#but I do have a serious version in fanfic form I might post later

[patchesproblem]

I have the strong urge to ramble about Tes and Eins so here I am. Slight warning that my writing may get confusing, so I'm very sorry about that. There'll be my personal headcanons plus other things I feel like talking about. There'll be a few jokes because I need them for my own sanity.

Rambling under the cut

Slight edit while I'm writing: I accidentally hyperfocused on one specific part so oops. I could fix that but I'm not so have fun reading my novel. I'll end up having to make a second post to finish my headcanons off because it's almost eleven and I'm still not done with them sobs.

These two have been living rent free in my head and they're driving me insane.

Tesla is 100% softer in private with Einstein and I will die on this hill. She's still an absolute menace to society, but a gentler one. What I mean by this is that she's more 'open' in a sense.

She lets her guard down purely because she trusts her and knows that she wouldn't do anything to hurt her. Things like feeling safe enough to not wear her glasses / contacts, being vulnerable, showing affection, etc. However if Eins ever teasingly brings it up in front of others she gets flustered and defensive and tells her to shut the fuck up.

Both Tes and Eins are extremely stubborn as well and I will also die on this hill. Literally they'd been in love for years and just refused to admit it because they were embarrassed. Though they were both also horrified that if they did it'd completely destroy their friendship if the other didn't feel the same way, so that played a part in it.

Funniest part is that everyone else knew they were dating before even they knew. They'd been living together for literal years and shared a bed. Totally best friend behavior right there.

Eventually Einstein was the one who caved, though it wasn't intentional and she wanted to disappear off the face of the earth at first.

An important thing to note is that over the years they both created their own way of communicating. They'd essentially developed their own language through the sheer power of mathematics. For a brief explanation on how, they assigned meaning to each string of numbers / equations. To go along with it there was a specific indicator. This helped distinguish messages from their normal work. It was originally made because they wanted to be able to send each other messages when they needed something, but they also just used it to talk to each other without anyone knowing.

The reasoning I bring this up is because it was ultimately what brought them together. At some point Tes was out for a meeting the majority of the day (probably arguing with and or insulting senators or something idk) and Einstein was home for a majority of the day. It was in the middle of winter and the heater for the dorms went down leaving everyones rooms cold. Eventually the cold caused her to become sentimental and made it where she couldn't ignore the repressed feelings, and combine that with the fact Tesla wasn't home she just kinda emotionally died.

Eins journals, and while Tes is aware of it and doesn't care, she keeps a hidden one she doesn't know about. Although at this point both of them were fully comfortable talking to each other about anything, it was one of those things that she still needed sometimes. Writing was (still is) one of the main ways she copes with difficult events / emotions.

Considering at this point neither was sure what the other thought she couldn't just talk to her about it. This was one of those moments where she needed to either write or talk with someone, and she didn't want to bother anyone. After a while she eventually dug out her second journal and started writing (basically rambling) using theire math language (because it was less embarrassing, plus if anyone else found it they'd think it was just part of her work). Originally she had planned to just put it up before Tes came home, but unfortunately for her she just completely forgot time existed for a few hours.

Tes did end up coming home around ten at night and sat down by Eins, exhausted and just wanting to be with her. She eventually glanced down to see what she was working on. Although it took her a minute to process what she was reading, she eventually realized and went completely still and channeled her inner lobster turning bright red. Eins eventually realized she was there and when she turned to tell her hi she quickly realized time was actually a thing and that Tes was not, in fact, completely illiterate.

They just stared at each other neither knowing what to say, and Einstein just wanted to disappear off the face of the earth. Eventually she decided to make an attempt at speaking, though she couldn't really get it out without stuttering. "T.. Tesla I-"

Tesla just kinda sat there before forcing herself to say they needed to talk, and proceeding to stand up and immediately tripping trying to go back to their room.

After about twenty to thirty minutes of Einstein just pacing back and forth preparing herself to get absolutely murdered and freaking out internally, she forced herself to actually go talk to her. Though Joachim probably got several texts along the lines of "Fuck. She knows this isn't a drill please help me." and him just essentially replying with "lmao good luck" and proceeding to go to bed. (Tesla had texted him less than ten minutes before freaking out. He was just happy they both were being forced to talk and he could be left alone. Both him and Joyce deserve financial compensation because they were both stuck in the middle of this for years. Joyce only escaped because he decided to just die on them and hid himself specifically so he didn't have to deal with their insanity.)

Eventually she poked her head into their room to see Tes just sitting on their bed. Just staring at the picture of them that was normally on her nightstand looking like she was about to cry, not even noticing her there.

Eventually she just said "Tes can I come in." Causing Tesla to get startled and look up before just nodding her head and looking down. The insanity continued, with Einstein trying to apologize and Tesla just telling her to stop, meanwhile on the verge of tears. After a few minutes of silence, Tesla eventually looked up and just asked her if she meant what she wrote. Einstein said yes, crying insued and they were finally together officially.

Joachim was now faced with a new problem of them being happier than ever and refusing to shut up. The Welts never win.

#einsla #tesla #einstein #honkai impact 3rd #joyce mention #joachim mention #I put jokes in here because I feel embarrassed throwing this out onto the internet for everyone to see #but I do have a serious version in fanfic form I might post later #idk #the pure power of lesbianism always wins #patches rambles #2022 posts #nikolas posts

[ghosthan]

hello!! i saw that you made a lot of stuff for 1872 and i was wondering if 1872 tony is similar to regular comics tony?? i know mcu and comics tony are different and i want to get into 616, but if 1872 comics are more easy to read i might try those first! 😅

Hello, hello! 

Thank you for asking, and sorry it took me so long to get back to you! I wanted to think about it and put together a thoughtful response because I am desperately trying to convert MCU fans to 1872. Or comics fans who just haven’t gotten into 1872.

This post will contain some 1872 spoilers, but not the Big Spoiler that you probably already know about anyways. 

Anyways, let’s get into it. Yeehaw.

What is 1872? It’s Steve/Tony in the wild west.

1872 comics are very easy to read, very short, and you need absolutely no prior knowledge to get into them; I highly recommend these as a start point for MCU fans who are curious about dipping their toes into some of the other Steve/Tony universes. And 1872 is, indeed, a Steve/Tony universe. It’s really gay, (and dramatic.) Uh. So gay, in fact, that one of the comic artists who drew pages even occasionally shares Steve/Tony shipping memes. So.

Marvel 1872 is a four issue series released as a part of the Secret Wars event; you really do not need to know anything about this to enjoy 1872, because it is a self-contained alternate universe in a “pocket dimension”, meaning it’s totally separate from the 616 cannon but technically exists in the expanse of the multiverse!

Here’s the summary:

In the Battleworld zone of 1872, Sheriff Steve Rogers faces corruption and fear in the boom town of Timely. Can Anthony Stark pull Rogers' fat from the fire? Probably not, since the only thing he seems capable of pulling is a cork from a bottle. Things in Timely are bad, and getting worse — and when a stranger arrives in town, Timely will be changed forever.

Now, to compare “regular comics Tony”, or 616 Tony, with 1872 Tony.

The main difference? 616 Tony wears this sexy little under suit (or nothing) under his armor, like this:

And 1872 Tony wears dirty, stinky one-piece pajamas under his armor (not sexy):

He’s so gross, he’s a mess. I love him. You’ll love him, too. 

No, okay. Being serious.

 616!Tony’s backstory is a lot more complicated just due to how long the character has existed, and the decades of cannon (much of it self-contradictory at points.) Like MCU Tony, 616 Tony used to manufacture weapons, experiences something life-changing, and becomes who he is as a result of this as a catalyst. 616 Tony’s backstory has been rebooted a few times, and I’m definitely not the definitive source on Iron Man lore compared to people who have read all of his comics, but I’ll try to touch on the basics.

Originally, 616 Tony Stark is shaped by his experience in the Vietnam War. This is later rebooted and changed to war in the middle East (we see this in the MCU when Tony is held captive in Afghanistan.) In both circumstances, he is taken captive after being in the air for war technology, and then he creates the suit to save his own life (losing a beloved mentor in the process, the guilt of which stays with him after.)

Tales of Suspense #39

In 1872, Tony’s formative event is the Civil War in some ways, but in other ways, this is only half of it, because this is not the event which causes him to build armor or set him onto his “become a better person” trajectory, like in the other comics. Mainly, the Civil War functions to cause Tony to stop weapons manufacturing and throw his life away down a bottle.

We get a flashback of Tony in the year 1862 with his female companion, picnicking and about to watch a battle, (rich people from the North did this in real life. If you’re interested, read more here!) We don’t get much of his past, but we discover that he is a rifle manufacturer and that he has created something called the ‘Stark Repeating Rifle’, and it seems that he has done so with the hope of encouraging a cease-fire, more than a slaughter.

Well. We don’t always get what we ask for.

Tony vows to actually never touch a weapon ever again, and this personal oath means so much to him that he gets creative at times during 1872 when he’s being chased by baddies:

Witnessing the extreme bloodshed of the Civil War, and feeling responsible for a huge amount of deaths, Tony turns to drinking, (and presumably moves to the west to escape the Pain of his Past, but this is not shown explicitly on panel; I have assumed, though, that Tony’s weapons manufacturing company was in the East, probably Boston or New York, since he comes from family money and because the American West was still “young” at this point in time so it would be unlikely that an established business would be supplying a war from lawless territory with little infrastructure.)

In 616, it’s worth noting that Tony builds the armor to save himself from danger in a war scenario; this is not the case in 1872, things unfold a bit differently. The Civil War certainly sets in motion the chain of events that eventually lead to the creation of Tony’s armor, but he’s not in physical danger or physically traumatized by the war in this verse as he is in other verses, and 616 Tony seems to have a stronger sense of duty than 1872 Tony, but this might be a complication of the depression/apathy related to the alcoholism.

What I mean by this is that both iterations of Tony struggle with alcoholism, but differently. Mainly, while 616 Tony has several alcohol themed arcs, and hits rock bottom with his alcoholism to cope with his trauma, he is sober more than he is drunk in the comics. His drinking almost kills him, and he almost loses everything because of the drink. It’s a source of enormous shame for him.

In fact, during this time in 616, I think Tony at his lowest reminds me a lot of 1872 Tony; 616 Tony is not an apathetic person and he holds himself accountable for an obscene amount of responsibility, but during what is referred to in fandom as The Second Drinking Arc, Tony basically gives up. This is the most “like” 1872 Tony, at least at the start of his arc. Rhodey takes over the mantle of Iron Man, and 616 Tony spirals, not caring whether he lives or dies, not hero-ing certainly.

We see both versions of Tony express similar sentiments, a certain cavalier attitude about their lives (and outright suicidality at other points) with nothing left but the drink.

Iron Man Vol. 1 #182

Compare with:

And you can certainly see a resemblance between this set of panels from IM v.1 #176 and in 1872:

Iron Man Vol. 1 #176 and Marvel 1872 #1

It’s a little different in 1872, where his drinking really is purely a result of his existing despair, and it doesn’t cause enormous problems for him, (minor problems, sure. He spends a lot of time drunkenly singing to Sheriff Rogers, or bothering him from the inside of a jail cell.) But this Tony lives at rock bottom, whereas 616 Tony only stays at rock bottom long enough to get his life back together (as many times as it takes.)

This Tony really doesn’t show any outward shame about his drinking; presumably, the people he knows in Timely have only ever known Tony as a drunk, and none of the people from his old life are here to see him like this. 

This is a Tony who has essentially given up on himself and has moved out West to hide from his shame and his past; this is not a Tony who is scared of letting down his friends by drinking, or scared of shirking his “duty”, because this Tony has moved away from all of his friends and has given himself no duties. He’s a bit more apathetic, but I would argue that this is not because he inherently is a less moral version of Tony, but because in this verse, he was drinking for a very long time and circumstances unfolded differently so it took him a longer time to find that sense of purpose and responsibility (beyond just shutting down manufacturing guns,) which is awakened in him by Steve Rogers. 

616 Tony’s sobriety is a major part of his character, and a conscious choice that he makes, even during some lowest points:

Civil War: The Confession

He takes some amount of pride in his sobriety, and when he does fall off the wagon at times (or magic makes everyone think he did,) it absolutely tears him up because 616 Tony cares very, very much about his sobriety and does not like who he is when he’s drinking. We do not know if 1872 Tony’s father had been a drunk or not, but we know 616 Tony’s father was, and that the drink lead to him treating Tony abusively.

Iron Man Vol. 1 #285 

Avengers Disassembled #1 (This was when ~magic~ made Tony drunk and it wrecked him breaking sobriety without ever having actually drank. Oof.)

616 Tony’s long struggle with alcoholism is a major part of his character and he has had relapses over the years and throughout the reboots, but in general, he does not drink.

1872 Tony starts drinking in 1862 and doesn’t stop until the last pages of the story, so in terms of the cannon we have for him, he is a current drunk, rather than a former drunk. This isn’t to say he doesn’t stop; but since it’s in the last page or so, it sets the reader up to imagine his sober future, rather than exploring his sobriety as 616 does. (Calling all fanfic writers!)

Anyways, both Tony’s are excellent. Both are damaged and traumatized, both are Iron Man in their own ways, both (eventually) find sobriety, both have some cute, quippy dialogue (though 616 Tony tends to be more reserved/polite for sure, in general). 

The last thing I’ll point out, is that both Tonys’ narratives are intertwined with and influenced by their respective Steve Rogers. I’m not saying soulmates but I’m saying soulmates.

Anyways. Sorry this post got super long, and I apologize if any of it is confusing or redundant, I am not functioning at my highest capacity currently. Please read 1872. Let it rock your world. Create & consume the fanworks, I would love to see a boom of 1872 content (more than the fics and art I keep making!) And my ask-box is always open!

#Anonymous #anon #ask #1872 #1872 stony #stevetony #stony #616 stony #616 #han reads comics #my post #idk how to tag this my brain is fried sorry if this post is all over the place #tw suicide mention #suicide mention #tw alcohol #alcohol #tw abuse #abuse #long post #comic panels #han speaks

[embrythecall]

a twilight tag game, you say?

pick 5-10 characters and write your take on the canon version of them vs. fanon version of them. fanon doesn’t have to be what is generally accepted in the fandom, it can be your own idea of what you think a character is like. then tag the same number of people as characters you pick, if you can.

I was tagged by @teamjacobthot -- thank you so much! I’m excited to get into this :) 

EMBRY 

(obviously because i adore him with my whole soul) 

Canon:

chill aka probably just shy let’s be real here

likes to bet on things? 

seems to have the most common sense

Fanon:

HERE WE GO, EVERYBODY *cracks knuckles*

def the smartest one out of him, jake and quil. 

an observer. definitely a people watcher. he reads the VIBEZ

very, super, ultra, mega sarcastic. almost cynical. I feel like he’s probably a realist in a lot of situations rather than either an optimist or a pessimist. probably leans a little more towards pessimism though 

refuses to learn about his dad (though, I personally believe it’s Joshua Uley, but that’s a long headcanon for another day unless someone specifically wants to know my thoughts on it more haha)

a super romantic without knowing he’s a romantic? 

real tight with his mom-- they’ve only ever had each other since old daddio has been out of the picture the entire time and she’s probably never really dated (once again, i have more thoughts on that too but you know, i digress)

also i SUPER headcanon that he almost ALWAYS only refers to her as, “Ma,” unless it is a serious situation in which he uses ‘mother’ but i do NOT feel like he is a ‘mom’ person. at least for his own mother. 

honestly these are just all my own headcanon i have no idea what people think about him :S 

for me, i think him and Jacob are closer than Quil is to either of them. In my mind, when embry’s mom Tiffany first got to town, she became really good friends with Sarah Black and thus, Jacob and Embry have kind of been friends since birth, quil only coming in a little later maybe and just not having the same kind of friendship that embry and jake have

I think him and Leah secretly get each other. Like they don’t talk much or anything, but Embry never makes comments to or about her and doesn’t participate in the guys being absolute jerks to her. 

also, he just guzzles that respect women juice. like, he was raised solely by his mother so like... he was taught to respect women and also i think this makes him more empathetic to other people which is why he wouldn’t be mean to leah or say mean things about her because he’d understand to a level and might even see pieces of his own mother in her because they both were screwed over by men and he never EVER wants to be that to anybody ever

probably plays guitar but NEVER shows anybody 

usually the but of a joke between jake and quil. 

also the decider in arguments between jake and quil

i have a zillion more but i’ll quit while i’m ahead

also

is a slut for muffins

QUIL ATEARA V

Canon:

he thinks he’s a ladies man (thinks) 

more outgoing?

likes hanging out with friends 

took his cousin to prom 

Fanon:

so, so, so funny as in a total dork with a lot of unearned confidence

book smart but NOT street smart

prefers name brand foods over generic because it just ‘has that extra something something’ and also, class

loves to debate with jacob. he always ends up taking it somehow more seriously than jacob does. 

i actually do not know why nobody talks about quil i feel like he’s super underrated and actually hilarious.

@teamjacobthot‘s one of this tag game mentioned he was a soundcloud rapper and i think i DIED so imma also go with that and second you there

very particular about how things are done 

a lover of the puns

toy story is his favorite childhood film, and he announces it as so. 

LEAH CLEARWATER

Canon:

angry and bitter 

thinks nothing more than of sam 

hates vampires 

sassy

Fanon:

i absolutely LOVE practically every fanon i’ve ever seen of leah in the fandom like...ever. they are all so amazing and i actually just want tons and tons of fanfictions about all of them

Ngl, i really am a big AngelaxLeah fan

BUT 

I PERSONALLY hc that leah gets fed up with being in the pack and she feels like there’s really nothing there for her. She ends up leaving la puzb to go off and explore the world-- she wants to see it and experience more than just the memories and the life that surrounds her in la push. she travels all over and often does so in wolf form when she can. I HC she imprints there-- on a real nice super cool lady from some other country. (this is another thing i could go on for days about, i will write a fanfic about it one day. ONE DAY i shall PREVAIL!) 

Honestly, i really do like Leah as she was canon. I think that it was the way everybody acted around her that i would change and i feel like the fandom as a whole agrees on that 

like yeah, Leah is a badass bitch with a great sense of humor. she’s witty and sarcastic and smart and wise and i just love her to pieces. everyone else just needs to wise up and be nicer

JACOB 

Canon:

super supportive and kind and loving and understanding and THEN smeyer swooped in and DESTROYED MY BOY. 

like, don’t even get me STARTED on my feelings about what she did to her OWN CHARACTER 

i mean really

smeyer straight up didn’t know what to do with him so she did... all of THAT. it makes me want to wheep.

Fanon:

the fanons out there on Jacob are just... they are SO WONDERFUL and give me SO MUCH JOY 

i’ve heard him being a mechanic obviously, i’ve heard about the HILARIOUS details of his friendship with like, alice and rosalie and emmett like... that shit is so funny i live for it 

i could read jacob fanons all day

i guess personally, i just love to bits. he’s super patient. very funny but also is really understanding and can (and loves) to get into deep discussions about stuff and listen to other people’s passions and share his own. 

purposefully pushes quil’s buttons so he can get a rise out of him because he LOVES their dumb bickering and enjoys a good debate 

is also almost always right in those debates 

quil probably won like... twice in all of history and it was based on some kind of weird trivia fact he learned in a biology class or something lol

i bet that when the time came he had kids (not with you-know-who obviously cause just...no), he’d be SUCH a great dad and he’d be SUPER hands-on with them, like always taking them places and teaching them how to do various stuff

and if one of his kids was really into something he didn’t know how to do, you KNOW his ass is up on youtube all night long learning how to do it so he can spend THAT MUCH MORE TIME with his kids 

oh he’s just so sweet love him to pieces 

RENESMESS

...I had to do this but i have a good reason:

Canon:

exists

Fanon:

absolutely does NOT exist

who?

the only ONLY acknowledgement i will give her is i read a fanon somewhere about how she HATES her name. like she is downright royally not okay with it and when she gets older and has to go to school for eternity with her family (weird. seriously so weird but i’m pushing through this) she decides to announce that she is only going by this other name (personally i feel like it’s Carlie because it’s still her middle name and jfd;akfsd but also because it’s A NORMAL NAME) and so she is never called renesmee again because that is straight up a monster name and even her nickname is a monster so like, ugh. 

also, i REFUSE to believe that Jacob imprinted on her, okay? if she has to exist, he did NOT imprint on her and they can be buds or something but just... no. (i have so many issues with imprinting guys, i should just sit down and write a long post about it but the ENERGY and it isn’t like it’s not all things that have been said before. it’s more what I’d fix about it so it could still exist but not be a legit code word for grooming and an excuse for blatant p*d* grossness because that’s all it is and i HATE THAT) 

so I don’t talk to anyone in the fandom really because i don’t really know how to start conversations like... at all. I really WANT to talk to people but I’m a chicken and i have a hard time, BUT, i really admire so many of the blogs on here and i LOVE so much of their content. Off the top of my head, i shall tag: 

@chiefjacob @911esme @jacobblackredemptionblog @embrycallsmuffin @leahclearwaterdefensesquad AND anyone else who wishes to do this! it was so much fun! I say do it! and if you’ve already done it, i just tip my hat to you for being an awesome blog :) 

seriously! tag me when you do it, i want to see your answers!! 

#twilight #twilight saga #the twilight saga #tag game #twilight series #jacob black #team jacob #wolf pack #quil ateara #embry call #leah clearwater

[rpbetter]

a vent (feel free to ignore if it's too much!): so recently i've noticed psd makers getting anon asks on whether they're ok with people who write certain topics (mostly rpf, incest, rape, underage, the usual "problematic" topics) using their recourses. now, i don't roleplay any of these subjects on tumblr, so even if a content creator said not to use their stuff, it's not even something i need to worry about - but, and maybe this is me overthinking it, what if i, someday, write a noncon fanfic on ao3? i'm still not using their resources on the subject or writing it on tumblr, but i'd probably feel weird about it, like i'm crossing some boundary. what if a psd maker whose content i've already purchased suddenly goes "actually don't use my psds if you rp abusive relationships", which is probably the closest to what people consider "taboo themes" of the things that i roleplay. it just feels like a fine line between personal boundaries and a shitty situation for a customer - not wanting to cross boundaries but already having PAID for something previously, when no such rules existed. it's making me want to 1. block everyone i see saying this, because even though i don't personally roleplay the topics above, i don't feel SAFE around people who tell others what kind of fiction they are allowed to enjoy and 2. just quit using people's resources and spend years learning to make my own psds so i won't have to worry about this shit. it's just stressing me out, as someone who has been harrassed and bullied online for speaking against censorship. i've had literal sock accounts made just to spew targetted harrassment at me on twitter. i've been accused of being a pedo and supporting incest and this is??? literally for saying "i don't think real people should be harrassed for fictional shit", i've not even shipped underage or incest ships. both make me uncomfortable. but fuck, antis make me 1000000x more uncomfortable than people who ship these kinda ships. i digress, this got rambley, i just. do you have any advice on what to do with the potential psd situation, or am i really just overthinking it? (always worried i accidentally send stuff like this off anon. help)

I need you to know that I actually had to rush-scroll back up and just double check that you did submit on anon lol! I always get worried I'll miss the one person who accidentally didn't use anon, if it makes you feel any better! When someone does submit with their URL attached, I message them first to be sure they are okay with them having it posted that way/it wasn't an accident ;) That's what I would want someone to do!

Alright, so, anyhow...

I've also noticed that becoming a more common thing and it's been on my (maybe huge) list of things to look into for a bit because I really do try to make sure I'm not just noticing things in my areas of the RPC/failing to notice things that do not impact me. Since I do all my edits and graphics, it falls into the first category for me. So, thank you for moving that up the list and informing me that it really is more prevalent and not my imagination!

My take on seeing it was a combination of business logic and anxiety, not going to lie.

On the first: charging to do a psd that is just that, just a psd file being used as a template/to act as an easier version of a photoshop "action" in a way, that's 100% legal and fine. Absolutely no muddy waters there. However, charging to do things like icons, edits, etc. that include images of celebrities and stills from movies (or gifs) is quite muddy. Legally, it's not legal. It's a thing we're allowed to do and use (on most platforms) because we're not making money off of it, we're not claiming to hold rights to the images, and so on - it's ignored but illegal. Charging money for it, however, even when phrased as "for my time" (which, absolutely valid feeling), is a more serious form of illegal and potentially attention-getting. This all gets more iffy though when we add donation instead of direct commission/purchase when working with these copyrighted materials. You can ask people to donate and suggest a donation based on your time spent, and that is always what I advise people to do.

Okay, so, that preface is necessary because the thing about stipulating use-rights is that they're iffy, too, there are variables present.

Often, these same people are charging for things like icon packs as well, meaning that even if they're only charging you for a template-style psd file sans imagery they don't own, they've kind of shot themselves in the foot. Not to mention, it's exceedingly damn hypocritical to pitch a fit about someone violating your rights when you're literally using other people's copyrighted materials lmao And that does tend to occur to me, yeah, it's a consequence of attorney friends and running businesses.

The other issues with this are that usage rights have to be stated at the time of purchase and morality clause-style shit, as pertains to products, is not legally binding.

When you purchase something like a psd file, that purchase acts as a sort of contract.

Think of like...buying a photoshop brush set - the person selling it puts very simple rules as to its use, such as: non-commercial use only, brush pack cannot be resold or distributed for free, separate brushes from the pack cannot be resold or distributed for free individually. Meaning that you own the brushes you bought, but you are not legally allowed to make real-life money from anything you use them in, and you cannot send the whole pack or files individually to friends for free or charge other people for them. By buying these, you have agreed to these stipulations of use and ownership.

If the person sells psd's and you agree to what they've stated about the use (you can't use them to do commissions you make IRL money from, you can't give them away to friends, etc.), that's binding even somewhere as casual as RP Land. The exchange of real currency makes it that serious.

However, there are limits to stipulations of use! One of those things is when you agreed - this person cannot, even one literal second, later change their terms of use and retroactively hold you to them. If they were okay with you not crediting them anywhere or using them in works you will gift others or charge others something like game currency for at the time you purchased, then that's it. Tough shit for them, not you, when they decide a month later that they want credit given where the work appears, that they do not want finished products gifted, or don't want you to make even in-game currency from them.

And that absolutely would apply to the morality wank, yes.

Except that this very morality wank comes with its own issues. Reality is not tumblr. In reality, at least in most instances and countries, you can't throw in a fucking morality clause regarding the buyer, use of item, or finished product.

Think of this in this way: Chik-Fil-A starts denying chicken and waffle fries to anyone suspected of being queer. They're legally allowed to run their business (as a private business, everything does have variables) with some things that are morally objectionable that they feel morally aligns with their religious beliefs. They're not allowed to deny queer workers a job or queer customers service, however, in accordance with overarching laws.

While "being gross" online in fiction is not like, making anyone a protected status person lol this is just an extreme example to drive home the point. Legally, when it comes to items/products be they digital or physical, your rights and responsibilities as the seller don't include your moral policing.

What your right is, is to make people uncomfortable to a degree, yeah. You absolutely can do that. You can state some nasty shit about prospective buyers you don't want. For example, they should (I mean, they should just grow up and get some real concerns, but) be stating that they would not like to see their psd's used by people on this following DNI list of idiocy, and they will block those users if possible to prevent interaction and purchase. That's really it, that's what they can do and the least immature way to proceed.

On the second: none of this logic would make me feel comfortable about interacting with them and their psd's in the future once they had outed themselves as morally objectionable and dangerous to me with this nonsense. And I would still feel anxious about using things I had previously bought because once harassed...it doesn't really go away, does it? It would just give me some ease about the latter with things I'd already made. Like, I could keep using the icons I'd made with those psd's with a little bit more comfort knowing that they honestly have not a leg to stand on outside of their harassment.

I might have the tendency to respond to harassment without much upset, but that doesn't mean I want to be harassed. Especially when I am not doing anything that draws that kind of attention. Not that harassment is warranted over anything, but when I make a PSA or answer an ask that I know is likely to get their attention and piss them off? That's an acceptable risk I am knowingly taking. When I'm just going about my life as a RPer, it isn't.

So, I don't feel like you're overthinking it or being too concerned! In no way did you sign up for getting unwanted attention, and because it has happened before, of course, you're trying to insulate yourself from having it happen again. That's totally reasonable!

Now, what you could do about it...

It's another of those situations in which we're only truly capable of controlling ourselves. Everyone else is kind of a NPC.

You don't have to do anything I'm suggesting, but these are things I would do!

I would block the shit out of anyone saying these things/trying to make them stipulations, yes.

By that, I mean that I would also visit blogs they appear to interact with and they'd be blocked as well. We can all reblog something like resources or a shit post from a user we do not agree with without realizing it, but when it's frequent reblogs, direct support, and friendly vibes going on, it's safer to assume that they are aware their friend sucks. More importantly, that they do not think their friend sucks and support their views.

Even if that is not the case, do you want someone else's repeated inattention to expose you to bad actors? Nope! So, don't run the risk of paying and otherwise interacting with the one resource blog in the group that doesn't express these views/"requirements," but does involve themselves with those who do.

Try to find people selling these resources, that are not connected to the problem ones, who do not have those views. Once a trend starts, it is very hard to stop until it has run its course naturally, so, this might be difficult and take some extreme effort. You might want to consider asking like-minded friends who use psd's where they got them so you can check those users out for yourself.

If they're all the same, problem, people...

Look for users well outside of your corner of the RPC(s) who are not asking to be paid. I know it sounds wild, but there really are RPers out there who just enjoy making things for others! I can think of at least one right off on my dash. They might not be advertising for doing psd's or psd packs, but either they might be willing to do so (especially if they do not appear policing-positive) if you explain what is going on, or they could at least fill some requests for you for fully made icons and such. Hell, people who love doing this work usually know others who do as well, and anti-policing people quite reasonably stick together. They could have suggestions for someone not vile selling psd's.

Depending on what it is you want your psd's to do, I promise you that it wouldn't take you very long to learn it. I know...I know lol that's both really easy for me say when I've been doing it for over twenty years and am about to piss some people off. The latter because the most common settings on popular psd's are extremely simple shit, a lot of that is the kind of thing you're expressly told not to do in design work. Like ramping up extreme contrast, pixelating the fuck out of an image, and turning up the primary colors only. Once you get to playing with photoshop or an equivalent, you will totally see what I mean. You can accidentally make an icon look identical to something that is on trend in the RPC. If that was what you were going for? You've hit the mark, and it's just repetition and tweaking it here and there!

Once you start playing with it, too, it's actually pretty intuitive when it comes to the basic things like resizing, adjusting colors and contrast, and doing easy effects like blurs and sharpening. Frankly, playing with it is better than half the tutorials you'll find because they get unnecessarily complicated when all you want to do is crop your muse's face, overlay some color, and add a damn dotted border. Listen, like I said, I have a lot of experience...and I find many tutorials frustrating and overwhelming!

It is not just you, you're not dumb or anything. People get very comfortable with something and when they try to explain it to others, they use terms and methods that are more advanced or specific to them than they realize. That's all!

If you have friends who make their own things, ask them some very basic questions about what you want to do. They know you, so, they'll know better how to explain to you, specifically. Just keep it simple until you've had some time to experiment! Ask things like, "I want to take this image, resize it to be an icon, and add an orange tint to the image while sharpening only my muse's features...how would I do that? Easy mode?"

And! You don't even have to pay for photoshop or pirate it anymore! Photopea is as an exact copy as possible entirely located in your browser for free. It's all overwhelming at first, a real case of too many options and ways to do the same thing, but the only way it gets less overwhelming is just diving into it. Dive in, get a little frustrated, have some successes, make some awesome discoveries, it gets a bit addicting in short order. Then, the tutorials and tips are so much easier to figure out and expand on, too.

If you'd like, you can always send me a pm here and ask me. I'm happy to try to explain how to do things, zero judgment or impatience. Just an additional option if you both decide to try learning and would feel comfortable doing that. Zero judgment as well on not wanting to do either of those things!

Okay, this one is much harder than learning PS basics because it's honestly a bit terrifying...the way these people are, they're going to take issue with you no matter what you do, and in the end, if they notice you and feel like bothering you, they will. There's literally nothing you can do about it. All you can do is try to buffer yourself, stay away from them, and be aware that you are not the problem.

Like with the AO3 thing or writing what could be viewed as toxic relationships. You can never write or be interested in a single, solitary thing that they're on about (and accusing you of doing in real life when the burning Eye of Moron turns your direction), but to them, you supporting the right of other people to do so is just as bad as doing it yourself. To them, the toxic relationships not only would be problematic, they'd be problematic enough. Being uncomfortable with their policing and feeling unsafe because of it is, to them, a red flag of how problematic you are. Writing anything they've deemed objectionable (or reading or viewing it, for that matter) anywhere, doesn't have to be on this platform or RP-adjacent, doesn't have to actually utilize any of their materials, is enough.

They're absolutely including you in who shouldn't use their shit. That's part of the "logic" and methodology of policing. Everyone is problematic, so, everyone can be labeled a pedo and harassed without too many people getting up in arms about it. No one is safe, so, everyone better behave. You don't actually have to be engaging with or enjoying things like underage, non/dubcon, rape, abusive relationships, etc.

It's gross, it's bullying, it's actually a problem...and there isn't much you can do.

All that is truly up to you is making an effort to avoid them, though, this is very often unfair and likely to get more unfair as resource blogs of all sorts deal in it more. At least, in this case, you do have some small bit of actionable power - by not ever buying from them. They wouldn't be charging if they did not either need or want the money, not giving it to them is a bigger hit than things like simply unfollowing/blocking, reblogging PSA's, and so on is!

Nope, it isn't like you're denying them some extreme amount of money by yourself, but every three, five, ten dollars is felt pretty hard when you desperately need money and/or are saving for something.

I know, I mean, I personally do know, that it's impossible to "get over" bullying, Anon. I'm in no way telling you to just get over it and move on, find some great well of not caring somewhere! What I'm saying is that there is power in not giving them power. The power to make you anxious, uncomfortable, unsafe, when you have every right to be here doing your thing and are not hurting anyone. And it might seem to be a deeply contrary sort of logic, but realizing and accepting that there are people out there who irrationally dislike you for literally no reason, that you cannot infallibly escape or avoid, despite doing nothing wrong is a bit empowering. Because it puts into perspective the things you can control, and when we know what is in our control, it's easier to just enjoy our time here without constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. If it drops, we can go put it back in the closet where it belongs.

It starts to put a positive spin on the whole, damned if I do, damned if I don't feeling, if that makes sense? I'm probably way too tired to try to be explaining this lol I'm sorry!

Anyway, again, I'm not implying you can or should do any, let alone all, of those suggestions! I just really hope that something will help you feel even a little bit more at ease. It's an unfair situation, it isn't right, and you have every reason to be uncomfortable and stressed. If I could make it happen, you better believe that every policing asshole out there would be writing heartfelt apology letters and sending donations to everyone they've upset lol but...since I can't make that happen, all I can do is say what I, personally, do, would do, or have done.

#answered #anonymous #purity police #resources #rp advice

[benisasoftboi]

Gushing time.

Rune Factory 4 Special arrived a day early, so my entire day has been consumed in nostalgia. The original Rune Factory 4 was the first video game I ever bought on release day - I remember saving up all my money and making my mum drive me to like three different shops trying to find one that had it. I was already a fan of the franchise - before then, Rune Factory 3 had been my favourite video game, across the board. Aside from a playthrough of the first game last year, I haven’t played a Rune Factory game in a long time, certainly not RF4. But just starting up the game and hearing the music again, it was like it was suddenly seven years ago. Running around Selphia and seeing all the characters again - I love JRPGs, have played a lot of them, and I can think of very few that have characters that have stuck with me this long. And the aesthetics - the best thing about the Rune Factory franchise has always been the aesthetics, the music, the scenic and character design, just the general world. It’s a beautifully whimsical balance of urban and fantasy, and it’s the only JRPG world I think I’ve ever come across that I would genuinely want to live in. Rune Factory may no longer be my favourite game franchise - but I don’t think there has ever been another series that has felt so much like home to me.

Here’s a very long selection of personal highlights from the art book (by which I mean photos of the art followed by my rambling opinions):

Yeah, see, here’s the thing - Rune Factory 1 is not a good game. I could write an entire essay on why it’s bad (I actually started and got pretty damn far before realising no one’s interested in my two thousand word review of a game that came out over a decade ago - the short version is ‘Misty Bloom-fucking-Cave’. Anyone who’s played RF1 knows exactly what I mean). Don’t get me wrong, it has good qualities - excellent boss fights, for one, and also, as with the rest of the franchise, it is aesthetically wonderful. But ultimately, it feels less like playing a video game, and more like playing a proof of concept for a game. Which I guess it kind of was - and I can’t hate it because we wouldn’t have the rest of the series without it.

But it literally ends with a dragon spewing plant breath on a tank to make a turnip grow out of the gun. ‘Profound’, my arse. 

It’s Raguna! The “master sowrdsman!” (that is not a typo on my part that is a direct quote from the ending of Rune Factory 1 this game’s script had so many issues-). And Mist! My favourite of the ‘canon’ love interests!

Best girl! When I was a kid, my favourite love interest in RF1 was Rosetta. As an adult, it is Tabatha. I don’t know what it is about her that I find so likeable (she’s as lacking in personality as any other RF1 character), but... idk, I just like her a lot.

Camus’s big ambition is to leave town like even once. He will never achieve it

Fun fact about Melody is that she’s extremely depressed, a fact that comes up once in an optional side quest and is never addressed again. It’s incredibly dark for an RF game

Fun fact about Lukas is that he sucks (he’s one of those ‘obsessed with talking about how hot all the girls are’ characters, an archetype that thankfully doesn’t show up again in these games). But also, interestingly enough, thanks to one of RF1′s many, many script errors, if you marry Rosetta (the girl Lukas is the most obsessed with), he’s supposed to express disappointment that he lost her to Raguna - but instead, he implies that he’s disappointed to have lost Raguna to her. The translators typoed their way into giving him a sexuality change. Which is honestly kind of amazing.

LOOK AT THIS SLIME THIS IS SUCH A COOL SLIME LITERALLY EVERY OTHER JPRG SLIME GO HOME DRAGON QUEST GET FUCKED (jk I like Dragon Quest a lot and its slimes are cool too). Wish you could see in-game that this is what they’re meant to be like.

I just generally love the monster designs, they’re really charming

Rune Factory 2! The RF game with the most weirdly mundane protagonist name (Kyle. In the main four games of this franchise we’ve got Raguna, Micah, Lest, Frey... and Kyle). The two generations thing was actually very cool, but when they say ‘each chapter captures a different lifestyle’, what they really mean is ‘the first half is a weak Harvest Moon I’m sorry, STORY OF SEASONS game, and the second half is a pretty good Rune Factory game’  

lookit this little fuck

Yue Yue Yue! I love Yue so much, she’s great. She’s kind of like a much chiller version of Anna from Fire Emblem.

It’s really cool that we got to see grown up Cecilia (she was in RF1). I have this silly headcanon that if Kyle doesn’t marry Mana, Nicholas (her friend in 1) comes to visit Cecilia one day in the hazy-post game future, and meets Mana, and they get together. While Yue is my favourite, I do genuinely like Mana a lot, and I just want her to find love, I guess.  

Here’s original Barrett! There’s a reason he was popular enough to make a reappearance (well, aside from the whole grumpy pretty boy thing he’s got going on) - he was a great character in this game. His and Dorothy’s relationship is also definitely the most compelling of the rival romances. Bonus Max, who also has a little shout-out in RF4 (check the diary in what will become Dylas’s bedroom at the start of the game)

Ray is male, but apparently he was originally going to be a female character, as he has an unused portrait in a wedding dress. My friend and I agree that this makes him a Trans Icon

Monster designs remain excellent. Especially the goblins

Skipping over Frontier (and also Oceans later), as I never got to play it growing up due to not having a console, and still haven’t got around to it - might try this summer. Except I do need to point out that these guys should be memes. I don’t know in what way. But they should.  

Rune Factory 3! My first RF game. The transformation thing was very cool, even if it was basically useless outside the main story. My friend and I spent hours mucking about in the WiFi dungeon. I loved the desert settlement and all of the dungeon designs in general, and man, RF3 is just great. I hope it gets a remake one day.

Raven Raven Raven! I LOVE Raven (as do most). Her story with Micah is the first time I can remember getting genuinely invested in a video game romance. I’m so glad she cameos in RF4. I love her. She’s wonderful.

I have an odd fondness for Marian. When I was about twelve, I decided to do a playthrough where I deliberately romanced the least popular bachelorette. After poking around on forums, I determined that character to be Marian, and did a run with her. And... I actually came to really like her. I find her endearing. I get that people find her annoying and don’t like her... unethical medical practices, but doing that run has still made me a pretty protective of her. It’s been a long time since I played RF3, so maybe I’d change my mind if I replayed now, but currently, as far as I’m concerned,  Marian’s a good’un.

I think I also used to low key ship her with Collette lol 

Pia’s official art has always been super weird to me because it’s so not what her character is like in-game. She’s a ditzy airhead. This makes her look so serious

RAINBOW! Another character whose art makes them look way more serious than they actually are. Daria is great and would be a meme if this game was more popular. I think she’s also implied to be a relative of Margaret. 

I’ve always been super confused about what Kuruna’s skirt is meant to be. Is it fur? Is it part of her shirt? Is it even a skirt at all?

Check it out, it’s the guy everyone would ship Micah with if this game was more popular

I want Zaid to make a reappearance and interact with Doug. Pretty sure it’s canon that they’re from the same clan? Think it would be very interesting.

RF3 definitely had the coolest farm. Also, still love the desert settlement.

This is from Oceans, so I have no context, but it’s just so cool that I had to share

Rune Factory 4. Culmination of the series is right - when I was playing it for the first time, I remember being blown away by just how much it is a true love letter to the franchise. I have never come across another game series that so consistently grew and improved from entry to entry. RF4 was a perfect ending.

Not that I’m complaining about getting RF5. Quite the opposite.

But if it had been the end (as we all thought it was until about a year ago), well, like I say. Perfect. 

Well. Aside from soda can nipples. Can’t believe they didn’t fix those. Though in some ways, that would have made me sad too

Dolce has such a cool design, in both human and monster form. I’ve always kind of crack-shipped her with Margaret, for no real reason at all

Vishnal! I love Vishnal. Vishnal is pure as heck. Marrying him this time around.

Doug! My choice from last time around. Another character who looks more serious in his official art than he is in-game (well... most of the time)

And then there’s Dylas, who looks much happier here than he does most of the time. Kind of looks like he and Doug swapped bodies, actually. There’s a fanfic prompt for you.

Their ship name is Dyldo. I love them

Leon is nostalgic for me mostly because my friend and I used to get into a lot of arguments about whether or not he’s the hottest character in the game. She maintains that he is, because muscles. I maintain that muscles aren’t actually that attractive. It is a rift that divides us to this day

(He looks oddly... younger in this art though? Weird)

Sechs Empire is such an unfortunate name. Seriously. How rushed was RF1′s localisation team? All those script errors, and then this (the Sechs were the antagonists in the first game, and were only referenced in passing in the rest until RF4 - so it was a bit of a ‘sins of the father’ situation by then).

Seriously, try saying ‘Sechs Emperor’ out loud and tell me you can take this man seriously 

I??? Love??? Them???

I??? LOVE??? THEM???

Still confused as to why Kiel, Xiao Pai, Arthur and Margaret are on the cover now. Don’t get me wrong, I like them, but... Amber, Dylas, Dolce and Leon made way more sense? Even the Archival Cover makes more sense (Vishnal, Clorica, Forte), as those three are all kind of Lest/Frey’s servants (well, Forte for the whole town, but still). Of those first four, all but Arthur basically lift right out of the game with little-to-no impact on the story

NO HAT TABATHA NO HAT TABATHA

I’ve always really loved this Raven picture

And I am thankful for you <3

#rune factory #rune factory 4 #rune factory 4 special #rf4 #rf4s #rf4srelease #i love these games <3

[daesungindistress]

not sure if you've been asked this before but do you think you will return to writing fic about bb and if so, would you include sr in your stories?

The last time I was asked this was back in March or April. And it’s difficult to give a final answer. I want to return to writing. The thought of abandoning all my WIPs and notes and ideas forever is a depressing one. And if I’m being honest, the longer I go without making something, be it art or fic, the emptier I feel.

Do I think I will? Return to writing? That I’m less certain about. The events of this year have left me feeling a bit disillusioned. Disenchanted. Disappointed. Yeah, they all kinda have the same meaning, but I guess I’m just trying to convey how this thing with Seungri, this tragedy, and the ongoing struggle within the fandom seems to have slowly stripped away my ability to separate BB’s public personas (and private selves) from the fictional versions we as writers play with. It’s broken down some necessary barriers.

The situation we’re in is too serious, too real, too heavy. And in my heart I feel there’s still too much uncertainty about their future. That uncertainty is steadily chipping away at the compartmentalization that let me comfortably turn them into characters and use them to tell stories. When I sit down and stare at all these notes from a happier, easier time I no longer see what I once did. I wonder, “Who wrote this? When? And how?” There’s some guilt too. Like, who am I to toy with them like this, to reduce them to fanfic fodder when so much has gone so wrong? Some fans have successfully escaped into fiction this year to forget; for me it’s the other way around. It’s been nine months but in a way the scandal is still front and center in my mind, and fanfic can’t overpower that. If anything, I’m almost… afraid to touch it again.

For example… the one fic I finished and posted this year, Sugar Kiss, was a smutty ToDae oneshot… and, regrettably, a sequel to a DaeRi fic. It was something I started late last year and had mostly completed by January, well before the scandal reached a boiling point. All the fic needed by then was a little polish, and it took me until July to find the energy for it. The teaser/summary was “It’s Daesung’s turn to be a bad influence” because in the fic before it he and Seungri had gotten up to some ~naughty fun~ together and Daesung decided he liked it enough to pass it on. So in Sugar Kiss Daesung shares what he learned from Seungri with Seunghyun. The joke was that Seungri persuaded him into mischief. Seunghyun even has a line in which he calls Seungri “a bad influence,” which one reader got really upset over, but I didn’t mean it in a bad way when I initially wrote it earlier this year. It was meant to be tongue-in-cheek. Just some silly, sexy, lighthearted fun, nothing more. I felt a little iffy posting it on the heels of Seungri’s scandal but in the end threw caution to the wind and went ahead with it.

Then, a few days later, the news about Daesung’s building broke and suddenly people were saying, “Daesung might be in on it!” and “He’s just like Seungri!” and “Daesung said they’d become close recently!” And I was like 😰 I had a few days to feel accomplished, after that it was pure regret. It’s like nothing is safe. Things I enjoyed before without thought or care… just aren’t that fun anymore. It’s really sucked the joy out of storytelling using real people. The thought lurks: what if some of the questionable stuff I write about them turns out to be, well, real? And then I have to either denounce or defend what I’ve written. People are still leaving kudos on that fic and its prequel, and every time I get the notification I wonder what they really think of it.

Anyway, to answer your other question: even though my view of Seungri has soured significantly since spring, my feelings on the matter of his involvement in my future fanfics, if any, have remained… largely the same. I think. The last time I talked about this I said I might continue to include him, but clarified that it would depend on the timeline (pre/post 2019) and setting (canon compliant, alternate universe). And also what role needs filling. Even after all we’ve learned about him, Seungri is still an interesting character to me with traits that I consider useful for the types of stories I like to tell. He’s a good foil for Daesung due to their opposing personalities, interests, lifestyles, values…. and for this reason I’ve always had a tendency to depict him as someone who brought conflict to the group in some form or another. His fans who found their way to my fanfics sometimes asked me to be kinder to him. Let’s just say now there will be no more pressure to pull my punches. That said, I expect any parts he does have will be small and fairly insignificant. A line or two, maybe even just a mention. My goal isn’t to pretend he never existed, just to avoid giving him undue attention that might, y’know… encourage people to like him.

…there is, however, one possible exception to that. Carnivores. Don’t think I’ve touched on this here yet? I had tentative plans to continue that series one day. Yes, even though I swore it was over. The story and setting is still meaningful to me and those characters feel more divorced from their inspirations, the Big Bang members, than any of my others. “They have lives of their own,” a reader once said to me, and I have to agree. You could change their names and I would still recognize them. I hoped it would be nothing too serious this time, nothing too intricate, just a oneshot catching up with the pack in their new home a year or two down the road. Here’s the problem though: Seungri was finally going to get something he’d always wanted. Something hinted at in the final scenes of Innocence & Instinct. And I wanted to scratch the surface of how they dealt with that.

Too bad 2019 has all but blown those plans to pieces. Carnivores!Seungri is not Big Bang’s Seungri or Lee Seunghyun, he is just a fictional character bearing his name and likeness, but even so, the absolute last thing I want to do right now is give him something he’s always wanted. No matter how I look at it, the thought of writing him into an important role comes off as really distasteful to me right now. So if that’s ever going to materialize, yeah, it’s gonna be awhile.

But wait. What if I give him something he’s always wanted… and then take it away. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? It came to me one day months ago, how I could work the events of this year into the series. Some parts of Carnivores do mirror real life events involving BB (such as Jiyong, Youngbae, Seunghyun, and Daesung confronting Seungri in Dreams Like Ashes over fears that he’s going to leave them for his newly formed group of human friends. Though I sort of glossed over it, this was based on things they were saying about him back in 2016, which was when that fic was written). So working his recent rise and fall into a future installment wouldn’t exactly be a new approach for this series. You could even say I’m a little intrigued by the idea.

Still, it’s too soon. Too fresh. And I don’t know how it ends, in this world or that one, or if I even have the creative energy to tackle something so… disruptive. Reality is hard enough. So until then, those plans will stay right where they’ve been all this time, boxed up in a dusty corner of my mind. I hope that one day I can reach back inside that box and share what I find with you all. Until then, I think what I need is a clearer sense of direction from BB… and more time to work up the courage to try.

#sorry this got long and rambling #I don't get to talk about my fanfic much #though I've been giving it a lot of thought #bigbang #fanfic #fanfiction #ask #anon #carnivores #seungri #also I haven't seen my otp together in almost 3 years so there's that too

[a-bit-too-much-of-a-zelda-fan]

Linked Universe Fanfic Ch. 1: The Cave (pt 1)

Stop! You’ve Violated the Law!

So, you’ve stumbled upon this original post for my Linked Universe fanfiction. That’s okay, it happens to everyone. As of March 2021, I’ve uploaded the entirety of this fanfic to my Archive of Our Own page. Along with finally giving the story a name (Oops! All Links: A Linked Universe Story) I made substantial edits to some of the chapters. These range from minor stylistic revisions to fixing a gaping plot hole that kinda completely broke the character conflict in the earlier chapters. I also renamed and renumbered (but not reordered) the chapters. Specifically, this is now Chapter 2.

The AO3 iterations of these chapters are the definitive versions. So, if you would like to read this fanfiction, please do so on AO3, right here. With this embedded link. Hehe. Geddit? Link?

Note: My screen name on AO3 is FrancisDuFresne. Yes, that is me. I am not plagiarizing myself.

Anyway, for posterity’s sake, the rest of the original post is below the cut.

@ linkeduniverse I had tons of fun writing my first fanfic for this AU, so I decided to write another. My last one was mainly dialogue, so I decided to focus this one on combat. Hope you enjoy! (edit: retroactively naming it to match it with the rest of my fan narrative) Word count: 1105

The clanging of swords striking swords rebounded off the walls of the cavern. Sparks flew through the damp air, pinpricks of light dancing in the darkness. Lamps hanging on belts flickered dimly, barely lighting the scene.

Stalfos surrounded the Links. There were easily a hundred of them, bombarding the nine heroes. “Hrrk!” Legend grunted as he deflected a blow off his shield. “You know, maybe this wasn’t the best idea!”

Between parries and dodges, Wild managed a sarcastic “What makes you say that?”

“I still can’t believe—” Legend dodged a swipe at his head— “I was the only one who—“ he parried a crooked sword with his shield— “thought we shouldn’t—” with a spin attack, he sliced off the head of the nearest stalfos— “go on a stroll through a cave!”

“I told you!” Wild snapped. “The Sheikah Slate said this was the quickest route!”

Warrior butted in, “Less talking, more fighting! We can settle this once we’re safe!”

While Wind was distracted looking over at his bickering teammates, a stalfos leapt forward, tackling him to the ground. His weapons clattered as he dropped them. He had completely forgotten his sword’s ability to freeze time for a brief moment.

A twisted skull and glowing eyes stared him in the face. Wind could see the monster’s sword being drawn higher. He struggled to get up, but it had him pinned. It was bringing its sword down…

“Guys!” he screamed. He covered his face with his arms, as if that would protect him. “HELP! AHHH—”

Twilight wasn’t even the closest of them all to Wind, but he heard him first. He whipped his head toward the scream and saw his youngest comrade about to meet a terrible fate. “NO!” His shout was more of a bark than words.

Faster than eyes could track, his form changed, and a wolf was charging full speed at Wind and his attacker. Five yards from them, the wolf leapt at the monster. In midair, the wolf disappeared again, leaving a furious Twilight in its place.The hero emerged twirling in a ferocious spin attack. He seemed to glide over Wind, his sword shattering the stalfos in his wake. He landed on all fours, his finger tips and boots skidding and kicking up dust.

Wind let his arm fall to his sides and propped himself up on his elbows. He stared at Twilight in awe. Twilight ran over to him. “Are you okay?”

“Y-yeah.”

“Good. Get on your feet.”

As Twilight lifted his sword and shield again, he took a fraction of a second to pat Wind on the head. He went back and started dueling with three stalfos at once. Wind got up, shaken but unhurt. He picked up his weapons and charged after Twilight.

Hyrule had just felled another monster. “Hey, if anyone has some special trick to help us out, this might be the time!”

Four realized that it may be time to bring in his other selves. He held the Four Sword aloft, pointing at what would be the sky had they been outdoors. A split second later, a blinding light shown from the blade. After the dark of the cave, it shocked the Links and stalfos alike.

The light faded, and four Links stood where one just had. They settled into perfect formation, moving in unison as if reading each other’s thoughts. Over the din of the battle, the others swore they could hear colors being shouted out.

The four identical Links formed a square, pushing groups of stalfos together. They moved in uncanny congruence with a chorus of war cries. Back slash. “Hup!” Forward slash. “Hup!” Back slash again. “Hup!” Spin attack. “HYAH!” They began to repeat this process over and over, tearing through the enemy ranks.

They other heroes and stalfos alike snapped out of their reverie and went back to fighting each other. Sky whistled. “Did anyone else have no idea he could do that?”

Incidentally, no one had.

An idea struck Legend. “Our boomerangs! Everyone, form up!” He, Time, Twilight, Wind, and Hyrule drew their boomerangs and threw them out into the crowd of monsters. Five twirling weapons knocked heads clean off the stalfos’ shoulders, with Twilight’s dragging the skulls into a whirlwind. The gale gathered the monsters’ bones with each of them it struck. In their one throw, the five heroes defeated at least thirty of their foes.

“Woo hoo!” Wind exclaimed. “You see that?!” 

Time did indeed see that. He spared a second to look at his companions. They had come far in their journey together. When they first met to take down Dark Link, they could barely work together. Now they could take down dozens of monsters with just one attack. He was proud of them all, even himself.

Now only forty or so stalfos remained standing. Sky had his own ingenious strategy come to him. “Twilight!” he yelled. “Follow my lead!”

Sky drew his whip. He swung the rope-like weapon. Its sticky end latched onto a stalfos’ head. With a yank, Sky ripped monster’s head off and started to swing it, buffeting its comrades.

Twilight saw this and grinned. Sky hadn’t made the perfect analogy, but he knew what he was supposed to do. He looked around at his companions. The Fours and Wind might make this, he thought, but I don’t want to take any chances… “EVERYONE! DOWN!”

They were confused but dropped to the ground anyway. Twilight reached into his pouch and took out his massive ball and chain. He started spinning and building up momentum. After a few seconds, the steel ball was whipping around the cave at full speed. Stalfos after stalfos had their bones destroyed as soon as they were hit.

Then there were thirteen. One monster per one hero. The Stalfos realized they were now at a serious disadvantage. They slowly started to back away. The Link’s stood together, shields leveled, swords raised. Warrior looked around and smiled. “So, what? Are we doing this one by one? Or some special technique? I mean I haven’t had the chance to—”

“No need for theatrics,” Time said. “Let’s do this nice and simple.”

Time paused a moment to observe the scene. In the flickering light of their lanterns dancing on the damp cave walls, he could see the carnage. Ninety-some stalfos lay defeated. Some simply missing heads, some whose only trace of ever existing was fragments of bones scattered on the ground.

Twelve young heroes stood together and faced impossible odds. Now able to fight these monsters one-on-one, Time had no doubt they could do this. He closed his eye slightly longer than a standard blink, sighed, and smiled. His eye, now open and filled with fury, focused on the skeletal monster ahead of him.

“Sic ‘em.”

#linkeduniverse #my writing #fan fiction #creator content #the legend of zelda #zelda

[amy-de-l-abc]

Request Prompts Post

So I’ve had some people discover that you can’t see the prompts page on mobile (thanks, @spnimpalaimagines!), so here it is in post form :)

In one of the questions in my survey about request etiquette, I had a few authors respond saying that they prefer it if I send them multiple request prompts and let them choose which one to write. That being the case, I decided I might as well keep an ongoing list of my prompts, so I can give authors the link instead of sending them a gajillion different asks with requests.  This, therefore, is the aforementioned list.

Asterisks mean I really want this written, so if you are choosing between two or something and one of them has little stars, go for that one, please.

Anyone who finds this page is welcome to write any of these, but if you would give me credit for the idea and let me know so I can see what you’ve written, that would be great!

NOTE: Some of these, if not all of them, could be adapted/changed/inspiration for Reader x Sam or Reader x Dean or whoever.  Feel free to do so, and if you do, I’d still love to see what you do with it, so shoot me an ask or a Fan Mail or whatever!  If I request, I probably want Cas unless otherwise specified, but if you’re just looking for something to write, go for it!

CAS x READER

NEW! (8/30/2015) **Death’s Daughter** Inspired by a comment from hogwartsismyhometoo.  Reader is the daughter of Death (nope, not gonna tell you how that works.  Be creative! :) ).  That’s really all I’ve got, except she ends up with Cas.  I want to see something of the relationship between Reader and her dear old daddy (what kind of dad is Death, anyway?).  Also, it’d be awesome to see Death’s reaction to his daughter and an angel–especially this angel.

**The Phantom of the Opera** Reader and Cas have unexpressed feelings for one another.  Reader has joined a theater group and is playing Christine in “The Phantom of the Opera.”  She keeps it from Team Free Will because she figures they (or at least Dean) will think musical theater is stupid.  (How much or if they know about her singing abilities is up to you.)  They find out and come to a performance.  Cas, while impressed with how well she did, is jealous that Reader is kissing another guy up on stage.  This somehow comes out.  Cue lots of innocent fluff and admission of feelings!

   Fics based on this prompt:

Cas x Reader by supernatural-imagine-oneshot

**Book Club** Sam and Reader (and Charlie, if you want, but you don’t have to include her) end up forming a book club between the two (or three) of them. One day, Cas hears the discussion getting a little heated and comes in, wanting to know what’s going on. Upon having things explained to him, he decides he wants to join. Things get interesting when, having been introduced to classics such as Harry Potter, Cas discovers fandom pick-up lines and thinks they’re an appropriate way to express his growing affection for Reader. The situation is not helped by Sam and/or Charlie, who is/are just encouraging him. Please keep the pick-up lines innocent (yes, innocent pick-up lines do exist :) ). This was partly inspired by the various fanfics in which people (mostly Dean) try to get Cas to use pick-up lines, and he fails epically.  (NOTE:  If you include Charlie, please don’t have her hitting on the reader at any point.  Strictly friendship there, please.)

Doctor Who Gabriel shows up and zaps Reader into “Doctor Who” (9th or 10thDoctor era, please). TFW are left to watch as she participates in the show.  They discover that Reader/her character/whatever has a bit of a romance going with the Doctor; Cas gets jealous. When Gabriel brings her back, Reader finds out about Cas’ feelings for her for the first time (he could admit it, or Sam, Dean, or Gabriel (or any combination of the three) could tell her; whatever you want). Innocent fluff ensues!

   Fics based on this prompt:

The Strange Blue Box by theobsessivefanfic666

Changing Channels by imagine-teamfreewill

Babysitter Reader is not a hunter, but she knows about the life.  Somehow Team Free Will have gotten saddled with an angel fledgling (or more than one if you want) and are at a loss as to what to do.  They find her, a babysitter/nanny, and hire her to take care of the fledgling(s).  The Winchesters leave Cas with her, for protection and because he can help if the kid(s) try to fly or whatever.  Reader and Cas fall in love over the course of their babysitting adventure.

   Fics based on this prompt:

Adventures in Babysitting by amazhangdestiel

The Babysitting Job by talesoftheimpala

Promise by hatgirl2017

Nightmare Inspired by this.  Reader has a nightmare about Cas being hurt.  She wakes up and freaks out.  He appears to comfort her, and they end up admitting their feelings.

   Fics based on this prompt:

A Light in the Dark by soulofawinchester

My Weakness by hatgirl2017

Worry One of the Winchesters nearly dies on a hunt.  Cas heals him in time, and Reader breaks from all the worry and tension now that she knows her friend will be okay.  Cas comforts her, and somehow this turns into a confession of feelings and fluff between the two.  (If you want, they could still be in the room where whoever got hurt is—maybe he’s passed out or is asleep or something—and he wakes up to see them kissing or something…  The long and the short of it is, you get bonus points if we get to see one or both Winchesters’ reaction(s).)

Did It Hurt When You Fell From Heaven? This may have has probably been done before, but I would love to see a Reader x Cas where she doesn’t know who he is and is being flirtatious, and she asks him if it hurt when he fell from heaven.  Cas, being Cas, is all, “Yes, it did.  How did you know?” or something like that.  After that, it’s up to you.

   Fics based on this prompt:

The Pick Up Line by theobsessivefanfic666

Falling From Heaven by saving-people-shipping-things

Protective Dean’s hitting on Reader—not with serious intentions or because he actually likes her or anything, just, y’know, being Dean—and Cas gets all protective and tells him to quit.  Later (maybe when Reader asks him to explain or however you want), the angel admits his feelings (either verbally or with a kiss or something).  Prefer slightly!clueless!Cas.

   Fics based on this prompt:

Untitled by free-will-oneshots

Unavoidable by soulofawinchester

Let Me Call You Sweetheart Okay, so basically I just want Cas x Reader where he calls her “sweetheart.”  I don’t even care.  Bonus points if you include the song “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” by Bing Crosby or Henry Burr and the Peerless Quartet (the Bing Crosby version is shortened to just part of the lyrics; it seems to be the most well-known incarnation, but whichever one you want to use is fine with me. You can find the full lyrics on the Henry Burr page), but it’s not required.  Also, if you want to have him use more pet names, “darling” is also a favorite.

   Fics based on this prompt:

Untitled by free-will-oneshots

Allergies This one’s a bit complicated, as I apparently got the inspiration from this fic and wrote the request a few days later, when I couldn’t remember whether I had come up with the idea on my own or had gotten it from somewhere else.  (I found which fic it must have come from weeks later, when I was rereading things from my favorites.)  If you choose to use this prompt, please link to the fic I linked to above so that the author of the original will get credit for his/her idea.

Now that that’s out of the way, here’s the actual prompt:  Cas has, at some point during his association with the Winchesters, learned about allergies (Dean or whoever probably explained them as symptoms that only happen when the person is exposed to something in particular, or something like that).  When he begins to develop feelings for Reader, the clueless angel naturally decides he must be allergic to her.  He goes to Sam and/or Dean for help (bonus points if it’s both of them), who laugh at/tease him good-naturedly and then try to get the two together.  Whether this is done by plotting of some kind or just by encouraging Cas to declare himself is up to you.  Bonus points if you include the song “You’re Not Sick (You’re Just In Love)“ (lyrics) from the Broadway show “Call Me Madam”.

   Fics based on this prompt:

Allergic Reactions by maymorning

Selfless Meg It would be really interesting to see a piece in which Meg (who honestly cares about Cas, at least for the purposes of the fic; I’m not sure what the general opinion of the fandom is on this, but I think maybe she does), seeing that Reader and Cas are in love with each other but haven’t said anything, is surprisingly selfless and helps them get together.  (Bonus if you can make her reasonably okay with this somehow; I hate it when anybody has to end sadly.  It’s up to you if you want to give her somebody else to love instead, or if she cares about Cas but is not so much in love with him that it hurts too much, or whatever.  Be creative, if you want.)  If you can balance the focus of the story between the budding romance and Meg’s sacrifice, that’s great, since I love seeing lots of fluff, too!

   Fics based on this prompt:

Resolutions of the Lonely by saving-people-shipping-things

Marian the Librarian I think it’d be awesome and super cute to see something where the reader works in a library and Cas comes in (for research or something, probably) and then keeps coming in because he wants to see her.  I figure it’d be kinda like a coffee shop AU but without the AU and the coffee shop.  If that makes any sense.  Partly inspired by the “To Go” series by supernaturalfreewill (Part 1 | Part 2).

The Meta Prompt Reader is a fan of the Supernatural books who used to write imagines, until she met TFW and discovered they were real. (I know, I know, you can tell what’s coming from a mile off. Just bear with me for some details, please.) Naturally, she keeps this a deadly secret from the boys. One or both of the Winchesters discovers it, however. (Note: READER IS NOT NECESSARILY IN THE BOOKS HERSELF. It’s up to you, but my inclination is to leave her out, because most of these “fan-discovers-SPN-is-real stories do end up with the reader in the books, so, you know, just to be different, you could keep her out.) Now, Cas has, at some point, been introduced to the wonders of e-mail. Having either been told or just figured out about her feelings for Cas, said Winchester(s) begin to e-mail her fics involving Cas to the angel himself, one at a time. And here, we have the part you’ve all been waiting for since the beginning: the angel somehow discovers that the fanfics are written by Reader, etc., and we end with confession of feelings and happy fluff. Inspired in part by “Fan Fictions” (found here).

IMPORTANT SPECIFICATIONS:

1.  No smut or anything very close, please.  Kissing and cuddling are much appreciated, but keep it innocent. Preferably no smut implied, either, as that makes it less relatable for me, but I can deal with it if that’s what you wanna do.

2.  As little cursing and “Oh, my God” as possible, please; preferably none at all from the reader.  If you need alternatives, the usual suspects apply:  “gosh,” “shoot,” “drat,” “darn,” “dang,” “heck,” etc.  If you want other alternatives, or are not sure when/how to use them, feel free to message me through ask/fan mail/whatever and I’ll help you out.

SLIGHTLY-LESS-IMPORTANT SPECIFICATIONS/PREFERENCES:

1.  FLUFF/SAP/SCHMOOP.  LOTS OF IT.  Like what would happen if you took marshmallow crème, clouds, and the stuffing from stuffed animals and dunked them in molasses and maple syrup.  I will pretty much never be unhappy if you’re cliché with it, either.  I love chick-flick moments probably at least three times more than Dean hates them, so feel free to use as much fluff as is humanly—or, you know, angelically—possible.  I’m not kidding.

2.  Unless otherwise specified, it’s a pretty safe bet that I will be happiest if the couple’s feelings are unexpressed until your fic.  I just love seeing them admit to each other for the first time.  (Honestly, the more ridiculously cliché their cluelessness, the better.  *sheepish*)

3.  I tend to prefer it if the guy makes the first move romantically, unless otherwise specified.  (I think this is partly due to me being old-fashioned and partly to me being extremely shy when it comes to things like that.)

4.  I’m not too fond of unfulfilled/unrequited love.  Even if I don’t specify, I probably want you to have them actually admit how they feel (it doesn’t necessarily have to be in words; kissing’s good, too :) ), not just hint at it.

#request #Amy de l'ABC Request Survey #request prompts #prompts #cas x reader #reader x cas #castiel x reader #reader x castiel #cass x reader #reader x cass #idk guys cas x reader are all i have rn #i might be slightly hooked on those XD #if anyone has any more prompts feel free to ask me to add them and i'll give you credit

[chimmychanga1225]

It was 1 AM when I wrote this: A Spideypool Fanfic

Chapter 1 (?)

So this is one of my first fanfics on this site, so sorry if it’s not the best, but, regardless, I hope you enjoy. (Btw I’m not really sure if tumblr is a site for posting fanfics, but I guess we’ll see.) (also, I swear this isn’t how I usually write, but writing Deadpool into a fic is like welcoming the demolition of the fourth wall, so, yeah)

Warnings: Major fluff, some vulgar language, and some serious keyboard hijacking

————

It was just your average bright cloudy day at the morgue when Peter started seeing dead people. Now you may ask yourself, is this man being portrayed by Bruce Willis, but, rest assured, this coroner was much more less bald than our DC universe older than middle aged sex fantasy, but we’ll get to that later.

No, Peter was probably one of the most brilliant minds in his field, if the field also included the requirement of building a scaled model version of the Death Star. And also a semi-decent Chewbacca impression. Geekdom aside, the guy was average, so he definitely probably didn’t deserve a red and white striped 1978 station wagon driving through the walls of his morgue.

As the dust cleared, the light revealed a half demolished wind shield with a few corpses chilling around the messed up room. The windshield wipers turned on for a moment to push away a dismembered shoulder, allowing Peter to have a better look at the driver.

Peter didn’t even have a moment to process what happened or who he had see when the originally dead man behind him jumped off the observation table, in his full naked glory, but still wearing his mask, somehow. “Jesus Christ”, Peter exclaimed tumbling to the ground.

“Close but not quite.”

“I don’t even need to be able to see to know you’re being stupid right now.”

“Lovely to see you too, Al. How’s the roomba working out for ya?”

“Are you always this much of a dick when you revive”, the lady responded. As Wade was about to respond, the previously forgotten coroner returned to their attention.

“Y-you’re supposed to be n-not alive”, Peter stuttered, making eye contact with the butt naked but ever sexy Wade W. Wilson.

“And who might you be”, Wade asked crouching down to the other man’s cowered form. “White jacket. Really awkward looking? You must be a coroner”, he said in a snobbish voice.

Peter felt himself finally come over the shock of the car crash and now finds himself having to deal with shock and trauma from the terrible movie reference. “Did you just quote Drac-“, Wade placed his hand over the other’s mouth.

“Wrong, fanfic sweet cheeks. But anyways, I gotta skiddadle”, and with that, the man, the myth, the legend merrily skipped his way to the semi-thrashed vehicle. Once reaching the driver’s side he leaned down to the barely visible woman who had been driving earlier. “Alright, short stack Sally, hand them over.”

With some grumbling and quiet curses, Blind Al digged out a wooden door stop and a metal rod along with a pair of... crocs? “Remind me to dip my hands in windex when I get home”, Al announced with disdain.

“Oh please, you know you love the after masturbation scent to them”, Wade coyly replied back. He walked over to the passenger side and opened - picked the lock to - the door. “Petal to the metal, Al. Let’s go!”

The car pulled out as quickly as it came in, showing all the damage the uncertified driver had made to the city. Even while assessing the damage, Peter couldn’t keep the man off his mind.

“Does he not want his liver back”, he asked himself mystified by how the walking talking crisis didn’t even notice.

—————

“Uugh”, Wade whined as he collapsed on his mysteriously stained couch. He looked over to the kitchen, disappointed to see the Blind Al didn’t have a reaction to his current crisis.

“UUUgh”, he complained slightly louder in hopes of getting her attention but still nothing.

“UUUUUuuuuuUuuuUuuuuUUUggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh”, he practically yelled.

“I’m not a dog, so why don’t you call me over instead of making some stupid ass whine”, Al said, already exhausted by the thought of the following conversation.

“You know, Al, I thought we had a real connection through that Craigslist Ad but, in all honesty, I’m feeling a little attacked right now.” Al gave a sigh of exasperation before making her way towards the overgrown child in red spandex.

“What’s wrong”, she asked, regretting the fact that his name was on the lease for their apartment.

“I can’t stop thinking about the bubble butt coroner from earlier. I left him my number but he hasn’t even texted me yet”, Wade whined looking at his heavily Hello Kitty decorated iPhone. Still nothing.

“When did you get the chance to give him your number?”

“I scratched it into my liver before I left”, Wade said casually picking at his finger nails.

“Maybe he didn’t notice.”

Wade’s persona did a complete 180, as he dropped his phone and threw off his crocs. He jumped to his suit, which was still riddled with holes and slashes from his last fight, and ran to his room. He exited an unrealistic minute later and grabbed his ammo bag.

“Don’t tell me your going to go kill him. He seemed okay”, Al said without much conviction.

“Not today, negative nelly. No, I’m going to go to him, with my unalderated feelings, raw and true, and ask him, sincerely, if he’d let me put it in his-“, Al put up a hand to stop him.

“I don’t need or want to know. Go do whatever and try not to die again. It’s getting annoying to pick you up all the time”.

“Okay, mom. I’ll hopefully return with bubble butt boy in hand or die a hero.”

—————

Peter’s feet dragged as he finally reached the enterance to his apartment. The day was wild from start to finish. And of course, Peter was blamed for losing a body. “Why do these things only happen to me”, he groaned placing the key into the lock.

Peter opened the door to his apartment and immediately went to the couch and collapsed, too tired to comprehend his surroundings. “This couch sucks”, Peter grumbled, making a mental note to invest in better furniture, after the million other things he has to pay off.

The couch laughed, shaking Peter slightly. “At least take me to dinner first”, the couch chuckled. Peter slowly came to, realizing that his couch was not talented enough to talk to him, or act so annoying if it did.

“I remember couches being a lot more quiet”, Peter said with a sly smile. He knew it wasn’t over between him and Bucky. Peter slid his arms around the man and hugging him tightly. “I’m sorry about before, I shouldn’t have gotten so upset. And I didn’t mean to ignore you either, it’s just that you’re always out with other people and I get worried.”

“Um”, the other began but Peter interrupted him. “Please let me get this out. I can barely manage to say it now”, Peter said, neck and cheeks burning. He was glad the other couldn’t see his face or else this would be even more embarrassing.

Peter took the man’s silence as a yes to his request. “I’m sorry for being so jealous and petty. I get now that you and Steve are just good friends and I’ll give you space if you need it. Just please don’t leave me”, Peter finished, giving the other a tighter hug at the end of it all.

“I love you too much to lose you”, Peter capped it all off. “I’ll prove it.”

The moment Peter was about to go down on him, Wade figured it was best to stop the kid before he did anything reckless. “Slow down there, hot shot. Didn’t you hear me earlier? Dinner first then the hanky panky. Or during dinner. Or pregame the dinner. I’m fine with either.”

“You”, was all Peter could exclaim, scrambling off the leather clad and unbelievably sexy hero mercenary.

“Me”, Wade said cheerfully, but, in reality, felt a lot of disappointment. Jokes aside, he really liked Bubble Butt boy. So much that he even broke into his apartment, like the suave heartbreaker he is. “I see that you’re kind of busy, so I guess I’ll be going now.”

Peter remained unmoving from his position in the couch, even as Wade began to get up. But just as soon as he left the couch, Peter reached out to grab Wade’s hand. “Stay... please.”

As much of a cold hearted killer that he was, Wade just couldn’t find it in him to say no to the boy sitting in front of him, trying his best not to cry. “Um, okay”, Wade said, miraculously not being annoying.

Wade sat back down, letting the other curl into his side. Peter let out shuddering breaths but refused to let out any tears. “Sooo.... exboyfriend problems?”

Peter laughed lightly. “You don’t even know the half of it.”

Wade frowned once more before putting on an award winning smile. “Well I know half of it can be resolved with some of Grandma Al’s macaroni cheese, going light on the cocaine, of course.”

“Cocaine? Damn your grandma was wild.”

“Oh she’s not my grandma. She’s my roomie. She is old, blind, and I’m pretty sure she is secretly in love with me.” Wade started digging through Peter’s pantry looking for anything pot like cooking thing to make the cheese heaven. “Grandma Wilson, on the other hand, was more of marijuana-macaroni type of gal. Oh Satan bless her soul, since she probably burning in hell with the rest of the Wilsons.”

Wade felt himself smile when he heard the other stifling laughs behind him. He was probably gonna get cursed by the bat shit crazy ghost of his long lost Grandma, but it was fine with him, if he got the bubble butt boy to laugh even for a moment. Speaking of bubble butt boy...

“Bubble Butt Boy, as much as I love alliteration, I need your real name to start working on our shipname.”

Peter blushed at the nickname, becoming a little more conscious of his butt than he was before. “I-I’m Peter. No, uh, Parker. Peter Parker. Like, together.”

“Of course you have an alliterating name, Jesus Christ, Stan, no one actually has names like this”, Wade yelled at the ceiling, confusing Peter further. When Wade faced the kid again, he gave him a toothy grin, which translated well through his mask. “‘Name’s Wade W. Wilson. Mercenary and certified love expert at your service.”

“Nice to meet you, mercenary and love expert Wade W. Wilson”, Peter said with a cheeky smile.

“Emphasis on the love expert. Now who’s the boy toy?”

Peter gave a sad sigh as he stood up from his spot on the couch. He glided over to Wade and gave him a small tap on the shoulder to get his attention. “The Kraft Mac and Cheese box is over here. Unfortunately, I’m fresh out of cocaine”.

There was a small pause before the younger continued. “And he wasn’t really my boy toy, but I was his.”

Wade had to bite his lips to stop himself from making a sarcastic comment and just listen. “His name is Bucky and he’s actually a really nice guy. It was kind of my fault we broke up. I mean, he was always really lax and let me do what I wanted, but I felt like he didn’t really care what I did. And when I started getting worried about him or jealous over the amount of time he was hanging out with his friends, he would always get mad.“

“I- at one point I thought he was cheating on me so I followed him out. Before he even got past a block I was caught by him and he hadn’t talk to me or even seen me since.” Peter was crying now, regretting who’s he acted and how jealous he was of Bucky’s and Steve’s relationship. “I j-just want t-to say I’m s-sorry”, he barely pushed the words through his lips before his crying took over him.

Wade walked over, Macaroni made in a nice Adventure time themed cup (which he totally wanted to steal) and led the crying boy back to the couch. “Don’t you worry your little bubble butt over him, Parker. He doesn’t deserve you affection and you don’t deserve all the stuff he put you through. And that’s my verdict.”

“But-“

“Sorry, baby boy, but it can’t be changed. Love expert, remember?” Peter laughed and rolled his eyes, which were still a little red, but mostly tear-less.

“You know, I don’t think I have ever met a love expert that was so modest”, Peter said gesturing to the Wade’s apparel. I don’t think I even got a chance to see your face...”, Peter trailed off, raising his hand toward the mask.

Just as his hand slipped under it a bit - allowing him to feel the damaged skin - Wade jerked back so much he fell off the couch. “I know I’ve made you dinner, but, Peter, you have to be delicate with me”, Wade said jokingly, but his heart was pounding and he was sweating under all the leather.

“I have to protect my innocence”, Wade said continuing with the joke, but eventually stood up from the ground and grabbed a blanket over on the other side of the room. He came back to Peter and put the blanket on him but made no move to sit back down. “I’ll check in on you later, Parker. So don’t do anything stupid”, Wade lectured and just like that he hopped out Peter’s window.

“What the fuck”, Peter exclaimed running over to the ledge, but it was too dark to see the ground. He only heard a quiet “watch your language young man” before he headed back to the couch smiling broader than ever.

#spiderman #deadpool #wadewilson #peterparker #gay #spidermanxdeadpool #deadpoolxspiderman #wade w wilson #marvel #winter soldier #bucky #steve rogers #stucky #steve #captain america #spideypool #cheating #manxboy #blind al #deadpool funny #spiderman funny #spideypool au #au #morgue #coroner #i see dead people #do people even read this many tags #if you do im afraid yoh need a better hobby #fanfic #spideypool fanfic

[lirlovesfic]

The Choice

A Doctor Who fanfic Summary: After GitF, the TARDIS brings the Doctor, Rose, and Mickey back to the estate to solve a problem involving the TARDIS herself. But when they see a familiar face, the face of someone who should not exist, they realize the problem is deeper than they thought and could endanger the Doctor’s very existence. Primary characters: Ninth Doctor, Tenth Doctor, Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith, Jackie Tyler. Genres: Romance, mystery, adventure, drama, character study, HN AU, fobbed!Nine, sick TARDIS. Pairings: Nine/Rose, Ten/Rose Rating: Adult

Warning: None for this chapter

a/n: I am currently working on editing this chapter-by-chapter, with the hopes of completing a chapter a day until I catch up with myself. As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m doing it to try to get back into the swing of writing and to build some momentum in order to finish this. Also, there have been some tiny things nagging at me for a while (grammar, punctuation, etc.) so I’ll be correcting as many of them as I can find as I go. The story will not change. In fact, most of the changes are going to be so minor that I doubt anyone (besides myself) will notice. But to keep me on target, I’ll be posting it all here as I go, with links to the other websites it’s on. I hope you enjoy it.

This chapter: on AO3, on TSP, on ffnet

Chapter Four—London, 7 July 2007 and 8 July 2007

On their way back to the TARDIS, Mickey decided not to go with them.

"We've been gone three months," he said. "I've got to check to see if my flat is still mine and find out where my stuff is."

"Do you want me to go with?" Rose asked.

"Nah," he said. "I figure I'd go back to the pub for a bit afterwards. Unless you wanna come with?"

She rolled her eyes. "Oh, yeah, I'd love to sit around and watch you watch more telly," she said sarcastically.

Once back at the TARDIS, the Doctor immediately began to work on the console, trying to get more information from the TARDIS's memory banks. For a while Rose sat on the jump seat, hands under her thighs, feet swinging back and forth, as she watched him work. Normally when he worked on the TARDIS he'd keep up a running commentary, explaining to her what he was doing and why, and even if she didn't understand a word he was saying she'd feel like she was a part of everything. But this time he was completely silent. She knew it was just an indication of how serious he felt the situation was, but she still felt oddly excluded in a way she hadn't ever felt with him before they had met Reinette.

After a few more minutes of staring at him staring at the monitor, she got restless and got up to get something to read. Months earlier, before he had changed even, the Doctor had given her her own storage space in the console room. It was a small compartment under one of the floor gratings where she could keep some of her own stuff so she wouldn't have to run back to her own room every time she wanted something. At the time it had felt almost as momentous as when he had given her a key to the TARDIS. The Doctor had blushed, actually properly blushed, when Jack had compared it to him emptying out a drawer in his bedroom for her.

Rose got out a paperback novel and returned to the jump seat, but she wasn't able to concentrate on it. Instead her mind kept returning to the tiny glimpse she had had of her first Doctor. She reread the same page three times, not remembering a single word of it, as his face swam in front of her eyes.

She threw the book down on the seat next to her.

"Stop it," she muttered to herself.

The Doctor looked up. "What did you say, Rose?"

"Nothing," she said. "Sorry."

He nodded and returned to what he was doing.

Well, there wasn't anything she could do here, she thought. Anything she did would just distract him, and she clearly needed a distraction as well. She considered going out to try and find Mickey, but she knew from experience that sitting around the pub would be as boring as sitting around the console room.

Lord, what had she done on Saturday nights on the Estate before she had run off with the Doctor?

Clubbing, she reminded herself. Mickey had been right. She had spent a lot of time clubbing with Keisha, Shareen, Susie and Rita. She briefly considered ringing one of them, maybe even getting together, but she quickly rejected the idea. She knew Susie and Rita had blokes and would want to be with them on a Saturday night. She wasn't sure whether Keisha and Shareen had boyfriends, but if they didn't, and if they were anything like they used to be, they'd probably want to go pub crawling or something. She didn't want to go with them to try and pick someone up at a club, that wasn't her anymore.

But even if they didn't want to go out, what would she talk to them about anyway?

What have you been up to the last couple of years, Rose?

Oh, I ran away with an alien from outer space. He has a time machine, and we've not only traveled millions of years in the future, but into the past as well. I've met a bodiless head in a jar, cat nun nurses, a woman who had had so much plastic surgery she had turned herself into a bitchy trampoline, and a werewolf from outer space. I've even met the Prime Minister and Queen Victoria.

No. The last time she had tried to talk to Keisha about what she had been up to she'd had to lie through her teeth about the Doctor, something Keisha hadn't noticed at the time because she was distracted by her own problems. She couldn't count on that this time.

She wandered the corridors for a bit, taking peeks into rooms she had never been in before—and why did the TARDIS have an entire room devoted to shoelaces, anyway? Finally, she watched a movie in the media room and went to bed.

Once there, though, she tossed and turned as her mind raced. Ever since Christmas in Cardiff in 1869, she had known that with a time machine the Doctor could take her into the past, where people long dead were alive again. But even after meeting Charles Dickens, Reinette, even her own father and herself as a baby, it had never occurred to her that she could ever see a past version of the Doctor himself.

As she fell asleep, her mind returned to the tiny glimpse she had had of him in the garage.

And longed for another one.

~oOo~

The Doctor huffed in irritation as he yet again watched the images on the small screen built into the TARDIS console. Nothing he did was clearing up the static in the display.

"Rose, this looks less like interference in the CCTV and more like actual damage to the TARDIS memory core. I can't figure it out. Any ideas?"

When Rose didn't answer, he looked up from the monitor. She wasn't there. He scanned his Time Sense only to realize to his surprise that it had been more than four hours since they had gotten back to the TARDIS. She must have gone to bed, he told himself.

Disappointed by her absence, he frowned and turned back to the screen.

~oOo~

"Exterminate! Exterminate!"

Beams of deadly light lit up the night. He could hear the sounds of explosions, of feet running, of desperate parents calling for their lost children.

"Exterminate! Exterminate!"

Giant pepper pots swooped out of the sky and floated above the ground, shooting everything in sight.

"Exterminate! Exterminate!"

Children screamed in fright and pain.

Fire. Fire everywhere. Burning everything in its path.

"No more," he muttered, his voice low and cold.

"Exterminate! Exterminate!"

"No more," he growled angrily.

"Exterminate! Exterminate!"

"NO MORE!" His voice rang out over the din. "NO MORE! NO MORE!"

Heart pounding and chest heaving, John shot up, instantly fully awake. This nightmare had been the worst yet. He reached over for his sketchbook, and stopped. His hands were shaking. Besides, there was nothing about this nightmare he wanted to remember.

In an effort to calm himself he closed his eyes and took in several deep lungsful of air, blowing them out slowly. Gradually his heart rate slowed.

The images made no sense to him. They had, could have, no basis in reality. But dream images often were symbolic of something else, he reminded himself. The dreamscape seemed clearly to be symbolic of a battle of some type.

For the first time, it suddenly occurred to him that he might have been a soldier.

He could have kicked himself. How could he have been so stupid? Why hadn't he thought of that before? The vast majority of the dreams he had were of war, albeit in a futuristic setting. Perhaps he was suffering from amnesia brought on by some form of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Knowing he wouldn't get any more sleep, he got out of bed and sat down in front of his computer. His fingers flew across the keyboard. In his effort to try to find out who he was, over the last several months he'd hacked into a half-dozen computer databases and created false accounts so he could easily enter any time he wanted. The first time he had broken into one of the websites, he had wondered where, how and why he had learned how to do it, but now he just accepted the fact that he could and was grateful for the skill set.

This time he broke into the websites of the armed forces rather than that of Scotland Yard or the NHS. It took no more effort for him than hacking into the others had. But several hours later he knew no more than when he had begun. Since the nightmare had featured a ground battle, he searched the army database for soldiers, regardless of name, matching his general description who were either retired or missing-in-action and presumed dead. When he had found nothing he had expanded his search to the navy and the RAF. Still nothing. A dead end.

John sat back and frowned at the computer. Now what?

What about the girl?

He had concentrated on searching for himself on the internet, but he hadn't searched for her, in part because there hadn't been a way of looking for someone based only on hair color. He hadn't known anything else about her, not her name, not what she looked like, not even if she was real. But now he knew she not only existed, but she was here, on the Powell Estate.

He retrieved his drawing and scanned it into his computer, but the photo recognition software couldn't get a match on the internet off of his drawing.

Another dead end.

He glanced at the clock and groaned. Not quite 8 am. And it was Sunday. He hated Sundays. They were so boring. The garage was closed on Sundays. And he had no odd jobs scheduled for the day. Maybe he'd go into work anyway, he decided.

Just as he was about to get up, the black cat jumped in his lap.

"You still here?" he asked with a quirk of one eyebrow. "You're not movin' in, you know." The cat butted her head against his hand and he sighed. "Alright, let's get you something to eat. But then I'm puttin' you out, because you're not movin' in."

The cat purred.

~oOo~

The next morning Rose slowly awoke in her room in the TARDIS. Although she couldn't rightly remember, she knew she had dreamed of her first Doctor. Right after the Doctor had regenerated, she had dreamed of his previous self every night, but it had been months since the last time.

She closed her eyes and buried her head back in her pillow, trying to recapture her dream. But there was no use. She was too awake.

Yawning widely, she sat up and stretched, wondering what time it was. She didn't have a clock in her room in the TARDIS. There was no real point. No job, no set schedule, and, as the Doctor frequently reminded her, no time in the conventional sense aboard the TARDIS either. With time travel, she could wake up only to find herself on a planet that was entering its nighttime hours or vice versa. When she had first begun traveling with him she had developed a killer case of jet lag trying to keep track of where and when they were, until the Doctor told her not to worry about it and work within her own circadian rhythms.

But they were on the Estate. There was actual linear time here. If they ended up stuck here for a while she might actually need a clock. She shuddered in disgust. She hadn't needed a clock since she had worked at Henrik's.

After showering and getting dressed, Rose stopped by Mickey's room. He wasn't there. Nor was he in the kitchen. Neither was the Doctor. After having a much needed cup of tea from the perfectly hot, never empty pot on the counter, she looked around for Mickey a bit more before wandering into the TARDIS console room.

The cavernous room appeared to be empty as well. Only the telltale whirr of the Doctor's sonic screwdriver told her he was there somewhere.

She found him sitting on the floor, wedged under the console. Disconnected wires, bits of electronics, and other things that looked more grown than made emerged from the bottom of the console and hung loose around his head and shoulders.

He was sonicking something that looked a bit like a glowing aubergine. Nearby was a box containing a half-dozen more of the egg-shaped things, and another lay on the grating next to him. Unlike the others, that one had a smoky appearance to it, resembling nothing more than a giant, burned-out light bulb.

She stood there for more than a minute before he realized she was there.

"Oh, Rose," he said when he finally noticed her. "You're up."

Well spotted, she thought, biting back the sarcastic reply. She was still irritated by his ignoring her the previous night. But that wasn't fair to him, she reminded herself. He was busy with a crisis, and it wasn't his job to pay attention to her. "What are you doing?" she asked instead.

"Replacing some ganglionic circuits from the TARDIS's neural net," he told her. He pointed the sonic at a couple of the hanging wires. They moved towards one another, twisting themselves together and reattaching themselves. When they were finished, it was impossible to see where one had ended and the other had begun. "And I'm almost finished. Unfortunately the static in the CCTV playback was more than static. It was actual damage to the TARDIS's memory core itself." He pointed his sonic screwdriver at the aubergine thing again. As the sonic whirred, its glow brightened.

"Do you know where Mickey is?" she asked.

"Did you check his room?"

She rolled her eyes. "Yes."

"Kitchen?"

"Yes."

"Game room?"

"Yes."

"Swimming pool?"

"He's really not much of a swimmer," she told him.

"Library? No, he wouldn't be there," the Doctor said, answering his own question.

Before Rose could defend him, Mickey burst into the TARDIS, breathing hard as if he had just run a long distance flat out. He bent over, putting his hands on his knees, and gasped for air.

"I am so out of shape," he complained.

"Where were you?" she asked.

"My flat," he told her. "I found out someone paid my rent for six months in advance. But that's not important." He turned to the Doctor. "I know where he is."

~oOo~

"I was just walkin' down the street, on my way back to the TARDIS, when I saw him," Mickey said for the fifth time as they stood across the street from the auto repair shop. Unlike the day before, since it was Sunday morning the street was almost deserted. "He was comin' out of the bakery eatin' a doughnut and carryin' a cup of coffee so I followed him."

"And he went into the garage," the Doctor said. It was clear he wanted less to clarify what Mickey had said than to just stop him repeating himself again.

"Yeah," Mickey answered.

"Hmm." The Doctor cocked his head and stared at the garage thoughtfully. "Well, assuming he's still in there, this is probably my best chance to get a good look at him. What's the best way to get in there unnoticed?"

"Through the office?" Rose suggested.

"It'll be locked," Mickey warned, "and before you suggest unlocking it with your sonic, there's an alarm. Same as the back way."

"I could silence the alarm," the Doctor said, "but he'd still hear the door open and close."

"Y'know, if all you want is to take a look at him, there's a couple of windows in the back. They've got bars across them, but we always keep them open at least a little for ventilation."

The Doctor's mouth twisted into a small grin. "That might work," he said. "You two stay here."

Darting between two parked cars, he took off across the street. Rose started to follow, and Mickey grabbed her arm.

"He said to stay here," he said.

"And since when did either of us ever listen to him?" she asked. She shook off his hand and followed the Doctor, and after a moment's hesitation Mickey followed her.

In the alley behind the garage, the Doctor was standing on a dustbin which had been rolled against the wall and was looking into one of the narrow windows along the eaves. Rose quickly climbed up next to him. She could hear the quiet strains of classical music filtering through the open window.

The Doctor didn't show any surprise at seeing her there.

"Did you see him?" she whispered. He placed a finger over his lips and then gestured at the window. She peeked in.

At first she couldn't see anyone, but then she spotted someone's legs sticking out from under the bright red Vectra in the repair bay directly in front of them. Although it was impossible to see who it was, she knew it was him, if for no other reason than she recognized his heavy black work boots.

"You think that's the man you saw yesterday?" the Doctor whispered.

Rose moved her mouth close to the Doctor's ear. "Yeah, that's him."

"Are you certain?"

"Yes," she said firmly. "Do you feel that echo you were talking about?"

The Doctor shook his head. He pulled his sonic out of a pocket and aimed it through the window. The tip lit up in blue, but she couldn't hear its familiar whirr. In the distance, a dog began to bark.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"The sonic is capable of producing sounds that Time Lords can hear but are far above the range of human hearing," he told her.

Rose looked back in the window. John Smith hadn't moved from his position under the car.

"One more scan," the Doctor said in a low voice. This time the sonic made a quiet whirr, barely audible to Rose even though she was right next to it. The Doctor's brow furrowed as he examined the readings. "He's not a Time Lord. He's completely, one hundred percent human."

"So that's not you after all," Rose said. "He just looks like the old you." She was surprised to feel a wave of disappointment.

"It's a little more complicated than that," the Doctor began, but he was interrupted by a loud crash. They turned as one towards the source of the sound. Mickey had rounded the corner and tripped over a wheelie bin. It had upturned and spilled its contents all over the alley.

Rose heard a sound coming from the inside of the garage and turned back to the window. John Smith had rolled out from under the car he had been working on and was headed towards the back entrance. She nudged the Doctor.

"Time to go!" he said. He hopped off the dustbin and caught Rose as she jumped off. The three ran, rounding the corner just before the back door opened. As they ran, Rose heard a familiar voice coming from the alley behind her.

"What a mess," John said loudly. "Stupid apes."

~oOo~

Back at the TARDIS, the Doctor immediately returned to his position underneath the console. "It's even more important now that I find out exactly what happened," he told them. He quickly replaced the remaining burned out globules.

"Because he wasn't you?" Rose asked.

"No," he replied. "Because he was."

"What?" Rose gaped at him. "But… but… you said he was human. One hundred percent human. If he's human, how is he you?"

"I don't think I can recover all of the missing CCTV footage," the Doctor said, ignoring her question. He pulled his glasses out of his pocket and pushed them on as he stood. With one slender finger he flipped a switch on one of the control panels and the whole room went black except for the console. The faint glow cast odd shadows around the room and gave his skin a bluish cast. "Most of the sections that are missing are too badly damaged to recover, but I don't think I really need them. The most important bit is at the end. I have managed to enhance the footage we've already seen, though. If I can just get an additional second or two to play back in addition to that, it might be all we need."

"Doctor, if he's you, why is he human?" Rose asked.

He looked up and met her eyes. "That's what I'm trying to figure out."

"Right." Stupid question, she thought, silently chastising herself.

The Doctor threw a lever forward. A hologram of the very room they were in superimposed itself on the real console room, making the room look like a 3-D movie being watched without the special glasses they always gave you. Rose was surprised to see minute changes had been made over time, changes she had never noticed. A switch and a dial were currently reversed from their original placement on the console. The door leading deeper into the TARDIS was a different shape than it had been. And the jump seat was not only a foot away from its original location but it was larger as well.

The holographic TARDIS door opened and the translucent shape of Rose's first Doctor walked into the room and crossed to the console. He wandered around it, flipping switches carelessly. He stopped in his tracks and winced before continuing to program in the next set of coordinates.

"Stop," said the current Doctor, and the image froze. He walked to the console and examined the controls. "Looks like I just programmed the coordinates for the Powell Estate."

"So… if the coordinates are set for the Estate, is this when you were coming back for me?" Rose asked.

"Yeah, must be," he told her. He looked up at the ceiling. "Forward, normal speed."

The holographic Doctor began to move again. Grimacing, he rolled his left shoulder and tilted his head left and right as if he was trying to relieve a cramp in his neck.

Smoke began to rise from somewhere within the console, and for a second Rose thought it was real. She only realized it was part of the holographic display when the younger Doctor reacted to the sight.

"No, no, no, no, no!" he shouted. He rushed around the console, appearing to run through the current Doctor. He pulled his sonic screwdriver out of the pocket of his leather jacket. As he began to sonic one of the control panels, his TARDIS lurched. He leaned forward and grabbed onto a protrusion near the central column while he continued to use his screwdriver on the panel.

"Freeze," the current Doctor said. He leaned through the hologram of his previous self and examined the controls. "Hmm. I seemed to have bumped the chrono-temporal relay switch. Reset the arrival time for… Huh. New Year's Eve, 2006." He frowned.

"That was six months ago!" Mickey exclaimed.

"But… but we were on the Estate then," Rose said to the Doctor. "We didn't leave until a few days after that." She gestured at the holographic Doctor currently sprawled all over the console. "Do you mean that you and… you were both there at the same time?"

He looked over his glasses at her. "Me? I don't mean anything." He looked puzzled for a moment. "No, that's The Restaurant at the End of the Universe," he said. He glanced at the ceiling. "Forward."

The entire image shimmered and was replaced by static. The Doctor pulled his sonic screwdriver out of his pinstriped pocket and aimed it at one of the controls. The holographic console room reappeared. The leather-clad Doctor was hunched over in pain. He staggered a few steps forward and fell to his knees before collapsing on the floor. In the background they could hear the Cloister Bell ringing, but weakly, as if from a far way off. The helmet that the Doctor had shown her before dropped from the ceiling and fitted itself to the holographic Doctor's head.

"Freeze," the pinstriped Doctor said again. He walked over to his previous self and knelt beside him. He pointed at the helmet. "That's a Chameleon Arch. Has the capability of rewriting a Time Lord's entire biology, changing every cell and turning him into a completely different species. This piece," he pointed out a circular part in front, "stores the Time Lord's true identity while he's in another form. It appears that the TARDIS used the Chameleon Arch to turn me human for some reason." He grimaced. "Could have been worse, I suppose. She could have turned me into anything. Could have ended up a Denebian slime devil or a Canidine Rosikan or something. Could have even ended up as a Slitheen."

Rose slowly walked over to the hologram of her first Doctor and crouched next to him. Now that she could get a closer look at it, she realized the Chameleon Arch didn't really look much like a helmet at all. The metal structure had a main arch that stretched across the top of his head from side to side, held in place with horizontal bars that clamped onto the sides of his head and large disks that pressed against his temples. Another secondary arch stretched from the central arch to his forehead, holding the circular thing the Doctor had pointed out tightly against his younger self's forehead. It appeared to be a silver fob watch, not unlike the one her great-grandfather had had, but this one had the Doctor's circular language engraved into the lid.

Despite being unconscious, the holographic Doctor's face was twisted in pain. Biting her lower lip, she reached out a hand as if to touch him before pulling it back. She drew in a shaky breath.

"Wouldn't that hurt, changing species like that?" Mickey asked

"Yes," the Doctor said shortly. He began to wander the room, ducking his head to look under the jump seat and behind the coral struts. "The only reason she would do something like this is if there was no other choice. The real question is what that was."

At his matter-of-fact tone, Rose stared at him in disbelief. He sounded as if he didn't care what the other Doctor had gone through. Same man, she reminded herself finally. He might not remember it, but he's the one who went through it.

"What are you lookin' for?" Mickey asked.

"The TARDIS locked me out, therefore she's been injured. I'm trying to figure out what could have caused it. I'm also looking for anything out of place," the Doctor answered. "Like this." He pointed under the console. A holographic sonic screwdriver lay on the grating under it. "I must have dropped it when I collapsed."

Mickey and Rose joined in the search, but they couldn't find anything.

"Forward, one quarter speed," the Doctor said.

The Cloister Bell resumed its weak tolling. As they watched, the holographic Chameleon Arch detached itself from the younger Doctor's head and withdrew into the ceiling of the console room, leaving the fob watch on the floor in front of the Doctor's face. The light illuminating the holographic console room flickered, briefly turning mauve before returning to its normal color. The grating under the Doctor rose up on one end, causing him to roll towards the door. It opened by itself.

As the holographic Doctor rolled from one section of grating to another, new sections of the floor would rise up, slowly forcing him towards the door and out of the TARDIS. Then the door shut behind him. The light began to flicker in mauve again.

"Stop!" the pinstriped Doctor yelled, and the image froze. He rushed to the door and knelt down, staring at something on the floor. When he looked up again, his face was visibly pale, made worse by the mauve light shining on his face.

"What is it?" Rose asked.

"The fob watch. It got stuck on the floor between the ramp and the threshold of the door. It's still in the other TARDIS, and as long as it's there, he can't change back."

#The Choice #revised #ficandchips #minor revisions here #but nothing major #I'd do more today #but the day is going to be busy #and I may not get back to editing #until tomorrow morning #we'll see #I really want to get this done #and now that I'm doing it this way #I am anxious to continue

[camilliar]

@yoursummerfrost tagged me in this meme!

What is your total word count on AO3?

South Park account: 618,712

Check Please account: 80,020

Check Please mpreg sock: 37,341

Ideally, every day in some form or another, but my main gig involves staring at a goddamn computer for serious chunks of the day, so sometimes I finish up with work and am just like, I can’t keep looking at a screen, I’d better just think about fic instead of writing it. I also write in real-life non-fandom professional contexts and sometimes that gobbles up my fic time..

Do you have a routine for writing?

Again, ideally, I like to sit down at a neat cafe with delicious coffee and just go to fucking town. I like to have the internet handy to check things, but I can get into writing without the internet so long as I flag things I need to go back and check later when I do get online. Depending on the story I might do an outline that’s got descriptions of the scenes I want to get down which can be pretty brief (more than one WIP of mine has THEY FIGHT or THEY BONE or something written at the end of a scene so I can go back and write it later) or fairly extended. I never write linearly so I end up with, like, 10k of story followed by outlines of sections I need to fill in followed by several subsequent chunks -- this system is a mess and not conducive to finishing and posting fan fic. Incidentally it’s also how I write non-fic.

I loooove writing on trains. I am a huge sucker for getting a disgusting Amtrak coffee and plopping down in the observation car with my laptop. Highly recommended.

What’s your favorite kinks/tropes/pairing?

My South Park OTP is Stan/Kyle and I don’t have one for OMGCP, which is weird probably. I’m mostly concerned with Kent/Jack/Bitty and then the rest of the core SMH group from Y1; I don’t really have much interest in like, I dunno, the Falconers or Tango the Tadpole or whatever, and I’m highly unlikely to read or write fic that revolves around characters outside of that core group of the main cast + Parse. This is a departure for me because for the past several years my only going concern in SP fandom has been just checking the AO3 tag for Stan and Kyle fic, though I’m liable to read something if it looks weird or someone tells me it’s good, I guess. But I can’t say that I even have a preference for, like, Jack/Parse over Zimbits in the strictest sense; I just want to read something unusual and well-written, probably in that order, and that’s my only real feeling about pairings in OMGCP fandom.

In terms of kink stuff I like BDSM, I like mpreg and other versions of gender-fuck, I like sub!Jack or whatever. Mostly I like to be surprised.

Do you have a favorite fic of yours?

My favorite fic is a South Park AU set in London in the 1960s-1980s, and specifically my favorite bit of it is set over the characters’ last year at Oxford: You Only Live Twice. I have little to no expectation that anyone in OMGCP fandom is going to want to read it, but it’s pretty solid, as far as batshit insane fanfics go.

My favorite Check, Please fic is probably Stone Fruits in Season, like, it’s pretty rare to get a chance to weave your own personal life experience into canon so neatly and have it feel so organic and true to the source material? At least, that’s how I feel about it.

Your fic with the most kudos?

The Model Home.

Anything you don’t like about your writing?

Assuming we’re talking about fanfic, it’s not plotty and I have a very difficult time writing endings, especially happy endings. I think I rely on too many “fuck you” turns where the story ends with like, an eerie feeling of uncertainty or lack of resolution. Allow me to emphasize here that I do think life is more like that than not and it’s certainly a true expression of my own worldview, and I’m sure there’s a good discourse in here about why a narrative needs to feel sewn-up like a taxidermied animal. But, I dunno, I wish I had the ability to write clean fics that swept the reader from point A to point B on a rush of clean cause-and-effect prose.

Now something you do like?

I’m good at dialogue, and I think I'm good at lacing allusions and references and historical context into stories. I genuinely don’t think I’ve ever written anything that sounded like a book report or a primer on how to have safe sex or whatever.

Next up:

I can tag @tomatowrites and @multsicorn.

#meme

[emilyelizabethfowl]

Fic Wars [OWH] Chapter 1

This is the first chapter of a fanfic @ostrichwearingheadphones​ and I are writing for the Fic Wars! The official event’s blog is @fandomficwars!

Fandom: Danny Phantom

Enjoy!

Danny was pretty sure that was the worst year of his life.

His freshman year of high school felt like a nightmare, one even worse that Christmas at his place.

He never got particularly good grades but he always managed to get decent final mark. This year however?

Math teacher could've been speaking Chinese and he still would’ve understood exactly the same amount of info- big fat zero.

English? You'd think he would be able to string a few sentences together. His grade showed that no, he apparently couldn't.

And let’s not even get started on PE!

In short, that year sucked. Objectively sucked.

He was sure it couldn't get any worse, and that's why he let his guard down during the summer.

Which appeared to be the biggest mistake of his life.

First of a long, long string of grave mistakes.

***

His parents finally finished their biggest invention, the one they were working on since the college.

It was their only love, their beloved child, the axis around which their lives had been resolving, their biggest dream.

Obviously, it didn't work.

I mean, it was supposed to be a portal connecting their world and the realm of ghosts. Which they started to work on without any proof that said realm had ever existed.

No wonder it didn't work out well.

Danny had never in his life been more sure about something than he had been about the nonexistence of ghosts.

And that's exactly why he decided to mock the hundreds of hours his parents spent on that useless thing by snapping a selfie inside.

Obviously, being the clumsy idiot he's always been, he tripped and pushed some button that for some reason had been placed inside the machine.

“What kind of a moron places the on button inside?” someone would later ask.

Danny would only shrug in answer, because honestly, his father was rather famous for his idiocy.

But currently the biggest problem he had was the current flowing through his body.

It felt like he had been set on fire, his nervous endings screaming, his muscles burning, too tight to even let out a scream.

He was dying; He knew it.

And that’s why he was so surprised when he woke up at the lab’s floor later.

Well, until he saw his dead body lying next to him, then he was too busy barfing to be surprised.

The corpse was scorched beyond recognition - if Danny wasn’t sure he was the only one who died, he would’ve never recognized himself.

However, that would mean....

That would mean he was a ghost himself!

“Yep, welcome to the World Of The Dead, Kiddo.”

If he wasn’t already dead, he would have twisted his own neck.

Right next to the portal was standing (or rather, floating) a white-haired teenager.

“Sup!” The ghost raised his hand in greeting, and Danny shrieked.

Or rather, he tried to.

“You’re newly formed,” the other one explained, inspecting his gloves with bored expression. “It’s going to take a while for you to start talking again.”

Okay, maybe Danny overreacted a bit, so what?

Yeah, throwing the first thing he managed to grab at the specter probably wasn’t the greatest idea he’s ever had, but he panicked and couldn’t think clearly!

“Are you fucking serious?” the ghost asked, now completely covered in some kind of green goo.

Not being able to answer, even if he knew what to say, the boy just shrugged.

“I’ve been considering helping you, but now I’m no longer sure I will…”

Danny sneered. Like you even could hung in the air, unsaid but clear.

“Oh yeah I can! I’ll have you know I’m one of the big fish in the Ghost Zone!”

The ghost had been standing straight now, radiant green eyes glowing bright. Danny just cocked his eyebrow, challenge clear in his expression.

Prove it his body language was screaming. Or are those only empty words thrown for the wind to take?

“I will! I will prove it! For I, Phantom, am one of the most powerful ghosts and I can do anything I want!”

Phantom took off his glove in one swift move and grabbed Danny’s hand, tugging him closer. The boy was too surprised to do anything, and simply let the ghost do his thing, which appeared to be dancing apparently.

But before he could try to wordlessly complain, he got dipped - the only thing lacking was a rose between Phantom’s teeth - and later he was too busy worrying about the weird feeling in his stomach to think about anything else.

That feeling was fusing, but Danny had never experienced it before.

***

Phantom was dissipating.

He knew he didn’t have much time left. That’s why, when he felt the new opening to the Realm of Living right in the centre of his lair, he immediately rushed out.

The hunt had never been expected to be hard, but to find a freshly dead soul right after entering the other dimension? That’s too much luck even for him!

Well, he wasn’t going to look a gift soul in the mouth.

One thing he didn’t expect to do as well was immediate possession of the soul. He wanted to toy with the boy a bit, but… Okay, maybe he does have a bit of a short temper.

But he possessed the soul anyway, so it didn’t matter anymore! It was going to last him for at least few weeks, and if he processed the body as well… It was really destroyed, but he still could get some nutritional value out of it.

Or so he thought, until he heard the voice in his head.

“What the hell have you done?!”

“How are you still alive?!”

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THAT?!”

Phantom stilled.

That boy had way too much influence on him! He met him like 10 minutes ago, and he already lost his temper twice! If he go around giving out important information like that, he’ll never hunt enough prey to sustain himself!

He took a deep breath.

“Alright, so I wasn’t going to help you.” He said finally. “Like, at all. I wanted to consume your life energy cuz I was fading slowing.”

Even though he couldn’t see the teen’s expression, he could tell he was resentful.

“In my defence, who the fuck accepts help from a stranger after the just met? A stranger from an entirely new, unknown dimension no less!”

A wave of shame reached him. Only after a second he realized that no, it wasn’t his own emotion. Having another living being inside his head, one with capability to think and feel emotion was certainly a really weird and unnatural experience.

It’s like you ate a chicken and it started bawking inside your stomach!

“In my defence, I just died! I don’t think I can be held accountable for anything I did in that state!”

Fair point.

“Still, I’m a hunter, you’re a prey, you should’ve kno-oUCH!”

His leg randomly lost support on the ground - when did he even stop floating?

He felt- smug? Oh, it wasn’t his emotion again.

“I think you’re forgetting we’re somehow fused together now, and I can actually hurt you in my own version of revenge until you get me back to how I was.”

The ghost lied on the floor, deciding he didn’t want to get up anytime soon. Who know what the human might try to do!

Though he might not be masochistic enough to try and do something really hurtful.

“You’re hurting yourself too!” He pointed out, just in case post-mortal adrenaline clogged the teen’s nerve ending too much for him to feel anything.

“Jokes on you, I didn’t feel a thing!”

That was… Unexpected.

Well, it wasn’t like he had any sort of experience in that matter, it was first time he didn’t absorb someone completely. He didn’t even know something like that could happen!

Phantom summoned a small ectoball and burned his own ball, trying and failing not to flinch. However you look at it, hurting yourself isn’t pretty nor nice.

“Did you feel it?” he asked.

“Feel what?” the answer came with another wave of emotion, this time it was confusion.

“I just burned my hand, did you feel it?”

“So I told you I didn’t feel it when you got hurt and your immediate reaction was to hurt yourself more? Dude.”

This wave of shame was definitely his own.

“I had to check if you weren’t just tricking me!”

“Oh, yeah, I guess when you betray everyone you meet, you learn never to trust anyone.”

The teen sounded genuinely hurt under the thick layer of sarcasm, and for some reason it made Phantom feel bad.  

“I’m sorry, okay? It’s just-”

The emotions he felt were had to describe, but he knew for sure the teen was sulking.

“You’re sorry just because you’re stuck with me.”

“Obviously!” Phantom yelled, losing his control again. “If everything went as it was supposed to, you wouldn’t exist and there would be no sulking teens demanding an apology in my head!”

Danny quietened, and for a short sweet while the ghost thought that maybe, just maybe, the digesting took some time, and he finally got rid of that nuisance-

In that moment he unwillingly turned intangible and fell through the floor to some weird dungeon full of medieval torture tools, knowing full well he wasn’t going to like the next few weeks.

At all.

“I’m going to turn your afterlife into an afterliving hell, and the only thing you can do to stop me, is giving me my life and body back.”

Phantoms, as it was already said, was an important ghost in the Zone; There wasn’t a lot of people he could say he was genuinely afraid of.

But in that moment, he felt really, truly horrified.

“Okay, okay!” He said “But we need to go back to the lag first!”

“What’s for?” He did give the teen a reason to doubt him, but he had a feeling these constant questions and suspicions were going to drive him crazy.

“Do you want to leave your body lying around?”

Wave of understanding. He was getting better at distinguishing the ownership of the emotions.

He wanted to move upwards, but when trying to access his powers, he bumped off an unexpected obstacle.

“What are you doing to do with it?” the teen asked.

Phantom took a moment to think.

“I can’t absorb the matter, as it’s not really compatible with my digestive system,” he said finally, “But I can overshadow it, mask the scorches with an illusion humans won’t be able to look through and put it in a kind of stasis, so it wouldn’t decay further.”

“Okay,” the barrier disappeared suddenly, and Phantom surged forward, hitting his head on the ceiling.

“Ouch!” he yelped.

“Ooops,” came from the boy, but the emotion that came alongside didn’t feel apologetic in the slightest.

He decided to let it go, considering it was mostly his fault and the human was mostly justified in his childish forms of revenge. Having back the full power, he phased back to the laboratory and hovered a bit awkwardly above the body.

“This might feel gross for a while,” he warned, and dived into the corpse.

**

Gross didn’t bloody cover it, as Danny painfully found out a moment later.

He was glad he could feel things again, but he would definitely prefer if his nose wasn’t instantly attacked by the smell of burned skin and if his nerve endings could stop resonating with pain, constantly reliving the accident.

But the ghost disappeared, so it was all for the-

“What the hell?” The tiny voice in his head said.

Danny groaned loudly.

“You aren’t gone?” he asked, exasperation and crushed hopes clear in his voice.

“Now you know how I felt!” Phantom responded, not really answering the question, sending a small wave of smugness alongside. Danny only noticed the emotion wasn’t his because he didn’t feel in the slightest bit smug.

Flexing the fingers, he realized he had been wrong. The worst year of his life has barely began.

#Danny Phantom #Danny Fenton #fanfiction #Phandom #fic wars #ostrichwearingheadphones #Emily's writing #my writing #my fanfction #fandomficwars

[thefairliterati]

We need to have a serious talk about this Gilmore Girls fic.

As Will Smith once said, OK. Here’s the situation. 

Someone is writing The Subsect. Jess’s novel. I’m frankly amazed that in all the years of online Gilmore Girls fandom that no one has attempted to do this before, and it’s entirely possible that someone has. But I’m too new to this fandom to know, and if someone tried to write The Subsect before, it probably wasn’t like this story. 

Because here’s the thing. This version of The Subsect, in its current online metafictional form, is fucking amazing. It’s so good that I thought, after a first pass, that it might actually be very good, very well-placed guerrilla marketing for the revival. But I don’t think it is. I think it’s just a fic. Written by some wicked smart person somewhere out there. 

If you want to read it, it’s here. The single most devastating thing about it, so far, is that it’s only two chapters long. 

I have many thoughts about this story, but let’s start at the beginning, in the first chapter. 

And as a note, the following contains many spoilers, so if you want to remain unspoiled in regards to this story -- however filthy and corrupted your mind may already be -- stop reading now, go read the damn first chapter of The Subsect, and then come back and read this. 

I’ll wait. 

Thoughts on the first chapter of the fanfictional Subsect, in no particular order. Here come some bullet points...

The first chapter is set in New York City, where we find Jess growing up as a youthful hoodlum and accomplished card shark, as you would expect. The level of accurate, ultra-specific detail about NYC in this story, though, is mind-boggling. Subway stops. The names of businesses. Geography. Every word of it -- with a couple of fascinating exceptions, which I’ll talk about -- is real. And it’s not just accurate in general. It’s accurate to the period of the story. An example: At some point, the narrator -- called J., but I’ll presume it’s Jess -- mentions a bookstore near Columbia University named Labyrinth. It’s real, but it’s now under new ownership and has a new name. You’d never know this, ever, unless you went to that bookstore before it was renamed. So whoever’s writing this is a New Yorker and has been for a while, or they’re a research freak of truly epic and admirable proportions. 

The story contains a freakishly contextual reference to Italian opera, and an ominous quote from Julius Caesar in Latin that both foreshadows the conflict later in the chapter and harkens back to Jess’s growing affinity for gambling. This is not garden-variety fanfic, friends.

The story invents a completely genius plot device that has Jess leaving NYC for Stars Hollow not just because he’s bad and is doing bad things — although he is and does, per cannon and the details of this story — but he also leaves the city in the wake of 9/11. The craziest thing about this? It totally works. The episode where Jess steps off the bus in Stars Hollow aired on October 20, 2001.

There are two references in this story that are clearly fictionalized. (And there may be more. I just haven’t spotted them yet.) The first one is about Liz working at Shrafft’s as a waitress. Newsflash: There is no Schrafft’s anywhere in NYC, and there hasn’t been since maybe the 1970s. So why the fictional reference amidst all this hard, cold, New York-y reality? Well, here’s the deal. As the story mentions, the Scrafft’s where Liz works is on 79th Street, and there was indeed a Schrafft’s restaurant on East 79th Street, though it was closed long before the action of this story takes place, and has now been torn down. But this particular Schrafft’s is notable because it was mentioned in a J.D. Salinger novella called Raise High the Roofbeam. Who would write that kind of obscure reference into a novel that’s otherwise positioned as a thinly veiled memoir? Why, your favorite pretentious literature nerd and mine: Jess Fucking Mariano. In fact this reference breaks the otherwise factual fabric of the story. It fucks up everything that’s been so meticulously plotted before and after it — including the piece’s careful attention to geography. As Liz gets off her shift at the fictional Schrafft’s, she beelines it for the 2 train to head uptown to her next job in the Bronx. Well, the Salinger Scrafft’s was on the East Side of Manhattan, where there is certainly no 2 train. The point of all this? To make you, dear reader, believe in your soul of souls that Jess Mariano wrote this story. If he wasn’t a fictional character on TV show, I might think that he actually did. The other fictional reference is when J. describes being robbed and beat up in a park in Bensonhurst by the Jones Street Boys, who are a fictional gang in the video game The Warriors.

It’s also worth mentioning that the chapter’s opening language is so very, very true to Jess’ character. The sense of poetic surreality. The ten-cent words. The thin veil of fiction over what’s clearly a memoir. It is the kind of stuff that first-time dude novelists do when they’ve spent too much time reading the beats. The result? It’s all weirdly convincing. I don’t just believe that Jess wrote this story. I believe that there is, in fact, a Jess. So how did we get here? Where the best piece of metafiction I’ve read all year is a Gilmore Girls fanfic? Tell me that.

I have more to say about this story. But I need to re-read the second chapter first and this post is really long and annoying, so I’ll stop. 

#gilmore girls #literatific #literati #rory x jess #jess mariano #gilmore girls fic #the subsect #truncheon press

[isitandwonder]

The Female Gaze

I think, in the end, it was about the women, not the gay. I think the groundbreaking new thing BBC Sherlock wanted to do was to strengthen and re-evaluate the role of women in Sherlock Holmes adaptions. But that went horribly wrong.

Mofftiss always said they wanted to right something with their adaption that everybody else did get wrong. Well, what could that have been, as Holmes has even been portrayed as a mice? We all hoped for Johnlock… as this has been a reading of the canon especially appreciated by female/queer fans, because it takes into account a somewhat different interpretation from the cis white het male reading. Sherlock Holmes is somewhat ideal as a character to captify female readers - as he retorts to thinking and talking and not to violence in the first place to solve a problem, which are classic female strategies. Holmes mostly employs his brain and not his fists - which sets him apart from most male action / crime solving heros in a way women can relate to (but remember Gatiss’s poem, advocating a more physical Holmes? Making him into a cis white male het hero…?) 

But as S4 clearly showed us that Johnlock wasn’t the goal - what else could have been the new, groundbreaking thing everybody had gotten wrong before?

Especially around TAB, but also before, Mofftiss talked excessively about the role of women in Sherlock Holmes adaptions; that the Zeitgeist when the stories had been written didn’t allow for many strong female characters. TAB was sold as a story about strong women and their empowerment - which sparked anger, because the women were portrayed as murderous furies. I’ll return to this later. The point here is that there were even panels at Sherlocked in 2016 harping on “Women in Sherlock”, emphasising their importance.

So, I think what Mofftiss felt necessary for a modern adaptation was to strengthen the role of female characters. Only, the brave thing then would have been to make Holmes and Watson both female. Which Mofftiss didn’t.

This got very long and is therefore continued under the cut.

As Mofftiss said themselves, instead they played heavily with the longstanding homoeritoc interpretation of the stories (feminising Sherlock and Watson?) - which appealed to gay and female and gay female fans. And, surpirse, surprise, they dig this; not the allegedly new / stronger female characters. But it was just a joke to the writer - whereas they were serious witht heir female characters like Moll yor Mary or Eurus. I think this misunderstanding of what the fans and the writers wanted respectively led to the train wreck of S4 (think about the Mary feature for the cinema screenings, for example, much hated around here!)

There is a great post going around about the male gaze in Sherlock. I’m sure every female person has been subjected to this sort of male gaze. Subjected, not enjoyed it. And that was one mistake. Mofftiss might not have seen what their characters were actually doing, how they were looking at each other - because they are male writers. To them, such a gaze is the normal look on the world. But not for female persons. For them, such a look is sexually charged. Mostly derogatory, or at least predatory. If a man looks at a women like Sherlock looks at John or vice versa, it’s a look of lusting after. Women / female persons see and know that, because we have to identify and interpret this look over and over in out lives to stay save. Men haven’t. For them, such looks might even be nothing special. But it is. This is one example where men and women read their reality differently. Therefore, female fans interpreted these glances in a sexual way, what Mofftiss couldn’t understand. They thought we were hypersexualising their show, because they are not accustomed to interpret such looks as the female fans are.

Therefore, they had no idea why so many (het) female fans read so much Johnlock into their show, as they just wanted to play with it a bit as a homage to Billy Wilder. This bafflement formed an unholy alliance with Mark Gatiss’s hate for fag hags, an ugly word for (het) females fantasising about gay men. He hates and mocks those women since League of Gentlemen days. He never tried to understand why women might have this kink in the first place. Gatiss seems to see those proclivities as perverted as many women see lesbian scenes in het porn. But there’s a difference.

Het porn is mostly made by and for men. The f/f scenes in it are almost always foreplay. Two women get it on, but a soon as a man enters, they go down on him. It feeds the idea that lesbian sex is just something women resort to when no man is around - otherwise they would, of course, go for the ‘real thing’ - an opinion that fuells the idea that lesbians just haven’t met the right man yet etc. In short, this opinion states that lesbian sex is not real sex. This is, of course, a derogatory view.

And totally not the same as (het)  women enjoying gay porn! First, gay male porn is taken seriously as a sex act between two men. I’ve never seen it as interpretated as foreplay for f/m action. Never have I seen two guys making out, then a female enters and they are suddenly all over her. Male gay sex actions stays just this: only guys getting it on. And women watching can do this like “Well, two (3, 4, 5 …) dicks are better than one”, but they can also feel save while doing so: No woman will be subjected to anything in male gay porn. There’s no female character to compare oneself to and be found lacking in looks etc. There’s no violence against women in these movies, no abuse, no reducing them to their sexual organs, no exploitation of female sexuality. Women can just sit back and enjoy male gay porn without feeling involved. And some women like it, because, as with the male gaze, male sexual attention towards females can be predatory, violent, looking for a conquest etc. And some (het) women just don’t like that. So they escape to gay porn, where they might even identify with the taking side.

This is not necessarily deranged fetishising of gay m/m sex. Women have a sex drive as well, get over it, Mr Gatiss. Everyone sins differently, so, please, no kinkshaming. It can be a confident expression of female sexual desires. Only, female sexuality somewhat seems to scare men.

Paired with this misreading of women enjoying gay porn as a fag hag fetish was the idea that the female fans who shipped johnlock are mostly teenage girls/virgins - and this seems apparently not the target group those writers want to be admired by. But honestly - can a 14-year old virgin write something like The Cold Song? A Cure For Boredom? PiaLR? That’s not to say that young girls shouldn’t write fanfic - on the contrary, they should, to explore their sexual identity and proclivities in a save space. But I’m quite sure that most of this fandom’s best writers are the other side of 20, 30 and even 40 or 50. Because it needs experience to write really engaging sex scenes. Experiences I hope 14 year old girls simply don’t have yet. So, here’s another misunderstanding / misconception the writers have about this fandom (and they are not very eager to correct it, despite Moffat’s somewhat encouraging words towards fanfic writers. In the end, they can’ tget over themselves, it seems).

But somehow mature, sexually confident, intelligent women seem to frighten Mofftiss, despite their idea of  giving women more room in a Sherlock adaptation. Why? Because mature, confident, feminist women KNOW that two men simply can’t strengthen and enhance female characters like they deserve it. Mofftiss knew that they couldn’t live up to feminist expectations, so they dismissed it outright, while even gaslighting female fans by ‘Look, we gave you great female characters, stop complaining!’ (And don’t get involved with  this perverse thing called johnlock either).

Look at how Mofftiss have done this:

Molly is a het woman, constantly humiliated by Sherlock, yet still pining for him. She was the first new character invented by Mofftiss for their show. But not as a strong character, only as a female character. Even when she finally emancipates herself, she chooses a boyfriend ridiculously looking like Sherlock. That at least earns her a condescending kiss from the object of her desire. Bah! And when under stress, because Sherlock is shooting up and her engagement is over, she is only allowed to turn to the male form of stress relieve - violence. She slaps Sherlock! Why does she not talk to him, offer help, involve their friends? Because that would be the female approach, but that is unfathomable to the male writers.

Same with Irene (in canon a  confident artist who wants to get married, not in the slightest interested in Holmes). In the BBC version, she becomes a lesbian (see above re: the value of lesbian sexuality) = has not yet met the right man (Sherlock). This is awful, becoming straight for Sherlock! I don’t mind the naked scene in her house so much, though. It’s not overtly sexualised, but can be read as self-confident and sexually assured. But I hate the wardrobe scene. Lara Pulver looks great in that green negligee and suspenders - but why was this scene necessary if not to charge the show hetero sexuall?. In the DVD comments, Mofftiss joke around that loads of people (men) suddenly hung around the set while this scene was filmed - to gaze at Lara Pulver in underwear. That is not funny, that is sexism! That is not a joke. She was displayed as a sexual object - not for herself or character growth, but for the pleasure of others. She was reduced to a sexual object for the male gaze, despite her character being a self-professed lesbian. Arghhh!

Mrs Hudson, on the other hand, is the devoted mother hen - another cliche. Only, in S4, she gets warped - again, like a man would want it, by having her drive an Aston Martin (cars=dicks). But it’s not even hers - she got it from her husband. She didn’t run a cartel, she was just typing… Giving her a fast car is not empowerment! Empowerment would have been to tell her tenants to brew their own tea!

Or look at Sally Donovan - the only WoC on the show apart from Hooper, who’s Asian (why are there no muslim women, disabled women etc on the show btw? Why is the female empowerment almost exclusively done via white women?): She calls Sherlock a freak, has an affair with a married man, who is an idiot, is sexually insulted by Sherlock for that in front of her collegues, and, in the end, is presented as a traitor, engaging in Sherlock’s downfall. Whereas Anderson is kind of redeemed later in MHR and TEH - nothing like this is waiting for Sally.

Or look at all of John’s girlfriends! Presented as jealous of Sherlock, helpless (Sarah), frustrated (Jeanette), some described as ugly (the one with the nose, the one with the spots). All of them are left by John for Sherlock the minute Sherlock asks him - now, imagine being one of those women. Would you like that? John treats those women like shit, not with respect.

I’m not going into the Mary story here, enough has been said about her. But just imagine for a moment being married to a closeted gay/bi man, secretly pining for his best friend… John treated Mary not much differently as Sherlock treated Janine.

Speaking of Janine! She’s befriended by Mary to get to Magnussen, courted by Sherlock for the same purpose, abused by her employer… only to get dropped by her fiance and dragged by the yellow press. The last thing is presented as her revenge - but at what cost? Picturing her as some kind of tabloid whore, as Sherlock says. What kind of treatment for a female character is this? Why again reduce her to a sex object?

Even Lady Smallwood is not allowed to be a strong independent woman - she is shown chatting up Mycroft!

Or Vivian Norbury! The old, lonely cat lady, still clinging to her dead husband.

And Eurus? Both Holmes brothers can channel their intelligence and use it for something good - but not the sister. No, as any female person, she just wants male attention and goes mad because she’s just too smart for her own good… seriously?!

I could go on and on… but I think you get the message. Mofftiss wrote female characters into the show and thought that would be enough to modernise the gender issue in the Holmes’s stories. But Mofftiss are not able to write strong, empowering female characters because they are men. They live in a men’s world (remember Hooper, who had to become a man to be successful?). That means, for example, that they reduce women to their sexuality, and advocate they resolve problems with violence, like the women in TAB. Think about it… why did they not just leave their husbands and settle somewhere in the country, together, supporting themselves with needlework? Well, that doesn’t sound very exciting, does it, but it was the female way back in Victorian times. You could leave your husband and seperate. Or you could poison him - but not shoot or stab him. 

There’s a sad truth to poison being a woman’s weapon - because usually, a man is stronger in hands on combat. Therefore, a man who beats his wife to death is usually just sentenced for manslaughter - it happened at the spur of the moment, no killing intended. But a woman who wants to get rid of her abuser has to do this when he sleeps, for example, or via poison or drugs, to be able to overpower him. This is mostly seen as cunning by the courts, which is a feature proving murder. A woman freeing herself from an abuser is seen as guilty of premeditation (= another feature of murder), whereas a man who beats his wife over many years unitl she dies from his abuse is exculpated exactly by this prolonged abuse, because he couldn’t expect the wife to die from his violence - as she lived through it for many years.

Sorry, but this is where the male gaze leads us - to a world made up and after male standards. But applying those standards to women is not empowering - it is still subjecting them to the male prerogative.

And many feminist fans see this (now) and ask why this happened. They criticise the male writers for this. Who kind of pout now, feeling perhaps misunderstood, as they wanted to give us strong female characters in a modern version on Sherlock Holmes and believed they succeeded with Eurus, Molly and Mary, even giving her the last word. And they don’t understand why we we don’t like it. Instead, all we wanted seems to have been gay porn! (Honestly, if we want to see dudes fuck, we know exactly where we can get that, Mofftiss). 

They can’t come around to our view of what is and has been going on. They can’t see us the way we are, because they have a totally different perspective and no inclination to change that. They think our criticism is juvenile, that we are ungrateful - as if the very idea of a largely (queer) female fanbase being grateful towards male showrunners isn’t fucked up to the extreme!

As I said at the beginning - if they wanted a Sherlock Holmes adaption that empowers women - make Holmes and Watson female. If you don’t want to go there - leave them as they are, together. No women are needed - especially not like Mofftiss wrote them. Explore Holmes and Watson’s friendship, and see where it takes you… Johnlock didn’t come out of nowhere. Holmes isn’t the typical 19th century male - he’s moody, thin, pale, likes music… all then and now characteristics associated with feminity. Perhaps that’s why he has such a broad, devoted female fanbase? Perhaps it would be empowering to allow us our reading and make it canon?

The first step, if you want to give women an empowering modern Sherlock Holmes adaption, is: Take the female fans seriously!

#sherlock #what went wrong #mofftiss #writing #female characters

[chickadee333]

Impossible Love Masterlist

Without further ado, here is my finalized Masterlist for my novel Impossible Love. At over 85,000 words, you guys are serious readers to put up with this!

(Update: You can also find my fic on AO3 at this link. It’s easier to read there.)

As always, my intention is to write a good, well thought-out story with some sexy, smutty stuff thrown in, and I hope you enjoy it! I like to create some angst-y situations and just have things build up from there. A little sexual tension is fun, right?!? Just another fair warning: This novel contains adult content. Most of my chapters have extremely graphic depictions of sex and violence and, on one occasion, both of them together. But this is ultimately a love story, so I definitely hope you stick around for the ending.

Impossible Love: A Novel by Chickadee333 (aka D):

Chapter 1: A New Beginning

Chapter 2: A Troubled Past

Chapter 3: An Unspoken Lust

Chapter 4: A Forbidden Desire

Chapter 5: A Heartbreaking Discovery

Chapter 6: A Manipulated Promise

Chapter 7: A Welcome Freedom

Chapter 8: A Certain Homecoming

Chapter 9: An Uncertain Decision

Chapter 10: A Hostile Takeover

Chapter 11: An Indelible Mark

Chapter 12: A Time Together

Chapter 13: An Agonizing Choice

Chapter 14: A Forced Confession

Chapter 15: A Tormented Mind

Chapter 16: A Yearning Heart

Chapter 17: An Unspeakable Betrayal

Chapter 18: A New Normal

Chapter 19: A Terrifying Strength

Chapter 20: A Contrived Existence

Chapter 21: A Tragic Revelation

Chapter 22: An Imminent Return

Chapter 23: A Forever Future

(They really sound like romance novel titles, don’t they? I kinda did that on purpose since this is truly a love story...)

If you are interested in reading about my motivation and inspiration, please see my Author’s Note below!

I just wanted to give you a little background about my writing and my inspiration. Actually, my inspiration is all of you incredible people. If there were a Tumblrs Anonymous meeting, I’d be the one raising my hand saying, “Hi everyone, I’m a long-time lurker, first-time poster...” My fangirl head just explodes reading all of the crazy, sexy shit you post. And then the art that is on here! You guys are so fucking talented. My stuff is rubbish in comparison and I only hope that someday I can produce amazing art like all of you do. It is truly an inspiration. In fact, seeing the art on here is what prompted me to purchase my Wacom tablet in February. I eventually plan to have at least one drawing composed for each chapter, though that will take some time.

When I was a teenager, I voraciously read comic books (mostly X-Men) and fell in love with that world of characters and their struggles. I learned to draw by teaching myself forms, figures, shapes, and shadows as I saw them in the comics. I had always wanted to write and draw for comics, but that was a pipe dream and I instead went to college and grad school for something far, far different (science). So, this is my chance to fulfill my fantasy of writing and drawing as I always wanted. You have no idea (or maybe you do, actually) how satisfying it is to finally get this stuff out of my head and into print. When I was a teenager, my angst-ridden, sex-starved mind always wished that the comic books could have been a little X-rated—replete with sexy artwork, too. But it never happened and never would happen in mainstream comics, which is why I finally felt the need to let all of these words pour out along with the artwork to accompany them. It was almost like I was waiting for something like Suicide Squad to come by so I could latch onto it and create my ancillary, alternate universe.

I first saw Suicide Squad at the end of December and I was struck by the fact that there was so much opportunity to create a really interesting story that could never be shown in a PG13 movie (too sexy, too smutty). I spent the first three weeks of January letting the movie marinate in my mind while thinking about the characters and making up little fantasies in my head. Then I saw a note that I had left for myself one year earlier encouraging me to “write more”—which was especially jarring considering that I wasn’t writing at all. So, I decided that I would take the opportunity and start writing down my fantasies. It started with Chapter 1 and how I had wished Joker had broken out of prison in the movie. Instead of torturing Harleen, he would succumb to his pent-up desires and have sex with her. I thought it would end there but it just took off. I wrote 30,000 words in literally two weeks, and I’m continuing to write and ride this out as long as I can sustain it. I have my entire story fleshed out and outlined and I expect to have a total of 14 or possibly 15 chapters when it is concluded. Update: A little over 10 weeks later and I have finished 23(!!!) chapters at 85,000+ words, thus concluding my novel. I’m a little sad that it’s over and I definitely don’t want to stop writing, but I think I’ll focus on my drawings for now. But who knows... I have set up my story for a potentially interesting prequel (Joker’s backstory), so maybe I will eventually work on that... 2nd Update: I will be writing a sequel, not a prequel, and I expect it to be the same length (a long-ass novel, LOL).

I will admit that I am not an expert on the Joker and Harley. I have seen the Suicide Squad movie, but I have not read the novelized version of it and I do not plan to. I know the names of some characters (like Frost) from having seen them float around, but I have been making up my own characters to fit my own story. In fact, other than Joker, Harleen, and Frost, most of my characters are original to a degree. When I write, I like to envision my characters played by an actor/actress so I can describe them better and I will eventually share with you my “cast of characters” for this novel (I actually have it posted already in the end notes on my AO3 page). I also have a running soundtrack in my head as if the story were a movie, and I’ll share that with you all as well (also found at that link).

As for Joker and Harley, I know some basics about them from the movies, some comics, the animated series from the 90s, and things that I’m seeing you guys post here on Tumblr. However, I have never been happy with how the comics/tv shows/movies have portrayed characters like the Joker. It always feels like these kinds of characters are too often portrayed as two-dimensional as their image is on the page. Where is the range of emotion? Where is the depth? I love a crazy, insane character, but they are not compelling to me when there is only crazy and nothing else. Why are they crazy? What is their back story? What drives them? What are their motives? What made them who they are? Is there any piece of humanity within them that can be salvaged? That was one thing that I think they got right with Suicide Squad—Leto’s Joker was portrayed as not only an insane, trigger happy loose cannon, but also suffering emotionally in Harley’s absence. I like kick-ass characters that show vulnerability. It is fucking sexy. I think it is important to add those extra layers of personality in order to make the character feel more real.

As for my portrayal of Joker, I intended to show his emotional and vulnerable side. You know he has one. He is still a flesh and blood person, after all. And he was a real person before becoming the “idea” of the Joker. In my world, he had a normal family life as a child (until his family died in an accident), he went to school, he got some degrees, he used his genius brain to start a business, he had a fiancée and a baby on the way. But shit happened and he is now the way he is. He has anger management issues. He is violent. He is fucked up. And he accepts that. Having said that, however, I was never a fan of Harley Quinn obsequiously fawning over the Joker no matter what abuse he put her through. I do not condone domestic violence and it makes me feel pity for her when I think of her returning to her abuser. In stories where she is portrayed that way, I just want to grab her by the shoulders and tell her that she deserves better than that! I know I would not stay with my abuser—no matter how great the sex was. In real life, I work in a social services field where I have managed cases in which my clients have suffered for too long at the hands of their abusive spouse or partner. That is a fucking difficult thing to be confronted with. It is not sexy; it is heartbreaking. And I find that these real life experiences inform the way that I write. For that reason, I am writing my Harleen as a strong, empowered, independent woman. My Joker, while still the insane, trigger happy loose cannon, is written to show facets of vulnerability and emotion. I think that makes him more attractive to know that he is more than just “crazy” and abusive. I like to show that he has desires, dreams, and urges. I think that kind of depth and dimension can sometimes be missing from the comic books—not always, but sometimes.

I do want to say that there are some brilliant fanfics out there that follow comic book canon with the abusive Joker and the submissive Harley. They really hold true to the characters, and that is an incredible feat within itself—to take a character, to know their personality, and to write a story that is true to how they would act. It’s very impressive. I might finish reading with a feeling of “God damn, Harley, you gotta stop letting Joker walk all over you!” And, to me, that means that the writer was successful because they elicited a true emotion within me—whether it is pity or anger or happiness or angst. So, this is not a put-down for those who do write true to the characters. I have mad respect for you. It’s not my bag, baby, but I will read it and enjoy it and I will walk away having felt something and that is the most important thing. Art in any form should make you feel. It should make you react. It should shock your sensibilities. It should inspire. It should make you think. And that is what I hope my art—both my writing and my drawings—do for all of you.

Sorry to have blathered on for so long, but thank you for reading if you made it this far! Your likes, comments, reblogs, and messages bring a huge smile to my face when I see them. It’s like opening a present when I check my Tumblr activity and see that someone has reached out to me. And please feel free to reach out to me with any comments or questions about anything!!!

So, I thank you from the bottom of my heart and I’m so glad that you enjoy my crazy fantasies as much as I like writing and drawing them!

XOXO,

D

#suicide squad #impossible love #masterlist #joker x harley #joker #harley quinn #harleen quinzel #fanfic #fanfiction #fanart

[elvenbean]

Rules: Tag 20 amazing followers you want to get know better!

Thank you, @walkingfairytalegoodlord for tagging me! ;)

Name: Aleksandra

Nicknames: Ola - that’s a way in Poland to call someone with my name in casual conversations because full name is considered too long and too serious. I have no idea why it’s ‘Ola’ and not ‘Ala’ or ‘Aleks(a)’ or something like that but I’ve read somewhere it comes from Ukrainian/Russian form of the name. I think it might be interesting for someone who likes linguistics. And has time to study Slavic languages. :P

Gender: Female

Star Sign: Cancer

Height: Somewhere around 170 cm.

Sexual Orientation: Half a year ago I’d say straight but now I’m in questioning stage.

Hogwarts House: I’m not a HP fan, never really got invested in the series even though I’ve read some of the books when I was a kid, so I literally have no idea how to answer that truthfully - but I once visited Pottermore just to find out what all the fuss was about and I did tests for fun and it told me I was Gryffindor.

Favorite Color: All shades of green. And brown and grey. I surround myself with those colors, especially green. It’s literally everywhere in my room - walls, blankets, cushions, flowerpots...

Favorite Animal(s): Cats and guinea pigs. Also bears.

Average hours of sleep: When I remember I should remain a healthy and sane person, it’s usually 8 hours. When I maturely choose to forget about this - maybe 2.

Cat or dog person: Cat person. I lived once in a neighbourhood where people would let their dogs bark and howl for several hours, night and day, and it was impossible to study or sleep or relax for even a moment. Weird people they were and I’m happy I’m not living there anymore - but now everytime I hear a dog barking I run in an opposite direction. I can’t stand the sound.

Favorite Fictional Characters: Thinking about it now I realised almost all of them are morally gray. Currently it’s Regina Mills from OUAT and my love for Morgana from BBC’s ‘Merlin’ is slowly growing too. There may be some parallels between those two characters but I haven’t watched the whole show yet. I’ve also spent a suspiciously huge amount of time reading metas and thinking about Bellamy Blake from ‘The 100′ and I consider him one of more complex and interesting characters of this show. And then there are also tons of characters from ASOIAF series but to pick a few - Arianne Martell, Asha Greyjoy - and all Mormont women, even if they’re secondary or even tertiary characters in the series. The fanon versions of them all will always remain close to my heart. Aand they might also be the reason for my obsession with bears.

Number of blankets I sleep with: One, but very thick and very fluffy. And green.

Favorite Singer/Band: Choosing one is extremely hard, especially because I’m switching between the genres all the time but I guess I’d say Insomnium. Because there doesn’t exist a single bad song sung/written by them imho. :P

Dream Trip: A trip around Eastern/Southern Europe. There’s a lot of history here. And I love the folklor. I’d also like to travel to the US once - maybe changing time zones would help me with my sleeping problems, I confuse day with night lately.

Dream Job: Your usual IT guy person. Probably. I don’t want from my job anything more but to allow me to work on my own, earn a reasonable amount of money, have the time to do the things I enjoy and not interfere in my personal life. I wonder if those are realistic expectations tho.

When was this blog created: May 2015 but I started posting only in October 2016.

Current number of followers: Heh, 50+.

When did your blog reached its peak: I guess not yet. :D It’s still a baby blog but I really don’t mind it since I still almost get a heart attack whenever I see someone liked or reblogged anything.

What made you decide to make a Tumblr: I stumbled upon one of Tumblr blogs by accident, back in 2015 when I was completely fascinated by A Song of Ice and Fire by G. R. R. Martin and wanted to read some analyses of those books. After a time I’ve decided to create an account just to keep track of all the interesting posts I’ve read without planning on posting anything. And I kept doing that for a long time, using Tumblr just to follow some interesting blogs with metas and fanfics - soon later I stopped swooning over ASOIAF but stayed on Tumblr. Then came ‘The 100′, then OUAT and the process repeated itself. I was scared of becoming an active blog because of a language barrier. I didn’t consider my English particularily great, I still don’t, and wanted to wait until I become more confident in using it. But then S6 of OUAT started to air and I wanted to finally become a part of the fandom instead of creeping around. So I started posting. But I’m still scared shitless when I have to write something here. :P

I tag: @swynwraigh @frankie-blue-sq @frenchpuppycormier @onceuponahappytime @colyssa @anothershadeofgreen @novalian @deathforfear @liebe-ist-alles @multifxndommess 

Of course you don’t have to answer anything if you don’t want to. ;)

#personal