#this is one of my most cherished canon divergence scenarios

[thetarttfuldickhead]

What would have happened if Roy agreed to come on as coach before Jamie returned to the team? Perhaps it would have played out the same but in parallel: the team first angry, then softening, Roy ignoring him, then softening – but perhaps not. Would we have had a Trent Crimm sort of situation, with Roy being very clear that no one is to talk to Jamie? Would that have hastened the team’s (already fairly quick) acceptance of Jamie, because they feel a bit bad for him? Or would it – more fun for whump purposes – rather have served to prolong their animosity, Roy’s dislike feeding into their own, and their tacit approval fanning his darker tendencies?

Or maybe Roy would have been quicker to warm to Jamie if he’d actually gotten to see the team take some of their frustration out on him, and Jamie taking it with reaonsably good grace and (for Jamie) humility? After all, Roy needs a bit of time to process things, so I think him walking into a situation where everyone else was already cool with Jamie while Roy was still very much on a “I hope he dies” kick messed with him, and played a part in him electing to just ignore Jamie completely, because he had no idea how to deal with that.

(I tend to think that Roy would have voted an emphatic no on Jamie returning, but only because he trusted that Ted would bring him back anyway; he knows their chances of being promoted back to the Premier League is that much better with Jamie on the team, but he just cannot stomach the notion of being seen as in favour of Jamie being there.)

[velvet-tread]

In which Star Wars was uplifting af for a hot second and we all hoped they wouldn’t fuck it up

TROS got a lot wrong (howls into the Rey nobody/Rose Tico void forever) but boy did they get one thing right and that was the rise of Ben Solo on Kef Bir.

And maybe I’m misinterpreting this Important Man Work with my delicate lady eyes, but for me it was about a bit more than the symbolism of Kylo Ren’s “death”, which has been much picked over already and confirmed by the production team. The tl;dr is that the whole sequence felt like it ran far deeper than a simple death-rebirth cycle, and there’s a certain rhythm to how this sequence goes down that is just pure poetry. So, I have to have do a breakdown.

Caveat: Some of my read on it may be way off what was actually intended because I fully believe this movie was written by a team of barely-sentient walruses with fanboy party hats on and we should probably lower our expectations with regards to emotional intelligence but here goes anyway.

The location is a ruined Death Star in the middle of a churning sea. A RUINED DEATH STAR. IN A CHURNING SEA.

What better metaphor is there for Kylo Ren? All of the conflict, all of the rage and all of his chaotic energy in the Force which led him down this path, embodied in roiling water. Everything he aspired to, the power and glory of Darth Vader, rotting and fragile and corrupted by the very same turmoil that corrupted Ben Solo.

Safety info: walruses shouldn’t be allowed trowels at all, let alone permitted to use them to lay it on so damn heavy.

So in the middle of this mad-dramatique metaphor Kylo Ren is chasing Rey. She lures him to the very, very edge of this Death Star, this old, crumbling dream of his, to fight him to the death. SWEET LORD THEY ARE SO STRONG AND EVENLY MATCHED IN THE FORCE AND MY KINK LIVES.

And then: Leia calls.

His mother, her mother, the mother of every Star Wars fan that ever lived. She calls. And Kylo Ren brbs out of battle headspace, Leia dies with the effort of it and Rey spears him with his own lightsabre just as they both feel Leia’s light putter out.

Silence.

This is where I get very emo even for me.  I can’t remember if the score was cut – it probably wasn’t – but it may as well have been because I just heard white noise. WHAT. A. MOMENT.

Obviously this changes everything but not in the way I – or these two characters – had been prepared for. Because what really sticks is that Kylo getting skewered isn’t the Important Development here. It’s utterly incidental. The most important development in this whole edge of the world scenario is that Leia is dead.

(Sidebar: I know that Chris Terrio has said that some of what followed was intended as Leia mindfuckery, but seeing as a) I hate that, and b) they chose to insert her “death” at the point where she reached out to Ben, I’m ignoring that extra-textual info hashtag walrus).

We get a couple of shocked seconds as Kylo Ren and Rey process. Kylo doesn’t even seem to notice that he has a gaping hole in his torso. Rey looks numb. Neither of them seem aware that the other is present. But then she looks at him and oh- not only is he physically broken, visibly made of the same flesh and bone that she is, but that horror she feels is reflected right back at her.

It’s a moment of parallel, silent grief and shared, binding humanity, and that is what I think leads her to heal him. Suddenly, she can no longer see a monster. She sees only a human being, pitiful, lost and wrecked, someone who meant something to Leia and she to him, and because’s she’s Rey, her compassion and empathy and all her inherent kindness kick in.

And look, this is where I diverge from some of the more critical views on Bendemption and its real-world meaning. Because I don’t think this particular redemption story is really about the rendemptee. This isn’t a story that centres male pain (although there is plenty of it in the ancilliary material and I Do Not Forget Ben Solo’s pain) and it isn’t a story that makes the case for redemption on a man’s inherent “goodness”. In fact Kylo/Ben, his character and rap sheet, don’t really matter in this moment.

What matters is Rey, and the choices she makes when she’s looking into the darkness herself. Her mentor is dead. She’s just won a battle and has sentenced her enemy to death. It would be very easy for her to grab that little slice of darkness she’s been so tempted by this whole time. Salve the wound of her grief with the feeling of power over another. Satiate her loneliness with anger. But she doesn’t. She chooses kindness. She chooses love.

And like, I don’t mean romantic love, shipper though I be. I mean the love that Rey has within her, separate from her idea of justice and completely unrelated to forgiveness or “deserving”.

This love that Rey has for Leia, for the Resistance, for Han, for her vanquished drama queen enemy Kylo Ren, for hot mess Ben Solo, for everyone, is so fucking powerful and redemptive in its own right it needs an executive assistant and its own en suite bathroom. It’s on her face as she weeps uncontrollably as she heals him (and damn, Daisy Ridley absolutely smashed this whole scene), and it’s reflected in his face which is – thank you Adam Driver for this – utterly incredulous that she would give him another chance at life when he knows damn well he isn’t owed one.

That is when she deals the sucker punch. She doesn’t offer him forgiveness. She tells him what he could have had if he hadn’t made his choices. “Ben’s hand” is the hand of someone who chooses the light, commits to it and sacrifices for it. Which means: power and glory isn’t worth her soul, and it shouldn’t be worth his either. That his inner conflict means nothing on its own. That the mere existence of goodness within him would never have been enough for her. Then she leaves.

*screams into a pillow for all eternity*

According to George Lucas, Star Wars has always been about love. And it’s shrouded in this cloak of unconditional human love – and I am not a fan of unconditional love in a relationship context but HOLY FUCK this is the love that counts here – that Ben Solo finds the strength to compartmentalise Kylo Ren and confront the worst thing he’s ever done: the death of his father. And the forgiveness Memory!Han implicitly offers (and it ABSOLUTELY tracks that Han Solo, who canonically cherished his son even after he was murdered by him, would offer him forgiveness, fight me) is what gives him the strength to turn away from the Dark Side, let his anger go and let the churning sea claim his cracked, volatile crossguard.

Leia’s sacrifice, Rey’s compassion and Han’s forgiveness, all powered by love, rebuilt a whole-ass PERSON and that shit is hopeful af. I thought – wow this is GENUINELY UPLIFTING AND MOVING, I hope they don’t fuck it up.

*looks at the camera like I’m in the Office*

Anyway, Ben Solo lives. Peace out.

[adventuresloane]

J, M, S, V for the fanfic meme : o?

uwu uwu uwu Thanks Opal ur great.

"J: What's your favorite fanfic trope? Have you written it?"

I'm not sure if I can easily pick a favorite tbh. I know that sounds like a cop-out, but I typically choose to read stories based on who the characters/ships involved are and how well the thing is written as opposed to the tropes involved, though of course I like some more than others. What does always kill me dead, though, is friends-to-maybe lovers?-to-enemies-to-lovers, and permutations thereof. Like, a good established relationship being torn apart by circumstance or silly childishness until the two meet up again on opposite sides but still can't forget that closeness? FUCK. ME. UP. I'm trying to work on that in "You Were Cool."

Also, I'm garbage and so I like captivity narratives, but only when the author is really careful and portrays them well. I (hope that I) did that in "The Wanted." OH MY GOD and sickfic/healing each other's wounds!!! That shows up in a lot of mine, especially the drabbles.

And finally, I still haven't succeeded in writing a tattoo artist/flower shop AU but someday...

"M: What's the weirdest AU scenario you ever came up with? Did it turn into a story?"

I consider "The Wanted" to be kind of weird honestly but I come up with a lot of fleeting AUs that are very fun but that I'd never want to devote a longfic to for real. I LOVE to toy with the idea of a silly fun Ocean's 8 AU with the TAZ ladies, if nothing else than for imagining them in incredible Met Gala outfits and making them all best friends. Also..........Amnesty Moana AU. I have zero time to write it but it's good and I'm right.

As a fun fact, "ride to where the highway ends..." is not itself an AU, but the beginning scene was tweaked and repurposed from a scene I originally wrote as part of a canon divergence AU where Hurley and Sloane join the BOB and remember everything.

"S: How do you feel about fanart inspired by your writing?"

Um, great? Phenomenal? Amazing? I've gotten some in the past and screamed for five days. Idk what else to say but I love people engaging with my writing on such a deep level and interpreting it into a visual form, and if you ever want to you don't have to ask me for permission, just go for it and PLEASE SHOW ME.

"V: Are there certain comments you've received on your stories that have stuck with you?"

Oh, lots! One very recently (you probably know who you are and thank you again <3), and also I can specifically recall one that someone in the DDDDiscord left (I don't wanna call them out or embarrass them but I do cherish it), but pretty much any comment that tells me what they specifically enjoyed about the characterization (which is probably most important to me) will stay with me a long time.

Also, I got some that I still hold dear from WAY back in the day, back when I was writing my first fanfic for Soul Eater. (I mean like. I was regularly talking in forums on FFN. Old as balls.) I had a friendship with one person who was older than me at the time and whose writing style I admired SO MUCH, and we would both write each other these super long, multi-paragraph comments (since that was what you did back then when you really loved someone's work), and at the end of one of these long gushing comments on the last chapter of one of my multi-chapter fics, they wrote, "Never stop writing." And like goddamn...I rediscovered that recently and thought about how even back in my awful wangsty writing days I could strike people in that way and have the potential to do even more now that I've improved so much and yeah.

Anyway this got long as fuck but you probably expected that lmao enjoy!

[howlingmoonrise]

Dear Yuletide Author

thank you for signing up for yuletide, i hope you have fun!

i’ve put all my letters in one place so you don’t have to juggle links around, feel free to send me an anon (is that allowed?) if you’re in doubt as to whether i’d like a certain trope or not! (and so sorry about all the ranting oops)

things i like in general:

pining. TONS of pining. ALL the pining! i have a lot more fun reading about idiots in love that aren’t together yet than if they’re already in an established relationship

i’m good with either gen or romance if you’re not comfortable with shippy stuff! what really works for me is the relationship itself, platonic or not, the development of it, and the interactions/feelings regarding the other. when it comes to the characters i’ve picked, for me it makes sense for them to develop trust and fondness/affection for the other before they get into any sort of relationship so gen is all good!

i’m veeeeeery fond of enemies/rivals-to-friends-to-lovers, and bickering pairs overall (as you can see by all my choices in characters lmfao) since they’re so much fun and provide such an opportunity for character and relationship development :D

continuing from above, nothing kills me as much as characters that bicker all the time but in the end they rely on the other and go to each other before they go to anyone else

conceptual AUs are fine! by this i mean stuff like soulmate AUs, AUs where they met differently from canon, i’m-your-next-door-neighbour-and-i-had-to-break-into-your-flat-to-get-my-cat-back AUs, canon divergence, that kind of thing - AUs like that are super fun!

fun tropes (sorry, these are a bit romance-heavy): fake dating, “accidentally got roped into x thing and shenanigans are happening”, What Do You Mean We’re Not Dating?, “oh no there’s only one bed”, misunderstood confessions, trope subversion in general is also GREAT

i REALLY like the canon and characters for all the fandoms i picked, so sticking at least to their characterisations and the overall “tone” of canon are a huge plus!! “missing scenes” and “what if” canon-divergent situations are excellent but like i said, i also like conceptual AUs so don’t be afraid to mix up the scenario a bit if you enjoy it, because i do too!

things i don’t like a lot in general:

kidfics. unless it’s petshop of horrors - where Chris and the pets are an exception - next gen and stuff are a pass for me

far into the future fics in general, actually - what really does it for me is the development, so if we skip ahead to much later on i feel like we end up missing it all

i usually don’t like most angst stuff since it feels a bit gratuitous to me when it comes to most fandoms and characters. the one exception for this is psoh (see below if you’re picking this fandom) or when it’s introspection fic. as a result of this, i’d pass on most content with major character death, sexual abuse, self-harm, the like, though of course there are always exceptions to the rule and you’re free to write as you wish! 

hard AUs are a bit ehhh to me - by this i mean world-heavy stuff like harry potter AUs, where the focus ends up more on the setting than the characters more often than not. i’d also pass on high school AUs (gsnk being the obvious exception) and ABO. 

i heavily dislike things involving cheating/infidelity, and genderbending is a bit ehhhh for me

script-based or roleplay fic is not really my preferred format, i really enjoy prose instead of nearly all dialogue!

if you’re going for nsfw:

kinks: moderate sadism/masochism, bondage, choking/breathplay, xenophilia and tentacles (which only make sense here for like... 1.5 fandoms lmfao), moderate degradation, edging

squicks: scat, vomit, praise kink, daddy or baby kink, vore, forced feminization, pet play, gore

--

PETSHOP OF HORRORS

i’m usually not partial to angst AT ALL but psoh is the one fandom where i don’t mind it if you wanna go ahead - psoh is RIPE for angst. we got two people with abandonment and inadequacy issues: leon who decided to leave his whole life behind to chase someone who gave him life and left him after thinking that he didn’t care for him at all, and d who is supremely fucked up by his upbringing and had to push leon off the ark to continue his family’s mission and let drop one (1) single tear that he was not supposed to cry over a human.

THAT BEING SAID, i also!!!! love slice of life shit for them!!!!!!!! GODS i love how much they bicker but then they turn around and the other is the person they rely on the most and who they trust above all others and how they keep roping each other into ridiculous shenanigans. neither of them are particularly communicative with a few rare exceptions, so there’s also a lot of room for introspection there on both sides, which i LOVE. my son leon in particular is also super underestimated when it comes to his intelligence and tolerance for gay shit both in canon and fandom, and he performs ridiculous leaps of logic and instinct that somehow turn out to be right but that are super ???? for everyone else involved, and that’s always fun to see. hell, just another missing scene where leon brings d some cake and they banter fondly over tea is A++++ to me!!

nsfw???? bring it!!! this is the fandom amongst these three where you’re free to go super dark and kinky if you wanna, or if you wanna write tender loving reunion sex where d cries a little while leon cherishes every bit of him that’s also excellent! 

psoh is the most excellent genre triangle where i’d be super happy to receive anything on the slice-of-life/angst/smut corners! (also, slash is 3249823% acceptable if you couldn’t tell by my ranting)

--

GEKKAN SHOUJO NOZAKI-KUN

yuzuki seo is my absolute favourite character on the series and i love her and how ridiculous she is! waka is also gr9, and i really love that little sadist streak he has going like when he kept teasing seo with his “confessions”, that was probably one of my favourite chapters! 

for gnsk either canon-verse or a conceptual AU would be excellent - if you’re going AU, i’m very fond of those where seo is a siren/mermaid and possibly man-eating (because those are the best kind amirite??) canon-wise i LOVE their interactions and how waka keeps accidentally getting taken on lowkey dates while resolutely defending they’re not even friends and even more accidentally retributing those with thoughtful gifts and the like haha

another thing i love is when waka is capable of looking past appearances to see seo, like in the chapter where they gave her the “lorelei” makeover and no one recognized her but him. i also love how stupidly happy seo is whenever she sees waka, it’s so cute!!

--

HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE

the thing i like the most in hmc are the characters’ flaws! i love the ghibli movie, don’t get me wrong, but they took away the bits i liked the most - sophie’s stubbornness and nosiness and temper and howl’s cowardice and vanity and his silver-tongue whenever he tries to slither around sophie, and all their banter and arguing. 

there’s nothing quite like their stupid arguments where sophie pretends she didn’t mess around with things she shouldn’t and howl is torn between being amused and exasperated at her expense - even better if he’s trying to do something good sneakily behind her back so he won’t be accused of being a good person before he finds another excuse to justify it. 

for this fandom i’d really prefer it if it were from anywhere from the beginning of the first book to before their marriage (i haven’t read the sequels and prefer non-established relationship anyway), but a conceptual AU would also be pretty nice! hmc in particular is very good for trope subverting, which i’m extremely fond of! for example, take a soulmate AU with the first words written on the skin thing: we could mess it up a bit since calcifer was in possession of howl’s heart and as such his first words would be on sophie instead of howl’s - cue shenanigans while sophie wonders how someone can have a soulmate bond with a sentient fire with no words of his own, howl panics internally about sophie not returning his mark, and so on! 

another thing i love about the book is the writing style and that incredible sense of humour in the writing, so something lighthearted and in the spirit of canon would be great!