#but it handles it a fuckton better than canon did

[lemontongues]

yknow ive been thinking again lately about how i would like to see more realism in batman content, both canon and fandom, but not the Dark And Gritty kind. the kind thats like.

yes actually he is highly emotionally intelligent and does understand himself quite well and has just accepted that he is A Freak and decided to roll with it rather than being so horrifically emotionally repressed that he can barely even acknowledge that what hes doing is based in trauma. hes been in therapy since he was like 9 years old. he studies human psychology extensively both for himself and so he has better odds of predicting whats gonna go wrong and how when hes up against a rogue or negotiating a hostage situation or whatever. he meditates for two hours a day and is fully capable of keeping a healthy handle on his anger 98% of the time. he's nice to people and fun to be around and sincerely caring. if he were just Always Right but super isolated and reactive and cruel and controlling everyone would fucking hate him and no it wouldnt be enough to sustain his crimefighting activities, thats a stupid lone wolf fuckboy fantasy

he has a strict 9pm bedtime that he only breaks for mandatory WE/brucie activities or emergencies. if theres a gala where he needs to rub shoulders with ppl to gather intel or keep his company running he'll do it but hes Not Happy about being out until midnight and cuts out early as often as possible, and when hes chasing the joker around until 3am hes lamenting his poor sweet circadian rhythm that did nothing wrong ever in its life the whole time. when hes batmanning hes expending a fuckton of energy and he needs to make it up and have a well-established routine to counteract the punishment hes putting his body through. on a similar note, this man is building braces and compression into his suit and doing extensive physical therapy exercises every day of his life bc he wants to have helpful little things like "knees" and "shoulders" by the time hes 40, and hes probably eating a small farms worth of assorted leafy greens and several chickens per day

he is simply Never drunk and he doesnt actually have that much sex. hes really really good at faking a) being drunk and b) getting a high priority phone call from lucius the minute someone hes making out with starts trying to get his shirt off. he also does a lot of "hey look i gotta get out of here with my reputation intact, can we help each other out and pretend we're gonna go fuck?" kind of negotiating with ppl (see: his 9pm bedtime, plus sometimes hes gotta slip away from an event to be sneaky), which is how a lot of the more wild stories about him start circulating lol. this is a man who's regularly getting gassed/injected/etc with highly experimental substances created by maniacs trying to torment or kill him, he does NOT want substances like drugs or alcohol in his body that could potentially interact with them, and the last thing he needs is to be dealing with a pregnancy or sti scare. plus if he can play it safe with someone and have them think of him as a nice and trustworthy dude who just has a bonkers reputation, all the better for his batman activities!

idk i just feel like theres unexplored potential in a lot of that stuff bc so much of recent batman mythos is like HES SO HARDCORE AND CAN DO ANYTHING AND HES ALWAYS RIGHT CAUSE HES SO PARANOID AND DISRESPECTFUL OF PPL AND THEIR BOUNDARIES BUT ITS OKAY BC ITS IN THE NAME OF BEING RIGHT and im like. okay. gotta admit that i dont rly find that believable or in line with my values. can we talk about WE's sweet sweet employee benefits package and bruce designing his suit to take most of the impact off his knees when he jumps off a roof. members of the jl discovering that he gives shockingly balanced and insightful advice about their mundane personal problems. bruce printing his own batsymbol envelopes to leave people cash after he misaims his grappling hook and breaks their window. things of that nature.

[noco7]

NO BECAUSE YOU'RE RIGHT: Sierra didn't have character development, like, at all. It kinda made sense: abusers often don't change.

I feel like the whole Cody-Sierra sub-plot could have been an amazing opportunity to show us something really mature about consent, trauma (remember Cody is supposed to be a child-neglect victim which btw explains some behaviours of his) and victim-blaming.

The actual thing wasn't only rushed and as we say in Italy "written with the asshole", it was straight up offensive. As a SA victim myself I felt MOCKED.

It's so sad, I wonder what happened to Cody by the way, like. We saw him naked in the shower on Sierra's phone in All Stars so it means she not only knows where he lives but also stalks him. Such a terrible ending for a character like him. :[

I agree completely, anon. Also I have a habit of making really long posts, so here's a read more link:

I really really agree about it being C*derra being an amazing chance to write about serious issues, and could even act as a guide to recognizing abusive relationships, and how to help someone you know get out of them. Also could say smth about the nature of parasocial relationships. In my fantasy rewrite of TD, C*derra starts as a relationship that goes sour. It begins with Cody in a bad place , for several reasons, and he latches onto his fan, Sierra, for comfort. Things seem to be going smoothly, until he realizes that Sierra is a terrible abusive person. And there's a lot of victim blaming and manipulation, a lot of guilt-tripping, but he learns to raise his standards and escape the relationship. So in essence, the flipside of what happened in canon.

To me, it's really hard to advocate for platonic C*derra. I understand that others love the idea, but it's really hard for me to look past her actions. I'm not a survivor, but imagining a friend of mine going through what Cody went through, and then them calling me and saying "well she made me a birthday cake, so I've forgiven her for everything and we are BEST friends now." I don't know. It seems terrible. I don't think Cody should have to do anything with Sierra other than leave, and honestly for Sierra to grow as a person, I also think she needs to take herself away from Cody until she is ready to act healthy to him. I don't think they should grow together - like, what, is Cody supposed to be like "yeah she grabbed me today, BUT she didn't kiss me! Woo! Baby steps!" ??? There is no reason for Cody to be there for Sierra's character growth - and for me, the real sign of character growth would be Sierra admitting her presence was unhealthy and removing herself. And not in a "let me die," situation, but a "let me go to therapy first," situation. To be fair to TD, it is a kid's show and maybe they couldn't talk about topics like consent and trauma. I know some kid's shows talk about that, like She Ra, but TD was before that, and also it had a completely different focus. Still, given that, perhaps they shouldn't have introduced a stalker to the show in the first place, when they couldn't deal with her properly.

It could be even considered irresponsible, considering it could trigger real Survivors, or give the entirely wrong message. I've actually seen real people say they used to think Sierra did nothing wrong.

At the very least, I don't think they should have rushed the best friends angle as they did. Yes, there were times Sierra was nice to Cody, but they weren't really differentiated from how she normally acted. She always compliments Cody, so for her to praise him with Duncan is nothing out of the ordinary. And neither is the birthday cake. It's like they didn't know Sierra was going to end up being friends with him until that episode. It's weird.

The solution would be to slow down her character development until it's an actual ARC. Or as most people in the fandom do - change her actions so they aren't that extreme in the first place. I'm not really a fan of that last option, because Sierra is kinda defined by how extreme she is, and I personally think an abusive antagonist makes for a better story then a mildly annoying girl, but. I understand why others wouldn't. But that's why I write Sierra like I do.

I'm very sorry you had to go through that, and that you had to watch WT and see it happen. Dealing with a topic respectfully is something you should do, not just because it's better writing, but because it's the moral thing to do when you're writing a CHILDREN'S CARTOON.

As for what happened to Cody after WT, I believe that his friendship with Sierra didn't last long, and she proved herself to still be as possesive as she once was. That's what happens in my fic, and that's whats backed up with the weird shower photo. However, extra clips reveal that after her elimination in All Stars, Sierra lands back into Area 51, with all the Cody aliens. Perhaps she stays there, and Cody is effectively free.

Also, I have to admit that as a Cody stan, that guy's arc with Gwen also had problems. Cody's still not Sierra level creep, but it's hard to argue that he's learned from his own actions in Island, considering how he acts in WT. And personally, and this is my hot take for this post - I'm not even sure his character developed during Island.

[jennycalendar]

ok you know what i think it’s actually really vital that i talk a little bit about tea time. buckle up kiddos.

first off, a brief and relatively spoiler-free summary: the premise of the issue is very simple. the kiddos (aged up, if willow’s mention of being engaged is any indication) are hanging out in the library to help giles with research, swapping stories about what it would be like were giles a vampire. each of them, save giles, gets a chance to tell a detailed story -- xander tells two! -- and each story plays out in a way that says a lot about the scooby that’s telling it AND the way they view giles.

obviously this is a VERY character-driven issue, and it’s a really really interesting look at giles and how he is perceived as well! shit like that is my bread and butter, so this has honestly become one of my favorite things that boom has put out -- possibly my ACTUAL top favorite issue if we’re being real here. 

below the cut is a spoilery dissection of every story told -- a literal summary of Every Single Thing that happens in this issue, as well as what it has to say about the scoobies and their perception of giles, so definitely keep that in mind.

as can be seen in the preview, xander’s first story is about giles rising from the grave as an ineffectual british caricature, who is easily defeated by smoldering, sexy xander harris (and xander in turn walks off with buffy and willow draped all over him, cooing about how amazing he is). it’s more of an intro to the premise than anything, but it still sets the tone pretty clearly wrt how xander handles this situation: there’s some laughter and levity, and he’s center stage. obviously a lot can be said about xander’s self-esteem issues and how he overcompensates by casting himself as the main protagonist both in canon and here. however, i wanna save my more in-depth xander analysis for his second, longer, story, so i’ll stop myself there.

willow immediately responds with skepticism: she’s of the mind that giles would be an incredibly serious big-bad level threat. the tale she spins involves giles as a dangerous vampire cleric with access to a cryptic altar, killing xander almost immediately and slaughtering buffy as a sacrifice to create eternal night. her view of giles is more clinical than anything -- and, i would argue, the most perceptive and realistic from a threat standpoint. the guy knows a fuckton of magic and he is incredibly well-read and powerful. he’d have some kind of terrifying master plan. where xander goes for comedy, willow goes straight for logistics, already looking at the battle like it’s a battle rather than laughs aplenty. 

xander and buffy have a bone to pick with willow’s story (xander is indignant that he’s immediately and brutally killed, buffy is of the mind that she would easily defeat giles in hand-to-hand combat even if he IS a vampire), so (after one more teasing story where buffy lives and xander dies) willow gracefully alters her narrative to reflect her friends’ objections: after a dramatic tussle, xander helps willow and buffy unceremoniously stakes giles in the heart. still pretty straightforward and plausible. willow sees vamp giles primarily as a threat -- one not easily neutralized. one who could easily wipe them out.

buffy, about to tell her story, is interrupted by xander, who “had an even better idea!” the web he weaves is this time purported as realistic and entertaining: while partying at the bronze, buffy and co. are interrupted by a bunch of balding, greying vampires in curlers and bathrobes, led, of course, by giles -- who is wearing a hair bonnet and disapprovingly informing the bouncers how late it is at eight PM. a knockdown brawl breaks out at the bronze -- old people feeding on and decimating the young -- and culminates in giles and the geezers taking over the band to sing “some terrible song” that’s “probably something really old and bad!” the rest of the story descends into b-movie chaos, with buffy throwing a broken guitar neck up at the stage lights to send the whole thing crashing down onto vampire giles and his vampire old person band. it’s categorically absurd.

the thing that really sticks with me about this story is how dumb it is. xander’s take on giles is not even slightly serious and wholly underestimates him. fandom at large talks a lot about how giles dropped the ball with xander, but i think tea time explores an easily overlooked factor: xander constantly, consistently underestimates giles. in canon, xander’s view of giles is not often challenged: to him, giles is a bumbling, british librarian who regularly gets his ass handed to him by vamps and demons and the like. certainly part of his story’s intent is about laughingly entertaining his gal pals, but there’s a very real and consistent thread involving giles being hilariously nonthreatening. 

giles, taking umbrage at this particular tale, calls out both xander and willow: xander’s story, in giles’s opinion, emasculates vamp giles and turns him into a ridiculous caricature -- and willow’s story, though much more flattering, lacks the kind of imagination that vamp giles would clearly have. he then offers a suggestion of his own. it’s worth mentioning here that both xander’s and willow’s stories get gorgeous multiple-page spreads depicting the vampy action, but giles’s is a simple and chilling little thing: this is his vampire story. this meeting, called to ostensibly “research” a vampire altar, is really an excuse to get the scoobies to do his dirty work and find the thing for him. they’re tired and silly because the tea and donuts he’s given them are drugged, and their library location is to keep them out of daylight. he laughs it off when he sees they’re bothered, and the meeting is then adjourned when willow finally finds what they’re all looking for. 

buffy’s left her phone in the library, so she doubles back, and accidentally wakes up a dozing giles. just as she’s about to leave, he inquires, casually, “...you never did tell your version of the story.”

and good god here is where it gets interesting.

see, buffy’s take is simple: she’s fighting giles in a cemetery, she’s given the chance to kill him, and she is entirely unable to do it. they share a tearful embrace as she sobs about the unfairness of it all -- “you’re giles! and you’ll always be! ...how will i do this without you? without your guidance?” and as the sun is rising, giles turns her into a vampire, with no resistance whatsoever from buffy. the next handful of pages depict bloody, indulgent violence on the parts of giles and buffy, the two of them cuddled up together as they watch the world burn. 

buffy’s tale is the most emotive, the most loving, which makes me so damn soft! i love this girl so much! she is unable to even joke about giles as a foe to be taken down -- he is her watcher. he is her friend. she loves him endlessly and that does not change when he’s a vampire. vamp giles as she portrays him is gentle and understanding, holding her as she cries, because he knows that they’re connected. it’s easily my favorite part of this whole issue.

notably, there is a definite buffy/giles bend that the comic itself tries to contradict. the art is sensual in nature -- vamp buffy all dolled up in a way somewhat evocative of drusilla, giles tenderly caressing her face as he waits for her to wake up. “watcher and slayer connected forever” being the quote chosen to describe the situation. i think it’s kind of what naturally happens in a vamp giles sitch, especially if he turns buffy -- the childe/sire bond is incredibly sexual in nature, especially in canon, and a lot of frustrating human sentiment gets translated into something sexual as well. sex is a big BIG part of the relationships between vampires we see in canon; it would make a lot of sense for that to hold true for buffy and giles.

the comic is reticent about Going There, which i can understand -- though buffy is decisively aged up in this issue (willow mentions being engaged to a woman, later revealed to be tara), the buffy/giles bond is always seen through a father/daughter lens in canon. i do think it’s also important to always recognize how desperately giles wishes to escape the label of father in reference to buffy, pretty much entirely because there is no way to parent a child soldier who you’re also training, but that’s a whole other kettle of fish. point is, buffy very pointedly refers to vamp giles as her father not once, but twice -- once as a human, once as a vampire herself. it’s a very clear attempt, imo, to un-sexualize the vampy experience. the reason it doesn’t totally work, at least for me, is the fact that -- like i said -- the childe/sire bond is VERY sexual (spike and dru, angel and darla, angel and dru) and it seems just totally implausible that vamp buffy/vamp giles (two people who, as human were both VERY repressed) would chastely remain within the socially acceptable version of their relationship.

i can definitely understand why they did their best to blur that line, though. the idea of buffy and giles being romantically involved as vampires is 1) Kind Of A Lot and 2) not exactly the target demographic that i think this comic is going for. but the subtext is there, to the point where the issue itself has to actively obfuscate it, which i think is .... so interesting? especially as a counterpoint to the way i often see buffy/giles in fandom, wherein the father/daughter subtext in canon is at times actively obfuscated in fic in an attempt to push a preferred reading. 

the ending i particularly enjoyed: after buffy leaves, it is lightly and ambiguously implied that giles might really be a vampire. works GREAT as a standalone, imo, and the end is like the cherry on top. it’s a really REALLY interesting issue and i highly recommend it for any giles fan. 

[nevermindirah]

I’ve seen Black Widow

thoughts below the cut

I loved it. I cried.

It’s pretty standard white feminism, nothing groundbreaking, but as a small story about a human being struggling with her identity and her place in the world, chef’s kiss.

There were enough callbacks that it didn’t feel like they’d taken Natasha out of her context, but it wasn’t an Endgame-style victory lap and rightly so. There were more callbacks to things that had previously happened in this one movie than there were to all 6 of the previous movies she’s appeared in. The fucking fireflies. They got to me. And the whistling? OUCH MY HEART

I didn’t realize until the moment Yelena handed it to her that that’s the vest Natasha wears in Infinity War. That’s when I started crying.

The set pieces were inventive as hell. I was genuinely surprised by: the avalanche, the Red Room being in lower Earth orbit, Natasha and Malina switching places with the masks from Winter Soldier, and especially, fuck, little Antonia who Natasha thought she’d murdered turning out to be the Task Master.

I loved that there wasn’t some big reveal like Malina was her birth mother or some shit. I loved that it’s left open how much or even whether Natasha keeps in touch with this one of her two families — while she and Yelena might be able to have an honest relationship after “It was real for me too,” Malina and Alexei showed realistic (which is to say, meaningful but fucking small) character growth. Those two are never going to be parents to Natasha, not how she deserved, not how every child deserves. I loved how honest this movie was about that.

The opening credits sequence was fucking traumatic, though, and here’s where we start the criticism of white nonsense. Yes, girls are probably the world’s greatest underappreciated resource. Especially girls of color. Who we see in this movie all over the place as nameless soldiers under the most extreme mind control yet seen in the MCU. Widows of color suffer and die repeatedly in this movie. It absolutely tracks that the Red Room would expand its post-Soviet operations and steal baby girls from all over the world, but they could’ve picked more of the white extras to be the ones to die painfully.

I know they did this so they wouldn’t be criticized for having an all-white cast. But they still had an all-white lead cast. I was charmed half-naked (of course my mask was still on, I saw this movie in a theater!) by the very pretty man who kept setting Natasha up with gear, but I can’t remember his name, and his only defining characteristics are pretty, charming, and frequently asleep. The moment at the end where she called him a friend would’ve been a fuckton better if she’d called him by name several times by that point so we could remember it, and if she’d, I don’t know, mentioned something that shows she pays attention when he talks, that shows she cares about him as a person even just a little bit beyond how he’s useful to her.

And you know what would’ve been a better way to get the Task Master off the field at the end? The Black teenager (fuck she looked so young) who went to her could have said, “Hi, my name is ___, I’m your sister and I’m going to get you out of here. What’s your name?” Instead her much shorter one line was entirely focused on helping the white girl. A different Black Black Widow was the one who said to Yelena something like of course we came back for you. We see Yelena holding her hand, but if we could only have one and not both, the screen time would’ve been better spent on learning this young woman’s name. A piece of her humanity that isn’t just using her newfound agency to choose to save the white lead.

They could’ve taken this opportunity to give us at least one Black Widow who was both Russian-born and visibly Asian. You know, since Russia is an enormously multi-ethnic country and even before modern immigration you don’t have to leave Russia to find people of color. We could’ve gotten a few sentences about the scientist who invented the deprogramming gas. We know she was in Malina’s age cohort so she was more likely to have been born in the USSR, and we know she had to have been exceptionally smart and brave even for a Black Widow to invent this formula and ensure it would free some of her sisters. Handled badly, this of course could’ve gotten into Asian math-nerd stereotype territory. Handled well, this minor character would’ve had a name — I think Yelena called her Oksana as she watched her die? — and a layered backstory. Malina could’ve even shared a memory of her, one thing that she and Oksana shared when they were baby Nat and Yelena’s ages.

Or they could’ve recast Scarlett Johanssson with an actress of any Asian ethnicity that could plausibly have been found in the USSR in the 80s, but, you know.

It is extremely not lost on me that both ScarJo and Rachel Weisz are Jewish and I wondered if they might do something in the direction of making Jewish Natasha canon. I’m relieved they didn’t go there in the end, and I’ll happily keep my Jewish Nat headcanons here where I can play with them and keep them safe from corporate bullshit.

To wrap this up, that post-credits scene made me so happy. I am so here for Yelena trying out every “the 90s are back” fashion trend she missed out on the first time around all in one outfit. What’s her name from Falcon & Winter Soldier turning up as Yelena’s boss or whatever and assigning her to kill Clint was exactly the right amount of crossover. We’ve only just met this character, I love her, and I’m fucking delighted that instead of spending yet more screentime on any of the white dudes who’ve already had plenty of it in the 23 previous MCU movies, we got to spend these last moments of the movie with Yelena.

Natasha Romanoff will return in my Sam Wilson and Nile Freeman are Cousins WIP (where she will be having a heart-to-heart with Andy)

Yelena Belova will return in Hawkeye (if Marvel knows what’s good for it)

[crazynekochan]

Dangan Persona AU

Palace #7

Ruled by Makoto Naegi.

Captive is Mukuro Ikusaba (held captive in cell; will be executed for her crimes in the alternate reality if not rescued in time; picked very much the worst day to dress as Junko).

Shadow manifests as Makoto but wearing a creepy long black cloak, like he is the judge, jury and executioner (which he is), who turns into a 4-armed angel, one wielding a shield, the other a huge revolver (like truth bullets), and the 2nd pair holding up the weight of the world’s hope on his shoulders as a shining globe that seems to get heavier as the battle progresses. It’s also immune to Curse skills, which is rather unfortunate because that’s what everyone was betting on it having since Lincoln (and therefore Makoto)’s weak to Curse skills.

Palace is Hope’s Peak as ala the first game but much more pastel, with the walls instead draped in soft silk, light shining down in jarring contrast to the giant metal plates over the windows. It gives everyone the creeps, especially when the 2nd half starts with much more blood and gore appearing on the pristine sheets and floors.

As a little peep to the next palace, this is also where they get a glimpse of a Shadow Nagito. The original had gotten curious and just barely went a bit into the Metaverse. He managed to get out right away, but not before causing his shadow to be spotted tending to a strange memorial garden of class 78 before vanishing.

Finally after frankly too many puzzles, they arrive at the midway point of Mukuro’s show trial at a near exact replica of the red door to the trial grounds. They open up and find the elevator, but what is much more relevant is the metric fuckton of Junko photos and Monokuma memorabilia all over the room, almost all of them horrifically destroyed in rage, aimed at the faces in particular. Since Mukuro was dressed as Junko the day she got abducted (Junko had a scheduling issue and made Mukuro dress as her for class, even though no one else really bought it), this makes everyone rightfully very nervous and reluctantly head down, despite the sick feelings roiling in everyone’s stomachs, because they’re not gonna like this. And nope, they didn’t like it at all.

They came out to see the trial already underway, 2 large stands loaded with masked figures to the sides of the room and a high circle of 15 podiums surrounding Mukuro, chained into a kneeling position as the Judges gazed down upon her. The party looks up to see them, and finds something rather strange. On one side are 9 funerary portraits on raised poles, with the 6 judges in black robes in front of them, all focused on Mukuro. The Judges are cognitive versions of the DR1 survivors, all looking much worse for wear (cognitive Hiro looks exhausted, cognitive Hina is silently sobbing with a funerary portrait of Sakura in her hands, even cognitive Kyoko looks like she was in mourning), with Shadow Makoto in the center as the chief Justice. It’s right at the ending of the trial, and Mukuro is declared guilty for conspiracy to end the world, to the disgust and horror of the crowd.

Mukuro tries to argue, saying that this must be a mistake, they have the wrong person. Shadow Makoto tells her that no, they know full well who she is, Mukuro Ikusaba (full name, no honorifics). He continues, telling her, in no uncertain terms, all of the crimes he knows of from the alternate timeline committed by the Ultimate Despair. “And to prevent that from occurring, we must tear the despair out, root and stem. Junko would be nothing without her little cronies, after all. What better way to end this right now than by her dearest sister’s death, leaving her powerless?” Then the Shadow has her trapped inside of a cage and sent down to the dungeons to await her execution, before the party can help her.

The rest of the palace works in a similar way to the first half, but everything goes into straight up horror movie territory. Like they were creeped out before, but now it was fucking all sorts of terrifying. It’s pretty much an amalgamation of all of Makoto from the other timeline’s trauma and survivors guilt from the first game. This part of the palace also has a bunches of minibosses that they have to fight through in the second half because holy crap, those things are fucking horrific. The minibosses are all the souls lost to the killing school life and it is very much not pretty. Sayaka covered in blood impaled with knives; Leon tied to a pole, pummeled to a pulp, chucking bloody baseballs; Chihiro with his head bashed in, using a mess of cables and screens to interact with the world; Mondo as a hellish biker that seems to be melting; Taka the terrifying sergeant with his head bleeding; Hifumi with his head bashed in as well, using his horrific Junji Ito-style magical girl drawings for attacks; a thing so burnt and smashed up that they could only identify her as Celeste because of the twin drills; Sakura as a silent warrior, constantly coughing up poison and blood. Even a makeshift “Mukuro”, hardly able to move from all the spears through her body. Holy crap, did that freak everyone out and make them very glad when they next saw their friends again at dinner because they’re alive!

The time limit this time is because Shadow Makoto, while being a twisted mess of repressed anger, sadness, and misery, is also fundamentally a good person and doesn’t want to kill Mukuro before she had even done anything, even though he knows that she’s guilty as sin of conspiring to destroy the world and everything in it (in the canon timeline). That’s actually where the party comes in, because by the time they clear the palace, the Shadow had finally decided that it was now or never and he needed to do this now. When they rush in to stop him, that’s when the boss fight starts.

The fight is genuinely hard as hell and the Shadow isn’t holding back. The attacks are all similar to the various minigames from DR1, just with a Persona flair. Makoto’s providing as much support as he can without being able to control his own persona, with the Shadow lashing out every time that Makoto offers his emotional support. Eventually, they notice that the giant ball of hope is getting heavier to the point of nearly crushing Makoto, who’s holding up the globe like Atlas holding the sky. His Shadow’s about ready to cry, begging the others to stop as Makoto encourages them all to keeping fighting and to not give up now. The battle only stops when they finally get Makoto to confess that he’s not always the bright ball of sunshine that they think he is and that even he needs help sometimes. With that resolved, the shadow returns to being Makoto’s persona, now instead of Lincoln, he is Logos (basically the closest to Jesus as I can get without making an even bigger mess in the MegaTen universe)

[Holy shit, I feel like I wrote a whole novel here! I’m ending this here, good night!}

---

Mod: The design for Makot's shadow is so flipping awesome. It’s so fitting for Makoto considering that he’s the main speaker during the class trials (cause MC and all) and this is literally a trial his shadow is holding, with the shields and revolver in each hand. Though my favourite is him holding up the worlds hope like Atlas with the sky, cause it’s still my favourite part of his character development that he admits in the DR3 anime that he’s sometimes really overwhelmed with always having to be positive as the Ultimate Hope but still keeps it up for ever (and as entertaining the anime was, it was one of the only good things it did story wise, but that’s a different topic altogether...)

The palace must be so disturbing for the party, cause up until now every palace was basically a fantasy place representing something of the person’s life/personality. But now they are in a twisted and later on gory version of their own school, and still don’t know anything of the past timeline. But things are starting to get unravelled now. Though most disturbing must be the memorial garden for their very much alive friends. The fact that the survivors, who were not among the memorial photos, are the judges who look like they experiences something very awful and traumatic. Not to mention the tons of destroyed Junko photos

That the minibosses are the victims in an all horror like fashion, where I’m imagining something along the lines of DR3 anime with Makoto’s despair hallucination, must be so brutal cause these are literally the “corpses” of their friends that are attacking them, who are in this timeline alive and happy

I can only imagine how hard it must have been for everyone to see how Makoto’s shadow actually is, which is basically being overwhelmed with all the support he has to give all the time. Cause everyone does lean a lot on Makoto (not that leaning on people is bad, but there is a limit how much one person can handle, even for Makoto)

[princess-of-the-corner]

Human After All: I'd like to know more about A) Ed and Al realizing they look different from the others at their new school and asking Roy and Riza about it, B) the scene where Ed nearly dies by impalement, and C) the rest of the Sins Crew deciding to join the good side at the last second, please.

Oh boy this is fun!

The boys realizing they look "different":

So. Kinda personal headcanon but Xerxes is a country in the desert so it's people should have dark skin. They can still have the gold hair/eyes combo but just darker skin. Obvs this would apply to Hohenheim and since Ed and Al take after him in coloration, so do they.

So even if you just mistake them for maybe mixed Amestrian/Ishvalan, the skintone is a whole different hue (Xerxians have warmer undertones while Ishvalans have cooler ones)

But Ed and Al grew up with people who were like. Used to it.

All the adults in Resembool had gotten used to seeing Hohenheim and any vaguely rude "yeah but where are you /from/" questions were already used on him. Then Ed and Al come along even the kids are just casually "I guess people look like that". Ed and Al probably know that Hohenheim wasn't from this town so they don't question it.

But when Roy adopts them they move to East City and go to a public school there. Most of the kids there are full Amestrian, with the occasional part-Ishvalan kid. So Ed and Al kiiinda stick out.

So the classmates having no filter, ask what's up with that. And other kids debate on it because some say the conclusion of "maybe they're part Ishvalan?" But someone else points out "no you idiot. Ishvalans have red eyes!". The teacher would calm everyone down and get them back to classwork, but provides no answers because honestly they've never heard of anyone like that from any country.

And they kinda think on that for a bit because like. Yeah clearly they're not super mixed because they both look like that and Hohenheim looked like that. But... No one else does?

So they ask Roy and Riza about it because ya know. Curious little fuckers.

Roy and Riza don't really have answers. Their best guess is that maybe Hohenheim was from another country, but clearly not one close by enough to be common knowledge!

Which. They're right about the different country thing! And for now that's a good enough answer for the boys! But now Roy and Riza are suspicious because they've never heard of anyone from any country looking like that.

Ed nearly dying:

Oh boy! This includes a lot of headcanons. Some of which I hinted at in TPWC.

So first off. This is the thing in the Briggs arc in the mineshaft before we jump to Camping Trip Of Doom. Lust sticks with Ed during the fight with Kimblee. And she's a lot more prepared to kill a man than Ed is, but doesn't manage it.

Ed still gets impaled. Which is fun.

Lust is kinda... Not handling that well. And is kinda actually panicking. (Give her a break how often has she dealt with death?).

Anyway. Ed still has his idea of using his own life energy to heal himself. And Lust initially kinda yells at him, despite his ability to think being a little fuzzy, because that's dangerous as FUCK.

Basically there's a reason that, despite the Philosopher's Stone being made of Human Souls, you can't just use someone's life energy. You have to transmute it into a usable form first, which is something Ed does not know how to do(and even if he know, he wouldn't because that involves sacrifices!). Plus the process to do it is painful enough that the subject might die anyway!

"But Corner!" You say. "Didn't Ed use his own Life Energy to heal himself in Canon?"

Yes. Yes he did. But think. What exactly about Ed makes him maybe perhaps not like other people? >:3c.

Basically. Ed and Al did get some side effects of Hohenheim's whole "Philosopher's Stone in Human Form" thing. They are essentially like that, but they only have their own Soul's worth of Energy isntead of the fuckton amount that Hohenheim or even the Sins Crew have. So they don't instinctively use that energy because they basically don't know that's an option(even if they did, it wouldn't be a magic fix because they only have so much. Fixing the stomach wound in Canon nearly killed Ed anyway.)

But in this version, Lust is stubborn. Ed protests, but she figures all that "this might actually not kill him". So she just kinda. Transfers her own energy to him like a very Alchemical blood transfusion. She only does enough to close up the wound, but still.

Ed's still suffering from blood loss and passes out, but when he waked up he's going to be thinking over all those revelations.

Darius and Heinkel are still involved here! Which is good. And they do find the Philosopher's Stone that Kimblee dropped.

Lust decides that it would be best if that doesn't end up in the wrong hands, and absorbs it into herself.

The rest of the Sins Crew joining the Good Side:

So we already have Lust and Greed on the good side.

The two of them kinda... Drag Envy into the good side. Like. Envy is not so much a "good person" but like. They just point out how little Father really cares about them. How much happier the both of them have been since they left, even at the risk of Father dragging them back and destroying them. And since they've been there and know Envy, they can pinpoit their weakpoint of "jealous of Humans and the connections they have".

Because how can something not Human be Human? But they are, in fact, very Human. The very definition of a Homunculus is "an artificially created Human". And Lust and Greed managed to find people who do care about them despite everything.

They know Lust and Greed are right, but they're gonna be super tsundere about it.

Pride is actually... Really close to what nearly happened in Canon. While Pride and Al are trapped in gay baby jail, they're talking, and Pride mentions Mrs. Bradley and how motherly she was and all that stuff.

But it's intensified by the fact that Lust already called him out for caring about her. And as he and Al talk, he kinda slowly begins to think that maybe it's worth it to try and save even just one person he cares about.

Wrath is similar. Thinking about how he cares about his wife. And at first, he's fine with just continuing with the plan and heading over to wreck a tank with a sword.

But he passes by a radio playing her broadcast. Specifically when she's told that he might be dead.

A moment of hesitation, and he goes to her instead. He doesn't plan on joining the "good side". But just... Tell her the truth. And be with her in the last moments before the country-wide Transmutation Circle goes off and kills everyone.

But she's kinda like. "Well i knew some shit was up with you and with Selim but damn." And like. She still loves him. But is also like "bitch if you love me then you better fix this shit!". It's a lot more complicated and emotional than that but... Yeah Wrath would rather listen to her. So better get going to helping the "good side". Yes this does somehow confuse everyone while making perfect sense at the same time.

Gluttony and Sloth are a lot more easy to deal with because they're a bit... Simpler. Gluttony listens to Lust more than he listens to Father. So if Lust gives an order, she outranks him. And with Sloth... Really if any of the Sins Crew are like "okay big guy take a nap" he'll chill the fuck out.

[modestmuses-a]

the positive & negative :    mun & muse  /  fill out & repost .

EKKO

MY MUSE IS :    canon  /  oc  /  au  /  slightly canon - divergent / fandomless / complicated 

i try to stay mostly close to ekko’s canon but i also have a fuckton of aus for him including some real self-indulgent bullshit that isn’t even on his verses page. if you want me to make a new au for ekko to fit him into a different skin line or something, i’ll probably do it tbh.

IS YOUR CHARACTER POPULAR IN THE FANDOM ?    YES  /  NO / I DON’T KNOW 

IS YOUR CHARACTER CONSIDERED HOT™ IN THE FANDOM ?  YES /  NO  /  IDK

for better or worse. when “giants” first came out, i had more ekko smut on my dash than i ever cared to see.

IS YOUR CHARACTER CONSIDERED STRONG IN THE FANDOM ? YES  /  NO  /  IDK

i can tell you what i think of ekko’s strength, and i can tell you that... it isn’t much. he’s not the most adept fighter in the series, and most of the time, he wins fights by cheesing them with time travel. in my thread with @uncaged-bloodhunter​ ekko would be DEAD four times over by now if not for the zero drive.

however, i haven’t seen much fandom opinion about his strength? i’m going to go out on a limb and say most people probably don’t find him very strong bc? i don’t see a lot of people saying that but. who knows.

ARE THEY UNDERRATED ?   YES  /  NO  /  IDK

canon-wise, fandom-wise, and on this blog, ekko gets a lot of attention, which i’m not complaining about. he’s a fav.

WERE THEY RELEVANT FOR THE MAIN STORY ? YES  /  NO  /  IDK

he is important around zaun, but considering he won’t LEAVE that place, i doubt we’ll see him achieve much relevance in the bigger overarching conflicts in the league universe anytime soon.

WERE THEY RELEVANT FOR THE MAIN CHARACTER ? YES /  NO  /  IDK

if league did have a main character, i’m sure he would never meet them unless they were from piltover or zaun lol

ARE THEY WIDELY KNOWN IN THEIR WORLD ?   YES  /  NO  /  IDK

around piltover/zaun, all the academics are trying to get him to sit down with them, but overall? nah. if he went anywhere other than piltover or zaun, they would have no fucking idea who he was.

HOW’S THEIR REPUTATION ?    GOOD  /  BAD  /  NEUTRAL

pilties HATE him! click to find out why!

no, but in seriousness, around zaun, his reputation is quite good as one of the few decent souls in the city. but in piltover, he’s just another thuggish troublemaker on a spree of petty crimes, as if zaun doesn’t already have enough of those...

HOW STRICTLY DO YOU FOLLOW CANON ?

shrugs. i don’t actively think about adhering to canon with every thread i write, of course, but i do think i have a pretty good handle on his character so.

SELL YOUR MUSE !( try to list everything that makes your muse interesting to make them spicy for your mutuals ) 

he is a nice sweet boy who WILL adopt every single child and will go out of his way to help those in need. he also has plenty of spunk and a real get-up-and-go kind of personality, he’s not the kind of person who likes just “hanging around” so he’s a perfect companion for someone who likes to get out and adventure as long as you don’t go outside of piltover/zaun. he’s very loyal and will stick up for his friends, even when it would be more convenient to sell them out. and of course, he’s willing to call authority figures out on their bullshit and doesn’t sit back and passively watch injustices happen.

NOW THE OPPOSITE !(  list everything why your muse could not be so interesting . even if you may not agree. what does the fandom perhaps think ?  )

he’s got abandonment issues up to HERE, and because of that, he is c l i n g y. if he gets attached to you in any way, he will NOT let you go. he will NOT get over you. he will probably keep trying to worm his way back into your life for months or YEARS because he just doesn’t know how to deal with being left.

furthermore, he represses every negative emotion he has ever felt because he feels like his problems are trivial compared to other people’s so he bottles that shit right on up like cheap cough-syrup-tastin’ whiskey. he holds onto a LOT of resentment - at piltover, at the chembarons, at himself, at the world - and because he doesn’t allow himself to DO anything with said resentment, he’s a ticking time bomb (pun fully intended). i do have... timelines... where all that internalized hostility blows up in a really messy way. and by messy, i mean bloody.

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO RP YOUR MUSE ? 

around the time i first started getting into league, a bitch was going through it. we were pretty destitute and received an eviction notice, and i had to work my ass off to keep us from losing our apartment. it was a very depressing time for everyone involved. but then i found ekko, this boy who had even less than i did but made the most of it, who always found some way to make the day better. writing him became very cathartic for me because it allowed me to take something positive away from what was one of the worst years of my life.

WHAT KEEPS YOUR INSPIRATION GOING ? 

punk rock music, haha! especially that of billy talent. their whole dead silence album is pretty ekko, but they have a lot of bangers that remind me of him scattered across all their albums. we deserved punk rock ekko and instead we got fucking true damage because riot didn’t wanna get political, i guess. smh.

some more personal questions for the mun . give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters , which could lead them to get more comfortable with you or perhaps not .

DO YOU THINK YOU GIVE YOUR CHARACTER JUSTICE ?   YES  /  NO  /  IDK                      

DO YOU FREQUENTLY WRITE HEADCANONS ? YES /  NO  /  IDK

i kind of only address headcanons as they come up. very occasionally i will drop a few for a new muse just so that people get a better feel for who they are before writing them but... yeah written headcanons are pretty few and far between here. it’s really not even worth me having a headcanon banner lmao

DO YOU SOMETIMES WRITE DRABBLES ?    YES  /  NO  /  IDK

i would like to, but writing my replies here kind of sucks up most of my time!

DO YOU THINK A LOT ABOUT YOUR MUSE DURING THE DAY ? YES /  NO  /  IDK

ARE YOU CONFIDENT IN YOUR PORTRAYAL ? YES  /  NO  /  IDK

too confident some might say, but those people would be silly fools

ARE YOU CONFIDENT IN YOUR WRITING ?   YES  /  NO  /  IDK  

ARE YOU A SENSITIVE PERSON ?   YES /  NO  /  IDK

sometimes i get anxiety about stupid shit but i try and often fail to be secure

DO YOU ACCEPT CRITICISM WELL ABOUT YOUR PORTRAYAL ?

nope, i ain’t changing a thing. i’m the best ekko on this site, and you are free to disagree with that because everyone is entitled to their wrong opinion, but my askbox is closed to those kinds of complaints. :)

DO YOU LIKE QUESTIONS , WHICH HELP YOU TO EXPLORE YOUR CHARACTER ?

yeah, sure, although i understand why people don’t send them because i often draw blanks on what to send without somebody reblogging a headcanon meme or something. if you just reblog “send my character questions on anon!” i’m probably not gonna do it bc i have no idea what kinds of questions would even be relevant or helpful for you.

IF SOMEONE DISAGREES TO A HEADCANON OF YOURS , DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY

nah, everyone can do what they want. i usually won’t follow people if i don’t agree with their headcanons, but i’m not about to get all up in somebody’s business about it.

IF SOMEONE DISAGREES WITH YOUR PORTRAYAL , HOW WOULD YOU TAKE IT ?

again, wrong opinion, but you’re allowed to have it and you’re also allowed to SMASH that unfollow button.

IF SOMEONE REALLY HATES YOUR CHARACTER , HOW DO YOU TAKE IT ?

who hates ekko of all people, first of all? but second of all, i don’t care. just don’t get in my dms about it ‘cause i’ll block you. i’m not really interested in somebody bashing one of my muses to my face.

ARE YOU OKAY WITH PEOPLE POINTING OUT YOUR GRAMMATICAL ERRORS ?

shrugs. yeah, i guess. i usually leave other people’s grammatical errors alone as long as i can read their stuff.

DO YOU THINK YOU ARE EASY GOING AS A MUN ?

yeah i think so. i try to be, anyway. i like to make ooc friendships bc i find it way more satisfying and easy to write with friends. although i sound a little bitchy in parts of this, it’s mostly jokes for exaggeration effects.

tagged by: @bikmui

tagging: @storiestotell (akutagawa), @bystcrdust, @dimensionaljumper (for eliza ‘cause i always send stuff for scribe lol)

[aquaburst3]

Fic asks: 2, 5, 8, 11, 13 and 14.

Undercut, because long and spoilers...

2. What character(s) do you find the most difficult to write for? Why?

So far, I guess Grim (Twisted Wonderland). While he’s a fun character and I love how he’s one of the few mascot characters in anime who gets character development, he’s a bit of a handful. That’s an understatement. I have to try constantly think about how he would act in certain points in the story, and how my OC would react to him.  

 I also find it’s hard to incorporate Grim into scenes. Sometimes I want my OC to be alone talking with someone or be by herself. Since the MC dragged around Grim in the game so much, I have to think of a way to include him in or think of a reason for him to stay out of it. 

Jamil and Kalim (Twisted Wonderland) are also hard to write for that similar reason. I want to make the Pomefiore arc happen earlier in the fic, so I have to constantly think of how to write them pre-character development in an arc that takes place after they grew as characters in the canon. But unlike with Grim, it’s in a fun challenge sort of way. Because it has a bit of a butterfly effect on the story. 

(If you don’t play the game, the Pomefiore arc is the 5th one. But I decided for a few different reasons, which I don’t want to get into, that I want to make it the 3rd, make Octavinelle 4th that happens during December finals season and Sacrabia the 5th, which happens over Spring Break. So because it’s bumped up in the timeline, my OC knows those two a lot better compared to the canon, and spent a lot of time with them in the Pomefiore dorm over the month and half leading up to the competition. Their arc is gonna hurt a fuckton more.)  

5. Do you listen to music when writing?

I enjoy listening to lyricless movie soundtracks or nothing at all. I find it’s easier to concentrate that way. Music with lyrics are way to distracting to me, since my mind latches onto them and I’m much slower at writing. 

11. How would you describe your style? (Character/emotion/action-driven, etc)

Honestly, it depends on the story. Some of my fics can be fluffy while others have dark aspects to them and others are character driven. 

How I would describe my writing in a general sense, both fics and original stories? I guess I would describe it as character driven with plot driven elements. I tend to focus on character first and foremost, because I think it’s important for readers to have a compelling character to get attached to push the story forward.  (I had several people say that my biggest strength as a writer is character). But I have a lot of fun and engaging plots, mostly action/adventure, to have these character engage with. I also enjoy doing world building a lot as well. 

The voice for my OCs (both in my TWST fic and in my OG works) is down to earth and witty. A lot of my characters tend to have a sense of snark to them as they try to process the insanity around them, but they still can still feel a wide range of emotions like fear, anger, etc. Though, there are some characters that go against that (like the MC in my reverse isekai original story). 

13. When did you start writing fanfic?

Right in the middle of high school. I got into it, because one of my friends at the time had a FF.net account, and I thought it would be fun to write stories on there. Here I am almost a decade later. 

It’s also how my love of creative writing started, too. My elementary, middle and high schools never taught creative writing in class, and I never took any for my diploma. So, yeah. I’m a self taught writer. 

14. How do you feel about your older work?

Depends on how far back we’re talking as well. If it’s my stuff made during high school, I don’t like most of it outside of a couple expectations. But if we’re talking about my stuff from college and after, it depends on the story. There are some stories I’m pretty proud of years later, expect for how I phrased sentences (before I began learning how to start some sentences with things other than “I�� or “Insert Character Name Here”) and odd word choices. Others I think are just weird or outright suck. I think regretting some choices in your past work is normal for any writer. I’m always trying to improve as a writer to create better stories in the future. 

Bonus...since I really want to answer this one...

1. What’s your favorite character(s) to write for?

I love writing for Bill Cipher (Gravity Falls), Pacifica Northwest (Gravity Falls), Vil (Twisted Wonderland), Jamil (Twisted Wonderland) and Ace (Twisted Wonderland). 

Bill Cipher is a chaotic ball of shit. Writing his wit and sass is a lot fun for me. Back in the day, I loved writing him interact with different fictional characters. Though, I only did it for Atem (Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters) and Judai (Yu-Gi-Oh GX) back when I was still into that franchise. (Because I’m certainly not as an adult in my mid 20s.) Might do it for other characters in other franchises if the idea strikes me. 

Pacifica is a complex and interesting character. She started off as the stereotypical mean girl. But with the NWMM episode, we got to see a whole different side of her, which added a lot of layers to her character. I love writing characters who add more complexity to the popular mean girl trope, because I always found them a lot more interesting than the dull MC in bad rom coms. 

Vil never showed up in any of my fics yet, but I’m writing parts with him in it thanks to writing some parts ahead of time. Vil is in a similar vein as Pacifica. In any other story, he would’ve been the one dimensional, vain pretty boy. But instead, he’s a hardworking guy, who wants everyone around him to shine their brightest. He hates lazy people. In that sense, he breaks a lot of tropes. Though, he has his fair share of faults as well, like his control freak tendencies, too harsh with his words and the way he treats Epel isn’t right. As a bi woman, I also love how he’s a guy who wears heels and makeup, but is never once mocked in the game for it. I do the same in my writing. Go, dude. Fuck those gender norms! 

Jamil is a blast to write, because he seems like a layered character to me. He’s a calm guy and collected guy, who he loves wearing hoodies way too much. But he’s also an intelligent, sly, cunning and manipulative guy. He seems loyal at first, but in actuality, he has a trick up his sleeve and wants to take Kalim down. His reasoning for as to why he’s doing this, while doesn’t excuse his actions, are understandable due to his family being in servants to his and him taking out his anger for his situation at the one thing he possibly could. He also has a lot of elements that humanize him as well, like the fact that he enjoys dancing, basketball and watching parrot videos. Tackling a character like him is a lot of fun for me as a writer, just due to how complex and interesting he is. 

Ace is probably the easiest character for me to write. He’s funny, mischievous and cheerful, but yet abrasive, bold, blunt, temperamental, willing to call out other’s bs and a bit of an ass. It’s pretty easy for me to get a handle on him, and understand how he would react in different situations. (As a side note, Ace reminds me of how I used to write Atem and Malik back in my YGO fics that I wrote in high school in that regard. Unlike those stories, he’s actually in character here, instead of extremely OOC like the YGO ones.)  

[something-tofightfor]

2019 writing recap!

I’ve seen a couple of people do this, and it seems like a fun way to go back through what I’ve done this past year in terms of writing + give some recognition to the other talented people in this fandom.  

Answers under the cut because it’s long! (Everything is linked because SCREW YOU TUMBLR)

favorite fic you wrote this year: I have two favorites. 

1. Neon Lights, which started out as a prompt request based on a song, and has spawned 100,000 words via the stories, the HCs and the random character asks… and has given me a much better understanding of Ryan Brenner as a character. 

2. You’re all going to be super surprised at this…. But it’s Here Comes the Sun, because it gave me a chance to write Logan in a VERY different way than I did with Tonight… and seeing him wholly happy is so nice.

least favorite fic you wrote this year: The First of Many, which was my one foray into writing for Frank/Karen… and I killed Billy in it, so that was a disaster. 

favorite line/scene you wrote this year: A few of the ones that stick out to me: 

 Neon Lights, chapter 4:   “Hey, I’m listening to what you’re sayin’, but if it’s alright, I’m gonna kiss you now.” The words were quiet, his voice a little hoarse. Yes, God, yes. You reached up with the arm that he wasn’t holding on to and touched his hair while you nodded, and then his lips met yours. You sighed into the kiss, and unless you were imagining things, he did too. It was brief, but when he pulled away he was smiling. “I’ve wanted to do that since yesterday.”

Take a Sip, part 2: “Caspian?” You met his eyes and he saw that you were trying to hold it together. “Will you help me get this dress off, please?” He moved quickly, pulling you to your feet and unlacing the front of your dress, fingers shaking as he untied the strings. His hands moving to your shoulders, he squeezed them before turning you gently around, undoing the buttons on the back of your dress - so much like he had the first night he’d ever touched you, the dress falling to your waist and then to the floor, revealing a shift beneath it. “Thank you, my King.” 

He heard the tears in your voice and blinked back his own as he lowered his head, pressing his lips to the bare skin of one shoulder and then the other, fingers gathering your hair to lift it and expose more of you to him. But you didn’t let him linger as you turned, giving him a small smile as you reached forward, pushing the jacket off of his shoulders and waiting until he’d shrugged it off before moving to help him remove his vest. Neither of you spoke, but he knew what you were thinking - that it could be the last time you touched each other, the last time…

Remember What You Told Me, part 2: When Logan and Reader confront William in the bar... it was so damn satisfying. 

He’s Not Here (Interlude): History: This was such a fun scenario to write because... why would Billy ever think that someone would need him to take care of them when they’re sick? I loved exploring this side of him, and helping him learn that it was OK to open up. 

total number of words you wrote this year: Based on adding up everything on my Masterlist pages + including the word count of the HNH file… 620,000 words… and that doesn’t include anything that I’ve got a few paragraphs of in WiP files, the HCs or the character asks that I’ve done. 

That’s …. 1557 pages in a typical novel…. So basically, because I love writing, I wrote FIFTEEN HUNDRED PAGES WORTH OF WORDS. Yikes. 

most popular fic this year: People have really seemed to connect with He’s Not Here, and that makes sense, because it’s my longest running series and Billy’s... been given a chance to be different, which is always nice to write and read about. 

Exit Row was also super popular. 

But the most popular single post of 2019 for me? Billy Russo’s NSFW alphabet. 

least popular fic this year: Tonight, which disappoints me, because I love it. I get that it’s a little dark, but... it was necessary, because Logan’s not perfect. 

And Neon Lights/Just a Place… which is super disappointing, because it’s Ryan and everyone should love him. 

longest completed fic you wrote this year: Neon Lights ended up being 60,000 words. 

shortest completed fic you wrote this year: All of the drabbles that I wrote in March are super short (I think they averaged about 700 words) … but I think that “On the Spot” is the shortest thing I’ve ever written at 500 words EXACTLY. 

longest wip of the year: He’s Not Here… which is currently (after 20 chapters) at 82,000+ words - for the main story. 

shortest wip of the year: Hmm… I’m thinking that this is PROBABLY the second part of Ink, which has been sitting in my WiP folder since September, and is only about 200 words long right now. 

favorite character to write about this year: This is a very unfair question, because I love all of my characters and stories, but...I honestly, (and this will come as no surprise) loved writing Logan the most in all forms. There’s so much that can be done with his character, and exploring it has been a LOT of fun for me. 

favorite writing song/artist/album of this year: I wrote  LOT while listening to the “Feeding the Wolves” album by 10 Years (it’s GREAT for Billy). I also think that I wrote almost all of Neon Lights while listening almost exclusively to acoustic guitar covers of songs that had NOTHING to do with the story.  

a fic you didn’t expect to write: I never thought I’d write Caspian, and here we are, 6 chapters later + a follow up with His Favorite Place.

fic(s) you completed this year:  I don’t even know, it’s got to be close to 40, maybe more with all of the prompt requests and all that. It doesn’t seem like that many, but I just scrolled through my masterlist, so I guess it must be. 

fics you’ll continue next year: Just a Place. He’s Not Here. Here Comes the Suniverse. Ben/Reader Exit Row universe… so many.  

current number of wips: Too many. At least 15. It’s insane. 

any new fics to start next year: There’s one for sure that I want  to write ASAP because I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it for like a solid week and a half. 

most memorable comment/review: I love each and every single one of you that takes the time to comment - or even to message me and keysmash - but I think that the handwritten comments from @its-my-little-dumpster-fire and @the-blind-assassin-12 are some of my favorites (and I’m sure those of you that have also received them will agree) .... it’s just overwhelming to me. And so is hearing that I overwhelmed you, or made you smile, or that you felt like you were IN the story. I am shit at replying to every single comment, but I try my best, and I can’t thank you enough for all of your kind words and encouragement. 

events you participated in this year: I participated in zero events aside from the ones that I set up for myself when I asked people for requests. 

fics you wanted to write but didn’t: There’s  Logan story that I’ve been sitting on since last December (I remember wrapping presents and contemplating it) … there’s a Logan one shot that I want to write and don’t want to write at the same time. I have a Caspian story that is ITCHING to be written, and might be one of the first things I write in 2020. 

favorite fic you read this year: 

Death of a Bachelor by @delos-mio: Logan Delos X Reader ... and it’s a RIDE.I vividly remember pulling my phone out in between bands at a concert to read the most recent chapter and I can’t wait for her to finish it 

With Courage by @halfwit-halfblood : Caspian x OC, and it features one of the strongest and most relatable OCs that I have ever read in my life. I am absolutely sucked in every new chapter. 

By Design by @luminex3: Billy Russo x Reader... and it’s literally everything that I could ever ask for in a non-canon Billy, because he’s still Billy, but he’s much less of an idiot than the REAL Billy. And her details? The dedication to her characters? It was BEAUTIFUL. 

... there were so many others, if you want more suggestions, please feel free to ask, because I have so many favorites. 

a fic you read this year you would recommend everyone read:

‘Deed I Do by @its-my-little-dumpster-fire: John Whittaker x Reader .... and it’s PERFECT. And it’s spawned so many fun companion pieces. (PARTICULARLY ‘My Private Affair’... which literally KILLED ME. 

Oblivion by @the-blind-assassin-12: Logan Delos x Reader... and it’s a lot to handle, but it shows just how strong Logan could truly be if he was given the chance/motivation

A Familiar Face by @illshowyourhurricanes/ @suchatinyinfinity: Ryan Brenner x Reader... and it shows why the simple moments are the most important. Her Ryan is so thoughtful, and I just love him. 

 number of favorites/bookmarks you made this year: I liked a LOT of stories on Tumblr. A ton, in fact. A literal fuckton. I read a lot this year. 

favorite fanfic author of the year: It’s really unfair to make me choose a favorite, so I’ll list some that I truly enjoy in no particular order: 

@halfwit-halfblood

@delos-mio

@the-blind-assassin-12

@its-my-little-dumpster-fire

@madamrogersstorytelling

@logans-chestnuts

[mittensmorgul]

Look, I know you've covered this already but I just want to reiterate how AWESOME it is that several lines and scenes of s14 were deliberately drawing our attention to the in‐betweens, to the fact that these guys have lives outside of what we seen and that they have significant moments in those off screen lives. I just fricking *love* that.

Hi hi! I know you sent this like a week ago, but I really wanted to have time to sit down and detail all the moments in s14 where they’ve used this device before replying– both for the sake of completeness in demonstrating just how critical they’ve made these “in between” spaces to the overall narrative, as well as for my own general reference purposes. :P

I’ll start by saying that the show has done this on some level from the start. I mean, the entire series begins with a cold open in 1983 before jumping 22 years into the future to begin in the “present day” of October, 2005. We begin our introduction to the story of Supernatural immediately aware that there’s already a metric fuckton of backstory we’re due to have filled in, and we’re primed to begin looking for more pieces to flesh out that history from the moment the first scene airs.

*clenches fist* STORYTELLING

I’m currently in mid-late s7 in my eternal rewatch, and even s7 uses this device MULTIPLE times. I mean, s6 does this, as well, immediately informing us that a year has passed since the events of 5.22, and gradually filling in the missing events from that gap, using Sam’s soullessness and then post-re-ensoulening amnesia about his soulless time, him “scratching the wall” and beginning to piece his own memories together, as one entry point into this “filling in the blanks of the past for full understanding of the present” storytelling device. The other major expression of this device in s6 is Castiel’s story throughout the season, which doesn’t truly begin to fill in all the blanks and answer all the questions until episode TWENTY.

(I am not defending this storytelling choice, because in s6 it served as a metaphorical “punishment,” which is still so skeevy I struggle to watch the season as a whole… in Gamble Era, characters are “punished” for remembering their past– Sam for his guilt over what he did while soulless, and eventually Cas for his hubris in believing he could devour the souls of purgatory without consequences… and again, what I get from Gamble Era overall is an unkindness to all the characters… this Erasure of Identity. For years now, I’ve read this exchange from 6.09 as a bit of an indictment of the story of that era by Ben Edlund:

SAM: So you’re saying having a soul equals suffering.DEAN: Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.SAM: Like, the million times you almost called Lisa. So you’re saying suffering is a good thing.DEAN: I’m saying it’s the only game in town.

but back to the point)

S7 employed this technique in really in-your-face obvious ways, showing us time skips with little montages that cover several weeks in a matter of less than a minute, during which we’re shown the tone of the events of the “missing time” and are being told directly how to fill in those blanks:

7.01 shows this montage through Dean repairing Baby while receiving occasional updates on Sam’s recovery and Cas’s Godstiel rampage.

7.03 gives us a montage of Dean’s healing leg while he’s relegated to the sofa in the cabin watching tv… weeks elapse like this before the action picks up again.

7.10 uses flashbacks as Bobby lays dying to directly show us a fuller snapshot of who he is as a character, and why he’s been so important to Sam and Dean as their adoptive father figure

7.11 uses another “weeks pass” montage to show us Sam and Dean’s grief and their respective ways of handling Bobby’s loss

7.17 uses another flashback montage as Castiel literally rebuilds his identity from these moments… can’t really be more anvilicious than this about the import of filling in the narrative gaps…

But over the years, this has evolved in the narrative from these blatantly obvious tells to something we’re being low-level reminded of in nearly every episode through a constant implicit assumption that these characters have lives outside of what we see on The Magic Rectangle for 42 minutes a week. The show’s gone from literally subtitling these scenes and telling us exactly what we’re seeing to requiring our assumption that all we need to learn how to fill in the blanks is to assume these are actually real people who casually reference things we never knew before from their own lives and assume we know all the characters well enough by now to correctly fill in the blanks they so casually point out to us, or even expand on vast swaths of otherwise “missing time” from what we actively see of their lives from an otherwise minor comment made in passing…

Gosh, ain’t it nice when writers assume their audience is actually intelligent, considerate, engaged, and caring like this? Honestly in this day and age of GOTCHA! oneupsmanship, of authors attempting to demonstrate their intellectual superiority over their audience, it’s rather refreshing.

One more thing before we jump right into s14. Dabb and Company have been “educating” us on how to read these subtextual instructions for years now. We had the Mixtape Revelation in 12.19 that idiotically devolved into fandom arguments over what a mixtape itself was intended to symbolize, with people arguing that the thing itself had no inherent romantic implications (which… wow… but people be dumb sometimes…). I’d argue that regardless of what anyone has convinced themselves the gift meant symbolically (or didn’t mean symbolically for people with their heads shoved so far up their butts they actually made that argument in a public forum with a straight face and actually got mad about folks who actually know better…), what it meant NARRATIVELY was that the original gifting of the tape was something that had happened in the past, that we-the-audience previously had no knowledge of this particular interaction between Dean and Cas, and were being SPECIFICALLY TOLD that even though WE DID NOT SEE IT HAPPEN ON SCREEN, it absolutely, definitely, CANONICALLY ACTUALLY HAPPENED regardless of that fact.

Not only did that unseen exchange canonically happen, it was discussed by Dean and Cas in a casual fashion, as if it was simply one moment in a past filled with moments just like it. In a season where the episodes leading up to this one were filled with comments about Dean and Cas calling each other regularly (conversations that we never see, yet are informed casually happen constantly offscreen), and Dean’s increasing distress over NOT being able to reach Cas for several episodes, it’s impossible NOT to draw the conclusion that this lack of communication is HIGHLY IRREGULAR and therefore SOMETHING WE SHOULD ALL BE CONCERNED ABOUT. We didn’t need to *see* all of this to apply this fact far more broadly to the entire narrative, and understand there were massive gaps between what they could show us in 42 minutes a week versus what the baseline background life is for all of these characters in those between-times.

They doubled down on this in s13, specifically in 13.06, both with the “Dean and Cas regularly watch movies together” comments AND in the casual knowledge Cas shares with Jack about Dean’s sleeping and coffee drinking habits. It’s not just these isolated facts that we’re supposed to take away from these sorts of exchanges, but what they mean in the larger context of their off-camera interactions and relationship as a whole.

So that said, let’s move on to s14, where this has honestly evolved to the next level. The rest of this is going under a cut for now, because the totality of this post is something like 7700 words...

14.01, Stranger in a Strange Land:

The season begins with a montage of Dinkle’s actions over a period of weeks, talking to different people and asking what they want. We don’t see every one of these conversations, but we can extrapolate out from the ones we DO see and infer how all of those experiences guide his subsequent actions (as well as Dean’s subsequent emotional and psychological state later down the road).

But we’re shown one more of those conversations INDIRECTLY, from an offhand comment of another character, where we’re both reminded of Dinkle’s little conversations, AND reminded that they don’t constitute the sum total of those conversations. There is much we haven’t seen (and will NOT see, because this scene renders any additional on-screen time to cover the tone and content of those conversations superfluous and redundant), and yet we still understand the importance and gravity of Dinkle’s entire occupation during those missing weeks:

Kip:You see, recently, I had a revelation. You know, somebody asked me what it was that I wanted. And I realized that after 600 years as a demon walking the planet, destroying, drinking, defiling – you know, the Three D’s – I didn’t know. So, I sat back, and I gave it a good think, and I realized exactly what I wanted.Castiel: And what is it?Kip: Everything.

We also see this from the other side of the narrative– through the progression of events occurring at the Bunker in Dean’s absence. Sam’s despair is conveyed not only in dialogue in his conversation with Mary, it’s conveyed through just how poorly he’s looking after his own wellbeing, not shaving (visual confirmation of his mindset informing us of what his life’s been like over the previous weeks), not eating or sleeping (we’re told, and believe because of how he’s presenting himself, but also emotionally informs us of how he’s been affected by his ordeal), while simultaneously having stepped up to lead the army of AU Hunters– i.e. people from a world where war against Michael has been their lives for more than a decade, and are literally bringing that experience to THIS world, metaphorically going back to the start of their own battle to a world where Michael is only BEGINNING to enact that war on this world, who now have the experience of having survived that war and the knowledge gained while having fought against it, but also a chance to stop it before it can be allowed to start again. Or that is the hope, you know?

We’re also seeing Jack struggle with guilt, with adapting to life without the magical powers he’d been born with, and being forced to confront what is truly important to him, and what his own humanity means to him.

We’re subtly being reminded of VAST quantities of canon upon which the current character developments are resting.

14.02, Gods and Monsters:

There’s a lot of “backtracing” through character arcs in this one, which I’m gonna boil down to the general themes:

Jack seeking out his familial history, seeking out Kelly Kline’s parents to make a personal connection to his mother’s past in order to better understand himself now

Cas relating parts of his own past to Jack (falling and becoming human, not mourning the past he can’t change but finding strength in himself regardless of his current circumstance, and to have patience while his circumstance will change in future) (aside to remind folks that this setup at the beginning of the season is entirely about subverting his words through his own actions throughout the season… with 14.14 being the massive turning point again for both Jack and Cas)

Nick’s setup of beginning to fill in the blanks from his own life after a decade of having lost everything to his possession by Lucifer. He’s got a lot of catching up to do, and a heck of a lot of blanks to fill.

the absolute knowledge that the show is 100% aware of how they’ve trained us to look at the narrative this deeply, using character mirrors, foreshadowing, parallels, etc., and that they’re keen to use this power against us. And it’s up to us to understand the difference between “things being presented to us for the purposes of subversion” and “things being presented to us to fill in narrative blanks.” Like the entirety of Dinkle’s conversations with both Dean and Lydia the vampire. Heck I’m already down to bullet points and I’m gonna need to extrapolate on this one… *sighs*

Let’s start simple, with a couple of quotes:

Michael: Why do you think I dumped your brothers and sisters in plain sight? Why do you think I let you escape?Lydia: You let me escape?Michael: Rule number 1 – you can’t have a trap without bait. That brings us to rule number 2, which says once the trap has been sprung, you don’t need the bait anymore.

and

Dean: Get… out!Michael: I don’t think so.Dean: You can’t!Michael: Oh, but I can. Because, see… I own you. So hang on and enjoy the ride.

Because the first defines and contextualizes the second… Do I really need to elaborate? No? Oh good, then we can move on!

14.03, The Scar:

Again, using the trope of amnesia and memory recovery to illustrate the emotional and psychological impact of “missing time,” if not the entirety of the content of that missing gap. In addition, to Dean recovering his memories and demonstrating his reaction to his own lost time, the two respective cases of the week (Darth Kaia, learning how she came to this universe, and everything she’s endured at Dinkle’s hands also informing further the information we learned in 14.01, and in the bunker Jack and Cas helping heal Lora of a witch’s curse that was literally stealing time from her in the form of her own life energy).

I love demonstrating how “filling narrative gaps from the past” is not only built into the inherent structure of the narrative like this, it’s also the entire purpose of all the character development we’re witnessing, as well as setting the foundation of the entire story going forward.

We had that in spades from Jody, putting in plain words what we all saw happening in 13.10:

Jody: They have a right to know but I can’t. I promised Claire human cases are mine, but anything “monstery” I’d loop her in: this. God. Claire’s been doing so good. I mean anything connected to Kaia, she’s a powder keg. First loves strikes quick, and then to lose it like that. Wow, you two are having a time of it.

Confirming the subtext of Claire and Kaia’s relationship, while simultaneously informing us of what Jody, Claire, et al’s lives have been like since then, filling in a huge narrative gap with just a few innocuous comments. But there’s one more example from within the span of this episode:

Sam: Okay, look, I’m just saying… you said you let Michael in, then, bang you’re back in a blink. But for me? You were gone for weeks. I didn’t know if you were alive. I just need you to talk to me, to slow down so I can catch up.

Sam, defining the narrative gap and begging for information to fill it with. And then at the end of the episode, he gets an answer, but it’s nothing like what he expected or hoped for:

Dean: And it wasn’t a blink, being possessed. I make it sound like that, but it wasn’t. I don’t remember most of what Michael did with me because I was underwater, drowning, and that I remember. I felt every second of it – clawing, fighting for air. I thought I could make it out, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t strong enough. And now he’s gone and he’s out there putting an army of monsters together and he’s hurting people. And its all on me, man. I said yes. It’s my fault.

And it’s still not really an answer.

14.04, Mint Condition:

Narrative gap reshuffle yahtzee. I’m just gonna give a few links to meta already written for this one, because it’s about the journey, and being informed enough to pay attention to all the sights along the roadside as we go:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179792849870/when-in-doubt-sing-mittensmorgul-i

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/181790806615/questions-and-their-empty-spaces

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179742780230/mittens-help-dean-says-he-loves-hatchet-man

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179734411135/i-love-there-wasnt-any-acknowledgement-about-dean

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179724128520/stuarts-my-best-friend-we-watch-movies-and-eat

(gotta throw in at least one destiel reference…)

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179700702490/hey-mittens-just-wondering-if-you-could-help-me

And because this reading list is already getting long, I just want to use this post to point out how the use of narrative mirrors informs our understanding of those one-off characters through our established understanding of the main characters, enabling those mirror characters to serve their function in the story. Davy was not subtle with pointing that out in this episode, and it’s an essential tool in understanding the bigger picture of the narrative. But it’s also a device in filling narrative gaps by recognizing and applying the subtextual lessons being demonstrated:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179695858820/a-few-observations-on-the-mirror-characters

So this isn’t just about individual lines at this point, but an entire narrative shift that the writers spent the entire first half of s14 laying out for us through these sorts of storytelling lessons hidden just under the surface of the story itself. Brilliant.

Basically, if you’re NOT making these connections and using your brain to flesh out the entire world pointed at in the narrative gaps, you don’t really have a hope of understanding the bigger story.

14.05, Nightmare Logic:

Aah, the superpowered djinn, 3D walking metaphor for filling in gaps from the past to find wholeness in the present. Also, one of Michael’s “monster traps” he laid out in order to lure in and kill unwary hunters, which he believed (and the monsters themselves believed) made them more powerful, but in reality became the vehicle through which the Winchesters were eventually able to gain the upper hand… they survived the encounter and walked away with new knowledge about both themselves AND Michael’s bigger plans that had been evading them before this episode.

Information fills narrative gaps.

The djinn itself has been “enhanced” from djinn we’ve seen in the past, able to create its illusions in reality rather than only within its victims own minds. What was imaginary becomes tangible. Subtext becomes text.

We also get AU!Bobby’s backstory, which demonstrates that this alternate version of Bobby is really nothing like our original version, and the sum of his life experiences have made him who he is.

We also get another “zombie” reference, which the more I think back on this entire season (and Jack’s long obsession with zombies in general) is an interesting metaphor for this sort of viewing, not engaging with the deeper text and instead shuffling across it without looking deeper. Because pretty much every time someone suggested the monster could be a zombie, it’s definitively shown to be something much more complex once they begin to dig for answers.

(we also have Dean discussing his past, his relationship with his father, and talking about how setting that baggage aside and living in the present, and for the future, is something he’s worked long and hard to achieve for himself. And we’ve seen some of that journey for him, but this was a huge step for him, which will become profoundly more evident in 14.10 and 14.13)

14.06, Optimism:

Oh, we wanted zombie references? Well, alrighty, have some zombie references! Via the entirely self-deluded MotW character, masquerading as a person with a sad backstory of being “unlucky in love” while all the while she’s a necromancer who murdered and resurrected her boyfriend as a mindless zombie she enacts a brutal game with for her own personal pleasure: luring in suitors and letting her zombie boyfriend kill and eat them. Worst honey trap ever.

Speaking of honey, the other MotW is a fly dude who couldn’t find love among his species and exiled himself to live alone among a pile of rotting corpses of his victims. I mean… ew.

But back to our necromancer, who is a lonely librarian, who is surrounded by stories and laments that people in her town aren’t interested in stories. All the while she’s not engaging with her own reality, and has decided that her own version of the story is an accurate reflection of reality (while the rest of us shake our heads in horror because whoa no hon…)

We also learn AU!Charlie’s backstory, with the constant reminders that what Sam keeps mistaking on the surface level for “his Charlie” IS NOT HER. Man, I feel that feel, AU!Charlie.

Jack: What's 'courting?'Dean: It's what you do before you start dating.Jack: Oh, and that's the thing you do before the sex.Wanda: Sometimes you just have the sex.

Yes, Wanda. Sometimes you skip all the courting, all the emotional and interpersonal stuff, and just go right to the sex. But then you tend to just walk away after without any sort of deeper connection having been made. One night stands are fine, but they’re very different things from deep interpersonal relationships.

You can absolutely engage with Supernatural like a one night stand. The story’s fun on the surface, but ultimately the courting is what provides the deep payoff.

14.07, Unhuman Nature:

We get back to the twisted story of Nick, and his quest to understand himself. He’s filling in more of those horrific gaps in his history and getting closer to the Worst Possible Conclusions about himself. He ENJOYED being Lucifer’s vessel, and wants that feeling of power back, even if it wasn’t HIS power, just being the vehicle for that power is enough for him, more important to him than even discovering the truth about himself. At the bottom of himself, he’s just an empty douchebag-shaped vessel for pure evil.

What a fucking delight >.>

Nurse: Uh-huh. Family medical history? Let's start with the father.Dean: He's dead.Nurse: Cause of death?Castiel: He was stabbed through the heart, and he exploded.Dean: Okay, you know what? We don't have time for this. All right, he's sick. His name is Jack Kline. His father exploded. There, you've got all the basics. Now what does he need to do to see a doctor?

Well that simplified the whole “filling in the backstory through the narrative negative spaces” thing in this episode, didn’t it?

Jack: Since I've been alive, everyone assumed that I would be this special 'person' who goes on forever. Only now it looks like forever might be a couple of weeks, so--Dean: We don't know that.Jack: What I do know is I'm done being special. Before my life is over, I want to live it. I just want a chance to get a tan or see a hockey game... get a parking ticket... get bored... and when it's all over -- die.

I mean, isn’t that what all of TFW kind of wants? They want to not be “special.” They want the universe to stop picking on them specifically. They want to just live their lives until they’re done.

Jack: You once told me you and your father did the exact same thing. It was your happiest memory of him.Dean: I didn't say that.Jack: It was how you said it. I could tell. I guess my point is that if I don't make it... The stuff I'd miss -- it wouldn't be things like Tahiti. Or the Taj Mahal. I'd miss more time with you. I'm getting that life isn't all these big, amazing moments. It's time together that matters. Like this.Dean: Well, who'd have thought hanging out with me would make you sentimental?

Dude. Dean. Everyone thought this. You are the king of “family is the most important thing in the universe without which I am nothing.” Talk about Jack filling in that particular blank for you.

14.08, Byzantium:

Aka that one where we discover something important to Jack in his own Heaven-- and it’s literally a missing scene from 13.06 and their road trip to Dodge City where they stop for burgers. UNPROBLEMATIC FAMILY BONDING IS JACK’S HEAVEN. And it also fills in a past narrative gap, specifically from an episode that was structured around filling in narrative gaps. WE’RE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS, PEOPLE.

We also have the return of Lily Sunder, now grown old since she’d completed her revenge quest against Ishim and the other angels who’d wronged her (including Cas, who literally killed Ishim FOR her). Talk about filling in a lifetime worth of gaps, and her literal near-lack of a soul she “fills in” through one final sacrifice made of love, which earns her redemption and entrance to Heaven.

I mean… those narrative gaps are looking pretty important here right about now.

Also, what’s that other big gap I haven’t mentioned yet? Oh, right! A villain literally known as “The Empty.” I’m sure that’s not meta relevant to the importance of the narrative empty spaces at all...

14.09, The Spear.

Sequel to The Scar (since the spear is what left Dean with the scar in the first place, so we’re back on our Dinkle nonsense again). There’s a lot of blank-filling going on in this episode.

Remember Garth? Well, as he’s reintroduced in this episode it appears as if he’s gone over to the Dark Side, but of course we learn he’s actually there as a deep cover agent for the Winchesters. This tells us they’ve been keeping in close touch with Garth all this time, despite us not having seen him on screen in ages. (FIVE YEARS!)

Remember Ketch? Well, he’s also doing deep cover agency stuff for the Winchesters, but with a level of incompetence that reminds us all that he’s still not one of the good guys, no matter how hard he’s trying, he’s still… falling a bit short. But at least they’re still keeping contact with him. And BOTH of these characters appearing after a while offscreen reminds us that TFW truly aren’t alone in the world, and they DO have this network of people (at varying degrees of competence still ranging from typical bumbling civvie to TFW themselves).

This entire episode was also a massive reference to Die Hard. Just… it was Die Hard: Supernatural. And we know Dean has referenced this movie endlessly. But the funniest thing: Die Hard isn’t actually referenced ONE SINGLE TIME in text in this episode. Nobody points out the similarities between the situation at the Hitomi Plaza at Christmas with Die Hard. Narrative negative space ftw.

And then we have the reveal that Michael had somehow left a “secret back door” open into Dean, and was able to just jump right back into him when it was convenient to do so. I.e., when he was losing the fight to Dean. He had a cheat code at the ready, because his possession of Dean had been operating on cheat code rules since the start in 13.23. His entire possession of Dean was a violation of the “standard rules of angel possession.” Consent of the vessel being primary. Even BAD consent has been enough in the past-- tricking the vessel into saying yes, backing them into a corner. I mean, remember s5 and the horrors Zachariah was willing to go to in order to secure Dean’s yes? Not even manipulation here with this version of Michael. Even if the face of Dean’s abject rejection of his possession, he refused to vacate the premises. Which is an interesting narrative blank to fill in, yes? Angels may have these rules, but for some reason-- is it Michael’s supreme power? Is it the fact Dean is his “destined vessel?” is it a factor of this Michael being from an alternate universe that might operate on different rules? Is it a factor of Dean’s own lack of conviction in his demand that Michael get out? Whatever it is… it is interesting.

We also catch up with Darth Kaia, who after months of balking at the notion, hands over her spear to Dean with the promise that he’ll return it after he kills Michael. It would solve her ongoing problems with the monsters Michael had been relentlessly sending after her. But he also promises to help her find her way back to her own universe. And now we don’t even know if any of that is possible… (aside to say that I’m now crying over the loss of Wayward again, and I feel this lack of resolution here is a damn pointed statement on that from Bobo.)

14.10, Nihilism.

Nihilism being a descriptor of Michael’s basic personality, in this case.

The most long-term relevant narrative negative spaces in this episode are Sam and Cas venturing into Dean’s mind, and literally using what they know about Dean to find where Michael had locked him away. They literally rely on their knowledge of who he is as a person as a map to find him, and then as a codex to actually get through to him and break him out of the illusion Michael had trapped him in. And then they all turn around and weaponize all of that to lock Michael away in Dean’s mind fridge.

Metaphors, anyone?

Meanwhile, Michael literally insists he’s telling everyone the truth about how Dean really feels about them, but it’s all… ALL OF IT… a manipulation and a lie.

(aside to admit that at this point I have been working on this post on and off for the last 12 hours, can barely remember what the point of it even was, and regret everything. I think we were supposed to be discussing Narrative References To Stuff That Happens On Screen, but at this point, that is so deeply intertwined with the narrative structure as a whole that I’m having trouble separating out textual references to offscreen stuff from the actual content of the story as a whole… yes this is already approaching 5k words at this point, and no I don’t care anymore :P)

14.11, Damaged Goods.

Dean is given information (that we have not yet seen) by Billie (again, offscreen) about “the only way to save the universe.”

Disclaimer to note that we STILL haven’t seen exactly what Billie showed Dean in her magical destiny book… which fact in itself can be open to myriad interpretations, because canon itself has shifted from this point in the canonical timeline to what we have actually witnessed unfold, which fundamentally differs between what Billie told Dean and what actually transpired on screen.

This… is major.

Also, Nick, and the effective end of his story… or is it? He’s finally got his personal backstory filled in, and turns out he was just a dick all along! Surprise! Because his “truth” never actually mattered to him. It was all a lie he told himself from the very first moment he was ever introduced on screen back in 5.01. He was never a good person who’d been used by Lucifer and manipulated into doing terrible things. He was always just a bad person who’d been looking for an excuse to do terrible things. Lucifer was just his excuse.

Dean fills in some horrific bits of their childhood for Mary through the metaphor of Winchester Surprise. Apparently delicious to Dean, but yikes… stuff like that’s really not healthy…

14.12, Prophet and Loss:

So, Donatello might not be as brain dead as previously believed! Let’s fill in that backstory, through a broken prophet who can’t be fully realized because Donatello’s technically not dead, so the new guy is getting a distorted message because Donatello’s interrupting the signal.

Dean asked Sam not to tell Cas about his Drama Coffin plan, but of course Sam had immediately told Cas about his drama coffin plan anyway…

CAS: Sam. Maybe if I spoke with Dean…SAM: It wouldn’t matter. Believe me, I-I I’ve never seen him like this. He won’t listen to me. H-He just – No. If we don’t find some way… Dean’s gone.

But then just a little while later, when Dean talks to Cas and learns that Cas knows his entire dumbass plan:

DEAN: Really?SAM: Dean, it’s Cas. I had to tell him.

Well, some time in the previous few hours, when Sam hasn’t been trapped in the car with Dean (which we know he has been canonically), Sam’s first priority was calling Cas to tell him about Dean’s plan. Like… duh… 

14.13, Lebanon:

I love this episode on every possible level. It drops us at the climax of a hunt and just trusts us to understand what’s going on. Someone has been murdered for their collection of supernatural artifacts, and it’s been traced to this shop, where the owner trades in dangerous artifacts… all of that happened offscreen, yet we understand the context if not the specific case itself. Beautiful.

Then we have the cursed pearl that apparently grants a wish. Dean uses it to theoretically wish that Michael was out of his head. In monkey’s paw fashion, instead of just granting the wish through the simplest means, the wish actually attempts to rewrite history (this is the sort of thing that differentiates a “cursed object” from a “magical cure”) in order to remove the root infiltration of Michael into Dean’s life… by literally bringing John Winchester into the present time from 2003, removing him from the entire timeline to this point and changing EVERYTHING.

Talk about filling a narrative negative space. Cas doesn’t know them, Dean never went to Hell. Hell, Dean never even went to collect Sam from Stanford. NOTHING from the entire history of the series as we know it actually happened AT ALL.

D:

At least we got to see Zachariah get stabbed again. Sam deserved a turn, you know? :’)

But we also have the other half of the episode-- the case in Lebanon, and seeing the Winchesters through the eyes of the locals. Talk about a HUGE reminder of the things that happen offscreen. They go to the post office, the local shops, and have a weird reputation around town, despite most of the townsfolk accepting their brand of weirdness. It’s… weirdly refreshing, seeing how they’ve gone from “hunters of urban legends” in s1 to “actual urban legends themselves” in s14. The power of storytelling at its finest.

In this case, so many personal blanks were filled in for Mary, Sam, and Dean just by being able to share a single family dinner with John in the aftermath of everything else. In the end, Sam and Dean CHOSE their own lives, and smashed the pearl with John’s blessing, putting everything back the way it was. The most powerful line in this entire episode, to me:

John: Dean. I, uh -- I never meant for this.Dean: Dad, we pulled you here.John: No, son. My fight. It was supposed to end with me, with Yellow Eyes. But now you -- you are a grown man, and I am incredibly proud of you. I guess that I had hoped, eventually, you would... get yourself a normal life, a peaceful life, a family.Dean: I have a family.

HE HAS A FAMILY. :’)

It might not be what John ever imagined for him. Or even what Mary wanted for him when she rejected the hunting life the first time around. But it’s the family Dean earned for himself. The one he CHOSE for himself. And he wouldn’t trade it for anything-- not even for the family he was born into, or a white picket fence he used to think he should have.

And then after this… everything changes… again…

14.14, Ouroboros:

Right. That one where everything changed. Where everything from Billie’s Books of Certain Prophecy to Jack’s soul to Dean’s certainty about… pretty much everything… went up in a swirling whirlpool of burning grace.

Yes, the episode where they burned the spiral narrative structure and were clearly beginning the inevitable run toward endgame. I mean it had been hinted at as a possibility before this, and 14.13 was certainly a product of the inevitability of endgame, but this episode sealed the deal.

They could’ve technically still gotten away with 14.13 as a one-off product of “very special 300th episode” and still continued down the narrative spiral that they’ve been circling for years now, but in retrospect from beyond the rest of s14, this was the official burn point.

So the story shifts radically in very fundamental ways from this point on, and reference to the past become… different. But what happens offscreen in the context of these episodes going forward takes on so much more weight as a result. We’re now “living in the present” with these characters.

We have Sam’s relationship with Rowena, which has clearly developed to the point of casual intimacy. Rowena confronts Sam in ways we’ve never seen before, demonstrating a confidence in their interactions DESPITE Billie’s assertion that Sam will be the one to “kill” her. That has strangely given her a sense of… comfort… with Sam, that’s demonstrated in the fact that they work together through this entire case-- paired off much the way Dean and Cas are.

Again, like in 14.06 and 14.13, we’re dropped into the middle of their case, and only informed that they’ve been tracing this monster through numerous other towns in this episode, requiring us to extrapolate out their entire hunt from discovering there might be a case, to the point where they’ve even brought Rowena onboard to help give them an advantage of a monster that had repeatedly eluded them.

The monster itself has an advantage in that it can literally see the future and escape before they catch him, until they discover the huge gaping hole in what it can actually see-- Cas and Jack are literally invisible to it. He can’t see THEM coming, specifically. The importance of actually reading what we DON’T see. Because if the monster hadn’t been so confident in what it COULD see, he would’ve understood that he was missing a critical piece of information-- the door literally shut itself in his vision of the future and he didn’t bother to stop and question WHY. And it was his downfall.

The narrative is telling us that missing this key gap-filling information is effectively our downfall as viewers.

14.15, Peace of Mind:

Hooray, we’re back to simple “missing scene” levels of text to latch on to, and I don’t have to swim through the whole of the narrative structure to make a comment. Wheeee! (sorry it’s been like 14 hours since I started writing this reply and I’ve achieved Peak Mental Exhaustion for it) :P

Let’s reflect on how all of the characters managed to delude themselves in this episode, and simultaneously approach their own personal concerns without actually talking to each other directly… and then instead focus on this exchange:

Dean: Oh. Hey! How was Arkansas?Sam: Arkansas was, uh It was weird.Dean: Heard you wore a cardigan.Castiel: Yeah, I told him about the cardigan.Sam: Great. Thanks.Dean: And the wife. He said you were, uh, really happy.

Yep. Proof again of offscreen communication happening, in a way I can yell and point at without having to write paragraphs to explain and defend. :P Aah, just like the simpler days of our past… which hey, is also a narrative theme of this episode! Nostalgia!

14.16, Don’t Go In The Woods:

Or, that one where we discuss why we don’t share everything with the general public, while Jack… behaves poorly with the general public, and then hides that fact from Sam and Dean. Also, we have this confirmation of offscreen conversation:

SAM: You got it. I'll grab Cas.DEAN: Mm. He actually left.SAM: What?DEAN: Early this morning.SAM: Why?DEAN: I don't know. Something about being cooped up in the bunker for a few weeks. We all need to stretch our legs. I get it.

Dean… had a whole conversation with Cas… and didn’t even mention it until Sam specifically asked about Cas. Stuff happened offscreen… big important stuff… and we’re only getting a peek at it now. Not only that-- because this will be VITAL to remember two episodes down the road-- they have been cooped up in the bunker “for a few weeks.” In 14.15 ONE EPISODE EARLIER, Dean complained to Sam that he’d been driving them literally from case to case without a break:

Sam: (Sam was in the map room flashing back to Maggie and the other hunters dying. He looked sad as he went to the kitchen) Found us a case. Arkansas.Dean: We've just done three back-to-back Hunts. I need some rest. At least a night. We both do.Sam: Yeah, well I'm leaving in ten.Dean: Like I said, not good.Castiel: Maybe I should go with him. And you can stay with Jack.

So the events of 14.16 are clearly after a hiatus of several weeks. Again, things have happened offscreen, and we’re only learning about them in the absolute most casual statement-in-passing sorts of ways, but these tiny references are pretty earth-shattering.

14.17, Game Night:

The timeline isn’t concrete, but I’ve written in several places that I believe 14.16, and 14.17 flow one into the other, just based on these subtextual sorts of cues-- Dean’s statement in 14.16 that Cas had been feeling cooped up after several weeks in the bunker, the fact that Cas had only LEFT the bunker at the beginning of 14.16 and we only see him reach his destination of talking with Anael now in 14.17  (and how long do we REALLY think it took him to find her and convince her to meet with him? Especially when the events of 14.17 take place over about 36 hours before bleeding directly into 14.18…). So this timeline that I’ve understood presupposes the gap of “several weeks” of being cooped up in the bunker to have elapsed between 14.15 and 14.16 as suddenly resolved itself into all of them willing to spend time in the bunker as a family… except for Cas, who’s on an as-yet unspecified mission.

This episode reinforces those missing scenes, through showing us the very different mission Cas is on, finally addressing the seriousness of Jack’s condition, but also paralleled through Mary’s growing suspicions of Jack that she’ll be unable to ignore by the end of the episode…

Jack even addresses this “but in that scene you didn’t see play out, this important thing happened!” IN TEXT, TO MARY:

Mary: If Sam and Dean saw what you did, they would be as worried as I am.Jack: Are you gonna tell them?Mary: You need help, we'll help you. We're your family.Jack: You can't.Mary: We care about you, Jack.

And now the things that happen offscreen have been lampshaded as being CRITICAL to understanding the whole of the story. And the divide between the two can be fatal...

14.18, Absence.

Literally, the title itself is telling us to be aware of what’s missing.

But we finally get the payoff on the “missing information” about those several weeks spent cooped up in the bunker-- Sam was literally not there. It was Dean and Cas, alone with Jack.

Sam: You know, after Maggie and the other hunters died... I just left. Just dumped Jack on Cas and left.

That happened in 14.14. The other hunters dying. But we KNOW that Sam had not left on his own at that time. He’d dragged Dean and Cas and Jack on three consecutive hunts in the aftermath of that to avoid going back to the bunker, in the run up to 14.15. THIS was the payoff of that “cooped up for weeks” comment in 14.16… because SAM hadn’t been cooped up with them. He’d dumped Jack on everyone and run off on his own after 14.15…

But this episode doesn’t stop there. It takes each character individually and pushes them through memories of the past, of Mary specifically, but those memories do so much narrative heavy lifting I can’t even begin to yell about them here. I’ll just link a post:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184195342200/you-know-when-deans-turns-around-after-that

Wait, I found that post while looking for the one I’d set to to find, but it’s in my Narrative Negative Space tag, so yay? Bonus. This is the one I’d meant to find:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184144189665/drsilverfish-mittensmorgul-mittensmorgul

There. My best thing from s14. And I’ll leave this episode at that.

Oh, and with the reminder that if Dean and Cas had truly still been at odds over Mary’s death, then Dean would not have brought Cas to Mary’s funeral pyre. Period. 

14.19, Jack in the Box.

Aka that one we’d all figured out what the big plot thing was just by the on-the-nose nature of the title, months before it aired.

At least the drama coffin got blowed up good?

14.20, Moriah:

The most meta meta to have ever meta’d. There’s not much happening offscreen in this one aside from the entire setup and premise of the episode as a whole. Again, we’re dropped into a hunt and expected to understand the setup, the legwork that’s already been done. We learn that Dean has been in touch with Cas, but they’re investigating different avenues. We see Chuck FINALLY answer Cas’s prayer for help from 14.17, but Chuck’s idea of “help” isn’t helpful in the least.

We understand the fundamental nature of the extent of the personal little lies Sam and Dean tell each other (Thanks for that one, Jack!), and therefore are being asked to reassess which comments from their past were the full, honest truth, and which were the comfortable performance they put on to maintain their own projected self-identities.

And whoa.

It’s now 3 am, and I’ve been working on this post on and off for the last 16 hours. And I am tired, and officially out of mental steam to keep thinking about it. So I’m gonna post it. All 7700 words of it. I hope this helps... :P

[bellarkefanfiction]

Lina got the chance to catch up with @ticogirls author of I Think You're Cute, Between the Lines, what a delicate heart, what a hard head and many more on ao3.

BFF: Tell us about yourself!

Mel: I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who starts sweating whenever they get this kinda question but here goes: I’m Mel and despite what my Twitter handle says, that’s not short for “Mellamy” lmao. I’ve been on Tumblr for close to eight years now (I just got a small stroke from saying that), I watch a fuckton of TV and movies (I mean. Who doesn’t, right?), and I’m also a proud BoC (Bisexual of Colour).  

BFF: When did you start shipping Bellarke?

Mel: The first place I saw Bellarke was, I think like many of the fandom, on my Tumblr dashboard. During the post-S1 hiatus, one of my favourite gif-makers (she’s changed her URL and gone on several hiatuses so I genuinely don’t know where to find her anymore) was posting a bunch of gifsets of them. Again, like many of the fandom, from the gifs and screencaps of S1 alone, I basically assumed Bellarke was already a canon couple and decided “ooh, they cute. Lemme watch this show for that Good TV Romance™”. (Once more, like many of the fandom, I got a Rude Awakening when I started watching the show because it turned out to be So Much Worse… but also So Much Better.)

As for when I started really shipping Bellarke in the actual show, I think a lot of people fell in 1x02 (Bellamy saving Clarke from the grounder pit) or 1x03 (Clarke relieving him of the burden of mercy killing Atom). While those were both huge steps for me in terms of perceiving their relationship, I don’t think I really fell for this ship as a potential romance until 1x04, ‘Murphy’s Law’. The Charlotte/Murphy conflict peeled back the layers on both Bellamy and Clarke: his posturing and bravado was melted away in front of the delinquents, and all of her cool logic and reasoning was temporarily suspended. That, for me, was the first episode that really showed that despite all their oil/vinegar clashes throughout the show, at their very deepest core, Bellamy and Clarke were always going to be unified by the same goal — to protect their people.

BFF: How long have you been writing fanfiction?

Mel: I used to write (bad) fanfiction for some older fandoms, back when Wattpad and AO3 weren’t even conceived yet and all we had was FanFiction.Net and LiveJournal. Shit, I was really out here when ‘My Immortal’ was still being updated, lmaooo. I stopped for several years for a multitude of reasons — overstuffed schedule, physical exhaustion, a bunch of big life transitions, mental health issues etc. Bellarke was THE ship that restarted my fic-writing engine in 2015, and I think because of that, I’m always gonna have that Soft Spot for them.

BFF: Are you a part of any other fandoms?

Mel: Aside from The 100, I’m a huuuuuuge Star Wars hoe. Original trilogy, prequels, Rogue One, current series — I love them all. I’m genuinely nervous about Disney’s future plans for reviving this franchise but having quite literally grown up on this stuff, I just don’t think it’s ever going to be possible for me to walk away from this franchise, no matter how Messy it gets (and I’ve a feeling it will!).

I’m also really big on the MCU (currently obsessed with Thorkyrie) and From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series, which I have no shame admitting is the guiltiest of guilty pleasures.

BFF: Are there any writers that you’ve drawn inspiration from?

Mel: I’m going old-school here, but I’ve always been enamoured by Douglas Adams (author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series) and K. A. Applegate (Animorphs series). It’s not so much about their kickass creativity with plot or characters, but more of the rhythm and pacing of their writing. They’ve each got a great way of balancing story and characterisation, all underscored and punctuated with these unique comedic inflections and beats.

BFF: Do you have favourite side-pairings or characters you also enjoy including?

Mel: I love writing Minty and, I’m not gonna lie, it’s mostly as a fuck-you to the writers for refusing to acknowledge Monty Green’s Gayness™. Memori have got a really fun dynamic to write too, and I still include a lot of Jasper/Maya in my fics because they deserve to be happy and in love forever. As for solo characters, Raven is hands down my favourite to voice, mostly because I feel like I can 100% relate with whatever’s going through her head in any given situation.

BFF: What are your favourite tropes to write?

Mel: Oh LORDT, do you got a full hour???

Lmao okay but real talk, I absolutely love writing Enemies to Friends to Lovers. I prefer Modern AU’s, simply because I like the concept of breaking our fave characters out from the grimdark world of The 100, to see how their relationships and attitudes could possibly evolve if they were allowed to care about dumb stuff like TV shows and public transport instead of just whether they manage to live or die. I am also a die-hard fan of the Roommates trope, simply because it’s the most convenient fic-writing device for ensuring that your ship will always have some reason to share the same space alone together with some regularity.

BFF: What do you predict will happen in season 5? Especially for our favourite duo?

Mel: So this is basically just “do you think Bellarke will become canon in S5”, right? (lmaodskjfhks) Well I hate to sound like I’m pushing a fatalistic attitude towards S5, but honestly, I don’t see Bellarke becoming canon in S5. After all, they’ve got a lot of ground to cover once they reunite on the ground. Six years is a heck of a long time, especially when one of them fully thought the other was dead. (It’s hard for us as fandom to grasp because we have been shown that Clarke’s fully alive and well, but we gotta remember, death is a separation of utmost finality. It’s not just like thinking someone’s away or missing.)

I do, however, think it’s feasible to expect some kind of recognition/acknowledgement of explicitly romantic feelings on either one or both their parts.

BFF: Do you have any plans for other fics you’d like to write, if so could you spoil or tease us?

Mel: Oh boy, do I ever. Full disclosure, I’m currently working on about 6 or 7 fics for Bellarke alone, but they’re setting up to hit at least 8k in length each so they’re definitely not going to be ready for publication anytime soon.

I do have one that I’m planning to post as a multichap, which means I won’t have to wait until it’s fully completed. I don’t want to give away too much, but it’s based on a French romcom titled Blind Date (Un peu, beaucoup, aveuglément). It’s basically a neighbours / enemies to friends to lovers AU, and I’m really excited for y’all to read it!

BFF: What advice would you give novice writers?

Mel: I answered this question a good while ago in this post here with a few major points, but I think the most important one is this:

You are your best competition. I know it’s a lot easier said than done, but this is seriously the most important thing for me as a writer: DON’T COMPARE YOURSELF WITH OTHERS. It never makes anyone feel better (especially if you’re, say, writing fic for a big fandom with a lot of existing content). Honestly, it doesn’t even make sense when you think about how every writer is different and has their own unique style.

Be your own harshest critic, but also your biggest cheerleader. Write for you, to express yourself. That way, whatever you write/publish, at the end of the day, you feel good about it.

[hillbillied]

I cba to count but any numbers what havent been already answered for the fic asks g ✌🏼

35 Questions for Fanfic Writers! welchh killed the meme

that’s all the odd numbers, you fuckin cunt, I’m gonna crush you in the lidl aisle with a tort textbook (thanks for these, I love em!! except for the couple that’re embarrassing; fuck you!!)

3. What do you think makes your writing stand out from other works?

the sheer audacity of either the AU concept or the scope of project; they’re either ballsy, like a fic that moves through 300+ years of history, or stupid shit like “hey what if alien but with robots and gay?” (if i wanted to be meta i’d say a gay guy writing gay guys has gotta have an appeal, at least to other guys like me)

5. What’s the fic you’re most proud of?

When It Rains It Pours is my “magnum opus” (bleeding quotations) it’s the fic i always wanted to write. post-canon fix-it, exploring the details of two characters i love making their way in the world (close second is Church of Saint Andrew because it was just a horrible idea)

7. What element of writing do you struggle with most?

overwriting. i sit down to write fun lil romps between chapter updates and then suddenly i got 10k words and a new multi-chapter fic. there’s no “lil one-shot for a break” because i just… can’t write them like that. really bums me out

9. Which character(s) do you find most difficult to write?

trick question, i only write AndyEddie and am therefore immune (i don’t think i write Sledge as well as i could, tbr)

11. Who or what do you find yourself writing about most?

Andy, Eddie, and their gay antics

13. First fandom you ever wrote for?

these are real interesting ones because they’re just me embarrassing myself innit… i wrote for Bleach. like the anime. i was 11, maybe. fucking end me

15. What’s the weirdest fandom you’ve ever written for?

i want to die saying this but ya’ll remember Death Note? probably that

17. A trope you’ll never, ever write for.

i’m not putting it on me blog but the one that uses the greek alphabet

19. Do you prefer canon-compliant, AUs, or something in-between?

all fucking three, baby, fanfiction is a buffet and i got my All You Can Eat token!!

20. Gen fic or shippy stuff?

don’t mind gen fic if it’s multi-pairing so the focus is on other stuff, but otherwise gimme them ships

21. Favorite pairing to write for? (platonic or romantic!)

this question is unlawful, do not pass go, do not collect fifty quid and a statue from bristol river

22. Do you listen to anything while you write?

always!! normally lil youtube playlists for most fics, if not then just whatever gives that general vibe

23. Do you prefer prompts and challenges, or completely independent ideas?

i like a good prompt when it suits but mainly it’s indie fics (“indie fic” is a cursed term)

24. One-shots or multi-chaptered works?

i write one-shots in my fantasies, and multi-chaps in practice

25. Have you ever daydreamed about side adventures/spin-offs from your fic? Tell us about them!

shit, i’d kill for a spin-off of Church of Saint Andrew from Andy’s POV. centuries of being reincarnated over and over, meeting a random guy every lifetime and wondering why he treats you like he knows you, like he loves you… that’d be fucked up and fantastic.

every canon era fic i write is lowkey a side adventure/spin-off of When it Rain it Pours, tbh, like that’s my canon touchstone for writing

26. Is there anything you’ve wanted to write, but you’ve been too scared to try?

less too scared to try and more not willing to commit the effort. some things are so niche and so self-indulgent it’s not worth putting into text, not until I’ve got a fuckton of time on my hands

28. How well do you handle criticism when it comes to your writing?

i used to handle it terribly. now I handle it better. i’ve got a real specific viewpoint on fanfiction crit nowerdays; since fanfic is free, takes effort, and is not inherently for the reader, any criticism given should be a) asked for by the writer, and b) on points of actual relevance rather than “i personally do not like X”. if it doesn’t comply with those criteria, i find myself asking why someone took the time to write the public comment. you can complain about bad fic privately, like all things

29. Have you ever gone outside of your comfort zone for a fic? How did it turn out?

there’s a WIP in my docs from Andy’s POV that deals with some heavier shit and yeah, that was a step outside but if you push through it, your comfort zone expands like bread for the ducks

30. Tooth-rotting fluff or merciless angst?

merciless angst, we die like men

31. Do you have any OCs? Tell us about them!

yes and you will never hear about them but know they are jewish and gay

34. Copy and paste an excerpt you’re particularly fond of.

(fuck almost pasted from my uni work about cyclist helmets) thought you’d enjoy this one:

His name’s Edward Allison Jones and he likes to think his life story can be summed up in under a page. Probably less than.

Where to start? It’s a boring beginning.

Born in a place called Red Lion, that he hasn’t been back to since he screamed his little baby scream at the midwife. It wasn’t a good start, either, considering his parents hightailed it out of there and over the West Virginia Stateline to avoid paying for his little baby entrance. They tell the story like they’re fucking Bonny and Clyde, but their son imagines it more like Flintstones. Yabba dabba doo.

35. Ramble about any fic-related thing you want!

quick fire round: i can’t stop watching the legend of korra (it’s fuckin good man) and it keeps bringin me back to the avatar AU, every time i write “cunt” in a fic i feel americans clutch their pearls, i’m getting back into the old groove of making chars jewish and not giving a fuck, once I found out “high school” was just secondary school i couldn’t write/read high school AUs cause that’s grim tbh, and sometimes i don’t even watch tv shows i use for AUs because I’m a busy boy

[theclacks]

Buffy Thoughts - (S7 E20-E21)

AKA Touched and End of Days

AKA:

(and also pain)

I don’t know if I can put my thoughts for these episodes into coherent words. But IDK, I’ll try. They’re pretty much 90% shippy, 10% the rest of the actual episodes, but whatever. Also they’re both technically several months old because I’ve been procrastinating on watching the final episode out of fear. What else is new?

BtVS & AtS Recap Master Post located here

Episode 20 (Touched)

Oh my god. Oh my god. It is official Buffy/Spike is my favorite ship of all time.

OF ALL TIME.

Like my god, I think I’ve said it before that I’m glad I’m only seeing this series now because if I was younger and less fiction-ly jaded, I think it would’ve destroyed me, but seriously, WHY DID IT TAKE ME THIS LONG TO WATCH BUFFY? I don’t know where my heart is going to be when I finish, what I’ll watch next to fill the void, if there will BE anything to watch next (which is why I’ve been stretching out these final episodes for so, sooooo long) and yeah.

Spike’s speech. AKA quite possibly my favorite scene ever. I discussed this ep a bit over at EF with the Spuffy crew right after I’d watched it and there were some back and forths over opinions of this speech, namely that it sounds like something Riley would’ve said, not Spike, right down to the “you’re a hell of a woman” line from As You Were and I stand by what I said then:

The line is the same. The context is not.

Riley made his “you’re a hell of woman” line as he was leaving to return to his wife, right after he basically said “yeah, you have a shit job that makes you smell funny but you’re still a hottie and you’re better than this.” And I want to put those other two things aside and focus on the “you’re better than this” sentiment, because that’s something that’s been fucking with Buffy’s emotional health for a very long time. This idea that there’s a better Buffy out there somewhere that she’s not currently being and therefore needs to try harder to be that Buffy because if she’s not that Buffy then she’s doing something wrong.

Spike on the other hand. Best line hands down = “I love what you are, what you do, how you try.” He loves her for who she is in that moment, not some idealized version who she could be. Lets her know that trying and failing is fine, that if she fails she doesn’t lose any of her worth as a person (something that Buffy punishes herself frequently her).

And I also love how Spike’s speech begins and ends with humor. Not “you smell bad but you’re still hot” humor, but audience-directed humor in the vein of:

BUFFY: Fine. The stage is yours. Cheer me up.

SPIKE: You're insufferable.

BUFFY: Thank you. That really helped.

It’s like… blah, my brain is refusing to connect words right now, but basically a lot of people in Buffy give her complements when she’s feeling bad for the sake of giving complements vs seeing through the angst and getting frustrated at it. Not like “why are you trying harder” frustrated, but IDK, it’s the difference between letting someone mope because you don’t want to upset them more vs giving them what they need (AND THAT’S NOT RUNNING AWAY TO ENGLAND, GILES). IDK, the speech was a perfect blend of emotional lightness, followed by an emotionally raw sucker-punch, book-ended by yet more lightness.

So yeah.

And as much as my shipper self could’ve skipped out on the other “love” scenes of the episode, I think they really do work well as contrast, particularly the Faith/Robin sex scene. There’s practically no emotional connection there, just the need to physically connect to someone, anyone. And IMHO it represents a growth in the way BtVS handles relationships? Unlike the Faith/Xander scene from Season 3, it’s not played for laughs. There’s nothing “wrong” or “bad” about it.

But, at the same time, contrasted against the Spike/Buffy cuddling scene, it really highlights that sex doesn’t automatically make anything more “meaningful.” Which has been this huge hangup for Buffy (the “need sex to have a complete love” thing). First there was Buffy/Angel which basically culminated in a single night of sex, and then he ultimately broke up with her because he didn’t think they could ever give each other a wholesome relationship without sex. That translated into her jumping into sleeping with Parker, perhaps to get the post-sex skeletons out of the closet ASAP (which, admittedly, she did). And then Riley… well, Buffy/Riley had a fuckton of issues that broke them apart, but she definitely felt like she couldn’t trust him until they’d had sex, not in terms of the actual act but him not leaving before she woke up.

...and then Buffy leaves Spike before he wakes up and oh my heart. It will never be whole.

Anyways, yeah, Andrew/Spike friendship remains beautiful. Spike growling like a cat/dog is canon (has he growled before this episode and I just haven’t noticed?). I loved the camera direction in the chaotic Scooby Meeting sans Buffy. I really loved Faith period, even (especially) through all her leadership failures ; it’s ridiculous how much my opinion on her has done a 180 since season 3.

And then Buffy finds a red scythe which I know is important because it’s on all the comic covers, and Faith finds a ticking time bomb and I actually laughed because of the clichéness of it all.

Episode 21 (End of Days)

Ugh.

Ugggggh.

Ugggggggggggh.

So this review, despite being for End of Days, will have lots of spoilers for Chosen and AtS S5. Because lots of spoilers are a thing that happened to me over the course of watching this series.

If for whatever reason you’re reading this blind and not as a vicarious feelings recap, stop reading now.

Good?

Okay, good.

So, I know pretty much all the basics of what’s going to happen in the last episode: Willow does a spell that transfers the Slayer powers into all the potentials, Anya dies (gets hit by the equivalent of a Stormtrooper blast? you were a leaf on the wind, Anya. a leaf on the wind)...

...Angel gives Buffy an amulet that can close the hellmouth but Spike has to sacrifice himself in order to use it, Spike does so but not before Buffy confesses her love to him…

Which okay. Pretty much the only thing I’m NOT spoilered for is how that scene goes down. Like does Buffy tell him that she loves him before or after he makes the decision to sacrifice himself? Does he believe her? If it’s before, does he think she’s just saying it to convince him to sacrifice himself? If it’s after, does he think she’s just saying as a consolation prize?

And it’s like, I REALLY WANT HIM TO BELIEVE HER, BUT I AM FILLED WITH DOUBTS. Because I know what happens in AtS S5, and yes, SMG not wanting to do the show anymore is pretty much the reason why she doesn’t make any cameos, but in an in-universe context, the only reason Spike WOULDN’T hightail it across the world to wherever Buffy was upon re-achieving corporeal status is if he didn’t think her declaration of love was genuine.

And if that’s the case, I think Chosen is going to break me. Which is one of the reasons why it’s actually been about 2 months now since I watched End of Days and I still haven’t gotten the courage to watch Chosen. (That and I have a thing about watching final episodes of shows I love. There’s something about knowing there’s always just a little bit more content waiting for you. IDK, I’m weird.)

But yeah. So.

If Spike doesn’t believe Buffy’s declaration of love, then there’s only one reason why he wouldn’t.

And that’s fucking Angel.

I shipped Buffy/Angel during my initial watch of the earlier seasons. I really did. But now I just want to PUNCH HIM IN THE FACE. He swoops in all smirky and condescing and then just INSTANTLY starts making out with Buffy, going all forever love with her despite what should be his fucked up emotional state re: loving and losing Cordelia and also his son. And the fact that he instantly, INSTANTLY, goes for the make out session without clueing Buffy into any of this… it just feels really, really, REALLY scuzzy.

Like, it’d be feeling scuzzy even if I wasn’t a Spuffy shipper (which I am, disclaimer). That’s how scuzzy it is.

And really, there’s very little difference between Angel swinging into town and sweeping Buffy off her feet with no mention of his other recent relationship, and what Riley did in As You Were.

And I think everyone knows my opinions on As You Were.

So anyway, back on topic. What’s the point of shoving a sudden love triangle into the FINAL EPISODE of Buffy, especially when it’s going to (I think) end with Spike not believing that Buffy truly loves him. Like was it fan service for Bangel shippers? (I mean, it very well could’ve been, but their ship had sailed FOUR YEARS AGO.) Was it to introduce last minute drama between Buffy and Spike? (to which I said, they already had an Atlantic Ocean’s worth of drama between them, they didn’t need anymore). Is it to make Buffy realize by seeing her options face to face, that she prefers being with Spike? (this would be the option i’d be most okay with, but am majorly doubtful because of all the post-series lists of “Top 15 reasons Buffy should’ve chosen Spike”).

And it’s just like… why?

This is the final season. You guys KNOW it’s your final season. So why?

Buuuuut, this is all speculation on my part due to incomplete spoilers, so maybe my hunches are all wildly off base. I sure hope so.

Either way, it’s January 1st, 2018, and I’ve put off watching BtVS’s final episode long enough. This is the night it ends.

Or… you know, kind of ends for the readers who’ve been reading these. I’ll come back sometime later this week to put all of my Season 7 thoughts + BtVS series as a whole thoughts into some sort of written cohesion.

Oh, and then I have all of AtS S5 to watch, which FUCK YEAH, SPIKE INTERACTING WITH WESLEY AND LORNE AND GUNN AND FRED, I AM STOKED. (You guys have no idea how scared I was that one of them would’ve died before the end of Season 4 and they never would’ve been on screen together.)

Also, paddlin’ back in circles as a last minute thing:

WHY? WHY WOULD YOU BRING ANGEL BACK IN AFTER THIS? THIS WAS PERFECTION. THE DICTIONARY DEFINITION OF PERFECTION.

Until then, Cassie is my last remaining ray of hope:

Happy New Year, everyone. See y'all at the finish line.

[princeros-blog]

well Okay here’s some of the pacrim au i have thought out. it’s a big timeline... including canon pacrim stuff LOL. the first huge half is detailing all of that. then u get to the actual characters HAHAHSDFHJGK it’s mostly abt yuuri and his backstory and also his relationship with viktor.. i dont have much for other characters haha i did make phichit only like a few months younger than yuuri tho... anyway... i put an embarrassing amount of thought into this all in the span of a few hours LOL literally just bc of that post i reblogged earlier. i made lil changes to canon to make it all fit better but pbbbt. please don’t take anything i have for this au w/o my permission!! T___T

if u don’t wanna read a fuckton of the canon lore/backstory abt jaeger program/kaiju/whatever just ctrl+f and search for “january 10th”

December 25th, 1997 - Viktor Nikiforov is born in St. Petersburg, Russia.

November 29th, 2001 - Katsuki Yuuri is born in Hasetsu, Saga Prefecture, Kyushu, Japan.

August 10th, 2013 - The Breach opens in the Challenger Deep of the Pacific Ocean. The Kaiju dubbed ‘Trespasser’ comes through the Breach and destroys San Francisco, and after destroying other cities after traveling 35 miles in six days, it was killed.

February 5th, 2014 - After months of silence, the second Kaiju attack happens: ‘Hunlun’ appears and attacks the Filipino capital of Manila. The military kills it East of the city with a nuclear weapon, but the creature’s excrement contaminates the environment of the city.

June 1st, 2014 - Third attack. ‘Kaiceph’ attacks Cabo San Lucas of the Mexican state of Baja California Sur, eventually killed in a nuclear strike which also takes out a good portion of the city.

September 2nd, 2014 - Fourth attack. ‘Scissure’ attacks Sydney, Australia. the military attempts to kill it before it reaches the city with a nuclear missile, met with failure. The attack from Scissure lasts 3 days, the military finally managing to lure it away to kill it with a missile -- while destroying half the city in the process.

Sometime after the fourth attack, 2014 - Dr. Jasper Schoenfeld proposes the idea of the Jaeger at a conference in Seoul, South Korea after seeing his son play with a toy robot and monster in his room. The idea is approved by the UN. He meets Caitlin Lightcap and the first Jaeger prototype begins construction in Pittsburgh.

Early January, 2015 - The Mark-1 prototype Jaeger, Brawler Yukon, finishes construction.

January 30th, 2015 - Brawler Yukon is launched for its first demonstration, test piloted by USAF Captain Adam Casey. Before he can begin, the neural load is too much for Casey to handle alone, resulting in a seizure and his death.

February 18th, 2015 - Sergio D’Onofrio pilots Brawler Yukon in another demo, managing to make it walk before he also suffers a seizure from the neural load, though Caitlin manages to connect with Sergio through the bridge and thus creates the first Drift. The demonstration is a success, and the Jaeger program is authorized by Pan Pacific Defense Corps (PPDC).

April 23, 2015 - The Kaiju ‘Karloff’ attacks Vancouver before the first line of Jaegers are ready for deployment. Brawler Yukon is sent out for a field test, piloted by Caitlin Lightcap and Sergio D’Onofrio. the attack ends in victory.

Autumn 2015 - The Jaeger Academy, on Kodiak Island, is opened.

January 10th to 12th, 2016 - Kaiju attacks have begun increasing. The Category II Kaiju dubbed as ‘Isonade’ attacks Northern Kyushu in Japan, moving from the Ōita Prefecture to the Saga Prefecture in the span of two days in its journey toward Fukuoka. Katsuki Yuuri, now 14, manages to evacuate from Hasetsu with his older sister, Mari, age 21, in time before Isonade wipes Hasetsu off the map. They witness this from an evac helicopter. They are sent to live in a shelter in Kawasaki for a month.

February 2016 - Yuuri and Mari end up being sent to Detroit, Michigan. Yuuri meets a boy around his age named Phichit Chulanont and the two become fast friends. They end up deciding that they’ll apply for the Jaeger Academy later.

May 15th, 2016 - Onibaba attacks Tokyo.

August to December, 2016 - Viktor Nikiforov, age 18, begins his training at the Jaeger Academy, graduating at the top of his class around his 19th birthday, and is sent into battle practically right after. Katsuki Mari also trains at the Jaeger Academy and graduates as a Jaeger Engineer officer for J-Tech.

January 19th, 2017 - Viktor Nikiforov, age 19, now stationed at the Russian Shatterdome in Vladivostok, is sent to fight the Category II Kaiju ‘Vagabond’ with his partner Nikita Sadovsky in the Mark-3 Jaeger ‘Silver Odyssey’. The battle, being Viktor’s first against a real Kaiju, goes smoothly and ends in a clean victory before it can reach Khabarovsk. Not long after, he quickly becomes considered one of the best Jaeger pilots in the program.

August 2016 to August 2018 - Yuuri and Phichit are under the supervision of Celestino Cialdini, a PPDC officer.

August to December, 2018 - Yuuri and Phichit, ages 16, are accepted into the Academy, their acceptance so young mainly due to Celestino’s influence and Mari’s presence as an officer. Due to Yuuri’s anxiety and emotional vulnerability, many thought he wouldn’t make it through the first cut, but he quickly showed he was far too stubborn and determined to give up so easily. The two are shown to be Drift compatible in tests and simulated battles, and Yuuri shows exceptional talent in piloting.

February 25th, 2019 - Yuuri and Phichit, stationed at the Shatterdome in Los Angeles, are sent in the Mark-4 Jaeger ‘Glacier Zero’ to fight a Category II Kaiju by the name of ‘Axel’ making its way toward Malibu. The fight is a success, the pilots only suffering minor injuries and little of the city harmed. Some question the morality of having a 17 and 16 year old pilot and fight.

June 2019 - Viktor and Nikita are moved to the Mark-5 Jaeger ‘Tempest Noble’, and soon after they take down the Category III Kaiju ‘Siren’ making its way toward Taiwan.

February 2020 - After the Category III Kaiju ‘Knifehead’ exhibited a learning curve that partially destroyed the Mark-3 Jaeger, Gipsy Danger, and killed one of its pilots, the PPDC’s downfall begins.

December 1st, 2022 - A Category III Kaiju dubbed ‘Kingpin’ advances on Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. Yuuri (21) and Phichit (20) are sent out in Glacier Zero. When they begin to attack, Yuuri’s begins to panic and it skyrockets as he latches onto the memory of Isonade destroying Hasetsu in 2015, disrupting the Neural Handshake and causing him to fire off in response to the memory, rather than attacking Kingpin. The battle almost ends in failure, both pilots nearly dying in the process due to being unable to fall back in sync and Yuuri’s episode. Glacier Zero is set to ‘self destruct’ as a last resort and both pilots are ejected, Kingpin laying waste to half of Victoria before the Jaeger explodes and the military flies in to take care of the rest. Yuuri is grounded indefinitely, and Phichit is permanently relieved of duty after they’ve both fully recovered. He works alongside his sister at the LA Shatterdome.

October 13th, 2024 - Viktor (26) loses his co-pilot Nikita in a battle against the Category IV Kaiju ‘Blackout’. The sudden loss of the other pilot and Viktor forcing himself to bring down the Kaiju almost resulting in his own death causes heavy mental scarring. He passes out right after the Kaiju is killed.

November 2024 -

With news that the Shatterdomes will be steadily shut down with the UN closing the Jaeger Program, Viktor arrives at the Shatterdome in Hong Kong along with the Tempest Noble from Vladivostok on the 2nd.

Yuuri (22) and Mari (30) arrive at the Shatterdome in Hong Kong from Los Angeles on the 4th. Yuuri is desperate to make himself useful again, to pilot again. Knowing Viktor Nikiforov is there makes his anxieties spike, since he knew of him and knew just what a name he made for himself in the Jaeger Program, even admired him. One of the best, if not the best, pilots according to the PPDC. Yuuri would’ve been in the top 5, were it not for the incident with Kingpin in Victoria.

With the recent death of his co-pilot, Viktor is in search of a new one. Multiple men and women try out (many would love to pilot alongside him, after all) though none stand a chance. Impulse drives Yuuri to step up, sparring with Viktor for a chance to be his co-pilot. The two last for a while against one another, before Viktor finally sends Yuuri on his ass. Immediately, he decides Yuuri will be his co-pilot for the Tempest Noble. They sync in the Jaeger with seemingly no issue, showing their compatibility despite the fact they were both practically strangers to one another.

They definitely bicker, though. A lot. What with Viktor’s cluelessness and clumsiness when it comes to handling other people’s emotions (especially when seeing the memories of his copilot), and Yuuri’s sensitivity and anxiety and stubbornness, they can butt heads a lot. In the end, they work extremely well together and grow attached quickly.

December 2024 -

After Yuuri turns 23 and Viktor turns 27, they end up in a relationship despite the disapproval of higher-ups, worried it would interfere. It makes their connection stronger, but that also proves a risk of one of them becoming severely damaged mentally should the other die or be ripped out without warning.

January 1st, 2025 - ‘Mutavore’ attacks Sydney, breaking through the Anti-Kaiju Wall.

January 8th, 2025 - ‘Leatherback’ and ‘Otachi’ attack Hong Kong.

January 12th, 2025 - The remaining Jaegers are deployed into the Challenger Deep to destroy the Breach. When the first Category V Kaiju ‘Slattern’ comes through and begins attacking, the Tempest Noble gets severely damaged by an attack from ‘Scunner’. Viktor is knocked unconscious and Yuuri has a severe physical and mental reaction to the Neural Handshake being cut off. Mari connects through the pons bridge to keep Yuuri stable long enough to eject both himself and Viktor from the Jaeger to receive help at the surface.

(it has a happy ending dw they survive operation pitfall even tho tempest noble gets wasted and they can be gross and gay all they want)