#ive added some more notes to his character on one of my fics so heres hoping i finish at least ONE of them soon 🫡

[baeshijima]

so i finished the neuvillette story quest and

my eyes are gonna be puffy

[mistydeyes]

𝔀𝓮𝓵𝓬𝓸𝓶𝓮 𝓽𝓸 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓶𝓪𝓼𝓽𝓮𝓻𝓵𝓲𝓼𝓽!

i’m currently not active atm but feel free to pursue my previous works <3

here's a short lil explanation as to where i am lol

click me for asks + requests :)

requests: closed atm!

pairings status: closed atm!

rules for requests - i love when you send things 💌

note - message me or comment on any one of my works if you want to be added to a tag list :)

I usually post on mondays, wednesdays, and fridays

izzie's fic recommendations - updated daily!

some things about me :)

the basics: 22, she/her, from the us :)

i'm a third year pharmacy student! also minoring in justice, law, and society

along with writing, i also intern at a retail pharmacy during the summer and a psychiatric hospital during the school year

so naturally my pharmacist series is my absolute favorite to write and research!

𝓶𝔀𝓲𝓲 𝓬𝓸𝓷𝓽𝓮𝓷𝓽 - the full masterlist

don't know where to start? here's a few readers' favorites :) ❤️ - izzie’s favorites

💌 if you want to peek at all of my writings

S E R I E S

"your prescription is ready for pick-up" - 141 x pharmacist!reader

all of my works and our pharmacist reader

a panacea❤️ - 141 meets the cure to all their ailments

sick day visit - you prided yourself on never getting sick but the day has finally come. as you’re resting in your quarters, a certain group pays you a visit :)

fake hypochondriac ghost x reader (sequel to “a panacea”) - ghost goes to extreme lengths to see his favorite pharmacist

pain-killer fueled thoughts price x reader (sequel to “a panacea”) - price landed himself in the medic tent and his pain killers are making him tell the pharmacist his feelings.

keep your weapons hot and bodies hotter (18+) - stripper!141 x fem!reader (codename: Phoenix)❤️

hunk-o-mania 141 edition - feast your eyes on Delilah's Den's newest male dancers

playboy bunny phoenix edition - an unforeseen guest complicates the mission, now you have to get ready to act as the distraction on stage

the joys of civilian life - 141 x civilian!fem!reader

opposite occupations - while on leave, the boys each meet a civilian that makes their time deployed and defending their country worth it

family moments - 141 x fem!reader

little moments and little voices - precious moments you spend in your home with your husband and children :)

oh, darling, don’t you ever grow up - your husband leaves this world too early and now you have to pick up the pieces with your children

secrets and pointed fingers (requested!)❤️ - simon "ghost" riley

behind locked doors - when the 141 thinks you're the mole, they make sure to extract the information in whatever way possible

empty apologies and avoiding glances - when you return back to base, everything is far from normal

half empty glasses and unchanging perspectives - you try to run away from the trauma at the pub but with a glass in hand, simon finds you

O N E - S H O T S

odd hobbies - 141 x reader everyone has their own hobbies, yours are just unique to 141’s perspective

butterfly effect - 141 x fem!reader they say "a butterfly flaps its wings in the amazonian jungle, and subsequently a storm ravages half of europe." what once was a silly quote now has implications as one action leads to your death.

opposite of a meet cute❤️ - 141 x civilian!reader most people have a cute story as to how they met their significant other but yours is a little more eccentric

V I S U A L S + R A N D O M

random things in pockets and bags❤️ SERIES - what does the 141 carry on them when they’re on leave?

pt i- kyle “gaz” garrick

pt ii - simon "ghost" riley

pt iii - johnny "soap" mactavish

pt iv - john price

E X P L A I N S my series of explaining the various timeline's of the games and characters

simon "ghost" riley's backstory

which modern warfare game should i play first?

some writings from the inbox

medication mixup - the medic unknowingly prescribing you a penicillin has disastrous results due to your allergy

141’s dossier - see what the dossiers laswell gets at the end of mw 2019 looks like! + template

ghost’s doppelgänger - how does the 141 and los vaqueros react to you joining the team? their reactions are even better when you share an uncanny resemblance with ghost

running mascara - 141 x fem!reader harsh words are said and you try your best to run away from the cause. however, everyone needs to face the issue eventually and now the 141 is left to pick up the pieces. initially part of my 1k celebration but i added a sequel as it was highly requested! PART I and PART II

mw2 x reader - my ongoing series of pairing y'all up and writing a short lil blurb about how you met and your relationship

izzie’s 1K celebration! - closed now :) but feel free to look and see some of the prompts + how i answered them

𝓪𝓮𝓼𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓽𝓲𝓬 𝔀𝓸𝓻𝓴𝓼

[mqole]

hbjhkgvhj ok here are uh. some character designs i did abt a year ago

these are all based on the incredible @kayzero's fic zero win game, which is a rewrite of ztd with akane as the protagonist, and it has possibly THE BEST characterization of akane ive ever read- listen just. just go read it you will be enriched i promise.

im not putting an image description bc i dont know where to start (sorry!!) BUT ill put a bunch of character design notes below the cut for people who are insane like me <3333

ok first of all. i know when i sent these to kay the other day they said there were some details canon to zwg that i missed (akane's lil hoodie pocket, aoi wearing white to contrast junpei's black (which is SO inspired btw.)) so just. PRETEND those are there bc i forgor <3

i spent the most time on sigma, phi, akane, junpei and aoi just because they've had multiple iterations of designs. it was fun to take bits and pieces from each version of them, so thats why they get a feature page

you can see a lot of my little pink notes with criticisms of the ztd designs there. in general, i really dont like the ztd designs, they all feel unnaturally bland to me (although thats probably also the artstyle).

most people whove looked into the colour symbolism in zero escape are probably familiar with the whole red/blue thing: that is, theyre colours representing the morphogenetic field. akane and aoi are the most obvious examples of this. 'aka' means red, and 'ao' means blue. in the first nonary game, akane and clover wear red - the colour for transmitters - and aoi and light wear blue, the colour for recievers. in 999 proper, akane wears purple, to symbolise how she can recieve AND transmit, while junpei wears red and blue by themselves. you can do a whole analysis of these colours and i will not put it here thats a whole SEPERATE post

anyway! the actual designs!! i'll start with sigma. i wanted to reconcile his vlr design with zero ii's design, and initially i planned on giving him a coat, but it didnt really have a nice silhouette, so i ditched that idea. instead, i turned his jumpsuit from vlr into a polo shirt - much like what he has in ztd - and gave him some zero-y accessories: the white turtleneck, the belt and the gloves all come from zero's design. once id included the white turtleneck, making the pants white felt really logical. in character design, its generally best to limit the palette of colours as much as you can, so it was a good excuse to reuse a colour while also paying homage to his ztd design. i also cut his hair bc hes a scientist and he'd do that.

phi's design is a lot more like her vlr one than her ztd design. the blue coat was her hallmark accessory, and im shocked that they ditched it for ztd, so i gave it back - along with her boots and hair accessory. i kept her pants and glasses from ztd, as well as the way the bottom of her shirt is tucked into her pants. they just have a much nicer silhouette to me. between my first pass of colours and my second pass, phi's colours changed the most - i realised i had too many blue guys in the lineup, and wanted to make the colours stand out individually. so i leaned into phi's orange-ness. giving her hair accessory, pants and boots an orange hue instead of a blue one, as well as shifting her coat to a more teal colour really helped make those colours pop.

AKANE MY BESTIE!!!! her design was probably the one i had the most fun with. i basically just took her ztd design and purpled it. I did want to include some more details though - her neck scarf was in both her 999 AND vlr design, so it felt wrong not to include it. i also added some gold highlights to her design, just to complement the purple - her boots are also toned yellow, so it felt fitting. the cut of her sleeves, as well as her hair, felt really natural: i gave her the side ponytail from ztd, while letting more of her hair fall to the side to retain her silhouette from 999. i stole the sleeves wholesale from vlr akane, but can you blame me. look at that robe. its so pretty.

overall i have mixed feelings on ztd junpei as a character, but i think his darker turn is at the very least a fun direction to take him. I do like the jacket he has in his concept art. IT SURE WOULD BE NICE IF THE MODEL ALSO HAD A JACKET. his design went relatively unchanged overall, i basically just retoned his hair, gave him a button-up instead of a t-shirt, and puffered his jacket. the red and blue from his vest in 999 is reused here, but in darker, more muted tones. you can see in the corner of the drawing i played around with swapping the red and blue, but the red focus felt too edgy for junpei. the blue also pops really nicely against his dark clothes, so i kept it.

anyone who has spoken to me for more than ten seconds will know how insane i am about aoi kurashiki i mean come on my name is santa. i think a lot about his two designs: that of the first nonary game and in 999. in the first nonary game he wears a blue scarf, harkening to his role as a reciever, but in 999 he wears monochrome. my personal interpretation of this is that his 999 fit was him purposefully disguising his connection to the morphogenetic field. so post-999, since he doesnt have to worry about that, i gave him his blue back!!! his general fit is the same- his pants and shoes are artistry so obviously i kept those, and i ended up making the rest of his look black to contrast his 999 design. if i were to redesign him now wearing white, id probably go a different direction altogether. that third little drawing ive included has some test outfits for him, carlos, and maria, but i never really went anywhere with them. also i gave him dark roots to show his relation to akane a bit more. and also because i like projecting my roots always grow back SO fast

that brings us to the 4 characters introduced after vlr: carlos, mira, diana, and... maria??? yeah like i said go read zero win game. do it. maria is such a fun character. she was, coincidentally, ALSO the only character where i had to design someone from scratch. you can see i fiddled a little with colour palettes, trying to figure out how to give every character a unique look. diana and carlos' designs actually go almost unchanged here- i think dianas design in particular is actually pretty great, and works as a nice foil to luna in vlr. carlos is just kind of normal. he can have his silly polo shirt.

miras ztd design is. ugh ok look its FINE but i hate the boobie designs in zero escape because they always feel like they were designed seperately from the character. mira in zwg is still a sussy baka, but she's a lot more cordial- i enjoyed seeing her more as a snake lying in the grass. I ended up giving her green because its a fun colour to give characters who youre meant to distrust. SO MANY TIMES reading zwg i was like "oh maybe mira's chill - oh wait maybe shes not - oh wait maybe shes chill again" and i love her for that honestly. she still gets boobies because i love women but i gave her a fun little long sleeved corset top. the amount of skin she shows directly correlates to the amount you should trust her (i am only half joking.)

i wont talk about diana because honestly the only change i made was giving her a little blue strip at the bottom of her skirt, but i'll talk about maria and carlos together. carlos i kept as a little pink boy because i love him and i love pink and listen its my character design ill do what i want. maria in ztd AND in zwg experiences reverie syndrome, which is connected to the morphogenetic field. her and carlos' designs both incorporate red and blue again- (just realised diana also has red and blue. pretend that was intentional) -to show their connection to the field. yes yes i know its pink but listen its red enough. like aoi, i gave maria and carlos both different iterations of their designs. i'm less sold on carlos', but i did actually like the baggier, heavy designs for maria. with those ones she looks more depressed than she does wearing overalls, so im calling that a win. maria's was the design i was least satisfied with overall, but hey i did these like a year and a half ago and ive gotten much better since then soo.

if youve read this far this is once again a reminder to read zero win game by kayzero on ao3

[help-i-need-a-cool-username]

Its the end of the year! Which means its time to post the

Tags That Made Me Smile 2022

The following are a collective list of tags, author notes, and fic names that i saw on ao3 and tumblr that made me either laugh or smile. Ive separated them by fandom but a good amount arent actually fandom specific. Ive added the character names or fandom at the end like {name} to clarify who the tag is talking about

[2021's list]

Author Specific / Non-Specific

i saw canon; acknowledged it; And promply burned it in a dirty trash can thanks; Have this instead

Give me pain I need to feel something

this is self projection thank you coming to my ted talk

Whats that?? Overused tropes that everyone has seen before????? Pfffffffft. This fic is literally just a big mess of "how can I cater to myself and myself only"

you ever just look at your life and wonder how you got here; bc that's what this fic is for me

Don't underestimate me I DO NOT know how long this fan-fic will be

can you tell my target audience is myself

this is content specifically catered to me and no one else

these characters are my landlords and i pay them rent

P O L Y A M O R Y   I S   M Y   P O L Y J A M O R Y

cheek kiss warning

kidnapping isn’t sexy don’t do it

i've never read the archie comics but that's not gonna stop me {archie sonic}

not me writing a whole fic for a ship only i care about; that like maybe two other people ship; rowing this boat is hard but someone has to do it {scourge x fleetway sonic}

ankles don't heal this fast but fuck it i do what i want

no beta we die like men; or rather we drown like the sad shipper with a pool noodle we are

I'm afraid of the Danimals mascot and you should be too

if you're getting flood warnings, don't worry. It's just MY TEARS!

me at every character: anxiety be upon ye

Me (Grabs canon and runs a marathon with it)

Quote: Do you think God stays in heaven because he too lives in fear of what he's created (Spy Kids) {tmnt crossover}

Alternate Universe - Monty Python and the Holy Grail

contains dangerous amount of bed based snuggling

(kind of its a very short very homosexual fight scene); and then they kiss.

Hostage situation takes a romantic turn???? Not clickbait????

enemies to frenemies

Improper Use of Pool Noodles

stone cold stoicism meeting determined stupidity

Star Wars

Kanan Jarrus: The Daddening

platonic love is what healed his lonely existence {din djarin}

when in doubt: road trip with the besties {din, boba, fennec}

Soul Eater

found family at its finest {kid, liz, patty}

The Witcher

wife (platonic) {yennskier}

at first I was like haha geralt and Istredd should kiss as a joke…. but bro I don’t think it’s a joke anymore….

Sonic the Hedgehog

Movie!Super Sonic is made out of LOVE no one touch me

Sonics gay awakening I guess

sonic movie 2 made me make an ao3 account lol

Sonic was made to love people

Two Bros Chillin’ in an ER Five Feet Apart ‘cause they’re not gay {sonic x shadow}

the most dangerous thing is to love {shadow}

Trapped in a small box with just enough room to face some feelings {sonic x shadow}

the R in rivalry stand for romance {sonic x shadow}

The L in Rivalry Stands For 'Love' {sonic x shadow}

A Largely Platonic Cave

i love boom!shadow so naturally i made him even more insufferable

Sad-ow

Wachowskis holdin it down in the bg; Absolute champs

I love how Shadow is just so mindbogglingly utterly done with reality

Knuckles is a guardian of all things great and small

“Would you kiss a worm?" “If he was cute as fuck? Yeah.” {wade x stone}

"What is this made of, bendable titanium?!" "INCORRECT. IT IS MADE OF THE FRUSTRATIONS OF MOTHERS EVERYWHERE." {team dark}

featuring a scourge that trips far too much because it's my fic and I said so {scourge x fleetway sonic}

no thoughts just soft hedgehog moments

listen if im going to die at the hands of injured lancelot shit i might as well take advantage of it

Everyone has a crush on Lancelot and I'll die on this hill

fairy Lancelot Fairy Lancelot FAIRY LANCELOT!!!

TMNT

Slow Burn; mostly on april's end of things; casey and donnie are basically on fire right off the bat {tmnt 2012}

Rise!Donnie and 2012!Casey be out there committing arson together for their first date >.>

Please enjoy Casey, the fool, realizing his feelings for Donnie, another fool {tmnt 2012}

Draxum and Splinter are the turtles' dads (it's a reluctant partnership)

just two absolute powerhouses holding each other gently {raph x mona}

“There’s nothing wrong with the way you love, Dee. Goodnight.” {rottmnt}

Wondering what to do when the apocalypse happens? Easy: fly across the country and get Vegas-married. That's definetley an appropriate reaction that won't involve your complicated feelings towards your roommate at all {hypno x warren}

Look rise are weapons of war 12 were accidents and I play with that HARD in this fic

"GET IN THE TURTLE TANK BITCHES WE GOING TO FAMILY THERAPY" {rottmnt}

Donatello is now Dad-Atello {rottmnt}

The other [Casey] is out on a beach in Tahiti; It's what he deserves after surviving the Krang {rottmnt}

Leo is now actively being hunted for sport; (the only sport Donnie is good at) {rottmnt}

These turtles can fit so much trauma

2018 Karai lives because fuck Nick; Casey x Donnie x April are a healthy ship and also fuck nick again

I cant be the only one pissed by Leo's and Karais 'love interest plot'; Leonardo's weird feelings were simply gender envy...Yes that is canon now {tmnt 2012}

What happens when two "dudes" call each other 'girlfriend'; Transgender activities, that's what! {tmnt 2012}

splinter is twice divorced and never married {rottmnt}

Papatello / Dadatello {rottmnt}

draxum's gone from dadxum to grand-dadxum good for him

HOLY FUCKING SHIT YES YES YES YES; GRANDPA BARRY COMING IN CLUTCH

draxum just be like gramps still got it; and by 'it' i mean a complete lack of forethought for care when creating random children

Puts the Bi in Bitchless {rottmnt leo}

its because ninja turtles

feral mamatello {rottmnt}

Marvel

it's the anguish, the self flagellation, the audacity to love the man who annihilate ur nation and killed ur mother; your m o t h e r {black panther}

[secretlysheikah]

I posted 4,645 times in 2022

162 posts created (3%)

4,483 posts reblogged (97%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@havenwitchworks

@foooxobsessedperson

@hyliagirl42

@mrowtastic

@author-main

I tagged 433 of my posts in 2022

#sheikah speaks - 177 posts

#legend of zelda - 68 posts

#loz - 53 posts

#sheikah suggests - 44 posts

#botw - 34 posts

#linked universe - 33 posts

#the legend of zelda - 31 posts

#breath of the wild - 31 posts

#zelda - 28 posts

#link - 27 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#ive been keeping on a longplay of twilight princess in the bg while i write my thesis and i think thats the only reason i havent lost my min

I sent 1 gift in 2022

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Sooooooooo....

guess who got carried away and drew some fanart for your Sky oneshot?

trick question it was me. <3 love you bestie

MROW! MROW HOLY SHIT!

OH MY GOD AAAAAAAHAAHHHHHHHHH

I love it so much mrow! I’m already crying in the club and it’s only just past 7am!!!!! How dare you do this to me!!! I WEEP! (Tears of how fucking cool this is thank you oh my God)

See the full post

66 notes - Posted January 5, 2022

#4

A Tale from the Sky

So after my last one shot I made for 2021 I got a request for a continuation by the lovely @mrows-fan-works and I have to say I feel in love with the request. So here we have it, I hope you enjoy. 

Here is a link to the fic on Ao3 if you prefer to read it there! 

Happy first fic for 2022, may it lead to many more! 

Start Here: 

When the last of the healers finally left the room, Warriors found himself alone until the others were found, hopefully alive and in better shape than Sky was. Speaking of their Skyloftian, he looked absolutely wretched. He was pale, his lips just a touch blue at the corners but he was assured by multiple people that he was breathing just fine and that it would fade. The skin under Sky’s eyes looked sallow and waxen as well and with the clean white bandages wrapped snugly around his chest it only served to make him look even more sickly. He found himself swallowing hard as he remembered the blood that he had only just managed to slow down long enough for a medic to get there. He looked down at himself, the blood was already dried and stiff on his tunic and his beloved scarf lay on the floor, nearly completely soaked through. That would be a pain to clean. Maybe if he put it in water to soak with some soap it would be easier to remove the stubborn stains? Even as the thought crossed his mind it left, leaving him with a metaphorical monster in the room. 

He looked back at Sky, and just by looking at the sleeping hero you would never guess just how frightening he could be. He had only just managed to get back to the keep where he had left Sky, cursing himself at how long he had been away. It had taken longer than he wanted to find the corporal who was leading the defense of the keep and the monsters that got in the way only added to his irritation. 

Much too long, it had taken much too long and when he finally came back…. He swallowed as he remembered the way Sky was shaking, practically convulsing as he was surrounded by a swirling black cloud. Wizzro, that bastard had looked smug, almost feral as he moved closer ready to strike Sky down. He was just about to leap to Sky’s aid when the man had let out a roar of rage that rooted him to the spot. He had never heard a sound like that come from Sky before, never thought it could even be a possibility given his normally soft spoken nature.  

Sky was, well, he didn’t even know where to begin, he had never seen Sky that angry before in all the time he knew the sleepy head. Sky had bellowed and raged and brought down gleaming strike after strike against the monster until it was down and dragging itself away with Sky stalking after it. He hadn’t even had the power to call out to the man, was hopelessly entranced by the display playing out before him. 

“Do you know who I am? I am the first hero, chosen by the Goddess and imbued with the hero’s spirit.” He had yelled, no more like boomed and Wars had been struck dumb by the sheer power in his voice. The scene continued to play in his mind, nothing around him registered in his head as he was completely enraptured by the scene replaying before him. He blinked and suddenly he was back in the smoke filled air of the keep, watching as Sky plunged the master sword through Wizzro’s back and twisted it cruelly as the monster screeched an unholy noise. 

“I am a slayer of a God, I have killed the very incarnation of hate and lived to tell the tale. Now tell me, what are you to a God slayer?” Sky had hissed, and even though it was quietly spoken Wars had trembled as if the very ground itself had tried to rend itself asunder. It was so callous, so cold even as his voice had been filled with burning hot rage. Wars mind could scarcely put the image of Sky as he was during that battle to the one he always knew. The two versions of Sky were so completely opposite that it was like staring into an alternate reality. He had snapped back to himself when Sky turned around, and offered him a sheepish smile and the blood, oh Goddesses above. 

“I guess you saw that huh?” 

Oh he had seen it all. 

“What? No I’m fine Wars this isn’t even my blood,” 

Sky wasn’t fine and the longer he stood there doing nothing the less likely he was going to be able to save him. He had to move. Now. 

“I’ll be fine Wars, Just need a quick nap.”

By the three, please no. Please.  

It was a blur from there. Just red seeping into blue, and pale skin going paler by the second and desperation. He felt himself starting to hyperventilate and he dug his fingers into his pant legs, too scared to reach out and touch Sky’s sleeping form. Never once had he been this terrified of another person. But what was he scared of? This was Sky, he knew Sky. Was it the injuries? Was it the way he looked so fragile now after the utter unworldly display of power he had shown not hours before? Whatever it was he was on the verge of quaking now. 

“God slayer,” Wars whispered to the silent room and the words seemed to call back to him and settle into his bones. God slayer, that was what Sky had called himself. Memories from a warm sunny day outside of Wild’s home, surrounded by the children of his village now settled in and filled his eyes. Sky had looked… Remorseful? Bitter? Both? 

“Oh Gods can die, just be glad all they left behind this time were bones,” Sky had said as he had tossed what remained of his apple away. He recalled the way Sky’s warm face had twisted and the vision shattered before his eyes leaving him back in the sick room. He was left struggling to put pieces together of a clearly incomplete puzzle that was the Skyloftian, the whole thing was maddening. There was clearly another side to his brother that he had not seen until now and he was dying to know more. There was a slight movement on the bed and Wars glanced over, mind still miles away as he studied the movement blankly. 

“I wasn’t fast enough, too late… Heh, what else is new? But now you… All suffer for it,”  

Wars snapped back to himself so quickly his head spun and he nearly toppled off his chair when he came eye to half lidded and distant eye with Sky. He was breathing heavily, his hands tightening in the sheets that were draped across his lower body. Wars watched as his eyes moved sluggishly around the high vaulted ceilings and he was fairly certain that anything Sky was seeing was not actually registering in his mind.  

“Sky?” Wars whispered but hesitated to move his chair any closer to the bed. Sky sniffled and sighed before he let his head fall to the side to look at him. Wars could just make out Sky’s sapphire blue eyes peeking out from underneath his thick eyelashes. The dark, almost bruised like skin that clung underneath his bottom lids only made the blue of his eyes stand out in stark relief. Sky blinked at him lazily, grimaced and made to clutch at his chest, the pain obvious on his face. Before he knew what he was doing, Wars had scooted his chair closer and grabbed Sky’s hand, holding it tightly so that he wouldn’t tug at the bandages. 

“Hey now, none of that,” He scolded lightly and was graced with a barely audible sigh. 

“Hurts,” Sky mumbled and Wars gave his hand a soft pat in understanding. 

“Do you need me to go get a healer? They can get you something for the pain,” He offered, the words scarcely out of his mouth before Sky was shaking his head in the negative. To Warriors dismay he was trying to sit up.

“No, no, Don’t go… Not yet, I have to explain,” Sky panted as he continued to struggle to sit up fully. 

“No you don’t have to, no wait,” Wars started but quickly gave up when Sky continued to struggle. 

“Fine alright, just stop trying to sit up,” He snapped and to his relief Sky let himself drop back down to the mattress, and Wars could feel the tremor in Sky’s arms from the strain. 

“I’m sorry Wars, I owe you an… e-explanation… An apology… I am ”  Sky slurred and Wars felt himself stiffen. 

See the full post

68 notes - Posted January 9, 2022

#3

Yahahaha! You’re clogging my damn vacuum find a new spot to hide damn you.

131 notes - Posted April 17, 2022

#2

Earth day appreciation post! Have some pictures from my rambles in the woods!

See the full post

169 notes - Posted April 22, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

ALRIGHT HERE WE GO!

I wanted to draw my blorbo, Hiri in her elder clothes! This is my interpretation of what the elder Sheikahs would look like/wear. The only thing you can see is that they also wear earrings. But the spooky vibe spoke to me so here we are.

186 notes - Posted May 30, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

AAAAAAAAAAYYYY not a bad year I think

[arlecchno]

HEYOYOYO jellyfish on main here ! HAPPY NEW YEARS !!!! (i hope the html code doesnt fail in the ask AHAHAH) i had to change the font of the board because it was really hard to read but here it is LOL

as you can see , incredibly silly SJSIKFGH the red "string" is put about a bit haphazardly but im not going to fix that (:

on a side note , did you have a vision of what the MA duo's uniforms look like (and / or any reference images for them / other outfits theyd wear) ? there may or may not be somethin in the works from me (see below) vvvv

PLEASE ignore the shitty posing of my mc and kuni im literally too lazy to even attempt to fix that hot mess that .

oh yeah uh also , im aware MA was aimed towards fem aligning readers — and i am not one — so im really sorry and hope you dont mind but as mentioned before you did include a bunch of my favorite subgenres and ,,,, i couldnt help myself !! but if you dont want me to be here bc of the fact im totally okay with leaving !! (<_<;;)

OKAY IVE SENT ENOUGH , - jellyfish (do i still need to do this signoff if im on my main ??? idk)

HAPPY NEW YEAR'S TO YOU TOO JELLYFISH!!!!

YOOO WTF THAT BOARD IS SO SICK!!!! now that i've seen it.... would you mind sharing the fic 🥹 by your theories the series sounds SO GOOD and i do not want to miss out on a fic of my favourite kind of genre!!

your theories look so incredibly detailed, whilst still adding in a tinge of crack to make it look more interesting, in which i completely agree with!! wtf you're insane

as for the visionaries of the main characters' clothes, since most of the story is inspired by b99, i'd like to think most of their clothes look like what the characters in that show would wear.

their official uniforms look something like this;

when kuni and y/n are busting down criminals, i'd imagine they look like this!!

i've tried my best to be as open as i can with y/n's clothing style and appearance, hence why i never mentioned y/n's attire or looks in the series (except for the dress in the grad ball arc). so it's mostly up to everyone's interpretation on what they want y/n to look like!! :)

as for kuni though, i like to imagine he's this low-key fashionable guy but won't ever admit to it lmao. i mean his usual attire is pretty basic, maybe like a button down shirt, a tie and pants but when he doesn't feel like using his duty belt i'd imagine he use these kinds of holsters (i know the 2nd pic is a woman but i couldn't really find any shoulder holster pics that were decent 😭)

and it's totally okay that you're not fem-aligned but still read the series (i hope i don't sound rude here, if i do then i sincerely apologize, idk how to put it into words 😭)

as i said before, i try to not mention a lot about y/n's appearance and all, and even though this is a fem reader fic, all other genders are welcomed to read, i don't mind at all :D

ALSO YOU DRAW TOO??? THAT'S SO INSANE BRO!!!! THEY LOOK REALLY GOOD ALREADY NOW I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE THE OUTCOME 🥹🥹🥹 i love you omg it's so lovely interacting with you

and judging by your user and pfp... i am here to assume you are a dainsleif enthusiast? if so then we have so much more in common than i thought!!!

i love dainsleif so much hehe i talk about him!!!! a lot!!!! always to the point that my friends would get tired of me 😞

i hope those pics would spark up some ideas for you :)) and i'm really sorry if some of my words here seemed rude or uncomfortable for you, i'm not really good with words so i do apologize in advance 💔

[lunaflvms]

I posted 2,197 times in 2022

That's 2,197 more posts than 2021!

1,741 posts created (79%)

456 posts reblogged (21%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@lunaflvms

@enloveclub

@mitsukifilms

@maiwon

I tagged 2,125 of my posts in 2022

Only 3% of my posts had no tags

#˖ ࣪ luna’s mailbox! ˖ ࣪ - 1,319 posts

#˖ ࣪ mail from: ˖ ࣪ ⸱ - 1,315 posts

#✦ luna’s anons。°˖ ✧ - 560 posts

#ˏˋ*⁀➷ luna’s moots ˖ ࣪ - 508 posts

#˖ ࣪ luna’s reblogs! ˖ ࣪ - 350 posts

#˖ ࣪ luna’s thoughts ˖ ࣪ - 311 posts

#chuu cherrie - 75 posts

#one16core - 59 posts

#enhypen social media au - 55 posts

#enhypen smau - 55 posts

Longest Tag: 143 characters

#bye jokes and all parent issues are so not cool 🤬🤬🤬🤬 like why would you (grown ass adult that has kids) beef with some teenager (emo child)

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

🌷🧚‍♀️🧼; ᝰꜜ ᩠˚ 𖤐 fairy of shampoo !

sypnosis: demons and angels have always existed in this world, hidden away in the shadows and guiding people to do right or wrong in many different forms and identities. This time as broke stressed out college students, Hyunjin a 1000+ old demon had a special duty to go guide a young boy in college but struggles when he see another person in the boys life that might make him fail his task. What happens when one demon and one angel both get assigned to the same person?

pairing: demon!hyunjin x angelfem!reader

featuring: enhypen, straykids, txt, itzy, wonyoung from ive and more!

genre: enemies to lovers, slowburn?, fluff, crack, angst maybe, fantasy au, college au

warnings: swearing, idk not much tbh ill add when i need too, maybe some suicidal jokes? like saying kys or kms or sumn 🤕, mentions of blood

author’s note: please ignore the fact the header looks very similar to my fiesta one 😓 i made it at 1 am and im lacking my creative mind rn, it still took me more than 1 hour tho 😒 HELP AND MY SCHOOL STARTS TOMORROW⁉️ IM SOBBING CRYING BLEEDING AND THROWING UP 😭

also this fic is inspired by @ddeonuism my accidental demon roomate!! i just wanted to give creds cuz one part of the story i planned for them is something similiar that happened in her book :) DONT WORRY THO THE PLOT IS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT 😭

release date: 25th january 2022

taglist: (open) send an ask

See the full post

471 notes - Posted January 24, 2022

#4

鐵線蓮花; ᝰꜜ ᩠˚ 𖤐 enhypen reactions !

See the full post

705 notes - Posted February 26, 2022

#3

西村力; ᝰꜜ ᩠˚ 𖤐 WISHLIST !

sypnosis: having a famous idol brother had its pros and cons, the pros? well you kind of get second hand fame if you ever go public on social media. the cons? well your annoying brother always tries to set you up with his members, maybe it wouldn’t be a bad thing if he didn’t keep trying to set you up with his groups maknae nishimura riki who you once met and had accidentally spilled coffee on you and then told you to suck it up.

pairing: idol!nishimura riki x fem!reader

featuring: enhypen, txt, itzy, straykids, ive + more

genre: social media au, fluff, crack, enemies to lovers, idol au, brothers bestfriend au

warnings: swearing, my humour 💀

author’s note: WISHLIST came first with over 20 vote 💀 wow anyways if you still want to vote for another one please do its for the future works im going to write i will add more maybe even a soobin smau 😱🤣 lol vote here

release date: after fiesta (will release prologue before that tho)

taglist: (open) send an ASK, replies will not be added anymore

See the full post

1,848 notes - Posted February 17, 2022

#2

엔하이픈 ; ᝰꜜ ᩠˚ 𖤐 luna’s enhypen fic recs !

See the full post

2,090 notes - Posted January 20, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

🎨 🌷; ᝰꜜ ᩠˚ 𖤐 FIESTA !

sypnosis: Jungwon has always admired you from a distance, watching you practice dancing in the hybe practice rooms, purposely trying to bump into you while wondering around the hybe building and also leaving nice notes for you to find. When you debut in a group, being Enhypen’s younger group, it’s Jungwon’s perfect opportunity to get to know you better but one day he gets into a dating scandal with your best friend. Which leads to you trying to get both of them together, what will he do now?

pairing: idol!yang jungwon x trainee to idol!fem reader

featuring: enhypen, straykids, txt, nct dream, itzy, ive + more!

genre: fluff, crack, maybe a tiny bit of angst? friends to lovers, idol au

warnings: swearing, my humour 😓, y/n is a lil clueless, yeonjun /j, dispatch, invasion of privacy idk

release date: 20th january 2022

taglist: closed!!

See the full post

2,175 notes - Posted January 20, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[lizard-spams-your-dash-too]

I posted 26,227 times in 2022

That's 21,823 more posts than 2021!

57 posts created (0%)

26,170 posts reblogged (100%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@guardiansofgahooleonwii

@dingdongyouarewrong

@toothlesshat

@the-polyhedron

@huffy-1337

I tagged 4,301 of my posts in 2022

#sth - 1,841 posts

#sonic the hedgehog - 875 posts

#shadow the hedgehog - 840 posts

#wwdits - 333 posts

#mcr - 293 posts

#death note - 178 posts

#what we do in the shadows - 177 posts

#miles tails prower - 173 posts

#our flag means death - 172 posts

#rouge the bat - 148 posts

Longest Tag: 138 characters

#dont think this is a real concern with zoomers since i too made mud pies and only really used the computer when i was already in preschool

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

imsonormalabouthisimsonormalaboutthisimsonormalaboutthisimsoniornal-

24 notes - Posted November 17, 2022

#4

This is a PSA:

Please continue to wear a mask people, COVID is still a real thing!

24 notes - Posted July 16, 2022

#3

I'm not really part of the death note fandom anymore but Ive noticed an interesting bit of fanon.

A lot of fans draw/describe Light with tanned skin, when in the anime and manga he's fairly light-skinned. The only canon source I can think of where he has a tan completion is the official illustrations by Obata. (Comparison below)

Anyway I don't really have a point here but I would like to say, keeping drawing him with tan skin. It's an improvement from the show in my opinion.

It differentiates him further from L, making his pale skin look even more stark. It also makes it harder to confuse him for a white dude, which is good since Death Notes story is so rooted in Japanese society and its Justice system. Also generally tired of people making jokes that Light is a white man.

Edit: changed some of my wording and added the last sentence

25 notes - Posted April 11, 2022

#2

Hey death note fandom, I'm trying to find a fic I read about a year ago.

It was a story on fanfiction.net and it was set in alternative timeline of death note.

Basically it starts of with Sorchiro Yagami's funeral, which L attends. Sorchiro was killed in a car accident, but L is fairly sure it was kira's doing. Sorchiro and him were the only ones looking into the kira case at the time, with Sorchiro losing respect at NPA. They haven't found any new leads on the case.

L's approached by a college age Light yagami who wants to help continue to search for kira. L agrees to work with light, even if he's not exactly trusting of him, as he needs extra help. They both get an apartment by the TO-HO campus to investigate kira.

The fic was abandoned, and was made sometime in the early 2010s late 2000s. It was also a Lawlight fic, with some fake dating in its later chapters.

If anyone can link it or remember the title of the fic I'd be extremely grateful, it's one of my favorite Death note fics and I want to archive it.

50 notes - Posted August 28, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Don't get me wrong I love Taika Watiti's work as much as the next gay atm but the amount of like parasocial worship of him I've seen recently makes me nervous.

I think it's important to remember we all know a very small sliver of him as a person.

At the end of the day he's just a guy whose making and in a lot of good things atm.

535 notes - Posted April 20, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[lyra-swan]

Hiiiii I know you're offline as I'm writing this but nevertheless I still felt like jumping into your inbox and word-vomiting for a second because I've been following Mechanical Angel for quite some time now and picked it up again recently and I just made it to part IV, god I'm having a blast. I can't wait to put all my full, extensive thoughts out there once I'm done but for now I need to stress that I'm just super impressed with both your writing style and the tone/ character development as a whole but the world-building in particular got to me gooood.

Am I right to assume that a lot of research went into this???? Because you can genuinely tell, to the point I literally felt transported to the places as you described them every time and the details are just so captivating to witness. It really feels like I'm reading a ww2 novel, I feel transported back into German literature class on occasion and it's just. Impressive???

Anyway thank you SO MUCH for putting this out there, I'm so happy Mechanical Angel (and all of your works) exist!! I've already noticed that there's another story focused on Natsume/Sora set in the same universe and I can't wait to finally jump into that one too once I'm done with MA. (Especially since Natsume is in my top 4# favorite characters but that's only a bonus)

Last but not least I am very mentally ill over Eimika now, congrats, I'm rotating them in my brain a very normal and totally not concerning amount, haha

May you have a wonderful day!!

Oh hi thank you so much!! I both loved and struggled with Part IV so much, but it was extremely fun to write, especially that dumb part in ch.38... I dunno if you've reached ch.45 but that was also very fun. I hope you continue to enjoy the rest!

I'm going to ramble like an old grandma again, adding a read more thingy so the post won't be a bother to scroll past for others.

In my opinion I don't think I've done enough research! But I'll always feel like that no matter how much I do so bleugh, nevermind. The scenery is typically based on my own surroundings but changed slightly to match an European feel... I think I wrote more in the last ask answer but it has a tiny bit of spoilers, I believe. The setting is a bit of amalgamation of my own country and europe because my own surroundings is what I'm familiar with, and of course although it's supposed to be inspiried by Germany everyone drives on the left side (I think I mentioned it in a chapter note) because I didn't want to accidentally trip over myself from a simple description of where a character turns their head. It's the Little Details that are important!

I say, as if I also didn't mess up a few details here and there because I started posting before finishing the first draft and so I couldn't edit the way I used to do for my previous longfics... But yes, it was very fun adding random bits from what I learned into the story because I used to love watching WW2 docs and laughing every time the nazis messed up and suffered a crippling defeat.

Like, I'd read about how they lied to their citizens that they were doing just dandy, and then have Wataru ask Eichi if he wanted more 'false reports of our so-called victories on the battlefield' to be published in the newspapers. Because that's the funniest shit ever to me...

Then one day I'd read about the nazis being among the first to connect smoking to bad health, and I'd add something like that in a conversation between Eichi and Tatsumi, they're not nazis obviously but because of the setting's inspirations that's where I got a lot of information (but you'll have a scene later on that's more Britain than Germany, so the fic truly is a amalgamation of different european settings during WW2). And of course, people are sceptical of new medical findings, that was mentioned. And the part where Eichi mentions 'common people are suspicious of IV drips' to Mika, that was a thing in the real world too.

I wonder if there is a single medical invention that wasn't regarded with suspicion by at least one person at first.

I kind of wish I had Eichi offering gold watches to anyone who quit smoking, it would've been funny, but eh.

And of course there are some things that don't make sense because this IS an alternate world so I DO have freedom. Like, even though this takes place generally in 1930s-1940s time, tranquiliser guns weren't invented until the 1950s (by a NEW ZEALANDER!!! Colin Murdoch. He's also the genius behind the modern day syringe, if I recall correctly), but you know, I added it in anyway because alternate world, alternate invention timeframes. I wrote that fog scene where Mika is shot by Midori while also sitting outside one dark foggy morning, and I liked the scene so much I kept it in.

Anyway I'm so happy you like the world-building! It was super fun to work on! I really like rural settings for world war stories... one of my favourite authors, Michael Morpurgo has that kind of vibe going on too, my bookshelf has a few of his books. So many dog and animal stories with themes of war lingering in the background if they don't directly deal with war and I love every one of them. They're all so full of emotion, they'd always make me cry. I love the stories that can make me cry and look back and think it was the most beautiful thing I've ever read and Morpurgo's works can do that A LOT. But also I'm very emotional...

And thank YOU for this! I'm always so happy hearing someone enjoyed what I wrote!

I still need to finish that natsusora fic. It was supposed to be a part of the main story itself but because it would've taken so many chapters, I was worried about 'forcing' readers through a side story that had no bearing on eimika. So I posted it as a separate fic! It takes place during that last chapter of Part IV so you can actually have a look whenever you've started Part V.

Natsume is very out of character, however. He's in his 30s and not really the cute feminine witchy boy that he truly is in canon (at least, that's how I see him), he's an engineer and really logical... but he hates Eichi with a passion, that's VERY necessary. Nevertheless, I try to write him as close to his canon self within the au that I've shoved him in and told him to survive in. Totally fine if you end up not liking it!

Excuse the rambling!! Thank you! You have good day!!

[asexualzoro]

Lew's guide to leaving long and detailed comments on fic--what to say and how to say it

there is little else that brings me joy in the world quite like leaving long, rambly, detailed comments on fic. maybe it's just the undiagnosed-probable-adhd-or-whatever, but i love having any opportunity to gush extensively about things i enjoy (as i'm doing right now). who better to gush to about a fic than the author?

however, when ive spoken occasionally to friends about fic and comments, i've seen a lot of the same sentiment. "I would love to leave more detailed comments, i just don't know what to say!"

many people will tell you that a comment can be as simple as "<3" or "[incoherent screaming]" or "this was great! second kudos!" this is true, but it leaves you with very vague and unspecific comments. i'm here to tell you how to do more than that!

what it boils down to is details.

in all writing, being specific can really strengthen a piece. i believe a comment is no different. the easiest thing you can do is copy-paste (or, if you're on your phone, remember and paraphrase) lines you like, but anything is good. include a quote you liked, paraphrase a joke. "i loved the joke [Character] said about the airplane" or "that section about the doll was really pretty!"

once i've found the detail(s) i liked, i then elaborate why i liked them! was it a joke that made me laugh? something soul-crushing that i want them to be aware of for making me suffer? "i loved the section of prose about the tree on the hill. it was gorgeous, and the writing made me feel really bittersweet."

i then will try to say more than "this made me laugh/cry/etc". yeah, it did, but why? "the way A and B were joking in this scene made me feel happy" is good to include! adding "it shows how far they've come from their argument in chapter 3" is great!

i try to make each detail i talk about be like... 3+ sentences. this is a detail i liked. this is how it made me feel. this is specifically why it made me feel the way it did.

(if you happen to be thinking "hey, lew, this sounds like a book report" know that i am, uh,

...aware.)

(meg, if you see this, this is still the best thing anyone has ever said to me)

once you've done these steps, you've got a pretty solid comment! all you have to do is stack a handful of details you loved, some elaborations on to why, and you've got a damn good comment. plus, when you do this, it's not only the author who benefits. but, life-hack, it can often benefit you, the reader!

being specific and detailed with a comment can help the author see what audience likes, which can influence them to make more of that thing.

"I loved this fic!" will get a happy author.

"i loved this fic because i love your sense of humor, especially the way you characterize this guy and his dynamic with his friend!" will get you a happy author whose writing you like who is now more inclined to write something funny about your favorite characters

furthermore, it helps you actually encode the fic and remember it. if you're reading something ongoing, being detailed in your comments will help you remember what's happening in the plot and keep it in your mind moving forward.

if you're also a writer, taking note of what you like in other fic will help you when you write your own. this is what writers mean when they say "read more" when giving advice to new writers--critical thought in your reading will help you in your writing

now, i'm not done with this post yet! if you want to read the ramblings of a lunatic who loves to comment, then keep reading

alright, so i have a ton more under this cut, so be excited for that i guess. i just think commenting is a lot of fun, so i have a lot of suggestions of things you can consider when leaving comments. if you can take away just one or two tips from this, i'll be happy!

first, here is how i decide when i have Enough details, and how i go about the actual act of writing and formatting my comments:

for chapters or oneshots with multiple scenes, i try to hit on at least one detail i liked per scene. it's nice to do more, of course, but just one detail is enough. something as simple as "i loved the humor in the second scene! the joke about the cake batter especially made me laugh! it really sounded like something she would say!" doing it like this helps me keep the comment i guess "proportional" to how long the piece i'm reading is.

when i'm writing my comment, i do a new section per every Thing, so like. praise for A's characterization in the first scene, then a new line for B and C's interaction in the first scene. this is more for readability than anything, but it also makes the comment look longer--something i know an author will appreciate, since i'm also someone who writes fic lmao.

i do lots of jumping around when im writing my comment. i often bullet out a bunch of stuff i wanna hit with one sentence, and then double back to elaborate. i think it's easier to do this and get out all my gut reactions and helps me make sure i dont forget any of the details i like, then i can get into my elaborations without worrying im going to lose any of the details i liked. plus, its easier to sort out what i'm feeling once i've got my list!

next, how to decide what details to pick.

first, the Intro To Details, here's stuff you can look out for

thoughtful characterization--sometimes you read a fic and you see an author just gets a character. let them know! do you think his dialogue sounds like something he would really say? do you think her actions at a tense scene made sense for her character? do you like the arc that a character is going on? these are things to look out for and note!

enjoyable dynamics between characters--what's better than one character? two! if i had a nickel for every time ive commented on how much the dialogue between two friends in a fic i'm reading sounds cozy/comfortable i would be a millionaire. comment on stuff like how a dynamic changes throughout a fic too, esp if you're reading ship fic

beautiful prose--did some description of a setting take your breath away? could you picture the place oh-so clearly? tell them!

prose which is NOT beautiful--i read plenty of horror fic, so sometimes the prose isn't pretty. sometimes it's graphic detail about worms in someone's flesh, or someone being crushed to death, or what have you. did it make me cringe? did it make my skin crawl? did it make me want to crawl into a hole and never come out? great!

interesting or affecting descriptions--did the way an author laid out a certain's character's feelings on an event/person/action knock you off your feet? if describing a character's resolve in a tense scene as a raging storm blows you away, note that! this is a good place to pick specific quotes.

action scenes--this might just be me talking as a writer, but action is so fucking hard to write. when i read a good action/fight scene i always point it out. if its exciting/engaging, has you on the edge of your seat, if you cant put the fic down and look away... all of that is stuff you want to point out!

another genre specific ones, but if you're reading something with an element of mystery, try pointing out details you think are important. maybe you can't solve the mystery, but if you say "i noticed [name] take something from the table--what did he take? why did he need it? did [name2] notice?" then you at least know you're paying attention. this also helps you remember those details, which can help you later in any ongoing story!

jokes that made me laugh--bonus points if you can point out what's funny about it. is it clever? dry humor you like? just silly and stupid and made you smile? say so!

if you're reading an AU fic, it's always good to point out details about the adaption. if you enjoy the worldbuilding in the fantasy au you're reading, or you think the powers the author picked for the superhero au are really fitting, or you just think the job of this side character in the coffee shop au is funny, say so!

demonstrations of technical skill--sometimes you see a sentence and you know if it was worded any other way it just wouldn't hit as hard. sentences that make nice use of alliteration, for example, or effective use of parallelism or repetition. if the way a sentence is structured compels you, point it out! it's nice to hear! this is ALSO a good place to pick specific quotes. (this one is especially fun to note if you're a writer, because it can help you out! if you like the way an author writes, being able to identify and explain what you like about it will help you in your own writing!)

every time you laugh, every time you gasp, every time your eyes water. cite specific lines and details if you can. i've read a fic that stressed me out so bad i had to repeatedly put my phone down and take breathers, and the author LOVED that i kept a list of every part that made me have to go take a walk.

all in all, just find what makes you like a fic. why are you reading this fic instead of a different one? what makes this fic special? identify that and show it!

now, the less-obvious details i like to watch for

if i wrote this chapter, what would i be proud of? what would i most what to see people comment on? one of my favorite things is when i read a specific bit of wordplay or clever phrasing that i know, if i had wrote it, would have been my favorite parts. i try to note those when i can.

on the other end, i also like to point out stuff i don't think the writer would expect. i read a fic this morning which, after a long, tense, dangerous plot, had a scene in the last chapter about making cake. in it was a detail, delivered almost as an aside, about how much of a sweet tooth one of the more tough, stoic characters had. after everything that had happened in the story, that detail really got me, and i made sure to note how much i loved it

this one's really silly but if they use a song lyric for their title and you know/like that song say so. there's someone who does that for one of my fics when they know the song and i feel so fuckin vindicated every time

now i will admit this one is kind of an unhinged thing to do, however it's one i do a lot: i try to think about what other readers would mention, and make sure i'm NOT picking that. after all, i want the author to get recognition for the whole chapter, not just the Big Thing that happened. if a long chapter ends with someone pulling out a gun, you know every single comment is gonna be something like "[name] has a gun!!!", so say literally anything else. for example, if there's a big plot twist at the end of the chapter....

i know that half the comments are gonna be "[BIG PLOT TWIST]!!!!" and, often, nothing else. so ill look for something else to mention (esp in that scene!). it can be a little disheartening as a writer to do a lot in one chapter, and then have it all be outshined by an offhand joke or a cliffhanger at the end of the chapter, so i try to do what i can to cover the rest

im probably not immune to hypothetical big plot twist, so when i touch on it, i try to go into more detail than "omg plot twist" and talk about something that's effective about it. did i see it coming? can i look back now and see the signs? how does this effect what i thought was going to happen? what do i think will happen next?

now that you've got how to note down details that ARE in the fic, i'm going to note some details that AREN'T. a lot of this is stuff that can help you think more deeply about the fic you're reading, which is good for you developing your critical thinking skills as both a writer and a reader, as well as improving your ability to remember the piece you're reading

(obviously, this doesn't need to be on every fic, but if a fic engages you enough to get these kinds of thoughts going, you should say so!)

theorize! it proves you're paying attention and thinking about the piece! guess what is going to happen next! use evidence, and cite those specific details. "[name] said this and did that, those were both suspicious. does this mean he was the killer?"

theorizing is fun, too, even if you're wrong--one of my favorite reviews ive ever received was a long theory where the commenter was very blatantly wrong. i loved it because, even if they didnt come to the conclusion id intended, they pointed out a lot of details id been careful about including to back their theory up, and it was nice to see those things noticed!

related: if you don't have evidence-based theories, then speculate! wonder about how characters are going to react to the events of the chapter, talk about what the protagonist might do next, express concern or excitement about a potential direction the plot might go. "some of these details look like they're pointing to [name]'s escape failing... does his captor already know what he's planning?" or "she got the letter... i don't think she's going to read it, but if she does, i hope she'll realize he's lying."

(and, here's a secret: sometimes saying something like "I wonder how [name] is going to react to [event]? i think she might do [action] or feel [emotion]" can also help the writer out! because maybe they hadn't thought of it like that, and now that you've raised this point, it can help them when they're writing the next part. maybe you're right, she will react a certain way--but only because you pointed it out!)

(theories and speculation can ALSO help an author who hasn't yet totally decided on their fic's ending, lmao)

now, my final, more miscellaneous tips:

abandon shame. gush a ton. say stupid shit. be excited. flattery (when genuine) will get you everywhere, lmao.

mention how you got to this fic, and/or if you're thinking about it when you're not reading it. "i'm rereading this," "i'm reading this because my friend recommended it to me," "i was just thinking/talking about this yesterday so i'm so excited to see it update now," "every time you update i drop everything to read this"... these are all great! i once left a comment which included a count of every time my roommate looked over at my expression/reactions when reading and asked me if i was okay. all these details serve to remind the author "there's a real person reading your work and enjoying it," and i know that when i write, i love to know people are excited about my work or that it lingers with them even when theyre not reading it

im constantly studying and remembering comments i get on my fic that made me happy, analyzing what i liked about those comments, and trying to do the same for other people. many of these tips are things i noticed in my own comment section that i enjoyed!

NOW, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO DO ALL OF THIS. i'm sure you can tell by the size of this post that i'm already prone to talking a lot, but I don't even do everything here all at once in every review i write. but, still, i hope that this helps in showing things you can think about when you write a comment!

EDIT 05/13/22: this post got a little uptick in notes, and there’s really only one thing i just want to add.

thoughtful commenting is, in my opinion, a skill, just like anything else! to do really well at it, you’ll need to practice! so leave lots of comments doing just one or two of these things at a time. soon you’ll end up with a toolbox like the one i’ve laid out!

it’s also a lot easier to think up stuff you liked if you’re already talking, so even if you’re not sure what to say, start typing. once you’ve got the ball rolling, the rest will often come to you much more easily

[charleswaterloo]

AGREED DO THE ULTIMATE FIC REC

Thank you so much for asking!! Okay, here we go!

DC fics that I got a few paragraphs into and already KNEW were going to be AMAZING:

1. The Jason Project by loosingletters

Warnings: Major Character Death

Jason had just wanted to see his autopsy report, he had only wanted to know what information Bruce had about his death. And when Bruce hadn't given it to him, he had stolen it. He hadn’t meant to stumble upon the bucket list of a dead child and the footage of a grieving father crossing one item after another off the list.

My thoughts: I don't often cry (which isn't healthy lmao) but this fic made me cry (happy tears!). It is absolutely wonderful and while angsty it has such a beautiful ending. I can't recommend it enough!

2. Little bird by Ididloveyou_once

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Tim knew he was fucked if only for the way that his brain was chanting Jason, like a litany. So he definitely didn’t need to hear the cold, mechanical chuckle or the chillingly delighted 'lucky me' to know that this was not good.

He took a second to look down at his coffee mournfully.

Then, he threw it at Hood’s helmet and bolted down the Tower corridor.

Or: Tim is supposed to be at Gotham Academy for a parent-teacher conference. Hood has other plans (Titans Tower AU).

My thoughts: One of the best Titans Tower AU fics I have ever had the pleasure of reading. The ending is to die for and so fluffy - it never fails to warm my heart <3

3. Straight to Voicemail by cabbagetop

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

“Red Hood. I need you to incapacitate Timothy Drake-Wayne.” “Aw, man,” Jason sighs, shouldering through the old wooden doors and out into the street with his books under his arm. “You and half the northern hemisphere. What’d he do this time?”

Jason's phone is blowing up about one Timothy Drake-Wayne (who is Jason's responsibility since when, exactly?). Jason comfort-eats. Jason suffers long. Jason reluctantly tries to keep this Raphus cucullatus of a human being alive, and maybe finds himself sidling back into the family while he's at it.

My thoughts: I was crying with laughter by the third sentence. If you want free serotonin, you will find it here folks, I guarantee it. Brilliantly written and hilarious and such a fantastic interpretation of Jason's character. Please read this lmao <3

4. miss me? by envysparkler

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Jason’s plan to observe his family’s reactions to his resurrection…does not go as intended.

My thoughts: I think I've recommended this one at least once before, but I will do so again because it is one of the best stories I have ever had the honour of reading on AO3. It has a happy ending, but was another fic which actually made me tear up. It is just beautiful and I'm sure some of you have read it before. Read it again even if you have - it's that good.

5. No Pain, All Gain by @sohotthateveryonedied

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Bruce checks Tim’s IV. “Are you in any pain? Do you need more morphine?”

Tim’s pupils are so wide that only the faintest ring of blue can be seen. He watches Bruce the way a five-year-old watches cartoons. “I’m all good, B-dog. All Gucci, like we cool teens say." His words are slurred almost beyond recognition, but Tim doesn’t seem to notice or care. "I could fight Superman right now.”

My thoughts: I know of only about 3 or 4 fics featuring Tim absolutely high out of his mind on some drug or another and this has got to be one of the absolute best of them. Whenever I feel the Depression(TM) crawling in and I need to laugh INSTANTLY I read this. It has not failed me yet. I can't recommend it enough it's so funny and a great read <3 The line below from the fic makes me scream laugh EVERY TIME:

“He’s not in his right mind.” “So? Neither are you half the time but you’re still in charge of everything.”

6. The Ouija Boy by SunnyBlue

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Timothy Drake was a stillborn baby. He was born dead, stayed that way for a solid five minutes, and was then resuscitated in the delivery room. He was a child who grew up alone, but for his imaginary friends. He had so many imaginary friends, in fact, that his parents sent him to get evaluated several times over the course of his childhood, which was spent with Tim as the only heartbeat in that house.

But that didn’t mean he was alone.

---

Tim sees dead people. When a Batboys murder investigation is going nowhere, he realizes his only chance at solving the case is to speak to the ghost of one of the victims. He has to reveal his secret to his brothers -- or risk the killer getting away.

My thoughts: STAND BACK FOR POSSIBLY ONE OF MY TOP TEN FAVOURITE FICS OF ALL TIME. I'm pretty sure I've recommended this one before but I will do so again. The story is impeccable, the mystery is ELITE and everything about it is literally perfect. I re-read this at least once a month so I can bask in its greatness and become a better person for having read it.

7. there but for the grace of god by TheResurrectionist

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

From a tumblr prompt.

AKA, "A Justice League fic where everyone argues about who's the most beautiful and intimidating sexy from the Big Three and everyone has valid points."

My thoughts: I'm going to let the note I added to the bookmark I made of this fic speak for itself. Here's what I wrote: "This was so funny - shoutout Jason for undeniable lad vibes plus the fact he felt he needed to neatly organise and write down the big three's sexiest traits."

8. American Ninja Worrier by DangerBeckett

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

It's just like Tim to give a poor college student a start in the business world. Kid's a bleeding heart, and usually, that's the sort of thing Jason avoids at all costs. He prefers his bleeding hearts on the literal side, and despite Bruce's best efforts, he's never had a head for business.

Unfortunately, though, this time the business is ninjas, and that's the sort of thing that makes Jason take notice. Because Bruce is useless, and someone's gotta make sure Tim's new internship program doesn't take down all of Gotham.

That's Jason's job, after all.

My thoughts: Please GOD just read the first few paragraphs. You'll know exactly what I mean when I say that this fic is it. Hilarious, badass and adorable. I mean, see the title of this fic rec. I just knew this fic was going to be amazing from the first line.

I have many, many more of course, but I'll leave this here for now as it's getting to be a pretty long post. Anyway, these are all fics - short and long! - that I knew were going to be absolutely perfect within the first few moments of reading. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!

[panharmonium]

you can be my ride or die: a staggeringly long essay about a deceptively short appearance

(aka, pan’s personal depository of notes about prince william of ealdor.)

now that my fic is long since done and posted, i can finally transfer this monster piece of meta out of my google docs and onto my blog, where it can serve as an unasked-for, absurdly detailed, beginning-to-end analysis of my obscure fave.

(whose line ‘yeah, and i’m prince william, of ealdor’ is still the funniest damn shit i’ve ever heard and also the most shocking burn arthur has ever received; i hope he thinks of it sometimes and remembers that humility is a virtue)

(the BRISTLING DISRESPECT!  the ZERO FUCKS GIVEN!  i love him!  please can someone else talk to arthur like this!  he needs it!)

disclaimer before we begin: i wrote this over a year ago, as a character check for myself during the very early stages of working on my fic.  i kept messily adding bits to it over the course of a couple weeks as i explored what i knew about this character and who i understood him to be, but at the time, i didn’t intend on posting it; it was just prep work for my own story-making.  it’s still essentially just a record of my train of thought as i pieced this character together - i’ve cleaned it up a bit now and added some recent links to make it more coherent, but it was never meant to be a posted essay, just a collection of notes for myself.  

be forewarned, it is more comprehensive than the things i’ve written about this character since, and it goes on for years.  if you are not interested in many, many pages of super heavy in-depth musings about a character who appeared in one episode, now is the time to scroll on by.  i promise i won’t mind in the slightest; i wrote this for my own purposes and don’t really expect people to read it - i’m posting it just to have it archived with the rest of my merlin stuff.

if you are interested in that sort of thing, however - hit the jump, and off we go!

i really love the episode where we meet will, though i’ve started to love it for new reasons since the first time i watched it.

the first time i watched season 1, 'the moment of truth’ was my favorite S1 episode overall, because it was the first time the Fab Four went off on an adventure together, and that was very exciting; and i also loved it because all the character stuff in that episode was so good; and i also loved it because look, all of us are suckers for that classic seven samurai plot, you know - i loved it in TCW, i loved it in the mandalorian, i loved it in merlin.  not gonna get bored of ‘simple farmers defend their homes with pitchforks’ anytime soon.  it is overall just a solid, self-contained plot with clear emotional arcs, and it sticks its landing well.  it’s a simple, strong story.

nowadays, though, i also love it because of will.

i. will whomst?

prince william of ealdor, that’s who!

will straddles a kind of weird place in canon, because he feels like a minor character to the audience but is very much not a minor character for merlin, who has known will much longer than the brief hour we get to spend with him and who has spent his entire life with will as his sole friend.

but, because will only appears once - let’s start with a round-up.  what do we actually know about him?

he’s a peasant farmer from ealdor, like merlin

his father was killed fighting for king cenred (as a foot soldier - these people are not wealthy enough or high-status enough to afford or be accepted into the knighthood)

his mother is either dead or absent

he’s painfully class conscious and doesn’t trust the nobility

he’s a “troublemaker” (the interpretation of which is...well, it’s left to the viewer’s discretion.  fandom seems to jump to ‘fun mischief and pranks,’ though i personally don’t get that vibe from this episode.  “troublemaker” in will’s case seems to mean more “doesn’t know how to keep his head down/can’t go along to get along to save his life.”  it means when he sees something that he thinks is Wrong, he absolutely will not shut up about it even when all his neighbors are sick of him and want him to just let it go.  it means he can’t stop rocking the boat even when rocking the boat makes everybody want to strangle him.)

he supplements his agricultural pursuits with carpentry.  you can see in his house big piles of hewn timber along one wall, as well as a grindstone and a shaving horse, and when he comes out of his house on two separate occasions he’s holding woodworking tools (mallet, chisel, etc)

he knows about merlin’s magic - for how long this has been the case, we’re not told.  it doesn’t feel like a new thing to me, but ultimately that’s guesswork.

he appears to have just one friend

that one friend is merlin

will loves merlin enough to die lying for him

merlin left will behind.

ii. it wasn’t what i wanted

so let’s talk about that.

merlin is asked “why did you leave?” twice in this episode, first by arthur and then by will.  he gives completely contradictory answers to the two of them, and it’s worth remembering, before examining both responses, that one answer is inherently more honest than the other, because merlin is only able to tell the whole truth to one of these people.

so when merlin talks to arthur, it goes like this:

“why did you leave?”

“things just...changed.”

“how?”

*silence*

“come on, stop pretending to be interesting and tell me.”

“i just didn’t fit in anymore.  i wanted to find somewhere I did.”

arthur has to drag this answer out of merlin, and it’s not because merlin doesn’t feel like sharing (i mean, come on, we know merlin; merlin wants to be in everybody’s business and he feeds off human connection like a starving man; he’d be thrilled that arthur was interested in his life) - the problem isn’t that he’s shy; it’s that he’s not exactly telling the truth and he’s trying to figure out how to do it in the least deceptive way possible.

i just didn’t fit in anymore.  i wanted to find somewhere i did.

that’s nice.  

it’s also a lie.  

it’s not a total lie, of course - there’s an element of it that becomes true, after merlin gets to camelot and realizes that working for arthur is “not totally horrible all the time” - that he sort of likes the excitement, and the newness, and being somewhere where nobody knows him and nobody will judge him - but that’s the reason he stays in camelot, not the reason he leaves ealdor.

by contrast, when will asks the question, merlin gives a completely different answer:

“why did you leave?”

“it wasn’t what I wanted.  mother was worried.  when she found out you knew - she was so angry.”

it wasn’t what I wanted.  

can we digest that for a moment?

merlin didn’t want to leave home.  

not that he isn’t enjoying himself in camelot now, of course - which he conveniently doesn’t mention in this conversation, because will is upset with him and merlin feels guilty that he’s been off enjoying his new life while will has been struggling at home alone - but at the point of departure, merlin didn’t want to go.  

his answer to arthur about finding a place where he belonged is certain-point-of-view bunk.  he didn’t just up and decide that he wanted to run off and find a place where he fit in better.  he didn’t leave because he wanted to escape a place he didn’t belong.  he didn’t set off in search of adventure and a new life.  it’s true that he didn’t feel like he fit in in ealdor, but that’s not what sent him packing.  he left because his mother found out that will knew about his magic, and she panicked and sent him away.  

iii. why did you leave

most fannish things i’ve encountered tend to interpret merlin’s departure in a much more generous light than i do, with merlin explaining to will that he’s leaving and will being unhappy about it but eventually understanding and kind of like...giving his blessing before merlin goes.  this is fine, of course, but it did surprise me, when i started dipping my toes into fandom, because i never interpreted events in this episode like that, and i don’t think it’s even a plausible read, not from the conversations we’re actually given.  the antipathy that accompanies merlin’s return doesn’t make sense under those circumstances, and moreover, from the way things actually unfold in this episode, we’re told, in order, the following three things:

1) the fact that will asks “why did you leave” tells us that he and merlin did not discuss it prior to the point of departure.  there’s no other reason for will to ask this question.  everything about will’s tone and body language in this scene indicates that he’s been stewing over this for a long time, that he doesn’t understand, that this is something profoundly difficult for him to address.  and while it might be nicer to think that merlin sat down and discussed things with will before leaving for camelot, that’s not the inference we’re being asked to make here.  

2) there is absolutely no way they wouldn’t have discussed it, if will had known that merlin was going to leave.  like - if your only friend in the world told you they were moving to another country tomorrow, there’s no way “why?” wouldn’t be the first question you asked.  there’s no way you wouldn’t have that discussion, at the most basic level, before separating.  it just wouldn’t happen.

3) so, given that information, the unfortunate, inescapable conclusion is this: will didn’t know merlin was going to leave.  merlin left without telling him.

everyone is free to continue to headcanon this in their own ways, of course.  but this is what we’re actually being told.

iv. we don’t want your kind round here

the fact that merlin vanishes without so much as a word to his best friend goes a long way towards explaining why merlin is so uncomfortable when he first sees will in the street.  

when they first encounter each other, merlin looks so apprehensive and wary, and the writers are playing it like ‘uh-oh, someone saw him use magic and now he’s nervous about it!!!’  but two seconds later, you realize that this can’t possibly be what’s causing merlin’s concern, because it’s made immediately clear that will already knows about merlin’s magic and isn’t going to say anything about it.  

merlin isn’t afraid of being outed, in this scene.  but he might, however, be afraid of the reception he’s going to get, given what we just discussed.

merlin just up and disappeared from home, and not so much as a letter since - we know will’s had a secondhand update, probably from hunith (“how’ve you been?!  i hear you’re skivvying for some prince”) but he very clearly hasn’t had any direct contact with merlin since before merlin left.  

merlin knows this was a big fuck-up.  he feels guilty.

(and to be clear - i think there is a lot to be said about just how merlin’s departure unfolded, and what stopped him from getting in touch.  it’s a complicated enough topic for its own piece, and it’s not quite within the scope of this essay, but suffice it to say for now that i don’t believe it stemmed from deliberate thoughtlessness or callousness on merlin’s part; it’s...deeper and more complicated than that.  honestly, i think merlin looks back on this as like...the first major mistake he ever made in his life, his...original sin, sort of.  and i don’t think he’s ever forgiven himself for it, either, but again, that’s a story for another day.)  the point here is that merlin didn’t necessarily want to cause harm, but he knew that’s what he was doing regardless - he knew that leaving without a word was the wrong thing to do.  and in this moment he feels rightfully guilty about all of it, and he’s afraid that his friend won’t welcome him home.

merlin’s moment of uncertainty is real, when will pretends to greet him with hostility.  merlin is afraid that will is angry with him for leaving him behind.

(and let’s not kid ourselves, will definitely is)

it’s a festering thing that keeps boiling to the surface as we progress through the episode.  it shows in the way will finally asks why did you leave, avoiding merlin’s eyes, the question laden with vulnerability.  it’s in the exchange “are you going to abandon them?”/“what, like you did?”  there’s real pain there, and confusion, lots of hurt feelings.

but.

despite all of that, will doesn’t freeze merlin out, when merlin comes riding back into town.  merlin is rightfully afraid that will might not want to see him, afraid that “we don’t want your kind round here” might be less of a joke than it ought to be.  and while all of the troubles that merlin is worried about are absolutely real and poised to cause friction later, the truth is that at that exact moment, when merlin comes walking up the road - none of it matters.  will has been nursing a collection of hurt feelings for months now, yeah, but in the immediate moment, when it comes down to it - he puts them aside.

they both do.  nerves, guilty thoughts, bruised feelings - they temporarily abandon all of that in favor of a momentary joy.  you can see how excited they are when they reunite.  how they start smiling at the same time.  how they laugh their way into that hug.  they’re so happy to see each other.

people get pretty worked up about ***That Time Arthur Finally Hugged Merlin!!!***, but i don’t know.  i think it matters to remember that merlin had people who knew how to hold him long before arthur was even a flicker of a shadow in merlin’s mind.

v. why are you being like this

so they reunite!

and then they fight. D:

but what really matters is how they fight, because even when they’re having an argument, they never let things escalate quite to the level of interpersonal nastiness, certainly never to the level of cruelty for cruelty’s sake - just a few hard truths and a pile of hurt feelings:

“i trust arthur with my life.”

“is that so?  so he knows your secret, then?”

...

“face it, merlin, you’re living a lie, just like you were here.  you’re arthur’s servant, nothing more.  otherwise you’d tell him the truth.”

the delivery in this scene is essential for understanding how these two interact with each other.  it’s so telling.  merlin and will are having an argument, and will is angry about everything we’ve already discussed, and on top of that, some prince is trying to round up a bunch of will’s neighbors for a fight that’s going to get a lot of people killed, and will sounds so sharp when he’s talking, up to and including the challenging “is that so?”  

but then when he sees that he’s touched a nerve there and merlin knows he’s right, his voice drops those edges and goes gentler, regretful, like - he and merlin aren’t all hunky-dory right now, but he’s not out to rub merlin’s face in it, either.  he’s not trying to “get back” at merlin for leaving him.  he’s not like...happy that merlin’s situation is shitty.  

vi.  if i broke it (would you quit?)

we mostly only see these two in a tense season.  they’re arguing with each other for almost the entire episode, and yet even in this at-odds state, there are little things that remind us of what they’re usually like - that they don’t want to be arguing, that this isn’t a natural at-rest state for them, that this isn’t what they’re used to.  they butt heads, but they keep swinging around back to each other, and trying again, and trying again, and trying again.  they never write each other off.  they keep trying to make it work.  

examples: merlin asking “why are you being like this?,” the implication being that will isn’t usually like this, that this isn’t how they usually act around each other.  the two of them together in the background of arthur’s pitiful training session, coming right off the tail-end of another argument and busying themselves with their own work, but still reflexively hanging in each other’s orbit.  merlin, even in the middle of a strained conversation, helping clean up the mess that the bandits made of will’s house, without asking or being asked, like it’s just the automatic, reflexive, natural thing to do.  merlin using will’s proper name when discussing him with other people, but always the diminutive when they’re talking to each other.  merlin following will every time will walks away; will doing the same when merlin’s the one who’s leaving.  that moment up in the hedgerow, with will’s embittered “you know why,” which sets them to arguing again, except instead of it pushing them apart, it pulls them closer together - will climbs right up into the hedge where merlin is standing so they can sit next to each other and talk.

like.  he’s angry!  but the instinct isn’t to storm away, it’s to get closer.

i love that so much.  i love how they’re starting to have another argument and merlin stands there and says “why are you being like this,” to which will, already upset, responds “you know why,” BUT -

but

will stalks up into that hedge and plops himself down right next to merlin, and merlin, without a moment’s hesitation, sits down beside him.

i love that.  they’re angry with each other, but their first instinct is still to close the distance.

i wonder, sometimes, how much of that is a function of them only having each other.  when you’re on the outs with someone, usually you can lean on your other friends, but what can they do?  it’s different when the person you usually seek out for comfort is the same person who’s pissing you off.  you don’t have anyone else to run to, so you can’t ever really storm off.  you have to learn how to hash things out.  you have to learn how to make it work.  you have to learn not to give up on each other.  

vii. she was so angry

the implied backstory for how merlin actually ended up in camelot is so painfully fascinating and, quite frankly, wrenching to think about, given how this episode eventually ends.

when will asks merlin why he left, merlin tells him, “it wasn’t what i wanted.  my mother was worried.  when she found out you knew - she was so angry.”  this is telling us that merlin’s departure for camelot was directly preceded by his mother discovering that will knew about merlin’s magic.  that is what ultimately prompted her to send merlin off to camelot.  of course there would have been other contributing factors - it’s evident that merlin’s situation in ealdor has always been precarious - but her immediate reason for sending him away was the fact that she found out that will knew about merlin’s magic, and she was angry and afraid to learn that merlin had been lying to her about something that put him at risk.

“i wouldn’t have told anyone.”

“i know you wouldn’t.”

but merlin’s mother didn’t believe that, or she wouldn’t listen to him when he tried to tell her, and she shipped him off to camelot anyway, despite the fact that camelot is arguably more dangerous for merlin than ealdor ever was.

the web of how this played out is such a tangled mess.  is it my fault, thinks will, before the episode even starts, desperately trying to figure out why merlin would abandon him like that.  it’s my fault, thinks merlin, at the end, knowing that if he had used his magic sooner, or come back alone, events would have unfolded differently.  it’s my fault, thinks hunith, realizing that the particular fear upon which she based merlin’s entire departure was utterly unfounded.

merlin doesn’t blame her for it, even though he has reason enough to be angry about it, by the end of this episode.  he understands that she was just trying to protect him.  but the truth of the matter is that she did make a mistake.  she was afraid for him, and she saw danger everywhere, and so she made a misjudgment.  

it’s the miniest of mini-arcs, but it’s there.  at the end of this episode, right after will drops the Big Damn Lie, merlin looks desperately around for the only other person in the room who understands, and the camera rests on hunith’s face for one lingering moment, as she realizes what’s happening.  when she’s exiting the house, there’s a shot where she pauses for a minute on her way out the door, staring back at her son's dying friend, who just offered himself up as a willing sacrifice to keep merlin’s secret safe.  

she and merlin are the only people in the room who understand the real import of that moment, the real meaning of that gesture.  they’re the only ones who know what’s happening, what it really means for will to say “i did it.”

hunith knows she misjudged that kid big-time.

viii. you can be my ride or die

so.  will.

why am i even interested in him?  what is it about this character that makes me want to write about him?

number one: i love him because he’s the only person we ever meet who cares exclusively about merlin.  

everyone else merlin has met up until this point is either a) as beholden to camelot and arthur as merlin is himself, or b) aware of merlin’s “destiny,” which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but does change the way people talk to him and treat him.  

it’s not that merlin doesn’t have people who care about him, but those relationships are not the same as the one he has with will.  merlin is obviously #1 in his mom’s life, of course - but, importantly, even hunith’s immediate reaction to merlin’s uncertainty at the end of 1.10 is to tell him that he has to go back to camelot, that arthur needs him, that he’s “the other side of a coin.”  this despite the fact that hunith has known arthur for all of five minutes and that merlin, in the moment where she talks to him, is in a lot of pain, and maybe it isn’t the most appropriate moment say, ‘hey, you absolutely must devote yourself to that guy i literally just watched lecture you about the evils of magic while attending your (supposedly magical) dead best friend’s funeral.’  

and when it comes to merlin’s camelot network, well - he’s #1 in gaius’s life, too, but gaius also is deeply concerned with the greater good, with the future emergence of albion, with what merlin is meant to become and do.  morgana and arthur - well, they don’t know merlin, first of all (really know him, all of him, the important bits) - they definitely like him well enough, and care about him in their way, but ultimately they’re royalty or pseudo-royalty and they have priorities that go beyond merlin, who, at the end of the day, is still a servant.  gwen comes the closest to being on merlin’s level, but she doesn’t know him-know him either, and as time goes on she gets more involved with the Crown, with arthur, and with the responsibilities all of that brings.  even merlin’s later friends all go on to have other missions - they absolutely all love him, but they all become knights, and they are as concerned about the well-being of the realm and the king as merlin is.  even merlin HIMSELF puts arthur’s life ahead of his own - he defines his worth by how well he can protect his prince.  

but will is the only person we ever meet who just cares about merlin - merlin the regular person, not the servant he pretends to be, or the legend he’s supposed to become.  not the fake, non-magical merlin facade (which is what almost everyone else needs merlin to be before they can condescend to be his friend) and not some destiny-laden figure out of prophecy, either.  will doesn’t know anything about destiny or prophecies.  he’s never needed to know about any of that stuff to care.  he’s always liked merlin.  just merlin.  just as he is.  

that matters.  all merlin ever does in this show is deny himself or be denied of the things every regular human being needs to thrive - love, acceptance, truth, safety.  he constantly puts or is forced to put other priorities ahead of his own interests, to a point where now, by season five, he’s spent years defending a regime that oppresses him, protecting kings who would execute him.  

will, in a display of true-to-character contrariness, upsets that entire narrative, because he does not care one whit about any of the things for which merlin is supposed to sacrifice his life.  will gives less than zero (count them: negative zero) fucks about arthur pendragon, and he doesn’t care about camelot, and he wouldn’t know what “albion” meant if he heard the word.  and it is refreshing - a blessed, beautiful, heartbreaking relief - to see one person in the world who only cares about merlin, for whom arthur pendragon, in comparison with merlin, isn’t the slightest bit important.  arthur isn’t even on the map.  he’s a non-entity.  he doesn’t exist.  

it’s a complete inversion of the way things are supposed to go, in this story.  you know how it goes - arthur is the once and future king, and merlin’s job is to usher in his reign.  "maybe that is its purpose,” gaius says, about merlin’s magic being meant to protect arthur, about merlin being born this way for that particular reason.  it’s merlin’s job to save arthur’s life.  it’s merlin’s job to teach arthur to be a better person, at his own expense.  it’s all for arthur.  i give my life for arthur’s.  his life is worth a hundred of mine.  what is the life of a servant compared with that of a prince?

will delivers the biggest fuck-you to that entire framework, because he doesn’t assess merlin’s worth based on what merlin can do for some random prince on the other side of the border.  merlin’s magic wasn’t purposed for anything, as far as will is concerned.  it doesn’t need to justify itself.  it just is.  it’s just who merlin is.  

and who merlin is has always been just fine.

ix. am i the only one wondering who the hell this is

for will, it’s people like arthur who need to justify themselves.  arthur with all of his power, arthur riding into little villages with his sword drawn, arthur and his bossing around and his “now, merlin!” conversation-interrupting.  will makes no allowances for wealth and couldn’t be less interested in royalty - his frame of reference isn’t you’re the once and future king and merlin exists to prop you up; it’s who the hell are you?  what gives you the right to be here?  what did you do to earn what you have?  

will, like gwaine after him, is acutely aware of the injustice of the reigning social system, and he’s not afraid to throw it in arthur’s face.  he knows that people like himself and merlin and all of their neighbors are unjustly disadvantaged from birth until death, and he knows they’re disadvantaged solely because the people at the top of the social chain are greedy lords who sow no seed but reap all the grain, who do no work but enjoy the greatest rewards, who steal from the people with impunity and call it divine entitlement.  will knows that he and merlin and all of their neighbors are considered no better than plow-beasts or war-fodder, and he knows that there is absolutely nothing they can do to stop the nobility from either taxing them into starvation or sending them off to die in a ditch - which makes him impossibly angry, and, unlike everybody else in his village, he’s not shy about saying so.

will is, at this point, literally the first non-villain to look at arthur and not immediately see some messianic pinnacle of human greatness - which is refreshing, to be honest, and fair enough besides!  he’s evaluating arthur from merlin’s side of things, after all, which nobody - including merlin - ever does, and while i love arthur as much as anybody - for the people’s hero that he could be, and for what he is, sometimes, if not frequently enough - the truth is that he’s not good for all of his people, not yet, and he’s not good for merlin, not the way things stand right now.  

will knows that.  he looks at arthur and sees a guy with a lot of power, who also happens to rule over the the least magic-friendly place in the five kingdoms, to whom merlin needs to lie in order to avoid the executioner’s block, and he sees merlin deluding himself into thinking that this supremely unequal, extremely unsafe situation counts as friendship.  

now, is will’s assessment of the situation a snap judgment based on personal encounters with an unjust social system and very limited knowledge of arthur as a person?  yes, definitely.  are there nuances to merlin and arthur’s relationship that he’s missing?  absolutely.

is he wrong?

not really.  and merlin knows it.

x. friends don’t lord it over one another!

i think about that line every damn episode.

over and over again, it comes back to me.  i hear it every time arthur gets On His Shit and invokes power he pretends not to have, every time i see more evidence of how this supposed “friendship” between him and merlin is inherently imbalanced.  it’s my favorite thing will says in all of 1.10, because it is so true and yet, most of the time, so unacknowledged as a dynamic.

we’re meant to love arthur and merlin together, and we do - i do; i do; when i see those moments that approach true mutual respect and care between them i am as swept up by the potential beauty of this friendship as anyone - but i still think about this line all the time.  it’s not right, the power dynamic between the two of them.  it’s not just about servants vs. royalty, though of course that’s a structural part of how it plays out.  it’s about the fact that, in a real friendship, one person can’t just whip out “you ever say anything like that again, and i swear you’ll join her in exile forever” to shut down a conversation and cow you into silence.  one person can’t just throw you in jail to spend a night “cooling off,” and they definitely can’t arrest you whenever someone levels a random accusation at you.  in a real friendship, it’s not one person who has all the power.  

but when it comes to arthur and merlin, that’s exactly what happens.  arthur gets to decide when he and merlin are and aren’t friends.  arthur gets to call merlin in or send him away.  arthur gets to make all the decisions about when to listen, when to ignore, when to trust, when to believe.  merlin can nudge, encourage, suggest, even defy, but ultimately, when you get right down to it, arthur is the king, and merlin is his servant, a dynamic which is compounded by the deadly particulars of merlin’s situation.  the relationship isn’t unequal solely because of a difference in social class, it’s unequal because arthur literally has the power of life and death over merlin.  arthur could (and would, as far as merlin knows) have merlin executed any day of the week, if he found out who merlin really was.  

that’s why when merlin tries to tell will that arthur is his friend, will snaps, “friends don’t lord it over one another!”  it’s not that you can’t care about someone who has more power than you, and it’s not that you can’t have some kind of relationship with them, but it is not real friendship if you think your “friend” will kill you when they find out who you really are.  it is not a real friendship if you have to pretend to be someone you’re not in order to preserve the relationship.  real friends don’t leverage impossible amounts of power to shut you up when you say something they don’t want to hear.  real friends don’t say things like “you’ll be a friend for life if you do [x thing]” to convince you to lie to their dad while they go out with a girl and thus get you clapped in the stocks three times in a row, and then turn around and show their appreciation by letting people raid and ransack your house multiple times, throwing you in jail at least twice, accusing (and once nearly executing!) your loyal long-serving mentor more than once - among innumerable other issues.  real friends aren’t “you’re my friend when i need you to be, but not when it’s inconvenient.”  they don’t have the kind of power to turn things on and off whenever they want.

i love that will is the only person who ever acknowledges this, across five seasons of this show.  i love that he spits it out immediately, without hesitation, the minute merlin tries to makes things sound better than they are.  i love that he says it unapologetically, to merlin’s face, because he says it for merlin’s sake, after all - the point of saying ‘friends don’t lord it over one another’ is to say ‘that guy doesn’t appreciate you the way you appreciate him/this isn’t reciprocal and he’s taking advantage of you/this isn’t the friendship you want it to be and i don’t like seeing you settle for this.’  will is that friend who watches you interact with someone and then later gets in your business like ‘EXCUSE ME!  I DO NOT LIKE HOW HE TALKS TO YOU!  I DON’T LIKE HOW HE TREATS YOU!'

will knows that merlin deserves better than arthur pendragon, even when merlin himself won’t concede that point.  merlin won’t advocate for himself, so will tries to do it for him.  merlin can try to convince himself that arthur is a real friend all he wants, but will knows what’s up.  he knows.  he knows where this is going, if merlin’s relationship with arthur is allowed to continue on exactly as-is.  will knows, from the very beginning, that this is a recipe for disaster.  

[addendum 2020: speaking from a post season-5 perspective...will understood where merlin and arthur were headed long before even we the audience did.]

xi. friends don’t lord it over one another [reprise]

you know what real friends do do for each other, though?

a) listen - even when they don’t like what the other person is saying

b) care - even when they’re angry

that’s it.  that’s what matters.  

we don’t need more than an hour of watching will and merlin onscreen together to see that this is how they interact with each other.  they’re arguing for most of this episode, and they’re both right, in different ways, but by the time they’ve had it out with one another, they both understand where their own arguments were wrong, too.  they listen to each other despite the fact that they’re angry, and despite the fact that they both have very strong feelings about their respective positions.  they care enough about each other to look past their personal injuries and accept where the other person is coming from.

merlin starts off this episode absolutely dead-set against using his magic to help ealdor, if there’s any chance arthur could find out about it.  but later, before he and will have even officially reconciled onscreen, we can already see that he’s been listening to what will’s been saying, that he’s come around to will’s way of thinking, because he tells his mother “if it comes down to a choice between revealing who i truly am and saving lives - that’s no choice at all,” hearkening back to will’s “are you telling me you’d rather keep your magic a secret for arthur’s sake than use it to protect your friends and family?”  and: “if arthur doesn’t accept me for who i am...well...then he’s not the friend i hoped he was” (you’re arthur’s servant, nothing more.  otherwise you’d tell him the truth.)  

merlin has been listening the whole time, even if he didn’t like what will was saying.

and the same goes for will, too.  he’s (understandably!) bitter about merlin’s situation, about the way merlin left, about the new life merlin built for himself while will was suffering in a confused limbo of abandonment at home - and will also obviously thinks the Farmers’ Resistance is a total disaster, a noble-spun farce that’s going to get good people killed - but even though he doesn’t trust the camelot contingent and couldn’t give fewer shits about prince arthur pendragon specifically, he trusts merlin.  he listens to merlin, even though they’ve been fighting.  he comes back because merlin keeps telling him it’s the right thing to do.

they both listen, even when it seems like they’re just arguing with each other.  and they both acknowledge where the other person was right, even when it means making themselves vulnerable.  will comes back to help his neighbors fight a battle against hopeless odds.  merlin exposes his magic to save people’s lives.  

they teach each other how to do the right thing.  they make each other brave.

xii. you just saved my life

let’s talk about being brave, then.

this kid jumps in front of a crossbow for a guy he doesn’t even like.

can we be clear about that?  will doesn’t even LIKE arthur.  he doesn’t particularly care about him.  he doesn’t accept him as the noble savior of all mankind.  he isn’t interested in defending the nobility, and he certainly hasn’t jumped on the camelot bandwagon.  just because he’s seen that arthur wasn’t planning on sending them all to their deaths without risking his own neck doesn’t mean will is suddenly going to start flying the pendragon crest from atop his house.

but he isn’t going to step back and let a coward shoot another man in the back, either.

arthur’s still a prince, yeah.  arthur’s still sitting at the tip-top of an unjust social system, benefitting from all kinds of privileges he didn’t earn.  arthur’s still a crappy friend to merlin.  heck, two seconds before that crossbow gets fired, arthur’s gone full-on inquisition-mode, interrogating merlin about sorcery, which, given that arthur can just go ahead and have merlin executed with a snap of his fingers, isn’t a great way to earn will’s respect or trust.  

but you know what?  when it comes down to it, will’s automatic, reflexive reaction upon seeing someone in immediate danger is to Get In The Way.  

it doesn’t matter that will doesn’t like arthur.  it doesn’t even matter that he actively dislikes arthur.  will doesn’t even think about it, he just moves.  instinctively.  automatically.  he isn’t going to let anyone standing right in front of him get murdered with their back turned, no matter how much he can’t stand them.  

let’s all take a second to remember and acknowledge something in arthur’s stead, since i’m not sure arthur will do it himself - arthur pendragon would have been dead right there if it weren’t for a dirt-poor peasant farmer from cenred’s kingdom who never had anything nice to say to a prince but still stepped between a pendragon and a crossbow in the name of doing the right thing.  without will, the story would have ended in season 1, episode 10.  albion itself owes its future existence to a young man with no surname who will never be acknowledged or recognized for anything he did, not for teaching the future king a lesson in humility, not for saving the prince’s life, and certainly not for the greatest and most noble move he ever made, because that gesture’s success is predicated upon its remaining a secret.  

this kid saves the entire World That Will Be.  the show would have ended before it ever really began, if not for our man prince william of ealdor.  

merlin knows that, and merlin never forgets it.  but i’m not so sure about everyone else.

xiii. yeah, don’t know what i was thinking

let’s talk about defiance.

this kid is dying, and he’s still full of piss and vinegar.  when arthur says, wide-eyed, “you’re a sorcerer,” will responds, “yeah.  what are you going to do, kill me?”  

what a power move.  what a thing to say.  

that’s not a question.  that is a no-fucks-given, shame-and-blame challenge.  

what are you going to do, kill me?  

merlin uses those exact same words during his confrontation with morgana in 3.02.  when he’s trapped - when he’s cornered and betrayed and angry - he reaches for the kind of defiance he once saw exercised on his own behalf, for a shameless bravery that burned itself into his brain.  for the kind of strength he wants to channel himself.

when it comes to holding your ground in front of the pendragon dynasty, merlin learned from the best.

xiv. and i’m prince william, of ealdor

let’s talk about names.

william: from wil (will or determination) and helm (protection, a helm)

hence the common translation of resolute protector.

which, given the events of 1.10, seems very fitting.

xv. i did it

let’s talk about lies.

because resolute protector rings even more powerfully true when it comes to merlin than it does for arthur.

at the time of this writing, i have four more episodes to watch before i’m done with season 5.  at this point, at the end of the show, merlin’s magic is still a secret.  merlin’s gotten involved in a lot of dangerous situations, risking his life in other ways, but the one danger he’s never had to really confront is the executioner’s block, because none of the pendragons know his secret.

and the reason none of the pendragons know his secret is thanks to our boy prince william of ealdor, who turns his own untimely death into a last-second rescue operation by telling the Biggest Damn Lie of his life and then doubling down on it when merlin tries to tell him no.

will is the one who secures merlin’s next five years of relative safety.  not from all of life’s dangers, of course; no one can do that - but when it comes to merlin’s greatest fear, the worst outcome, the prospect of being dragged out of his home in chains and murdered in front of an ogling crowd for just existing - will buys merlin’s escape from that fate with his life.  merlin remains hidden and unexposed to this very day because will died protecting his secret, because will lied to the prince of magic-hunting and invited upon himself all of the risk and scorn and danger and condemnation that a false confession like that entailed.

i honestly don’t know how to express clearly enough the enormity of that moment.  the momentousness of that gesture.  i called it a bold and tremendous lie in some other post somewhere, and i don’t know how else to capture what it was.  the thought of what it would mean, to be merlin, and to see someone throw themselves on the block for your sake, for your safety and your future and your freedom, when the rest of the world and every message you’ve ever absorbed says you don’t deserve to be safe, you don’t deserve to be free, you don’t deserve to exist.  

it is impossible to overstate how much that matters.  merlin carries that with him for the rest of his life.

xvi: i can’t fight you anymore (it’s you i’m fighting for)

let’s talk about love, okay?

this ep is called the moment of truth, right?  

so here are some truths about will.  in the time that we spend with him, we come to understand that he is the following:

a poor peasant kid with nothing to his name

a kid whose father is dead  

a kid whose mother is either dead or absent

a kid who “people are used to ignoring”

a kid who’s been making his own way through this backbreaking subsistence-farmer’s life with no grown-ups to hold him or help him or listen to him when he comes home at night

a kid who isn’t trusted to protect merlin’s secret, even by merlin’s own mother, whom will has known for his entire life

a kid whose only friend in the world fucked off to the country next door without a hint of warning or any indication that it was something that should matter to either one of them, making will think he misread the only meaningful relationship he’s ever had, because if merlin can just vanish to nowhere and not even bother to send a note, then either merlin wasn’t actually his friend to begin with or merlin was his friend at one time but doesn’t want to be anymore, both of which options are soul-crushing

a closed-off, heavily-armored, hurting kid who’s been unspeakably lonely for the past few months but also angry and ashamed at himself for feeling that way, because how stupid did he have to be, to think that he mattered to someone, that someone would ever want him or love him or need him or miss him, to think that this time would be different, that this time somebody wouldn’t leave him -

and even in this state - even in the midst of all this -

at the moment of truth, he still puts himself on the chopping block.  he still says, “you’ll have to go through me.”

he comes through for merlin.  of course he does.  the irony is bitter and beautiful - hunith sent merlin away precisely because she didn’t trust that merlin would be safe with will knowing about his magic, but in the end it’s will who gives up everything to keep merlin’s secret concealed.

not just to keep it concealed, even - to reverse merlin being outed.  merlin had already been exposed.  the deed was done!  the magic was seen!  it was all over - and then, miraculously, it wasn’t.  what will did was the only way merlin could ever have slipped safely back under the cover of secrecy.

will didn’t have to do that.  he didn’t have to lie about performing magic, and he didn’t have to save arthur, either.  it would have been better for will to let arthur die, in fact, and it would have been better for him to let merlin get caught, too, because ‘maybe then merlin would have to stay here with me’ - but will is so much better than petty revenge.  he’s so much better than anybody ever gives him credit for, merlin excepted.  

the fight will has with merlin doesn’t matter to him, in the end.  it was a complicated situation for both of them; will knows this.  if he weren’t dying now, he and merlin would have talked it out and made up - will knows that, too.  things could have gone a little smoother between them, maybe, and will still thinks going back to camelot is less than what merlin deserves, but it’s what merlin wants, and the mark of truly loving someone is when you want the best for them, even if it means you don’t get what you want for yourself.  so ultimately, when it comes down to it, the truth for will is this: he wants merlin to have a good life.  he wants merlin to be safe.  he wants merlin to be happy.  he wants merlin to be with him, too, but if he can’t have that, it’s no reason to withhold any of the other gifts he can bestow.  if one of those gifts is freedom, if one of those gifts is safety - it’s no choice at all.  

merlin is will’s one good thing.  merlin deserves everything will can give him, as far as will is concerned.

xvii. the only place worth being

this place has been boring without you.

what a thing to tell someone.

what a powerful thing to say to someone whose entire life up to this point has been a litany of ‘there’s something wrong with you,’ ‘you don’t belong here,’ ‘you’re cursed/broken/wrong/unnatural.’  what a dauntlessly loving thing to tell someone whose entire life has been the message ‘people like you deserve to die,’ over and over and over again.

what a singularly beautiful thing it is, for someone like merlin to hear ‘you are what makes this place worth living in.’

xviii: the only one worth seeing

likewise it’s good to see you again.

because it’s not just “it’s good to see you again;” it’s an acknowledgement that merlin is the last person will is ever going to see.  

and will is like, okay.

he’d rather be alive, yeah, but if he had choose - it’s good that it’s you.

xix: the only bed worth sleeping in (is the one right next to you)

the most devastating moment in this sequence, for me, is at the very end, when will confesses fear.

it doesn’t happen until everything else has been taken care of.  arthur’s been fooled, merlin’s been safely shuffled back under the cover of secrecy, everybody’s been taken in by the ruse and sent away, none the wiser  - all the necessary and important business has been dealt with.

only at the very, very end does will’s own predicament rear its ugly head.  only after everything else is done does he even allow himself to feel it.  he’s spent the rest of this sequence making jokes and roasting arthur and keeping it all together, but at the last second, when he falters, he comes undone for the only person he trusts, the only person who understands him, the only person in the world who gives a damn about him.  his defenses come down, in that last moment, for merlin - and it could ONLY be for merlin - when will says, “merlin, i’m scared.”

we don’t need anything else, to understand their relationship.  we’ve seen enough of will by now to recognize that he keeps the world at arm’s length, that even his walls have walls, that this is just not the sort of thing he would ever admit to.  confessions of pain?  acknowledging vulnerability?  never.  he’s not that kind of character.  we know he has a big heart - look at what he’s doing - but we also know he’s had a hard life.  he’s wrapped himself in layers upon layers of protection - snark and anger and deflection and sarcasm and still making jokes at the prince’s expense after being shot in the chest - nobody is allowed to see him open and undefended, never.

except merlin.

will is dying.  he is so young.  he has been so alone, for so much of his life, and he’s so young, and he’s dying.  he clutches for this lifeline like it’s the only thing he has, because it is the only thing he has - merlin is his only friend.  merlin is the person will loves best in the whole world.

merlin, i’m scared.

that is so unbelievably vulnerable.  that is so utterly naked.  that is totally defenseless, exposed, belly-up and barethroated under someone else’s burning gaze.

that is absolute trust.  will would never have said that in front of anyone else.  he would never have allowed anyone else to see him like that.

his confession is, like pretty much everything else he ever does, for merlin alone.

xx. your heart is on my sleeve

merlin, will keeps repeating.  merlin.

how much do you have to love someone, to make their name your last words?  how much do you have to care about someone, for that to be the only thing you can think to say, again and again, in your last terrified moments on this earth?

that’s a rhetorical question.  

i know how much.

xxi: i missed you too

i think, sometimes, about will, when i watch the later seasons of merlin, and about how he would feel if he could see what merlin’s life has turned into.

i sometimes wonder how he would feel, if he could see how merlin allows himself to be passed over, disbelieved, disrespected.  if he could see how merlin has started to define his worth in terms of how well he is able to protect Some Dude who doesn’t even know who merlin is, who keeps people like merlin trapped in the shadows of subjugation, hidden citizens in their own kingdom.  if will could see how merlin has laid his entire life down for other people’s enrichment, if he could see how little hope merlin now holds for his own happiness, if he could see the way merlin in S5 has given up on his own liberation -  

i don’t have to guess what will would say about it.  i know how he would feel.  if will could see merlin in season 5, his raging little heart would break.

i wish he were here to tell merlin exactly what he thought about it.  merlin does all this self-sacrificing for the sake of his “destiny”; whereas will would think that any destiny making merlin this miserable was a steaming pile of trash.  will would tell kilgharrah to get lost, and to take his questionable advice with him.  will would tell arthur to fuck off - he’s done it already, in slightly less explicit terms.  

does that mean i truly think merlin is supposed to abandon his mission and ditch camelot and run off to live his own life?  no.  merlin cares too much about making the world a better place to be truly happy with that kind of existence; he wants to change things for the common good; he wants to help the people he cares about.  but merlin, as he tries to fulfill his mission, is desperately missing will’s kind of support in his life.  merlin needs someone who is only here for him.  he needs someone who is going to get up in his face and remind him, “you matter.”  he needs someone to tell him, “you deserve better than this.”  he needs someone who isn’t afraid to tell destiny to fuck off, when telling destiny to fuck off is in merlin’s best interests.

merlin needs someone who is on his side.  

not camelot’s side.  not albion’s side.  not arthur’s side.  

HIS side.  merlin’s side.

xxii: he still is

the thing about will, then, for me, is this: i can’t minimize him.

i can’t do it.  i can’t diminish that part of merlin’s life.  

i don’t think it’s possible to overestimate his importance, frankly.  merlin, when we meet him, has only ever had two people in his life.  that is such an...unfathomable experience, for many of us.  just two people.  just two people to know you.  just two people to love you.  just two people, for your whole life.

will wasn’t just some friend.  will was half of merlin’s world.

fannish pursuits that i have seen...the things where will appears are already so limited, and of course that’s completely understandable - it’s not like he’s a main character, or even a side character, by any means; i totally get that.  but - so much of what i see is him serving solely as a set-up for merlin/arthur, or otherwise being shoved out of the way as soon as arthur shows up on the scene, or showing up only to be a receptacle for discussion about arthur and merlin’s developing relationship - even will and merlin’s own ship tag is 90% merlin/arthur fics.

and there’s nothing wrong with this, ultimately; everybody should continue to write exactly what they want and enjoy exactly what they want; that’s the fun of fandom.  i mention these things here only because for me, personally, the whole point of will’s character is that merlin’s life is bigger than just arthur.  the most important relationship merlin had for most of his life had zip-zero-nothing to do with arthur pendragon, and it still has zip-zero-nothing to do with arthur pendragon, after will is dead.  

you remember will’s funeral at the end of 1.10?  arthur has an entire conversation (a horrible one, fyi) with merlin, and merlin doesn’t look at him once.  he answers arthur’s questions because he has to, but his eyes never once leave the pyre in front of him - not while he’s listening, not while he’s talking, not once.  not ever.  arthur comes, arthur chastises, and arthur goes, all without being granted so much as a glance, because this isn’t about him.  this is none of his business.

the whole point of will is that it is possible for someone to love merlin and not give a tinker’s cuss about arthur pendragon.  the whole point of will is that having someone love merlin without caring about arthur pendragon is, in fact, a good thing.  merlin needs somebody like that in his life.  he struggles when he doesn’t have someone like this around to advocate for him.  just look at where he is in season 5 - look at what his life has become, when it’s been years since he had an in-the-know friend.

merlin suffers when he loses this kind of support.  it’s easy to say that will is never mentioned again after 1.10, but there are real reasons why merlin wouldn’t be willing to explicitly mention him, and the lack of explicit references doesn’t mean we can’t still see him, if we pay attention.  we see the immediate impact of his death in merlin’s attitude shift in 1.11.  we see him in 2.02, when merlin names his fake tournament knight sir william and spends the rest of the episode roasting arthur to within an inch of his life.  we see him in the season 3 opener, when morgana levels her sword at merlin and the first thing that pops out of merlin’s mouth is “what are you going to do, kill me?”  we see him in gwaine’s intro episode, when merlin immediately cleaves to this class-conscious ‘people get sick of me too quickly’ stranger whose father was killed fighting one of the king’s wars.  and his absence is felt, more generally (as is lancelot’s) in how quickly merlin’s life starts to spiral out of control once the only two honest friends he ever had are gone.  their loss doesn’t have to be explicitly referenced for us to understand that merlin, without that kind of support system, is faltering.  we see it happening with our own eyes.

[edit, post-viewing-of-S5-finale: and we see where it eventually leads, too.]  

so, once again, as i said - i can’t minimize this character.  i can’t overstate the positive impact of merlin having somebody who was here for him and only him, who affirmed merlin’s value independently of arthur pendragon’s fate, who knew and loved merlin without caring about a “destiny” that ultimately, in the end, turned out to be a cruel joke made at merlin’s expense.  

if will had lived, i’m not sure we would have ended up in quite so dark a place.  we might have landed in some other tight spot, sure, but i can tell you one thing for certain - will would not have sat quietly by and allowed merlin to throw his life away, not for camelot, not for arthur, and certainly not for a parade of empty promises.

xxiii: where you are, there i’ll be

the bottom line is this.

merlin spent the first two decades of his life with one friend.

one.  

loved by one friend.  

one.

merlin had his mother, who was there for him from the beginning, whose love was unconditional, who was an “of course.”

and he had will, who chose merlin, who kept choosing merlin even after merlin told him the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Secret.  will’s presence in merlin’s life is the only reason merlin grows up believing himself to be deserving of love from people who aren’t his own mother.  his presence in merlin’s life is the only reason merlin knows how to have and be a friend.  his presence in merlin’s life is the only reason merlin is who he is - a merlin who’d spent his entire life without a single friend would not have been the same confident, optimistic, gregarious person who later walked into camelot and told arthur pendragon, “i’d never have a friend who could be such an ass.”

will mattered.  we don’t talk about him much, because he only appeared in one episode, but it wasn’t “one episode” for merlin; it was closer to twenty years of companionship, of elbows in ribcages and smirks exchanged across the room and someone to natter on at, a person to sit next to and walk beside, in every season and all sorts of weather.

will chose merlin, and he kept right on choosing him, until he breathed his very last breath.  that is enough for me to love him, to feel grateful that he existed.  i don’t care how rough he is around the edges.  i don’t care that he hates arthur pendragon’s guts, that he has a big mouth, that he speaks out of turn, that he has no tact, that he can’t suffer fools, that he has a chip on his shoulder the size of a minor planetoid and wings it at people’s heads when the mood is on him.

he loved merlin.  actual, magical merlin; merlin as he truly is, merlin in all his gifted, unnatural, beautiful imperfection.  

that is a desperately rare thing.  that is worth celebrating.

[liamrysandme]

Hurt- Part two

All characters belong to Pixelberry

Book: Open Heart

Paring: Ethan x F!MC

Word count: 3741 

Warnings: Head injury, surgery. 

A/N: I’m doing my second year of residency and I really wanted to write a medically accurate fic!

Part One 

Ethan was sitting in his office, specs on and looking over some blood work results. Truthfully, he was concerned about his girlfriend. Earlier when the rest of the team had met, she complained of a headache and just seemed a little off. It wasn’t like her but as a junior fellow on the diagnostics team she was being given more responsibilities, more challenging, stressful cases that she wouldn’t been able to take when she was an intern. Maybe it was just stress. It didn’t stop the older doctor being concerned though, it’s strange behaviour for her. 

Ethan had just finished looking through the results for the team's newest patient. Everything was normal, except the patient had a vitamin D deficiency and a vitamin E deficiency too which could be why he’s experiencing vision disturbances, fatigue and muscle weakness but unfortunately didn’t explain the rest of his symptoms. 

He was just finishing looking through when his pager went off. Ethan picked it up off his desk, read the message and was immediately up out of his seat and moving toward the door. 

** 

Ethan rushed into the ER just in time to see Sienna and Bryce wheeling her in. He’d rushed through the hospital like a complete mad man- the staff he passed must’ve thought he was a lunatic. 

Ethan made his way up to the gurney just as they were wheeling her into a cubicle. “W-what happened?” Ethan stuttered asking no one in particular. 

“Er…” Bryce started, swallowing thickly as he looked down to one of his closest friends laying unconscious on a gurney. 

“Dr Lahela. Bryce,” Ethan said sternly and urgently, encouraging the younger doctor to continue. 

“Erm...a New-onset seizure, she complained of a headache earlier and also vomited," Bryce summarised, clinically. He needed to attempt to distance himself emotionally from this if he was going to help her. “We gave her five of diazepam to stop the seizure. She’s post ictal. She woke up for a minute or so and now isn’t responsive.” 

Ethan moved to reach for a pair of gloves from a box hung on the wall, “Right, someone get me IV access and page Neuro. Now.”

There was a flurry of activity. “Okay, I’ve got an 18 going in the left AC!” A nurse called as Ethan slipped on the pair of gloves and stepped closer to the bed. 

“Ethan, you can’t-” Bryce started. Ethan turned to him and gave him a pointed glare. 

“Either you two can help me or you can stand there and I’ll save her life single-handedly.” Ethan didn’t wait for a response as he turned his attention back to her. “Casey? Casey, can you hear me?” Ethan called, rubbing her sternum. 

This time Ethan managed to get her to open her eyes. She made an attempt to shuffle away from Ethan’s touch but couldn’t. He listened closely, noting her breathing was irregular. He moved closer to her to get a better listen. “Okay, she’s not moving enough air,” Ethan explained. He was just about to request that somebody bag her when Casey started gagging. “She’s vomiting. Let’s roll her.” 

Bryce moved to support her head as Ethan and a team of nurses helped to support the rest of her as they rolled her on her side. 

"I need suction,” Bryce requested, a nurse handed it to him and he took over draining the vile stuff from her mouth. 

“Anyone have any ideas?” Ethan asked the team. There were a thousand explanations. A thousand different diagnoses. 

“Meningitis?” Sienna suggested from the sidelines. 

“What’s her temperature?” Ethan asked. A nurse quickly checked her temperature. 

“It’s normal,” She said. 

“No fever. It’s not meningitis,” he insisted,” Her blood pressure is high,” Ethan noted. 

“A stroke?” Bryce suggested. He knew that was unlikely given her age but the symptoms added up. 

Ethan didn’t say anything as he moved around the bed. He gently pushed the hair away from the back of her head so the goose egg shaped hematoma was visible. “No, there’s a hematoma here. This is trauma.” 

Casey’s eyes momentarily opened, she moved her arm trying to move Ethan’s hand away but failed to do so before her eyes fluttered back shut. 

“She hit her head?” Bryce questioned. It didn’t make sense to Ethan either, when did this happen? How did this happen? 

“Okay, er...Roll her back down carefully, then get her in a collar and then she needs an urgent CT.” 

After they were sure Casey had finished vomiting, they turned her back over, got a neck brace on her and Bryce took over ventilating, except she wasn’t moving much air and he’d tried re-positioning her jaw to no success. “She’s not protecting her airway. I can’t-” Bryce announced, trying once again to position her jaw properly. 

Ethan knew what that meant. She’s not able to protect her airway which meant they needed to intubate. This definitely wasn’t something anyone thought they’d need to deal with today and they all still had no idea how this happened. 

“Ethan!” Bryce called, when the older doctor seemed to zone out for a second. How did this happen? 

“We need to intubate her,” Ethan announced. Ethan moved to the head of the bed, moving Bryce out of the way as a nurse handed him the laryngoscope. He used a technique called a jaw thrust to try and open her airway, since he couldn’t move her head since the she had a potential spinal injury. After that was done he placed the laryngoscope. He took him a second to  it in the right position. “Okay...pass me a 7.0 tube.” A nurse handed him the right sized tube. Once again, It took Ethan a couple of seconds to place the tube. Once it was in place he slipped the laryngoscope out of her mouth. 

Ethan then moved from the head of the bed as a nurse connected the tube to the BVM.  “Steth-” Ethan ordered, Sienna took her stethoscope off and handed it to Ethan. Ethan listened to her breathing through the scope for a couple seconds, “Okay, I've got bilateral breath sounds. Okay, someone inflate the cuff and then lets get her to CT. Someone call them and say we’re coming.”

** 

Ethan, Dr. Gary Taylor- the neurosurgeon on call, and the technician we’re standing in the CT technicians room looking at the images as they spread across the computer screen. 

“C-spine is all clear,” Dr Taylor nodded, “There’s no sign of a spinal injury.”  Although Ethan already suspected that so it was no surprise. 

“She’s bleeding on the brain,” Ethan mumbled. Neuro wasn't in any way his specialty but he didn’t need to be a specialist to see the bleed on the CT. 

“Subdural hematoma,” Dr. Taylor nodded. “She needs surgery.”  The two doctors filed out of the room, as a couple nurses headed into the CT room to get Casey out of the scanner then prep her for surgery. 

Gary was definitely not who Ethan would want to operate on his girlfriend. He’s an arrogant little shit but Harper was sick and he’s the surgeon on call. Dr. Taylor turned to Ethan just outside the room. “You’re not coming anywhere near my OR.” 

It frankly annoyed Ethan that was picking a fight now. Yes, they’d butted heads many, many times in the past but now was not the time to piss off and simultaneously test his restraint, not while Casey’s life is at risk.  

“I’m going with her,” Ethan insisted. He didn’t want to leave her. He wanted...needed to be with her. 

"If you come into my OR, I will have you removed," Dr. Taylor pointed a finger in Ethan's face, "You watch from the gallery. Do I make myself clear?"

Ethan was fighting every instinct he had to punch him, his jaw and fists clenched tightly by his sides. Had Dr. Taylor not been one of the best neurosurgeons next to Harper, he just may have followed through with it.

“Fine.”

** 

Everyone made quick work of getting Casey prepped. Ethan walked alongside the bed as they made their way towards the OR. 

Ethan’s head started pounding in his chest as they approached the sterile line line. Someone was about to open up her skull and he couldn't stop thinking about everything that could go wrong. The damage that can be caused, that already could’ve been caused. 

Ethan leaned down and place a kiss on her forehead, "Don't you give up on me now Rookie, okay? I need you." He whispered as he took her hand. “I love you so much,” His voice wavered. Whether or not she could hear him didn't  matter; he just wanted to tell her. 

Ethan let go of her hand and the other slip of the raising as the scrub nurses rolled her through the OR doors, her anaesthesiologist following closely behind. Ethan felt helpless when the door swung shut- that was a new feeling for him. He was frozen in place. That could’ve been the last time he gets to tell her that he loves her. That he needs her.

**

Naveen had arrived and guided Ethan to the gallery. This was a sick, cruel form of torture for him. He didn’t like not having any control over what happened in there. He didn’t want to watch and do nothing. He couldn’t help but be annoyed with the surgical team as they scrubbed in- the bleed could potentially be getting bigger and bigger, causing more and more damage. 

Bryce, Sienna, Elijah and Jackie were also now present. Jackie had explained to them how Casey could’ve hit her head. If Casey wasn’t so stubborn and had just told Jackie the truth. This could’ve been avoided. 

Ethan just stood, fixed on the scene below him. He involuntarily flinched when Gary turned on the bone saw. He’d seen this a dozen times but...his girlfriend was never the one on the table. 

He wasn’t squeamish. Ethan couldn't afford to be in this job but seeing someone drilling into Casey’s skull had him feeling that way. 

He couldn't take this. He thought he could deal with it but he couldn’t stand to hear the horrific, nightmare inducing, sound of a bone saw drilling into her skull. 

"I’m...I'm gonna pass out," Ethan stuttered, stumbling back. Naveen was immediately on his feet at his statement. Ethan staggered backwards again right into Naveen.

“Ethan, sit down,” Naveen ordered. He guided him to a seat. He’d kept it together but he just couldn’t anymore. This was the final straw. That sound...

He ran a hand through his hair, fighting to urge to put both of them over his ears. Soon the sound stopped, he’d thought that would be a relief but it now meant Casey brain was on display. 

Tears started to pool in his eyes as he unsteadily got to his feet and gazed down into the OR. He quickly turned his gaze to Naveen then back to Casey. “She-” He started, his eyes refilling and glistening with unshed tears. Before too long they slipped down his cheeks. “She...she h-has to be okay... s-she n-needs t-to b-be.”

**

It was two days later since Casey’s freak little accident and Ethan hadn’t left her side. Ethan was sitting by her bedside when Bryce came in to stand at the end of her bed. 

“How is she?” 

Ethan nodded, “ Surgery was considered a success, there were no complications, her post- op EEG was all normal. SBT's have all been great. They’ve even started lightening sedation as well. She’s practically the ideal candidate for a full recovery.” 

"That's great," Bryce exhaled, nodding gratefully. 

“Yeah,” Ethan sighed. Both men tried not to think about that fact that Casey may now wake up as the same woman they once knew or wake up at all. There was no reason to believe that anything will go wrong, yet that's the only thing he can think about. 

** 

It was much later that day when Sienna and Elijah stopped by after their shift had ended. Ethan had moved from his post and was now standing by the window, looking over the view of the dark hospital parking lot. 

"How's our favourite patient?" Elijah asked as he and Sienna came in. Ethan turned to face them nodding. 

“Really good,” Ethan replied with a small sigh, 

“Bryce said that they’re lowering her sedation?” Sienna asked, Ethan nodded. 

“Yeah, they started this morning. Dr. Taylor hopes to see her start to wake up soon but it’s a waiting game for the time being.” 

Suddenly an alarm on the monitor started to ring and Casey’s head jerked back. All three doctors we’re immediately next to her. 

"Is she seizing?" Sienna asked, unsure of what she was seeing.

Ethan looks to the monitor then back to Casey. “No, no, this isn’t a seizure. She’s bucking the vent,” He explained, the younger doctors relaxed somewhat, pleased that this wasn’t an emergency. 

Ethan took hold of her hand resting on her stomach and placed his other on her shoulder, “Casey can you hear me? Case?” Ethan gave her shoulder a light pinch and her eyes fluttered open. 

Ethan could see the panic  in her eyes as her surroundings started to become clear to her. She started grabbing at her face, desperately attempting to remove whatever was choking her. Ethan caught her frantic hands in his, stilling her and stopping her pawing at the tube. 

“Don’t do that, You're alright, Case, look at me," Ethan said calmly, "Look at me."

She looked up to him. It took her a second to connect the dots- Ethan . She searched his face frantically, trying to figure out what was going on. She’s scared and she can't figure out why her boyfriend isn’t doing anything to help her. Ethan read her expression. 

“Casey, you had surgery,” Ethan told her plainly, “You’ve got a tube in your throat, that’s helping you to breathe.” She shook her head; tears welling in her eyes. “Casey, you need to leave it in.” 

She withdrew away from him."Case-" Ethan warned.

She immediately reached for the tube tamer and tore the velcro off as Sienna and Ethan jumped forward to grab hold of her arms. If Casey wasn’t panicking she would know that she couldn’t just rip it out but she rightfully so freaking out.

"Wait, wait, wait, stop!" Ethan called. He turns to the side and reached for a syringe and she relaxes. "Hold on, I got you," He murmured quietly as he deflated the balloon. "Big cough on three, okay?" He instructed as he gripped the tube, "One, two, three."

Casey erupted in a coughing fit as Ethan gently slid the tube out. Sienna gently held an oxygen mask up to her face, which she gratefully gasped into. Once she slowed down, she finally rested her head back against the pillow. Ethan rested a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"There you go, easy, just breathe," Ethan soothed.

"E-" she sputtered quietly.

"Shhh, don't talk, just breathe," Ethan said, watching her vitals on the screen. “Okay, You’re stable.” Ethan turned to face Elijah and Sienna on the other side of the bed. “Could one of you go and update Dr. Taylor.” 

Instead of one of them going, the pair did. As much as they wanted to see their friend, they knew Ethan needed some time with her. 

"Do you know where you are?" Ethan asked as he sat on the bed beside her.

"Eden-" She replied, the rest of the word silent from her hoarseness.

“That’s right,” Ethan nodded. Casey nodded to the glass of water on the bedside table. Ethan picked it up and held the straw to her lips as Casey took a few large gulps. “Slowly, small sips.” Once Casey was done Ethan placed the cup back down.

“Ethan,” Casey breathed, her voice scratchy and quiet. She reached out to him, She just wanted some comfort, she still didn’t know what was happening. 

"That was the answer to my next question," He smirked. He got to his feet to lean over to place a kiss on her forehead, just below the dressing over the incision wound. “How are you feeling? Any pain?" He asked sweetly.

"No," she shook her head, wiping at her tired eyes, "What happened?"

"You hit your head really hard and you needed surgery to fix—" Ethan started.

"No, not like I'm a patient," She interrupted, holding up a hand, “Talk to me like I'm a doctor. Don’t gloss over anything, I want to know what happened. Everything.” 

A hint of a smile ghosted over her boyfriend's lips. Ethan was just relieved to have her back if he was being honest. Who knew that a freak accident could make you realise how much you need someone?  He always knew that Casey was able to keep him on his toes but this definitely took it up a notch. 

“Well, you managed to somehow hit that pretty head of yours which caused a subdural hematoma,” Ethan started with a sigh. He wished that he didn’t need to relay this to her but it's what she wanted after all. “You  had a seizure, During the time you were in ER we had to intubate you because you weren’t able to maintain your own airway, then when we were examining you we found a hematoma on the back of your head. Shortly after you were rushed to CT. The CT showed a bleed on your brain and then you had surgery.” 

“Why did I have a seizure? Did I hit myself during it?” 

“No, Bryce and Sienna made sure you didn’t hurt yourself during your seizure,” Ethan reassured, shaking his head, “You were acting off before the seizure started according to Bryce and Sienna. I assume that was an Aura but then you had been complaining of a headache while we were together shortly before this happened. Taking into account all of your symptoms, I assume you must’ve hit your head at some point during the day,” Ethan explained, Casey  nodded along. “Do you remember how that happened.” 

“No,” Casey replied

“Jackie seems to think you hit it on a bed.” 

She nodded, her eyebrows creasing. Come to think of it, she didn’t remember anything from that day. It was all a blur. "Who operated?" 

“Dr. Taylor,” Ethan said reluctantly. The man was arrogant, pompous and very few people in the hospital actually liked the man. Although he had many, many unappealing qualities, Ethan couldn’t deny that he was at least skilled, he saved his girlfriend's life after all. 

Casey huffed and rolled her eyes. "You really think I'd let him come anywhere near you with a ten blade If there was any other choice?" 

“No,” Casey muttered, a hint of smile on her face. Her hand came to rest on her throat. She now understood why people hate being intubated. Ethan picked up a glass of water from the side and held the straw to her lips. Casey took a few sips of the ice cold water. “Thanks. So...How long have I been sedated?" She glanced around, trying to figure out the time of day. It’s light dark- that’s all she was able to gather. 

"Two days," He replied as he rested a hand on her cheek as the other gently ran through her hair.  “How are you feeling? Truthfully.” 

Casey looked up to him, quickly meeting his eyes. It wasn’t often that Ethan was this affectionate to her. “My throat is a bit tender," she mumbled, Casey moved so her cheek was pressing more firmly against his hand, melting into his touch. “I’m just really tired.” 

Ethan nodded in understanding. “We only lowered the propofol a couple hours ago so that’s probably why. Just try and get some rest.”

It was safe to say that Casey was terrified. She understood everything Ethan had told her although it was still a lot to try and process in a short amount of time too. She was anxious about the possible complications she could have in recovery. 

Casey turned back to him when she felt his hand come to rest on her arm, “I’m here, Casey. Everything is going to be fine.” 

She was certain her heart just swelled. It really wasn’t often that Ethan was so affectionate and gentle but she was scared and he knew that- he’s scared too although he’d never openly admit that to anyone. 

Ethan collapsed the rail of the bed and slid in next to her, carefully pulling her close so her head was resting on his chest.  "I'm right here Case," Ethan said gently, "You're safe."

Both of them understood all too well the gravity of her injury. A brain bleed wasn’t something that people just recover from overnight. The couple just laid in each other's arms for sometime, grateful that Casey would recover and that she hadn’t suffered a different fate like many people with head injuries sadly too often do. 

"Ethan," She whispered, "I love you."

"I love you too, Casey."

 ______

Here’s a medical lowdown! I used a lot of terms in this fic and I don’t wanna confuse anyone

I’ve got an 18 going in the left AC-  The nurse is referring to the needle size. An 18 gauge needle is one of the largest needles. It’s good for giving fluids/ meds/ blood quickly. AC is the vein in the bend of your elbow. 

“No fever”- Since Casey has no fever it pretty much rules out Meningitis. 

A stroke?- Casey is young which means the chance of her having a stroke isn’t that likely, however, it’s possible. Because they’ve ruled out meningitis they could combine the symptoms and come to the conclusion that it’s a brain bleed. A hemorrhagic stroke could absolutely be why someone is having symptoms of a bleed. 

Casey opens her eyes, whimpering, and tries but fails to push his hand away - So we measure somebody’s level of consciousness by how many points they get out of 15 using the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS). It’s calculated by how someone responds and other factors that play into this. The way Casey reacts shows that she’s aware that she’s in pain and where the pain is localized (ie: The back of her head). 

(I would put Casey’s GCS at around 9 her which really isn’t good!.) 

“There’s a hematoma ”- So now they know it’s trauma and not an illness. 

Ethan tells them to roll her carefully. This is because if someone has a head injury we always suspect they have a spinal injury too. This is because if you’re able to hit your head so hard to cause a potential bleed on the brain, you could’ve also hurt your C-spine. This is also why Ethan requests a C-collar (neckbrace). It’s just a precaution until a spinal injury can be 100% ruled out. 

Bilateral breath sounds-  After somebody has been intubated You have to check that the tube is in the right place (aka not in one of your lungs). Bilateral just means that there are even breath sounds on both sides. 

BVM- Bag Valve Mask. 

Sterile line- In most, If not all hospitals, there is a line painted on the floor before you enter an OR. You have to be really, really sterile to go in. 

“I’m gonna pass out” - Now, this isn’t uncommon when you’ve seen something happen to anyone, normally a loved one, but there’s a technical reason why this happens. 

When someone experiences something triggering (like someone drilling into your girlfriend’s skull) The vagus nerve will send signals to slow your heart rate and blood pressure but sometimes your body will do this too well. Basically Ethan’s body is trying to chill him out too much. His brain just isn’t getting quite enough blood which makes him feel faint. 

SBT - SBT means short breathing tests. Doctors use this when we’re trying to take someone off a ventilator or just to see if they can breathe on their own. The ventilator is turned off to see if the person can breathe adequately without being aided or not. 

 (People on ventilators aren't something I see all that much so my knowledge is fairly limited in all of this.) 

Post- op EEG-  

Post-op= Post operation. 

EEG= Electroencephalogram. This tests the electrical activity in your brain. They are most commonly used in people with epilepsy or to just detect seizures in general. 

Electrodes are stuck to your scalp (like a heart monitor) but for your brain instead. 

When someone is unconscious, Like Casey, It’s used to make sure that you’re not braindead or having subclinical seizures. This means that the person is having seizure activity but they’re not outwardly showing that they’re having a seizure. 

_

Ethan mentions that Casey is an ideal candidate for a full recovery. This is simply because Casey is young. The older the person is who suffers an injury like this, the mortality rate gets higher. It just means that she’s likely to recover. This isn’t always decided by age though. Lots of factors are taken into account. 

Bucking the vent- This can happen because the settings on the ventilator may not be correct or in this case it’s because Casey is awake. It basically just means that she’s fighting against it. 

Ethan gave her shoulder a light pinch- Again this is painful stimuli. This is called a trap squeeze because you’re squeezing the Trapezius muscle. This is painful and won’t leave a mark like a sternal rub can do. 

Tube tamer is just the thing that secures the tube in place. 

Ethan reaches for a syringe and she relaxes- Basically there’s a balloon-type thing at the bottom of an intubation tube that creates a seal. You need to deflate this before you remove the tube. (Ethan referred to it as ‘the cuff’) 

Aura- Not a spiritual one. This is simply what the feeling you get before a seizure is called. based on what Bryce had told him about her behaviour before her seizure, Ethan concludes this is what was happening.

[destielfanfic]

Enter Destiel

I return again with a question This may be a stretch but is there any fics where deans in a relationship with a girl and falls in love with cas and runs away w/him or leaves her for him?

No worries, this is not a stretch at all! Dean dating girls before he meets Cas is quite a popular trope in destiel fics. After all, that's canon. Here’s a small collection of such fics previously recced on our blog. I’ve selected fics where relationship with a girl is important to the plot and character development but of course, YMMV. I’ve also added fics with Cas dating a girl, since those are few and far between. And rest assured, there’s no girlfriend bashing in these fics. Sometimes a boy and a girl just don’t work out, right? Enter Destiel. 

I. Fic starts with Dean or Cas being in a relationship with a girl (dating/ engaged/ married)

As We Forgive Those by AlreadyPainfullyGone (unofficially recced here) (Dean/Lisa, engaged)

Cas and Dean’s Infinite Playlist by kkingofthebeach (Dean/Anna, right after the break up)

Freebies and Oak Trees by violue (Dean/Tessa, living together)

It’s Always the End of the World Somewhere by scaramouche (Dean/Bela, dating)

Kind Of A Forever Deal by komodobits (Dean pursues Lisa)

Mr. Know-It-All by baba_writes (Cas/Anna, married)

My Heart Is Beating From Me by enochian things (Cas/Daphne, engaged, season 9)

On Air by wincechesters (Cas/Daphne, dating)

the open sky (is mine tonight) by weatheredlaw (Dean/Anna, engaged)

Painted Angels by winjennster (Dean/Anna, engaged)

Passing Ships by quiettewandering (Dean/Lisa, trying to date)

Peace and Good Luck To All Men by kismetjeska (Dean/Anna, dating)

So Glad We Made It by scaramouche (Cas/Daphne, dating)

Someone I Forgot to Be by mathildamavis (Dean/Lisa, living together)

Stellar (Meet Me In Outer Space) by youaresunlight (Dean/Lisa, dating)

Three Funerals and a Wedding by engaldnwouldfall (Dean/Lisa, Cas/Daphne, dating)

What I Need by xaandria (Dean/Cassie, right after the break up)

Genie in a Bottle by thepopeisdope NEW REC!!!! [NC-17, 30,000 word count] (Dean pursues Lisa)

When Dean finds (okay, steals) a bottle containing a strange, glowing blue substance, he does so thinking it's a cool novelty, at best. It didn't exactly cross his mind that the substance might be a living being, let alone a grumpy, sarcastic, perpetually-underdressed genie waiting for a new master. But now that he has a bona fide genie at his disposal, well-what better chance will he have to help things along with Lisa? Except, things don't always go as expected,

II. Fics where past relationship with a woman is described and has impact on Dean/Cas relationship, woman has either left or died.

Angel Cookies by noxsoulmate (widower, single dad Dean)

As The Sparrow by hubrisandwax (widower Cas)

Asunder by rageprufrock (widower Cas)

Autumn Hollow by shotgunsinlace (widower Cas)

Gargoyles on Motorcycles by mandraco (Dean/Lydia, single dad Dean)

Much More Than A Hunch by gedry (widower, single dad Dean, single dad Cas)

Novaks, Rebooted by violue (previously recced here) (Cas/Amelia, single dad Cas)

Plain and Tall by destielpasta and mtothedestiel (Dean/Lydia, single dad Dean)

This is All Life Really Means by gedry (Cas/Amelia, bad break up)

III. Since the ask is about Dean moving on from dating a girl to dating Cas,  here’s some fics where relationship with the girl doesn’t fit in previous categories but is still important

An Assembly Such As This by unforth (Dean/Charlie, Cas/Anna, both marriage of convenience)

Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives by cymbalism (Dean stays at Lisa’s, season 5)

Friends and Burgers by justkeeponwriting (Dean misunderstands Cas relationship with Anna)

Nine Times We Met (And One Christmas We Parted) by almaasi (marriage of convenience with Charlie)

Peanut Butter-Pumpkin Wedding Cake by sparseparsley (Dean misunderstands Cas relationship with Anna)

Someone Who’s Feeling For Me by ellispark (season 12 fic, Dean and Cas meet Lisa)

IV. More resources from our blog

for more fics with Dean and Cas being in past/oresent relationships with other people see our Tags Page, under Side Pairings header. Please note that sub headers Cas/Other and Dean/Other also act as tags for lesser used partners or original characters.  

ask about Dean and Cas being in relationship with other people when they meet

[nightinngales]

Dear gays and fans of Skyrim in general... 

Ever wanted a real slowburn fanfic for Serana/Female Dragonborn? Perhaps a fic that addresses Serana’s trauma and builds a relationship naturally over time?

Vigilance is an epic length novelization with F!DB/Serana as the main ship - wherein their relationship progresses organically, and Serana’s traumatic backstory is not sidestepped or ignored. 

Currently at over 470k altogether, there are 6 full acts or “books” available within the Vigilance series of varying lengths, with the 7th act currently in progress and updated regularly. 

Some links to get you started: 

Vigilance wiki: A more in-depth look at the series including relevant lore, timeline, current progress on the series, and character blurbs. Spoilers up to the end of act 5. Updated sporadically. 

Vigilance Series landing page: The series on AO3 - you can find all the links for each work here, or continue below the cut for a more in-depth explanation of the series. Updated regularly, usually at least 1-2 times per week.

Not a fan of Skyrim? Never played it? Vigilance is written in a way where it can be enjoyed regardless of your knowledge of the Elder Scrolls franchise. My so-called “beta” hasn’t played Skyrim and she’s more pushy about me updating than most lol. So, if you’ve never played Skyrim but want to read about a vampire lesbian? Try it out anyways, you might like it.

For more regular updates on progress, you can follow me here on tumblr.

This post may be updated on occasion with new information or mod credits below the cut.

About:

The series itself is broken into acts, which each follow a particular segment of the Dragonborn’s life. These acts can be further bundled into Arcs. So far, I would say there are three major “Arcs” of the story, broken up into the separate acts, not including the prologue. 

Vigilant Arc - Acts II - V: This arc of the story is, essentially, the first half of the series. Beginning with the prologue, the Vigilant arc covers Eres’ journey as a Vigilant of Stendarr, the Dawnguard DLC (and Serana), and finishes with her retirement as a Vigilant. Wordcount: ~316k, completed. 

Dragonborn Arc - Acts VI - VIII: This arc is currently in progress, and covers Eres stepping into her role as Dragonborn. This will include the main quest as well as the Dragonborn DLC. Currently we are on Act VII. Current wordcount: ~155k, ongoing. 

Final Arc - Act IX: Currently in the concept phase. This will cover what happens once Eres has stepped into her destiny as Dragonborn and fulfilled her role. Essentially - this is the end of the fic, and will serve to tie up loose ends and provide a nice ending to the series. ...For now. :)

Total current wordcount: ~471k, with around 2.5 acts remaining. The full series may reach somewhere between 6-700k - which will put it around the length of the entire LOTR series. 

Why the fuck is it so long? 

There’s three main reasons for this. 

1: I love slowburn fics, so when I say slowburn - I mean slowburn. 

2: Vigilance isn’t just about the pairing. In fact, Serana does not even enter the story until Act 3, where Eres tackles the Dawnguard questline. As the fic continues forward from there, obviously Serana becomes a secondary main character and is just as important as Eres, but I didn’t want to just start the fic with the pairing and leave it at that. I wanted it to be a journey, from beginning to end, from Eres’ arrival in Skyrim, to meeting Serana and falling for her, to facing her destiny as Dragonborn, and so on and so forth. 

3: Most importantly, I have read a lot of Serana/fem!DB fics, and to be clear I am not disparaging any of them. There are some incredibly talented authors out there who have written some of my favorites. But there is one thing that I always wanted from a fic for Serana/DB, and it was something that I hadn’t seen: An indepth handling of Serana’s trauma, front and center, showing how it affects her and how she might heal from it through love. As a survivor myself, this was an issue that was deeply important to me, and I was disappointed that even some of my favorite fics in the fandom had not addressed it more deeply. So I started writing Vigilance, and here we are nearly 500k later. 

That’s why I wanted to write this. I wanted to show, through my fic, a relationship developing between two people who are broken in different ways, and how they might come together, help each other heal, and lift each other up. The pairing of Serana and Eres, for me, is meant to be an ideal, something to aim for. With Eres’ help, and those around her, Serana will work through the issues she has due to her trauma. She will recover, and heal, and find the happiness she feels she doesn’t deserve. 

I hope, reading this, that maybe you take a bit of time out of your day to give it a chance. I know it’s long. I know it’s a hell of a thing to look at a fic that’s nearly 500k and decide to try reading through it all even knowing it’s not finished yet. But give it a chance... you might find that 500k doesn’t seem long enough once you catch up. 

CREDITS: 

Vigilance is a series that follows a modded playthrough of Skyrim. As such, I could not have written this fic without the following mods which provided the inspiration. 

VIGILANT LE / SE : Provides the basis for the Vigilant arc within the series. The basic plot of both Act 2 and Act 5 are based upon this mod. Please download and drop an endorsement, for this fic would not have been possible without the work of Vicn which it is based upon. Note: it requires an English addon if you plan to play it with voice acting, which can be found here: LE / SE 

LC BUILD YOUR NOBLE HOUSE LE / SE: Fellburg, Eres’ estate within Falkreath, is based upon this player home mod by Locaster. Highly recommend either this or LC Feudal Keep if you would like an idea of what the estate is supposed to look like, though the Keep mod is located near Loreius Farm instead of Falkreath. (However, the “Build your own” version needs to be built, obviously, whereas the Feudal Keep version is plug and play.) 

INIGO LE / SE: This companion mod by smartbluecat is one of the most life-like on the nexus, with thousands of lines of dialogue and quest and location-awareness. Inigo makes his first appearance in Act IV. I would highly recommend him if you’re looking for a game-long companion. 

Serana and Claire LE / SE: This is more of a cosmetic thing, but this mod is replacer I use for Serana to make her appearance mesh better with the other NPC appearance mods I use (such as WICO, Bijin etc). It’s close enough to her default that it doesn’t feel like a complete replacement. I use the Thorns (short hair) version with the Glowing red eyes option, pictured above. 

Mods that have been mentioned: 

Darkend LE / SE: This is only mentioned in passing by Mirabelle in act 3, where she references a cursed shipwreck to the north. More of an easter egg than anything else, but still well worth playing if you like. 

More to be added later as I remember them, I’m sure. 

[powerhh]

Hi, I hope you're well! It's me, TomorrowsHero from AO3. I've been throwing around the idea of writing a chatfic of my own (for Pokemon SwSh, not BNHA), and I was wondering, as someone who has a few already, how much time you spend sweating over your portrayals of everyone? I know I probably shouldn't, but I feel compelled to get everyone right. Anything you do to help with that feeling? Thank you!

hi!!! i’m so sorry i haven’t gotten to answering this ask for a while!! i saw that you sent me another one with the same question (which i’m grateful bc i got a notif for that one, but not this one) and didn’t have the time to answer it instantly and then it slipped my mind lmao. i’ll not respond to the other ask you sent considering it’s mainly the same question, but i’ll answer the things you added in that question here as well. also, im honored that you asked Me for advice on chatfics, im very glad my fics have left an impression on you!!

alright so! this is gonna get long, so buckle up bc i actually have a lot of thoughts (contrary to popular belief) when it comes to writing my chatfics and you can take out whatever you find helpful from this:

the first mindset i have when writing my chatfics is the “if the opposite has never been stated in canon, there’s no reason this couldn’t be a thing”-mindset. like, say todoroki has never said in canon that he enjoys listening to cascada, but he has also never said that he Doesn’t listen to cascada. this means it wouldn’t break his established character to throw in a random interest like that. it doesn’t break the character, but it adds some flare, which is where the comedy comes from. a serious character stays serious, but the funny part is them having unexpected soft spots and interests, because the reader is so used to the seriousness. a very powerful character having their own interests not at all related to what makes them powerful, or even insecurities to give them even more depth. it’s all about finding the core attributes of the character and staying true to that to some extend to not make the character feel like someone completely different, and then going HAM with everything else. as you probably have noticed, i take a LOT of creative liberties with side characters, especially with my pro hero bnha fic, Daily Lives of Pro Heroes, because most of the characters are more or less blank slates to go wild on. actually that’s another point:

use the side characters that barely have any established interactions or interests!! they’re perfect to drive story and situations forward that wouldn’t go anywhere with the main characters because of their already very existing characterization that you don’t want to kill fully!!

to answer a part of the actual question? a lot of my characterization may seem really surface-level and random at first glance and like i’m fully shitposting, but i usually have it decently sorted out. i Do follow what has been said in canon to some extent, but if i don’t like something or if something appeared later, i see no need to follow it religiously. people aren’t here for canon, they’re here for comedy. i like following the general mood and vibe of the characters, then exaggerate it at some points and also add some depth to the characters by giving them random and sometimes even meaningless interests to make them seem more like, you know, real people. i let my portrayals grow with the fic and derail more as i go, to give the reader more time to get used to MY characterization and canon of each character. so like? do spend some time giving each character you’re going to use some base values and points you find important in the portrayal.

i have a bunch of situations and conversations in my chatfics that are pulled directly or are closely inspired by my own life events or ideas ive had (i do a lot of dumb shit), and also a bunch of convos and situations that are closely inspired by my friends and things that have happened in actual group chats i am in. 

another thing i feel is pretty important to make the chat feel more alive and relatable is making them not Only talk about random and wild situations. there has to be some kind of downtime and some more mindless chatting, or even a character feeling down or sad, because groupchats aren’t Always wild and funny. a perfect example is actually when someone stole parts of my bnha chatfic and posted it on wattpad. the thing is that while most of it was stolen, the person changed some things and also removed a lot of the small-talk and less Wild situations, which ended up changing some of the situations and removing a Lot of of my characterization, which made the characters feel less relatable and just flat. clearly the person hadn’t understood why i wrote the characters like i did and managed to ruin that by simply cutting and pasting their favorite segments of the fic, without paying any mind to what the other parts contributed with.

it comes to actually writing the chatting, you may not have noticed, but i actually have slight different ways i write every single character. this is honestly inspired by my times of being a homestuck fan (lmao) and the many different group chats i’ve been in, and it Does make a difference even if people don’t fully notice exactly what it is. sometimes there are too many characters to have very distinct differences and still match the characters, but i usually spend a good amount of time thinking about what tone i want each character to have when typing and how to achieve that. if i take my bnha chatfic   Yikes™ again as example, you may notice that tokoyami always starts what he’s saying with a capitalized letter, but doesn’t fully care about proper punctuation after that, it’s like he has auto capitalization on. iida is the type to take his time and actually write with proper punctuation. ashido is very!!! excited!!! and uses a lot!! of exclaimation marks!!! kaminari writes in lower caps and doesn’t use apostrophes on words that should have them (like doesnt instead of doesn’t etc, with some exceptions where the sentence would get too confusing without them). sero is similar to kaminari but at least bothers with the apostophes.  note: sometimes i obviously personally slip up and forget what i’ve decided for each, but there IS a thought behind every single character in All of my chatfics lmao.

anyway!! that got long and it’s not even all i wanted to say but it’s all i have time for right now. take whatever you want out of this, but i hope you find something helpful. it’s 4am so i fully don’t know if i make sense, so feel free to DM me or send another ask for clarification or more questions!! also, ive told you many times before, but thank you for reading my fics!! <3