#the amount of lesbianism in this fandom is delightful

[breakingstanding]

I am actually devastated over Michaela… not because I care about Michael or the book, but if they’re making Francesca queer, there’s no way they’re making Eloise a lesbian (which she SO clearly is!). I saw the spoiler of Franny and thought okay they can make 2/8 queer, and then I watched and saw they made Benedict queer too! I just can’t see them doing 3, especially 2 women.

It’s so disheartening because so many people have been rooting for sapphic eloise and I think hardly anyone was wanting Franny.

I think i’m more upset with this than if none had been queer because like ugh we were SO CLOSE. We could’ve had it all. like imagine how happy we could all be right now. 😭

they’ve been setting up queer benedict and eloise since season 1 so I just don’t understand why they would do this. (sorry for venting to you- none of my friends that’s watch are caught up yet)

Always happy for a vent, and I definitely feel you! I'm personally really excited about Francesca's storyline because I really liked her this season and Michaela is EXTREMELY hot lol - but I'm also frustrated that it's the sister we've had as a side character for one season who will be getting a queer love story, and not the one we've been invested in for three seasons.

Ultimately I think the frustration we are feeling is more because this is reflective of larger issues that always pop up in fandom than being upset about not getting a storyline we wanted for a character (although I'm not going to pretend that's not a factor too!) a) There's such a pattern in fan spaces for queer people to see themselves in a character and to recognise clear queercoding, and then to have straight people come in and condescendingly say "not all characters with x trait have to be gay" - as if we have an overabundance of queer characters and are trying to get our grubby gay hands on more. So much of the discourse around Eloise amounts to people saying "not all feminist characters have to be lesbians" which is crazy to me because WHERE are all these shows that are supposedly full of feminist lesbians?? Please tell me I would love to watch them!

b) Straight fans will get all different types of characters and plotlines for the heterosexual couples and then act like queer people are being greedy if we ask for more than one for us. Just within Bridgerton there have been three straight main couples already - and of the queer siblings we've also gotten to see a cute romance between Francesca and a man, and will likely see Benedict fall in love with a woman (this is not to diminish their queerness, obviously bisexual stories are incredibly important regardless of the gender of the love interests, more just pointing out the sheer quantity of m/f love stories straight fans get to enjoy).

It absolutely sucks that we exist in a TV landscape where instead of being excited about what looks to be a delightful relationship between Francesca and Michaela we are instead mourning the loss of other another character's queer potential. It's absurd that we are so rarely allowed to have multiple sapphic characters (who aren't each other's love interest) on the same show - particularly because in real life queer people tend to flock together!

The feeling reminds me of being part of the 100 fandom nearly a decade ago. I distinctly remember when it was leaked that Clarke and Lexa were going to kiss. The sapphic side of the fandom were definitely very excited - but there was also this strange sense of dread too. I saw countless posts of people bemoaning that now that she was gay they were definitely going to kill her off - and they were right! Bury your gays was such a common trope that we could see it coming a mile off.

This has felt like a very similar reaction. Queer fans spend a lot of time dealing with subtext and are very good at recognising tropes and patterns, and we know that the chances of Netflix allowing one their tentpole shows to have two sapphic main characters is slim to none.

I hope we are wrong and things are changing for the better, I really do.

I think the best thing we can do now is swallow our disappointment and make sure we support Francesca/Michaela fiercely to prove that there is an audience for sapphic stories.

[elephant-in-the-pride-parade]

20 Fic Writer Quesions

First, thank you @singeart and @mytardisisparked for tagging me!. I did a set of these last year and it was fun to see how my answers have changed since then!

How many works do you have on Ao3?

61

2. What’s your total Ao3 word count?

1.6 million and counting!

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Star Trek Voyager

Star Trek Prodigy

Sailor Moon

Harry Potter

Madam Secretary

Ive debated writing SwanQueen for a long time but by the time I had the energy and time to write, I'd lost interest in the show. I might rewatch and come back to it one day...

I have thought about writing Wynonna Earp or Tamora Pierce universe fanfiction but have yet to get an idea that grabs me. I like to find things i want to fix and it's hard when the source material is perfection.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

The Parent Trap (305)

Sailor Moon H Order of the Phoenix (289)

Sailor Moon H Half Blood Prince (222)

Eden's Deception (167)

Out of Reach (150)

5. Do you respond to comments?

I try to! although if I'm busy or feeling down it can take me a while. Sometimes I forget.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I still think What Even is 3 Minutes takes the cake. Or I'll be Your First if You'll be my Last

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I Heard the Comm on Christmas Morn and Parent Trap

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Unfortunately I've gotten hate on fics since I started writing them... and it's become just something I expect to happen. Sometimes it's funny. Sometimes it confuses me. Sometimes it makes me sad. It really depends...

The memorable haters:

There was the delightful Fanfiction.net reviewer who got pissed i was "making everybody gay" (that was funny actually). I forget if they were the same person who flamed me when Mcgonagall and Hooch kissed under some mistletoe. I digress. They thought queering up the canon was like sinful or whatever. I was delighted to disagree and make the story even queerer.

Another person cussed me out for magically restraining Sailor Plutos time travel powers so my plot would work and for making her have feelings about it. aparently mad the senshi were not all powerful deus exmachinas who never feel feelings... That one stung. That was the reason I left FFN.

Hate because in Sailor Moon H, Harry Potter was not the main character.

Hate that I made a magic bio baby for the magical lesbians. (I can't have a biobaby with my wife irl, can't I at least let the fantasy girlies have one!)

Hate for including C/7 in a story

...I wouldn't call it hate for the fic but I have had an uncomfortable amount of commenters who hate on Chakotay any time I have him involved with Seven / don't have him grovel to Kathryn / really any time I let him advocate for how he's been hurt... at first comments like this stressed me out because i worried i had not written the character sufficiently sympathetic. But then Parent Trap breached containment and I got enough comments to be able to see I had definitely written the character fine... it was just that some people were always just rooting for a "Chakotay falls over himself to apologize to Janeway for not immediately dating her" storyline that... I'm not sorry 😅 I'm never going to write that. The older I get the more I feel like both of J/C just need therapy! They've been through so much trauma. Their feelings are valid (yes, even for other people).

Parent Trap breaching containment also meant that when I hit an irl rut and couldnt get in the writing headspace for a bit, a bunch of - sincerely, well meaning - fans got into their heads to start a commenting campaign to get me to update. I heard about it and panicked (i had bad experiences that year of getting people who only commented "update soon" and those conversely stressed me out and made me not want to write - I love fic writing for the conversations and community... so it made me feel like readers thought i was just a content vending machine). so just the thought of potentially getting an avalanche of guests, well meaning or not, begging me to update made me lock commenting until the fic was done. I wound up deciding after that that since "update soon" requests were becoming a lot more frequent that I'd consider before posting whether getting them would hurt my ability to finish. So most of the time now if I know a fic is going to reach a bigger potential community, I don't start posting it until it's almost done. That has had some upsides! (Im less dependent on positive feedback for motivation now!) and some downsides (no one comments on my fics with their theories anymore) but on a whole, a good decision.

Immediately after finishing Parent Trap I wrote Fever and got this amazing guest comment from someone who said (paraphrasing cuz i'm too busy to go find it) "Youre better than this. how dare you write this filth. J/C are better than this" that one had me laughing for days. But the comment did prompt me to create a second account later when I wrote a tentacle fic. At the time I worried i'd get a ton of similar flame comments from people who were subscribed to my main for other types of fic... but I am even feeling like that's unnecessary now. I write what I write! Yes, some of it is really dirty, weird smut. I'm not sorry.

Currently any time I post a Threshold AU fic an anon drops into my comments section in order to call me "Sick" and "Deranged"... they make me so sad I don't even make a quippy reply. I just delete them. I write that universe for my own wish fulfillment... Someday (soon, hopefully) I'm gonna have kids. And I am going to have to have conversations with them about who their biological dad is. Why they look like one mom and not the other, whether their non bio family love them even if theyre not blood related. I might have a kid who feels different from everyone else because they're queer or they're neurodivergent or they're some new alienating feeling I am totally unprepared for. and I'll need to help them navigate that.. Writing about hybrid salamander kids getting raised in a blended family is FUN. But more importantly... it helps me practice those situations. It comforts me to know that if the characters can figure this out in the AU then I can figure this out in real life! What the hell is sick and deranged about that!?

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I write all sorts of smut. I post the stuff that doesn't totally mortify me once i've gotten out of whatever mood had me writing the smut in the first place.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I have exactly two crossovers to my name: Sailor Delta and Sailor Moon H. I think on the basis of word count alone Sailor Moon H (>500,000) is definitely the craziest.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I consider the unlicensed use of the AO3 archive for ChatGPT and similar LLMs theft. (and there are several court cases pending that are also seeking to address whether it is legally theft as it pertains to published fiction and newspapers). The canon creators of the fandoms I write for aren't allowed to make money by using uncredited ideas pulled from my fanfiction (just like I am not allowed to make money from writing fic with their copyrighted settings and characters) and i continue to be apalled that ChatGPT and other LLMs think they can get away with using others copyrighted ideas without permission. Especially that they can take advantage of people who cant profit off their own work.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? 

No but i would be open to it!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes! Once with @magdalenejaneway, once with @jellybeansarecool and once with @trekflower and all three were fantastic!

Most of what I write for Threshold AU is also increasingly collaborated on a great deal by the AU creators and a few other folks. It's been going for over 2 years now and doing that more and more has enabled us all to drop more references to previous fics and to create a more cohesive body of fic for the AU. in general its just been so fun and fulfilling to make these stories with other people who are as invested in the characters as me and it just fills me with joy. I'm really grateful for you guys.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

On the one hand J/C have inspired over 50 fics, But on the other I have also been loving Sailor Moon and those ships since before I knew what fandom or shipping were. And really the only reason J/C inspire more fic is that all the sailor moon characters got a happy ending.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I never want to give up on a WIP...

but I am in knots about what all to do with Out of Reach.

Out of Reach is a St:Prodigy S1 AU where Chakotay has amnesia and doesn't remember anything from his time on Voyager, all the while he and Kathryn are in a situationship with a baby.

There's two questions I never figured out how to answer: 1. Does he get his memories back. If so, how much and what enables it. and 2: Do he and Kathryn stay together?

On the memories front. saying he never recovers seems unfair to the character. But saying he magically does thanks to 24th century science feels cheap and disrespectful - to the reality of real memory loss and to the plot that built up so much tension around this. Saying he gets back some or more over time is more realistic, but left me uncertain of where exactly to end the story. Tying his retrieval of memories to Kathryn also tied me up in knots. On the one hand they're in love and thats romantic. on the other hand the optics of his recovery totally dependent on one person is icky.

I also found the baby really annoying to have there by the end - I still think he's cuteeee i really do!!! - it's just... he makes the "we should stay together and try to figure this out" answer a bit too convenient 😅. and he complicates Kathryns reluctance to restart their relationship. The more she resists, the more callous she seems (deliberately not trying to patch things up with her kid's father) when i really just want to focus on her fears that Chakotay would be happier without her and that even if they restart their romance, she might lose him again on a future mission. It's ironic because i originally created the baby to ensure she wouldnt just run away from her fears. And now hes contributing to my difficulty ending the fic...

Actually the more I think on it, my real problem is I could write my way out of this, but I cant do it in only one or two chapters and that makes me feel tired. i was sorta hoping to wrap that fic up. 😅🙈

16. What are your writing strengths?

Imagery has always been a strength for me. But i think I'm also getting really good at action scenes too.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Oneshots.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

Only if it was information i wanted the reader to understand but not the POV character.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

W.I.T.C.H way back when I was 15.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

Universe to Mend - I even have a few sequel or companion novel ideas to come after it.

This has gone on a while... 😅 - thank you for tagging me and letting me ramble! i'll tag anyone else who wants to answer! have at it.

[cantsayidont]

March 2021. For a long time, I was very reluctant to investigate the DOCTOR APHRA series, put off by the overly cutesy covers and the grim mediocrity of most post-1986 SW comics, but I eventually got some of the trades from the library and was pleasantly surprised.

The titular Doctor Chelli Lona Aphra is an archaeologist (she does actually have a doctorate, even though she did end up blackmailing her thesis advisor to get it), treasure hunter, thief finder of rare antiquities, con artist, and all-around ne'er-do-well who thinks principles are for suckers. Naturally, she gets herself into a lot of trouble (including owing large amounts of money to many very dangerous people, like her sometimes-ally, the Wookiee mercenary Black Krrsantan), and many of her adventures revolve around her trying to get out from under the aftermath of her previous capers.

Aphra is also a lesbian, and kind of a fuckboy, leaving an ever-growing trail of embittered ex-girlfriends who aren't sure if they want to kiss her or shoot her. Much of her initial ongoing series deals with her on-again, off-again relationship with Magna Tolvan (the white cyborg lady pictured behind her above), an Imperial officer who eventually joins the Rebellion after Aphra ruins her career. Given the usual trajectory of online fandom, which is very eager to impute gayness to the most drearily hetero of media, I hadn't expected Aphra being gay to be more than a vague implication in the actual comics, but she does actually canonically sleep with women. Who'dathunkit?

Aphra's early appearances in Kieron Gillen's wretched DARTH VADER comic and the lackluster Jason Aaron STAR WARS book present her as pretty overtly villainous. When she got her own book, Gillen apparently decided that wasn't viable, so in her own series, Aphra acquires a bit of a conscience — never enough to keep her out of trouble, of course, but enough to distinguish her from her meaner allies, like Triple Zero (a protocol droid with the personality of a gleefully polite serial killer) and BT-1 (an astromech who's basically R2-D2 if somebody let him have way too many grenades). The latter part of her first ongoing, written by Si Spurrier after Gillen's departure, eventually threatens to soften her a little too much, but the current ongoing, written by Alyssa Wong, seems to have found a better balance in that regard. On the other hand, I find the current book a bit too episodic — it's more accessible, but a lot of what makes Aphra delightful is her increasingly frantic scramble to escape the accumulating consequences of her many, many terrible decisions.

The massive (1,200+ page) Omnibus pictured above compiles all of Aphra's early appearances and the complete run of her initial ongoing title in chronological order. While her early adventures are important insofar as they introduce Aphra and some of her major supporting characters, they aren't as much fun as her first ongoing series, so you could just as well start there. There's also an audio dramatization of Aphra's early adventures, adapted by Sarah Kuhn and featuring Emily Woo Zeller as Aphra. The dramatization is okay and Zeller is great, although Marc Thompson's Vader is completely unconvincing and a bit of a drag on the proceedings.

[aingeal98]

Top five characters

Of all time would be very, very hard to answer uhh.... Hm. You know what I'm going to try anyways. I can't make any sort of ranking for them because they all occupy such huge amounts of space in my brain so let's go with the order in which I found them.

1: Valkyrie Cain

From the Skulduggery Pleasant series and perhaps the most relatable character I've ever come across. She's Irish she's bisexual she uses humour as a coping mechanism she has an ego sky high she goes through so much trauma her own reflection hates her she's just. So good.

2: Toph Beifong

From avatar the last airbender. Iconic TV show iconic character. I feel like I shouldn't even need to explain this one like she's just too cool. Joined the show late and made every moment count, she was a delight to watch. I think avatar being the first show I experienced online fandom with is part of the reason she makes the top 5, but hey, nostalgia is one hell of a drug and she was a foundational part of my childhood that helped shape all the future characters I'd come to love.

3: Willow Rosenberg

From Buffy the Vampire Slayer. My favourite little meow meow (She has no morals, unfathomable amounts of power, and the only reason she hasn't destroyed the world is because her friends are in it and they like fighting monsters together) Such a good deconstruction of the nerdy best friend archetype and also she's a lesbian. And kills misogynists. But not unless they really piss her off because her friends kind of have a whole thing about murdering other humans and she spends a lot of time trying to pretend her morals are the same as theirs.

4: Cassandra Wayne

Everyone pretend to be shocked. The whole reason I got into the batfam and dc outside of the titans. I saw that Dick had a sister who was a cooler version of Batman and never looked back. No regrets even though comics can be. Well. This whole blog is a decent summary of all my thoughts on her. Also hilariously enough she's the only person on this list who would not be OK with murder. Congrats on being the most normal one here in that regard Cass it's not something that happens to you like. Ever.

5: Sameen Shaw

From Person of Interest. Bisexual sociopath and one of the best TV characters ever created. Watch Person of Interest for Taraji P Henson in Season 1 and then Root and Shaw from season 2 onwards. Trust me it's worth it. She's everything.

Honorable mentions: Marcy Wu, Helena (Orphan Black), Rukia Kuchiki, Jinx (Arcane), Chara from Undertale actually they should probably be top 5 now that I think about it but oh well. Team RWBY, Arya Stark, Daisy Johnson, Brittany from Glee and many many more.

[returning-spring]

8 shows to get to know me

thanks @impending-doom-lol​ for tagging me!

does your mind ever boggle at the sheer amount of tv shows you watch? I had to sift through so many memories to come up with this list. anyway tagging whoever might want to play! @weaverhawk @blackwatervial @asterdust @saturnskyline @kerasines

1) KinnPorsche

My current obsession. Of course it has to go on here. I was in such a writing slump last summer: I had a million wips, but I’d stopped working on any of them for a few months (to be fair, that was partly because they got derailed by my newfound obsession with horror audio dramas, which I mention later in this post). Then I watched KPTS, and I’ve been writing consistently since then because the story and characters are so to my taste that it’s hard to believe any work of tv media could be so perfect for me. And I’ve made some great friends in this fandom; there are so many cool and funny people here. The memes are fantastic

2) Black Sails

There are other queer shows on this list, but this really is so important to me for its political and revolutionary themes, the variety of queer and polyamorous relationships and characters, and my childhood love of pirate stories. I don’t really know how to describe this show, but it moved me so much. I collected all four seasons in dvd this year because I want to keep it forever, and also because I don’t trust entertainment companies in 2023 to preserve shows online. Anyway Anne Bonny character of all time (there are so many characters of all time in this show)

3) Killjoys

I LOVE SCIFI, and if you love themes about revolution and fighting against oppressive regimes, this show is good for that. This show also gave me my favourite amoral lesbians ship in Delle Seyah and Aneela. It gave me queer models of family, including multiple characters parenting a child and forming a found family. Actually, found family is a big theme in general with Dutch and Johnny, whose relationship is really central to the show. Also this show is just genuinely fucking funny, it turns into a straight up comedy after season 1 when they found the tone they wanted to go with for the show

4) The Magnus Archives

Hey it’s the show that kicked off my horror obsession in 2022! I’d always enjoyed horror, but it’d been a casual thing prior to that. Maybe it’s the fact that the medium was still somewhat new to me, and I fell in love with it (I’d listened to a couple audio dramas before, but the habit hadn’t stuck; I mostly listened to nonfiction podcasts). Maybe it’s the fact that the show was queer, and I was very new to queer horror - specifically, horror that was queer on purpose, and explicitly so - not just subtext. The fic in this fandom is so fucking good, I had a blast last summer

5) SHL

This gets a shoutout for kicking off possibly the longest fandom brainrot I’ve ever had (we’ll see if KPTS will surpass it). It’s the fandom I’ve written the most for: I really can’t explain the hold it had on me in 2021. I’ve never felt so inspired to write. It also got me into participating in fandom projects, and I helped create two zines for the fandom

Also this is the show that got me really into genderbends and mommy kink lmao, enough to even write it

6) Luther

We’re reaching far into the formative shows of Scoop’s youth here. Luther and Alice are the blueprint of fucked up people in love/obsession with each other for me. You can draw a clear line from my love for Luther/Alice to Delle Seyah/Aneela to Wenzhou to VegasPete (and many, many other ships)

7) Story of Yanxi Palace

I love palace dramas so much. I watched this in 2020, and it was a delight. Wei Yingluo is in my top fictional characters ever: she’s clever, cunning, funny, and so vulnerable even though she doesn’t always let herself feel it. Also I wanted her to fuck all the women on that show, my god they had so much chemistry. The show is long, but really worth it

8) Schitt's Creek

This is the show I rewatch random episodes of when I don’t know what to watch, or when I need a laugh, when I need to watch something funny and sweet. The family relationships and friendships are really fantastic. Moira Rose is mother

[astralbooks]

Bloodmarked by Tracy Deonn

Read: 07/10/2022 - 18/10/2022

Rating:5/5

Rep: Black main character, Taiwanese-American lesbian side character, bisexual love interest, Black side characters, achillean side character, various queer side & minor characters

CW: racism, death of a parent (in backstory), death of a friend (prior to book’s beginning), on page death, grief, violence, life-threatening injury, discussed rape (in backstory, not of main character), non-consensual drug use, non-consensual memory & perception manipulation, imprisonment

Review:

(This review will spoil the ending of Legendborn)

To put it simply, I’m obsessed.

The book opens a few weeks on from where Legendborn ended. Nick is still missing, and the Order haven’t given any indication that they’re all that concerned about trying to find him. Bree’s supposed to be their leader, their King, but you know how it is in both fantasy and through history with long time regents when the true monarch appears. At first they keep her identity secret for practical reasons that appear to be largely reasonable, but things soon take on a much darker tone.

The commentaries on generational trauma and institutionalised racism that were present in the first book haven’t gone anywhere in this one. Bree may be Arthur’s Scion, and the most powerful Scion there has ever been due to her own unique abilities, but in the eyes of many she is just a Black girl who needs to be controlled and possibly eliminated so that her power can go where they want it to go. Deonn doesn’t shy away from how horrific this is.

Bree learns a lot more about how the magic works in this world in this book and I really enjoyed that! Through the first book Bree met people who told her about magic that only works in a very specific way, and it was fun seeing Bree learn how these people were wrong, intentionally or otherwise. The magical world is a Lot bigger than Bree realised, and this isn’t always a good thing.

I liked Selwyn in book one but didn’t quite relate to the huge amount of hype centered specifically on him. It’s not incorrect to say that a lot of Sel’s hype stems from him being the mysterious hot white guy character who’s a bit of a jerk, and we all know that these are the characters that fandom likes to flock to. However, I get it. After reading this book, I get it. I’m surprised at how much I love him because he can be downright mean at times and I usually don’t like those characters at all, but this jerk does have a heart of gold and his meanness almost always stems from how deeply he cares about his friends, wants to keep them all safe, and doesn’t want them to worry about him. He’s not mean just for the sake of it, and he’s under a lot of pressure because a lot of people are relying on him. His relationship with Bree was So Good. There is an incident partway through the book involving him that has the potential to turn a lot of people off him entirely, but I think that his genuine understanding of what he did wrong and his genuine remorse, plus Bree not forgiving him right away due to how serious this incident is, has made me enjoy him and their relationship dynamic even more. 

Loving Selwyn does not necessarily mean that I’m rooting for him to ‘win’ this love triangle. Nick’s not in this book as much as he was in the first one, but with his limited page space he still manages to shine. Does this make me Team Nick? No it does not. There are a couple of scenes where both boys are talking to Bree at the same time and they were great and I would like to formally make it known that I think Bree deserves two boyfriends. I’m sure the boys would be down. 

A bunch of new characters were introduced in this book! I especially liked the new friendly cambions, Lark and Valec. Valec was particularly fun, and hit on a very specific trope that I enjoy a lot. Valec is attracted to Bree, is completely aware that these feelings are not reciprocated and is content with that, and delights in making fun of the other person present who also has feelings for her. Valec is the transparent sort, and Sel very much isn’t, even if Sel likely doesn’t know the meaning of the word subtlety.

I wrote in my review of the first book that I had a prediction about Alice and I didn’t write that prediction down and for the life of me I have no idea what that prediction was. I will learn nothing from this. Alice was great though.

Of course, with all these cool side characters, the fact remains that Bree is the star of the show here! She spends the whole book trying so hard to do the right thing, even when it seems like everything is against her. She doesn’t put up with anyone’s bullshit, isn’t afraid to put boundaries in place and fight for them when needed, and is willing to do so so much if it’s for the sake of the people she loves. She’s an excellent protagonist and I love reading from her perspective.

Speaking of perspective, the climax near the end was SO COOL! Once again there’s something that looks like a non-sequitur but really really isn’t in my review on this series, but I can’t explain in any more detail without spoiling things. Just know that I was yelling.

For some reason I was under the impression that this was a duology, and this made the final chapters of the book significantly more stressful for me. If that ending had been the ending to the entire series I would’ve been so mad. I’ve never been so happy to learn that I was wrong. I know that at the time of this review being posted this book hasn’t technically been released yet, but please I am begging for it to be less than another two years before the third installment’s release.

I would absolutely recommend this book/series. 

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for providing me with an e-arc in return for an honest review.

[daringdarlingdt]

Ok there’s been an influx of stranger things fandom posts coming across my dash bc of a few mutuals and I haven’t really interacted much with the fandom in the past despite liking the show, mostly because I watched it all a while after season 3 came out and all talk about it had kinda died down so I’m really excited about actually getting a bit hyper fixated on this and talking about my Thoughts. Yay!

On that note I have to say I am unsurprised and delighted at all the queer shipping going on and I will never deny a queer ship to those who want it but I must admit that I don’t really bc Steve as queer. I 100% think Eddie is and I think they’re besties and I get the impulse to hc Steve as queer in some way because he is The Best Character and it would just be great if he were representing you and he totally could be queer and I want y’all to be happy with your gay or bi or anything else Steve hc but headcanoning him as straight actually makes me personally the happiest. For two reasons.

1. I’m in love with him. I myself am bi and not even fully a female person and if I did headcanon him as queer I think he’d be bi but then I’d want to imagine him and Eddie as a thing and I’d rather fantasize about dating him myself… y’know?

2. I actually think it’s so much more satisfying and endearing that he is a straight, able-bodied, affluent white man and is still the best character because he wasn’t when he started but he went through this character arc where he stopped catering so much to the expectations put on him by his social status and became a really wholesome, accepting, maternal, un-toxic guy who rolls with the lgbt and regularly parents a bunch of freshman all while maintaining his perfect hair and being a ladies man. D’you know what I mean?? Like it’s important that Steve is able to be both a cishet fairly masculine guy and also stand with a towel over his shoulder, hands on hips, telling his adopted children ‘no, because I said so’ and also immediately support his best friend/crush when she comes out to him and not out her to anyone else btw even when everyone’s like why aren’t you dating her?? I know it’s the bare minimum but still it’s important.

Plus i don’t think the lesbian/himbo solidarity is quite as funny and iconic if the himbo is also queer because then it’s just queer solidarity and like. That’s important and good too it’s just not the same. And I recognize that the complexity and focus on Steve’s character is why he would be such good queer representation and lots of straight characters have these qualities and are given this depth but even on the show the other canon queer characters are given a fair amount of stuff that they have to deal with and there are other non-canon characters I believe are queer who are also complex. Like Eddie. That one tumblr post is right he could have been pretty stereotypical but instead he is both soft and cool and brash and also terrified a lot and reconciling the image of Cool Guy Steve with the fact that he’s actually an amazing person and becoming friends with him and dealing with high school biases and the feeling of needing to be morally superior than other cliques and realizing its all bullshit. That’s really interesting. And he’s gay (at least I think so). I also believe that Max is somewhere under the bisexual umbrella. Possibly pan idk. I think she would kiss a girl without a moment’s hesitation because she’s just awesome like that.

All that having been said. I do still ship Steddie a little bit on the DL. Like if I see a post about them. I will like it. It will make me smile and if it’s really good or has anything to do with Steve and Robin’s friendship, I may even reblog it. I ship Steddie and believe Steve is straight simultaneously. My feelings aren’t that strong either way and whichever brings me more joy in the moment will rule. This is just my explanation for why I’m fine with him being the token straight friend. But as I said before I never deny a queer ship unless there is something seriously wrong with it. So like go off little gay ppl in my phone watching this truly fucked up show about teens fighting interdimensional monsters and only focusing on the teens personal drama. I feel you.

[gascon-en-exil]

Not a notp ask but some observations on edelbert and ferdibert fics and their portrayal of Edelgard. Going to straight up admit I've never read any Edeleth but the captain stuff got me wondering... like ferdibert is very much a pair the spairs/afterthought for that fandom segment it seems. For every ferdibert focused fic i've read though Edelgard is an integral part of their relationship as the Emperor but also as the woman they both admire lol. She's also never painted as perfect or woobified like in captain vision as a lot of ferdibert fics pick up after support level b bad actually take an interest in the fantasy politics. I think another reason for both Edelbert and Ferdibert fics delving into the more unsavory aspects of the empire is that's largely Hubert's wheelhouse. The appeal of edelbert in general seems to be "guy who will bloody his hands to ridiculous amounts for his liege" so that's often on display in those fics. Also while there's crossover between the ferdibert and edeleth fandoms (pair the spares) and edelbert and ferdibert (empire ot3) I really haven't seen any edelbert and edeleth. Maybe that contributes to how different Edelgard is on that side of the divide too?

Ferdibert is a surprisingly complicated ship in fandom. It's a part of the Standard Eagles Gay Setup - along with lesbian Edeleth, Casphardt, and Doropetra - but because of the significance of both characters and how much they're intertwined with Edelgard there's been all sorts of odd wank around the ship. I've seen Ferdibert shippers who insist that you can't like the pairing if you "hate" (read: are critical of and/or simply indifferent to) Edelgard, and others including myself who see Hubert/Ferdibert as selling points of CF because Hubert is delightful in his unmasked villainy and Ferdibert works as a better emotional barometer for the Eagles route split than anything involving Byleth ever could...because Ferdinand actually has emotions of his own and isn't just a proxy for the player. Naturally, these two subgroups rarely get along. The second category is undoubtedly why non-CF Ferdibert is a thing in fanon, allowing writers to explore things that the game never touches on: how would Hubert react to outliving Edelgard? what would he do in a situation where he has neither her nor a blank check to commit whatever evil acts he pleases? would the sex with Ferdinand be more or less kinky? etc. Hubert wants to sleep with Edelgard while Ferdinand essentially wants to be Edelgard; there's no way that would never manifest in fascinating ways in their relationship no matter what the scenario.

As for, uh, Edelbertleth, I can make a few guesses as to why it's barely seen outside kink memes or the like. Reddit dudebros who ship Edeleth either see Hubert as an ugly incel creep Edelgard would never be interested in (technically correct) or do their best to woobify him and likely pair him with Bernadetta or another woman instead. Tumblr Edeleth shippers are much more likely to put them alongside Ferdibert and turn Edelgard and Hubert into gay BFFs, erasing Hubert's attraction to Edelgard entirely because it's unpleasant and comes across to them as an obstacle to both their ships...even though it absolutely isn't. I don't see Hubert's attraction to Edelgard presenting any obstacle to Edeleth, and it only spices up his own romance with Ferdinand.

[a-hundred-jewels]

cruel summer ch 12: i have these lucid dreams

Ao3 Wattpad

Summary: sabrina starr, pegasuses, and oh no! the fourth wall broke! do we have a carpenter in the audience?

Word Count: 9000 ish

Tags: Rachel Elizabeth Dare/Jane Penderwick, Rosalind Penderwick/Tommy Geiger, Nico di Angelo/Will Solace, Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson, Jane Penderwick, Rachel Elizabeth Dare, Rosalind Penderwick, Skye Penderwick, Chiron (Percy Jackson), Martin Penderwick, Elizabeth "Batty" Penderwick, Elizabeth Penderwick (senior), Iantha Aaronson-Penderwick, Ben Aaronson-Penderwick, Nico di Angelo, Will Solace, Annabeth Chase, Jeffrey Tifton-McGrath, Percy Jackson, Demeter (Percy Jackson), Apollo (Percy Jackson), Camp Half-Blood (Percy Jackson), Camp Half-Blood AU, Demigods, demeter!elizabeth penderwick, demeter!rosalind (second generation), demeter!batty (second generation), apollo!alec mcgrath, apollo!jeffrey (second generation), demeter!jane (second generation), demeter!skye (second generation), all of that's in no particular order, main focus is on jane because i love her and she's so so fun to write, tomsalind is there (and stuff will happen - i can't really say what, it will really be eventful though), yes of course there's solangelo, takes place right before Penderwicks In Spring, After Trials of Apollo, more tags to come??, Minor Swearing

Notes and Full Chapter below cut:

Hello everyone and welcome back! I'll admit, this is a little later today than I'd been planning to post (was hoping to get an early start), but hey! If the Puppet History season 4 finale can be late, then so can I!

First off, a massive massive thank you to waterbottle_stickers for being the best beta reader ever. This chapter would be a mess without you. Also, if you haven't already, please check out their enola holmes fic wherever you stray, i follow it's truly wonderful.

If you've been following me on tumblr, then you'll know that, in addition to reblogging an alarming quantity of good omens fanart, I've been making some plans for fics this month. The original plan from back in august was to post every day of the month, but... ahhh.... I just don't work that fast lmao. I'll have to be content with just posting a fair amount this month. Happy october! Anyway, stay tuned.

On this fine day, we've got two lovely QUEER fanfic recommendations that I'm very excited to share. Up first is one from the tumblr blog izzielizzie (which you should all absolutely check out! especially if you're into the one of us is lying fandom!). it centers around the skye/melissa pairing and their senior prom, which Skye is said to have only gone to last minute, and also wearing a lab coat, in a passage of the penderwicks at last. featuring some oblivious lesbians and also jane. once again a massive thanks to izzielizzie, as this fic is one of my favourites!. click here to take a look! (also keep an eye on her blog in general bc her penderwicks fics are awesome!)

The second fanfic is also one I'm very fond of, as it focuses on the siblinghood of skye and jane, which is one of my favourite topics on earth. check out rolling down the ancient high street by hanchewie/ramblemadlyon (tumblr and ao3 respectively) for the sibling antics of aroace skye and bisexual jane when the latter visits the former at her college in california! and, if you like it, ramblemadlyon has two other penderwicks fics from the past couple days that look fantastic as well, and that I look forward to reading.

This chapter is dedicated to my therapist, since I've decided this will be the month of oddly specific dedications. thank you for telling me to stop referring to cruel summer as my "trash baby" and help me recognize the true worth that it holds in my life.

Disclaimer: not my characters, you know the drill. Jeanne Birdsall and Rick Riordan are lucky ducks indeed. chapter title is (obviously) from "lucid dreams" by Juice WRLD.

FROM THE POV OF JANE PENDERWICK

The woods loomed around me, seeming as tall as buildings as they invited me in further. I took another step, the sharp pain of a pinecone digging into my foot barely registered in my mind. I kept walking. A crack sounded throughout the air, and, behind me, a tree splintered round its base and fell down, only inches away from crushing me dead, and completely blocking the path out.

Frightened, I began to run, looking for a way out of the forest. But no matter which way I went, there were only trees in front of me. Where was the path? Where was the grassy hill I had walked down to get in here in the first place. Had I even walked down that hill to begin with? Now that I thought about it, I wasn’t sure I remembered coming here. I wasn’t sure I remembered waking up this morning, or going to bed last night, or anything besides existing in the forest. Who was I? What was I doing here? How could I get out?

Panicking, I stood in the middle of a clearing, looking frantically at the trees around me, trying to find something familiar. Nothing. I was exhausted. How long had I been here? An hour? A day? A lifetime? I collapsed at the base of a tree, sobbing as I tried to remember. Something. Anything.

Then, a voice echoed around me. “Welcome,” it said, and my mind went black.

I bolt upright in bed, a scream halfway out of my throat. I clamp it back, not wanting to wake my cabinmates. Thin light whimpers through the window--enough for me to see my white-knuckle grip on the sheets, but not enough to pass as daylight.

What time is it?

Our cell phones don’t really work here--that was one of the first things Miranda told us when we arrived, and Batty’s been gleefully lording it over us that her Mp3 player will still play music and, like, function, while our smart phones recline sadly in our duffel bags. That being said, I don’t feel quite brave enough to get out of my bed just yet and tiptoe over to the big analog clock that Rio bought at a pawn shop in Colorado. Maybe my phone will at least show the time.

I reach under my bed and fumble for my duffel, hooking my pinky through the zipper loop and yanking it out onto my floor. My phone’s in the front pocket, buried under two pairs of headphones, several gum wrappers, and some strawberry leaves (?????). A piece of gum peels off the screen as I disentangle my phone, and I mentally chide my past self for being so messy.

My phone does not turn on. Big clock it is.

I tiptoe across the cold tile and peer around the tree.

5:45 .

Jesus Pagan Christ.

It’s too early to wake anyone up (as I think this, Batty lets out a snore to rival any crabby Tyrannosaurus Rex), so I wrap a blanket around myself like a criminally attractive burrito, and creep out onto the porch, with my notebook and pen tucked into my shirt.

As long as I live, I will never get tired of summer mornings. There’s something deeply lovely about the soft light of the still-sleepy, pink lemonade sun, the quiet anticipation of the cool air, damp from dew and preparing for the upcoming heat. At home in Cameron, Skye’s woken me up many an early morning to go for a run or do soccer drills or for a grueling “Seven Minute Workout Except You Don’t Follow The Rules And Torture Your Sister by Making It Actually A Forty-Nine Minute Workout.” (But it’s okay, I’m not bitter). But, as delightful as those experiences have all been, I don’t think Skye really gets it. The beauty of the summer morning is not what it can do for your workout schedule, but rather in its gentle softening of an otherwise boiling day. It is to be appreciated in the way that I am now, sitting curled up on this frighteningly creaky porch (I mean, seriously, who built this?) and calling up the Sabrina Starr section of my brain to try and write away the residual panic from my nightmare.

Sabrina sighed as the plane took off. She wasn’t sure if she should have followed the voice in her head telling her to come here. Saying it out loud--even just thinking it--made it sound ridiculous. A dream, a voice in her mind. Barely more than a whim.

Worse than that, Sabrina wasn’t even sure where this whim was taking her. On a napkin in her pocket, she’d scrawled everything she remembered about the dream from the night before. The dark sky, lit only with spiderwebs of lightning, the shadowy figure huddled on a beach and soaked through with rain. The voice crying for help.

And a name. Aeaea.

After she’d woken up, Sabrina had looked up Aeaea, too tired to fully connect why the name felt familiar. Her heart had sunk further after reading the Wikipedia entry, and a breath of hopelessness had left her lips. According to the internet, Aeaea was not a real place. It had been the island prison of Circe. Fiction wasn’t new to Sabrina, and neither was mythology (she recalled an adventure spent with a ghost called Rainbow from a few years back).

Fictional places, though, were another matter. How could she get somewhere if she didn’t know where she was going? Was she trusting her gut with too much this time?

Sabrina folded up the napkin and put it back in her pocket. There was no point in worrying about that now. She’d looked at enough maps to make a guess at where Aeaea might be if it was real. When she got there, she could get more information. Sabrina Starr had survived this long in her career of rescues and whims. She could survive one more adventure. Worst case scenario, she said to herself, I spend a few days running around for nothing and have to brush up on my Greek.

She repeated it to herself like a promise. Worst case scenario, worst case scenario… Eventually, tired out from all her anxieties, and from trying desperately not to worry about what would come next, Sabrina fell asleep.

FROM THE POV OF RACHEL ELIZABETH DARE

“Okay, I give up. Tell me what’s wrong.” Annabeth’s voice startles me away from my plate of eggs, which I had been pushing around with a fork. Anxiety bubbles in my throat, just as it had been since I woke up, and food just doesn’t sound like a good idea.

“I--what?”

Annabeth waves her hand impatiently. “Don’t play dumb. I’ve been talking to you for five minutes and I don’t think you’ve looked up once. Also you’re always hungry in the mornings, so unless you, like, ate an entire cow before I got here, this ,” she gestures to my uneaten eggs, “is unusual behaviour.”

I give her a look. Sometimes, I get the feeling that Annabeth exists as a part of multiple different dimensions at once, like she’s having four other conversations that I can’t hear, and is still ten steps ahead of me in the one I’m actually a part of.

Or maybe I’m just easy to read.

“Nothing’s wrong.” I don’t want to talk about it. “I’m fine.” I’m terrified.

Annabeth sighs. “Is this about the prophecy?”

“No,” I spear another piece of egg, and don’t eat it. “Maybe. Yes.” I feel like going back to my cave and staying there for the rest of my life. Waiting with a book and some paints for the prophecy to get bored and go away. Maybe I’d take Jane with me, or Nico, for some company. That sounds nice.

My plate is pulled away from me as I aim my fork again. “I can’t pay attention when you do that,” Annabeth huffs. I think I wouldn’t invite her to stay in my cave. She’s too on the nose when I want to mope. Then again, she says the same about me.

“Fine,” I turn and face her. “Let’s talk feelings.” Connor Stoll, who had been making his way towards our table, abruptly turns around and walks the other way. I should get Chiron to hire a therapist. Gods know we need it.

Further proving my point, Annabeth’s eyes widen a little, before she remembers it is I who will be spilling. (I make a point to corner her later. It’s a routine we have). “Wow. You broke fast.”

I nod. “I’m tired and you’re annoying.” (False. We both know it. Another routine). “Like you said, I’m nervous about the prophecy.”

Annabeth nods. “And?”

I frown. “What do you mean, and ? There’s no and.”

Annabeth frowns back at me. A mirror, a mime, an annoyance. The nerve to look disappointed in me. “I thought you were spilling, Red.”

I roll my head back and study the roof of the pavilion, which Annabeth designed, and slowly lean my head down to stare at the table. I really don’t want to have this conversation. I go along anyways. “I’m worried about Jane.”

Annabeth leans back, triumphant. “Ah, yes. Your girlfriend.”

Maybe if I try reeeeeeeally hard, I can activate the Oracle of Delphi and freak Annabeth out enough to make her go away. “ Not my girlfriend. You know that.”

“You called Percy my boyfriend for weeks before we actually officially decided.”

I wave my hand dissmissively. “That’s different, you guys were dancing around each other for like three years. You needed a bit of a push. Jane and I kissed once! Over a week ago! And nothing came of it.” We actually haven’t really talked about it. We’re in this sort of in-between zone where we spend a ton of time together, but don’t have a label for it. Honestly, it’s been nice.

Annabeth grins, apparently reading my thoughts. “You’ve been eating lunch with the Demeter cabin, like, every other day. I saw you doing archery together yesterday. Both of you were awful at it, but you stayed there for hours. I’ve never seen you focus on something that long outside of your paintings.”

I stare at the ceiling again. Maybe Annabeth designed it so that a single square foot of rock might fall down onto my head and relieve me from this conversation. “Yes, fine, we spend a lot of time together. But that doesn’t make us a couple, and has nothing to do with what I’m actually worried about!” I can see in her face that Annabeth is more serious now, and is about to fully listen to me, when Percy and Malcolm show up, sliding into the seats across from us, and clanging several plates of pancakes down onto the table in front of them.

“Made them ourselves! Wanna share?” Percy gives Annabeth heart eyes and a kiss on the cheek when she folds a large blue pancake into thirds and bites it like a burrito. I roll my eyes at them because they are a horrifying and disgusting couple and also I kind of want to be them when I grow up. Malcolm ignores them, instead turning to me. “Were you talking about Jane?” he asks, pushing wire rimmed glasses up his nose.

I frown. “Sort of. Why?”

He shrugs, sheepish. “You know. Just, uh, just wondering.”

I narrow my eyes at him, then Percy, who tears himself away from looking at Annabeth to sigh dramatically. “Malcolm wants to ask out Jane’s sister. You know, the blond one.”

I snort. “ Skye? Seriously?”

Malcolm looks vaguely offended. “What’s so weird about that?”

“Sorry, it’s not weird.” I reach over the table to pat him on the shoulder with my fork. “Perfectly normal teenage hormones.” He glares at me and I smile sweetly back. “I just can’t imagine Skye going out with anyone, that’s all.”

Malcolm stares down at his pancake, disappointed. “Oh. You sure?”

I nod, feeling a little more normal with my friends and less doom-related breakfast conversation. My eggs are past the threshold of “warm and appetizing” but I take a bite anyway. “Pretty sure. Jane told me that she’s aroace and, based on past occurrences, there’s a seventy percent chance she’ll punch anyone who asks her out. Anyway, why the interest? I didn’t know you guys talked.”

Malcolm shrugs. “We don’t, really. She just seems cool.”

Percy pipes in, “He’s been practically obsessed with her since she won that soccer game against the Nike kids and made them cry.”

I nod approvingly. “Well, Malcolm, at least we know you have good taste.”

Annabeth pats him on the head, ignoring his complaints that her hand is covered in blue maple syrup. “Better luck next time, brother of mine.”

Piper and Leo join us next, contributing an alarming volume of grapes and a single hardboiled egg to the breakfast display. Leo grabs a pancake and wraps it around some grapes, before taking a big bite. “I hear you’re discussing Malcolm’s romantic failures,” he says around the world’s worst breakfast burrito. Piper gasps in mock offense, then swallows the unpeeled hardboiled egg whole, like a snake. (This is a regular morning routine. She’s trying to work up to being a sword swallower, since her dad did it in a movie once and she thought it looked like fun). “ Malcolm, why didn’t you come to me? I could have given you a verdict within five minutes!”

“I wanted advice on whether I should ask out that Heaphestus boy two weeks ago and you told me to fuck off.”

Piper pouts at him. “That’s on you, you caught me at a bad time.”

Annabeth holds up a pancake with the air of a respected royal and we turn to her. “As delightful as this is, Rachel and I were initially talking about her romantic prospects and also her worries and fears, and I feel that we should get back to that before she slinks off and avoids the rest of the conversation.”

I glare at her. “Why would you bring this away from the very nice conversation we were having about everyone else’s problems? Do you hate me?” Annabeth rolls her eyes. “No, dumbass, I’m just not letting you walk away from a potential breakthrough. Now, where were we? You were saying that you’re worried about Jane but it has nothing whatsoever to do with your relationship, or lack thereof.”

I give a long suffering sigh, and try to communicate telepathically with Piper that she needs to Save Me Now, but she’s looking at me in interest with her chin resting in her hands, her long fingers adorned with rings sent to her from her Mortal girlfriend, Shel, who bought them at a vintage punk store. The traitor. Defeated, I turn back to Annabeth.

“It’s just that, whatever ends up happening with this prophecy, I don’t want it to fuck her up, in the way the quests have sometimes done to us. Like, we’re used to this by now, but it hasn’t been a smooth road. I don’t exactly like going on quests, and at first I was really worried at the prospect of being included in a prophecy, since that’s fairly abnormal, but Jane was only made aware of her heritage a couple months ago! What if this turns out like Silena or Beckendorf or-or Jason, and the prophecy destroys her, and it’s all my fault because I’m the one who pulled her into all this?”

Everyone tenses up at the mention of Jason, but they continue to look at me with a mixture of concern and love that makes something soften inside of me. For the hundredth time, I think of how lucky I am to have these people who love me unconditionally. Even if they really, really need therapy.

“I know that I didn’t plan any of this, but we’re both tied in now, especially since both Chiron and I had the prophetic dream and I actually gave the prophecy that day in the woods, and, well, this isn’t her world yet. She’s only got a little bit of ichor in her, and she grew up knowing nothing of any of this. In a way, I did too, and I have no ichor, but I had clear sight. For me, it was ineffable, but she could technically leave any time, if it weren’t for the prophecy. She can leave, and I feel like it’s up to me to make sure that doesn’t change.”

“Oh, Rachel.” Annabeth reaches her arms out to me and I let myself be pulled into an embrace. “Jane’s going to be okay. We’ll make sure of it.”

Sabrina stood in line at the boat rental hut, her arms crossed and a frown plastered on her face. It had not been a successful afternoon. For hours, she’d been searching the coastal towns near where her plane landed, looking for some trace of Aeaea, or anything else she’d seen in her dream. She was used to working with dregs. It was normal for her to have to squint a little at the evidence, have to shuffle things together around big holes of “Maybe,” like she was working a jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces missing.

But this was something else.

Sabrina had read about places where mythology shaped the culture. Places where the tourist draws were events that had supposedly happened thousands of years ago, or creatures that only existed in grainy photographs and people’s imaginations. Hell, she’d met the Loch Ness monster. Was it insane for her to have assumed she’d be able to find the same kind of thing here? All her training and years of experience had told her that, if you sniff around long enough, you’ll find a conspiracy theorist or a slightly off-the-rails guidebook.

So far, though, Sabrina had found nothing. Absolutely nothing. She hunted around, searching up library catalogs, checking every store on the street. “Aeaea,” “Circe,” even “the Odyssey.”

Nothing.

The line edged along slowly, and Sabrina ran her hands up and down her arms. The air was chilly from its proximity to the cold sea water. There were three people in front of her now. She just had to wait a little longer, then she would have a boat and be able to explore these waters herself.

Something was wrong with this place. Something was wrong with all of these places. And Sabrina was going to figure out what.

Later, Jane and I are taking our time walking to the pegasus stables to watch the riding lesson that Rosalind has reluctantly agreed to let Batty take (provided that Percy, who’s teaching today, doesn’t let her fly high enough that she’ll die if she falls off, and that Batty wears all of the necessary protective gear). Jane looks lovely, wearing a sunshine-y yellow bandana that sets off her dark curls and warm sepia skin. She has on her Camp Half-Blood shirt again, and a short green skirt, and all of it should clash horribly, but it doesn’t.

We’ve decided to cut through the strawberry fields, and I swallow a sun-warmed strawberry while Jane tells me about the dream she had last night. I think back to my conversation with Annabeth this morning when she tells me of the dark woods and the feeling of drowning, the memory warping and the echoing voice. At some point we sit down in a patch of grass, a simple circle amidst strawberry plants with a couple logs where the campers and satyrs take their breaks when they work here. Jane finishes her story and we sit in comfortable silence for a few moments, only broken by the grunts of annoyance Jane makes while trying to get her plant powers to activate again. She’s been doing that a lot.

“Well that sucks,” I say finally. “Have you been having other dreams like it?”

Jane shrugs, the neon orange fabric of her shirt wrinkling on her shoulders. “One or two, I think. Last night’s was the first one I really remembered. ” She smiles out of the corner of her mouth. “I hardly ever remember my dreams. It used to upset me. I thought I was losing potential writing material.”

I laugh. It’s such a Jane thing to think, that I can’t help it. She goes quiet, like she’s reminiscing, and I picture a tiny version of Jane, sitting crossed-legged on her summer quilt, writing. I look at her now, scrunched up nose and big brown eyes. Oh gods, she must have been an adorable child.

“My mother used to say that my imagination was the eighth wonder of the world,” Jane says. She’s looking down the hill at the cabins, plant powers temporarily forgotten, and I remember her telling me about her mother, the first Elizabeth Penderwick, who came here and was a daughter of Demeter and loved opera. The Penderwick siblings’ beloved mother who died so young.

I move closer to Jane on the log. “I can understand why she’d say that.”

Jane smiles again, a little sad this time, a little absent, but full to the brim with love.

“Bet you she’s in Elysium,” I say softly. I explained the Underworld to Jane a couple weeks ago, and she’d gotten this same absent look on her face, that I now know means she’s thinking about her mother. Jane nods, now, then turns to me. “Could we talk about something else?” Her voice is quiet, her eyes a little shiny.

“Course,” I say. “Shall I regale you with tales of dimwittery at this camp in the years past?” I told her last week about the time some Hermes kids tried to order pizza to the camp, accidently causing Chiron to think we were under attack. Jane had nearly fallen off the bench laughing.

She grins now, but shakes her head. “Tell me what it’s like being an Oracle.” I give her a look. She’s asked me before and I never really know what to say. When I give prophecies, it’s like I black out. I’m taken over by another entity who shares my body. (“Like that lady in Suicide Squad ,” Leo had said when I tried to explain it to him once, but I’d refused to be compared to such a gods-fucking-awful movie). So, in a way, I don’t know what it’s like to be the Oracle.

As if reading my thoughts, Jane shakes her head. “Not that part. I’ve seen you all green and smokey, and I know you can’t feel it. I mean the other stuff. How did you know it was you? What did you have to do to become the Oracle? That kind of thing.” I relax a little. Jane’s asked me all sorts of weird questions about Greek mythology and the gods recently. She calls it “research for her book,” but sometimes I think she’s just nosy. It’s cute.

Jane shrugs and looks off into the distance. If you tilt your head a little you can kind of see the stables from here. We have fifteen more minutes to get there, according to my watch. I decide to take it easy. “Delphi is this weird ethereal spirit,” Jane continues, “but there’s also just everyday, Oracle you, who likes paint and denim and bagels.” At that, I laugh. “I actually don’t like bagels that much. I’m just late to breakfast so often that they’re usually the only things available.”

Jane pouts at me and plays with the bracelet tied around my wrist--the one she gave me. “You know what I mean! You know all this weird shit about me because my siblings don’t shut up at lunch, and I know stuff about you, like the denim thing, which I still think is funny by the way. But you’re also the freaking Oracle! Your dormant self lies waiting!” I laugh at her, and she rolls her eyes, but I see the corner of her mouth tilting up. “Rachel, that’s very cool!”

I give in. “Honestly, there’s not much to say, that’s why I don’t talk about it.” I pause. “Well no, it’s that a lot of the stuff beyond the obvious is actually sort of creepy and weird, and not in a good way. There’s stuff I try not to think about, is what I mean.”

The edge of her yellow bandana sticks up as Jane tilts her head at me. “That makes sense. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

I shake my head. “No, it feels okay right now.” I mean it. Now that I’ve gotten into the swing of it, I do want to talk about it. Still, a small sigh escapes me. “I like being the Oracle, because that’s what brought me to a place where I feel like I belong and I have people who love me. It’s nice to know that I’m fulfilling my purpose in life.”

Jane pulls her knees up to her chest. “But?”

“But I also get lonely.” It comes out in a rush. “There are other oracles, but I didn’t know about any of them until the Apollo thing happened, and even then, they’re all supernatural beings--I know, I know, but not in the way I am. It’s not the same. Also, there are all these weird rules. Like I have to stay an unmarried virgin my whole life.”

“That’s fucked,” Jane says softly.

“I know! Chiron won’t even tell me why, just that it’s ‘the rules’” I let out an annoyed huff. “And, like, it’s not even that the idea itself bothers me. That’s pretty much what I was planning to do with my life anyway.”

“Same.”

“But it’s the principle of the thing!” I flick a strand of hair out of my face, offhandedly noticing that the tip of my pinky finger is slightly green. I ignore it. It’s not important. “Just because I don’t want to have sex or get married doesn’t mean it’s a fair rule to impose on me! Besides, why is it always the women in these things whose identities are tied up in who they do or don’t fuck? Last I checked, Grover didn’t have to sign an ‘I shalt not fornicate’ contract when he became Lord of the Wild!”

“Exactly!” Jane raises her hands and shouts up to the sky. “Don’t you fuckers realize we’re more than that?”

“The Hunters of Artemis, too!” I’m a jack-in-the-box, and something’s winding me up. “Thalia and Reyna send me letters all the time, and they seem really happy! Which is great!” I pause to emphasize the greatness of their happiness. My pinky is completely green, now. “But, they also had to make a stupid ‘ode of chastity,’ like I did!”

“Are you kidding me?” Jane’s hair flips as she turns to me. “I thought Artemis was one of the good ones!”

My voice lowers to a husky rumble, and I stare into the distance towards you, the reader. “In a broken system, there are no good ones. Abolish the police.” I clear my throat and my voice turns back to normal. “Sorry, zoned out for a second.” My green pinky has begun to vibrate.

“Happens to the best of us,” Jane’s voice is light and nonchalant. “And yeah, I know. Pretty much all of the gods have skeletons sitting on their shoulders, but it just seems out of character for her. I thought all of Artemis’s groups were supposed to be safe havens, not oppressive structures in their own right.”

I frown. “Yeah you’re right, that is weird. I’d never thought of it much beyond the gods having weird rules, but I wonder if something bigger is at play. The gods might be fucked up in the way that regular people are, and are undoubtedly responsible for all sorts of crap. But then there's more personal things, like the ‘chastity vows’ the Hunters and I had to take, and the fact that Nico was initially outed by Eros, and the weird unexplained eye condition that Piper had during some of her quests that made her eyes a bunch of bright, Eurocentric colors, rather than their natural brown. All sorts of other stuff, too.”

“Wow!” Jane says, sitting up straight on the grass. Her hand moves from where it was resting in her lap to cover her heart. “It’s almost like a bunch of genuinely good and inspiring material, such as including prominent queer people and characters of color in fun children’s fantasy, as well as having an immortal group of warrior women who support each other and are free from the gaze of men, was taken into the hands of a cis white man armed with unchecked misogyny and a fair amount of white Twitter feminism, both of which really showed when he tried to create an inclusive and empowering book series for children! Like yeah, it had its moments, and definitely some good characters, but overall, a lack of meaningful research in certain areas really made it fall flat!” Once again, I stare through the bindings of URLs and internet coding, now joined by Jane as we lock eyes with you, the reader. This time, we hold eye contact for nearly a minute, giving you time to read and process the long tangent spat out by this fanfic’s author, who, if we’re being honest, has gone just a tad off the rails right now. Finally, Jane and I look away from you, and resume our roles as fictional characters, still shaking off that strange cloud that comes with staring into the soul of those who give you life.

“Ugh, what’s going on with me today?” Jane groans at the same time I mutter, “What’s Twitter?” We turn to each other, blinking in the sunlight, then grin. This is normal. We’re fine. Jane looks up at the sky again. “I wonder if the gods are watching us. Maybe we should make them think we suck so they’ll leave you alone.”

I laugh as she sticks her tongue out, grinning wickedly at a nearby cloud. “Better yet, make them think we’re too powerful to be messed with,” I say. Jane sees me watching her and opens her mouth, sucking the cloud in between her teeth. The sky seems bluer in the space where it had been, and Jane’s eyes glitter with mirth as she swallows. “Mmm, tastes like sugar.” I giggle, feeling a small shiver on the top of my head. When I peer up, I see another cloud has floated over to me. I open my own mouth, and take it in, just as Jane did hers. “Sugar, yes. But there’s a touch of blood, too,” I say. Jane nods sagely. “What were we talking about?”

“The inherent misogyny in much of Greek mythology and the world of Camp Half-Blood in general.”

Jane nods again. “Right. A very important topic. It makes it weird when I’m writing sometimes. You know, cause I want to bring in Circe and Zeus and Apollo and all these fascinating characters, but there’s just so much bad stuff tied up with them that comes up when I research.” She looks down at our feet, which are standing in the midst of a strawberry patch. We seem to have been walking, crushing sweet summer strawberries as we go, which is odd because I don’t remember getting up. “You know Rachel, I’m feeling a bit strange.”

I look at her, and see an odd blankness in her warm brown eyes. “Now that you mention it, Jane, so am I.”

“My thoughts and words are my own,” Jane says, “But there’s something up with my body. I can’t really feel it.”

“I agree, I’ve honestly gone a bit numb.” I try to glance down at my fingers, wondering idly if they’ve gotten any more green, but find that my neck won’t bend.

Jane’s eyebrows furrow. “Yet, at the same time, I feel as though I could do anything. Grow another grass blade. Grow a flower. Grow a tree. Bend the world to my will if I wanted to.”

“Or is it the world bending me to its will.” I grin at my own philosophical point, but find that the smile won’t go away. Pretty fucking inconvenient, since the next thing I was going to bring up was part of the whole serious misogyny conversation. I decide to go for it anyway. “And I’m not the only one with weird rules!” Jane nods, as if this is a perfectly normal segway, and the only extraneous thought that floats through my mind as we find ourselves walking down a hill is how unfair it is that she still has control over her neck and I don’t. “Remember when I told you about the Hunters of Artemis?”

“Oh yeah! Your friends Reyna and Thalia, right?”

“Yeah, them! They send me letters sometimes, and seem really happy, which is great.” I pause, meaning to add emphasis, when I’m hit with a great sensation of deja-vu. “Wait a second, we already talked about this, didn’t we?” I try to remember, but something in my mind is rapidly melting. I cannot find it. I cannot find anything.

“Jane?” My voice quivers, and I squeeze my eyes shut. Oh gods, please let this be a dream. For a moment, I try to convince myself that it’s the Oracle of Delphi taking over, just like she did the other day and generally does a couple times a year. But I know that I’m lying. This is not what that feels like. “Jane, where are you?” I can barely move my mouth to say the words. I can feel nothing but the frozen fear of paralysis, of lost control. When I open my eyes, this other thing in my body has brought me to the edge of the forest. “Jane? Jane?” She could be right beside me, unable to speak, and I wouldn’t know because I can’t turn my head, can’t move my eyes, can barely even hear right now.

It’s okay, something says.

“Jane?” It’s not her voice. It’s no one’s voice.

It’s okay. You’re home.

With every cut the wooden oars made through the choppy ocean water, Sabrina knew she was getting closer. She could feel it in her bones, in her brain, a little voice that whispered in her ear. It had been three hours. Her body was worn down, energy levels dipping dangerously low, when she felt something scrape the bottom of her boat.

A rock.

Frantically, she peered through the fog that had begun to surround her boat a mile ago. The island. Had she finally made it?

As if answering her call, a peel of thunder rang out, and Sabrina’s boat began to fill with rain that pounded down from the sky. The storm from her dream. She rowed even faster, then, fear sparking a renewed strength in her tired muscles.

Just as Sabrina was about to reach the shore, a massive wave crashed over her, and her boat capsized. She came back up, sputtering, holding her sopping wet bag above her head. Another wave swept against Sabrina’s face, and she found herself spitting out a mouthful of saltwater. Finally, she washed up on the shore, heaving breaths raking through her lungs.

Sabrina blinked, pushing herself up onto her elbows. It was real. She was here.

She had made it.

FROM THE POV OF ROSALIND PENDERWICK

It’s been a pleasant day so far. Breakfast with my siblings and some of the Demeter cabin (though Jane did seem a bit absent-minded). Miranda, Florien, and Rio convinced me to practice some plant magic with them for a couple hours and I built up to growing a small sunflower. Lunch (again with Jane seeming distracted, though Rachel ate with us this time, which appeared to help). Then, Skye and Jeffrey disappeared with some of the older campers (supposedly for a regular game of soccer, but the unsettling gleam in their eyes had me doubting that was all there was too it), Jane and Rachel went to take a walk in the strawberry fields, and Batty and I were left to prepare for a pegasus riding lesson. If it had been up to Batty, the latter could have easily taken up the entire afternoon, but changing into durable pants and finding a bandana can only take so long.

After a somewhat restless hour, during which I grew three peonies and Batty rhapsodized about the stable of unicorns that another demigod camp apparently has, Batty and I arrive at the stable. We’re ten minutes early, and she’s been talking a mile a minute the whole time, not stopping from before. I swear I now know as much about pegasuses as she does. According to Rachel, the teacher today is Percy, her friend, who’s very responsible “when he puts his mind to it.” I wasn’t sure how to tell her that’s actually not very comforting, but Batty looked so excited and I figured there will be plenty of other people there, so. Why not. She’s been spending so much time there anyway.

Needless to say, I very much regret my decision now.

The stables are modest, made of wood and painted green, and I’ve been there several times by now. There’s a long line of stalls visible when we first walk in, but Batty skips straight to the far end, where a massive pegasus the color of a carrot pokes its head over the door and nuzzles Batty’s hair. She looks up at me with a smile that could melt anyone’s heart, and pats the horse on the nose. “Rosy, this is Queen Lotus Flower. Percy said we have a impenetrable bond.”

I look at the two of them with a questioning gaze. How can they both have the exact same puppy-dog eyes? I swear to god. The gods. All of them. “Batty, sweetheart. That horse is like ten feet tall.”

She nods enthusiastically. “I know, she’s so much taller than any other horse I’ve seen. Percy says she has the biggest wingspan of any horse at camp.”

I nod, slowly, wondering why my sister picked the biggest pegasus to fall in love with. At that moment, Percy pushes the door open. “Hey Batty! Ready for your lesson?” Batty leaves her post by Queen Lotus Flower to wrap her arms around my waist and nod. I look Percy over. He’s a few inches taller than me, with brown skin and curly hair. A beaded camp necklace, orange tshirt, and jeans. Weird arm tattoo aside, he’s one of the most normal-looking people at camp. I’ve only met him a couple times before, but, my nerves over Batty flying around on massive horses aside, I do trust him. Rachel seems to have a good taste in friends. Also, Batty likes him, and she’s still shy around a good number of Skye and Jane’s friends back in Cameron.

For the next few minutes, I watch as Percy instructs Batty on buckling Queen Lotus Flower’s giant saddle and looping the bridle over her nose. Not wavering a bit from the “lesson” aspect of all this, he steps back to let her show what she’s already learned from hanging around the stables so often, only stooping in to guide her when she gets confused. As the minutes tick by, more people show up for the lesson: three other students, and a good sized crowd of people who just like watching the pegasuses. By then, I’m seated on the grass outside the stables, soaking in the blistering sun and watching as Percy (seated atop a wiry black pegasus who Batty pointed out as Blackjack) darts around the large dusty enclosure, making final preparations for the lesson.

Skye and Jeffrey show up then, and sit on either side of me. I want to ask them where Jane and Rachel are, but they’re talking non-stop about a game they just played in the woods with some of the other campers, only switching the subject when Percy and Blackjack return and they begin discussing whether or not it should be scientifically possible for a horse to fly.

Just as Batty and Queen Lotus Flower begin a gentle trot around the enclosure, I feel a tap on my shoulder, and hear the familiar sound of Tommy’s chuckle. “She’s got a weird knack for that,” he says. I nod, grinning.

It’s been good with us. We’ve had breakfast together a few times, even played a game of basketball one afternoon. Our conversations aren’t the same as they used to be, and there’s a sense of newness that feels cold and strange every so often. But it’s good. It feels right. At least for now, this feels like where we’re supposed to be.

As Percy starts demonstrating how to take flight, I look around again. Jane and Rachel still aren’t here. They promised to come. (“For moral support!” Jane had said. “Wouldn’t miss it,” Rachel had added with a smile). I try to push it out of my head. This lesson is a big deal. Batty’s going to be flying.

She leans forward on Queen Lotus Flower’s neck.

They begin to run, moving together like a single being.

Just as they burst into the air, Batty’s euphoric smile lighting up the sky, Katie grabs my shoulders from behind. I shush her so I can lean forward and watch Batty silhouetted against the pegasus’s wide orange wings.

“Rosalind. Rosalind, guys. ” Something about the panic in Katie’s voice makes me turn around. Her usually tied back hair is loose and her clothes rumpled, giving the impression that she was dragged out of bed for this. (Some part of my brain distantly remembers her saying she was going to take a nap). Skye and Jeffrey turn around, too.

“What, what’s happening?” I reach out my hands, trying to calm her as she collapses into a squat, breathing heavily.

“Billie… found me in the cabin… had been looking for you guys… been running all over the camp… lucky I remembered about the riding lesson…”

Jeffrey leans over and puts his hands on her shoulders. She stares down at the dirt while her breathing levels.

“Katie, what are you saying? Why were you and Billie looking for us?”

She looks up, and I see that her forehead is drawn into well-worn creases of worry. “Jane and Rachel have gone into the woods.”

Something was wrong. Sabrina crouched on the wet sand, straining to see through the heavy rain. In her dream there had definitely been someone else on the island. She remembered the hunched figure, the sound of sobs leaking through the rain.

But she’d circled the shore at least twice by now, and there was nobody to be found. “Am I late or something?” she wondered aloud. Somehow, she’d gotten that dream It felt like it had been sent to her. Why did it show a person when there was no one?

Sabrina sighed and began to traipse inland, tucking a knife in her pocket. It wasn’t a big island, and she might as well find some shelter aside from her boat, which was now overturned somewhere on the beach. Circe lived here, didn’t she? There must be some sort of roof, especially if this kind of weather was standard.

Or maybe this was just a random island and there was no Aeaea and Sabrina’s dream had just been the unhinged work of her unconscious mind.

There was a small grassy hill set aside from the sand, which Sabrina crawled up with the determination of a dying warrior. Something was pushing her back. An invisible force, a last crumb of survival instinct, plain old fatigue, she wasn’t sure. But something wanted her out of here, and it pushed back harder and harder as she climbed.

She let out a cry of frustration, clawing at the ground, at the air, at whatever this goddamn thing was, and found a renewed burst of strength that pulled her to the top of the hill. Once there, the force that pushed back ebbed a little, like it was giving up. Sabrina let herself relax, and simply took in the view for a moment.

The hill she lay on top of gave way to a deep valley, sprawling and green. In one corner, there was a cluster of trees that looked healthy and comfortable, despite being on a random Greek island in the middle of the ocean. A modest garden lay next to it, somehow appearing unaffected by the rain, and a narrow river wound around the whole scene.

There was also a house.

Sabrina wasn’t sure what she might have expected from the lair of an infamous Greek enchantress, but it wasn’t this.

She hauled herself up on the hill and started down, rushing through the rain onto a wide wooden porch. There was a large stone vat of something dark and crumbly, with a heavy looking staff of sorts leaning against it. The door to the house was short, and Sabrina heard it scrape on the floor when she pushed it open.

The scene awaiting her was surprisingly cozy when she stepped inside. There was a fire in the hearth and rows upon rows of little viles arranged on a set of shelves beside it. A broom leaned against the wall. Sabrina looked around, noting the way that the rain didn’t make any sound as it thrashed against the roof and window, and the almost drug-like stupor that threatened to take over her brain, whispering that everything was fine, she was safe, nothing bad could happen to her.

Sabrina had encountered hypnosis before, and it only ever made her more jittery.

There was an open hatch in the floor with stairs that lead into darkness. She followed them down, feeling the air grow cooler with every step. Sabrina was quiet, taking tiny steps on her toes, and wincing when one of the stairs creaked. She didn’t know what was down there, and she didn’t want to find out the hard way. But there were no arrows flying up from the space below, no sounds of footsteps or slashes of swords.

Sabrina stepped onto a dirt floor and let herself exhale, shuffling along until her toe hit something hard. Only seasoned reflexes made her reach for the knife in her pocket instead of crying out in fear. She knelt down and squinted in the darkness, trying to see what she’d hit.

A leg.

She frowned, shaking it until she heard a low growl. “Stop that.” She stopped.

“Who are you?” Sabrina leaned closer. If they hadn’t killed her yet she was probably safe.

Instead of answering, they reached out a hand. Sabrina could see a gold ring on the thumb that glinted in a little sliver of light that had crept down from the room above. “Pull me up,” the figure said. “I’ve been paralyzed by the witch.”

Helping the stranger sit turned out to be no simple feat. They were tall and muscular, wearing a cape and a heavy metal chest plate. “The witch?” she questioned, propping them up against one of the cellar’s dirt walls. Her eyes were beginning to adust to the dark, and she could just make out their sharp chin sticking out as their head lolled back.

The figure made a noise. “The witch, the sorceress, the woman. Whatever you want to call her. I figure she sent you down too?” They snorted. “Good luck. I told Zeus not to sent mortals, but does he ever listen? You’re gonna die.”

Sabrina tried to piece together what she could from all this. The witch must be Circe, unless she’d wound up on an entirely different island. And if Circe was going around paralyzing people, then something must be going on. She must be hiding something. As for the person in front of her, Sabrina wasn’t sure who they were. By the way they talked about Zeus, and casually said “mortals,” she’d guess some sort of god? As if that narrowed it down. She’d have to be careful.

“Why did she paralyze you?”

Another weird gutteral noise. “She didn’t like my offer. It’s not the first time this has happened.”

She was growing impatient. Why’d he have to be so vague? “What?”

“Yeah, I don’t know why he always sends me. I don’t think he trusts me. He’d rather me stay her paralysed in the basement of a witch than come back home.”

Sabrina let out an exasperated sigh. This wasn’t working and she needed answers. A whole coast of people with mythology-shaped holes in their memories awaited her. “You’re going to need to be a little more specific. I don’t think we’re on the same page.”

The figure sounded confused. “What do you mean? Don’t you know who I am?”

She leaned forward and inspected them in the darkness. “No. No I don’t.”

They slid their eyes down to her face. “I am the god Apollo. I came here for Circe and she did this to me.”

“What? Why?”

The stairs creaked behind Sabrina and she felt a long nail drag up her back. “I just want to be left alone,” said a voice as deep and powerful as the smell of red wine. “You don’t mind, do you?” Before Sabrina could grab her knife and turn around, before she could even scream, strong arms had surrounded her shoulders and a hand was clamping a damp cloth over her nose and mouth. Shock made her breath in, sharply, and she smelled the sweetness of sleeping drugs.

A heartbeat, a brief struggle, and Sabrina Starr was gone.

[koboldspucke]

Dear Creator Letter

Hello there!

Thanks for offering one of my requests and coming here to read my letter. My format preferences and DNWs are in the sign-up but I’ll try add some more about what kind of things I like here for prompting.

Broadly I'm interested in more character-driven stuff and I don't much care about adherence to canon and am indeed positively delighted about critically looking at canon and what it implies. I would love any amount of or indeed lack of smuttiness, can be as explicit or as tame as you'd like.

I love tropey fics, (mutual) pining, women being super competent, talking things out, dry wit, middle-aged women being sexy, showcasing feelings and character through sex, characters getting to be silly as well as serious, gnc and/or butch characters, explicitly or implicitly neurodivergent characters, queer community and solid friendship for pairings in addition to romance/sex.

If you are doing a video, I especially enjoy if there some original sound or quotes in, not solely images and a song.

Now onto fandom/pairing specific things:

I’ll put prompts or ideas where I have them because I know that’s sometimes easier to write for but please don’t feel limited by them.

The Half Of It: I love this film so much. I'm open to anything but if you'd like a prompt I'd be interested in Aster meeting Ellie a few years after the film in a setup where Ellie isn't single or at least appears non-single to Aster.

Original Work: I’ve just been delighted by all the things people nominated, so broadly I figure if you see something you like just go for it.

Crossovers: I picked pairings from the tag set that looked exciting. If you've offered these I figure you have something in mind. Go for it, I'm so curious! For Rose Tico/Kaylee I think it could be cute for them to be thrown together to do engineering/ship maintenance stuff and if you want a smutty prompt for them to show each other their made-out-of-spare-parts vibrators and then test run them. For Marianne Dashwood/Emma Woodhouse I figure that Marianne could bring a bit of entitlement to levity to Emma’s life who is always looking out for her father and living up to the appropriateness of her station. I think Emma could do some romantic antic sweeping Marianne of her feet while actually having the financial stability to not abandon her.

Wayfarers: Love these books so much! For Isabel and her wife from Record of a Spaceborn Few I would love for them to get a bit of romantic adventure in the vein of when they went on that rocket ride. Happy old lesbians ftw. Can also see a poly situation of some sort and looking at how that shifts their relationship ideally in a way that showcases its stability. For Rosemary/Sissix I’m generally into the Rosemary pining, Sissix being a sexy pilot, domesticity mixed with portrayals of the crew handling cultural differences in their backgrounds (temperature differentials!) but don’t have a specific prompt idea.

Bletchley Circle: Would love some smut and/or mutual pining for Millie/Jean or a season 2 and after romance for Millie/Alice. I mostly ship season 1 or earlier Susan/Millie but am open to any ideas. For Jean/OFC was thinking a romance with someone her own age would be nice. Maybe someone she met during the war? Maybe someone she’s been with since the war?

Mum: I think Cathy/Kelly is not a ship that should sail maybe, but I’d love for Kelly to actually make a move and them to talk about it and work things out about themselves. And for Cathy/OFC, even though I like the canon romance, it would be interesting to see someone who is a bit less of a pushover than her shake her life up a bit, sweep her off her feet and get her to want to be more selfish sometimes.

Derry Girls: For Sister Michael pairings I’m a sucker for the dry wit and practicality of her. With Janet Taylor I’d like something that highlights that they immediately hit it off and make each other laught and get each other either lightheartedly for a one night stand or seeing each other once a year thing or to contrast with how they’re not really meant to be friendly. For Clare/Michelle I like that they call each other out on things and they seem to be opposite forces in group arguments but actually get each other.

Emma: Emma/Jane just make sense to me! I figure it would happen after the events of the book, maybe something terrible happened to Frank Churchill or he scarpered somewhere? Poly setups with female characters and/or Knightley are fine. The whole bit where Emma dislikes her for reasons more to do with her own insecurities and misunderstandings but they have so much in common just screams not-quite-enemies to friends to lovers to me. I think for the OFC pairings basically the same applies in that at the point where they might be in a place for a relationship with each other they could also meet someone new. (For canon / video sources: I like the books and the Romola Garai adaptation best but any version works, probably even modern ones or the ones in your head.)

Ted Lasso: https://koboldspucke.tumblr.com/tagged/keeley%20x%20rebecca No Roy bashing please bc I love him.

Buffy: They all deserved better! Love a soft but badass Tara. I think in general in the show it’s taken way too much for granted what all you can heap on a slayer without looking after them, just bc it’s their calling.

[i-am-grell]

Spoiler Free Descriptions of Steven Universe Episodes (Season 2)

Full Disclosure - I’m crying to a ringtone

Joy Ride - Don’t fall for peer pressure

Say Uncle - Expectations were so. low. that this somehow ended up being the best episode?

Love Letters - Remember that minor character from episode 3?

Reformed - Days Gone Without Crying Over Amethyst: 0

Sworn to the Sword - CONNIE. GETS. A. SWORD.

Rising Tides, Crashing Skies - Look, at least Ronaldo has a passion?

Keeping It Together - Sobbing.

We Need to Talk - How To Build A Healthy Relationship

Chille Tid - Good luck sleeping ever again

Cry For Help - “Noooooo! Not television!”

Keystone Motel - “Square pizza?! What’s wrong with this crazy state!” (Also, Lesbians)

Onion Friend - Onion is a demon child

Historical Friction - A mop. A freaking mop.

Friend Ship - Sometimes you just have to almost die to fix your mistakes

Nightmare Hospital - The title is accurate. That is all.

Sadie’s Song - Olivia Olson exclusively delivers bangers to children’s cartoons. First Busted and now Haven’t You Noticed (That I’m a Star)?? Queen.

Catch and Release - SHE’S TINY

When It Rains - SHE’S TINY Part 2

Back to the Barn - Robots?

Too Far - The fandom adopts Peridot as their gremlin child

The Answer - *delighted gay screaming*

Steven’s Birthday - If I had 2 nickels for the amount of times this show traumatized me during a birthday party, I’d have 2 nickels. Which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice, right?

It Could’ve Been Great - You’re just now telling us about the moon?

Message Received - The Crystal Gems adopt Peridot as their gremlin child

Log Date 7 15 2 - “I’m a chiiiicken!” “I get the joke now!”

[mlmdarkfiction]

GIFT FIC- Extra Credit?

Fandom: Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Ship: Edelgard Von Hresvelg/Byleth Eisner 

Description: After Dorothea finds out Edelgard has a B in Professor Eisner's class, she tells Edelgard to ask for extra credit, knowing the other woman has a crush on the Professors Daughter who's also his teaching assistant.

Content Warning: Modern AU, College AU, Teachers Assistant Byleth

Authors Note: This fic was a gift for one of the kind people who donated to help my friend pay medical pills for their dog!

Read Below:

“...”

Silence interrupts the once cheerful conversation between the four girls. The other three had been waiting on a response, and were instead met with nothing.

Edelgard had, admittedly, stopped paying attention to the conversation at hand as soon as she’d gotten an email about their midterm grades being released.

She had to check immediately!

She expected what she always did.

Perfection.

Her whole life Edelgard had been kept to an impossibly high standard, and things truly hadn’t changed much now.

Really, the only change was that it was now Edelgard herself expecting too much of herself.

And when she checked her grades and saw that everything was not perfect and that they didn’t meet her regular perfection she was crushed.

There was no way she had made a mistake.

With all her studying, and the amount of hard work she put into every assignment, there was no way she’d earned only a B in Professor Eisner’s class.

Edelgard had never gotten a B before.

And it was unacceptable.

“Ede?”

Dorothea finally calls gently, breaking the silence.

All three women were capable of understanding that something was wrong, based both on Edelgard’s silence in turn of conversation, and the sour expression that had slowly taken her face as she looked at her phone.

Just seeing that expression on Edelgard’s face was enough to make Bernadetta nervous by proxy, her leg beginning to bounce under the table in an attempt at self-soothing.

“Sorry.” Edelgard says at the realization their lunch time conversation had halted because of her.

“What were we talking about?”

Petra and Dorothea share a look between them.

Clearly something was bothering the other woman.

Instead of answering her so that they could continue their mundane conversation, Dorothea decides instead to pry.

“Is something wrong?”

“Wrong? Why would something be wrong?”

Dorothea and Petra share another look.

The sharp, somewhat rushed tone of Edelgard’s voice was enough to give away that something truly was bothering her.

Exasperated Dorothea sighs a little, shaking her head.

“Well you were looking at your phone like it killed your whole family.”

A pause.

Edelgard simply sighs.

No matter what she does or says there’s no way Dorothea is going to let this go, it’s simply not in the other girl's nature not to pry when she thinks there is something wrong with one of her friends.

Although an admirable trait, in this specific instance, Edelgard hates it.

“I got a B in one of my classes.”

“A B?”

Bernadetta finally speaks up, it’s clear by the confusion in her voice she doesn’t understand the problem. For someone like Bernadetta, someone who doesn’t keep themselves mounted on a pedestal, a grade like a B is no problem.

However the meek girl immediately regrets speaking up at all when she gets a sharp look from Edelgard.

“Yes, Bernadetta a B. I got a B.”

Sensing the tension, and Bernadetta’s rising anxiety, Petra finally interferes, wrapping an arm around the other woman.

“We are going to have to be going now!”

Edelgard sighs as the other two retreat, leaving her alone at the table with Dorothea. She makes a mental note to apologize to Bernadetta later.

“Well...Which class is it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” The look on Dorothea’s face, that teasing smile that’s slowly taking over her expression, makes Edelgard regret this entire conversation.

“Is it the class with that cute Teacher’s Assistant you like so much?”

“...”

The silence is all the answer the other needs.

She practically squeals in delight, clapping her hands together.

“Oh Ede! You stupid Lesbian! No wonder you have a B in that class! You’re too busy staring at her!”

“No. I am not- That is- That is ridiculous.”

It’s not ridiculous.

Dorothea is right, she knows she’s right, and Edelgard knows she’s right. Still, even if they both know the truth, that doesn’t mean she has to admit to it.

“Well it’s only a midterm.” She points out, knowing there’s no use to get Edelgard to admit she’d slacked off due to her crush on the Professor's daughter.

“If you’re saying it doesn’t matter because it’s only a mid-” “Relax.”

Edelgard’s spiel is cut off by Dorothea gently resting a hand on top of hers, and gently squeezing.

“All I meant is you still have plenty of time before grades are final to turn that B into an A.”

She smiles gently at the other.

Dorothea can never entirely understand why Edelgard is the way she is, but she tries her best to be supportive.

“And for someone like you that’s easy right?”

It’s barely noticeable, but...Edelgard does relax a bit.

“You’re right…”

“And besides!” Dorothea chirps out, “If you really want it fixed now, you could always ask Byleth for some extra credit!”

And as if worried Edelgard wouldn’t understand the extra meaning in her statement, Dorthea winks for emphasis.

Ignoring the pink that comes to her cheeks in response, she just rolls her eyes at her friend's statement.

Although the idea wasn’t entirely a bad idea.

Professor Esiner would never give out extra credit, but his daughter, the TA, might.

It was worth asking about if nothing else...even if that means humiliating herself by admitting that she needs the extra credit in the first place.

The next time Edelgard has Professor Eisner’s class she once again struggles to focus. She is, as usual, distracted. Although for once her distraction has less to do with Byleth’s existence, and more to do with her extra credit.

Instead of actually paying attention to the lesson Edelgard is trying to figure out how she can ask Byleth about extra credit without embarrassing herself, or without making herself out to seem like some kind of idiot who’s failing the class.

When all the other students start piling out of the classroom, Edelgard stays. For a while it’s just the four of them; Edelgard, Byleth, Jeralt, and Leonie.

And the longer Edelgard finds herself waiting on Leonie to leave, the angrier she finds herself becoming, until she’s firmly glaring at the redheads back.

It really doesn’t seem like she’s going to leave at all, still talking the Professors ear off, and so instead Edelgard makes the decision to take the L on this.

After all, Dorothea was right when she said there was time before grades finalized.

She gathers her things, heads to the door, but then she’s stopped, a hand reaching out to grab her wrist.

It’s a subtle action, gentle but firm, but still enough to cause her to jump, whipping around quickly to be met face to face with Byleth.

“Hey-”

Edelgard hopes she doesn’t look stupid, she can already feel the heat rising to her cheeks, lavender eyes flickering from her wrist and the fingers around it, to Byleth’s calm face.

“You waited all that time,” Byleth says softly. “Did you need something?”

Getting defensive is an instinct, something that triggers before she’s actually able to stop it. “Need something? Why would I need something?”

But Byleth keeps looking at her, obviously not buying it, expression blank as ever, and it’s enough to make Edelgard crumble apologetically.

“I was...just wondering about extra credit.”

“Extra credit?”

Edelgard curses Byleth.

Curses how cute she is.

Her thoughts immediately drift from the topic at hand, and to the way Byleth always seems to tilt her head just slightly to the right when expressing confusion. She wonders if the other woman is even aware she does it.

“Extra credit, yeah…” Edelgard clears her throat, using the moments pause to regain her composure.

“My grade fell from an A to a B for seemingly no reason, and so I thought…”

“I won’t sleep with you.”

…

What.

Edelgard’s composure quickly falls apart.

Although that’s what Dorothea had originally been joking about when she’d told Edelgard to ask about extra credit, she had no intentions of actually-

Surely Dorothea hadn’t talked to Byleth about this?

But then...how else would she have known to say that?

“I-I don’t understand what-”

“That’s...That’s what happens in movies, right?” Byleth seems just as confused as Edelgard, at least.

“Someone asks for extra credit, and then they have sex?”

Edelgard is even more perplexed.

That sounds like a bad porn plot more than a movie.

Does Byleth watch porn?

No! Bad horny brain! Focus on the task at hand.

“I was…thinking something more like worksheets.”

Her entire face has become engulfed in red, and she finds it more difficult to actually look at Byleth.

“Oh.”

The other woman pauses and then turns to call out to her father, “Hey, can Edelgard do extra credit?”

Great.

Now not only did the Professor end up finding out she wanted extra credit, but Leonie overheard as well.

This is becoming worse and worse, more humiliating by the minute.

“I...think I am just going to leave.”

She hadn’t realized until she tried leaving again that Byleth hadn’t released her wrist. It’s easy to tug free of her hold now that the surprise of being grabbed has long past.

Edelgard quickly makes her way out of the class room and down the hall. She just wants to go back to her dorm.

It’s likely irrational, and she realizes it, but she feels like she was made a fool of both by, and in front of the girl she likes.

The girl who probably is completely unaware she likes her.

She’s trying her best to avoid the heat in her cheeks, and the tears threatening to spill from her eye due to the humiliation of it all.

“Edelgard! Wait!”

Byleth jogs down the hallway, catching up with the other easily.

“I brought you these.”

Worksheets. She’s offering Edelgard a handful of work sheets.

Clearly Jeralt must have agreed to the extra credit work.

She’s relieved if nothing else, at least all this humiliation hadn’t completely been in vain.

“Thank you.”

Edelgard takes the worksheets, but notices that Byleth seems to hesitate for a moment. She raises a brow, waiting for the woman to speak.

She’s usually not the type to show any form of hesitation, and so she gets Edelgard’s full attention.

“I’m sorry about before,” She says softly. “I was trying to make a joke but...I’m bad at jokes.”

That is an understatement, but it at least makes Edelgard feel a bit better about the entire situation, knowing that it was just an attempt at humor.

“I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” Byleth continues.

“And...Dorothea told me you like me?” It’s said with just the tiniest bit of emotion in it, a curious, hopeful upturn to the last word.

Edelgard decides in that moment she has to kill Dorothea.

“So...I was wondering if you wanted to go on a date?”

Edelgard decides that she will not kill Dorothea.

When she doesn’t get an immediate answer Byleth panics a bit.

“Not like- Not as extra credit! Just like...in general. Just a normal date?”

“...I’d like that.”

[takaraphoenix]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 4

1. Favorite character of this season?

Spike. I loved him as the villain in seasons prior, but this is the start of slowly turning good Spike and especially this whacky in-between phase is such a delight. He's clearly not good, but he still involuntarily helps some. Also, lots of tied up Spike, which is a nice visual (sue me).

I love his dynamic with Willow, it's weird. I loooved when he was living with Giles, I adore the snark that goes on between those two, the banter is delightful. Him living with Xander was so much fun. I just really enjoy his journey and season 4 in particular is such a wild ride there.

2. Outstanding minor character (positive or negative)?

HARMONY KENDALL. I love Harmony. I think Harm is an underrated character. Honestly, I mean I am going beyond season 4 here but – she stays herself? She is a vampire, but she is still Harmony. If anything, becoming a vampire actually improved her. Everyone loses their soul and turns into careless killers, she learns self-help books, gets out of an abusive relationship and learns her own worth. Especially under this universe's premise of what vampires are supposed to be and what the bite is supposed to do to a human, I find her character development absolutely fascinating!

3. Favorite character dynamic?

It really is Spike and Giles. What they have is so peculiar, it is peak snarky banter, it is so much fun to watch. In a season I overall didn't like much because of the military nonsense, this was an utter delight and one of the things that still made me love it in a way.

4. Favorite canon romantic ship?

TARA/WILLOW. MY FIRST CANON LESBIANS.

And look, I will not be that easily baited with canon gays generally, but... these two? They were the first lesbians I got to see on screen as a child. The first. They shaped me fundamentally, they mean so much to me on a much deeper level for that because they really were the first time I saw that a girl can like a girl, that a girl doesn't have to like a guy.

Willow's storyline means so much to me, because you can taste the heteronormativity in her early upbringing, everything about her – including Xander and Oz – makes perfect sense to me, as a lesbian who grew up in a heteronormative world. And the gentle, curious manner in which she came out and how she fell in love with Tara, the way those two just... came together, it means so much to me because it meant so much to me growing up.

5. Least favorite canon romantic ship?

Honestly, Riley and Buffy. I just... I care a negative amount about this and considering the fandom discussion is always Buffy/Angel vs Buffy/Spike, I gather the majority of fandom doesn't quite care either. It's just... so boring and plain most of the time? And actively not my cup of tea the rest of the time – when he goes full Good Military Soldier Boi.

6. Favorite episode?

The favorite episode this season was 04x09 Something Blue – it is just... whacky and fun and it gave me my first Spuffy aesthetic. But in a fun way. I really love this episode, there is no evil to fight, just a spell gone wrong with hilarious outcomes.

7. Least favorite episode?

So I have this rating system, where I rate every individual episode something from 1 – really forgettable or really cringey – to 5 – outstandingly favorite episode. Season 1 had one episode in it that was a 1 for me, season 2 had three such episodes, season 3 had four, but season 4 actually has ten of them so that's a bit too much to list them all. There just are too many episodes I didn't enjoy in this season and it greatly links to the fact that I hate the overarching villain of this season – usually the 1 rated episodes end up being dumb filler episodes.

So... I guess the worst offender is the one where they make Oz, of all characters, cheat and then have the morally offended Willow, who had cheated first. I mean, her cheating on Oz does certainly not justify that he cheats on her, but the hypocrisy of it was still very over the top. I really hate that this is how they ended that relationship and that this is how they write Oz out of the show, by making him cheat on her because the animalistic draw is too strong. What a load of crap that was.

8. Favorite Monster Of The Week?

The Gentlemen were delightfully creepy and weird one-off villains who gave their episode such a different flare, it is one of my favorites definitely and they are some of my favorite Buffy villains.

9. Least favorite Monster Of The Week?

I do think another weakness of this season is it's lack of good Monsters Of The Week.

I mean, seriously, this is the season where a bitch demon roommate is trying to steal Buffy's soul? A Poltergeist triggered by Riley/Buffy fucking too much, I mean seriously? A barkeeper who turns people into Neanderthals with beer... And that's not mentioning the awkward Thanksgiving episode where they have a moral dilemma over whether or not the vengeful native American warrior spirit ought to be killed or not because he kinda has a point you know. There aren't many one-off monsters in this season and the majority of them are... not impressive, really.

But I guess if I'd have to pick one, it'd be the “Buffy's sexuality is bad!” episode then. Aka, Buffy and Riley fuck so much that they awaken a Poltergeist, indirectly shaming Buffy once again for her sexuality. Which. Not a good look, you know. Also, just really weird concept there.

10. Rate the overarching villain!

Sucks. Seriously. Every villain is somehow engaging or has something about them that makes them interesting, but the Initiative? It's just the military with its blind, obedient soldier boys who don't question jackshit, which really does account for 50% of the trouble in this season. Walsh could have been a great villain but she was offed barely after being revealed to be a bad guy and then her version of Frankenstein's monster becomes to actual endgame villain and literally nothing about Adam is interesting or appealing or engaging. He ponders philosophical questions, but not in a manner that has you trying to hash them out alongside him, it is awkward and tedious to watch.

Bonus: Other thoughts?

It's just an overall relatively awkward... adjustment phase. I understand that. Seasons 1 to 3 were the high school phase with set roles for everyone. Seasons 5 to 7 are the adult phases. And season 4 is that figuring yourself out season – Giles is without a job, not sure if he is still a watcher, Willow comes to terms with being a lesbian, Oz leaves to figure out the wolf inside of him, Xander goes from job to job not knowing where he fits in, Buffy struggles with where she wants to land in life, Spike is somewhere in the middle between helpful and villain. But if everyone including the overarching plot are 'somewhere in the middle', the entire thing becomes... muddled and awkward.

[freykitten]

Weird question - do you have any Crystal/Gigi fic recs?

Hello there, dear

That’s not a weird question at all, although there might be people who’d answer it better. But I’ll do my best, just for you.

My first idea would be to stalk @chachkisalpaca, who fell head over heels for them and I’d say Crystal and Gigi (GoodeMethyd, anyone?) are her it-ship at the moment, so she’s written A BUNCH - her collection of prompts and drabbles will be a gold mine for sure. I believe most of them are lesbian AUs, although I’ve read one that wasn’t and it was even canon-compliant. There is a one story in the making and even I haven’t seen it yet, but it sounds absoluetly amazing. As for stories that are already out, there you go:

In My Head (We Belong), multi-chap, lesbian AU, waitress AU

A delightful Spring story about our favourite characters sharing exactly 0,8 of a brain cell between all of them. Over the course of seven chapters, you’ll experience a lot of useless crushes and mutual pining, learning how to get rid of the “mis-” part of miscommunication, a few hook ups, the most adorable love confession, true friendship, and, probably, more than a few dishes being shattered.

The Beauty and The Kickboxer and also baby, let’s keep it a secret set in the same universe, in which Crystal is a kickboxer and Gigi is an ice-skater

For being both relatively short, they are very meaningful, highlighting problems that queer women encounter in professional sport, that aren’t talked about nearly as much and nearly as widely as they should be.

Blow a Kiss, Fire a Gun multi-chap, lesbian AU, mafia AU, written in collaboration with @leljaaa

It’s a mafia slash hitwomen AU. If that’s your climate, that’s all you need to know. If it isn’t, let me explain further.

Nicky is a future head of a French mafia. Gigi is a head of a Swedish mafia. Crystal is Nicky’s partner in crime and Gigi’s wanna-be partner. Jan is a hairdresser, and if you’ve heard that you can get fake documents in her basement, it depends on who sent you. Jaida is a police officer and Jan’s wife-to-be. I know. She doesn’t. Jackie is a police officer too, and she’s kind of falling for that misterious French seductress she’s recently met. Yeah, she doesn’t know either.

Spirit one shot by @opalescent-cheetah 

Now, this might be a bit of stretch, but then again, it isn’t. Remember Crystal’s Devil wears Prada look? Opal does too. Now, imagine it isn’t a costume. 

There is an abandoned werehouse, and it’s rumoured to be haunted, you know, like abandoned buildings sometimes are. Gigi is just a girl, standing in front of her “friends”, asking for them to remove the quotation marks. Crystal is sort of a devil and even more sort of cursed. Alternatively, Gigi she gets locked in an abandoned werehouse because of a stupid dare, and soon discovers that the rumours aren’t just rumours, but the Spirit that’s famously haunting the building is actually… pretty friendly?

Crystal Isn’t Counting a mini multi-chap by @a-tresia

Nicky and Crystal own a café. Gigi orders the same thing for the 37th time, but Crystal wouldn’t know it’s the 37th time. She isn’t counting, yeah? Why would she be? Because this cute customer makes her want to know her name and maybe also the way her eyes spark when she smiles? Because she would prefer not to hand her her order, but hold her hand? Listen, even if she would, she can’t stress it enough how bad it’s none of your business, okay?

leather and lace (and the taste of oxidation) a PLEASE MAKE IT A MULTI-CHAP, I’M BEGGING by @blackhaus

Listen, I don’t really know what this one is about, but I’m so freaking hooked and I need to know. But basically Gigi and Crystal are agents. Or assasins. Are they enemies? Are they friends? Are they lovers? Do they want to be friends and/or lovers, but have to be enemies? I don’t know. But shit goes down and I’m here for it. While looking for the author’s sideblog (thank you, Lily), I noticed there’s going to be a second part posted today on AQ and HOLY HECK CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW EXCITED I AM? Oh, and Gigi killed a man, I think it might be important.

For more one-shots go to @goodemethyd They have four or five little fics posted, and all of them are so cute, so adorable, so sweet (I know I’m not saying anything new, but I’m making a point here), written in such a nice, fresh way. I’ve reread them anytime they appeared on my feed, they’re so pleasant. Fantastic.

Now, the most important thing - there is more. I’m dumb - I have the memory or a goldfish - and chronically run thin on time, because life gets lifey, and in my case lifey means hectic. My heart cries for every GoodeMethyd fic there is that I have missed and continute to miss. But we have a crazy amount of incredibly talented authors in this fandom, so feel free to browse both @artificialqueens and Crystal/Gigi tag on AO3 to your delight. I may update this ask. I may not, but I’ll try. We’ll see. Today I’ve started a GoodeMethyd fic myself, but don’t really get your hopes up with me, I hate to disappoint.

Oh, and everything in bold is linked, so you can just click on it and it should take you places. I might have messed it up, I hope I haven’t, but I don’t know how to technology

[vampanic]

okay here’s what i remember from THE CON

i can’t remember if the ticket was cheap or pricey. i don’t know why. i wanna say it was more expensive or of equal value to a bigger con and i justified it to my parents and myself because it was the first one. but i went because i thought the idea of a con that was centered on the various fandoms popular on this site at the time was a genuinely neat idea. i also thought, okay let me just go because it’s another one to attend.

i should note: that have been to a lot conventions in my time. i’ve been to acen twice i think? i’ve been to nebkon twice. sadly i have never been to c2e2 or flashback chicago (which i may never get to go to now whoops) and i’ve been to wizard world chicago i wanna say 4 times?

now at these cons (mostly wizard world) these fandoms aren’t as present. in fact, the main demo of that con was adult to middle age to older visitors as well as families, so usually teens and young adults would find each other at this con (whether planned ahead or by accident there) and freak the fuck out over our cosplays or mutual love of whatever.

so because of this again the idea of a t.umblr con was exciting to me, even though i was already at the end of being interested in those fandoms (as i’m sure most people were at the time)

okay so first, this con was far. wizard world and acen are held at the rosemont convention center which while kind of far from where i live, is accessible by train via downtown or via one of chicago’s big airports. i always got a ride though which with summer traffic, took forever. so much like that this con was a journey away.

the hotel the con choose i remember thinking it seemed new, but it was far from where i lived which inpacted the amount of time i spent at the con and the decision to only go two days (i didn’t return the last day because it was a shit show)

i went to this con by myself because i think at this point i had already had a falling out with my friend who i went to cons in the area with (she did not attend that i know of). i wore two cosplays that i had made already for other things, gwen stacy and america chavez. this would have been the ideal place for me to cosplay something more niche, but i just didn’t care that much about it. maybe i didn’t think it was worth it at the time since it wasn’t going to be a big con.

so i get there and there’s no long line to get my badge in fact i don’t even remember a line at all. which, for me, was bizarre. every con i’ve been to before had huge lines even on off hours to get badges. but whatever. i cant remember if where i got my badge was in the the same room as where the ball pit was or not. but yes, i did go into the ball pit and i was silly in it with some other people because

idk you see a ball pit you go in the ball pit? in hindsight i know it’s not acceptable to have this at a con, but shit i guess i was high on life at the time. someone took a pic of me in the pit, but i have never seen it.

i remember seeing some very impressive cosplays at this con. i also bought some really great art in the dealers room which was small. (here’s the artist. also this was nonfandom art. i don’t remember buying anything else from anyone because i don’t think i saw anything i liked/could afford) there was no unlicensed night vale merch sold here that i remember, but i do remember receiving free unlicsenced night vale like pamphlets from a random vendor and also  there was a vendor who was giving away a large piece of night vale fan art with a purchase of over something dollars i dont remember.

panels: i don’t remember there being many panels or even very interesting panels. panels i remember going to include: bisexuality in media/bisexuality representation (which was put on by the bisexualbooks tumblr), ask an avenger (which was put on by various marvel cosplayers), and a panel that was about female characters in supernatural (i was a spn stan back in the day jsyk).

the bi one was good. i remember it being the most like a panel that you’d go to at a larger convention. they had slides and info and they took questions and had several speakers.

the avengers one was what we’d call today “cringey” but it was cute. it was exactly what it sounds like. avengers cosplayers sat up on a stage answering questions in character. i believe that all the cosplayers had rp and/or ask blogs which is why they were chosen.

the supernatural panel was, like the bi one, complete with slides and various speakers, but from what i remember it was mostly going down the list of female characters in the show. i remember from the fandom that there a good chunk of people who love the characters, but they’re often killed off or abandoned and this is something a lot of fans did have gripes with. this is gonna sound fake when i say it, but this did happen, we got to charlie and someone said “yeah i like charlie she’s cool because she’s a lesbian but she doesn’t act like one like she’s still feminine” and i spoke up and said “well yeah it’s cool she’s a lesbian, but what do you mean she doesn’t act like one. like queer female character shouldn’t have to be feminine to be seen as good rep.” and people clapped. i know that sounds fake, but please believe me because this is a setting where people are inclined to clap when they agree with statements. people clapped at others too.

i also attended the costume contest, the night vale panel, and the meet and greet with doug jones.

the contest was fine. there was one individual at this con who i can’t name because i didnt know their name, but they cosplayed as ed from edd ed and eddy and they were in character the whole time to the point of discomfort. it wasn’t just for the contest i found myself in a cards against humanity game that they were in and it was even there and it was weird.

then the night vale panel happened and ooooooooohhhh boy

this was the most filled room in the whole con. a main reason i went to this con was to see them and im pretty sure this was everyone’s main reason to go. i known someone from other cons who came from florida to see this. (fun fact: we were mutuals on various platforms and had hung out at various cons and i knew their name, but they could not remember mine and i thought that was bogus so i ghosted them. dont know if i was justified in that but whatever)

so here we all were waiting. for over an hour. during this time people talked and i remember someone cosplaying the glow cloud went up and down the isle with a little glow cloud baby in a stroller and we all laughed and cheered. people started playing card games. we kept busy. for me though.

this was one of the most boring cons i’ve been to honestly. i’m having trouble remember a lot of it and that’s because i went solo. i had no friends there. i cosplayed gwen from like the 60s and this was before spidey joined the mcu and before itsv was a thing so spidey was basically an niche fandom (i was active in the tasm and dane deha.an fandoms at this time and the latter became toxic as fuck but that’s a whole other story) or something older comic fans liked.

my other cosplay was america chavez from young avengers which never got that popular either (though kate bishop and kid loki where more recognized, but for their connection to bigger marvel names). so it wasn’t like other cons where my cosplay was an ice breaker and i could join groups. i was alone.

so a lot of the con for that reason was awkward and waiting for night vale was like being the person texting in the corner at a distant relative’s party because they know no one.

so they finally come on stage to say that night vale will not be performing and people went ballistic people were shouting and the person said “we have doug jones in the next hall you should go over to that” and someone yelled “WE DON’T WANT TO SEE HIM”

i went to see doug jones and i was previously unaware of what his name was but i knew who he was. he talked about his work and acting process and did a meet and greet after. mr. jones was a delight and i’m wondering how they even got him there in the first place. he was leagues above this. 

i had to leave the con early that day to go to my brother’s football game, but i believe that was the night they “protested” at the con and i kept seeing on tumblr that it was cancelled. i decided not to go back the next day because i was unsure of what was happening and because it was too far.

and the rest is history. i’m sure i went to other panels, but i can’t remember them. i do remember going into the room where they were watching pacific rim, but it was on a shitty projection screen and i wanted to go to a panel instead.

it’s shitty what happened with the con. and a lot of the unrest came from literal teens who were cheated from money who didn’t know how to act, but all the responsibility goes to the people who organized it poorly. The concept of a tu.mblr con i don’t think should have been inherently bad. i think it would have been cool to have a con that focused on more niche interests. but shouldn’t have been as big as they wanted it to be for the first go.

anyway that’s most of what i can remember. it’s kind of blur because i spent most of it by myself and there wasn’t much to do so i didn’t even spend the whole day there.

quite frankly, i’m glad i wasn’t there when they started singing les mis because i have no idea how i would have acted.

[dietraumerei]

On Good Omens, and love

...well I keep wanting to write a kind of year-end wrap-up and meditation on finding Good Omens and how it’s transformed my heart and my relationship to fanfiction and why and how I write fanfic, but I don’t know if it’s coming? We’ll find out together.

I posted my first GO fic on July 14th, and counting today’s updates to Advent, I’ve, uh, posted 201,327 words. 17 fics. Honestly, I don’t know how you all put up with me, reading that over. That is half a year of output. No wonder I feel sort of like I’ve eaten too many sweeties. By comparison, in 2018 I wrote 74,753 words. (2016 was the last time I hit > 100k words in a year, I think. Because of how AO3 totals word counts, that might be a little fuzzy.)

So it’s obvious that this story chimes with something in me. That Aziraphale, especially, chimes with something in me. But also, I can’t help but contrast Good Omens to Marvel, which ended(ish) with a very damp splat. With a clear signal that for all their money, they didn’t really care about these stories, not anymore, if they ever had. I wrote about this some a few months ago and it’s still with me. I know fandom and fanfic can definitely exist to fill in the cracks and make meaning out of something that’s a blatant cash grab. I mean, I took a lot of joy out of subverting toxic masculinity and body image and things like that. But I think it says a huge amount that I was writing almost exclusively AU’s, especially in the last few years.

So I don’t want to say that fanworks that fix a story are bad, because they aren’t. They’re powerful and beautiful, but I feel like...Good Omens is special, because the love pours out of it. Like Aziraphale and Tadfield, you can feel it. Michael and David are so careful with their characters, because they love them and know we love them. Neil made this story because Terry wanted him to, and there is so much of that love -- for the story, but also for Terry -- in this. Douglas wanted to make a beautiful story that everyone would love, and tell this story with affection. It is transformative, to work within a framework that is valued and loved, where everyone wanted to tell the story of an angel and a demon who are best friends, and who sort of save the world, kind of? Well, they have something to do with it. And the angel changes who he is and how he sees the world in a beautiful, sad, wonderful journey. And the demon helps him. (And, also, they are played by men facing down middle age and neither the angel nor the demon actually have a gender or a sexuality although Aziraphale is pretty much culturally gay and is fucking proud of it.)

So the story chimed with something in my heart, and was a thing I needed this year. That’s wonderful, but isn’t different; I find the stories I need over time. But what I hope means that this will stay my story is that -- it was made with so much love. And the fandom feels that love and responds to it and we feed each other with joy, and the tree keeps dreaming itself.

(And also, while we’re here, I did not plan on getting this...ace-lesbian-parasocial-whatever-it-is crush on Michael Sheen, but HERE WE ARE. I couldn’t have picked a better person, at least. It has been a delight, let me tell you.)