#it makes me so sad to see some corners of the tolkien fandom feel like

[rohavon]

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[oldtowrs]

SWEETHEART - TENTH DOCTOR

BASED OFF: the song “arms” by the paper kites and an edit i saw where the tenth doctor said “hey! there we go sweetheart!” 

SUMMARY: the reader and the doctor are in an established relationship and the reader is having a terrible week and when she comes home, the doctor sees she’s near to sobbing and fluff ensues. 

A/N: hey! so this past month or so has been shit for me and so i really just needed some comfort and i thought, why not start a new fandom and write some angst/comfort with the doctor! so here this is, i guess. please don’t let it flop. also! i am on winter break now so i should be able to write. feel free to send requests for anything other than tolkien bc i already have a lot to write for that fandom. anyway, gif not mine, creds, to the owner and please enjoy!

WARNINGS: mentions of not feeling good enough and feeling out of control.

WORDS: ~1.3k

The Doctor sat on the metal flooring of the TARDIS fiddling with some broken trinket he had found on the outer reaches of the Triangulum galaxy. The short bursts of the whirring of his sonic echoed throughout the silent space. He ran a hand through the messy locks of his hair, making them stick up in an even wilder arrangement than before.

He was trying his best to distract himself with the thing, but thoughts of you kept invading his mind. Sweet memories from journeys where your lives had not been at risk and ones in which the two of you had run faster than ever before accumulated and made him smile. He recalled your smiles and the amazement glistening in your eyes as you looked at him and the many wonders of the universe alike. Your sweet laugh rang faintly in his head and his hearts warmed upon remembering the feeling of his arms around your waist, with his face partially buried in your hair as the two of you overlooked the scenery of some far-away planet together. 

His thoughts were interrupted when the TARDIS let out a short series of beeps and whirs that indicated you were home. A flicker of excitement filled him as he ran through a list of all the places he wanted to take you. But when you didn’t walk into the TARDIS that was parked quite literally in the middle of your living room, the Doctor left the trinket and stood to find you. 

He opened the doors to the TARDIS and a faint little squeak of her old hinges sounded as the Doctor began searching for you. 

He shoved his hands into the pockets of his tan overcoat and walked in the direction of your bedroom. He heard movements and soft sniffles from behind the closed door of your room and a small smile formed as he knocked softly.

“Y/N! Love, you in there?” He asked, his voice filling the mostly silent apartment. 

“Yeah,” a soft squeak of a reply sounded, and the Doctor thought it sounded rather small and sad. 

“Sweetheart, are you okay? Can I come in?”

Again, the small “yeah” was his only answer and the Doctor opened the door softly.

You were sitting on your bed, cross-legged, with your back to the Doctor and your face in your hands. The Doctor instantly noticed that your shoulders shook gently and the soft, near-silent sobs pained his hearts as he realized you were crying. 

Instantly feeling drawn to you, the Doctor hurried to your side, sitting on the edge of the bed. His hands flew to yours, his fingertips brushing over your skin as he pried your hands from your face with all the gentleness and care in the world. The touch was gentle and sweet but the Doctor’s eyebrows were drawn together in worry and his eyes were filled with sorrow as he set sights on your closed eyes that leaked torrents of tears. 

“Hey, what are the tears for, sweetheart?” he said, a touch of humor in his tone as he tried a playful approach.

The Doctor’s hands found your damp cheeks, his fingers delving into the soft roots of your hair as his thumbs wiped at the trails of tears on your face. Another sob ripped through you and the Doctor felt a few tears of his own filling his eyes at your sadness. 

“Hey,” he said even softer, trying for a more kind approach this time “look at me, love.”

Your damp eyelashes fluttered open and your watery eyes met his almost immediately, sending a small shooting pain through him. His thumbs brushed over the curves of your cheekbones and the Doctor poured as much as love as he could into the minute gesture. 

“There she is,” he said with one of his small lopsided grins. “Now what’s wrong, love?”

“Just a rough week,” you said in a quivering voice, your eyes fixating on your hands that fidgeted in your lap.

“Oh, I know you better than that,” the Doctor said, pressing a gentle kiss to the tip of your nose. “A rough week doesn’t make my Y/N cry this much.”

The Doctor pulled you close to him so that you sat in between his legs, your head on his chest, and his arms cuddling you closed to him. He pressed a kiss to your temple, picked up one of your hands and held it in his own gently. He saw the corner of your lips twitch into a sort of half smile and it warmed his hearts. 

At least we’re getting somewhere, the Doctor thought.

“Now,” he said, “tell me all about it.”

“It’s just a bunch of things happened and they all make me feel so stupid and worthless,” you started. “I feel like I’m not good enough for anything in my life and I just feel so out of control.”

More tears spilled over and your voice became sadder and sadder as you explained all that had happened to you in the short couple of days that you had been away from the Doctor. And the whole while, the Doctor sat and listened, kissing away your tears when they fell and squeezing your hand and hugging you closer as a sign that he was still there, listening to you and loving you with all his being. 

“I just don’t know what to do,” you mumbled. 

“Well,” the Doctor said, “you’re good enough for me. In fact, you’re so much more than good enough. You’re perfect.”

You nodded and snuggled closer into him, tucking your head under his chin. His hand found the back of your head and he pressed a kiss to the very top of your hair before he continued to sift through the silken H/C strands.

He waited a moment before continuing.

“You’re brilliant and kind and your smile is so bright it outshines the Proxima Phoronus galaxy itself,” the Doctor said as he untucked your head from his chest so he could gaze into the E/C of your eyes and pour all of his love for you, his lovely companion, into them. 

“And besides,” the Doctor teased, his signature smile lighting up his face “I’ve never met a better, sweeter companion. I’ve got all of time and space and there’s nowhere and no when I’d want to be if you aren’t there with me.”

At that, your eyebrows twitched upwards and your sweet smile spread across your lips and a warm blush covered your features. You then wrapped your arms around the Doctor and buried your face into the warmth of his chest once more, his hearts fluttering with absolute love and adoration beneath you.

“Hey!” The Doctor laughed quietly. “There we go, sweetheart.”

You smiled into his chest at the endearment, the love from his hearts and his age-old soul filling your singular heart with more warmth than ever before. You loved the Doctor. You loved him with all of your being and he loved you back with just as much devotion and care. 

You pulled out of the hug, the wide smile still spread upon your beautiful features. 

“Just look at you,” the Doctor hummed, his hands finding your cheeks again. He took in the subtle pink tones in your cheeks and the deeper ones of your supple lips, the reinvigorated spark in your eyes, the beauty in the way the corners of your eyes crinkled slightly and the curves of your cheeks plumped with your smile. He took it all in and he swore he had never seen something or someone more beautiful than you, happy and content in his arms. “You’re beautiful, sweetheart.”

His hearts burst with happiness as the blush on your cheeks deepened and the time lord leaned down and kissed you with so much passion and love that it seemed to knock the whole universe out of its orbit as soon as his lips met yours. 

And when time seemed to begin again, and his lips pulled from yours, he thought he could never be happier than that moment when you gazed up into his warm brown eyes and said, “Now where are we going, spaceman?”

“Anywhere and everywhere you want, sweetheart.”

[earisridesagain]

Star Wars Misfit

I find it very hard to be a SW fan. I never did the full SW fandom thing when I was a kid and all we had was the OT and a bunch of books.  Part of that was that the fandom seemed to revolve around stuff you had to buy - toys, games, aforementioned books.  The library didn’t carry all the books.  My parents were not going to shell out $$$ for lego sets and action figures.  And I have never played video games. I basically sat in my corner, loved the movies, and wrote out some essays on my thoughts about the SW Universe.  I wish I had kept some of them.

Then, there was the PT and the internet and I got into fanworks.  And that was great.  I wasn’t a huge fan of the PT, but the world-building, and resultant fanfic, was superb. I wore a Jedi padawan braid for at least half of high school.  But the fandom at large still seemed to revolve around buying things and knowing bits of information and arcs from a series of books that I frankly didn’t care very much for.  Some of the books were great, but a lot of them . . . were not very good at all.  I am not judging people who like them.  Fuck, I read absolutely anything that has Tolkien on it.  I’m in no position to judge anybody.  I still don’t play video games.  I have 2 Funko Pops.  At first, the internet based fanworks were more my jam.  Fanfiction, videos, hilarious comics (he killed the yuenglings!).  But no matter how I tried to be happy in SW fannish spaces, it all came back to arguing about trivia and people being 100% possessive of the source text and gatekeeping like a mother fucker.  Any appreciation for the PT made you NOT a ‘real’ SW fan.  And let’s not get into the sexism. Part of my dislike of the Slave!Leia outfit stems from the fact that most of the straight male SW fans I knew made that their primary appreciation of my favorite character.  I know it’s more complex than that, but when a 14 year old girl is told and shown over and over that Leia’s legacy is being a sex symbol, it fucking hurts. (Long live the Huttslayer).

Clone Wars began to get me back into SW fandom at large.  CW was great.  It was fun and sad and mythic and silly.  It was romantic and touching, it gave us great world building, awesome action sequences, great new characters, fleshed out old characters, and made me rethink me dislike for some of the PT.  And the fandom was lovely!  So many smart people writing snark and slash and het and comedy and making drawing great fanart and comics and it felt so right.  Rebels followed in that vein.

The came the ST.  TFA kicked my latent SW obsession into high gear.  I loved the new characters, especially Rey, and Finn, and Poe, and Kylo Ren.  The world got bigger.  New books started to be published, from authors I actually enjoyed reading.  (Shoutout to Claudia Grey and Christie Golden and E.K. Johnston and Jason Fry and everyone in the FACPOV collections).  I still wasn’t ready to get big into the fan-spaces, but I did start reading some fanworks, mostly StormPilot.  And also, Reylo.  As my journey in SW grew, I found myself drawn more and more to Reylo.  It was hilarious.  I’d never had a het!ship before.  And the Reylos I knew were talented, and smart, and lovely, and never made me feel bad for not knowing something or having a weird idea.

But people HATED Reylos.  I genuinely don’t know why.  And don’t give me that ‘the pairing is problematic’ bullshit.  That ship is fucking tame.  I’ve obsessively shipped way worse pairings.  It’s fanfiction - not reality. The pairing is rich and meaningful, it has deep parallels in folktales and myth, it encapsulates many of the themes of SW.  Oh yeah, and I happen to find it fucking hot.

People also hate the ST.  I agree, it has its problems (the biggest of which is TROS). But the PT is no gem of filmaking. TPM breaks in the middle for a fucking video game ad that sucks all the air out of the room.  AOTC is tragically paced.  And ROTS (far and away the best) feels like the culmination of a very different trilogy.  Even the OT has flaws.  There is nothing wrong being critical of something.  But some people can’t see a picture of Kelly Marie Tran without launching into a tirade about how much they hate Rose.  Rey, Finn, and Poe are there for representation, and Kylo Ren is the worst villain ever.  I have very little time for people who feel that Luke’s journey in TLJ is some sort of slap in the face of the character (Luke faces his guilt and regret and ends up saving the day just like Obi Wan Kenobi and Kanan Jarrus and all the other Jedi who have chosen defense over aggression and laid down their lives for others.) The vitriol astounds me. 

Once again, I was a SW misfit. The people that I loved in the CW world ragged on the people I loved in the Reylo world.  The rabid OT fanboys can’t see a picture of Rey without yelling Mary Sue. People keep chanting about wiping out the ST, as if there aren’t people who fucking love it and it’s got CARRIE FUCKING FISHER’S LAST PERFORMANCE AS LEIA ORGANA. PT fans who loved Anakin and Padme turn around and abuse ST fans who love Reylo.  Mandalorian fans have started to try and out-Easter Egg each other, and dump on people who are watching for story.  We’re back to gatekeeping and people lunging at each other’s throats about little bits of information and trivia. 

So, why did I write all of this?  I just needed to get it off my chest.  I like being in SW fan spaces, especially Reylo and CW and Rebels spaces.  I love the novels.  I love the music.  I love the concept art and the fan art and the fan fiction and the comics (well, some of them) and people making reaction videos to the Mandalorian.  But, once again, I’m sitting in a corner, afraid to speak up.  

I guess I’m not a real fan.