#if you know of any Good Sasha Meta

[sparky-is-spiders]

Wanna hear my big major Sasha headcanon? No? Too bad.

It’s hard trying to puzzle things out about her because she just didn’t have enough time on air, so this is cobbled together from a handful of lines and a helluva lot of projection, but I think Sasha really, REALLY wanted to know more about other people. I think she’d see someone behaving strangely in public, spot two strangers arguing a couple steps ahead of her, and want to know why. And she knew she should just ignore them, and even if she did want to pry (and she really truly did, I think) she couldn’t. Not enough access to their lives, not enough known about their identities.

But it was probably different for her friends and coworkers. We know for a Fact that she looked through their records and got into their accounts (seemingly multiple times). But half the time I see it brought up in the fandom it’s a joke, and most of the time it’s not brought up at all. But that’s a huge breach of privacy! I’d be really upset to learn someone did that to me. Now don’t get me wrong, I love Sasha because her creepy boundary crossing, not in spite of it. But I think we need to talk about it more. Which is where my headcanon comes in!!

I think that whenever that curiosity got nearly overwhelming, when she needed to know why the person sitting across from her on the train was crying or what the person arguing loudly on the phone meant by that one, clearly cutting remark, she scratches the itch by digging through employee records. And every time she comes across something deeply personal she feels guilty, but she just can’t stop. She wants to know why one of her coworkers if Like That, she wants to know what made Elias and then Jon so qualified for the jobs they’ve been given, why Martin was struggling to do tasks he should know better about, she wants to Know. Why are they the way that they are? What shaped their personalities? What lead them here? What personal troubles are worrying them? Why? And I think she just can’t quite bring herself to ignore her unquenchable curiosity. Why does it matter that she’s come to learn so much about the janitor she’s seen occasionally but never spoken to? If they don’t know she knows, then who’s being hurt, really?

I like to think that, in a version of the podcast where she survives, she becomes an Eye Avatar. Preferably another Archivist but certainly an Eye Avatar. While an Archivist Sasha would naturally have some compulsive powers, I imagine her specific abilities are much more about Knowing and possibly spying. Beholding likes to drop random, deeply personal information about the lives of the people around her. It’s always important (if not to her then to them). It’s always something that shaped them. It’s always the kind of thing that stokes that burning curiosity. Sometimes it happens without her randomly, outside of her control, and sometimes she says that that’s what happened and she’s lying, and most of the time she says nothing at all. If they don’t know that she Knows, then who’s being hurt, really?

This headcanon has been percolating in my mind for a while. I haven’t listened to her episodes in a bit so let me know if I got something wrong and there’s a line that dismantles my entire point. But yeah I think about Sasha a lot. So here’s a long headcanon and a bit about one of my favorite AUs for the character.

[thethiefandtheairbender]

Since you think Owl House could have been better if they combined Amity and Hunter as the redemption teen with bad parent and Willow and Gus as Luz's first Hexside friend, do you think Amphibia also could be better off if they combined Sprig and Polly as Anne's frog sibling that's reckless (since Sprig's too static and Polly barely gets many focus episodes) and Sasha and Marcy as Anne's toxic and redeemed friend (since Marcy kinda got the short end of the stick in season 3)?

re: this meta of mine

'Static' characters aren't necessarily a bad thing so long as their interiority is explored (how they think and feel about a variety of things that are important to them). Because Anne's frog family is small, I know in depth what Polly and Sprig's personalities are like, how they behave, etc. They're part of the core cast and they always feel like it.

The main issue I have with TOH isn't that Gus and Willow aren't main characters, it's that they don't even feel like main side characters. I feel like I know more about Amity's twin siblings than I know about Luz's best friends. Which again, wouldn't be as Noticeable if they didn't put such an emphasis on Luz's main human world problem being that she had a hard time making friends.

Overall: TOH has a LOT of characters and, because it's always set in the same place, doesn't have a good justification for a lack of focus on them. Whereas in Amphibia, Anne and the Plantars travelling, and the girls are purposefully separated (narratively) and have to travel to reunite, so there's an in-universe reason they're not always having the opportunity to be around each other. For Luz, it's just because she didn't feel like shooting her best friends who live two streets over a text (for whatever reason).

Amphibia also can't combine Sasha and Marcy because those characters represent different themes and different complications in the girls' layered friendship. The main reason I posited combining Amity and Hunter is that they're basically the exact same character and character arc Theme Wise, just with differing personalities and stakes.

I also rarely post about Amphibia so idk why you thought I'd like... want to Improve it in this manner? Is it because they're 'sister shows'? But yeah Amphibia has the worldbuilding, pacing, and good distribution of its ensemble cast (Marcy was introduced later than both Anne and Sasha and ultimately was less effected by Amphibia, even if it was still really meaningful for her; she was never meant to have the same narrative weight) that TOH never quite managed for me, even in S1 and S2.

TLDR; if you're gonna 'merge' characters, you gotta make sure that would strengthen the themes they embody. TOH isn't a very thematic series in terms of like, Deeper meaning (what you see is what you get, and what you get is meaningful just not like, Drawing on much, if that makes any sense?) and that's okay. Amphibia just has significantly more to say theme wise, partially because it lets its main leads all be significantly more flawed as people.

[mdhwrites]

Monster Month for Amphibia?

I give no promises but like I've done a Lumity monster week back in 2022, I just like doing monster girl stories. Or stories with monsters in general. I floated the idea of being given ideas a little bit ago to my Discord but thought I'd ask here now: Any monster/character combinations you'd like to see me do something with? Some thoughts I've considered over the couple days I've considered it: Marcy as a ghost: Anne and Sasha, challenging each other to be brave, find a haunted house and have to deal with a ghost whispering in their ears until finally they scream at the ghost to just kill them, at which point Marcy shows up to explain that she's not that sort of ghost. She was just trying to tell them neat things, answer their questions and warn them about the faulty parts of the house. She's just kind of shy, especially because they're both so pretty. Werewolf Sasha: Starting with Sasha gaining the werewolf curse, she faces potentially the ultimate sacrifice of her control as she has to face being powerless against the curse. Worse yet, Anne, the one she always thought her second in command, is now pushing back against her. Info from Marcy though helps her start seeing the joy of the egghead's gushing. Ends with the girls helping Sasha find peace with her wolf side by not pushing her away when Grime shows them her in her full wolf form.

Fr-Anne-kenstein: This is admittedly mostly a Marcy story despite the name. Marcy is a starving artist and researcher, pushed to desperation as she steals for food, then for laboratory pieces and then bodies for her anatomy research. With how everyone treats her though, it pushes her to make a friend. When she sees Anne's innocent eyes, the most beautiful things she's ever seen, she runs off, believing herself unworthy of ANYONE, let alone that. She had hoped them being a monster would make it okay but it does not. Anne sees the effort in making a party for her Marcy put together and after talking to Marcy who put herself in a grave, they decide to both give Marcy a chance. Possibly ends with Sasha getting made as a joke towards the Bride of Frankenstein.

Also, yes I know Frankenstein is the scientist but Anne as a scientist... I guess KIND OF happens eventually but mostly no. XD

Maddie the Witch: This one is a fun one for me meta wise as well as concept just because the idea is to actually use the frogs in a human AU like the Halloween Amphibia episode. Maddie has a problem. Sprig is a ball of sunshine who doesn't seem to live horror, creepy things, etc. like that. Even at 11 years old, Halloween to him is more about Trick or Treating than spooky costumes and movies. This is the boy Maddie, lady of the occult and master witch, has fallen for and is TERRIFIED of just being rejected outright if he knows the truth. Maybe if she wears her witch garb while they go door to door for candy, she can feel things out with him, even if she's surprised he was even willing to have her go out with him for this.

Like I said: I REALLY like me monster stuff, possibly because I like playing with their unique traits, the fear of being other, how they can contrast against humanity, etc. Hell, this actually wouldn't be the first time I've done this sort of thing for Amphibia since I did a one off for Cutetanuki's werewolf AU a good long while ago now. Three if you count when I had Marcy create a sculpted Sasha and when I made Marcy a clockwork creation (which I would like to still get back to someday).

But yeah, consider this an open call for concepts, monsters, etc. to play around with so I can try to use October as an excuse to tell myself to breathe and play around with that which lurks in the dark.

[bloodpen-to-paper]

Review Blurbs: Barbie (2023)

~General Thoughts~

-I thought this movie would be like... PG. And then it got really emotional when Barbie was looking through Gloria's memories of the days when her and her daughter were at their happiest before Sasha grew up. And then Barbie got called a fascist. So

-Margot Robbie is an insanely talented actor. I'm gonna be honest, I'm not sure how well the movie would've done for me if I wasn't invested in the main character but Margot completely ate the role and made the story of Stereotypical Barbie very endearing to watch

-The pacing was surprisingly good for me, I'm usually really picky about pacing but they were able to balance out transitioning from the silly stuff to serious and back again pretty well, Greta Gerwig you have my applause

-Its an interesting detail that the Real World is still intentionally somewhat unrealistic and caricature-ish similar to the Barbie world is; not sure if that's just Greta's style or if there was a reason for it, made the movie a little jarring imo but I'd love to know why she did it and what effect she was going for

-The fact that Barbie wasn't interested in Ken and rejected him and it was treated as a good thing is just *chef's kiss*

-The Kens fight scene being a colorful musical number with eccentric choreography was so fun to watch I want more

-I don't care what you've been through, nothing could've prepared anyone for that gynecology line. Its such a genius way to remind you that Barbie now has to deal with the biological changes of becoming human. 10/10

-Allan beating up the construction worker Kens was the best moment 10/10

-Speaking of Allan, I loved how Allan was a metaphor for someone who doesn't fit into the gender binary. He was the only non Barbie/Ken, had his own unique name and was always uncomfortable/disappointed with the world around him no matter who was in charge, which was a great way to subtly insert this kind of character. He happily sided with the Barbies to help take down the Kens, embracing all the pink and cheering alongside them when they won, while also looking very sad during the part where the Kens were realizing they failed. Just all of it screamed gender-non conforming to me. I've seen some interpretations saying Allan is a representation of a gay man (being more of a "Ken" presentation wise but finding more of a space among women and being deeply uncomfortable with patriarchy perpetuated by straight men) and some saying he's nonbinary (wanting to leave Barbieland behind and never being satisfied no matter who was in charge); either way, what they did with Allan was very cool and I'm glad some queerness, even if subtle and less prominent, was included in the movie)

-Similarly, Weird Barbie isn't getting nearly enough love. She was one of the most fun characters for me (Kate McKinnon magic, duh) and she like Allan could definitely represent someone out of the cishetero-normative/gender binary (I've seen people saying she's very queer-coded and it honestly makes sense, she tends to dress and act in more un-feminine ways which I think says butch lesbian but its up to interpretation) I am also very gay for her give her more attention cause she deserves it, seriously

-John Cena mermaid

-Simu Liu Ken constantly antagonizing Ryan Gosling Ken over Barbie's attention and being the better Ken within Barbieland is a metaphor for how patriarchy will put women against each other for the attention of men and make women fight each other too much to realize who the real enemy is

-Margot Robbie being acknowledged as "not the best to make this point about ugliness" was fantastic lmao, love the meta-narration

-The way Ken's story arc and the commentary around patriarchy with the incel-pipeline was very strong, and I respect Greta for critiquing it the way she did (I made a full post here )

-Ken and Ken should've kissed. Any of them. All of them.

-Barbie deciding to be human in the end despite her whole journey being about wanting to be a perfect Barbie doll again and her being terrified of flat feet and cellulite but then telling that old woman how beautiful she was and watching humans be normal and mimicking their expressions because even though its scary she wants to feel the way humans do because she sees the beauty in it and its a love letter to women and to people and the complexity of our messy species omfg I'm gonna cry other people said it better than me so go look at their stuff

-Barbie helping out Ken despite everything he'd done because she didn't want things to go back to how they were when Barbies ruled the world, she wanted something different, better, and she helped the person she had every right to want to hurt because we're supposed to be better than those who hurt us

~Criticisms~

-As an add-on to the caricature blurb, I felt a bit weird watching cause Greta's style recreated facets of misogyny as a caricature, so things like patriarchal brainwashing, sexual assault and other very harmful misogynist rhetoric were told in a slapstick way. I was uncomfortable throughout a lot of it, and I'm still deciding if I consider it a genuine criticism to have such matters told in this way or if its just personal preference; would like to know other thoughts if you're willing to share. Regardless, just be aware of it if that stuff's triggering to you so you're prepared for it

-Loved the emphasis on uplifting femininity in Barbie, and I understand the metaphor behind the change, but I can't help feel they pulled a Breakfast Club with Sasha going from her all black attire to suddenly very feminine and with makeup. Being gender non-conforming isn't just for queer people, lots of women are like this and it feels like media makes it seem like this kind of woman is impossible. Not all women wear makeup, not all women are feminine, and I would love for a more masculine/GNC woman character to be able to actually be that. I'll forgive it a bit since Barbies' styles kinda revolve around makeup, and Weird Barbie was consistently butch, just wish characters that are brought up with the prospect of gender-nonconformity could actually stay that way

~Final Thoughts~

Surprisingly good! Don't get me wrong, movies with this style can be good for sure but with the recent surge of mediocre movies I didn't have too much faith. However, I was very happy with how enjoyable and passionate it was. Highly recommend if you like caricature-type works, and/or want to get into some basic feminist ideology in a more fun way that's still very meaningful and heartfelt. Barbie is not just a feminist critique, but a love letter to women, girl hood, and the complexities of humans and how beautiful that can be <3

[madraleen]

Attack on Titan - Season 4 Part 1 (eps 1-16) A commentary turned into a TED talk (but what else is new)

(full manga spoilers. ending spoilers. all the spoilers.)

-ah. the mappa era.

-the "good eldians" line of the marley eldians never fails to give me goosebumps

-well hello there reiner, as dashing as ever

-i love how aot can make me so emotionally confused

-"i suppose there aren't any titans with wings" HAHAHA about that...

-zeke pretty much says, "it's not the paradis' titans we should be afraid of, IT'S LEVI!"

-oh hello eren's back watching reiner and the kids. that's where he infiltrated, fort slava, while the corps is back at marley and jean's buying newspapers, cool

-hello hobo eren, i didn't like you looking like that in the manga and the anime changes nothing. shave.

-how unfortunate for eren that he met falco first. it's hard not to sympathize with falco, you know?

-hobo eren: "i just don't want to go home. i don't think i can face my family anymore." i mean, he ain't lying

-listening eren and basically-tanjiro converse confuses me on a meta level, heh

-i mean, eren's not LYING to tanj-er, falco, he IS sending the letter to his family and he DOES tell them that he's there (and some other things).

-things happen so fast in the anime. in the manga it felt like forever until we got to see eren again

-the declaration of war ep is so good with the music and the VAs that i'm laughing with joy

-DUDE THE REINER AND EREN CONVERSATION, THE VAS ARE SUPERB.

-THE SLOW-MO TRANSFORMATION OF EREN, DUDE I LOVE THE DECLARATION OF WAR EP WHAT! mappa, let's talk

-what eren did to liberio was god awful but tybur and magath weren't much better, intentionally letting everyone be turned into martyrs. eren said "i'll kill you all" and magath and tybur went "yes please"

-it's SO cool that they show the titans form, bc it pairs so well with the fact that ymir creates them

-there is no plausible way other than telepathy that mikasa could have possibly heard eren's "ima da, mikasa" but goddamn that moment is amazing. maybe she read his lips.

-HOLD THE PRESSES MY MAN LEVI HAS COME

-armin how so pretty

-GALLIARD THE NUTCRACKER

-that soundtrack tho

-i'm like. i know. i've read the manga. and yet i'm looking at eren and mikasa like "OHMIGOSH THEY'RE SO BIG THEY'RE SO GROWN OMIGOSH LITTLE BABIES"

-the slow pace of armin offering his hand and eren taking it, perfection

-dude the music and the voice acting, THE TENSION, it's so good, mappa let's talk

-armin is so. i just want to pat his lil head

-oh wait so. when eren kissed historia's hand he knew about the rumbling, but not how it would be possible to do it? and it clicked when he heard hange's recount of yelena's spiel, he confirmed his suspicions re: the royal blood?

-i don't know if i'm imagining it, but i think armin and mikasa sound intentionally younger in the three-years-ago stuff to differentiate them from the present day, which is cute because they never actually sounded that young in-universe

-the VA does an excellent job with zeke. the animation is excellent. i just really detest zeke. i don't know why my wrath is so focused on him.

-EREN DON'T YOU TOUCH HANJI DON'T YELL AT THEM DID YOU NOT LEARN ANYTHING FROM THE MANGA

-is it? is it a two-round fight? it sort of is, eren's a two-round fight.

-enjoying that wine fellas are ya

-eren @ the gang: "because you're important to me. more important than anyone. so i want you to live long lives." i cry

-I UNDERSTAND IT'S THE SUNSET AND EVERYONE'S RED BUT MIKASA AND EREN ARE HAVING A LOOK YOU KNOW?! this moment was suss even in the manga

-yeah, this is definitely working well in anime form. i don't know if it's because i already know the story, so i'm not lost between juggling scenes, or because of the faster pace of the anime, but it feels good.

-back up a sec tho 'cause i'm still on this. gang, eren laughed when sasha died, but did you not see his face, the man was having a breakdown (they might actually not have seen his face).

so there's two reasons he might have laughed. a) sasha's last word being the trigger word bc of its absurdity and how sasha-like it is, he broke down. he's just lost one of the people most important to him bc of a plan FOR his friends where he doesn't know IF his friends will survive it in the first place. this confirms death is a possibility.

b) it's something he's seen during the hand kiss, it connected dots, it confirms he's on the right path, and he reacts as such.

i personally do not ascribe to the latter. eren isn't receiving random memories, he's receiving curated memories chosen by paths!eren via grisha's past memories. paths!eren isn't stupid. why would he send himself a memory of a most painful event that could waver his resolve? arguably it's sasha's death that makes it personal, that puts the seed in the gang's mind that they might have to kill eren. but paths!eren cares about sasha as much as every eren; why the heck would he send that memory back? why would he undermine the "do the rumbling, exterminate titans" cause? why not take his "i didn't even know if my precious friends would survive" at face value?

also. eren knows glimpses of the future and through them he decides to make his friends heroes. he's not omniscient until he reaches the paths (and what he can process of being omniscient in the paths is arguable, and it's also arguable if he IS omniscient), and he does show surprise when something that he doesn't expect occurs, like with ymir in the paths. he also showed emotion when sasha died. so why question it? for eren, too, sasha's death is a breaking point, not only because it's his friend that dies because of his actions, but because he didn't know, which means any of his friends might be next, a sacrifice to his greater cause.

-THANKS FOR COMING TO MY TED TALK, NOW BACK TO THE ANIME!

-okay, around ten months ago eren "began to act on his own." whatever that means. i'm trying to figure out how long he was missing for - the general consensus seems to be he was in marley for 1-2 months, so a few months at most.

-you know what i love? you could ask a number of people their favorite aot character, and they'll all have different answers, and to every answer you can say 'oh yes, ofc it's eren/levi/mikasa/armin/hange/etc, why wouldn't they be, they're awesome' BC EVERYONE IS SO WELL-CRAFTED FFS

-funny how they think eren is being manipulated by zeke when it's zeke being manipulated by eren.

-oh man the niccolo-gabi confrontation is so good

-so killing zackley was part of zeke and yelena's plan

-the gabi-eren parallels get more interesting the more you get into them. they start similarly, with the same rage and tenacity, but eren is the result of the escalating violence, cruelty and injustice, whereas gabi is the product of a concentrated effort to bring the kids out of the forest so to speak.

-I AM NOT READY FOR THE EREN-MIKASA-ARMIN RESTAURANT SCENE! i'll never be ready for that scene.

-they're really taking their time with the pauses and silences, good good good

-in retrospect everything is so on point. like armin asking eren, "what did you really come here to say?" bc this conversation wasn't about eren hating mikasa and armin at all and armin got that.

-i can't stress this enough- ZEKE'S STORY IS SO GOOD! i just detest him.

-i was screaming so hard when eren agreed to the euthanasia plan in the manga. i had such a breakdown. but in hindsight, at least in the anime, he doesn't say "yes i agree with the euthanasia plan." every single thing he says is true to what he actually does, except that zeke thinks he agrees with him bc of the context.

-isn't it funny how it's jean of all people being like "but if eren isn't crazy, he must have a good reason to hurt armin and mikasa"

-whose are these high-pitched screams when yelena kills griez, there are only the boys in there and mikasa, and mikasa ain't gonna be screaming!

-to this day armin's reaction to yelena's plan creeps me out. "i'm moved." the general consensus seems to be he was crying out of relief that eren didn't betray them bc he was certain that eren wouldn't agree to euthanasia and it confirms to him that he does know eren after all, then played it up to make yelena trust them. i'll take it. he's a good lil snake, armin is <3

-ah a pity, the panel of galliard about to eat eren is more majestic. but i don't care, this has been an excellent season. and yeah, that's another thing eren didn't know, and he didn't know pieck would pull all of this - he isn't omniscient.

-DON'T DO THAT, I'M WEAK FOR LOOSE HAIR EREN HE LOOKS SO VULNERABLE argh i hate aot, i love it so unbelievably much

[androxys]

Ranking my WIPs based on how likely they are to ever get finished (ft. what they're actually called in my Drive)

Very Likely:

Ghost Dragon: VERY likely. Is actually likely to be a chapter or two longer than I thought, because I just keep writing it.

Firecrackers: I only have one vignette left for this story, but it's the hardest one so far. Still, I don't foresee myself not finishing it.

Hello Baby, Hello World: My love letter to Stephanie Brown, taking the world tour though her life. I can't wait to get to this one.

Ken and Barbie: The sequel to Can't Prove it. I know how it starts, and I know how it ends, and I even know some of the twists and turns in the meantime. I just need to flesh out the middle.

Morality Bug: Jean-Paul Valley vs. the Religion of Crime on a boat. Need I say more?

Oracle Year One: My love letter to Barbara Gordon. I plotted out her first year recovering and becoming Oracle, and am folding in a blend of Earth-One, New Earth, and Infinite Frontier elements.

The Word as Heard: A reworking of Final Crisis to make it less... like that. Now with more New Gods!

Timber Rename: The explicit third part of Couldn't Look Away (Even If I Wanted). Tim and Bernard's first time having sex together. Still trying to work out a good title.

Tim and Dick Puberty Fic: Tim goes to Dick as his "trusted adult" after health class. Dick does not feel like an adult, nor should he be Tim's trusted one. Brother acquisition ensues.

Okay this got long so the less certain WIPs are all under the cut

Maybe Someday:

0 For More Options: I'd like to get back to this one, honestly, but don't know when. This was an OC-centric fic about a guy who works for an emergency assistance fund in Gotham, based on my own experience working in nonprofits.

Cui Bono: A Checkmate story! I'd like to get back into this one, honestly. Sasha and the gang goes up against a meta whose power is to open any lock. I would say I'm probably going to write it someday, I just need more practice drafting political thrillers.

Bodyodyodyody: This title was not final. A Timber date.

Educations from Cinema: Another Timber date fic. Probably won't return to this one either--there was no plot, just them being cute. This one and Body were both very important to the process of learning how to write What Does the Fourth of July Mean to You, to be fair.

JLA Year One: My take on a JLA Year One story, combining some of my favorite elements from the different Years One.

Shaggy Dogs: I don't write Joker stories. I haven't figured out how to do one that seems interesting to me. This was Bruce and Robin!Dick when a woman is killed with all the trademarks of the Joker... but the man himself is in Arkham. As I review it now, I realize how Devil's Advocate it is.

Stupid Games, Stupid Prizes: A DickBabs fic where Barbara goes toe to toe with the City Council. Focused on civilian heroics and the power of local government.

Sweater Weather: Bernard finds out about Tim. Tim takes it badly and flees to the beach. Bernard follows. I can definitely see how working on this primed me for Fourth of July. I may go back if I want to practice more angsty style writing.

Tim's Day Off: I'd like to return here, but I don't know what to make him do. Maybe the plot will be people forcing him to actually take it easy on his day off. Or things keep coming up.

JLA Charity Gala: My Met Gala for the Justice League. I want to write gala shenanigans. I want to write a paragraph long description of a dress. I just don't know when I'll have time.

Graveyard Darlings:

(Cat)Walking Wayne Manor: On the other hand, very unlikely, unless I post just an excerpt. This one was supposed to be my architecture tour of Wayne Manor with a Selina POV, but it kept not working. On the plus side, though, it helped me refine my Manor floorplan.

April is the Cruelest Month: This one needs to go to the graveyard--it was an attempt for me to write 100 words for every day in April, with a Dick POV. I definitely didn't do that, but the idea behind this fic found its way into the DNA for my Oracle Year One WIP

Christmas in June: This fic taught me that I'm not meant for angst fic as a genre. This one was supposed to be about the first dinner party Barbara throws after getting out of the hospital, but Bruce not coming because he's too caught up trying to stop DitF. It just didn't come together, and won't.

Coffee Shop AU: This one was just Steph being a college student. Never going to write more than the one paragraph, but it was good practice for Steph's voice.

Delphi on Rooftops: This was the last conversation Dick and Barbara had before Dick moved to New York and Barbara retired Batgirl. I couldn't make it long enough to feel like it went anywhere, but it may find life as a flashback sequence in another, longer fic.

Mark the Spot: A Red X vs. the Titans fic. I have a specific headcanon of Red X as a sort of mantle passed down thief to thief, because I wanted Dick and Tim to go up against two generations of Red X with their respective generations of Titans. This idea may still come back, but not from this fic.

Red and Redder: See above. Same deal, Red X fic, wasn't working.

Grief: A fic about Tim after Bruce's not-funeral. Would potentially tie into the Lazarus Civil War idea I had, but I didn't get more than a sentence into it.

Water Lilies: Tim and Barbara go swimming, talk about life. Was set just before War Games, but I couldn't get any of it to feel natural.

[yellowocaballero]

FIC MASTER POST

I write a lot of AUs, and also just in general. A lot of it is too short, bad, or weird for AO3, so I post them here. For ease of access, I'll put links to every short story here. Those that belong to a greater AU will be sorted under the AU. Miscellanea will be posted just under the fandom. They will be ordered in a mix of size and chronology.

4-26-22 EDIT: I changed my URL, so I changed the links to suit the new URL. If I missed anything and any of the links are still broken, please let me know so I can fix it!

Fic under the cut.

MARVEL

Best Life

A pseudo fusion of the MCU, 1970s-80s Marvel Comics, and completely made up backstories. Exclusively utilizes the lamest superheroes I could find, including Moon Knight.

AO3 Fics [Starring Moon Knight]:

Mens Rea

Good Luck, Jake!

and Letter Column, an AO3 collection of the side stories listed below and more.

Side Stories [Starring other lame people, and sometimes Moon Knight being lame again]:

Dr. Strange Works Retail and Peter Parker Makes a Multiversal Mistake

Ghost Rider visits the Hell DMV

Colleen Wing and the Immortal Iron Fist Participate In A Cultural Exchange Program During The Weirdest Spring Break Ever

Moon Knight: Marc & Steven Meet Jake; Realize Youngest Siblings Are The Worst

Worldbuilding Notes & Meta

Matt Murdock: Ninja Union Organizer & Normal Guy

Assorted Marvel AUs

Moon Knight AU where Jake's the worst teenager you've met in your life; Jake Plays Minecraft, Marc’s a Wine Mom, and Frenchie & Layla Meet a Serial Killer

And companion piece Jake Stays Up Past His Bedtime, Meets His Contemporaries, and Wants a Dog So Fucking Bad.

STAR WARS

Roleswap AU

Roleswap AU set from the Clone Wars era to three years after ROTS. Family is found and lost. Children grow up and become angsty teenagers. Badly parented children become bad parents. Child soldiers become pirates. Local kitten adopted by pack of wolves thinks it's a wolf.

AKA: Rogue Jedi, Rogue Queen, and Rogue Clone go on a space adventure to rescue a dad, cry instead.

AO3 Fics:

Reel to Reel

Less Than Zero

SIDE STORIES:

Cody POV Interquel of Less Than Zero

Obligatory Canon Crossover

Mandalorian Crossover

Book of Boba Fett Crossover

[REDACTED] POV of Clone Liberation

NO CHIP AU: An extensive detail of situations in which, hypothetically, many people would be very bad parents.

Order 66: More Like A Suggestion This Time

Bly: The Perfect Boyfriend?

MORE than Zero?

Torture Adventures of Rex, Supernanny

SW:Rebels Depa Bilaba vs. Cartoon Villain Cody

Fox Takes A Really Nice Nap and what Mace Windu does during the nap

Rex, Padme, and Ahsoka's zany family hijinks

REALLY COOL SHIT THAT OTHER PEOPLE DID THAT I LIKE A LOT

@bobafett's Interquel Outsider POV

@nirelaz SUPER DOPE fanart of Ben & Blanche and another one!

OTHER STAR WARS

Boba Fett's childhood existential crisis

Fox & Leia's Holiday Special - this one is a less depressing AU of my other work Twilight on Owl Creek Bridge.

Obi-Wan is a depressed teen dad

Fishhooks (Jango Fett obtains a mail-order child, regrets it highly when child adopts two million clones)

AOTC Continuation of Fishhooks, just to make Obi-Wan Kenobi confused and miserable

THE MAGNUS ARCHIVES

(oh boy...)

WEB!JON AU

AO3 FICS:

Sucker's Bet

The technical nonsense that started this don't worry about it

SIDE STORIES:

Web!Jon roleplays canon Jon with mixed results

He's Just Not That Into You: Martin & Jon (this one is a sort of pilot to Sucker's Bet, it's not canon)

Not Your Queer-Coded Disney Villain: Annabelle & Jon

Desolation Destroyed My P----: Gertrude & Jon

THE CROW'S FUNERAL AU

Jon gets involved in local politics, regrets it

AU of AU Where Martin prevents the story from happening

Prequel: How Agnes, Gerry, and Jon met

HUMAN RELATIONS AU

Jon and Sasha versus Bad Telenovelas

Semi-Sequel, Never Completed

Jon and Tim versus the Internet

Jon and Jonah versus the Sixties

ROLESWAP AU:

People are bullied. Nobody does any work. Lesbians flourish. And, since being trapped in an infernal contract with a fear demon means that nobody can get ahead, everybody gets even.

Podfic of the entire series by @stonesfromglasshouses

Fear Demon Intern Michael Does Michael Things

Crossover With Canon

OTHER TMA:

Jon's Trapped In Temporal Time Out: A TMA Time-Travelling Tale

Fandom History: pleasedontaskpleasedontask

American AU: PLEASE don't ask

A short post-canon story of Bell, Book, and Candle & No Sin But Ignorance: Daisy Crashes A Date, Fuck You

NARUTO

Most demented roleswap feat. the worst decisions Obito has ever made

Uchiha Family Values

Sasuke and Obito's Post-Massacre Bonding Hour

Kakashi’s a wifeguy, Rin’s a Girlboss, and Itachi gets adopted

FIRE EMBLEM: THREE HOUSES

WEEKENDERS (AKA BYLETH'S CHILD CULT):

AO3 Fic:

Weekenders

SIDE STORIES:

Byleth gets turned into a cat; Felix causes problems on purpose

Byleth and Three Houses Search for Rat People

Worldbuilding Notes & Meta

OC lore and snippet don't look at me

Dimitri and mental illness

OTHER FE3H:

Ashen Wolf Byleth & Teen Dad Yuri

MISCELLANEOUS FANDOMS

Percy Jackson: Percy Jackson meets a Landlord, a Tax Accountant, and a Tree Growing in Brooklyn

Loki: Loki Suffers His Own Personal Hell and Participates in Game Shows

New Wave: Jason Todd vs. Annoyingly Perfect Cheerleader Barbie Stephanie Brown

Omniscent Reader's Viewpoint: YJH Commits the Improbable and Reads a Webnovel

Transcendence AU Nostalgia

This is MY Hero Academia

Chicken on a Raft: Chicken on a Raft

[dekusleftsock]

Well, you did ask for more questions...Here's what has been on my mind: I have to admit, I liked Dabi/Touya's character better after his past and feelings about his family were revealed. I'm not sure, but when I looked that seemed to be somewhat of a controversial topic. Before the reveal, I lot of people wanted to believe Dabi had some hidden soft spots for his family, but the official narrative firmly broke that idea. When it comes to trauma and abused families...I've noticed that a lot of people only like acknowledging one specific type of victim. We like to believe that one party is good and the other is bad, and often nuances are lost in that interpretation. I'm not trying to call anyone out, but when Dabi's backstory was released I noticed this effect amongst the viewers. People started to become less sympathetic towards him, calling him a "psycho" child and such. People often do the opposite with Fuyumi, they want to demonize or belittle her for wanting to forgive her father so quickly and put the family back together. Having lived around someone who was traumatized, my personal experience with it has often been that people who are traumatized lash out at others. Horikoshi's depictions of trauma so far have supported that. Deku was a nice kid, but started to act mean as the traumas piled up. Not all traumatized people are mean or violent when they are scared, but I don't like how western fandoms often seem to feel the need to either abandon a character or excuse everything they've done in order to like them. I can like someone and still hold them accountable for their actions. Hell, I can love someone and still hold them accountable for things they've done. Loving Endeavor doesn't mean they aren't holding him accountable. Again, I'm not trying to call anyone out here, it's just an attitude in real life that I've seen transfer over into fandoms, specifically when the Todoroki family and Dabi is involved. People want to believe in one "valid" way to express trauma, and try to deny the reality when other types come into the picture. What do you think? Side Note: Steven Universe suffered from this effect to an extent. It tried to find a way to either excuse or abandon it's villains instead of approaching things honestly. The genocides the diamonds' did get swept under the rug in the name of redemption, whereas Spinel's willingness to kill people in the name of her goals goes unpunished because she had been hurt. The show acknowledges that Bismuth was extreme and forceful, but never properly addresses what she did. Instead it lets her off the hook. With Rose, the attitude is the opposite. She's never forgiven, despite how hard she tried.

I love that you said this.

Little sneak peak of what I’m going to talk about in the Katsuki meta: how bullies are handled in western media.

When I think of a few redeemed bullies in western media, I think of amity from toh, Sasha from amphibia, and Pacifica from gravity falls. I know I mention them a lot, and I love each of their characters, but I feel like the creators of those shows let their bullies be forgiven for their actions rather than actually making up for them. Excused from them even.

The problem with this idea is that, somehow, none of these girls have internalized their parents bad habits. They only show a fraction of a child’s response to abuse and not the full picture. You are going to pick up your parents habits one way or another. That’s just how it works and you can only work to break them.

Yet amity, Sasha, and Pacifica don’t seem to have these traits once they were “redeemed”? I also feel like their actual race played a part in it; if a creator made a black bully who got redeemed, the audience wouldn’t be HALF as obsessed with them as they are. Not only that, but characters are only seen as redeemable from bad actions if they’re white. It’s a censorship so that the white audience can relate to and see her more human than if she was any other ethnicity or race.

Just like I think that part of the reason why spinel or any other gem’s actions in Steven universe are easily excused because almost NONE OF THEM are fat. Rose is also a direct result of abuse. It feels like Rebecca had a vision originally, and then they just changed it for the last few episodes, the movie, and future because it was easier to make her an antagonist because most of the fandom already hated her.

Mental health nowadays is more normalized, yes I agree, but it is not NEARLY normalized enough to understand the complexities in the flaws of characters who come from abusive situations.

Im kinda tired of peoples immediate judgment of others simply based on a few interactions where they may have had “outbursts” because they want to ignore the possible idea that there is more nuance to a person. We are comfortable in the idea that mental health is feeling really sad sometimes and not that it may result in someone scream crying in the middle of the hallway for no reason.

Cw for mania, mentions of dereality, mentions of religious trauma, and mentions of murderous intent

The first time I ever experienced mania was when I was apart of a school musical. I was the stage manager, and if you’ve ever worked in theater then you know just how stressful of a job it is. So, I was manic on dress rehearsal, aka the day before the show. I almost had a physical altercation with someone. For several hours that day, I thought that no one I talked to was actually real and had a panic attack. The night before, I was planning on killing someone who hurt my friend because I thought I had a religious duty as I worked for god. Hell, I almost posted on this account talking about how I was the reincarnation of Jesus around a few weeks ago.

But those are the “dirtier” parts of mental health that people don’t want to see. They want to hide behind one way of dealing with trauma. But that’s what makes the todoroki’s such an amazing family; rei and dabi have the “ugly” kind of response. Todoroki and fuyumi have the “expected” response. Natsuo has the “common” response. But they’re manifestations of the same thing. The abuse from endeavor. Someone who was also traumatized by a society that groomed him.

Endeavors response was horrendous and there’s no getting past that, but it doesn’t change the fact that he’s a human being, NOT an unredeemable villain.

[scorchedhearth]

i saw you say that you like scarlett, sooo do you have any headcanons for her or her relationship with jason?

i do like her! or maybe i should say i like her concept because the way it’s executed in the actual run is uh. debatable i shall say. + jason’s fucked characterization doesn’t help either but i do think they can be an interesting duo.

hcs under cut cause i have a page full of those, enjoy!

jason doesn’t take sasha in for any goal (red hood wouldn’t ever use a kid like that, wth). he just sees a teen, angry and terrified and in pain and knows he’s the only one who can help her in her current situation. it’s also by luck, he wasn’t out looking for a sidekick

sasha’s the one who comes to jason about fighting with him, not the other way around. he teaches her how to defend herself in order to give her some safety and reassure her after what she suffered through with pyg, but it’s weeks later that she asks to go fight with him and he then teaches her how to attack

its a response to her trauma, seeing her father suffer to pyg's hand for being a criminal messed with her, as taking his life did and she feels she needs to take action after that happened and prevent it from happening again. it's not healthy, but it's something to keep her going instead of sitting with her grief and pain

she gets nightmares and sleepless nights after what happened to her, jason always sits with her or stays in the same room when it happens. they don’t talk but it helps her feel safe to know he’s watching over her, the big bad red hood protecting her

she gives back as good as she gets, jason is an asshole but she can be worse than him, and she doesn’t shy away from fighting with him and telling him what she thinks and wants. the only time she lets herself be ordered is when they’re patrolling in the streets because she knows he’s the better fighter between the two of them, but any other situation and she stands her ground and tells him off. jason loves her to pieces for that fact alone, it’s rare to meet people who can butt head as hard as he does and are as stubborn.

jason is conflicted about letting her fight by his side, and he understands some of bruce’s actions better in light of sasha coming to him. although i think she’s more similar to robin!dick than jason’s, which i don’t think jason knows a lot about so it’s more on the meta aspect of their relationship that one

sasha despite what happened to her is still very much a teenager, and once she feels safe enough with jason she lets that shine through. she’s defensive at first, but once she sees it's okay she freely mentions those interests like tv drama, boys bands, her interest in sports, etc, as well as in the behavior, letting less mature and unguarded moment happen

jason isn’t a replacement to her dad or her family. she told him off and made it clear that wouldn’t happen, he’s an ally, someone trusted and to rely on but not family and to the both of them that means more, especially given the time they find each other in their respective life

sasha learns fast, and what she doesn’t have in skills she makes up with her anger and direct actions. i love how she gets robin off guard by jumping him despite having less training than him, it is something she relies on a lot in her fighting style, looking unassuming and taking dramatic actions and letting her emotions fuel her

she burns fast through the anger and grief from her pyg trauma, and that’s what makes her leave gotham. she can’t be scarlet forever it takes too much out of her, and once the mask finally falls she takes the opportunity to be sasha again

she keeps in touch with jason, a few times a year he’ll get a text or a quick visit. they never last because it’s reminder of a harsh time in her life but it’s important for her to remember who helped her during those time

i just think of the potential of giving jason someone to look after personally, and someone with anger and pain and grief like him. he lost his parents to crime, he's been betrayed and suffered and he could have interesting things to give to sasha. in return, seeing her move on could be good to him. overall, there's something to get in their dynamic

[bananonbinary]

Time for a Salty Meta Post about Martin!

people who’ve followed this blog for a bit know that spending six hours combing through text for some goddamn sources is my specialty, so i compiled every time jon ever talked about martin’s work in season 1. which for the record, he stopped complaining about all the way back in episode 26, where he was angry that martin of all people got hurt.

things jon gets mad at martin for:

not being able to find records that don’t exist

not being able to find someone based only on a first name

the Dog

not wearing trousers in his off-hours

being the one that got caught up in the jane prentiss thing

mag 004 and mag 012 both have jon taking potshots at martin over research that was proven accurate by outside sources

things jon has never once complained about:

martin not understanding the filing system and just putting stuff away at random

martin being clumsy, constantly ruining things, spilling tea everywhere everyday, etc

martin turning in incompetent, poorly-edited, or badly formatted reports

martin not understanding the terminology used, skills expected, etc., and generally being extremely new to the field

please for the love of god stop making martin the silly bumbling idiot who can’t do anything right just because he doesn’t have a formal education. there’s zero evidence for it in the text, and it’s really weird to act like a 4 year degree would outweigh the *10 years* of job experience he has, not just in academia, but in the institute itself by season one. my boy has worked there longer than ANY of the rest of the main cast. screw you guys.

tl;dr: martin is never once shown to be bad at his job, jon pretty much only ever gets mad at him for the really stupid first impression and also not finding stuff that no one else was able to find either. after martin got hurt, jon talks about his research basically the same way he talks about tim’s or sasha’s work.

fucking proof under the cut:

(i didnt include the s1 finale or martin’s statement bc that’s just...two entire episodes of them talking to each other, but there isn’t really any notable Martin Complaints in either of them imo)

I swear, if he’s brought another dog in here, I’m going to peel him.

[pre-launch trailer]

.

Well, technically three, but I don’t count Martin as he’s unlikely to contribute anything but delays.

[...] Alongside this Tim, Sasha and, yes, I suppose, Martin will be doing some supplementary investigation to see what details may be missing from what we have.

[MAG001 Anglerfish]

.

Martin couldn’t find any records of Ex Altiora as a title in existent catalogues of esoteric or similar literature, so I assigned Sasha to double-check. Still nothing.

[MAG004 Pageturner]

.

I had Martin conduct a follow-up interview with Mr. Woodward last week, but it was unenlightening. Apparently there have been no further bags at number 93 and in the intervening years he has largely discounted many of the stranger aspects of his experience. I wasn’t expecting much, as time generally makes people inclined to forget what they would rather not believe, but at least it got Martin out of the Institute for an afternoon, which is always a welcome relief.

[MAG005 Thrown Away]

.

Martin was unable to find the exact date the original house was built but the earliest records he could find list it as being bought by Walter Fielding in 1891.

[...]

We cannot prove any connection, but Martin unearthed a report on an Agnes Montague, who was found dead in her Sheffield flat on the evening of November 23rd 2006, the same day Mr. Lensik claims to have uprooted the tree.

[MAG008 Burned Out]

.

According to Martin, who was here when they took this statement, it was at this point in writing that Mr. Herbert announced he needed some sleep before continuing. He was shown to the break room where he went to sleep on the couch. He did not awaken; unfortunately succumbing to the lung cancer right there. Martin says the staff had been aware of how serious Mr. Herbert’s condition was, and had advised him to seek medical aid prior to giving his statement, but were told rather bluntly by the old man that he would not wait another second to state his case. I can’t decide whether this lends more or less credibility to his tale.

[MAG010 Vampire Killer]

.

“Veepalach” might also be a mishearing of the Polish word “wypalać”, according to Martin, which means to cauterize or brand. Admittedly, if Martin speaks Polish in the same way he “speaks Latin,” then he might be talking nonsense again, but I’ve looked it up and it appears to check out.

[MAG012 First Aid]

.

I sent Martin to look into this ‘Angela’ character - not that I want him to get chopped up, of course, but someone had to. Apparently, he spent three days looking into every woman named Angela in Bexley over the age of 50. He could not find anyone that matches the admittedly vague description given here, though he informs me that he had some very pleasant chats about jigsaws. Useless ass.

[MAG014 Piecemeal]

.

Martin declined to help with this investigation as he’s “a bit claustrophobic”

[MAG015 Lost John’s Cave]

.

There simply aren’t enough details given in this statement to actually investigate, short of Martin confirming that Mr. Vittery did indeed live at the addresses he provided.

[MAG016 Arachnophobia]

.

Oh, he’s off sick this week. Stomach problems, I think.

Blessed relief if you ask me.

[...]

I asked Martin to try and hunt down Mr. Adekoya himself for a follow-up, but have been informed that he passed away in 2006.��

[MAG017 The Boneturner’s Tale]

.

MARTIN

Well, I need to tell someone what happened, and you can vouch for the soundness of my mind, can’t you?

ARCHIVIST

…

That is beside the point.

[MAG022 Colony]

.

Martin! Good lord man, if you’re going to be staying in the Archives, at least have the decency to put some trousers on!

[MAG023 Schwartzwald]

.

Martin found one other thing while combing through police reports for the Hither Green area. About a month after this statement was given, on May 15th, 2015, police were called out to once again investigate the chapel.

[MAG025 Growing Dark]

.

I know, but it would have to have been Martin, wouldn’t it? I mean, anything goes wrong around here, it always seems to happen to him. Anyway, we’re getting off topic. Why didn’t you report this?

[MAG026 A Distortion]

.

Martin made contact with the son, Marcus McKenzie, but he declined to talk to us, saying that he’d “already made his statement.”

[MAG027 A Sturdy Lock]

.

Tim and Martin had a bit more luck investigating Tom Haan, though only really enough to confirm that he seems to have completely vanished following his departure from Aver Meats on the 12th of July.

[MAG030 Killing Floor]

.

Martin’s research would seem to indicate the place employed a reasonable number of international staff they preferred to keep off the books

[...]

TIM

Ah well, that’s actually what he was asking, huh! Um, apparently Martin, uh, took delivery of a couple of items last week addressed to you. Did he not mention it?

ARCHIVIST

No, he… Oh, yes, actually. I completely forgot. He said he put it in my desk drawer, hold on.

[MAG036 Taken Ill]

[saintbleeding]

ok so i am not someone who is good at the thinks OR the words.

but.

tma and romanticism, right.

specifically, the preoccupation in romanticism with interiority, the autobiographical, and the self.

so, i mean, let’s just get it out of the way that the author quite literally named his protagonist directly after himself to the point where the fandom in general has unilaterally adopted “jon” for character and “jonny” for author so as to lessen the potential confusion.

(also, a point here, this is not in any way intended as a read on jonny as a person, what he does and doesn’t put out is his business and he has every right to privacy and space. i’m just. analysing romanticism. moving on.)

i’ve been thinking a great deal about how the whole plot is given in this... adjacent-to-epistolary style? like we are constantly reminded that we are being read a statement that was given on paper -- i’m reminded specifically of all the statements that refer to gertrude and later jon in the second person. it’s a conversation where the speaker is always both observing and observed. or perhaps beholding and beheld.

something that really strengthens this theme to me is how versatile jon’s statement-giver-voices are. like i think that in-universe is beautifully addressed through it literally being a supernatural influence that enables/forces him to read the statements in this way, but i think it’s also in a meta sense a really interesting point for rumination: when a statement is being read, and we hear “i”, how much of that is the “i” of the person giving their statement? how much of it is jon internalising their trauma? how much of it is the “i” of the eye (ha ha) as it steals bits of the statement giver’s personhood?

i think this is something that’s strengthened even more by the fact that as time goes on, the process does become so much more... self-involved? like contrast: mag 22 and 26, where martin and sasha both give their statements in very conversational ways, mag 32 where although jane is addressing gertrude in a very direct, self-aware manner, she’s really just letting her thoughts -- or her fear -- run, and mag 81 and 104, where because we’ve spent so much time with jon and tim by now, it is, to my mind, a very different, much more... personal version of fear. like by that point to me we’re much beyond anthological spooky stories and into glimpses into the psychologies of people who we’ve become painfully aware are deeply, deeply broken and traumatised.

another really fascinating manifestation of this aspect of romantic style to me is the preoccupation both in the narrative and in fandom with smirke’s 14 + the extinction: i think it’s a really normal but also really fun thing to do to sort yourself into neat boxes, and i think it’s very Romantic that it’s such a major part of the story. not only because it gives such an interesting and potentially complex shorthand for what sort of person each statement giver and avatar likely is, but because it provides such a cool potential for the audience to do the same thing.

i love listening to people discussing which entity is the one they’re most afraid of, and of which they think they’d be most likely to become an avatar. it’s similar to a lot of personality-sorting methods: i think you can tell just as much, if not more, about someone by hearing how they assess and categorise themselves.

along a similar vein, and this is based largely on my personal experience/thoughts, but it’s a sentiment i’ve heard echoed by a lot of people: this type of horror that is so personal and human can make for a fantastic framework for self-examination. i don’t know, of course, whether that was built in intentionally or if it’s a side effect of tma being such a cohesively romantic piece of writing/media overall, but using it as a way to, as an audience member, look at yourself can be so gratifying and so cathartic. i know in the group of people i talk to frequently, we facetiously refer to doing this, but in all sincerity, i could write a post ten times longer than this one about how much i love martin on account of his helping me see so many things about myself in a new way. and intentional or not, i think it’s a really fascinating aspect of tma.

(note: yes i realise i have not examined ol’ fuckhands in this post despite how relevant they are, but oh boy that is a whole ‘nother post that it is too late at night for me to write rn lmao)

[ajkal2]

the essay: childhood trauma, responsibility, and tma. part 1: jon

in a tma fic i published like six months ago, i left an authors note that promised an essay on jon and tim’s trauma to anyone who asked. several people asked, and so here i am!

the fic is called a deeply annoying child. it’s about being a kid and seeing something horrible, and it’s about jon and tim’s rocky relationship. 

this post isn’t actually about the fic. it’s a breakdown of jon’s mental state through s1-3. im going to make another post about tim, and then a final one linking it all back to the fic. i’ll chuck links to those on here when they’re posted!

but first, let’s talk about my boy, JON ‘JARCHIVIST’ SIMS.  

(fair warning- this isn’t a fully backed up meta post, it’s my interpretation of canon. any thoughts/queries/additions welcome! my askbox is always open <3) 

part o: a note on guilt

hey, you know what’s fucked up? an eight-year-old kid with survivors guilt. 

as a child, jon watched someone he knew die, due to circumstances that, while they were not his fault, were set in motion by his actions. children (and often teens!) think in black-and-white. complex logic often just doesn’t occur to them.  jon, at 8, looks at what happened, and says that’s my fault. i did that. jon didn’t like his bully, and wanted him to go away, and then he did. that instinctive reaction is something i think he never grows out of. when you already hate yourself, it’s easy to pile more fuel onto that flame.  he doesn’t think about risk, not to him, because he deserves whatever happens. he let someone die. he doesn’t ever forgive himself for that.

part i: belief (precanon+s1)

now, i have a headcanon about why jon doesn’t believe statement givers, and imma lay it all out for you right here. 

when jon was 8, and freshly traumatised, i think he tried to tell someone what happened. beneath all the layers, jon is compassionate, and tries to help people. now, picture this. a kid, one with a history of troubled behaviour and an atypical home life, goes up to someone (a police officer, his carer, a teacher) and tells them a giant spider ate someone. what’s that person, someone who is a rational adult, someone who doesn’t believe in silly things, going to say back? are they going to believe that kid? 

no. no way. they’re going to tell that kid that they’re making up stories, that they had a nightmare, that they should stop making jokes about someone who actually disappeared, jon, you need to be more sensitive about these things. 

now, that kind of dissonance- ‘this did happen, it was real’ and ‘everyone i talk to is telling me it’s not real’- is hard on adults. to a kid? devastating. 

jon, because he’s jon, would have been desperately searching for a way to explain this, and i think the thing he grabs on to is evidence. if he had some evidence of what happened, if he could prove what happened, people would believe him.*

but he doesn’t have evidence. and he resents that, and he resents that so much that by the time he’s an adult he’s settled into a mindset towards the supernatural somewhat akin to ‘i didn’t get believed, but you think you should be believed? what’s so good about you? you think you’re better than me?** fuck you! i don’t believe you!’   this is also a way of keeping himself safe. if the monsters aren’t real, they can’t hurt him.

and then, through s1, that mindset is chipped at. the statement givers start being real people, who come into jon’s office and cry when he dismisses them, and that clearly makes him uncomfortable. martin gives his statement, and martin has evidence. jon knows martin, and knows that he’s a good person, so martin having evidence isn’t likely to be an attack at jon. 

jane prentiss attacks the institute, and then suddenly jon’s shield of denial and anger is ripped away, because the monsters are real, and they can hurt him. 

*would they? i don’t know. people can be very attached to believing that the world is good, and kids are misguided, and there are a hundred thousand ways to explain away a piece of evidence, as jon comes to know well. 

** this ties into jon’s self hatred, as people saying they are better than him kicks him right in the Issues. 

part ii: paranoia (s2)

after prentiss attacks, jon is left floundering. his old I Do Not See It mindset has been smashed to pieces, and underneath all the trauma he’s been brutally suppressing is bubbling up. jon has no real experience in judging threats, because for the last 20 years he’s been burying his head in the sand and yelling he can’t see any threats. so he overcompensates, and assumes everything is a threat. his experience re:not being believed tells him that everyone around him is stupid and wrong and the only person he can rely on is himself.  

so he investigates. he’s convinced that his life is in imminent danger, that everyone around him is plotting to kill him. he doesn’t hold back, because you don’t hold back in a life-or-death scenario.  he knows something is wrong. something is very wrong. he’s sure it’s a threat to him, a threat to his life. but he can’t put a finger on what it is.

this is when his friendship with tim breaks down. i’ll talk about tim in a minute. 

jon spirals, and obsesses, and wrings answers out of the ether until it all falls together. he understands what is wrong, that it’s sasha that wants him dead. or, well, not sasha. he’s been winding up tighter and tighter all series, and he lets loose by striking out, acting for once instead of reacting. it is remarkably easy to buy an axe in central london, after all.

and then, well, that doesn’t go well. 

 part iii: desperation (s3)

after what jon did backfired so badly, he goes to georgie, because he has no other option. and he thinks, what went wrong? and the answer he comes up with is i didn’t know enough.* that’s why it all went wrong, because he didn’t know what he was dealing with. and so the solution is to find out more.

he’s starting to realise that he’s changing.** he wants to find out more about that as well, to control it. 

so he goes and finds out more. or, tries to. he doesn’t have many leads.*** jon is not good at judging threat, and doesn’t know the danger he is putting himself in. he’s stubborn, and locked onto getting more knowledge like a dog and a bone.****

and then he does get more knowledge, but it’s the knowledge that the world is ending, and he’s the only one who can fix it.***** he can’t process his trauma. he doesn’t have time. the world is ending. 

in late s3, jon is desperate. he’s overworking himself. he feels alone: daisy’s at his throat, elias is dangling information over his head, tim... 

we’ll talk about tim later. 

basira doesn’t trust him, georgie isn’t happy with him, melanie’s never liked him. he gets kidnapped for a month, and no one notices. the only person jon has firmly in his corner is martin.****** and he doesn’t have time to talk to martin, because he’s getting kidnapped, and jetting across the world chasing shadows, and desperately, desperately trying not to fuck everything up again. 

and he doesn’t! they build a plan. it’s dangerous, sure, but jon doesn’t even know what that means anymore. his whole life is dangerous. jon going into the unknowing is cautiously, waveringly hopeful. maybe this time it won’t go wrong. this time they know what to do, they know what they’re dealing with. 

and, the tragedy is, it doesn’t go wrong. they save the world. they send elias to prison. it all goes to plan. and tim is dead, and daisy is buried, and jon is lost in dreams. 

*👁️ **👁️ ***👁️ ****👁️  ***** he’s not the only one, of course, there are a whole team of people working on stopping the Unknowing, but jon is the Archivist. he’s the heir to gertrude’s legacy. 

****** this is where they fall in love, after all. which is a good thing, of course, but it adds an extra weight to every interaction they have, guessing and double-guessing how the other feels, until jon actually can’t talk to martin, not how he wants to, because he’s not sure if they’re there yet. (martin is there. jon doesn’t have time to be.) 

see yall next time 

i would like to cover s4 and s5, but this post is 1.5k already, and i’ve covered up to when the fic takes place! next time i will be ranting incoherently about timothy stoker, punctuated by bursts on uncontrollable sobbing. when that’s up, i’ll chuck a link here, and on the author notes of the fic i’m doing this for. see you then!

[radiantmists]

i feel like this is gonna be an unpopular opinion but i sometimes see people talk about grizzop as a sort of paragon of logic and morality and it always bugs me.

bc like. yes, i love grizzop. and i think it’s clear that he is very much trying to be good, and he’s very committed to doing what he sees as the right thing. 

but the same are true for azu and hamid and plenty of characters, and i don’t think he’s any better at moral reasoning than most of the rest of the party. i think the impression that he is comes from his unshakeable confidence and his mastery of what I’ve started to think of as catholic logic. 

(this is fairly stream of consciousness and i’m not gonna tag it bc it’s not gonna be entirely coherent or especially well argued, i’m just getting some thoughts down. but my understanding is that sometimes untagged stuff shows up in search, plus ig i have followers, so feel free to reply and discuss this, i’d actually love that. but not much i say here is stuff i’m super confident about so... please don’t get too offended by my wrongness. just tell me why you feel im wrong without aggression, or move on.)

the first bit is the confidence. we don’t ever see grizzop have a moral crisis in the way that most of the other characters do. I can’t think of a time that he’s appeared to look back on something he’s done and wonder if it was wrong; the closest that occurs to me is when he regretted shooting the guy’s legs off in the cairo bar, but tbh i think that was more of a judgement error where he expected to hurt the person much less than he did. we don’t see him question things like flooding the orc town near damascus or dragging sasha into the politics of ancient rome when she didn’t want to be, and honestly, i think this lack is mostly to do with how short a time he was with the party.

most of the arcs he were present for were focused on hamid and sasha’s growth. where he played respectively the accuser and the protector, both roles that made him look good because they cast him as the arbiter of who was right. 

i think hamid, especially, bought into this in the cairo arc, because i think hamid is very consciously in the process of recalibrating his moral compass at the time and he has a marked tendency to do so based on the people he admires-- and the loudest voice in the room. hamid really doesn’t like people he admires having a problem with him, and he already felt that he wasn’t necessarily a good person, so he was very open to seeing grizzop or azu as the authority on whether he could be good, and since grizzop pushed where azu prevaricated, grizzop was the one who got the final say.

but in the same arc, you can see sasha and azu starting to question grizzop’s moral compass; sasha notices how legalistic grizzop’s judgement is, and that it really ought to condemn her too, while azu takes issue with how brutal grizzop’s methods are (see punching wilde). but neither of them are willing to press the issue with him at that point, and so he’s never really confronted with something that contradicts him.

and notably, grizzop’s confidence comes from the obvious source: he believes that artemis is inviolably good, and he knows she approves of what he’s doing because his powers still work. but there’s an arrogance here, too, a very strong belief in his own moral superiority with the slightest confirmation; look at rome, where he refuses to listen to azu and ed’s assertions that there’s something wrong with the gods there, because he was able to bull through to artemis the one time he tried, so obviously he must just be a better paladin of a better god, right?

grizzop has very strong beliefs and opinions, and he takes whatever route works best to fulfill them-- both in terms of actions, and in terms of logic. take his decision to forgive/endorse hamid near the end of the cairo arc: by his own assertions, people should experience consequences for their actions, and we know he knows what manslaughter is because he brings it up when hamid first starts talking about accidental murder. but where saleh and carter belong in jail because they’re ~bad~, hamid is allowed to continue on because he’s ‘trying to be better’, never mind that that  was hamid’s whole argument about why saleh didn’t deserve to go to jail. plus, saleh’s one goal when he thought he’d killed someone was to resurrect them, which imo makes a lot more sense as a redemptive gesture than going around killing entirely unrelated people. the rules are different because grizzop likes hamid (and probably a bit because ben didn’t want to break the party, but shhh).

this twisting of the logic to fit what you’re trying to prove is what i mean by ‘catholic logic’ (i’m catholic dont @ me); it sounds really good if you don’t think about it too hard, but in fact it’s generally post-facto rationalizations for decisions that have already been made.

grizzop is very enthusiastic about poking holes in other people’s moral reasoning, as we see with apophis, but i think his issue is that he’s got a blind spot when he looks at himself and his own decisions. in grizzop’s world, grizzop is right as long as artemis is still with him and everything else comes after.

now i’m personally of  the opinion that alex doesn’t bother/want to engage with the idea that gods take away powers, post-poseidon nonsense, which if true i sympathize with; doing so is either going to lead to the sort of inscrutability zolf had a meltdown over, or put a player in the weird position of making their character do what alex has decided their god would require or having to entirely reinvent the character without those divine powers.

on another meta level, my understanding is that grizzop  was designed to be very resistant to doubt because of ben’s difficulties playing zolf, so i think he might have been nearly as resistant to growth on that front as bertie was in general, because believing unshakeably that he’s right is a core element of his character. 

but i think if grizzop had lived longer, alex absolutely would have done some hammering at that absolute conviction. that might have come in the form of vesseek and the fact that grizzop is apparently an absentee father; even if he is sending home money, i can’t imagine that not being something that gets mined for angst. 

i also think he would have eventually come into a similar sort of conflict with azu, sasha, or cel (whoever was there) that zolf is in right now, where he absolutely believes that whatever killing he’s committed/intending to commit is not only right but a moral imperative, and they disagree. 

now whatever side you fall on in the barrett debate, i think grizzop ought to be a lot less willing than zolf to say ‘i’m not gonna go through you lot to do it’, not because i’m convinced grizzop would be hugely more willing to physically fight the rest of the team over it, we know that despite his practicality he seems to overlook some ‘’’wobbles’’’ in people he already cares about,  but because zolf is capable of giving up on something in a way that grizzop just isn’t. i dont know how that would play out; chances are, it would get interrupted by a fight, but. who knows.

[rataplani]

“Feet of Clay is a fascinating book, and an enthralling script, and I was very excited when invited to direct it. It is a timely play speaking as it does about identity, freedom and truth, all wrapped inside a fun murder mystery.” 

~ Shaun King, Director’s Notes.

Since there’s been a lot of negativity at the moment about a certain adaptation that doesn’t care about its source material, I thought I’d share something more positive. 

So in case there are any Discworld fans in Queensland who don’t know this, there’s this little indie theatre called the Brisbane Arts Theatre that’s been working through all the Discworld books over a number of years now (also atm it’s doing an adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s Dodger).

A few weeks back I went to see their production of Feet of Clay and it was pretty good! (and run in line with QLD Covid policy) As it was weeks ago I don’t remember all the details, but one thing I found pretty hilarious was that for soundtrack moments they generally used music that sounded like they’d gotten it from 80s cop comedies. Also I think they did alright with Cheery’s character arc as basically a transgender woman’s coming out story, though I'm hesitatingly ambivalent about the few moments of Cis Awkward Supportiveness(tm) from other characters on stage (though importantly the laughs were directed at them, not Cheery) and of course there were Carrot’s dwarf culture gender issues for a bit until he got his prejudices sorted out.

Although I knew the plot coming in, it was still fun to watch the mystery unfold, and it was funny how over-the-top blatantly evil Dragon was in his introduction scene just for the drama. Dorfl’s storyline cut out the Dorfl vs All The Priests bit and most of his run through the town, but was still good (and I like the design differences between him and the King Golem you can see in the photo below). Overall it was quite funny and a pretty faithful adaptation; can’t wait until next year.

Adaptation-wise, there were a couple of parts where they were able to use the visual element through a couple of physical comedy jokes (Vetinari: I’m Fine Now *passes out five seconds later*) or using props to point out how Carry’s new crest looks very similar to the Assassin’s Guild crest)

On a meta level, a few characters had their gender changed for cast reasons, including ‘Dr’ (Lord) Downey (played by a lady who I swear could play Susan when they get to her books), Drumknott, and Arthur Carrey (the candle maker), who became Artemis Carry to keep the “Art Brought Forth the Candle” pun intact.

Also not only did the guy who played Carrot played Salzella last year when they did Maskerade, but Vetinari’s actor doubled as Nobby so I got a double serve of mental whiplash there.

Here’s the cast photo! (Due to Covid restrictions a lot of cast members played two or three roles, so not all characters are shown, but I’ve bolded the ones that are)

Cast List left to right (then front row left to right):

Simon Lyell as Dorfl Daniel Baker as King Golem & Detritus Julian Hobson as Dragon King of Arms John Grey as Lord Vetinari & Corporal Nobbs Isobel Smith as Doughnut Jimmy, Mr Slant, & ‘French Maid’ Caitlin Smith as Drumknott, Mildred Easy, & Pardessus (of the College of Heralds) Paul Fear as Gerhardt Sock & Wengel Raddley Lucette Eggleton as Dr Downey, Prebble Skink & Mrs Kanacki Steve Durber as Constable Visit & Mr Boggis Daniel Grey as Commander Vimes Stuart Fisher as Sergeant Colon Alastair Wallace as Father Tubelcek, Mr Hopkinson, & Professor Whiteface Samantha Mclaughlin as (Artemis) Carry Tallulah M. E. Gray as Rosie Palm (and Assistant Director) Amanda Lay as Constable (Cheery) Littlebottom Sasha Barclay as Constable Angua Callum Pulsford as Captain Carrot

[gerrydelano]

Hi! I just read your BPD analysis of Martin (very interesting). Do you have any particular examples in mind with regard to lapses in memory? You mention that a few times in the document, but I couldn't remember any instances of it in canon.

hey there! thank you, i’m glad you liked it :’-) under a cut because not only do i like to hide my rambles like a dainty victorian woman with a fan but this actually did become something, whoops.

i’ll start with the example that angel @ofdreamsanddoodles​ brought up: 

“martin is the one to bring up that notsasha’s monster form looks like sasha, but when tim brings it up later on, he immediately shuts it down as impossible despite having met both jane and michael at that time. i think he does say in 186 that forgettings easier tho.”

honestly, the strongest examples of the lapses in memory are MAG 170 and 186! MAG 170 especially. the fact that those two episodes are so strongly rooted in the core of martin’s character, the type of stuff he can’t mask or talk himself out of, the stuff he might not have even fully realized about himself until it bled into this setting made out of his deepest fears and desires, really speaks volumes about what had to have been going on in his head for a long time before the apocalypse began.

bear with me on this, but domains and the manifestation of someone’s avatar powers remind me a little bit of the stands in jjba, which are “a manifestation of one’s fighting spirit.” whatever deep-set trait, recurrent thought process, hidden insecurity, unshakeable trauma or grotesque desire that could create a stand would be the same thing that creates these things here, too; those parts of a person.

take the way the distortion manifests as an example between when they’re playing off of michael versus helen! i said in this meta that michael shelley’s decades-long gaslighting trauma would have played a huge role in the distortion’s modus operandi when he was its primary baseline, because when he became a part of it, that experience — though he may not have even realized that’s what he went through, even when he finally got to see a glimpse of the real gertrude on the way to sannikov land — influenced the way the thing that killed him would then take shape.

i can say flat out i don’t think there actually are many direct examples of martin forgetting events/information in canon! not in the classic way, at least. but what i saw more of is the implication of an issue with emotional object permanence, and the fear of forgetting. often, when you fear something like this that deeply, it’s because you have a suspicion that you’re already doing it and when you do have any form of memory loss? no, you’re not always gonna remember that you forgot something.

i think i said in the doc that his memory-related stuff is most likely intended on jonny’s part to be connected more to his mother, and the fear of her illness being genetic. watching that happen to her and knowing what it did to him, of course he would fear inflicting that on someone, and that’s just another justification he might have made to himself about isolating “for the good of everyone else.”

(i say “i think” because, without looking to check, this would be my own memory lapses in action so i’ll leave it as an example: i’m pretty sure, but i can’t be sure, even though i wrote it so recently and had been thinking about it so much. memory lapses don’t have to just be pure, black-space amnesia! it can just be a little foggy, it can happen in a bunch of different ways all at once, and a lot of the time you’ll never know. that’s the nature of the symptom! it blows.)

there’s also martin splitting on tim and then sort of... not acknowledging it again, almost like it didn’t really happen, could be an example of trying to ignore his mistakes or it just kind of stopped existing in his head, sort of like how tim’s worm trauma stopped existing in his head because he was so focused on jon’s. like, it wasn’t even that he looked at him and said “i don’t care about your trauma and am choosing to pretend it didn’t happen,” he really seemed to straight up not even recall the real shape of the events that took place because he got so wrapped up in the version of it that would have made him the perfect caretaker to jon’s wounded protagonist.

emotional object permanence issues would basically be all the times he had to make assumptions about his feelings on things based on what he may or may not remember certain sensations feeling like. it’s basically like how a baby forgets something exists when it isn’t right in front of them, only it’s feelings, or the fact that someone loves you, or a bad thing somebody did to you that goes away the moment they’re nice again. splitting is often a sort of memory lapse in and of itself, through that. and martin definitely seemed to split more than a few times in canon.

so, unfortunately, this might not have been what you were looking for! i’ll admit again flat out that there aren’t, like... things i can pull directly in neat little screencaps of him going “wait, what? are you sure?” about things everyone else knows definitely happened, because it probably wasn’t intentionally written out like this & also even if it was, memory lapses aren’t that cut and dry anyway! i hope this helps even a little bit. weirdly, i had fun writing this!

[ghostbustermelanieking]

oddly specific memories i have of listening to tma

in honor of the finale, and because i am a sentimental asshole, i bring you this potentially uninteresting and completely pointless list. i'm gonna miss this show a lot

half my original reasoning for listening to the podcast was to motivate me to walk on the treadmill. this did not work. but i did it the first time, when i was going through the trailers and anglerfish, and i remember the room where my dad keeps the treadmill is really dark and the spooky chanting sort of freaked me out

after the treadmill, i ended up listening to the bulk of the first four episodes on the couch, and halfway through i let my oldest cat, winnie, who always lived outside (i know, i was very against actually keeping her outside) in the house. and she jumped up on the couch with me, which she literally never did. (she was very grumpy and not super affectionate.) i had that cat since i was five, and she passed last june, and i really miss her. quarantine kind of gave us the opportunity to hang out with her a lot, because we were home so much. so i'm glad these memories are kind of intersected in my mind. (below: a pic i have from that day.)

my friend sarah relistened along with me the first time around, which was extraordinarily sweet of her, and also led to some interesting interactions. for example: she forgot when it was revealed that sasha was dead, so she accidentally spoiled that for me when i asked when the others would find sasha (and i spent all of season 2 just like. anxiously vibrating over this fact). she also made this post, when i was still in like early first half of season 1, and my immediate thought was "oh no martin is dead." i hadnt even MET martin at this point

back in early quarantine, my mom had this rule that we had to do something new every day (to keep away the depression... ha ha). anyways, all i wanted to do in my free time was sit around and listen to tma (and also watch this show i was into on netflix), so i came up with some lame excuses, one of which was "i'll give myself a pedicure." this led to the memory i ultimately associate with mag 56 (trevor herbert 2) being me sitting out on our roof balcony thing, giving myself a horrendous pedicure

another time, my family wanted to go play tennis, and they brought me along and brought a hammock for me to lay in. there was this excess material from the hammock, and the sun was in my eyes, so i ended up pulling it up and over me to block the sun and creating this ridiculous hammock cocoon thing. one of the episodes i listened to that day? "tucked in."

before i ever started the show, my friend sarah stayed with me while i was pet sitting. i remember when she got there, she'd just listened to 150 and was telling me how freaky it was (she was still trying to get me into the show), and she was like "of course we're staying on a CUL DE SAC." (that was also the weekend she watched us for the first time and was very upset because i slept through the whole thing, which is scary when you're staying somewhere by yourselves.) anyways, i spent the whole show waiting for the scary cul de sac episode

while i was listening to the show for the first time, my step-dad (an artist) started painting an EYE on the door downstairs near my bathroom. a fucking EYE. he didn't finish it til i had finished the show. but still weird!!

i binged like 12 episodes in one day to finish season 4, which is not impressive at all, but it's still my personal record. i just remember staying up late in my dark bedroom (til like.... 11 i'm lame and i go to bed early), listening to like 158 & 159 & 160 and just being knocked on my ass by how good it all was... i was SUPER spoiled by this point, through my own fault, and i knew exactly what was coming, but actually experiencing it was nuts

the second week i listened live was 167, where the public release was delayed by a couple hours by accident. i spent like 20 minutes refreshing spotify, thinking it was broken, before going on tumblr and seeing what the deal was. (and 167 remains one of my favorites of s5 because i remember just going "thank god it was worth the wait.")

this one car ride where sarah and i made some of our friends listen to the first three episodes of the show. it was the middle of the night and we were just like blasting down i40 listening to anglerfish and do not open etc

the night the what the ghost episode publicly dropped was the night after my graduation, and i was sleeping out on the couch in the living room so my grandfather could sleep in a bed. it was super dark, and i am a jumpy person, and i Remember being mildly disgusted with myself because the corny sound effects were actually freaking me out. (i think i mightve actually seen something weird that night, maybe, but that's another story.)

the weekend my parents moved me into college, we couldn't get the cable in the house we were staying in, and we were all sitting around doing nothing, so i jokingly suggested starting tma with them, and they were like ok grace. my step-dad promptly fell asleep and my mom zoned out -- which is probably good, she doesn't like horror and she's super claustrophobic, so it's probably better we never got to do not open

my brief roommate in college talked about how she was into those youtube channels where people just read scary stories, so of course i was like try tma out. so she listened to the first episode on her own, and we were out one night, and she started mag 02 while i went into an ice cream place. she was into it (she kept being like open it, ya pussy) and wanted to keep listening while we went home, and even back in our room. i had only been in town for a couple weeks, and barely knew my way around, but i also didn't want to turn the gps on and be interrupted every five seconds. so i tried to find our way back on my own. it took the entirety of mag 03, and into mag 04, before i did it. so now i will forever associate across the street with all those wrong turns i took in a dark, semi unfamiliar city, trying to get back to our college without a gps

the day of the early drop for 179 was the day i moved back home from college -- a five hour drive by myself. i ended up listening to it on the final stretch of the trip, when i was super tired and it was dark and i knew it'd probably be a crazy episode. just me full blasting down i40, drinking an energy drink (which i never do) through a hole punched in the top, listening to daisy's death

186 early dropped the day after initial u.s. election day (when we still didn't know anything). my mom had set up a "watch party" in the living room with these giant air mattresses, and we all sort of spent the day crowded around the TV watching the numbers. not much of a memory, but i remember sitting on that air mattress and listening to martin's monologue in the midst of that messy week

i had a virtual therapy appointment on the day of 187's early drop, and my dad was home, so i drove to an empty parking lot to do the session in some privacy. i was trying to listen to the episode before the session started, so i ended up listening to the last half sitting in my car, in the pouring rain, just staring at my radio in shock (187 remains one of my favorite s5 episodes)

my friend sarah had just come home for winter break the day 189 dropped, and we decided to listen together, just like driving around in circles drinking coffee and listening and speculating on whether or not that was really martin

i started my relisten right after thanksgiving and was just kind of blowing through fast as i could through the whole of december. i had to go back to college to empty out my dorm, and i went to the beach after, and i ended up listening to mag 11 while just like walking around in circles in the tide pools. the closer it got to christmas, the more christmassy i wanted to keep things, so i would like. listen in the mornings and turn on one of those Netflix fireplaces and get all cozy

my other friend went with me on a mini bagel road trip in december, and he was still trying to get caught up, so we listened to mag 169, 170, and 171 on the drive home. (by this point, i was accustomed enough to s5 and smiting scenes to automatically reach for the volume controls when jude perry and jared hopworth died.)

when i relistened to mag 47, i was sitting with my cat beezus. i paused the episode to write this big long meta, so i was in a different headspace when i pressed play again. jon immediately yelled for sasha and i immediately jumped, and beezus gave me a searing glare and just got up and left

i relistened to piecemeal while i was cooking, which i thought was kind of funny and also disgusting

after christmas, i got into the habit of bringing my cat georgia into my room in the mornings, and she'd crawl under the covers with me while i listened to tma

one story i've always liked to tell from my first listen is how when i first listened to the meat arm grinder episode, my dad asked me to help him cook hamburgers later that day and explained how hamburgers are ground up (to my disgust). i hit meat grinder in my relisten and um. you'll never fucking guess what i made for lunch that day

so i had all these arbitrary rules for myself when i started tma last april, and i've broken like all of them. i started listening to tma while virtually working -- you just pull it up on your computer and it works. (i got the life scared out of me when one of my coworkers started talking over the podcast, wondering who it was that had walked into jon's office and why he wasn't reacting and why i didn't remember it.) i also started listening a lot while driving, which led to several long meta posts i wrote being typed up in a parking lot somewhere

i spent the entirety of 194 anxious-cuddling georgia. (i tried to do this for 198 and then didn't have any anxiety to cuddle her over.) i fully plan on doing this for 200, where i am sure i will need it again

my favorite place to listen to tma probably ended up being the roof room at my mom's, and unless something goes awry, this is where i will listen to the finale. (with georgia, of course.)

this list is super uninteresting, like i said, but here it is. i'm gonna miss this show a lot. i can't wait to return to it, later in life, and make all new listening memories in the process