over the days at SEP and in the military taught him plenty on how to rig a fire together with minimal materials. Soon enough Reaper drifted lazily back to the hotel, and up into the room. He left behind a merrily burning corpse.

“Better?” Sombra questioned lightly. She didn’t glance up when Reaper settled himself back into his chair.

“Much,” Reaper breathed and let himself relax. Just the one was enough for now. His ribs no longer ached and while most of everything else of him hurt, he didn’t feel the burning urge to feed any more. He glanced over to where Jack surprisingly kept snoring away and shook his head. Only Jack would rest so soundly among his enemies. With a slight yawn Reaper kicked his feet up onto the edge of the bed that Sombra laid on. She stared at his feet, and then up at him, and rolled her eyes.

“Honestly,” she mumbled, slipped off into Spanish which left Reaper chuckling lightly. She watched him settle down into his own form of sleep, comforted by the fact that at least Overwatch and Jack didn’t appear to be a threat for the time being. If they were a threat Reaper would wake up easily enough anyway.

When Reaper finally settled into soft snores Sombra slipped out of the bed. She grabbed a pillow and quietly made her way around to Reaper’s side. With gentle care so as not to wake the man she tugged off his mask, and then tugged his hood down, and stuffed the pillow behind his neck. Reaper didn’t even respond except to roll his head further into the pillow with a tired grunt, a sign that he really was out of it like a light. Sombra shook her head, carefully made her way over to the second bed and grabbed another pillow from there. Just as carefully, more-so actually since she didn’t know Jack Morrison like she knew Gabriel Reyes, Sombra tugged off the Soldier’s mask and visor. She shifted the man back so that he leaned against the wall and not his hand, and stuffed the pillow behind his head. Then Sombra stepped back and tugged her fingers apart like blowing up a photo. When she finally had the whole room in view, she stepped back, smiled, and tapped a finger against the nanite created screen.

“Boop,” Somba said lightly. She snapped the screen closed, filed the photo away, and climbed back into the bed with Widow without a further word. All of her desired programs would run throughout the rest of the night anyway, and anything she absolutely needed to see would alert her quickly enough in a silent ping across her senses from where her nanites directly interfaced into her head. With her own yawn of exhaustion Sombra drifted off into sleep. She couldn’t wait to see what tomorrow would bring.

[rebaobsessivelywrites]

The Profiler in the Therapist (ch 10)

You can find this entire fic here on AO3.

Fandom: Bones (TV) and Criminal Minds (TV)

Entire Fic Description:

Dr. Lance Sweets is no longer the innocent eager psychologist he was a little over a year and a half ago. His time as a prodigy profiler at the BAU was a blessing. His time in a serial killer's basement was not.

Now, scarred but healed, Sweets is 'retired' to calmer job in the FBI as a therapist. As he helps others, he helps himself. But... is it enough? What will he do when one of his most fascinating (unwilling) patients asks for help on a case? How will his new team take his past as his secrets slowly start to come out?

Entire Fic Warnings: cannon-typical violence, past torture, panic attacks, PTSD, serial killers

Chapter word count:  4,089

Chapter warnings: panic attack, flashback, referenced past torture

Summary: Lance finds new friends and writes a book. Penelope has something important to say...

Please read the fic! First chapter, previous chapter, next chapter, master list. And let me know if you want to be tagged.

The following week, bright and early on Monday, Sweets was dragging himself into the conference room on Agent Booth’s floor of the Hoover Building. Even from halfway across the quiet bullpen, Sweets could already see the group in the conference room—it was everyone from the Jeffersonian, save Brennan, with the addition of Caroline Julian. Booth was nowhere in sight. For some reason this fact left him slightly unsettled; he may not be close to Booth or Brennan, but he knew them a lot more than these scientists. He had only met the group a few times, and only in reference to the Gormogon murders.

And so, it was with a slight sense of trepidation that the therapist entered the room and greeted the group. He needn’t have worried, however; as soon as he greeted the room at large, Jack Hodgins gave him a friendly smile and offered his hand, “Hey, it’s Sweets, right?”

“Yeah, that’s me,” the therapist returned the smile and the handshake, “It’s good to see you again, Dr. Hodgins.”

“Oh!” Angela Montenegro exclaimed from beside the entomologist, “You’re the therapist Brennan was always complaining about.” Lance shifted and nodded slightly awkwardly, confirming her assumptions.

Camille Saroyan materialized at the artist’s side, giving her a slightly reproachful look and interjecting purposefully, “You’ve also been helping with the Gormogon case.” She turned her attention to him and smiled, “Glad you could make it, Dr. Sweets.”

“Thank you, Dr. Saroyan,” Lance smiled back, “I hope I’m able to help with the case.”

“You sure will, chér,” Ms. Julian announced in a way that made it halfway between a reassurance and a threat, an amused look plastered across her face as she leant with both hands against the chair at the head of the table.

Sweets maintained that she was absolutely terrifying.

“Ah,” Sweets moved around the table to take a chair, “Where’s Agent Booth?”

“He got caught in a traffic jam,” Dr. Saroyan answered as she settled into a seat beside him, “He’s on his way.”

After a beat of slightly awkward silence, Zack Addy shifted in his seat—which he hadn’t left earlier, “Dr. Sweets, if you don’t mind me asking, what are your degrees?”

“Oh, uh,” Sweets blinked once, adjusting to the sudden question, “Well, I received my undergraduate pysch degree from the University of Toronto, my master’s degree in abnormal psychology from Temple University, my doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, and my doctorate in behavioral analysis from Columbia University.”

“Wow,” Angela was staring at him a little, “How old are you again?”

Sweets opened his mouth to respond, but Ms. Julian beat him to it, “Dr. Sweets was 21 when he graduated with his last degree and entered the FBI Academy.” She smirked across the table at him, “Isn’t that right, chérie?”

As all the Jeffersonian employees turned stunned expressions on him, Sweets couldn’t do much more than blush.

“Nice,” Hodgins grinned at him. The sentiment was quickly echoed.

As Angela and Dr. Saroyan commented on his hidden accomplishments, Sweets caught sight of Agent Booth through the window of the conference room. He stepped through the door just as Zack jumped in, “It is rather impressive, although I am still not convinced of the validity or usefulness of behavioral science.”

Skirting the end of the table, Booth chuckled, “You sound just like Bones there, Zack.”

Zack looked over his shoulder at the agent, “In my experience Dr. Brennan is usually correct.”

“I’m afraid that in this case she isn’t, Dr. Addy,” Lance couldn’t resist jumping in; he may not be able to convince Brennan, but he may be able to convince Zack, “There are numerous cases that are solved every year with the help of profiling. For example, the team with the highest close rate in the FBI right now is the primary BAU team, with the two secondary teams coming in third and fourth respectively.” The profiler turned therapist was pleased to observe the thoughtful look on the young doctor’s face (although he was older that Sweets himself).

“Who comes in second?” Camille turned to give him a curious look.

Sweets gave her a smile, “The Jeffersonian-FBI Investigative Taskforce; you.”

Proud smiles flitted across each of their faces. It was always good to hear you were making a difference; it had been one of Sweets’ favorite parts of working at the BAU.

“So, Sweets,” Booth clapped his hands together, “You think you’re ready for your first trial?”

For a split second, Sweets blinked in confusion at him. “Oh, no,” he chuckled a little, “Sorry, this isn’t my first trial.”

Booth’s eyebrows shot up, “Really?”

Lance just shrugged, “It is my first trial as the only expert phycological witness, but I’ve testified many times in the past.”

Booth gave him a piercing look that reminded the therapist of the look he had given him over Jack’s head just a few days earlier. A second later, he shook whatever he had been thinking away and moved to lean against the wall behind the empty seat beside Sweets.

“Speaking of first trials,” Ms. Julian shook her finger a little at him, as she settled into her chair “Make sure you stick to fully grown up words, alright chér? I’m not afraid to tattle to darling Aaron.”

Lance took a moment to examine the prosecutor’s face, taking note of the poorly concealed amusement behind the threat. Really, she was a lot like Aaron in that respect—she was hard to read, but wasn’t nearly as serious as she looked. With that in mind, he responded as though it was Hotch who had just threatened him, “Now that’s just mean.”

Caroline gave him a delighted little smile and pseudo-leer, surprising several individuals, before sobering and getting down to business, “Enough of that. We’ve got a case to prepare for. Now, I’m going to say to you what I always say to you before a trial, because this one is no different than any other trial.”

“You’ve never said that before,” Zack pointed out.

“What?” the prosecutor gave the forensic anthropologist an unimpressed look.

“You’ve never told us that a trial is no different from any other trial,” Hodgins agreed.

Zack nodded, finishing the idea, “Which suggests this one is different.”

Sweets found himself relaxing amongst the group as the banter was thrown back and forth and orders were given to each member of the prosecution team. Sometimes he couldn’t believe how lucky he was. He already had a team who was like a family to him and… the more he spent around this team, the more he could see himself finding something similar here as well.

Following the meeting, Lance was in a good mood all day; not even Angela refusing to testify put a damper on his happiness. And honestly… he sort of agreed with her.

If the trial was going to be anything, it would be interesting. That’s for sure.

--

It was the middle of the second day of the trial, and everything was going splendidly. While Booth was still, well, Booth and could be found with Brennan more often than not (even though they weren’t supposed to be socializing), the rest of the prosecution team seemed to have adopted Sweets. He had interacted with each of them sporadically on the Gormogon case, but his primary source of contact had always been Booth. Now, though, it was usually the four of them—Camille, Zack, Hodgins, and himself—spending time together during recesses, eating lunch together, talking, joking, laughing… It was giving him vivid flashbacks to his first few cases at the BAU, when the members of the team banded together despite having just lost Gideon and welcomed him into the group.

On top of the wonderful bonding he was enjoying with the other doctors, he was in a court room again. It wasn’t the most enjoyable place to be, but Lance had always been fascinated by law and truly enjoyed stretching his profiling muscles by testifying. And on top of that, he had made a decision. It was a big decision with the potential to bite him in the ass, but he was excited none the less.

He had just gotten off the phone with Rossi, who had given him a proverbial kick in the ass, and parted ways with the prosecution trio; he was now outside the courthouse searching for a particular pair. They hadn’t been anywhere he looked inside, so he was guessing they were visiting the coffee cart outside on the street. Sure enough, he found Brennan and Booth siting side by side sipping coffee on a bench. He immediately made a beeline for them, barely coming to a stop before launching into his spiel, “I’m writing a book, taking a clinical approach to efficacy and focused outcomes. You shouldn’t work well together but you do; I’d like to study it further.”

Sweets paused, giving them a chance to react while sitting on the edge of his metaphorical seat. He wished he knew how it was going to go— how they were going to react —but the truth was the pair was just a tad too unpredictable at times.

After that split second of staring in surprise at Sweets, Booth blinked and turned to Brennan, “I don’t get it.”

“He wants to study us,” the anthropologist translated succinctly, brows furrowed against the sun. At least, he was fairly certain it was against the sun and not in annoyance or anger—although that was a distinct possibility.

“A session once a week, just like before I cleared your partnership,” Lance jumped in. That wasn’t all he was planning on offering, but he knew the pair well enough to hold his cards close to his chest in the beginning.

A smile that was vaguely mischievous crossed Booth’s face. “Now why would we want to do that?” he turned to his partner once again, completely ignoring Sweets.

“I can’t think of a good reason,” Brennan smiled back, similarly ignoring the therapist.

“Ok, see,” Sweets jumped in again, pointing between them for emphasis, “that thing that you do when you talk to each other while excluding the third party, in this case me? It’s an adaptive mechanism for disparate entities to bond together, however temporarily, while simultaneously isolating and exposing the subject of the conversation.” It was a technique that the pair used frequently, both in interrogations and day-to-day life. It was a symptom of their improbable yet powerful partnership.

“Isolating and exposing, huh?” Booth broke script to grin up at the profiler.

Sweets let out an exasperated huff and felt his cheeks heat slightly, “You know what I meant.”

Still grinning at the therapist, the agent lent towards Brennan, “What d’ya think, Bones?”

“Well,” she frowned slightly, “the idea is quite ludicrous in several respects, but anthropologically speaking—”

“About the offer, Bones,” Booth turned to look at her more directly, “Not the mumbo-jumbo.”

“Agent Booth!” Lance gave him an affronted look. There was no way psychology was mumbo-jumbo! “I can assure you that profiling is a—”

“Aha!” he exclaimed, pointing up at the startled therapist, “You are a profiler.”

Lance blinked in surprise at him and attempted to formulate a response, but before he could Brennan took the words out of his mouth. “Yes, Booth,” she said almost patiently, eyebrows furrowed, “He’s said so since our very first session with him. That’s why you brought him that time capsule case all those months ago.”

“That’s not what I mean,” the agent was still grinning, “I mean he was a profiler before he was a therapist.” He looked up at Sweets again, “You worked for the BAU, didn’t you?”

Lance found himself rendered speechless. It wasn’t exactly a secret that he had worked for the BAU—quite a few people knew his history and experience—but everyone who did know also knew why he left and respected the dangers that could arise from broadcasting his past. Besides that, well, he just didn’t like talking about it. So… how the hell had Booth figured it out?

Something must have shown on his face because Booth chuckled a little and explained, “I figured it out on Monday, after the prosecution met. I didn’t hear all of it, but I’m pretty sure Caroline said something about you joining the Academy—which non-agents don’t need to do—and you sounded awfully proud when you were talking about the BAU’s close rate. It took me a little, but I started to piece it together.”

Lance probably would have continued to stare, but Brennan, who had been giving him a piercing look since Booth mentioned the BAU, broke through his growing stupor. “You’re an agent?”

He blinked at her for a split second before shrugging, “Not an active one.” He gave the pair a nervous smile, “You could say I’ve been chained to a desk early.” This really had not been his plan when he came seeking them out.

“Why?” Brennan asked in that horribly innocent and unintentionally insensitive way.

“It’s a long story,” Lance settled for shrugging and deflecting.

“We do have time right now,” she pointed out. He floundered for a second that felt like an eternity before Booth jumped in, making him almost sigh in relief.

“Whoa there, Bones,” the agent stalled her, “Maybe he doesn’t want to talk about it.” Brennan turned her curious gaze to her partner, so he continued, “Tell you what, why don’t we make a deal with him where we allow him to study us and in return he gives us phycological profiling on demand.” Brennan started to protest, so Booth continued, “It’ll give us more time to quiz him.”

Brennan made a considering noise, as though weighing her options, “I don’t know if that’s worth it; you like that sort of thing, but it’s just,” she mimicked Booth from earlier, “mumbo-jumbo.”

“Still not mumbo-jumbo,” Sweets grumbled to himself.

The agent let out a vaguely frustrated sound, “C’mon, Bones! He’s from the BAU!”

“I was unaware you were so fond of a unit that concentrates all its efforts on the pursuit of circumstantial evidence,” she raised her eyebrows at him.

“It’s not circumstantial,” Sweets protested a little louder this time.

Booth sighed, but his frustrated expression was quickly wiped away under the same mischievous smile he had held at the beginning of the conversation, “Or maybe he just doesn’t want to admit he likes us.”

Brennan paused as she opened her mouth, no doubt expecting to continue the argument, but her partner’s comment caught her off guard. A vaguely delighted smile crossed her face as she turned her gaze back to Sweets, “Do you like us?”

Oh, for crying out loud! Sweets let out a disbelieving huff. They’re impossible, he thought, though he quickly revised it as the two adults started chanting in sing-song voices, No, they’re just like children. Why did he want to put up with these two once a week again?

“Ok, you know what?” he threw his hand in the air, “I regret I ever made the offer. I take it back; forget it.” Still in a huff, he stormed off. Even as he did so, he began to regret it. Yes, they were impossible and infuriating and made him want to slam his head against the wall half of the time, but they were extraordinary and fascinating for the same reasons. He really did want to study them more, and help with their cases, and, honestly… he did like them— he wanted to get to know them better.

But, as he continued back into the courthouse, he realized me may have done the best thing he could to get what he wanted with the agent-anthropologist pair; they’d need to talk to each other without an audience before they could agree on a response. Direct confrontation never seemed to work that well with them.

He’d hold out hope and focus on the trial for now. At the very least, he’d avoid talking to Rossi until he knew for sure what was going on. Dave could be scary.

--

The evening of the trial’s final day, Sweets was walking on sunshine—metaphorically, of course; the sun was almost completely gone by this point. The red and orange hues cast cross the Reflecting Pool made it look as though it was made of liquid fire. But, anyway… Sweets was having a great day.

The prosecution had lost the trial, yes, but it had gone the way he had secretly hoped. He was thrilled Dr. Brennan would be able to get to know her father, to spend time with him doing normal things rather than always visiting him behind bars. Sweets didn’t feel too bad Max Keenan had gotten off scotch-free; he wouldn’t be a danger to the public, just so long as his children stayed safe.

After the trial, Booth had cornered him to tell him he and Brennan were willing to be studied in exchange for profiling. As that was the exchange Sweets had been planning on offering from the beginning, it was a win-win in his mind. Rossi had been both pleased and smug when Lance had shared the news. He reportedly also welcomed the distraction from the team’s latest case (a terrorist-like random killer who shared a great deal of his pathology with a serial arsonist), and promised to share the news with the others.

After the case, Jessica and Jack and surprised him and took him out for ice cream (it was all Jack’s idea and he made sure his uncle knew it). It had been a loud and sticky affair, full of laughter and good spirits. Jessica shared her good news as well; her latest book had gotten published.

Once they had finished, they had taken the subway to the National Mall. When Jack had been engrossed in watching a performer as they waited for the train to arrive, Jessica had leaned over to Sweets and whispered, “We need to burn all that sugar off somehow—he’ll never sleep like this!”

Jessica had been quite right. Jack was currently a hyper ball of energy racing up and down the steps of the Lincoln monument, huffing excitedly and imitating his favorite cartoon character all the way. Every time he circled back to his aunt and uncle, who were following at a much more sedate pace, he would grab Jess’s hand and haul her up a couple steps before dashing off ahead of them again.

As Jess stumbled after the most recent pull, she gave Lance a mischievous look over her shoulder. He raised his eyebrows in response, and she simply grinned wider and turned back towards the hyper blur hurling towards her. When he came within reach, Jessica scooped her nephew up and blew a giant raspberry onto his stomach. Jack let out a delighted squeal and attempted to wriggle away from his aunt. Lance felt his face nearly split open with the force of his smile as Jess took another deep breath and gave the giggling boy another.

“Uncle Lance!” Jack cried desperately after a moment, “Make her stop!!!”

Sweets just chuckled and shook his head mock-seriously at him, “And face Aunt Jessica? I’m not that brave, buddy! You’re on your own.”

“Nooooo!” he squealed, giggling madly, “Save me!”

Jessica, helpless to withstand the sight of her cackling prisoner and grinning friend, broke down laughing as she dropped down onto the steps, Jack still clutched to her chest. The boy let out a squeal of surprise before wriggling around just enough to stick his fingers into Jess’s armpits. It was her turn to squeal.

Lance was debating which side he should join in on when his phone cut through the laughter, vibrating in his pocket. After a moment of fumbling, he managed to get the device out. “Dr. Sweets,” he answered absently, still smiling at the scene before him.

“Oh, thank god,” a familiar voice exploded across the line, “Lancelot! You’re ok!”

Fully focused on the call now, Sweets frowned in confusion, “Yeah, Pen, I’m fine… What’s wrong? Is the team ok?

“We’re fine, Junior, honest. We just caught the guy,” she let out in a rush.

“What’s wrong then?” he frowned worriedly into space.

On the other end, the hacker sighed, “Lance…”

“Penelope, c’mon,” he entreated.

“The DC police department found a body— I mean, Will found a body today,” she started.

“Is he ok?” Sweets’ frowned deepened.

“He’s fine,” the hacker quickly reassured him before taking a deep breath. “But, Lance… this body has all the signs…” she trailed off again.

“Penelope,” he stressed, his frustration growing.

“It,” she started before exploding in a rush, “It’s the Ghost.”

Sweets felt as though the world had been yanked out from underneath him. His team always avoided using that name with him—they knew how it affected him—but it was the fastest way to communicate the issue. To communicate the gravity of the situation. And that gravity had his breath catching and his legs wavering. The world seemed to stop, and he was frozen in a moment of utter terror. It was silent but for the blood rushing in his ears and the echo of half-remembered screams. His throat ached, his eyes stung, and he couldn’t breathe… all he could smell was iron. Iron and blood and rust and pain.

He was vaguely aware of sitting heavily onto the steps, reaching blindly behind himself with one hand to stop from falling further. A hand came to rest on his shoulder and a concerned voice called his name, followed by another. Neither registered until a third voice broke through. “Uncle Lance? Uncle Lance, are you ok?”

“Jack!” came the more distant, distorted call through the phone.

Although he couldn’t see anything, Sweets didn’t resist as little hand relieved him of his phone. A moment later he spoke, “Auntie Pen?” There was a pause, then, “Yeah, he is. Is Daddy ok?” Another pause.

In and out, Sweets told himself, forcing himself to breathe, to focus on the voice and push the memories to the side. Not real. Not there. He’s not here.

Jack’s voice came again, “Aunt Jess is here.” Then, “Ok.”

Another voice came (Jess, the part of his mind that was fully rational whispered, That’s Jessica). It was full of panic and a touch of fear, “Penelope, what’s going on?!”

Sweets forced himself to open his stinging eyes. There, right in front of his nose was his wonderful, beautiful, brilliant nephew. Jack’s brow was furrowed in concern. Lance gave him a brief forced smile, allowing the presence of his nephew in his lap to ground him, before glancing up just in time to see all the blood seep out of Jessica’s face.

The writer blinked rapidly a few times, blond curls bouncing around her face, and swallowed hard, “I see. Is he in DC now?” Whatever Penelope said seemed to firm her resolve; she nodded once, beginning to regain her color, “I’ll make sure of it.”

Still slightly detached from reality, but with his panic attack stemmed, the therapist watched as his friend and pseudo-sister hung up. He watched as she knelt to join Jack at his side, as she leant forward and wrapped him up as a hug, Jack firmly sandwiched in the middle. He felt Jack wriggle a bit, small hands fisting in his uncle’s shirt. He felt his stinging eyes flow over.

There, wrapped in two of the people he loved most in this world, Lance cried. He wept in anguish of memories, in the fear of what may come. He wept in grief.

He had forgotten.

How had he forgotten? How could he have ever forgotten what he had survived, who had allowed him to survive? How could he have ever believed he would let him go?

Lance loved his life. He loved his job, his family, his friends. For the past month or so, he had been completely at peace. He had healed. He had moved on…. He had forgotten and now he could do nothing but remember.

The Ghost was in DC. He was here, and there was only one reason for that; he was here for Lance. He wasn’t done—he had warned him! How could he have forgotten?

And so, he grieved. In the fading light, on the steps of the Lincoln monument, he soaked Jessica’s shirt with tears and clutched Jack to his chest and grieved for what he would lose.

(Don’t forget you’re mine, boy. I’m not done with you yet.)