#one of my favorite parts of outlander

[jewishcissiekj]

currently reading the A New Hope From a Certain Point of View book and these two are toxic yaoi to me

[the-halfling-prince]

Outlander S3:

Marseli: Listen here, you English whore-

Claire: 😶

Fergus: Hey that's my mom don't call my mommy a whore

[genderfluid-insomniac]

how about scara and reader secretly likes each other but they don't admit it then scara does smth that made reader upset so scara makes it up for reader by eating her out in his office 💯💯💯🔥🔥😈😈💪💪

I'm sorry if I got this wrong 😅

I’m in love with the way you hate me /// Fatui!Scaramouche x afab!reader NFSW

Traveling with the famous outland had its perks but it also had its downsides and one of them was constantly bumping into Fatui camps. Every time you go to make camp for the night, you go for a walk for some local fruit only to be grabbed by skirmishers for “trespassing” and brought to the harbinger or boss at the camp. Call it fate or the universe because almost every time you met the harbinger running to camp it was always Scaramouche the Balladeer however after the first two meetings you both began to make snide remarks that eventually led up to a secret budding relationship or at least favoritism on Scaramouche’s part.

He looked forward to your meet-ups since it wasn’t planned and it gave him a bit of a thrill that he was so close to someone he was technically supposed to apprehend and kill. Part of Scaramouche feared you would leave him and put your journey above him which was indeed valid, being able to track you via adventures in the city and being sent to follow the traveler. However one of those meet-ups went a bit wrong as some of the old soldiers that’d seen you before decided their boss wasn’t being as harsh as he should be and put it on themselves to teach you a lesson.

After being kicked and beaten they brought you in and tossed you on the wood flooring of the Balladeer’s office, not caring about you or your whimper you let out and addressing their harbinger. “Lord Harbinger, we found this trespasser spying again on the camp. We thought you’d like to deal with them personally.” Scaramouche looked up with a bored expression and as soon as he saw you all bruised and cut up saw red, slamming his fists against his desk accidentally causing burn marks with his electro abilities and harshly glaring at his pathetic soldiers. “You dare take it upon yourself to give your own orders and deal punishments without my command. I wonder why I have to do everything myself but then I remember my soldiers are all idiotic blind weaklings!” He walked around his desk and got in front of you who was still groaning and trying to not cry from your injuries. “I’ll deal with the rest of you later and be grateful I’m not killing you on the spot now! Leave me and go.”

Sending cold glares that caused them all the freeze before hurrying out and leaving the two of you alone. Once he was sure they were gone Scaramouche locked the door and knelt in front of you, bringing your chin up and clicking his tongue at the damage they’d done to you. “I apologize for my pathetic soldiers for harming you. Let me tend to those injuries.” Grabbing a first aid kit and allowing himself to be soft behind closed doors knowing you’d been through a tough ordeal, cleaning the cuts and bandaging your injuries. The balladeer cupped your face and saw your teary eyes all red, pressing a light kiss to your lips and picking you up carefully before setting you down on top of his desk.

“Let me make it up to you, Name.” You nodded and weakly wrapped your arms around his neck, bringing him close between your legs and kissing him sweetly. Humming contently when your lover gently caressed your body like it was glass and breaking the kiss to gasp in air, a heavy blush painting your cheeks as you caught your breath and saw his smug grin. “How I’d love for the world to see how you’re mine and mine alone but that’s a privilege just for me. All flushed and panting ready for me to take you.” He slowly took off your clothes and helped undress your lower half, trailing kisses and hickeys up your legs before finally reaching your cunt.

Licking a long stripe up your pussy and reveling in the lewd cries you made, teasingly kissing your clit and prodding your hole with his tongue. “Scara stop teasing- mhmn~ You said you’d make it up to me.” You looked at the erotic sight of him kneeling in front of you bare and ready to eat you out, carding your fingers through his hair and pleading. Scaramouche pretended to think for a moment and hum, rubbing circles on your inner thigh. “Hm, I guess I could give you a break just for tonight.” Wasting no time and plunging his tongue into your pussy, thumbing your clit, and wrapping his arms around your waist so you could pull away from him. You grip his hair and try to roll your hips, wanting to push his face deeper into your pussy.

It wasn’t long before you reached your climax and toppled over the edge when the balladeer pushed against your G-spot, humming to send vibrations through you and eagerly licking up all your cum dripping from your cunt. He eased you through your orgasm and sweetly kissed your thigh, standing up and leaning his forehead against yours. “I’ll run a bath for you beloved and then I’ll deal with those bastards for daring to harm what's mine.”

[faefum]

posting my twst ocs and my yuu w/ info 🥺 also some old art is included but not really

character info in order as well as one fact about each of them:

Carmin Pelagic

The beloved idol-prince of the resplendent coastal kingdom, Sundread Cape. Ever-shadowed in the limelight, his Excellency is famous for his evocative musical pieces that seem to resonate with any audience.

BIRTHDAY: March 3rd (Pisces)

AGE: 18

HEIGHT: 177 cm (5'9" ft)

DOMINANT HAND: Left

HOMELAND: Sundread Cape

FAMILY: Unnamed parents (deceased), Marena (aunt)

SCHOOL: (was homeschooled)

HOBBIES: Bird watching

PET PEEVES: Mistreatment

FAVORITE FOOD: Onions

LEAST FAVORITE FOOD: Escargot

TALENT: Detecting lies

UNIQUE MAGIC: Reaver's Song

BASED ON: Eilonwy + Achren (Black Cauldron and Chronicles of Prydain)

His aunt, Marena, is the ruling queen of Sundread Cape, which is an absolute monarchy. Carmin is suspicious of the fact that she may not be his actual family member.

Yuu (Yuulia)

An outlander from another world, she is the prefect of Ramshackle dormitory and a member of the Pop Music Club. She sings of the melodies that only now exist in her memory, hoping to bring a part of her across and beyond.

BIRTHDAY: November 22nd (Sagittarius)

AGE: 17

HEIGHT: 165 cm (5'4" ft)

DOMINANT HAND: Right

HOMELAND: ???

FAMILY: Unnamed parents

SCHOOL: Night Raven College (Sophomore)

HOBBIES: Playing musical instruments

PET PEEVES: Rudeness

FAVORITE FOOD: Chamomile tea

LEAST FAVORITE FOOD: Bitter melon

TALENT: Opera singing

UNIQUE MAGIC: —

BASED ON: (nobody)

Is kind of a minor Magicam celebrity because of her song covers and original works. She covers songs from her original world, in which viewers have found themselves perplexed since none of the music she posts exists in Twisted Wonderland.

Thora Griffith

The stalwart vice-president of Royal Sword Academy's Fencing Club. He co-leads with a mild demeanor, a deadpan face, gestures filled with grace, and mystery as to what his past shares.

BIRTHDAY: October 27th (Scorpio)

AGE: 17

HEIGHT: 185 cm (6'0" ft)

DOMINANT HAND: Right

HOMELAND: Sundread Cape

FAMILY: Unnamed adoptive father

SCHOOL: Royal Sword Academy (Sophomore)

HOBBIES: Fencing

PET PEEVES: Laziness

FAVORITE FOOD: Pot roast

LEAST FAVORITE FOOD: Charred food

TALENT: Blastcycling

UNIQUE MAGIC: Bladed Ambition

BASED ON: Taran (Black Cauldron and Chronicles of Prydain)

Many of his classmates think that he may be hiding a mysterious evil in his dorm room. A dangerous secret, something lewd, or even prohibited items. In fact, he and his roommate have both decided on a truce and keep a runt kitten they found by the beach.

other arts!! some are "old"

[clare-with-no-i]

theogony part 1 behind the scenes

**SPOILERS ahead for theogony and mild spoilers for Outlander!**

this is just going to be a long infodump of all of the things I pondered while writing theog (specifically part 1, part 2 will come later) but never talked about! I'll try to go chapter by chapter, and maybe I'll end up adding more later on, but for now I just think it'd be fun to chitchat and reminisce on some of my favorite tidbits. this story is really my baby idk :")

Prologue - Alalá

one thing that I wanted to establish in the prologue, other than the obvious James-Sirius dynamic, is the presence of otherworldly or spiritual premonitions in this universe. it was always important to me that the first person who actually made any sort of prophetic declaration was James.

so much of the story relies on Lily's status as an oracle, but this little tidbit here helped build the world for me so much; we can't be sure if James's various dreams and premonitions are wishful thinking, or really the Gods speaking to him, or something else entirely. of course, this story deals with time travel, so there's an inherent supernatural element. but Lily and James's conflicting – and sometimes competing – conceptions of God felt like such a necessary tension for me to explore. it was such an incredible shorthand for the tension between modern and ancient sensibilities. and we never get a definitive answer to those looming questions, which I knew I wanted to do from the outset. did the Gods bring Lily back to the past? did James? did she do it herself? does God/the Gods even exist?

also: there are probably moments where I failed to do this, but I tried to capitalize Gods in all of the James chapters but not in Lily's, unless she was referring to the Abrahamic Capital G God. that is, until the last chapter, which I'll elaborate upon later :)

also: i wrote the prologue first, then the epilogue, and then i posted the prologue pretty immediately after. I had the entire story roughly outlined but I absolutely jumped the gun when it came to posting the prologue LMAO I didn't even really announce the story, I just joked about writing it and then posted the prologue, which you can see from the beginning note. i remember Suze was about to go to sleep and she started messaging me like wtf Clare what do you MEAN?

and the rest was history (pun completely intended)!

Chapter One: Ouroboros

the narrative brushes past the other statues in this section pretty quickly, but I always imagined that the first bust is Philoctetes, James's father. I think the consensus on this one tends to oscillate between Philoctetes and Aristides, which is another great interpretation.

The reason I wrote it this way and imagined it to be Philoctetes is because I thought it would have been nice to let Lily 'meet' James's father (in a sense), even before she 'meets' him. when I read this chapter back after I first finished the story, I had a very soft moment where I close-read my own fic (lol) and thought that maybe it was Philoctetes who sent Lily back to the past. maybe he sensed something about her and knew she'd be right for James and for antiquity.

sooo many people forgot about this! which i was hoping for!!!!! I was hoping everyone would forget about James's statue holding something until the Big Reveal. fun fact is I wrote the reveal right after this. I liked the idea that, no, he was never going to actually be holding anything. he'd be reaching for Lily. the choice to accept his hand was always going to be hers.

a fun fact about this chapter is that I had to pull from a bit more Outlander lore than I originally thought. and no I don't mean the 'Jesus H Roosevelt Christ' part lol. It was always hilarious to me how Outlander set up Claire to be the objectively perfect person to go back in time. she was a combat nurse who happened to develop an interest in medicinal botany and Scottish-English history. she also happened to spend her formative years with her adventurous archaeologist uncle after her only living relatives died. like girl. lol.

so I had to really toss up which traits I thought it would be appropriate for Lily to have as she traveled back in time. the biggest one, obviously, is her field of study, which was necessary given the language barrier and the completely foreign nature of social norms in Classical Athens. I toyed around with the idea of making her mum a nurse so as to give her some base medical knowledge, but that felt a) unnecessary given the circumstances of the story, and b) far-fetched that she would have gleaned enough transferable skills to apply in 479 BCE.

it was also fun to give her more reason to go back to the future; she has a sister who, while they aren't in contact, is a significant emotional attachment; she has academic goals; she has a best friend (however toxic we know him to be). it added a layer of conflict that I enjoyed playing up, even if I definitely could have explored her modern life more fully.

Chapter Two: Kinesis

soooo much exposition and worldbuilding in this chapter. oml. it was so much fun to play around with the reasons why James would be in Tatoi in the first place; I can't remember quite how I landed on the Persian auxiliary soldier thing, it might have been from my initial (admittedly extensive) research on the months leading up to Plataea; it may have just been the fact that I KID YOU NOT this story used to take up all of my fucking brainspace. I couldn't stop thinking about it. I'd be doing work for my research fellowship and just daydream about theogony. the initial idea came to me AS A JOKE!!!!! when i was idly pondering before going to sleep (as one does), and then it just wouldn't leave me alone. i kept imagining what it might look like. I thought about how the time travel might work. I thought about James's Greek equivalent. I ranted to my sister and her dog (he did not care) about what the statue might look like and mean (sorry bestie love u).

one narrative decision that has given me a bit of strife was the Dimitrios-James name change. I've had a number of people ask me if I'd ever try to pubilsh theog – and this is one of the (many) reasons why that would be pretty categorically impossible. using James's English name in his internal narration, instead of the name I give him as a Greek man, is something that only translates to fic. it makes pretty much no sense at all if you consider these original characters lol.

honestly putting the word 'practicum' in here caused me SO much pain. in James's chapters I tried really hard to use words which had Greek roots and not Latin roots, even if they're in modern English today. in most of his chapters, I'd try and find synonyms for big/complex words so I could use ones that came from Greek. it just helped me stick to his narrative voice a bit more.

I forgot how much STUFF went on in this chapter. oh my god SO much happens?? we get the lack of the Parthenon as the time marker (felt very clever doing that), Lily processing the fact that she's time traveled (lazy writing on my part to not have this happen in a Lily POV chapter but I'll take that on the chin), the Plataea reveal. OML. tired just thinking about it. lily sweetie i am so sorry

guys, the amount of time I spent wondering if I should Greek-ify Sirius's name is insane. For so long I thought about making him Seirios, which is the original Greek version of Sirius. But I felt like I had already messed with their names too much, and so I left it. but honestly I'm still torn. looking back, maybe it would have been the right move to make him Seirios and have Lily give him the name Sirius, but I guess we'll never know!

one of my favorite Sirius moments, and something that, essentially, sets up the rest of the story. but I wanted there to be a little ambiguity throughout the story about how much of this Sirius actually believes.

we know that James has just confessed to Sirius and Pétros that he was hoping they'd desert the Athenian army. we know that he thinks he's going to die, and he's adopted this sort of fatalist view of his future. and then here you have Sirius, who could never abide such a thing, pretty much leaning into the idea that Lily can tell the future – which would allow him to challenge James's prediction. I always wanted to leave it up to interpretation, and I know it comes up in later chapters (at the komos especially), Sirius's skepticism about Lily's origins. but it's such a fun question to ask: does he really believe that she's the Oracle that James prayed for, or does he just need that to be true so he can try and influence the future himself?

Chapter Three: Peribolos

omg. lol. the chapter three opening academic argument scene. this is a favorite of mine, and something I had so much fun writing. it's actually based on an argument/"spirited discussion" I had with my dad a few years ago about moral absolutism versus moral relativism which forced me to interrogate and expand my knowledge on the subject. I thought it was such a fun way to get into Lily's politics and her character without doing crazy exposition in the ancient world.

it also touches upon one of the touchstone themes of the story: that to study something is, in a way, to detach yourself from it. academia is routintely completely disconnected from its subject matter, and it creates this weird disdain for lived experience versus book knowledge. Lily has spent upwards of ten years studying (in some capacity) the ancient world, but she is so utterly out of her depth when she experiences it herself. as such, she espouses these very revolutionary politics when examining historical conflicts, but she has a blindness to what the real-world realities may have been for the people living in those conditions at the time.

alsooooo, The Return of Martin Guerre is one of my favorite books I read in college, and the easter egg here is that it's about a person of dubious origin entering a community and the politics of how the community might accept or reject them. ha ha!

^^based on something I said in an argument with a Poli Sci major in college and I have to say one of my better moments. was an absolute haymaker. this was very 'author gives main character a zinger' of me and I will not be ashamed of it

this! ladies and gentlemen! this was basically a declaration of love!!!! to be loved is to be remembered!!!

in a very romantic way, the study of history can be such an act of love to those who lived before us. i just adore the idea that, even before Lily developed real romantic feelings for James, she had this itching sort of feeling; AKA, when someone has made such an impression on you, and you know (or in her case, you think) that you'll be leaving them at some point, and you just want to be interesting enough, be impressive enough, that they remember you, that they think of you randomly as time goes on. that is such a giddy hallmark feeling of having a crush, in my book. I liken it to making eye contact with someone or having a brief conversation on a night out, maybe at 3am on your way back from a bar when things are sleepy and dizzy, and you just have this sense that you're being seen in that moment as anyone you want to be. i love this moment so much I feel like I could give it its own meta LMAO

Chapter Four: Hamartia

this chapter really put the pedal to to the metal lol. at the time of writing the story, I generally didn't (and still don't) love fake dating that much as a trope; I don't typically love plotlines predicated on (even harmless) deceptions, it's just a sensitivity of mine that I don't expect anyone to relate to or share. but when I was considering how to structure theog, it just made so much sense for James and Lily's arcs to have them get 'married.' there was no way that Lily was going to be able to navigate Classical Athens as an unsupervised woman alone, and even with the Oracle title offering her some protection, there was nothing really tying her to James. much like Outlander, it really did feel like the last possible resort, which softened me to the idea of using the trope.

fun fact, i got a snarky comment a few months ago complaining that i was trying to pass the story off as historically accurate (lol to the fifteen disclaimers I embedded throughout which addressed that) and one thing they took issue with was that lily wouldn't have been able to own property and the only thing that would have kept her from being a slave would have been marriage.

which! yknow! none of which contradict the story! but anyway I digress.

I was initially nervous about how early on the fake marriage happens; we don't really know the characters that well yet, we're not sure who James is as a potential partner to Lily, or how Lily's feelings for him are starting to bump up against her very rightful and justified desire to get the hell out of dodge. but – we only really see James in canon as a husband and as the father to the main character, so it felt pretty true to the source material to throw him into being a husband pretty early.

I loved writing this scene with Aristides. I've always been partial to his appearances throughout the story, and this one is just so special to me. I think of him as a driving force in humanizing the ancient world in theog, sometimes even more so than the main cast of characters. to elaborate a bit on that: with the Marauders and Lily and the other transplanted HP characters, I think there's this inherent sense that they are already fleshed out people (to some degree) even before they hit the page of the story, because they appear in canon and across Marauder fic verses. no matter how much I make James into Dimitrios and Peter into Pétros and Fleamont into Philoctetes, people know them and love them outside of theogony verse. but not Aristides. he doesn't have a one-to-one HP character. there is some version of him that really existed in 479 BCE (my complex and largely negative feelings on RPF are setting off alarms at this but we proceed) and that's it.

it would have been easy to just give him this very gruff and surly character, to make him a military general who didn't care about anything other than the war. I think that's how we conceptualize historical people sometimes, often without meaning to. but he was a person, and he had likes and dislikes, he probably had a family and maybe he'd fallen in love, and it was such an honor to give him such dimension. not to say that I'm putting that personality upon the actual historical person; but just to really take my time with a character outside of the Marauder canon. in this scene he has this human moment where he reminds James that, yes, love is a worthy pursuit, even to those in positions of incredible power. even when the discussion isn't about romantic love but about James's love for his closest friends. it's this permission that James didn't even know he was seeking but ultimately that changes the course of his and Lily's lives. Aristides is who James might become, in many ways. in the actual Plataea chapter this becomes more and more prevalent. (more on this later!)

overall, I am forever hoping that people come out of reading this story with an appreciation for the humanity of those that came before us. I did a poor job with other characters in this story, and I own that, but I'm proud of how I wrote Aristides.

oh my godddddd I fucking love this part. i am so fucking proud of it. LMAO. achieving wordplay in an ancient language that i have never studied should be on my fucking CV I swear. like this was just perfect I'm sorry I am BUZZING that I pulled this off.

also, a cute way to introduce a phrase to the narrative which will become very important: se filo!

I remember that I wrote this passage, which many people commented on and which I loved writing, in a coffee shop on a sunny day when my cousin was visiting me to introduce me to his girlfriend. there wasn't any wifi in the coffee shop so I was blessedly devoid of distractions and could only focus on the doc, and i was LOCKED IN let me tell you.

when my cousin and his girlfriend arrived I told them I was sending an important email and edited the last sentence of that paragraph about four different times while they sat in silence and waited for me to finish LMAOOO

Chapter Five: Ascesis

a profoundly insane moment in my personal history was reading excerpts from Eudemian Ethics, Nichomachean Ethics, and Memorabilia just to passively mention them in a flashback in a fic. relied heavily on Foucault for this, I will be so honest. why did i do that tho. like girl take a breath...

but in all seriousness this was just a joy to write. i miss being a history student and having these discussions – law school is great, but history classes will forever hold my heart ngl! also, this passage is in some ways an homage to my grandfather, who is one of my favorite people ever. he taught himself Classical Greek and Latin when he was in his 20s, before he went to medical school (and get his pilot's license for fun, he's seriously the most interesting guy alive). he gifted me his leatherbound Great Books printings of Aristotle's works and of the Iliad and the Odyssey shortly after I started theogony, and I cherish them so much. he spurred my interest in ancient greece when i was young. so this is for him :)

one of the hardest things for me to articulate (and maybe something I could have done better) was the war and the balance between James's inherent goodness and his growing feelings for Lily. i wanted her to have plausible reason to think that he doesn't at all feel romantically towards her, even as she's growing to admire him more and more. I hoped, as I wrote the story, that these little interactions where the reader clues into his feelings (this protective 'peninsula' moment being one of them) still walked that line. as in, i wanted lily to reasonably believe that he's just that good of a guy that he would take issue with anyone being taken advantage of, not just her. she's so destabilized in this moment as well, I think that worked to my advantage. or I hoped it did LOL.

from what I remember of writing this chapter, it just came really quickly and naturally. much more than the later ones. this early period of writing was just an outpouring of the ABSOLUTE BRAINROT I was going through after conjuring up the idea for the story. it just flew. the ending scene where they have their little almost-moment was probably about an hour's worth of writing. it's like I couldn't type fast enough to keep up with my thoughts. not sure i've experienced that since!

also, the now, here, alive line reappears in the last chapter, which is one of my favorite callbacks:

:) :) :)

Chapter Six: Kleos

one thing I used to worry about CONSTANTLY is that I was losing the classic (and necessary!) Marauder goofiness to the more somber setting. so it was a jaunt and a boon to write scenes like the opening one here, where it honestly could be copy-pasted into the Gryffindor Common Room and it'd look a lot like my canon stories.

he's just a dude being hungover and embarrassed about the previous night with his bros!

the first time we get a hint of Pétros disappearing to dubious locations!

this chapter was one of the most research-heavy. it was a new setting, filled with new characters, and predicated entirely upon planning the Greek front at Plataea. so if I couldn't nail that down (at least to some degree), I was going to have trouble. of course I took liberties, but I spent a lot longer combing through sources for this chapter than some other ones, I'll tell you that for free. it took ages to find any treatises on ancient athenian sword combat, sigh.

yeah I mean i remember thinking that the subtitle for this chapter could have been 'I am going to create an environment that is so toxically masculine' because that's pretty much the whole vibe. James is not immune to that, either, and that was intentional. he feeds off of the violence and the anger of the men surrounding him, and he exhibits some behaviors in this chapter (rushing off to kill Anaxagoras after he grabs Lily's arm, for instance) which are not ideal! but I do think that there's meaningful conversation to be had about Lily's cultural assimilation into an ancient, misogynistic society, and how there was absolutely no way I was going to get out of this story without giving James some sort of period-typical attitude. now again, I took the liberties I deem necessary, because I have no desire to make my main romantic lead into an asshole. that's not my James Potter. not that that's news [gets taken out by a sniper]

i got CLOWNEDDD for referring to this dude as Dion son of Dion but idk what to tell you!! that's how the old documents referred to him!!! i didn't make that shit up I swear to god!!!!

also - that's the actual text of the Oath of Plataea, except (as Lily points out) it should read Athena Areia. is it likey that she'd remember this off the dome? no. is it possible that she just recognized the missing descriptor from context clues? yes. did i care enough to explain this either way? no, no i did not.

the Big Ticket Item of this chapter, though, is the oh.

and it wasn't just an oh, it was an oh followed by this innocuous conclusion that isn't even about Lily. i made myself laugh so hard with that. he's just like 'oh god my friend is going to wave this over my head FOREVER' and you know what? he's right!

as for the previous paragraph in that passage, I pulled a bit of a bait and switch, but not as badly as you might think! it was a risk to even bring up the idea that James could leave Athens, because I know it spurred some people into thinking that he'd go to the future with Lily (sorry babies that was not on the table). but what I intended for this passage (however successful it may or may not have been) was to just…allow him a moment of real, visceral empathy for the sensation of displacement that Lily's experiencing, and as well, introduce the idea that he might leave the life he's cultivated in Athens. his entire upbringing has been himself, the consummate Athenian man, surrounding himself with people from outside of Athens and drawing from their experiences, but never venturing outside of his little realm. in so many ways, the story questions what Lily's relationship with 'home' is (especially later on), but it always felt necessary to me to reckon with how 'home' may change for James as well.

finally:

yeah honestly i just remember the exact moment i thought of this passage. i had been reading the secret history (shoutout Donna Tartt i idolize and fear you) and i was lying down in my local park in the summer. I just thought about the Greek myths I knew, and the kind of cosmic horror that it is to really admit you're falling in love with someone, that they have this power over you that you didn't anticipate. and that closing line of the scene really struck me out of nowhere – I wrote it down in my notebook and just stared at it for a good few minutes. it's still one of my favs of the story :)

ok! if you made it this far, you are just amazing. this has to be a few thousand words at least. TYSM!!!!

see you all later for the part 2 BTS ❤️

[sgiandubh]

Thank you for the detailed explanation of the financial and administrative situation and the investors' shares, Caitriona.

But is it normal for the role of her personal assistant to extend to her commercial investments?

Outlander is over, what is the explanation for Tony joining a new company in October?

Do you have a deeper vision for this madness that has been going on since the appearance of the so-called Tony in Caitriona and Sam's lives?

Dear Detailed Explanation Anon,

I am sorry, honey, but I am certainly not C, nor (to be honest) would I ever want to be. I am perfectly happy with my own life and adventures. I will answer your questions in order, rather quickly.

Yes, it is perfectly normal and legal, once you know and understand some easy UK company law ropes I discussed in my answer to @bat-cat-reader's Director Anon, yesterday evening. As long as C remains the sole PSC in that company, he has no legal means to pretend to anything she owns in her own right. One more time, his position can be easily revoked anytime and I do think that the only reason he is present there, in that capacity, is because he needs to have a modicum of dignity/status, in the process. Please note that 'Director' seems to be the favorite 'occupation' he likes to mention in almost all of his business/company documents (and I even think on that Marriage Certificate, too, if I am not mistaken). This is what he wants to look like, this is his jam. What do I think about it? I think it is a bit childish, it's a bit like putting 'Expert' on my own business card (expert in what exactly? climate change? mixology? late Mycenean pottery?), which of course I don't. If anything, Anon, it is harmless enough and vague enough. Count your blessings and remember that before thinking marriage or relationship, the first thing that comes to mind is perhaps 'arrangement', when it comes to these people. A mutually profitable (and also very lucrative for one of them) one, at that. Mark me. I am ready to die on that hill.

T joining a new company in October? You should have your eyes checked, Anon. Byron Benirras is anything but new, in my book. It's been around for ever and it is her dedicated, visible and traceable money stash. Her credit score, her taxes, her revenue are based on its accounts. Why is he there now? I already answered that part in my 'Two Questions Anon' and nope, sorry my dear, I will not budge. Use your critical thinking skills - I think you might know why, you just need validation. Consider it done, darling.

Do I have a deeper vision? The answer is the same as ever, Anon and sorry if it displeases you. In fact, I do have a deeper, wider vision. Will I further discuss it here? Nope. Not for all the tea in China. Why? Because this is not my call. I am not 12 and I am not a fool.

[thetruthwilloutsworld]

Article 24 October 2024

[alexanderwales]

Book Review: The Ministry of Time

I picked up The Ministry of Time when I was in Berkley. It was prominently placed, it had a bold and colorful cover, and I'm a sucker for time travel of any kind. When I brought it up to the counter, the cashier told me that it was one of her recent favorites and really brilliantly realized for being from a debut author. The inside cover promises "an ingeniously imagined, hilarious romp through time, space, and the human heart".

As a veteran of time travel stories, I think they fall into two basic camps. The first camp is the thinky camp, interested in the time travel elements, the layers of cause and effect, the twists and turns that history or characters might have undergone for want of a nail, branching universes and stable loops, the raw matter of causality itself. The second camp is mostly interested in history, whether that's alternate history or historical characters. These are stories where the premise is that modern warship gets transported back to Ancient Greece or whatever and then we just do not interact with time travel in any meaningful way until the end of the book, if that. Sometimes (maybe even often) time travel stories straddle these two camps, but when I read a time travel story I usually immediately clock it as being one or the other.

For the first three quarters of its word count, The Ministry of Time is so firmly in the latter camp that I thought it would just stay there. The basic premise is that the titular ministry has pulled people through time and set them up with "bridges" who are essentially civil servants that live with the temporal "expats" and get them acclimated to the near-future modern world. Our protagonist "bridge" is a British-Cambodian woman, while her "expat" is Graham Gore, a member of the doomed Erebus and Terror mission to explore the Northwest passage. He's very loosely based on a real man about whom so little is known that his character is invented from whole cloth, but there's quite a bit of historical grounding.

Kate & Leopold was a 2001 film about a modern woman who works at an advertising company (Meg Ryan) and gets embroiled in a love affair with an aristocrat from the late 1800s (Hugh Jackman). It's a romcom, and I thought about it a lot when reading this book, which turns out to mostly be a slow-burn romance. It hits a lot of the same beats. Gore is a man out of time and we milk this for entertainment value as we watch him acclimate to the modern world in various ways, seeing the things that he loves and the things that puzzle him. He's also a gentleman from a simpler time, and his nobility stands in contrast to the boorishness of the modern male. A lot of this is stock: I don't read many romance novels, but "man from the past" is a whole genre, whether he's come through to the present or the female protagonist has been sent to the past. I am pretty sure that the first book of Outlander is this, but I only watched half of the first season of the TV show.

(The other piece of media this reminded me of was the Norwegian show Beforeigners, which hits the "past is a different country" and "refugees from the past" theme a lot harder, at least for my money.)

The Ministry of Time does all this far better than Kate & Leopold did. Part of this is simply the writing quality, but there's also at least a little engagement with ideas of colonialism, the horrors of the past, how we assimilate into the dominant culture, and what that means. Gore is well-realized, and our protagonist has a lot of complexity to her, which brings some brushes with identity and living in the wake of someone else's trauma (particularly because the protagonist, like the author, is mostly white-passing half-Cambodian). It's just that this isn't the sort of time travel novel that I like, because it feels like the core premise, traveling through time, gets set to one side while we focus on the relationship between the past and the present, and how fuckable guys from the past are. I appreciate that there's some depth to the female fantasy on display here, but I don't find this particular female fantasy all that interesting on its own. When I realized, about twenty pages in, that this was primarily going to be a well-written romance, I could feel my enthusiasm for it waning.

Aside from the romance between these two, which is the largest chunk of the book, we have a few people from other eras. They're not given nearly enough depth for my taste, but they serve their purpose well enough, and help add another dose of "actually, the past was kind of shit", which I think any work that is flirting with romanticizing the past needs. The two main ones are Arthur, a gay man from World War I who doesn't get enough screen time, and Margaret, a lesbian who comes from the 1600s. I think there's probably a lot to say about identity and queerness, especially because modern notions of these things are not historical, but as with many things, the novel touches lightly on them and then flies off to the next thing like a timid dragonfly.

The best thing about the book, and the reason I kept looking forward to it, is that the prose is really really good. On almost any random page I open up, I can find a passage that delights me. There's a real art to the metaphor and how it's employed, and I really enjoyed most of it, even the ones that maybe made me scratch my head a little bit. Things like "sparrows gusted along the curb" or "I looked into Margaret's face, the sultry peach color of her mouth and her acne glowing with unprinted newness" or "sheepish, excitable expressions, like children caught drawing on the walls". On the prose level, I was a big fan.

The setting for the novel is near-modern London, a city that's suffering the effect of climate change, with blisteringly hot days where they can't do much more than lay on the floor and wait for the heat to pass, and occasional flooding. The ministry itself is a bureaucratic monolith in a way that feels like it's a piss take, but it doesn't go terribly far toward saying anything here. There's a genre that I'm trying to coin a name for called bureaupunk or bureauporn where we focus on huge organizations with matrix management and endless meetings and paper trails, and how that all feels to live with, but this doesn't quite go to that level, even if it gets close. (The ur-example of this is The Laundry Files, for a future post.)

On the plot level ... I hesitate to use the word "sucks", but I had a lot of problems with it even before we get to the last fourth of the novel where it shifts gears from being a slow romance.

To start with, why are they forcing this man to co-habit with this woman in a way they acknowledge to be scandalous from his perspective? Why didn't they select a bridge that would ease him into the 21st century? Why co-habitation rather than, say, a bridge having regular check-ins or something? Actually, why is all this time and effort being expended on getting these people to acclimate to the 21st century in the first place? The novel doesn't really seem to want to engage with this either, and the answers, to the extent we get them, are always pretty vague. Uncharitably, the bulk of the novel is just an excuse plot to get this woman with this man and have them fall in love.

It's not until the last fourth of the novel that it really starts to pick up steam, at least from a plot perspective. There's a mole in the ministry, there are mystery people from the future, there are plots and plans firing off, people are revealed to not be quite who they said they were ... and I enjoyed this part a lot less, in spite of it being ostensibly more toward the type of thinky time travel fiction I'm a fan of. There are two major reveals, and I didn't think that either of them landed, in part because of how weakly they tied into the thing that the novel had mostly been about, which is this central romantic conflict. It's also in this last fourth of the novel that it becomes a type one time travel story instead of a type two one, but the time travel mechanics are never explained, it never matters, and the whole story is worse for it. There's something that a lot of time travel stories sometimes do where they say "well it's time travel, it's confusing, no one really knows" and I fucking despise it because it's lazy shitty writing. Even if you don't have perfectly consistent rules that make sense on a physics level, you need to have rules that make sense on a narrative level, and usually the kinds of authors who write passages like that don't have either.

Prose aside, I think I didn't like this book. I like some of the stock time travel stuff, like a man from the past discovering Spotify, and a woman from the present reveling in a man from the past. I thought the sentence level stuff was great. I thought that some of the recurrent themes of identity and running from the past were interesting, especially the stuff about power dynamics and fitting in with the governmental overstructure ... but I didn't feel like the novel hit all that hard, aside from a single passage midway through the book. The author has some thoughts on growing up with this Cambodian heritage, but I don't think I necessarily got all that much understanding on top of what I could have gotten from trying to write a character like that myself. I got the sense that the author was putting a lot of herself into the novel, sometimes to a degree that felt embarrassing to read, in a way that the novel is explicit about. Sometimes that was embarrassing in a good way, raw and real, and other times it was just confusing, elements of her life put onto the page without enough introspection or background to understand it.

The romance is good and compelling though, I'll give it that. If you like romances, and don't really care about time travel, you might like it.

[lurkingshan]

Shan! Question for you. You are a foremost expert in knowing what makes a romance successful. Do you think there are any remarkable differences between how Asian vs. Western dramas “do” romance? If you think there are differences — what are some Asian dramas you’d recommend as particularly successful from a continental lens?

In the words of Omar Little, oh indeed. One of the primary reasons I got so into Asian media was because of its radically different treatment of romance as a genre compared to Western media. Asian media actually respects romance and treats it as a valid and worthy part of the human experience, where Western media looks down on and belittles it as unserious (as with most things that are seen as the domain of women). Most Sophisticated Dramas in the West have little to no romance in them. We rarely get romance-focused dramas in the West, and when we do they are full of misogyny, abuse, and SA (*glaring at you, Outlander*). Asian dramas, on the other hand, cater to the romance audience in a way the West sneers at, and I found it completely revelatory when I first started watching them.

In terms of recommending good Asian romances, the beauty is that there are just so many. Any style or tone or flavor you want, they got it. You want a big sweeping epic? Crash Landing on You or Descendants of the Sun. Want it to be historical? The Rebel Princess or Love and Redemption. A fun and flirty romcom? Semantic Error or An Incurable Case of Love. Romantic tragedy? Eternal Yesterday or The Red Sleeve. A straight up fairytale? Legend of the Blue Sea. How about a dark and twisted fairytale? It's Okay Not to Be Okay. Maybe you want a cozy friends to lovers? Romance is A Bonus Book. How about a painful one? Theory of Love. Slice of life? What Did You Eat Yesterday? Workplace romance? Her Private Life or Old Fashion Cupcake. Second chance romance? Lighter & Princess. Or perhaps you want to play with gender and sexuality crisis? Coffee Prince.

I could go on and on and on, but you get me. I have actually already compiled a list of my favorite romance pairs here.

[adriansvetozaroff]

Inktober with "Outlanders". Part 3

13. Horizon. Sheeku returns from a cloud car excursion, which he agreed on with a local ugnaught in exchange for help in the work of repairing equipment, to Cloud City and sees a storm front beginning to form at the edge of Bespin's atmosphere upper layers urging on a herd of beldons.

14. Roam. Long ago, koorivars lost their homeland forever, and after that they had to wander a lot around the galaxy until they were able to find it again. For this reason, their symbol on Kooriva became a semi-parasitic tropical plant - it has no roots of its own, settling on large vines, but its red-orange flowers are simply enormous. A former koorivar fusilier tells Lamarr about the history of his people and about these flowers, decorating the tallest buildings, as a reminder that those who have no roots will still flourish.

P.S. These are my headcanons about the Koorivar culture and what their planet might look like.

15. Guidebook. Lamarr talks about life with Gemmo, a religious teacher of the Church of Toydaria. His speeches can be called a guide to life: this cheerful Toydarian is ready to welcome everyone as his guest, he will always treat you to tea, listen, offer to discuss the meaning of life, good and evil, and give wise advice. The temple bell at the top refers to the clan bells of the Toydarians, but it is also surrounded by many smaller bells of various shapes and sizes, symbolizing that the doors of this church are open to a variety of creatures.

Jumping ahead a little, at a certain point in their travels, Sheeku and Lamarr lived on Toydaria for some time, and Gemmo played his role in their story.

16. Grungy. On Malastare, Sheeku made a bet with the Gran who owned a small motel that if he could get the old shabby podracer that was gathering dust in this Gran's hangar going again, he would be allowed to drive it out of town at night. It was a short drive, but Sheeku got the experience he wanted. And he was lucky to be almost unscathed when this stuff fell apart completely.

17. Journal. Dakh Dainon, the producer of the travel show "Outlanders", fills out the accounting journal. He is the most experienced member of the crew, and has had some successful projects under his belt before. He believed in Sheeku and Lamarr, seeing the potential in the concept they came up with, and took the risk to develop and promote their idea, despite the fact that they were amateurs. And although the position of the pau'ans in the galaxy has noticeably weakened after the Clone Wars, Dakh managed to maintain his old connections, which greatly help him negotiate filming of such material and in such locations where not everyone is allowed.

18. Drive. In his travels, Lamarr, like and also Sheeku, rode many different animals, but one of his favorites was definitely the milodon from Quartzite. This giant centipede moves nimbly and smoothly, is capable of reaching the speed of a subtram, and simply looks very impressive.

19. Ridge. The Kel Dor have not only their own Force tradition, but also their own martial art, and Sheeku is ready to learn it. He will spend several days living in a monastery in the Dorin mountains, sharing the way of life of Kel Dors, who study ancient martial arts, spending much time in intense training that disciplines the body and spirit. It is an unprecedented honor for an alien to achieve such an opportunity, but one Kel Dor put in a good word for Sheeku - he was his mentor and a good friend during his time training as a shuttle pilot on Coruscant.

[mercysong-tardis]

Meeting Alex Kingston in Moll Flanders cosplay at FanX 2023

Just over a year ago, a little birdy (@now-theres-a-spoiler-for-you) informed me that to the best of her knowledge, Alex Kingston had never seen a Moll Flanders cosplayer. And as an avid appreciator of the Miniseries, I took it upon myself to become the first.

The Miniseries, "The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders" (1996) of which Alex Kingston starred in alongside Daniel Craig, was Alex's major breakout role which led to her role on ER and her subsequent claim to fame. So considering the prevolence, I had to make it special.

I put in a LOT of work researching, sourcing fabric, internet deep-diving, and reading before I ever got started on the dress. The actual hard work of sewing the dress took a few months to make once the initial homework was done. Undergarments? Structuring? Patterns? All of these took a lot of guesswork on my part.

The original was created by costume designer, Trisha Biggar (Which if you are in the costuming community you will know her as the designer of Padme Amidala's wardrobe and the designer for Outlander) for the 1996 miniseries. The dress was constructed of fabric Trisha Thrifted in the 1960s in Sweden, most of which I am fairly certain is Indian Fabric specifically used for Banarasi Sarees. The dress is inspired by a common silhouette from the 1670s London England, based on common evening gowns worn at the time. Considering the substantial trade happening between India and England at that time, it makes sense that a dress is fine as this would’ve been historically constructed with Banarasi silk.

The original evening gown:

Sadly, I cannot afford to construct a dress entirely out of silk in this American economy, so sourced much of my fabric overseas and while I was in Egypt and Israel this summer. The rest of it was either Thrifted or appliquéd by hand by me. All of the notions and ribbons were Thrifted. I believe in doing everything possible to keep cosplay sustainable. There is a video on my TikTok which goes into detail on my construction process.

But once the dress was done, I was ecstatic, and It was time to debut it at a convention. The morning of Thursday FanX SLC, I got some pictures (in my River wig to preserve my curled hair) and this is how they turned out...

Then it was time to show The Queenston herself. I had been a little bit stressed that she wouldn't recognise the dress or wouldn't be very interested, but I held out hope.

Spoiler Alert; I had NOTHING to worry about.

Before I got to Alex, I got an autograph from Karen Gillan, who's table was next to Alex's. While in line, I was staring in awe at Alex, as she was just under twenty feet away. In between people, Alex glanced up to the crowd, then did a double take, and leaned over her table to see me through the crowd. Her mouth dropped open, she pointed straight at me, and she got all excited, and mouthed “You! Moll Flanders! Wow!” Time slowed down and I froze until I gave her a big smile (and I think a thumbs up?) and I was so starstruck that I was convinced I was hallucinating until she added “you look amazing!” still smiling, before going back to the next person. 

When I got to her table, she greeted me as Moll,and she said she'd "Never ever, ever seen a Moll cosplayer!" and I got to tell her that I made the dress. Alex absolutely loved my Moll Flanders cosplay. She told me it was the first one she’d ever seen. She was so sweet. I wasn’t anxious at all. I was so excited to finally meet her but I didn’t cry. I was actually so relaxed, which came as a surprise, as I have a track record of being emotionally overwhelmed and crying in front of Celebrities.

She was so nice and was so impressed with the dress. We got a Photo together and she ended up grabbing the shackles (is it even Alex Kingston without a cheeky touch?)

Then she signed my Making of Moll Flanders book and she flipped through it “oh this really takes me back. This was my favorite dress. The red velvet one. It was quite warm. I loved the big hat!”

For reference this is the dress she was talking about:

Then she looked up back at my dress and asked me “aren’t they fun to wear? Don’t you feel sexy?”

I said yes.

I was a liar.

I was actually incredibly uncomfortable but I would NEVER SAY THAT TO THE QUEENSTON.

So I just smiled and said yes. (I did feel sexy but 17 hours tightlaced in 1670s stays is not fun to wear)

Then at the photo op, Alex played with my hair XD

So that is the story of my most insane cosplay yet! I hope you enjoyed all you people out there on the internet.

[devilsrecreation]

Random screenshots of the Outlanders cuz I’m bored

PRECIOUS BEAN PRECIOUS BEAN PRECIOUS BEAN PRECIOUS BEAN PRECIOUS BEAN PRECIOUS BE-

Am I the only one who wants to throw a blanket over all of them and kiss them goodnight because I want to

Honestly my favorite part of “A New Way to Go” they look so pure 🥺🥺🥺🥺

He looks like an angry child that’s been put in time out lmaoooo

Look at Nduli. Look at him. Not a thought behind those eyes. Bro’s got elevator music in his head rn

Kiburi actually looks insane here holy shit

Love Tamka’s smug look lmaoooo

I LITERALLY CAN’T GET OVER THIS SCENE LFHDGTHFTRYEURURY

Chungu’s face says it all he’s sooooo mad😂😂😂😂😂 and Cheezi looks high wut-

You know what that scene reminds me of? That one Spongebob episode where Patrick eats his own chocolate bar and he’s like “You took my only food, now I’m gonna starve!”

Sooooo couple things:

1. The way Kenge is positioned….that can’t be comfortable. No wonder he left Scar’s army like fuck…

2. Fun fact: Crocodiles physically can’t stick their tongues out, so Nduli doing that face is super inacurrate. But it IS Disney, so I’ll let it go for now

I like to think Sumu was watching this shit from the shadows and he was like “Nah, fuck that.”

I cannot get over how cute Nduli looks when he’s laughing. I know the crocs are supposed to be laughing evilly but Nduli’s laugh is just so genuine it’s freaking adorable 🥺

He looks like he’s genuinely having a good time and I love it

[queen-scribbles]

What motivated you to make Tel your canon outlander?

Oh, that's a fun story :D

Originally it was his big sister, Silver, smuggler extrodinaire and one of my OG launch day babies

(art from emedeme)

She's two years older than Tel and I've always(since making him, at least, bc he came along a year or two after she did) headcanoned they were going through the class story events at roughly the same pace. She was a little ahead for Act 1, he was in Act 2, then she was for Act 3 and the post-main story stuff. They keep in touch and are on good terms; catching up, goofing off, teasing each other mercilessly etc etc. So when Silver starts running Shadow of Revan, of course she taps in her little brother for help. There's no way Tel's a Revanite; he loves the Republic so much he left the family smuggling business to be a goody-two-shoes soldier.

Since this means they've both interacted with Marr and Satele, I had the thought it would be really funny if when Marr commed Silver about the Wild Space Expedition she snarked something about her war hero brother being a better fit for somethin' like that and gave him Tel's holofrequency before snuggling in against Corso and going tf back to sleep. (cue five years of Guilt™ when she thinks she got him killed >.>) And then I started actually thinking about it, and realized it was a) something she would do and b) very helpful for some Silver/Corso timeline things. With when I wanted them to have kids, she would have been 7 or 8 months pregnant in carbonite(yeesh) and Corso would have had an 18 month old to handle while she was MIA and while Silver is good she's not heroic, if that makes sense.

Tel is both. He's so Captain America his face claim is Chris Evans /cough And he's a really good fit for Alliance Commander(better than Silver, much as I love her, she does not do the Leading Large Forces thing). Sooo my joke thought turned into canon. Silver instead got that Dantooine farm Corso mentions in one of his romance letters, three kids, and occasionally goes on forays into Wild Space to look for her little brother bc part of her can't believe he's dead. (she finds him on one of them, and becomes an Alliance recruit. Yes, this messes up the whole Corso and Risha alliance alert, but you only get that as a smuggler, so it's fiiiiine. Risha can tag along. That way I get to reunite her with Vette and all is as it should be in the world.)

OH. Also, Elara Dorne is my favorite romance in the whole game, so I had to make her my canon one. :D

[renee-writer]

Fictober 24 Day 12 Did You Hear That?

AO3

Written for @fictober-event Day 12 prompt. Outlander Fandom

Their breaths catch. The amazing sound fills the air.

 

“Oh my God! Do you hear that.” She says. He does. She knows this. It is just…

 

“Aye. It is brilliant.”

 

The midwife smiles. One of her favorite parts of antenatal appointments is the parents hearing the heart beat for the first time.

 

“Good and strong. One hundred and fifty beats a minute. Perfect.”

 

“Hello baby.” Claire says through her tight throat.

 

“You’re alive in there.” Jamie adds. They knew. Just hearing the brilliant sound.

 

“Alive and strong.” The midwife agrees.

[sgiandubh]

Waypoints, Take 1: POV Complete Outsider

A little something, before we begin. In the history of this fandom, S's book was a critical juncture point. To explain my speculations and findings, it felt appropriate and fun to split it in two parts: the first, written from the POV of a complete outsider who happens to stumble upon Waypoints. The second would be a shipper's view, simply because this is who I am. Under no circumstances should it be understood that I recently took a flight to Bangkok, as I will immediately tell you (I wish I had!). Last time I used this rhetorical trick it went in flames, and I had to explain myself at length: you have been warned. Here goes and I apologize already - this is going to be LONG:

Hi, I am Sgian-Dubh and I have just boarded the LHR-BKK twelve -hour flight, after four years of forced COVID abstinence. I am brimming with anticipation for five o'clock tea at the Mandarin Oriental's Author Lounge, the speedboat transfers on the Chao Phraya and the first real Thai mango sticky rice.

Lo and behold, somebody has forgotten a book in the pocket in front of my seat, undetected by the cleaning ladies. It is written by a certain Sam Heughan. I have no idea who that guy is, but I am quickly informed about its topic: My Scottish Journey.

Ok. A travel book. Favorite genre. This guy is no Pico Iyer. No Robert Byron. And certainly no Freya Stark. But I've got roughly ten hours to kill: where's the harm?

The cover intrigues me. Not my type, but a very good-looking gentleman, with a rather determined, almost stern attitude and a dram of whisky in his left hand. Is he a unicorn entrepreneur? An inventor? The next UK astronaut? Impossible to tell. But hey, never judge a book by its cover.

It quickly becomes apparent that Heughan is the male lead in that lengthy Outlander series of already cult-ish reputation, that my mother watches with gusto ("call me in half an hour, I am watching The Wedding": might I add, for the 455th time in documented history) and The Guardian TV critic calls raunchy.

Six hours later, roughly by the second round of refreshments, I have questions.

The beginning is peculiar. This guy has a busy-busy-busy life and lives in a large country house all by himself, with a hissing coffee machine he just bought. There is something havishamesque about this premise, clashing with the self-assured, conqueror pose on the cover:

But there is hope: a decision is made on the spur of the moment to skedaddle and walk the 96 mile West Highland Way, rather than brood in front of the telly with Chinese delivery food and more alcohol, Bridget Jones style. Fair enough. Adequate equipment is immediately acquired in a frenzy and outside it is nasty raining. The new tent is mounted and dismounted in the living-room (who does this? who eats scrambled eggs with ketchup?).

Pitter-patter. And more pitter-patter. Damp, but heartwarming overnight stops in cozy hotels along the way and short conversations in Halloween-themed bars, surrounded by Highland zombies and banshees. Parritch and grit. The harsh encounter with homelessness along the way prompts the Good Samaritan reflex:

More pitter-patter. Entwined with the self-reliant feat, we start to follow a parallel trail to the narrator's past, by far the most interesting part of the book. Challenging beginnings, in a single parent family surrounded by love and dignified penury. A real shyness due to truly heartbreaking, unfairly absurd, almost debilitating circumstances:

Details like the above quickly grab the reader's attention, and how could they not? There is a lot of sensibility in there, rather aptly balanced with a whiff of Dickensian morality (stay true to your self) and of course, with one of the favorite Victorian refrains: play up, play up and play the game. Obstacles are patiently conquered with uncommon resilience and a true stubbornness, but for a very long time, life is a haphazard succession of opportunities and rebukes.

For such a good-looking man, women are sparse and far between. Ae fond kiss and then we sever at 10. Stage partners. A stage production assistant. The one who didn't last more than one week once moved in together. No explanation is provided and we sense this is an uneasy topic. I wouldn't insist, as a casual reader, but my curiosity is piqued.

At this point in time, breakfast is served. I have long lost track of the zip-a-dee-doo-dah trekking part of the book, involving a sulking, but nice bearded guy and his wife, chance brief encounters and mushrooms. But the Underdog Tale surely got my attention, even if we spend an extravagant amount of time between the London neo-slums and the glitter of Tinseltown: skipping to the essential, it eventually paid off.

With instant fame comes exposure and the lottery winner syndrome. What to do. How to cope. Women multiply as by magic, but only one is singled out and discussed in a strange, contrived, almost lackadaisical manner:

If this made me, the assumed Complete Outsider, stop in my tracks and scratch my head, I can only imagine what would happen to these people's fans. Why address folklore and conflated nonsense, at all? Why give space to hearsay? Why "it", when it should logically be "them"? Why the ambiguity? Why the uneasiness, spinning like floating wood in a sea of positivity? Why worry about that, when you drum the march of success and explain your bachelorhood by an unsolved Oedipus complex, thwarting any potential pairing?

I sip the horrible airline drip coffee and I ask:

Who is Caitriona to you, Mister Heughan?

You wrote a +150 pages long book beating around this bush. There are no such things. You are either life-long friends and this is a non-existent topic, or you are lying to yourself, lying to your readers and hiding in plain sight.

Time to disembark. I am keeping the book. I am not buying the whisky (naïve product placement on top). But hell I am going to watch that series on Netflix!

[khaleesiofalicante]

Noorambles strikes again

As we all know, David is your own character. But how did you come to make him? Like what was the thought process, any inspo?

Why is he French? Why’s his name David? Where’d you get his last name from? Was David your rough draft and you ran with it, or was he originally something else? Like different name, nationality, and personality wise?

Out of everyone in the shadow verse, why’d you chose to write about max and make David a part of it ?

Funnily enough, David came out of nowhere.

Most of my other OCs (if not all of them) were born out of a lot of thought and workshopping.

David is what I call an accidental pregnancy lmao but he ended up being my favorite kid. I made a small reference to him when I was writing a ficlet on tumblr years ago and then he just never left my mind...

There wasn't a lot of inspo. David is honestly inspo for what I want to see in the real world. I wish there were more Davids out there.

But for some of your other questions:

He's French because I've always liked France. In school, I studied French history for two years (and yes I impressed my Uber Drivers in Paris by answering their questions lol). David's name came up absolutely randomly (like I said I picked a random name for that ficlet I wrote and I never changed it). But I was so so pleased to learn that the name actually means 'be loved'. HOW COOL IS THAT?

David's last name has a deeper meaning (which we'll learn later), but it was inspired by Claire Beauchamp - a character from the Outlander series whom I loved very much.

A lot didn't change about him in terms of the specific things you mentioned. He really is the original draft. But the David who is now isn't who I thought he'd be at the beginning. But that's the same for any original character I write. The more you write, the better you understand them. Like when I wrote him at first, I didn't think being a father would be an important part of his personality. But now it's kinda most of his personality. He loves his children more than anything and I can see how that came to be considering how he was realized and how much love he kept himself inside himself without having anyone to give it to. He never had any family so when he got one that he could love, he didn't hold back. Those are things I only realized later on. And that's the best part about writing OCs. They keep surprising you!

As for why I write about Mavid the most, I feel closest to them the most. In the same way, I feel and relate to Malec the most in the tsc universe. It's impossible to write about a ship if you don't understand its dynamics on a deep level. I kind of understand Max and David very very deeply - in a way I don't understand Rafael and Anjali or Lance and Theia. Maybe it's because individually as characters, Max and David, are more fleshed out in my brain than anyone else. I assume so anyway :)