I would never delete my fics
I got linked to a reddit thread today where people were being advised to download my mortifying ordeals/Buddie fics, since apparently "now that I'm a BuckTommy shipper", I might be "petty" and delete all my Buddie fics.
So. I'll move past the complicated feelings it gives me to have people hoarding my fics while actively shitting on me as a person (and seemingly not even telling me that they enjoyed my work, although in fairness that could just be a difference in usernames.) That's the nature of fanfic, fandom, and putting things out there on the internet and I accept that.
But I do want to reassure people that I would never delete my fics. I still have the cringy-as-fuck Harry Potter fics I wrote in high school up; believe me those would be first on the chopping block if I was inclined to delete my work. And all of my 9-1-1 fics hold a special place in my heart, but none more than the mortifying ordeals series, which consumed basically a full year of my life and reminded me why I love writing. Hell, I got engaged while writing the final chapters of I once was lost. That fic is indelibly tied to my life now.
And look... I don't think it really matters, nor should I have to explain and justify what I do and don't enjoy about a show or fandom, but this whole experience has upset me more than it probably should have and I can't help but want to get it off my chest anyway.
My favourite thing about this show is the found family feels. I either love or am at least intrigued by every single character that has appeared. You'll notice that family is the central theme of every story I write, whether the story is Gen, Buddie, or BuckTommy.
Because yes, the idea of BuckTommy and how that plays into the family themes of the show has intrigued me and captured my muse.
I've also said before that I didn't think Season 7 left Buddie in a great place in terms of romantic relationship potential - in my opinion, the ghost of Shannon would be an absolutely massive barrier to them getting together right now. The post season 7 Buddie fics have also heavily featured character bashing, which isn't something I generally enjoy seeing, and infidelity, which I really don't like seeing romanticised especially since I've had a partner cheat on me.
So yes, I've distanced myself from the post-S7 Buddie fandom because I just don't enjoy the pervasive negativity I've seen and the way that cheating and violence is suddenly celebrated by a significant subset of the fandom.
That does not mean I've given up on Buddie altogether. I still have a whole list of pre-S7 buddie fics in my to-be-read list that I've been making my way through and 2 out of my 5 WIPs are Buddie fics (both in the mortifying ordeals 'verse, just to make it even clearer that I'm not at all interested in deleting that series.)
But two of those 5 are BuckTommy, because as I said above, their relationship was intriguing to me and it captured my muse.
I don't think those opinions make me some kind of betrayer, or that they inherently make me a "petty" person but I guess I just didn't realise that not-exclusively-shipping-Buddie was such a High Crime in this fandom.
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August feels. Blurry. The Thursday of the year. Of the summer? IT feels like the year. I managed to fill out my entire Summer Bingo Board for the library. I haven't heard back about winning any prizes, but I had fun and that's what counts. Bingo made me branch out of my comfort zone which was really neat. Can't say I'll do it more often, a comfort zone is comfortable, but I do enjoy reading something Different every now and then. Did some crafty things this month, which has been a lot of fun, and I've been Smart and Wise and started on holiday gifts so I'm not scrambling in December. It's called personal growth~
The Bone Season: Tenth Anniversary Edition by Samantha Shannon ⭐⭐ - I'm salty about this. Yes, it's an improvement, but it still sucks. The world and magic is so neat, but we're stuck with a plot Like That. Made me do an actual full review on goodreads and on tumblr if you want all the details.
The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon ⭐⭐- I kept my original rating because honestly I felt the same as I did years ago. It's worse than the updated version, but it's the core of the novel that needs changing. Props to this one at least for making Paige asexual. I do not want to see this book on ace book lists ever again.
The Adventure Zone: The Suffering Game by The McElroys and Carey Pietsch ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- One of the best installments so far. The art is AMAZING, I love the meta they're doing with Griffin and The Hunger, it was a little rushed and I'm bummed we aren't getting a full adaptation of The Stolen Century, but this is still right up there with Petals to the Metal for me!
The Hollow Places by T Kingfisher ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - T Kingfisher has never written a bad novel to me, but this one did take me longer than her others to really click. The audio narrator had some inflections that didn't work for my brain, but once they went through the door, things got Weird and picked up. These two made so many stupid decisions, but it still felt in character! Big Stan Pines energy coming from that uncle.
Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves by Nicola Twilley ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - For book bingo! Got me a square for Read Nonfiction, Read Something About The Environment, and Read Something You Found from Book Page (a magazine advertising new and upcoming books). AND it had a local connection. I learned a lot, it was really neat and didn't feel like I was reading a textbook. It was very engaging, and has me looking at grocery stores differently. It was hard to find, though, because Frostbite is a very common name in the urban fantasy romance genre.
The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Oof. Very heavy, very creepy, very GOOD. Did not expect the many graphic dog deaths, but that was on me. Technically I WAS warned, my brain just didn't register "SGJ dogs are not safe" as "The dog dies in this one". The audio narrator was very good, but I had to listen to the opening a couple times to really get everything to click. It might've been easier had I" read it myself, but the cadence of the narrator really added to the story.
The Last Heir to Blackwood Library by Hester Fox ⭐ - Wow when was the last time I had a true one star read. (Actually not too long ago. It was The Novice.) This wanted so badly to be The Haunting of Hill House, but if you want another book like Hill House, just read Starling House. We missed what actually happened in the book because the main character was losing her memory. If you want that, go read Harrow the Ninth. This was a mess and I hated it.
On that note, I need to read something to recharge my faith in books, so MURDERBOT TIME! That's my only reading plan for September, but now I'm feeling Rushed because the year is almost over and I still have about half of my reading goals list left. Whoops. I'd also like to at least attempt some of the Swordtember prompts, if not do all of them. That looks like a lot of fun! So! Onward we go!
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BRO THEY LITERALLY DID IT AGAIN
I was talking this morning about how the og Titans were so off balance that they had to keep removing Donna and Wally from the narrative just to make it work because those two were WAY too overpowered for the typical Titan mission.
And do you wanna know what they did in today's Nightwing? Huh? Do ya? They, you guessed it, removed Wally and Donna from the narrative. But that's not all folks! Nope! Starfire got removed as well!
Honestly, I'm surprised Raven managed to still be in this thing. Cause it'd go Wally, Raven, Kori, Donna in terms of firepower.
Man... They weren't even clever about it. Wally was gone the entire issue with no explanation. He checked the perimeter of a jail once. That was it.
Donna and Kori got relegated to babysitting duty while the other Titans (sans Wally for no explainable reason) did the actual plot and went on a Heist in Hell.
This is concerning because this man is writing the new Titans series. The og series suffered because Donna and Wally were on a different level and the writers didn't know how to compensate for that so they kept knocking them out at the start of every issue. And now the same thing is happening.
Taylor doesn't know how to power balance. The best Justice League runs deal with assorted power levels by having different roles for the heroes to play. Ollie isn't on the front lines fighting General Zod with Clark and Diana. Hal doesn't tag along on stealth missions with Dinah and Bruce. Different heroes have different power levels and different abilities. Narratively, you have to juggle that.
And it's hard! I get that. It isn't easy. But I'm going to be honest, if a writer can't power balance then I don't want them writing the Titans series.
Because having half the cast drop out of the plot for no reason other than 'they would solve the plot too fast' is not good writing.
And I'm sorry. I'm going to say it. It's because Taylor is power scaling everything back for Nightwing. It doesn't take the entire goddamn Titans team to take out Blockbuster or to take out a single shape shifter. For some reason Taylor has this fascination with Grayson being the best and smartest Titan who can be the only one who solves issues, so every bad guy is difficult but doable for Nightwing to defeat.
It's incredibly annoying and it makes Nightwing seem super unlikable which is... I'm flabbergasted at that because it's Nightwing. How the hell do you make him unlikable?? But this is it. I've found it. This is the limit . Mary Sue Nightwing has no place in my heart.
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Junicrane/Starstruck Ramble
I will not be brief, all under the cut
To clear some things right off the bat:
No corpse, no proof with Juniper. Obligatory this is set in a canon where he's alive and adjacent to the agency in some way.
Reggie & Juniper are just gay to me, but I don't mind any interpretation of their sexuality
The games are set in 1967/68 to me (based on a couple bits in game) which is before it was legal to be gay in America at least (1971), which is relevant to how I interpret canon as being somewhat grounded in reality, despite unrealistic elements.
This is just an insane amount of headcanons/elements of and AU all culminated into one post. I will talk about some headcanons like they're just facts because they are established in my head, and it saves me over explaining literally everything, however I will explain some parts a little bit for clarity.
Alright. Actual beginning of the ramble:
Juniper is a character to me who had gotten so lost in his job as an actor and a social presence that in the end his whole life revolved around that 'role'. Because of this, by the time he's put into the situation where he's around the Agency, he basically knows nothing about himself, though he doesn't realise at first. Furthermore, what little identity he had has changed in so many ways. He's no longer a beloved famous actor in the prominence of public light, he's legally dead and he tarnished his career just before he was supposed to die, with the bonus of that making him lose the majority of his estate. From that, he also has horrific facial scarring from the electrical burns from literally having his face fried. I believe a friend of mine made a post about this a while ago (I also think they were the first to think it up also), but, to me, Juniper has a permanent trimmer in his right arm (aka his dominant hand) from the electrical current and it is messing with his nervous system.
All in all, he's not doing great, but he's too proud to admit that he's not doing great, because if anything, what's left of his ego is all he has as a defense since he's deep in unfamiliar water.
Before ending up around the agency (I have multiple interpretations of this, so I'm just going to bring it up generally), he'd never actually seen Reggie, and his only impression of him is a single voicemail, which was his only reference he had to later impersonate him. Juniper probably has very little feelings other than the ones he projects onto him because of Phoenix and that, at the very least, he's physically attracted to Reggie to some degree (that's like the beginning of how everything else would tumble into place in this sort of interpretation at least).
And on Crane's side? His feelings towards Juniper are probably very intense and muddled. On the one hand, he adores musical theatre, and that's his now ex-favourite actor. The thought of just casually being around him blows the bit of fanboy in him away at first because THAT'S the GUY, plus the inklings of a celebrity crush which still poke at him. And then there's the rational side of him, which knows Juniper has committed absolute atrocities on the side of Zoraxis, and hates him for that. Then there's how much Juniper comes off as an asshole at first because he refuses to cooperate with anything the Agency tried to put in place. He finds Juniper endlessly frustrating, and yet he's stuck working with him since, afterall, he's the one who knows the Agency's history with Juniper the best. I imagine him acting a lot like how he does IEYTD 1 around Juniper.
At this point, I'm just describing the pitch for a romcom.
I think the start of their relationship with one another largely started with Juniper trying to wind Crane up. It was a way of getting his attention, and I don't think Juniper knows why he's so dead set on that at first, because I don't think he realises he has a crush on 'this grump' at first. (I think that's actually the fun part about these two, because it's almost like a role reversal of the celebrity crush dynamic. This ex-big name actor has a TERRIBLE crush on an average joe and it is KILLING HIM.) But of course the Agency keeps them together because Juniper is at least conversing with Crane, so it's a start.
Through one way or another, they actually get talking casually, at least mildly at first. It takes Juniper a long time to fully deconstruct the wall he's built, and the thing is, Crane isn't the one trying to deconstruct it, at least at first, because yeah, Juniper realises if he wants Reggie to actually like him in any way, he can't keep winding him up. So they talk. Small talk at first, something rhythmic and almost easy to keep to a script. And over time that turns into actual conversations. Genuine ones in which Reggie rips out the occasional one of his jokes which Juniper is endlessly endeared about. The way he smiles just before he makes them, like he wants to chuckle at what he's about to say before he says it. That's probably when Juniper realised that he does have some vague crush on him, and that it wasn't going away.
This is what kickstarts John I can't-buy-you-things-to-impress-you-so-acts-of-service-it-is Juniper to do little things for him. It mostly starts off as him trying to make Reggie his tea how he likes it. However, the nerve damage in his arm makes that hard, as the weight of the kettle and trying to pour is hard all of a sudden. And he refuses to accept that, so he tries for a very long while. Long enough that Crane would go to investigate what was going on. And when he does see Juniper leaning over a cup with the kettle as he uneasily tries to pour it, and when Crane asks Juniper responds so matter-of-fact that his intention is nothing but genuine. And it catches Reggie off guard because Juniper hadn't done anything like that up to that point, and his very apparent vulnerability is so clearly on show.
It shifts something between them.
From that point on, conversations are longer, more familiar. Both of their attitudes soften, and Reggie makes more jokes. Juniper learns how to better use his left hand while strengthening his right back to a point where it could be used again. Slowly, they're both spending time with one another not because they have to, but just because they can. Little bits at first, not too far outside what they already were doing, but those little bits turned into long bits to a point where the other person's company was genuinely desirable.
As time passes, Juniper probably realises that he doesn't genuinely know much about himself or what hobbies he's into, because he never really had the time when he got big, and his home life in his youth wasn't bad, but it wasn't picturesque. I think Reggie would pick up on it, and absolutely try to introduce him to some things he's into. Some things stick, other things don't (corn husking very much stays Reggie's passion, and John will go with him sometimes because it's him, but it's not something he strongly cares for). Crane introduces him to a lot of music, and it's something that becomes a staple between them, with tracks they listen to more than others (tragically, I know relatively little about 60s music so I couldn't really say what). Occasionally they dance, never anything intense, think slow dancing, but the closeness is nice.
Through all of it, Juniper is battling the worst crush of his life, and he can't stand it, because I think he struggles to read people since he doesn't have anything like a script or a director to refer back to, so he has no idea if Reggie likes him back or if he's just desperate for that to be true. I think because of that any sort of confession between them would be incredibly raw, not only because of the time they live in making it hard for them to be truthful about how they love, but because it's a complete show of Juniper who's worked to be this better person. I don't exactly know how that would go, mainly because I don't have one set version of their dynamic, this post is just a generalisation of main consistent points.
Reggie does like him back, because he's gotten used to Juniper being just this guy, not a figure in the public eye, not a Zoraxis lackey, and not any sort of Agency operative (despite being under their care to some degree). He's someone he genuinely cares for, because they've given one another the time of day to learn one another, and I think because Reggie was a field agent, he was a lot better at reading Juniper than Juniper was at reading him. Eventually Juniper's company becomes something he could see around him for the rest of his life, and I think he accepts that he likes Juniper a lot more gracefully.
I think any affection directed at Juniper would at first be met with him feeling a little muddled. Reggie was a very physically affectionate person when he could be, and sure the initial flirting with one another came with the occasional little touches, but everything now was so deeply intentional. I also don't think Juniper would almost ever get over the novelty of being able to kiss him, or many other gestures, because it made the fact that they were together so very real, and it was great. I do think it comes easier to Reggie, and it's a big way of showing how much he cares, so it's important for Juniper to try and show it back because he knows how much it means to the other.
I like the idea of them eventually living with one another, too. I think Juniper would have always had a quiet little daydream of sorts where he does just live a domestic quiet life, and he can with Reggie (well, as close as they can get between the Agency and Zoraxis always being at odds), and he loves that, and he loves him, and it's immense.
I think they cook for one another a lot, it helps Juniper work on his dexterity in a controlled environment, which means a lot because it's a huge point of insecurity (that and his scars). He does improve, and Crane is proud of that and shows it and it's great. I also think they'd probably cook together too, because they can deal with being in the kitchen together and they work well with one another. It's probably a good way for them to unwind because over time they can do it in relative silence.
As I said before, I also think music is a staple in their household, and that Reggie listens to things on vinyl almost all of the time because he likes the background noise. Sometimes Juniper will catch him chuntering along to the music which he finds endlessly endearing. I wouldn't put it past his dramatic ass to also join in to fluster Reggie, but I also don't think Reggie would mind that terribly because Juniper has listened to the music enough to know the lyrics, and that's huge to him.
I don't think they are without rough patches, no relationship is, but I think the good part about them is that they're willing to talk about it (... eventually). They're used to long conversations, and while they're often less fun conversations, they're needed and they know that, and it works out.
Alright. I think I'm done for now. I haven't mentioned everything, but this definitely got the worst of it out of my system. If you ever want to hear any specific thoughts my ask box is open but other than that, behold my general dynamic for these two which has been festering in my head for years. I think they're great
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