#hello lovely anon <3

[magpie-sherlock]

Write some ✨fluff✨, any characters you want just vibing on a fall day playing in fallen leaves 😌😌

Could be lu or something else!

OR you can draw that prompt!

ehehe fluff. time likes leaves, right?

"RAAAAAH!" Wild slams a ball of leaves onto Twi, who squawks in surprise and stumbles.

"Wild!" Twi shouts, spitting bits of leaves out. "I swear to Hylia-" he grabs his own ball of leaves and throws it at the Champion.

The Chain had been dumped in Wild's Hyrule, specifically the Akkala region. The reds and oranges on the trees were a welcome difference from the miles of green they had been traveling through. Warriors had immediately started gushing about pumpkin spice, to which Legend's response was usually in between a scoff and trying to slap the Captain.

Wind watches the older boys throw leaves at each other, curious. Time walks up behind him. "Something on your mind, Sailor?"

"Why are the leaves orange?" Wind asks.

Four whips around in surprise, having overheard the situation. "What do you mean, 'why are the leaves orange?' It's autumn!"

The sailor's eyes widen. "Your guys' leaves turn orange in autumn?"

Sky join in on the conversation. "Yours don't?"

"Palm trees are green all year," Wind shrugs, before looking over at where Wild and Twilight had made a leaf pile. "Ooh, what are they gonna do with that?"

"Jump in it, probably," Time chuckled. "How'd Wild rope the Rancher into that?"

Wind runs over to where the leaf pile was being built. Hyrule follows him, eager to join in on the chaos. The four discuss their plan, laugh, and continue building up the leaf pile. Sky and Four start looking at the leaves, trying to identify each tree. Legend walks up to Time and rolls his eyes.

"Can you please get Wars to shut up?" the Vet asks. "He's been talking about pumpkin spice for the past thirty minutes, and I can't take it anymore. You should be glad I haven't strangled him yet."

Time laughs. "Go join in on the leaf pile. Or you can join the on-going leaf identification debate between Sky and Four."

Legend nods. "That doesn't involve pumpkins. I'll do that." He walks over to Sky and Four, and the three get lost in their conversation about leaf shapes.

Now it's War's turn to walk up to Time. "How are you, Old Man?" he asks. "Not going to join in on the fun?"

Time smirks. "I will. I just need to get my armor off first. Leaves and armor don't go well together." He takes off his breastplate and lays it down by the Chain's pile of stuff. He rolls out his shoulders and sighs, taking a look at his surroundings, head-counting his boys. They're all safe. They're happy. He looks at Wars, who has a wicked grin on his face. "Alright, ready."

"Good," Wars says, and waves over the leaf pile gang, who all come running. Before Time knows what's going on, they all dunk leaves on his head, yelling and laughing. Wars stands off to the side, laughing. He's glad to see that his men are happy. They needed this break.

"GAH! Wild!" Time picks up the Cook like a log, and reaches for Wind, who runs away cackling.

~~~~~

Later, Sky, Legend, and Four come back from their leaf escapade, looking like they're carrying miniature flames with all the leaves they're holding. Warriors waves them over to the leaf pile, where the rest of the Chain has collapsed, sleeping or half-asleep. "They had a leaf-pile battle," the Captain clarifies.

Sky laughs and falls into the leaf pile, snuggling up next to Wind. Four scoots in between Wild and Hyrule. Legend chuckles. "You gonna join them?" he asks Warriors.

The Captain shakes his head, smiling. "I'm okay. I only watched the fight."

Legend sits down next to Wars and sighs, smiling. "I like autumn."

Wars nods and hums in agreement. They watch the wind shake the trees, making the leaves tremble like flames.

[floccinaucinihilipilificationa]

Hello may 31th anon! Look at that, another year behind us and a new one to come. Have a nice day! ₍՞◌′ᵕ‵ू◌₎♡

[bumblingbabooshka]

Cursed but funny: Tuvok transitions... and so does T'Pel. They are still straight, just t4t about it

Alternatively: Tuvok and T'Pel are both bigender and they take turns so there's always a wife and a husband, it just varies who's who

Incorrect! Bigender/Trans Tuvok is not cursed at all and is in fact a blessed image, sight, thought etc v_v Please rise and salute Mz Vulcan!!!! That IS undoubtedly a funny scenario though - they are forever destined to be Husband & Wife. Imagine worrying for several years that your wife might leave you for being trans and then you meet with her again and she's your husband and the only thing that changes is you're HIS wife now. This is T'Vok's life.

[aaaaaaaaaaaa-hey-its-jude-or-bee]

*turns up in a bright pink limbo and rolls down the driver's window* guess who's back in the inboxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (with another short ramble ft. our favourite plane guy)

(not a request!)

(would this be nsfw ish? For like one paragraph lol no idea)

hmmm.... maybe harvey w/ a farmer who has the strongest scented cologne EVER like it smells faintly of oranges and/or ginger and GOD he's obsessed...... ,, and also farmer has moobs because. because.... *explodes*

ok but ??1!(3?£+!!??? EUHGGGHHAAAAKKEJFJ HARVEY JUST COMING HOME FROM THE CLINIC AFTER HELPING A REALLY DIFFICULT PATIENT AND STUFFING HIS FACE INTO FARMER'S MAN CHEST. INHAILING.

ngl would /hj

harvey who's glasses get foggy due to early winter rain but farmer reaches to them before he can and suddenly farmer's the one to clean his glasses and pull him into a kiss

harvey who's straight up smitten for farmer because he loves listening to him chat about planes

harvey who craves farmer's touch because he's so warm during winter and so cold during summer???? Like he'd think how it's possible but the minute he falls into his arms he loses his thoughts (positively)

harvey who loves the rain during fall because it means evening cuddles with his and farmer's cat + farmer himself

harvey who's surprised that farmer gifts him a build-along plane set complete with paint, and it's his favourite one, too

harvey, who's so inlove and feels so lucky to have had farmer move into the valley

ok this wasn't as short as I thought it'd be

oops!! 🤭 harvey ml <333

- 🫚anon

AJAJAJWSJDJDJDJD JESUSSS THE 🫚 ANON IS BACJ OG MY GOD

Harvey,,,,, teeheee he's so silly omg I love that man, he would do such things yet still be super embarrassed and shy because anxiety go brrrrr

Spoilers for date night mod if you married Harvey

You don't get to pick the timings of the dates or where he will take you he just will bring it up.

I have this mod where I have date nights with the person I'm married to(Harvey) and he either takes the farmer out to go shopping with him just because spending time at Pierre's and you can have a kot of choices to get whatever you wanna get and you can pay for the stuff when Harvey says he'll be paying but you can still pay for it and it gets Harvey all blushful when you insist on doing so and then when you're done he whispers into the farmers ear abt having some fun time at home like woah!!

Or going to that hot air balloo again as a date teehee

OR going to the saloon for a date and there's just the farmer and Harvey in the room he rented out and they can either play pool, or go outside and walk to the beach to stargaze, the farmer play pool and he tries to win and then yada yada they head home and he brings up Spivey time WHICH DAMN

anyways :3!!

For the stargazing one he is rather a sad man, not shy, he says he wasn't happy with his life and he wished to yoba something could change his life, and he made that wish the day before the farmer showed up and then he says he got what he wished for and then the two of you kiss and head back home, and yes he does bring up if you get there fast the two of you can have fun together back at the cabin and then the farmer instantly runs back.

Ive been wanting to share for so long

[fatuismooches]

greetings!!! this is the first time i've ever shared my idea to anyone, kind of worry but guess that i have to share it with you because your writings are so good and i love how you execute scenarios and ideas (literally awake all night scrolling through your brainrot 😭😭😭😭)

let me tell you that fragile!reader and dottore is what keeps me awake at night i love them so much, i literally read everything in the tags, the fluff and angst is SOO GOOD NGL.

so, angst/ no comfort (because i love tormenting myself (⁠◠⁠‿⁠・⁠)⁠—⁠☆), fragile!reader and terminal lucidity - somebody suddenly became lively and conscious before their deaths. i see that you have written about fragile!reader whose memories are slowly deteriorating or slowly losing their eyesight. imagine one day, everything just come back...normal, the sudden recollection of memories, vision returned miraculously, no pain, no suffering, as if they were back to the days at Akademiya. they became gleeful, happy, full of live, no longer the gloomy, sick-ridden individual.

Dottore, of course, was surprised at this phenomenal, run more tests and check-ups just to be sure that we are actually healthy because there is no way we actually turn healthy after being sick in centuries. the segments however, especially Zandy, didn't think much about the whole ordeal. you are fine!! you can finally walking and running freely without being on life-support. your turn in health manage to turned them into a bunch of joyful, blue-haired maniacs with giddy, happy smiles on their lips.

we are fine for a few weeks, which also make Dottore himself believe that maybe, maybe his efforts have paid off, maybe our health have been stable, and maybe from now on, he could spend the rest of eternity with his beloved.

then we die (this is so mean i'm so sorry 😭😭😭😭😭). how they perish is completely up you but i'd preferably that they die in their sleep, a peaceful death. Dottore and the segments are... well, shocked is an understatement, their whole world have...gone, they'd question themself: how can this happen? you were fine in the past few weeks? In which Dottore blame himself the most, he shouldn't have believed that we were fine, he should have run more test, he should have been more cautious about the whole situation but now he completely felt... helpless, for the first time in millions of years. the only person who went thick and thin, the person that can tolerate him in the Akademiya days and the person that he can tolerate now have passed away.

(the ending is kind if short because idk what else to say since my vocabulary and grammar is rather limited. i hope this would be sufficient 😭😭😭😭😭 also looking forward on how you react to this. for now i'll just cry myself to sleep with this scenario while waiting for your work ❤️🥰)

- 🪷

It would come out of nowhere, no one expected it, no one believed it in the beginning. After all, over four hundred years of debilitating illness makes it hard for anyone to believe something good finally happened. But it does, when you first wake up you can feel that something is different - you definitely do some test runs in your room, picking up objects that were once too heavy for you, simple actions that no longer left you tired, no more aches or pains, it was marvelous. So obviously with your newfound energy, you sprint out to find anyone, hell even a random agent would do, because you're finally free. (You can already hear the voices of the segments - no running in the lab because of the very obvious dangers.)

Naturally, Dottore is very skeptical of this, yes, he does not trust how his heart beats at the sight of your glowing self putting on a little performance for him to show how healthy you are now, he can't bring himself to. He's witnessed how low you could become from the worst stages of your sickness, so although he's more than happy to see you well, the possibility of you falling back into such a state is very high. However he cannot find anything, and you don't show any visible signs either. Even so, he still watches you very closely. It's a feeling that always nags, one that may always nag him perhaps, the thought of you becoming worse. But he's not going to damper your mood with his thoughts, you should enjoy this.

Dottore and the segments would still scold you for your recklessness but realize that you are no longer sick and frail and they no longer have to fuss over your health. It's a very strange sensation that's hard to break out of since they've been doing it for so long. But it's good! You're happy! You're strong! You're the [Name] that was buried away, come to rise to the surface once more. Let's just say Zandy very much enjoys the piggyback rides. The checkups still persist as a general measure, but they always go smoothly. It seems there's nothing to worry about.

You would want to assume your role of his assistant once again right away - it's something you've been longing for, to be able to be useful to your lover just like how you once were. To live those days of banter and sharing fascinating knowledge and listening to each other's ideas once more. And so you do, Dottore's more than happy to let you, oh how he's missed you by his side so often. He's excited, he's ready to put the past four hundred years behind and move on, his mind already racing with the countless possibilities that have opened up now. Unfortunately, they don't come to fruition.

Perhaps you felt something wasn't right but it was already far too late - on the day of your death you acted like everything was normal, carrying out your new duties, but also with a lot of added affection, visiting each segment and Dottore and kissing them with all your love. They don't think much of it, you're usually affectionate like that. If only they knew that would be the last time they were embraced by you. Little Zandy too - it would be the last time you ever hugged him and listened to you read him a story. He'd be absolutely inconsolable after your death.

With you gone, the spark in his life would be gone. It would be the same routine of his duties and experiments and research, with nothing to ease his tension. Sure, he no longer has to spend lots of time finding a cure or producing medicine, but this wasn't the way he wanted it to happen. It's the same as when you were sleeping, except this time he no longer has the anticipation of you eventually waking up. Or does he?

Resurrection is a forbidden art, but he is Il Dottore, the one who has no problem sinking his hands into what should not be done, and he is Zandik, the one who loves you. If this world wants you gone so badly, then so be it. He will simply reach for your hand and pull you back to him every time, because even if it is lifeless, he will make sure it's warm once again.

[xx-vergil-xx]

Can I ask what pushed you to end Hounds the way you did? It's a fantastic ending, but I'm curious. I expected the Fates to revive Dream, or allow him to inhabit a new form (such as one made by Daniel, so that Dream becomes a dreamthing), etc. But instead, his death is made to have never happened. Which makes it partly feels like Hob's whole road trip journey was for nothing since he lost all those memories and connections with Matthew, the Corinthian, Delirium, Despair, Desire, Death, etc. (thank god he kept the farmhouse). But it's almost like he traded all those memories and connections for Dream. Unless I missed something while reading (I was crying very hard).

Again, fantastic ending, and I'm also glad it's a happy ending. But I'm curious as to why you didn't go in the other direction

howdy! thanks very much for the ask — an excellent query, one which i’m happy to answer

(verg of the future: this answer ended up long! there’s a short form at the top here and at the end <3)

in brief: he did make that trade you described! but not strictly for dream — it was the price of swapping genres!

an explanation:

what i had in mind while planning and writing was less the idea of erasure of prior narrative action and more a subversion of the expected genre, in particular the genre tropes that follow dream in the original arc of the comics, where his story is very classically tragic (with the understood weaving of hob into that tragedy, this being a dream/hob telling and all)

for reference, i also drew a lot of inspiration for hob’s road trip odyssey from the aeneid, an epic that is, yes, about the founding of rome but also (at least to my reading) a fundamental tragedy — the cost of founding rome is aeneas’ home, many of his friends, much of his core family, and the very end of the story is not some victorious depiction of the glory of rome to be (which we do get earlier in the book, with the ekphrasis on his shield) but aeneas, overcome with fury and loss, killing a man who begs his mercy. i’ve always felt that the aeneid, while certainly stepped in the expected amount of roman nationalism, is centrally about a single man and his singular suffering as an instrument of higher destiny.

i wanted to model hob’s arc around the aeneid (minus, y’know, some of the chunks that are strictly battle sequences <3) both because intertextuality is a huge part of how i wanted to handle hounds (story about stories, made of other stories, etc), but also because hob and aeneas are fundamentally parallel characters — nomads with exceptional ordinances, permanently displaced by the passing whims of higher powers, men who are made to reckon with both extraordinary wonder and extraordinary tragedy regularly while still, at their core, just being human. that’s what makes aeneas so compelling — he’s just a man. and so is our beloved hob — that’s his whole thing, his whole narrative function and his whole central ideal, humanity

so then, approaching hounds with both the thought of the sandman’s original tragic contours (see: the whole lead-in to daniel. christ above is the way that goes devastating to read) and the man vs fate core of the aeneid, i was considering a lot of things about how to mess around with both notions without gutting them entirely. i tend to dislike tragedies that become un-tragic without some sort of Serious Payment For It (not to say i don’t like happy stories because i very much do! but i get ticked off when high stakes get deflated too quickly) and i didn’t want to undermine the very real fact that the Fates are typically not versed in notions of empathy and/or leniency, and that dream and hob and those around them did experience and endure devastation and loss, and that death is a fact typically immune to argument.

the world of sandman is not one with easy answers, and to my mind there’s no such thing as a bargain with the Fates where you break even. for hob to get what he wanted, something had to be given, something dear and vital and real. there’s more to what hob actually gives the Fates than he verbally stipulates, which i tried to address largely via the corinthian and his perception of the situation, especially those last conversations with dream in the “swamp”. i have a lot of options about the corinthian in his function as “dark mirror” having a blistering clarity of understanding much of the time, which is why i foisted the onus of those complexities onto his dialogue, rather than hob, who (and i say this with love) is a creature of bias and often blinded to greater repercussions of his actions insofar as they extend beyond his immediate objectives/enjoyments, or dream, who can see the bigger picture but i think often really keeps himself from doing so when it comes to anything at all that’s personal (king of stories has a blindspot for his own). what hob gives the Fates actually costs him almost nothing, in the long run, if we operate with the idea that he cannot remember, nor is there any lasting effect from, his 600-ish heavily-relived years. there’s narrative and symbolic weight, of course — he gives them love as an oath and as nostalgia (sidebar: his driving force is an almost pre-nostalgia, a continual love of the moment as the moment is passing, but anyway) (cuff links), he gives them in a captured moment the lovely discomfort and simultaneous brilliance of being alive (the hook, the finger prick the blood), and he gives them a rich and complicated experience of humanity (those 600 years). but practically, what is actually taken from him that he doesn’t just get back?

only those few months — and in them, a web of real and known connections, all of which matter, and all of which change his understanding of and relationship to things like grief, and loneliness, and fear, and forgiveness. those are important changes, real changes, that would affect how he operates in the world going forward. that development is gone. he returns instead to the (of course, fought-for and hard-won) stasis of what was, which becomes what will always be. in making the Fates and their judgement more complex, he has actually made his own life less complex. now, i’m not going to sit here and argue that “suffering has inherent value” or some shit like that because i think that’s bullshit! pain is just pain. but he does lose experiences which would have shaped him in new ways, and, i think, good ways. even important ways

and he may well be shaped towards similar courses with dream (especially re: learning that lesson about loneliness — i think hob suffers from the curse of always, ultimately, being alone (immortality etc there’s so much discourse about this), and the road trip was in part about him learning that though it is the simplest path it is neither the sole nor the best path), but he certainly doesn’t learn them the same way, with the same faces, with the same acuity and clarity and intensity.

the thing with the Fates (to me anyway) is that you don’t ever just win. maybe you can get what you want, but it’s not easy (it make take a thousand repetitions of your lifetime until friction and the touch of your hands wears the sisyphean boulder down to a pebble — like the parable of the bird scraping its beak on the mountain), and it’s sure not free.

so yes, those months are lost. that’s a big part of the price. and we don’t know, at the end, how much of that thing he really gave ultimately comes back — his new relationship depths with deanna or cori or the other endless, those things aren’t seen. the main arc is resolved — hob and dream — but there are still pieces missing. he loses a piece of his human experience, he gets tossed back around through the wringer of his life (which is often distinctly not pleasant), and he is, as he ever was, a character with a path whose impetus and dictation rest heavily on external forces. even in attempting to channel his life elsewhere, he still has to bargain, and is still subject to the choices of the fates, and in some ways the story remains irrevocably a tragedy, in that one way or another it has loss in a central place. in the latter half of hounds hob really became my attempted version of an aeneas type — a man with a quest and a fated directive, a deeply human and flawed individual, who can alter the path and even irrevocably change the genre of his own narrative, but only at cost.

of course let’s be clear! some of all the actual rendering of this ended up as it did partly because i am not always a clean writer, and for that i apologize! but i did genuinely want that sense of gaps — of faces and voices given over to the gravitational well of the principal narrative arc of hob/dream versus the Fates. i think those things are gone. the narrative is forcibly re-centered around hob and dream, and in doing this — in shifting the story genre — other ties and bonds are not just cut, but unwoven entirely. when you change the kind of story you’re telling, the change is done at the expense of something else. kind of like how there’s a fixed amount of matter in the universe? you can’t create or destroy matter — to make something new you have to take from another place. (sidebar: wow i’m realizing something about my fundamental storytelling beliefs right now! laws of physics! anon your ask has really got my cylinders firing, and most sincerely thank you <3)

still, they might come back. though i didn’t write it as fully as i could have (i will freely admit there was a great deal of burnout at play towards the end there), i had a lot of thoughts re: repetition and density, namely that if you stack a thousand repetitions of a lifetime against each other it’s the equivalent of writing a word over and over and over on a page. when you erase it, the channels remain. language flows most naturally in the direction once etched for it. maybe hob learns those same lessons and knows the same people in the same way — maybe he and the corinthian find that odd patch of common ground, maybe he takes a long drive with delirium through rural maryland. maybe there are echoes. maybe even if it is gone what was still shapes the topography. maybe a kindness or a word exchanged still ring out when you can’t see them or remember them. while the milestones of our lives rippled the most visibly, i think we’re shaped a thousandfold ways by accumulations of small things we can’t distinctly remember. only a feeling of a thing, or the negative space it leaves.

well. tl;dr — i didn’t want to let hob get away without actually giving anything up, nor without his choice to bargain affecting others besides himself in equally irrevocable ways (sidebar: at his core is a selfishness that is both charming and ignoble — he wants to do a good thing for dream but also he makes a call that changes a plenitude of lives other than his own, and i don’t think he really asks, he just does — grey areas are his whole gig to me), because nobody makes a deal with the Fates for free, and changing genre has a price tag. it was my effort to make the tone of the whole beast more authentically sandman-esque, since sandman does a lot of that sort of water-muddying, especially when using understood narrative models/archetypes/etc etc

i am. sorry this was as long as it is! jesus! but i’m sending it off all the same. anyways, anon, thanks very much not only for your lovely kind words and the high honor of your tears (no pulitzer could mean more to me than knowing a thing i wrote really moved someone, seriously thank you) but also for giving me a blank check to go buck wild and ramble about my own damn writing and Things I Just Think <3 i hope you have a lovely day/morning/noon/night, and thanks a bunch for dropping by <3 <3 <3

[puckpocketed]

inspired by yesterday’s ovechkin-posting and the stick story, because. i had as much fun as anyone with the idea that riding a camel over all-star break is what jostled the goal-scoring back out of him, but at the same time... i am frothing at the fucking mouth about ovi × The League × national hockey media. where is his respect? where is his hype? where are his roses???? please !!!! understand !!!! that i find sidney endearing as a guy and he is undeniably incredible as a player and he deserves the love that he gets. but from day one, ovi has only existed to them in relation to sid and that makes me lose my fucking mind. 

and general hockey fans through the years loved ovi, and then they hated him, and then they said he was an overhyped washed-up old man who doesn't care anymore (starting in like 2013 lmfao). like, I'M sorry, back in the late '00s and early '10s he was being hounded for days about his cellies, and being booed every time he came out on the ice—and you're mad? that he looks like he's lost his love and enthusiasm for the game???? (i cannot for the LIFE of me find the podcast ep where i heard this, so. grain of salt. but a former teammate talked about how startling and upsetting ovi found the booing, bc it was such a sudden change, and meanwhile, ovi was just the same guy he’d always been 😭).

and then, idk, we went through hate again, and then indifference, and now in the 2020s we're back to "oh, his production has dropped so therefore he's overhyped, can’t wait ‘til he’s gone"?? the season ovi was 36 he had more points per game than sid did last year at 36 (90 in 77 vs 94 in 82). or how about. please remind me how many goals gretz scored the season he was 36 (25 goals compared to ovi's 50). or what about when gretz was 38 (9 goals compared to ovi's 31)? i am NOT trying to say that ovi is "better" than either of them—this is just me saying that people are completely irrational about him. like back when he was drafted and people were saying "oh, he's not actually as good as he looks, because he's lying about his age" bc he looked 25 instead of 18. like. okay lmao. and then what? his NINE rocket richards count less bc he started later? he's actually older now and scoring more per game than gordie howe was the first time he retired? like what are we doing here??? i'm not an empty-netters-pod guy, but they talked about it in the first few minutes of this ep; like... yeah, why was everyone so fucking excited to dance on his grave at the start of last season? and then again in the playoffs? he’s NOT DONE YET, and even if he were, i would hope to see a modicum of respect for the player he’s been and the career he’s had! 

the point is. ovi has scored 30+ goals per season every single year since his debut except the pandemic-shortened season. his teammates, current and former, love him and say what an awesome, generous, team-focused guy he is. he has literally dozens of nhl records already, some of them previously belonging to gretzky. and yet! general hockey fans and the league and national hockey media all refuse to take him seriously. and caps fans (mostly) and dc hockey media (mostly) (barry svrlugas i do not forgive you... dan holmi i would just like to have a fucking word with you....) are all just standing here like hello? alexander ovechkin is RIGHT HERE and he is very good at hockey. hello he is GOOD at HOCKEY, can you hear me????? is anyone seeing this, HELLO???? 

i don’t get it. i simply and entirely don’t get it. there are so many excellent players on teams that i hate! there are players i dislike and i can still point to many impressive things about their game!!! WHAT is the mental block that happens for everyone when it comes to ovi, and how tf has it been going strong for nineteen fucking years? 

thank you for listening!! i swear to you that the vast majority of the time i am simply having a fun time with whatever my terrible children decide to do, admiring ovi’s fashion choices, cheering on my number one babygirl dylan strome, and enjoying whatever horny, incomprehensible nonsense they get up to. it’s just that sometimes i gotta go guard dog mode about alex ovechkin 😅

Hello!!! First of all, thanks for going to all the trouble of typing all that out and including links. I have loved sifting through your citations, and felt very much like a floor dwelling sea creature eating nutrients from the silt <3

I believe you all when you say Ovechkin's not done yet. Shaking my entire clenched fin at everyone calling him a washed up old man!! Fascinated by the Caps' attempt to pivot into being competitive long enough for him to break the record, because what of the After? The Rebuild of Damocles beckons!! Except, having paid some attention to prospects I see they've got a pretty interesting crop of talent coming through. And there are those big contracts they just acquired (hello Dubie and Roy). I just feel like have to be on this train so I can say I was there to see how it all shakes out. History Witnessing type beat <3

and I'm SO endeared to Caps rituals. What little I've seen of them is so fun, so silly. Exactly my vibe. MUST a team "Play Hockey Well"?? can't they just be obsessed with each other . can't they torture and embarrass each other . being stressed about strange concepts such as ""Winning"" is so., passé .

Thank you again for dropping by and for the essay! and I'm sorry it took so long to get back to you, it was such a meal I was digesting it for days :>

extended thoughts/discussion under the cut.

From the outside looking in, I think can speak to how compelling it is to pit Crosby and Ovechkin against each other. As your ESPN article puts it: "Crosby was careful, corporate. Ovechkin was unpredictable, borderline dangerous. The key word was passion, and even though Crosby had it inside, Ovechkin oozed it. He was the anti-Sid, possibly the better player, and soon a cult hero." (x, y) I know you're frustrated by this, but they do sort of exist in relation to each other. Maybe I've fallen for the propaganda, but it's very literary <3 You could write their story down and present it to a novel studies class, and the easiest thread to pull on would be all the ways in which they're each other's narrative foils.

IF you held a gun to my head and made me guess at the 'why' of it, I'd probably agree with Eric Adelson! It really does feel like Crosby's image is who hockey wants to be seen as. A Good Canadian Boy; humble, no conspicuous expressions of his wealth, no partying, and of course no on-ice flash! I think I can understand the backlash somewhat; in such a team-oriented game, one with all these arcane honour codes and the emphasis on humility and respect and not rocking the boat, I could see why the spectacle of Ovechkin's personality would've grated. Crosby's an easier pill to swallow for the conservatism of hockey culture. (And I specified 'image' because there's the reality of what it is to be famous, deified, and torn apart each time you don't quite measure up. I hate to be the guy who says there's another side to this but, like, I'm sure plenty of people who are more familiar with Crosby's story could come out and tell me about the unique challenges that come with being considered The Next One.)

And obviously, your specific frustration is coming from the fact that Ovechkin is, somehow, seen as the inferior superstar, and that his achievements - which either equal or surpass Crosby's - go uncelebrated by mainstream media. and ough. man. I'm not as invested in this as you given I just got here, but your emotion is palpable!! I have... complicated feelings about his whole deal wrt geopolitics I won't lie, but I am serious about the whole "Is it the Russian thing?" I wouldn't, like, submit this as a legal document or anything, and I doubt I'd be the first to point it out, but there has to be a level of Othering that comes from his nationality, right?

So there's my thesis: he's not like them, he's not from there, and his image is not who they want for a star. Being so undeniably good for so long probably bought him some time in their good books, but the moment he looked a little bit mortal any grace they had to give was dispensed with. It sucks for you as a fan of course </3 I don't mean to sound so morbidly curious about it all,,, like i get that a real wrong was done to Ovechkin by the establishment that refused to recognise him!! But . well. I'm looking at this through a nonfiction writer's lens. I do hope someone who was there for the whole thing writes a book or two about this, because it would make for a really interesting story. I get the feeling people will look back on this stretch of time and think the world went a bit crazy for believing Alex Ovechkin was done.

[soracities]

adding on to what ur saying, I'm a short girlie and I've dated tall guys in the past and I actually find it quite annoying, its logistically inconvenient. my bf now is 5ft7 and I like it, I like that we're always eye to eye and he feels so much closer to me haha. idk I just think you can romanticise being similar heights the same way you can romanticise a height gap and some short girlies are missing out

i agree 100% with you on this eye contact is everything to me i feel this in my bones !

[foreshvdowing]

i’m bigger than these bones

[six-white-venus]

What can you do when you hate every word that comes out of your mouth with a burning passion? When nothing you say ever feels right? When all of your words feel like lies, even though they’re not?

Because they’re not, right? …right?

[magpie-sherlock]

Hi, I just wanted to say you're really cool and awesome and creative!! Have a good day!

:O

<3333333

[possuminnit]

i just realized that youre a real person and not just an inside joke that all of my mutuals talk about because they talk about you like a mythical creature (/pos) and i thought it was just a bit and then i looked your user up and realized that everyone was just talking about a really cool account and now im embarrassed

anon oh my god this is actually the funniest fucking thing, im so so obsessed with this

[alluralater]

do you have any celebrity crushes?

no particular order: priyanka chopra, isla fisher, angelica ross, sarah shahi, ayo edibiri, rachel weisz, salma hayek, amanda stenberg, myha'la herrold, nasim pedrad, angela basset, anne hathaway, golshifteh farahani, rachel mcadams, aisha dee, ashley graham, ruth negga, lupita nyong'o, christian serratos, eva mendes

as you can see, i have a thing for extremely talented gorgeous baddies <3

[sillylittlecourtjester]

Fav non merc??

-🐌

Miss Pauling. No doubt. I'm a Pauling lover.

She's so funny to me, especially in the comics. The comic art of her is really cool as well :3

I love Miss Pauling so much <3

[eldenphil]

ELLOO sorry I just came across one of your posts from a few months ago, and one of the tags was something along the lines of Phil making a deal of not thinking of himself as a man? or somethings fdnxndjsk andd I just wanted to know if I misunderstood that or has Phil actually mentioned something about not considering himself a man and/or just not caring either way cause I think I do remember Dan saying that he doesn't really care what pronouns someone uses to refer to him? I think?? and that whole stereo where he talked about wanting to try more feminine clothing (and later on sister Daniel and that catboy merch one happening whichh I was ecstatic to see him finally dabbling in smthn that he'd mentioned wanting to try but not relevant to this ask I guess😭) BUT I only remember Phil questioning if his own lack or interest in feminine cut clothing and stuff was because of societal norms, and saying maybe one day he'd try nail polish I think?? I don't remember him mentioning any gender stuff so I was just wondering if I missed something😭😭 has he mentioned anything in any of the other stereos orr maybe a video? :0 thank youu<3 and I apologize for the very long ask dsjdjzjs

hi beloved!! i love this ask don't even worry about the length <<333

i couldn't find the post you're referring to bc i don't tag SHIT but i'm probs talking about the moment in Dan and Phil react to Every PINOF 1 at like 3:56 where dan asks "Would you say that you are a man now?" and phil goes "NO!", which still makes me go head in hands when i think about it. i think jam @freckliedan has some goooood thoughts on their blog abt philgender i'll probs rb some after answering this :,)

thinking about phangender makes me genuinely so happy, there is something so sweet in seeing people you've been following since you were a kid navigate the same things u are (ie. being gnc/queer) and being joyful about it (esp in their 30s. god)

[tame-a-messenger]

Hi there :) I just wanted to appreciate you for creating this blog, I adore Damien & Angela’s dynamic so much :D

Smoshtwt isn’t too fond of Damangela, ’cause a lot of them seem to think all of us ship them romantically (it seems like most of us just enjoy their fun & teasing dynamic!), so being over here is just a lot more fun with less drama!

Anyway, it looks like today’s Games video is gonna be a TNTL Trivial Pursuit - hoping for Damangela!!

- 🐦‍🔥

Thanks💖 I'm happy you like my blog! :D

Smoshtwt can be something else I tell ya. If it was all shipping they are still so aggressive for no reason. I try to stay out of it as much as I can.

(I'm a longtime fandoms lurker. There's a lot of new blood all the sudden trying to change things up, I will not sway and buckle because they think it's 'cringe'. Like I know it's cringe?? I just don't care. It brings me joy)(the word "fan" literally comes from "fanatic" and you're telling me I shouldn't be excited about my cuties™?? be quiet.)

TNTL TRIVIAL PURSUIT!!!! I wonder who it will be today!! (as always, hoping for 🕯️🕯️🕯️Damangela🕯️🕯️🕯️)