#like yes yeah whatever regeneration & different versions of the same guy technically

[rystiel]

apparently people fight over ninerose and tenrose and which ship is better…? bro that’s literally the same guy. same ship. what are you talking about

[wavemaker9]

I don’t know when i accidentally tricked myself into being so toni/arthur but also i was thinking about the one dw xover with kyle and ivan as amy and rory and then arthur as the doctor and was trying to figure out a good river and i don’t know if it’s an exact perfect fit but toni as river wouldn’t be /bad/. Mainly hard to imagine toni idolizing someone like arthur the way river does the doctor, especially doubting that arthur genuinely loved him because of how important arthur is to the universe + him having other relays over the years of travelling as well. ‘you can’t expect the sunset to admire you back’ matches less with toni’s style, though i will say it’s not IMPOSSIBLE by any means. A, Toni’s self-esteem not being quite so high as normal in this AU because of the same situation of river as being raised as this weapon and then trying to flip his morals wildly and suddenly while also serving a long sentence for murdering arthur. It’s easy to see how that can unintentionally add a ‘i’m not a good person’ factor onto one’s mindset. Also just not just self-esteem for doubt source, but it’d also make sense for toni to doubt because hey he /did/ almost kill arthur that one time. Twice really if we’re thinking about it. Arthur seemed to have not been upset about either time but also yknow. His classic tagline is that he lies, so. Like in GTA AU distrust because of potential hostility is what causes Toni to emotionally distance most relationships so that’d track. Also in defense of the choice, Arthur already isn’t a /perfect/ fit for 11 either given how energetic and playful 11 is, so it’s like whatever. We adjust it’s fine

Anyway, other factors I remembered during work that are very good here:

Toni just being raised his whole life to kill Arthur since he was a baby. Good fucking get him, my boy. Toni just being sly and looser morals in general.

Arthur telling a room full of bad guy aliens that Toni can at least kill 3 of them before X or whatever. Toni corrects, no he could kill 7 of them. Arthur, ‘Seven? Really?’ Toni, ‘For you, Eight.’ Arthur teasing for him to stop it and Toni coming right back for Arthur to make him which immediately gets a countered “well maybe I will” before they have to remember to focus, they’re here to save kyle.

This whole exchange: Arthur: Are you married, Antonio? Toni: Are you asking? Arthur: Yes. Toni: Yes. Arthur: ...No, hang on. Did you think I was asking you to marry me, or asking if you were married? Toni: Yes. Arthur: No, but was that yes, or yes? Toni: /Yes~./

Toni coming back from dealing with a Dalek he thought killed Arthur Kyle: What happened to the Dalek? Toni, coldly: It died.

Not sure if this still applies since can’t have the direct pregnancy plot thing between kyle and ivan, but also. I’m upset at how cursed yet believable the concept “toni as kyle and ivan’s kid” is. We already joke about toni and ivan being a lot alike but take that + kyle’s darker hair/skin, charming personality, and also the spanish factor i added to kyle via summer and it’s like. Upsetting how much that tracks. It’s not even that important because river’s like at least 2 regenerations away from the ‘rory and amy’s baby’ appearance she would have had, but yknow.

Toni just shooting off all the hats Arthur gets because toni’s an asshole sometimes and loves fucking with arthur even if he also loves him

Toni holding kyle back from running to arthur’s side when he’s shot but ALSO unloading his entire gun at the person who shot arthur. Get you a man who can do both.

This bit fits better than the rustralia version of doc/river let’s be honest: Arthur: I’m being extremely clever up here, and there’s no one to stand around looking impressed! What’s the point in having you all? Toni: (teasingly to Kyle and Ivan) Couldn’t you just slap him sometimes?

Toni trying to convince Arthur to do something based on trust and Arthur coming back to grill toni on a bunch of vague mysteries about him. Admits he loves a bad boy, sure, but /trust Toni/? /Seriously/?

The back and forth “oh i hate him/you” from toni and arthur “no you don’t” + Arthur saying toni has a ‘he’s hot when he’s clever’ face. Toni countering this is his normal face??? Arthur ‘yes, it is’ and toni just laughing and telling arthur to be quiet

Toni pulling Arthur into a kiss and Arthur immediately !!! surprised about it because from his perspective, have not done that before so surprising! Good, but surprising!

God just the back and forth flirting + out thinking each other as early toni tries very hard to kill arthur with arthur stopping him at every turn. Toni: Is killing you going to take all day? Arthur: Why, are you busy? Toni: Oh, I’m not complaining.

TONI SLOWLY DE-AGING TO FREAK PEOPLE OUT. not quite as good as the version where it’s ivan + kyle and then the mels version is just sergey but yknow. 

Toni being jealous of himself without realizing it is just very good. Him just growing more bitterly upset about Arthur being so in love with this other person until it’s finally revealed ohhhhhh /i’m/ the other person. It was me all along, whoops! And finally, at Kyle and Ivan’s prompting, helping to save Arthur’s life at that point.

Arthur: We’ve got 10 minutes. Get dressed. Toni: That’s so close to the perfect sentence.

Toni being told by Arthur to get his wrist free from a Weeping Angel’s grip without breaking it to prove that time can be re-written and that Kyle can be saved from whatever bad thing is expected to happen to him in the future. Toni eventually coming out from where he’d been held, shrugging off that he did it, no need to ask how, Arthur asked so he did. (Arthur “[He]’s good, yeah? Have you noticed? Really, really good.”) Until Arthur goes to grab Toni’s wrist to lead him off to their next destination and Toni reacts in pain, revealing he did have to break his wrist, but didn’t want to let Arthur know because he knew it’d only upset him.

Arthur sitting Toni down to ask why he lied and Toni explaining that idea, Arthur doesn’t like to dwell on the pain and the sorrow, to let it show that it affects him. And so, because Toni loves Arthur, he hid the damage to make that easier for Arthur.

Arthur trying to talk Kyle into staying with him instead of letting the Angel take him to where Ivan was taken to. Toni doing the more responsible thing (technically???) and reassuring kyle that he should go be with ivan. Never pass on a chance to get rid of Kyle, even in an AU where you’re family, huh toni?

Though also just. Arthur realizing later that he didn’t even consider how upset Toni must feel because this is also him losing his parents, but Toni doing like before and hiding the damage to reduce the pain arthur has to address.

Toni admitting to being a terrible influence on Arthur, that’s valid. They really should not be allowed to travel together long term, the most responsible choice toni’s made.

Arthur not talking to Toni after Toni’s death because. Yknow. That’d be arthur addressing an emotionally upsetting thing and he just simply will not do that.

Arthur revealing that he could see Toni as the ghost hologram before, but didn’t want to talk to him because he thought it would hurt him too much. Toni offering he thinks he could have dealt with the pain just to talk to Arthur again, but Arthur countering he meant it would hurt /himself/ too much. And he was right.

Technically it shouldn’t be arthur for the ep with 12 but yknow. Fuck it i don’t care, still gonna refer to arthur even if it’d be a different face

Toni calling some other guy as an act “the only husband [he]’ll ever have” and arthur just rolling his eyes SO hard.

Little bits:

Toni /basically/ married this guy’s diamond instead of him.

Arthur: You’re talking about murdering someone! Toni: No, I’m /actually/ murdering someone.

Toni: I’ll kill the lights, you kill the patient.

Arthur “I haven’t laughed in a long time” awh

Arthur “Stop holding my hand, people don’t do that to me!”

Arthur’s frown being audible

Arthur and Toni fighting each other’s attempts to stay behind to try and save a crashing ship before finally just insisting they won’t let the other stay because there’s nothing on that ship that’s worth more than the other person’s life.

[aikainkauna]

Fanfic trope meme

Apologies to those of you who see this for a third time, as I’ve crossposted it to both LJ and Pillowfort. Feel free to comment over on there (or my other posts) if you like. And of course, feel free to grab this one and do it yourself, if you like.

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Grabbed this meme from a couple of people on LJ. It's... well, apparently about fanfic tropes. Some of them more terrifying than others.

I have written:

-Hurt/comfort (Yeah, baby! Most of my fic is this.)

-Body swapping (Sort of? Souls slipping into each other's bodies for a bit? Jaffar feeling what Yassamin feels? Sex swap, I've definitely done.)

-Soulmate identifying marks (tattoo, red thread of fate, etc) (I have! The Throne of Solomon. And maybe The Past Forgotten counts, in its way. I may have written more, but I forget.)

-Snowed-in cabin/isolated together for extended period of time (The Jaffar/Pwinzezz Cavefic!)

-Found families (I guess the Samarkand gang counts for poor old Fadl? Even if Jaffar *is* his brother, so technically it is his family. But he does have his religious congregation and Zainab, and is... well, he always does seem to be seeking something, so he's the kind of guy to go for this trope.)

-Fairy tale/mythology AU (And not just when I am  writing in *actual* fairytale/mythology fandoms. Which I am doing most of the time, what with Thief of Bagdad being a 1001 Nights fanfic anyway. So I'm writing fanfic about a fanfic of some age-old RPF (fantasy AU!) about historical figures from the late 700s/early 800s...)

-Enemies  to friends to lovers (Yes, please! Aplenty. I'm surprised that  enemyslash/FoeYay/Hero(ine)/Villain(ess), whatever you want to call it,  isn't mentioned on this list.)

-Characters swap roles AU (Uh... I've written sexual switching in some isolated chapters? Like when Laura  briefly doms Torsten in The Fall of Angels, to help him get over some traumas?)

-Friends to lovers (With RPS, Veidtbone in particular, and Theta/Koschei. This also seems to happen whenever I write femslash.)

-Magical  connection (telepathy, etc) (Doctor/Master basically ruined me for all  my other ships what with their telepathic ability. So that now, it feels less interesting for me to write love/sex that *doesn't* have telepathy.)

-Fake dating/fake marriage accidentally turns into feelings (see next trope)

-Royals/political marriage turns into feelings (These last two are pretty much the same thing in ToB, as I've had Yassamin marry Jaffar a couple of times--like The Past Forgotten and The King's White Falcon, but without him laying a hand on her for up to a year, until she finally grows a brain and realises how loveworthy he is after all.)

-Seemingly unrequited pining (Emphasis on the "seemingly." Jaffar's unrequited   pining is painful enough in the movie, so there's no point in making him  suffer any more.)

-Accidentally fell in love with the mission target (Well, *kind of,* what with Torsten. Lars-Erik was definitely his mission target in the original film, and at the start of Because The World Belongs to the Devil, he made no bones about having wanted to kill Laura Erika [the teenage girl version of Lars-Erik in this AU, to those of you just joining in] when she was born.)

-They break up (but then they get back together) (With Jaffar/Fadl.  Fadl's stormed off in a huff at least twice in the past. And Doctor/Master is always the same old on-off car crash, isn't it? Although this is not a favourite trope of mine, as the setup would usually necessitate them being an existing couple in the first place,  and I tend to not write canon or "plausibly lovers" ships because   they're already happily together. What do Two and Jamie, Holmes and   Watson etc. need me for? They're already as good as married. Let them have their happiness.)

-Supernatural creature/human romance (Sort of. I've written Time Lords/humans, humans/djinn at least. And surely wizards count as supernatural romance, anyway?)

-Reincarnation/'25  Lives' AU (What's with the 25 lives? Is this some big fandom thing again? One of the darkest, most fucked-up fics I ever wrote was the Master killing the Doctor during sex and fucking him as he regenerated around him. As you do. And there's reincarnation in one of my Jaffar/Pwinzezz fics,  but I won't spoil it for the new readers by telling you which one it is.)

-Selfcest (possibly due to time travel) (I am scratching my head trying to remember when I wrote this and in which fandom, but I have the distinct feeling I've written it. I've certainly whacked off to  that World Of Simm!Masters clusterfuck what with the pink dress so many  times I... I think I broke two clit buzzers during that time. I've certainly drawn it. And drawn some Connies on Connies. And then there's, of course, Sarosh the Sexbot  who's a clone of Jaffar, looks-wise, but he is very distinctly just a robot, not a living character as such--not the sort with which you could  have a real, interpersonal dynamic. My problem with selfcest, in general, is that I like having that character dynamic--and that requires  the characters to be different from one another. If it's two characters  that are too similar--if they fulfill a similar role in the canons--it's hard to create a dynamic between them and to make it   interesting.)

-Polyamory (Swinging away ALL the bloody time with the Roses!Jaffar and Yassamin, and Torsten/Laura. Sometimes I miss the monogamous 'verses.)

-Amnesia (I've got a post-movie "Jaffar comes  back from the dead" WIP I'll probs never finish, because it doesn't seem to get off the ground. If I wrote this trope, I would have the characters gradually regain memory, though; complete mind-wipes are   horrid. I did have Handy lose the majority of his cognitive/motor/Timey skills in No More  and that was the main reason I had to... well, I'm not going to spoil it if someone hasn't read it yet, but it wasn't the cheeriest of fics. The Past Forgotten *sort of* has this, but I don't want to spoil as to how that happens.)

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I could write:

-Daemons (Why the archaic spelling? I have written djinn, so I almost put this in the 'have written' section. I can't remember if I actually *have* written real demons, because I might have. Surely, Torsten counts...)

-'Everyone is evil'/mirrorverse AU (Well, mostly, if I want to explore "evil"   characters, I write about those types of characters in the first place, without having to turn anyone evil. Devilry is the 'verse for that. Hell, usually it's the other way around; I try to look for the human elements of the baddies, or at least explore their logic--what makes them tick, what makes them the way they are. So, IDK, I could've also   put this in the "unlikely to ever write" section.)

-And they were roommates! (This would be terrible and also hilarious, whatever characters ended up becoming my victims. Even if I'm more interested in those hurt/comfort plots, overall. And I have always found it *impossible* to live under the same roof with other people because I need peace and quiet and solitude too much. So this is almost a bit too much like the sorts of negative RL experiences I don't really want to get more of in fic.  But I *could* write it as a comedy for cheap lols, especially if the stress were resolved by hot bonking, ASAP.)

-'They  all work in an office' AU (Otherwise, I would've put this in the "just  no" category, but... the Barmakids were civil servants. So I *could*   write Jaffar and Fadl drowning in paperwork--"WHY DID WE EVER introduce paper into THIS EMPIRE?!?" and cursing their fates and Jaffar restraining Fadl from braining Harun al-Rashid with a paperweight. Same with Lina doing Zainab's books and trying to hold back The Fist of Death when Fadl carelessly drops a piece of his lunch over her perfectly calligraphied accounting.)

-'Falling for a coworker/teammate is a bad idea' except this is fiction so it works out (Maybe. Just maybe. But it'd also be in a medieval ToB context.)

***  

I will probably never write:

-'Groundhog  Day'/karmic time loop (I just never got the appeal of this. Sounds like the sort of thing experimental writers would like? The sorts who really  like filling in bingo cards and challenge lists?)

-Vampires/werewolves  AU (I'm not that big on either. Super-unpopular opinion coming up: I prefer sex to the sublimation of it that vampires are often all about; bloodsucking in lieu of sex, and/or being seen as way better than sex just always feel to me like a cheap cop-out from writers who are disappointed in sex, or afraid of it. I've never grokked it any more   than that stupid, stupid "chocolate is better than sex" quip from women who don't know what masturbation is--yes, it fucking well is sex, TYVM! I much prefer to make partnered sex better than it is IRL by adding supernatural stuff like telepathy to *that*. Immortality alone is interesting to explore, as are Gothic themes, but all the usual themes that vampires *specifically* usually represent just... either hold little interest for me, or then, I can explore them in other ways.)

-'Pride  and Prejudice' AU (I don't hate Jane Austen, but it's not my fandom. That kind of society stuff and being witty over teacups in bonnets has never really been my thing--if anything, I usually have my characters exist in their own bubble, isolated from society and its restrictive mores and social stresses.)

***

JUST NO!

-Coffee  house AU/food service AU (AUGH! Please, no coffeeshop AUs for me; the world is full of them already. Maybe I could write it as some terrible, short parody? Or doodle it? But no more than that.)

-Hogwarts AU (Haven't read HP. Young Adult isn't really my genre. I know, I know; I've just lost all my WLW cred.)

-High  school/university AU (I've done Time Lord Academy-era stuff with Doctor/Master, but I expect this means a sort of American high school/university AU with jocks and cheerleaders and shit. Hell, no. Again, the exact sort of horrid society stuff I would rather have my characters escape from.)

-Adopting/raising a baby (Erm, not unless you count Jaffar/Yassamin adopting a cheetah? They do have kids in some 'verses but there's none of that everyday baby stuff that this question/trope probably implies. I'm squicked by   babies, sorry.)

-Unusually specific occupation AU, like, the Author clearly has the same job (It worries me that this is, by virtue of its inclusion here, apparently seen as normal and acceptable..? When it's crap fanfic, inserting yourself into something that should be about the *established* characters instead. Jesus, I don't want to go in expecting a fanfic, and then find out it’s your diary instead! Unless you're Anaïs Nin. And even if you really *do* want to write about yourself, then just... write original fic? An autobiography? A blog? Write an OC that has your job. Don't do this false advertising where you insist it's fanfic when it's not. That's a dick move towards your readers.)

-Loyalty kink (see next trope)

-Alpha/beta/omega (Too creepy. I can write about piss, shit, incest, necrophilia and cannibalism, but not these last two. Any more than I can glorify the Nazis I've written about; I either take the piss out of them, as with Strasser, or just step outside of their politics and bring them into the land of happy sexings like with von Kolb, with the aim of dragging him out of that madness and leaving it behind.)

-Hot single parent(s) (Please. Rundvik: "You love children." Torsten: "I loooooathe themm.")

-Unrequited pining (Too much of an emotional squick. Has to be requited. I write fanfic to fix things, to avenge wrongs, to set things right. I don't write them to make the characters more miserable than they already are. Unless it's for temporary, character-development purposes, that is.)