#tells you a lot about my engagement with star wars that this is the first time im drawing anakin skywalker sdfnsdfnsd

[romanarose]

Honest Mistake (Cowritten with @missdictatorme)

Santiago "Pope" Garcia X Fem!Reader

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Birthday fic for me and Dolli! Her's was the 18th, mine is the 20th (TOMORROW AT LEAST IN THE US!!!) so we whipped this bad boy up together! It was a lot of fun, we worked well together and have similar humors. I think some parts you'll be able to tell who wrote what, but others it could honestly be either. I hope you enjoy, bc I think this is pretty stellar!

Fluff

5k words

Summary: Santi goes into a panic one morning when he realizes it's your birthday, the first since you and him got together at Will's engagement party... and he forgot. In a hurry, he calls on his team to pull off a special day in order to make it seem as if he this all planned out ahead of time.

Warnings: some smut (fingering, oral), uuuhhh that's it? Content warning implied/referenced Nicolas Cage.

***************

“God baby, you just woke up this soaked?”

“It’s doesn’t help you’ve been grinding your morning wood into my ass the last hour.”

Santi had his finger down your Star Wars pj pants as the two of you laid in bed on this sleepy sunday morning, Santiago spooning you. Santi loved how you looked like this. Don’t get him wrong, he loved how you looked in business casual for work, he loved how you looked when he took you out on a fancy date and you got all dressed up, but something about this drove him crazy. Maybe it’s because only he got to see you like this, or maybe it’s because he got to see this so often instead of the one night stands he was used to. There was something so fucking intimate about it.

And it just turned him on like crazy.

“Not my fault you look this goddamn good”

“I literally have drool dried to my cheeks right n- oh” There it was. Santi curled his fingers and hit that perfect spot inside your gushing core.

“Only way I can get you to shut the fuck up, huh? Make you moan like a little whore?”

“Hmmmm I think you should be just a little bit nicer to me considering it’s my birthday.”

It took all his will power for Santi to not stop finger fucking you right then and there, his face hidden behind you hiding the horror at himself. BIRTHDAY?!?! It can’t be your birthday. That was tomorrow, wasn’t it? No, no it was a Sunday… next Sunday? No, next Sunday was Will’s wedding- oh fuck it’s your birthday.

“Sure is, hermosa” Santi mumbled into your neck. “And I have a great day planned for you, starting with…” Flinging the blankets off the bed, Santi scrambled his way down your body, sliding off the pants and diving in, large nose and all, into your cunt. Santi put every goddamn ounce of energy he had into making you scream, licking and sucking away, only breaking away to nibble on your thighs for a breath while he finger fucked you, never once letting up on the sensations he was giving. 

“Fuck! Fucking hell Santiago, what’s- uuugghh, fuck, what’s gotten into you today?”

“Just trying to give my girl the best birthday ever!” He said, perhaps too enthusiastically. Only Ben get’s that fucking excited. Still you didn’t seem to find it odd because you were moaning his name as you came on his face, Santi lapping up every drop until he drew a second, smaller orgasm out of you. “Just lay here, princesa.” Still in a panic (and fucking hard, on top of it all) Santi went and drew you a bath. The perfect excuse to leave you alone with a towel, face mask, candle, and music going so you didn’t have to hear him hyperventilating.

How could he do this? How could he forget your birthday, his perfect fucking girlfriend who remembers every date from his birthday, to Frankie’s daughter Yasmine’s recitals to the anniversary of Tom’s death. And he couldn’t remember this? It’s a week on the dot before Will and Lana’s wedding, how could he forget! Between the wedding, the bachelor party, groomsmen duties and not to mention last month he signed Yaz up for a soccer camp which meant committing to picking her up from daycare for a few hours every day for the last week and of course he had to take her out for McDonalds after like the good uncle he was… you had just gotten lost in the flood.

This would not stand. He’d give you the best birthday he could pull together last minute or so help him god! He just needs a few reinforcements.

Benny’s Boys 😎

Pope: I fucked up.

Ironhead: You forgot her birthday, didn’t you. 

🐟: How the fuck do you remember, Will

No Call Sign: Will drinks respect women juice for breakfast 

Ironhead: It’s a week before my wedding. How did you forget?

Pope: I don’t know! But I need your help to fix this!

No Call Sign: Have you tried eating her out? That usually fixes things when May is mad

Ironhead: Jesus Christ Benjamin. Have some class.

Ironhead: Have you, though?

Pope: GUYS

Pope: Also, yes.

🐟: What do you need, Pope.

After a four way call on the balcony and planning that rivaled what it took to almost pull off Colombia (Why does Will have a white board and a corkboard with pictures of them all, you, Yazmine, Lana and red strig just ready to go?), a preliminary plan was made. Santi would start by taking you to brunch where Will would just have enough time to bring over a bouquet of flowers and put their names in for a table without being seen. Meanwhile, Frankie and Yaz were going to be working on a cake and Benny called up everyone you both knew (why does he have everyone’s numbers?). Lana was their man on the ground, updating the boards in an organized fashion she knew Will loved and keeping everyone on track. One task each would not be enough to get this done, they’d have to hussle the whole day to pull off what the 4 men had planned in an effort to make it seem like Santi scheduled this out ahead of time.

When Santi finished the calls and the grand plan was made, he walked back to the bedroom, just in time to see the bathroom door open. He quickly dove onto the bed, landing on top of the covers and he propped himself up on one elbow, acting relaxed.

"Enjoyed your bath, mi vida?"

You lifted an amused eyebrow, seeing that he bounced a little on the mattress and looked a bit out of breath, but you nodded.

"Yes, baby, it was perfect, thank you." - you blew him a kiss and walked to your closet to dress up.

He had a big house, much bigger and much nicer than your flat, but last night was spent at yours. When you two first dated, Santi set the rules by saying that he wants to keep things slow and casual (like with all of the women he had in the past, he loved fucking them, he respected them, but he wasn't the type to spend most of his free time with them). 

You agreed, not wanting to complicate things. The sex was great and he was fun to hang out with, and because of that you didn't want to rush things in case you get bored with each other too soon.

This plan flew right out the window when both of you spent your nights in separate beds, thinking about the other, missing the other.

The next time you had sex, Santi pulled you closer when you wanted to get up, get dressed and leave, asking you to stay the night, kissing your neck. You melted in his arms and cuddled close to him, and after having the best sleep of your life next to each other, it was almost impossible for both of you to let go of the other from then on.

Santi was surprised you and him were still together. Not because you two together weren't perfect. He just… never met someone who made him feel this… happy. Now he felt even worse for forgetting your birthday.

He watched you dress up with a soft smile, loving the way your body looked. When you were done he got up too, lifted your face up with one of his fingers and kissed your lips sweetly.

"How about I'll take you to that restaurant you eye fuck everytime we pass it? For brunch?"

Your eyes widened. That restaurant was… expensive.

You opened your mouth to protest and Santi smiled wider, putting his forefinger against your lips.

"Not that you get any say in the matter, I'm gonna spoil my perfect little princess on her birthday and you can't do anything to stop me."

You mock pouted and bit his finger making him laugh, then you hugged his neck and kissed his lips.

"Okay, Mr. Kidnapper, I sure as hell don't wanna go to that restaurant I've been dying to try since I first saw it. And just for your information, I'm gonna be all grumpy and shit the whole time while we're there!" - you said as you turned to walk out the door and Santi's heart fluttered at seeing the excited bounce in your steps as he followed you.

You kissed his cheek when he opened the car door for you, making him grin widely; you were so sweet, so good to him. Just when you were driving near Santi’s house to get to the resteraunt, you spotted a car similar to Benny's as it turned in the street.

"Isn't that Be…?"

"So are you excited to try this restaurant?" - Santi asked all too eagerly.

"I think that was Be…"

"You must be so curious what I brought for you as a present, carino. I can't wait to give it to you."

You frowned a little then started talking about the reviews you read on the restaurant and started listing him the stuff you'd be happy to get as a present.

When you were looking out the window while you were rambling on and on, Santi quickly reached for his phone and started a voice recording. He sent it to William so he'll know what to buy.

As Santi took you into the restaurant, he got nervous since it was packed. How was he supposed to make it look like he had made a reservation? “Sit here, amor.” Santi directed you to an open chair and went to talk to a host. As he walked away, he heard you call his name, and when he turned around, he saw you in your pretty white dress making a heart with your hands. Santi made his best attempt at a heart back (it looked terrible.) and went on. You were so perfect, so pretty… how was he supposed to give you the day you deserved?

“Hi, uuhhhhhh call ahead for Santiago Garcia? Or maybe it’s under William-”

“Yes! Mr. Garcia! Your friend put your name in. Luckily we just had a bunch of tables get up, so as soon as they get bussed off, we’ll seat you. Maybe 10-15 minutes?”

Santi breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you, that’s perfect.” He turned to go back to you when he realized a weak link in this plan. The hostess. This was not a military operation and he couldn’t ‘take care of it’ the way they used to… lucky for the hostess. “Hey uh… can you maybe not mention my friend to my girlfriend? Or that this was a call ahead instead of a reservation?”

She smiled knowingly. “Of course, Mr. Garcia.”

When he got back to you, he told you the wait time. “Sorry baby, they said they had some tables stay longer than expected.”

“Oh that’s okay!” You assured. You used to work in a restaurant and know how it goes. When the hostess came to seat you, she made sure to tell Santi his “reservation” was ready.

Brunch was… expensive. But it didn’t matter, you were worth it, and you smiled so brightly at every bite and every sip, he wanted to take you here more just to see you so happy. Just when he thought Will couldn’t swing the flowers, the hostess brought up a bouquet and Santi watched in delight as you beam at him. 

Next on the agenda was a picnic. Driving home, Santi prayed for the first time in half a decade that the Millers had gotten their next part done. Ben came over to start decorating and prepping the picnic basket. Will had to bring the physical basket and blanket… and glasses that aren't plastic. 

“BEEEEEEEENNNNNNNNN” 

“Relax!” The younger man shouted back as Santi entered the apartment. “We’re way ahead of schedule” Ben had stopped at the store to get a cheese and meat platter and was adding the finishing touches. Will had already left for his next part; buying a gift in which Santi would venmo the cost back. He didn’t care how much, just make it good. 

“Tio!!!” A little brunette ran up and hugged her uncle, covered in flour.

“Mija, what are you doing here?” He asked as he greeted his goddaughter.

Frankie round the corner from the kitchen. “Yasmine, you just got him dirty!” He scolded. Santi assured him it was fine and wiped off the flour, and Frankie explained. “We figured we’d make the cake here instead of risking transportation.”

With hugs and thank you’s all around, Santi grabbed the finished basket and dashed out the door.

When he got back in the car, you looked at him curiously. “Is that Frankie’s car down the street?”

Santi gives a noncommittal answer and mutters something about Frankie having ladies in every zip code, then drives away, quickly changing the subject to the new Barbie movie you wanted to see so badly as he took you out to the park for a picnic. 

Santi found a nice spot under a tree where the shadow was big enough to cover the big blanket from the heat of the sun. He made you sit down and you watched with a smile as he pulled everything out of the box. While he did that, you decided to pull off your sandals and removed Santi's shoes and socks too, making the man chuckle.

He opened the bottle of wine while you picked some cheese on your plate and you beamed up at him.

"Today is going great Santi. Thank you for this."

Santi smiled back at you and leaned over to kiss your cheek.

"You deserve the best, baby."

You shook your head, feeling your cheeks heat up.

"Still… No one put this much effort into making me feel special, like… ever."

Santi's smile faltered a little and you thought it was because of sympathy. But he felt shame envelope him. He shouldn't have forgotten your birthday. If he would've remembered he would've made you take a week off from work and would have taken you to somewhere nice. To Spain maybe, or Guatemala or Italy, maybe Greece. To somewhere beautiful where you always wanted to go. To make you feel like the most special girl in the world. Because you were the most special! At least for him. What would you think of him if you knew his friends were helping him, because he forgot your birthday? Did he really deserve you?

You pulled him out of his thoughts when you leaned your head on his shoulder as you were watching the lake where ducks and swans were swimming peacefully.

"You always make me feel special though. Everyday. Sometimes I feel like I don't thank you enough." - you said quietly.

Santi looked down and kissed your head several times, until you chuckled.

"Don't be silly, baby. You're the best thing that ever happened to me. There are times when I just look at you and wonder how you ended up being in my life."

You grinned.

"It was one of Benny's parties where you were drunk as hell, grabbed his guitar and started to serenade me, singing about how I am the most beautiful woman you've ever seen."

Santi started to laugh.

"Well, you are!"

"I just finished throwing up, and was trying to wipe my makeup off with little success."

"Still. I was watching you since you entered the house and was drinking cause I was trying to get enough courage to go over to you."

"This is such bullshit!" - you said, looking at him.

"Que?!"

"Benny told me you are the biggest womanizer he ever met, why did you need courage?"

"Because…" - he started as he booped your nose with his fingertip gently as he leaned closer. - "You are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, and I didn't want to fuck it up." - he said and kissed your lips softly.

You snorted and kissed him back.

"So your grand plan was to get shitfaced and serenade me with silly lyrics you made up on the spot."

"Well, I didn't mean to drink that much, but Will just told us he got engaged and we had to celebrate." - he kissed your cheek again, then your neck. - "Besides… it worked." - he grinned.

"It did." - you laughed and kissed him again. 

Benny’s Boys 😎

🐟: Booked you a couples massage. Consider it your birthday gift. And christmas. Y Dia De San Jose.

Pope: I cannot say thank you enough, you guys

No Call Sign: Once would be great.

Pope: Hey! I said thank you!

Ironhead: Quit texting your boyfriend and woo your girlfriend. If you want her to be your wife you can’t let her think you’re going to ditch her for some blonde bimbo

No Call Sign: Wait. Am I the blonde bimbo?

🐟: Hey! He’s my blonde bimbo

No Call Sign: Thanks baby 😘

This was proceeded by Ben and Frankie ‘homie flirting’ as Ben called it, before Will reminded them Benny has a girlfriend and Frankie still needed to text Santi the details of the massage.

He took his time with you at the picnic, plopping little bits of meat and cheese and berries in your mouth, continuing to woo you with everything he had. He would make you feel like the most special girl on the planet if it was the last thing he did.

“You’re the most perfect boyfriend in the world“ You praised as you laid on this lap as he sat back against the tree. Santi dangled grapes over your mouth, feeding them to you as he fanned you (Will had a fan in his picnic kit? No wonder that man got engaged so damn fast). 

“Hopefully I’ll be the most perfect husband not long from now.”

The way you beamed up at him, eyes sparkling, made every worry he had disappear. “You mean that, Santi?” With bated breath, you await his answer. It wasn’t like you hadn’t been serious… but the line between meeting at Will and Lana’s engagement party where Benny brought you along to, where you had both said to stay ‘casual’ to where you were now, with you as Santi’s official plus one to Will’s wedding, spending nearly every night together… you hadn’t really talked about the future. You knew he was serious. He wouldn’t lead you along like this if he just wanted to casually date, and Benny would kick his ass if he thought Santi was being a dick to you (and threatened to do as much when you first told him about his two best friends dating), but you hadn’t really talked about it.

“I mean it, carino.” Assuringly, Santi caressed your cheek. “I know we’ve been moving a little slow, and I appreciate you meeting me at my pace. I know maybe it seems like I’m just messing around-”

“It doesn’t.”

“-but I promise you, I am very serious. And I’d like to take the next step.” He goes in for a kiss, pecking your lips and tasting the fruit on them.

“And what’s the next step, baby?”

“You’ll see when we get back to the apartment.” He did have one gift ready, something he had planned for weeks ahead of time to give today. It wasn’t that he forgot your birthday completely… he knew what day it was, he knew it was coming… it just got lost in the chaos. So yeah, he needed his 3 best friends, one’s fiance and his goddaughter to assist him. “But up next, a couples massage.”

Santiago did not mean to moan. He really didn’t. But between the stress of the wedding and this whole day, he was tense, and the massage therapist was good. Lucky for him, both his and your massage therapist were cool about it, and you burst into giggles, proceeding to tell his masseuse “I never get him to moan like that.”

He’d be humiliated if it was anyone else but you. You made everything so easy. You also mimicked his moan the whole car ride to his apartment as Santi prayed to god Benny had decorated and gathered enough people together to constitute a surprise party. It was definitely a perk that your friend was good friends with your girlfriend; they knew a lot of the same people. Okay, so maybe Santi thought Ben was competition at first! So maybe Santi kinda wanted to steal you from Ben! So maybe the reason Santi brought out the guitar is because Benny had previously played it and was singing ‘baby lock them doors and turn the light down loooowwww’ and Santi wouldn’t be upstaged! So sue him!

As he unlocked the door, he spoke REALLY LOUDLY in hopes they’d here and get into place. It worked. It definitely worked. Until Yaz shouted “DON’T SHUSH ME DADDY” and it was all over.

You looked at Santi suspiciously.

"You are either hiding your side-chick or… IT'S MY FAVOURITE LITTLE GIRL IN THE WORLD!"

In three seconds you two spotted Yazmine sprinting down the stairs and into your arms, giggling.

"No, Yaz, abort mission, I repeat ABORT MISSION!" - you heard Frankie yell after her, still in his hiding spot while Santi facepalmed himself.

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" - she shouted excited as you picked her up and kissed her cheek.

"Thank you, honey! So tell me…" 

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!" - suddenly dozens of people jumped out from behind different furnitures and you jumped back scared, but then laughed when you recognized the faces.

"Oh my god, guys, thank you!" - you laughed as you put Yasmine down and hugged everyone who came up to you.

Santi quickly searched for his friends to thank them all the effort they put into to make this day special for you. The decoration was done and it seemed like you loved it, if the way your eyes sparkled when you spotted another balloon or a birthday poster was any indication. 

You loved the restaurant, the picnic basket Will and Benny put together was fucking delicious, the massage was heavenly and now all of your friends were here to celebrate you.

"Guys, seriously, thank you." - Santi said as he hugged them.

"You better marry this woman one day, since we did all this for you two." - Will winked.

Santi looked over at you with a soft smile on his face. 

"Maybe I will."

Frankie, Will and Benny's eyes widened and they grinned, pulling Santi into another group hug. They've never seen their friend this happy and it was easy to tell that it was because of you.

You had a suspicion that it wasn't all Santi. You're not saying he wasn't capable to pull all of this off, but he looked a bit on edge the whole day and he was on the phone a lot more than he used to.

When Santi appeared in front of you with a big gift box, you grinned widely, taking it from him.

“Baby it’s huge!!!” You squeal as you both sit down to tear it open; right away you knew he had sent Will to get it. When you had listed off things you guessed he might have gotten you in the car this morning, you had named several items. A pandora’s charm bracelet, the giant blanket off redbubble with Nicolas Cage’s face all over it, that rose shaped sex toy you were curious about, a new hair dryer since yours had broken, and it was, in fact, the last one. This had Will written all over it. It wasn’t that Will couldn't be romantic; he was, from what Lana had told you and what you had seen, very romantic. However, out of the four, Will was more practical, and absolutely went for the hair dryer. Santi was more fancy jewelry, Frankie would go for the sex toy, and Benny…

The hair dryer was nice, though, very, very nice. It came with several attachments, and Will even managed to put in different hair masks and deep conditioners in there. It was perfect, and you would absolutely be using it on you and May to get ready for Will and Lana’s wedding. 

“THANK YOU BABY THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!” Jumping up, you tackle him onto the carpet and pepper his scruffy face with kisses as you both giggled.

The night went swimmingly, a fun weekend but nothing crazy since most had work the next day and the real party would be next weekend, but you had such a great time, Santi serenading you with a cover of You and Me by Lifehouse. Benny somehow read your mind and got you that god awful Nicolas Cage blanket you wanted, and Santi he was never staying the night again.

When the crowd cleared out, leaving you and Santi alone, you took both of his hands in yours. “Thank you for today, Santiago. I had an amazing time”

Santi smiled at you, adoration and love spreading across his face. “I’m so glad, mi vida. It took a lot of effort” Now he could honestly say that wasn’t a lie.

Looking around, you compliment his work. “The decorations look great” You nod to the streamers that were so high up. “You use a step stool?”

Fake glaring, Santi furrowed his eyebrows. “Oh you’re gonna be a brat now, are you?”

Pulling your boyfriend closer, you look his dead in the eye but keep a light smile to make sure he knows you aren’t upset. “You forgot my birthday, didn’t you?”

His eyes go wide, and immediately he starts stammering. “No! No- why would you- baby I would never- your birthday of all days!”

You cock and eyebrow at him. “Santiago Garcia.”

He sighs. “Fine! So I forgot it was today, but I knew it was coming! I just got so… I don’t have an excuse, baby, I’m sorry.” He genuinely looked so sad, so disappointed in himself. 

“Oh Santi.” You lean in to kiss him, caressing his face tenderly. “It’s okay, you made me feel so, so special, so loved, not just by you but by your family, and that means a lot to me. Knowing that they care about me too. So thank you today was perfect.”

His face softens, smiling lightly. “Okay, so I had a lot of help. But!” He departs from you, walking into his bedroom and coming out with a small box. “This is something I made up weeks ago. I didn’t completely forget about your birthday.” He hands it to you.

“Santi, you shouldn’t have! You’ve already gotten me so much!” 

“Well, this one cost me like. Three dollars.”

When you open it, you see a small key from those kiosks at walmart that even had a Star Wars design on it. “Santi” You gasp. “Is this-”

“A key to my house, yeah.” Santi stuffed his hands into the pockets of his dark pants, shuffling nervously. “Well, we’ve been dating for a while, and you practically live here anyway” He teases. “I want you to just… make yourself at home. And when your lease is up… and if you feel ready… I was thinking…” The hopeful look on his high-strung face after everything he did to put today together at the last minute… you fell more in love with him every day.

“SANTIAREYOUASKINGMETOMOVEIN?!” You blurt out, practically jumping.

“If you want-”

Kisses. Nothing but kisses and I love you’s and you jumped and squealed in excitement. 

When you had settled and confirmed yes, you’d move in when your lease was up in a few short months, Santi took your mouth in his for a more passionate kiss, and a handful of ass in his hand for a squeeze. Sloppily, you two made out on your slow trek back to what would soon be your bedroom (Where the Nicolas Cage blanket was awaiting him, little did he know) he asked you.

“How did you know I forgot?”

“Weeeelllllll”  you draw it out as you go for his neck. “There were a few signs.”

He mumbles a few swears. “Was it Benny and Frankie’s car’s?”

“Well, yeah. But there was the fact, and baby I love you very much, but that level of decoration requires Benny’s enthusiasm.”

“Okay, yeah, well-”

“The gift screamed Will, and the massage had to be one of their ideas at the very least because you would never willingly strip for a woman you weren’t sleeping with.”

“Hey-”

“The cake had a chunk of missing frosting that was suspiciously Yasmine sized”

“She takes after her uncle Ben-”

“There was a fan in the picnic basket”

“Okay so?”

“And baby…” You stop right outside the bedroom door, both of you panting and eager for each other. “You never eat me out like that unless you are trying to make up for something.”

His stupidly sharp jaw drops. “Are you saying I’m not a pussy eating champion?”

“Hey!” You raise your arms in defense. “All I’m saying is if Lana and May are correct, you could take some tips from the Miller- AH!” Santi scooped you up, slinging you over his shoulder.

Despite his words, he was clearly smiling, his shoulders shaking in laughter. “I don’t need jack shit from the Millers!” 

“Except this party”

“Except this party! Now, let me show you a little hint of what my wifey will get.” With that, he carried you into the bedroom, promptly greeted by a giant blanket collage of Nicolas Cage.

“Babe. What the FUCK!”

***********

Hope y'all liked!!!!

Dolli I hope you had a great birthday!

Tomorrow I'm decorating my classroom with baby yoda decorations, giving my day care class party favors, and bringing them cookies.

then this weekend thank GOD i have friday off and im going camping

@eyelessfaces @my-secret-shame-but-fanfiction @my-secret-shame @whatthefishh @miraclesabound @littlenosoul @fandxmslxt69 @campingwiththecharmings @melodygatesauthor @moonknightly @ahookedheroespureheart @jake-g-lockley @kittyofalltrades @milkymoon2483

#santiago garcia #santiago garcia x fem!reader #fem!reader #fem reader #santiago garcia x reader #santiago garcia/reader #fluff #santiago garcia fluff #santiago pope garcia #triple frontier #santiago garcia fanfiction #triple frontier fanfiction #best friend benny miller #will miller #benny miller #frankie morales

[parkerpeter24]

Sending in req, wedding anniversary w/ peter can be smut or not but a lot of fluff <3

OKAY I LOVE THE IDEA thanks so much for sending this in 🤍 i tried my best idk why my writing feels a bit rusty and this isn’t that long 🥸🤧 also i accidentally made this pre-wedding anniversary 😭

pairing ➳ peter parker x reader

requests are open

masterlist

the remnants of last night flooded your mind, leaving a wide smile covering your face as soon as you woke up. peter’s arm were wrapped firmly around you but he shuffled when he heard the change in your pattern of breathing.

you turned around in his arms and he pulled you closer, “g’morning, boyfriend. happy anniversary.”

you watched with partly closed eyelids as peter’s eyebrows furrowed, lips downturned, “i’m your fiancé!”

“right. i know.” you chuckled as he nudged his nose against yours. peter, your boyfriend since four years, had finally proposed to you one night before your anniversary, and despite him being the worst at secret-keeping, this one was exceptionally well kept. but knowing peter, you would have expected something like that from him anyway.

“why’d you say boyfriend?” he asked.

“you know, it was fun being your girlfriend. it’s like an end of an era.” you shrugged, getting up finally to start the day.

peter shook his head, “happy anniversary, fiancé.”

the two of you made breakfast together, stealing kisses every once in a while as you worked around the kitchen in co-ordination. peter cut up some strawberries while you baked pancakes.

“we should run to the grocery store later.” you stated as the two of you sat down at the dining table, besides instead of sitting across each other.

“why?” peter asked.

“there’s basically nothing left in the fridge.” you said before dipping your spoon in the nutella jar and pulling out a flood of the chocolate spread, covering your pancake in it.

“whoa! easy there, willy wonka.” peter teased, making you laugh.

“it’s alright. not like i’ve gotta maintain a figure, i got a boyfriend.”

peter’s face, once more turned sour with distaste. not from your pancakes but from what you’d just said, “i’m your fiancé.”

“yes, i’ve got a fiancé.” you gave him a grin before taking a bite from your stack of pancakes.

the two of you took a trip down to the grocery store around noon. peter gathered all the items from your list while you were busy exploring the snacks section, finally deciding on a few packs of readymade popcorn for your movie night later and some reese’s peanut butter cups.

on your way out from the store, you stumbled into your neighbour, mj. she noticed the ring immediately and her eyes widened in excitement.

peter realised you two hadn’t told anyone about your engagement. peter noticed the look of confusion over your face as mj congratulated you.

the brunette took your hand in his, pulling it up to your eye level so you could see the beautiful ring sitting on your ring finger, “fiancé.” he mouthed to you.

“oh! thanks a lot, mj.” you smiled at the kind girl.

you were sitting on the couch, legs stretched to rest over the coffee table as you waited for peter to bring the snacks out. the first scene of the movie you two had mutually agreed upon– after a long, long conversation over how star wars is better than rom coms– was paused over the screen as you tapped away on your mobile phone.

you were talking to gwen, telling her the whole thing since she wanted every little detail about how peter proposed to you. you sent her the last text as peter settled beside you, leaving against your shoulder, “watcha doin’?”

“nothing, just telling gwen about my fiancé.” you emphasized on the word.

“finally!” peter cheered, making you laugh as he wrapped his arms around your waist.

the two of you cuddled on the couch as you started ‘the proposal’.

not to your surprise, peter was straddling your hips as the end credits rolled. his hands, warm under your t-shirt, travelled up, pulling the fabric along with them.

your tongue worked its way past your lover’s lips, exploring his mouth. your hand travelled to the nape of his neck, playing with the soft curls as he pulled away for breath. his lips attached to your jaw, leaving a trail of kisses in their wake, then over your neck. you felt him gently bite the skin over your sensitive spot, making you gasp, “peter! no teasing.”

peter pulled away to look you in the eye, giving you a smug look “what? i just wanna make sweet love to my girlfriend.”

“fiancé!” you scolded before sealing the gap between you two once more.

#peter parker #peter parker fluff #peter parker x reader #peter parker x y/n #peter parker smut #peter parker imagine #andrew garfield!peter parker x you #andrew garfield!peter parker imagine #tasm!peter imagine #tasm!peter fic #tasm!peter x you #tasm!peter fluff #mcu!peter parker #andrew garfield!peter parker x reader #tasm!spiderman x reader #tasm!peter parker fluff #tasm!peter x y/n #tasm!peter parker fanfiction

[bengiyo]

Get to Know Me Tag :)

I was tagged by @telomeke and shaded by @lurkingshan.

do you make your bed?

Not usually, but I don't have a partner right now. I find that I'm actually really good at cleanliness when I have people in my space regularly. I am better about taking care of things when I'm doing them for the ease of others.

what's your favourite number?

14, but I couldn't tell you why. I think it has something to do with a girl named Ciara who I sat behind in elementary school.

what is your job?

I fix things for a government agency.

if you could go back to school, would you?

Probably. I didn't really know what I wanted to do when I went to college, and was far too much a mess at the time to study what I really should have. If I could do it and maintain my expenses, I'd retrain for my preferred profession.

can you parallel park?

Yes. I am the gay who drives.

a job you had that would surprise people?

I was paid for over two years to be really good at D&D.

do you think aliens are real?

So... I gotta be honest... I hate this question. This feels as loaded as the "Do you believe in God?" question. We are not aware of the existence of life on other planets, let alone sentient life. There is nothing for me to believe in. Do I hope that there are other intelligent beings out there? Yes. I think it would be really cool to engage in communication with a species that also crawled their way out of the muck and made it to space. I think there's much we could learn from each other about life and the universe itself. But belief is such a loaded term for me as a lapsed Catholic. I do not believe in aliens, but I hope that we'll get to meet some in the future.

can you drive a manual car?

Nope! Never needed to learn.

what's your guilty pleasure?

Hmm... Nothing really anymore?

tattoos?

Nah, I've always worked in the public sector in a way that hasn't made it an advisable choice, and I've rarely cared enough about something to mark my body with it.

favorite color?

Purple most of the time, but my wardrobe would say I'm in my green era.

favorite type of music?

I'm a soft rock 90s kid who embraced a lot of 2000s and later alternative. I've been on a huge synthwave kick lately. However, because I grew up in the 90s and remember the era of radio, I have a deep affection for Soul and R&B, classic rock, and pop.

do you like puzzles?

Yes? But not in a way that makes me yearn for them.

any phobias?

Probably falling, but that seems like a normal one for survival purposes.

favorite childhood sport?

Baseball! I was a shortstop.

do you talk to yourself?

Not often. I don't actually have an internal monologue, so I don't need to talk to myself often to get through it.

what movies do you adore?

This is...so difficult. I'm just going to name a ton of films: Pooh's Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin, Pacific Rim, Ghost Dog, Master and Commander, The Man From Earth, The Sum of Us, Big Eden, Kill Bill 1 and 2, Knives Out, Muppet Treasure Island, Gattaca, C.R.A.Z.Y., Weekend, First Blood, Robocop, Starship Troopers, Drive My Car, Nine Days, Really Love, Set it Off, Make the Yuletide Gay, Shelter, Pig, Kiki's Delivery Service, The Digimon Movie, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Star Wars IV and V, Isa Pa With Feelings, The Way He Looks... and probably many more.

coffee or tea?

Coffee. Tea does so little for me.

first thing you wanted to be growing up?

A train conductor or an astronaut! Trains are so cool, and space is the final frontier! We have to boldly go where no one has gone before!

I'll tag @shortpplfedup, @negrowhat, @chicademartinica, @so-much-yet-to-learn and @happypotato48

#tag game #tag meme #about me

[alpaca-clouds]

(The concept of) Canon is like an Onion

It has layers.

Okay, I just gotta be the fandom elder here, because there is a thing that is kinda bugging me. And that is the tendency of especially younger fans of stuff to point at all sorts of suplementary material (artbooks, interviews with creators/actors, articles in magazines and what not) and go: "See, my interpretation of this and that is totally canon!"

And the thing is that... it is a bit more complicated than that. Because what is and isn't canon... Well, it is something people argue about a lot. But the general thing is, basically this. Canonicity can have multiple levels - and the top level of it is basically just the text itself.

Like, older fans of the Star Wars Fandom might still remember Lucas' five (or was it even six?) levels of canon. And those were just based on actual stories. It had become a necessity back then just based on the fact that a lot of the extended universe stuff was at times contradictory - even with the stuff that Lucas himself had done. So according to Lucas, the main canon was just the stuff he had been a part of creating. And then there were levels of things going from "most canon" to "least canon" basically.

But yeah, generally speaking: Canon is the information given within a story itself. You can argue about additional story material maybe being canon (like tie in novels to a movie, for example), but generally even those are not... necessarily canon to the main-thing itself.

I know that these days there is this big thing happening of creators just being very, very accessible to fans. So, the temptation is big to tweet or mail or comment on a twitch of your favorite media's creator/your favorite character's actor/whatever and be like: "I have this theory/analysis. Am I right?" Which is... fine. But you also have to keep in mind that stuff that people privately say is not necessarily authoritatively.

As some of the followers of this blog might know: My OG fandom is Digimon. And boy howdy, can I tell you stories about Digimon's "Word of God". Because... look people, if it is not a book, there is not a singular creator. And the people who were in charge of Digimon, had at times very, very differing ideas from each other.

With Digimon Adventure/02 I interviewed several of the writers. And guess what: I at times got opposing opinions from them. And those opinions were also differing from what the producer and the director said in official interviews and sublementary materials (like artbooks or the novelization).

Two examples are Sora's age and Hikari's crest. Sora is shown to have her birthday in movie 2, which is set in March. Given how Japanese school law works, this would make her 10 during the events of Digimon Adventure and 13 during DIgimon Adventure 02 (because the cut-off date is April 1st). According to Reiko Yoshida, who wrote that movie, this is true. According to the producer, however, no actually the movie is set in April, she is 11 during the events of the first season. And the other fun one: What does Hikari's crest of "light" actually mean. We asked five different people involved and got five different answers.

And the big thing is, that you cannot assume that someone, who is engaging with media, does also engage with ALL THE INTERVIEWS and FOLLOW EVERYONE INVOLVED ON SOCIAL MEDIA. Because most people don't.

I see this happening a lot especially in regards to people interpreting the canonicity of ships - and character sexuality.

Let me use an example where I totally agree with the person in question: Isaac from Castlevania. According to his voice actor Isaac is queer. I totally absolutely read the character this way, no question. But... technically it is never confirmed in the text. So if you come away from it not reading him this way, yeah, that is totally understandable. You do not need to know everything every voice actor said.

And if stuff within the actually story itself is kept vague, you cannot just go and say: "Person XY who also was involved in creating media X said this, so this is the only correct opinion." Because if the text does not confirm it, it is not necessarily "canon" and either interpretation is valid.

And if there is multiple entries as source material, also try to think of what people will usually think of, when you say "Fandom X".

Like, to get back at my own fandoms: Yeah, no, most people will not know about the novelization of Digimon Adventure. Most people will also not have played the Wonderswan games (that also at times outright contradict the primary text in form of the anime). Or with Pirates of the Caribbean: Most fans have never read any of the tie-in novels. Heck, most people do not even know they exist. Meanwhile, also a ton of people do not consider movies 4 and 5 canonical to the Gore Verbinski trilogy, given that again those movies outright contradict some of the stuff stated in the trilogy.

What I am trying to say: Canonicity is, if anything, a spectrum, not a binary. So for the love of all the gods, please stop the entire: "Well, the guy who did the storyboards for three of the scenes in this show agrees with me, so I am right," stuff. I know it is tempting (believe me, I KNOW). But... If it is not in the text, other interpretations are valid.

Also, headcanons are always valid. Always.

#canon #canonicity #fandom #fandom culture #digimon #digimon adventure #digimon adventure 02 #castlevania #castlevania netflix #pirates of the caribbean #star wars

[amethyinst]

god im thinking gale post war. he's got a kafkaesque middling bureaucrat position on government or perhaps something like 'minister for outreach' or some bs job. mostly there to be the attractive young face of the new government.

his friends are all 40yo rebel leaders turned bureaucrats and posy his 6yo little sister who writes him pen pal letters from district 12 where she is going to school (its an assignment where you write to a pen pal from another district and she was like i pick my brother Comrade Gale Hawthorne Of The Rebellion and the teacher is like well i meant another kid from another district but okay then.)

she's only now learning to write so its mostly little kid stick drawings in her new gel pens he bought her with a note from hazelle asking if he's eating enough and that katniss asked about him. and he reads them crying while getting whiskey drunk at 9pm. and he writes back like hello posy what a lovely drawing tell mummy im doing absolutely fine and please dont bother katniss about me but also is she okay does she talk about me is she happy is she mad please and thank you lovely pen colour by the way.

he is engaged to a female rebel about his age maybe a little older. i have named her evjenny a future dystopia spelling of yevgenia russian form of eugenia meaning 'good breeding'. because its funny to me for him to go full bolshevik. she's from district 5 a slightly wealthier district in comparison to the outliers like 10, 11, 12. she's a little uptight, very type-a, respects gale, loves the state, believes in black-and-white justice. thinks katniss is mostly a propaganda creation and that she's a little weepy but good for morale. has a pet bird she is wanting to teach human language to.

vaguely know each other from the little inter-district rebel communications that coin allowed. coin off-handedly mentioned that she respected her so when The Powers That Be were arranging propaganda couples to marry (they didnt call it that ofc) he was like yeah okay she seems fine.

meet each other at panem galas that are about like fostering relations between the districts. TPTB are like ah gale this is evjenny you are attractive young people you should chat. we did not plan this we did not have several meetings planning this. they bond over hating all the former capitol turned rebel folks.

evjenny (evjen for short, she says, because it is efficient) mentions that she enjoyed gale more than katniss in the propos because gale was an 'actual working man' as opposed to katniss (who is the equivalent of a kardashian to her). and gale is like. Eye twitch. thank you. i enjoyed when you organised that power plant to get blown up and she goes thank you it did take a lot of work. she is not joking she's just a very serious person. they go on like five 'dates' (paparazzi outings) and they agree to marry with a handshake three months after meeting. (there is a more official ceremony where evjen pops the question on tv with a sensible steel ring)

their marriage is like an absolute flop cos gale has a drinking problem and evjen is like if a robot was a 15yo girl and that 15yo girl got parentified because the russian revolution happened. she's not even like jealous about katniss at first until it becomes insanely obvious that gale has like deified / villainised katniss in his head not even deliberately she just represents the past/future he can never have. so evjen is like okay but why cant you just repress it better why are you making it my problem? this is not important we are literally rebuilding a government and you are getting winedrunk over your childhood situationship Man Up.

they have a daughter the first year of marriage who plutarch wanted to name peace but he got outvoted and they (evjen and gale but also The Powers That Be) settled on pax. gale calls her sweetpea :) pax hawthorne is kind of a child star from birth which evjen is fine with cos its for The Greater Good but gale is like. This Is What They Did To Katniss. but he cant say that because he banned all mentions of her.

after a few years of fail marriage they choose to get pregnant again to try and save it (BAD IDEA) and they have another daughter. The Naming Committee was a nine month process all the way till the fuckn day of childbirth. they wanted something evocative of olive branch imagery. olivia was considered but they vetoed it cos it sounded too capitol (plutarch was miffed about it and left that committee) then olive but since that's the skin colour they vetoed that too even though gale liked it. eventually went with dove :) because gale has apparently not had enough damn birds in his life

i think they do divorce once an appropriate amount of time has passed where its not bad optics. gale 3Ds (drunk, divorced, dilf) is very important to me. anyway this post is long enough my bad

#gale hawthorne #the hunger games #thg

[maledistributionsystem]

Heyy i have a question for you bro. First of all i love your posts, it's so encouraging and makes me feel genuely better abt myself. My question is how do i make up for a boyhood i never had? I'm 18 and transitioning isn't available to me, my country is extremely homophobic and id simply need someone to tell me my chest doesn't make me a girl etc but i don't know any queer folks irl and it feels like im missing out

Thank you for contacting the Male Distribution System Bark Line. Remember: Mens bodies come in many shapes, sizes, colors, and heights. Being unconventional does not detract from your validity. Your message is in the queue...

hey man whats good!

This is something I've been doing/thinking about for years, and honestly I'm not sure how applicable my advice is, but i'll still try :^)

I grew up real sheltered and closed away from the world, there's a lot that I never got the chance to experience or be taught that I've had to make up for. I'll ask ya, What weren't you allowed to do due to your socialization/upbringing? for me the answers are: Tackle football, watching star wars, playing with "boy toys" from fast food meals, walking around shirtless, wearing "simple" clothes, stuff like that.

Dont be afraid to derive gender euphoria from shit thats uselessly gendered. I still use Old Spice deoderant because it was Boy Deoderant and i really liked the way it smelled when i was 17 lol. Buy "mens" body wash, use "mens" razors, stuff like that! (In america all these things are less than 10$ so im very sorry if thats bad advice for you)

My answer for experiencing boyhood is: Let yourself be free in all the ways you wish you could have at that age. Collect monster trucks, build lego sets, watch wrestling or mma or boxing or [insert overwhelmingly male-dominated physical sport here], engage with hobbies that are male-dominated and feel good about talking to other men online who participate too.

honestly on that note, make a social media account divorced from any of your other ones with no indicators whatsoever that you're trans, just say you're a man (if you specify at all) and interact with dudes anonymously, kinda like you did me here. It's such a quiet and hidden thing to do, but when i was in highschool (14-17 years old for me) it was one of the most validating things i did for myself. I was just one of the guys, because i literally am.

But also, that boy needs to cry. I'm serious, let him scream and be angry and punch things, let him be sad and ask "why couldnt i have this before?". That little boy inside you could use the aknowledgement.

Also hey, i know you dont got no IRL queer folks to say it to you, so i will: having a chest dont make you any less of a man. Wearing a binder hurts my back, badly. So i stopped wearing them and havent worn a binder in a few years now. I still correct people to tell them im a dude. I just let them hang about freely. I'm just a dude with a chest, and i make people deal with seeing that. Even if you can't go around correcting people and shit, i want you to know it in your heart. Dudes have chests sometimes. Not even just trans dudes! Cis dudes get gynecomastia at varying (but usually a bit older) ages and have to get surgery too. Hell, even those gymrats addicted to roids get tit fat that need to be removed. They're all still men, and so are you. I dont care what it looks like, you're still a man.

I'm sorry if this wasn't quite what you was looking for, but i hope you know you're a brother to us all, and like any brother would, i hope you get what you're looking for out of your life. You deserve it.

Be easy, now ☆

#Bark Line #had to redo my tags on this one bc i forgot using quotations fucks them up. gods i hate tumblr sometimes #anyways #it might look stupid or childish to other people to see me sitting here like #'play into gender roles to make yourself feel better' #but im actually serious it feels so good and the unnecessary gendering of random shit isnt going away #might as well use it to make yourself feel better lol

[thebearemoji]

I had some thoughts today about why I still gravitate to children's media as an adult. Why i still have opinions on them. And why they still maintain at least a small plot of real estate in my heart to this day. I realized that many of the cartoons I consider to be classics from my childhood (avatar the last Airbender, Danny phantom, teen titans, and later in life, star wars clone wars as a few noteworthy mentions) are a coincidental combination of the things I seek most when searching for media.

Much of a medias first impression can be tied to aesthetics. The appearance/tone/setting of a show can determine whether someone stops watching halfway through the first episode, or remembers the content for life. So what was it about those shows that stuck with me?

The least helpful description I can give of my aesthetic preferences is "escapism". I want to engage with a universe that is so compelling that it distracts me from the reality of day to day life. It can be enormous fantasy, fascinating sci fi, or just a place more fun than reality.

In addition to that, I like character designs and scenery that are colorful. There are so many drab live action shows that you can take a still image, and it would be completely indistinguishable from a thousand other shows. Good cartoons don't have that problem, they are loud to the point of iconic. It makes sense, designs from children's media are meant to sell toys. But it turns out that designs that are marketable are also often memorable. If only shows like succession were pitched with the intention to sell a line of action figures with different vibrantly colored suits /s

Looks alone don't make a series memorable. I assume I'm not alone in knowing I've watched a few GORGEOUS anime or other properties because I liked the art style, and yet when I reflect on them, I remember few if any details of the actual content. What the shows I listed above do is two-fold. Both retaining my goldfish level attention span with their visuals and entertaining me with the stories they tell.

As I said previously, I engage with media to forget my troubles. And as a result, I don't enjoy watching properties that take themselves too seriously. I need time to breathe, relax, and sometimes laugh when watching content. And cartoons have humor baked into their DNA. A bunch of silly lil guys doing animated things very naturally becomes amusing. So funny (or at the very least light-hearted), and colorful. That can describe plenty of cartoons, but the final trait is what makes my favorite truly exceptional to me.

Nothing invests me in a media like in depth character examination. I want to see those little shits emotions on full display as they face impossible odds. I want to see them scream and cry and struggle, in a way the toxic masculinity that has infested Hollywood won't allow a lot of popular properties to do. I want to take a break from marvel one liners and block buster explosions and silent dark brooding that fills every movie and every show to LOUDLY FEEL SOMETHING!

I often see people imply that continuing to hold affection for cartoons as an adult is immature. And you know what? If that's what I have to be to enjoy what I enjoy, then that's alright. There's worse things I can be then immature.

I wanna laugh and cry and forget for a little while. That's all. I mentioned clone wars above specifically because I didn't watch that show until i was in my 20's, but during its best episodes it made me feel the same way i did watching the cartoons from my youth. There's also the spiderverse movies, which are in a league of their own as far as exceptional animated content, I was captivated watching them. So I dont think nostalgia is a factor for me, i think i just... like good cartoons. And I'm done allowing other people to decide for me that I shouldn't.

#me long post #atla #danny phantom #teen titans

[fictionadventurer]

I saw your post from 2020 about your Four Quadrants and I absolutely love them! I have wanted to get into Chesterton for a while but have never actually done it bc I have no idea where to start. I decided that you’d be likely to know where I should start based solely on my relating so much to the rest of what your post said. Do you have recommendations?

There are several answers to this question, depending on what type of writing you're interested in, because Chesterton wrote in a lot of different formats.

Novels: My favorite (and the one that feels most "Chestertonian" in the sense of embracing the joys and paradoxes of modern life) is Manalive, which is about a boarding house full of disaffected young people whose lives are upended by the arrival of the energetic and eccentric Innocent Smith, who may or may not be a dangerous lunatic. I'm also fond of his first novel, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, which is set in the far future of 1984, where the actions of two eccentric guys get London caught up in medieval warfare. That book addresses Chesterton's common theme of the tension between taking life too seriously and not taking it seriously enough, but it is a very odd book that's a bit more of an acquired taste.

Short stories: Chesterton's most enduring legacy in pop culture is the Father Brown mysteries--one of the few detectives at the time that wasn't just a Sherlock Holmes clone. These stories are half mystery and half philosophical essay, and I love them (and they're nothing like the TV show). I always tell people to start with the first collection, The Innocence of Father Brown, because the first four stories there--"The Blue Cross", "The Secret Garden", "The Queer Feet" and "The Flying Stars"--form an arc that should be read in chronological order, and the rest of the stories can be read in pretty much any order.

Poetry: Chesterton's big achievement is "The Ballad of the White Horse", a novel-length epic poem about the legends of King Alfred the Great and his war against the Danes. But if you don't feel like reading something so long, his other masterpiece is "Lepanto", a stirring poem about the Battle of Lepanto that saved Europe from a Turkish invasion (though that one is much better if you know the historical context). He also wrote this short, rather biting anti-war poem "Elegy in a Country Churchyard".

If you want something not about war, Chesterton was known for his love of Christmas, and he wrote several excellent Christmas poems, including "A Christmas Carol", "The Wise Men", "Gloria in Profundis", "Joseph" , and "A Child of the Snows".

(As long as we're talking about Christmas poems, I'm going to mention that his wife, Frances, was also a poet, and she wrote a Christmas poem every year for their family Christmas card, which include, "How Far Is It To Bethlehem" and "The Shepherds Found Thee By Night".)

Essays: Tremendous Trifles contains several of the humorous, insightful essays that are among the first things I think of when I think of the Chestertonian mindset, including "A Piece of Chalk", "The Advantages of Having One Leg", and "On Lying in Bed" . Perhaps my favorite Chesterton essay, "On Running After One's Hat" isn't in this collection, but feels like it should be.

Nonfiction: "Orthodoxy" is probably Chesterton's most famous and most accessible religious book, which outlines the worldviews that led him to embrace Christianity.

This last recommendation doesn't fit into any of the categories, but I can't finish a Chesterton introduction post without begging you to read this letter he wrote to his wife, Frances, not long after their engagement, because it may be one of the best love letters ever written.

#answered asks #g.k. chesterton #poetry #frances chesterton #father brown #manalive #the napoleon of notting hill #the ballad of the white horse #lepanto #orthodoxy

[anghraine]

Fic author interview (meme)

I was tagged by @incognitajones! Thank you very much <3

1- How many works do you have on AO3?

222, though some are very closely interconnected.

2- What's your total AO3 word count?

1,193,545, says the AO3 statistics page!

o_O

3- What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

LOL, I had just automatically rearranged my stats graph to rank fics by kudos instead of hits. It's:

Season of Courtship (inevitably), a Darcy/Elizabeth canon-compliant engagement interquel I wrote as a teenager;

But Thou Didst Not Leave His Soul In Hell (always a pleasant surprise), a short AU in which Luke convinces Anakin/Vader to flee the Empire with him;

per ardua ad astra, a Rogue One+ANH Jyn/Cassian AU in which Jyn, Cassian, and Bodhi escape Scarif only to get trapped on the Death Star and forced to pass themselves off as Imperials;

we get dark, only to shine, a longggg yet unfinished AU of The Borgias in which Cesare and Lucrezia begin their affair during S1 instead of S3 (CW for canon sibling incest, murder, etc).

Contradictions and Varieties (baffling), a short Darcy/Elizabeth AU I wrote for a fest in which it takes them slightly longer to get together.

4- Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I try, especially with fics I'm actively updating, but I'm always behind on it. I mostly just get distracted and forget.

5- What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

Oh, interesting question! I don't write a lot of angsty endings, but there are a few options, and I think it probably would have to be the gift of men, a short (~1k) Fourth Age fic in which Eldarion goes along with a politically convenient marriage to one of Faramir and Éowyn's daughters, and falls in love with her, only for her to die of old age while Aragorn and Faramir are still alive and Eldarion remains young.

Honorable mentions: Set On This Path (Luke and Leia are brought up in the Empire + fusion with the story of the bloodbending brothers in B1 of Legend of Korra, complete with murder-suicide) and the last day (a chirpy epistolary fic that takes an abrupt turn after the genocidal attack that begins the Guild Wars games).

6- What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

Um, just considering the ones that have endings, to be fair, and ... hmm, that's harder. A lot of happy endings! Probably the ones that are happiest for me, personally, are First Impressions (m!Elizabeth/f!Darcy re-telling of P&P) and whatever we deny or embrace (f!Cassian/Jyn).

7- Do you write crossovers?

Not often, but sometimes! Like now.

8- Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Yes! I've gotten hate more than once wrt Season of Courtship in various versions (even before it become so overwhelmingly the popular favorite of my fics). The rest has been on other fics and mostly on ff.net.

TBH the subtler stuff bothers me more than outright hate (corrections based on adaptations or fanon or expanded universe material I already said I wasn't using, concern that I might switch permanently to a new format I'm trying out, etc).

9- Do you write smut?

Very rarely. I respect people who can write good smut (hi incognita!), but I'm definitely a fade to black sort unless the ship is already so out there that I'm long past feeling self-conscious about it.

10- Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Yes. It's happened a couple of times, but the main one was someone who stole a few Austen fics from various people and tried to piece them together into something they could sell on Amazon. One of the fics was The Rich Are Always Respectable (not what I would choose to plagiarize if I were going to, but ... okay).

11- Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes, several times. I think it's cool!

12- Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I wrote a short fic with my friend @tulinlina many years ago :)

13- What's your all-time favorite ship?

Darcy/Elizabeth. Truly this ship is the terror of the seas!

14- What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

Oh, man. This probably requires more self-knowledge than I really have. Um ... I hate saying it, but we get dark, only to shine is likely this. I had so many plans for where it was going to go, but I'm just in a very different fannish place these days.

15- What are your writing strengths?

It feels weird to say, but I think I write solid dialogue (it's certainly my favorite thing to write!) and fairly clean prose in general.

16- What are your writing weaknesses?

Description is my truest nemesis—I tend to place scenes in just empty or vaguely described space. Fight scenes and that sort of thing are really difficult (for related reasons). Finishing things—my stuff nearly always grows out of control and it screws up pacing and so on.

17- What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

A little goes a long way, IMO. I did a bit of it in my fic about Leia and Cassian and Alderaanian, in tongues and quiet sighs, so I can't judge it too hard, but it's very much something to handle with care (especially with conlangs—Tolkien fic can be pretty grating this way).

18- What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Tolkien! My first attempt at a fic was a Faramir-goes-to-Rivendell-instead-of-Boromir AU that never got very far.

Well, my first serious attempt at fanfic, that is—I wrote original stuff for years before that, and I guess technically I tried to write Trixie Belden fanfic when I was about 10 ... and the original stuff spun off from a piece that was basically a Secret of Mana fanfic I wrote even before the Trixie Belden stuff. But in terms of something written within a fandom community, the Faramir fic.

19- What's a fandom/ship you haven't written for yet but want to?

Hmm. I'm not sure, actually. I mostly just write stuff if I feel like it. Oh—it's cheating, but I've barely written Korra/Kuvira even though I adore the ship. I'd like to write a proper Korvira fic someday.

20- What's your favorite fic you've written?

This changes pretty often, though there are always a few that come up when I'm asked. At this moment in time, probably The Jedi and the Sith Lord, the third (sort of) of my f!Luke Skywalker fics, and the one where the story finally swerves off the canon tracks and becomes its own thing. Maybe (probably?) not my best work, but the Lucyverse is my baby and I think TJATSL is my best work in it.

Tagging: @elwing, @kareenvorbarra, @heckofabecca, @veliseraptor, @rain-sleet-snow

#long post #anghraine babbles #fic talk #sadly not tagging all the fics individually #words about words #meme #meme prattle

[denimbex1986]

'Actress Claire Foy is ready and braced for a lot of personal reactions to her latest film All of Us Strangers. Adapted from Taichi Yamada’s novel Strangers, writer-director Andrew Haigh’s emotional reimagining finds gay screenwriter Adam (Andrew Scott) working on a script inspired by a devastating personal tragedy: in the early ’80s, both his parents died in a car crash when he was just 12. Seeking inspiration, Adam travels back to his childhood neighborhood where he encounters his parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) — not only still living in his former home but looking exactly the same as the last time he saw them.

DEADLINE: How did you first hear about All of Us Strangers?

CLAIRE FOY: It was actually three or four months before we started shooting. One of my agents, Billy Lazarus, had a very, very emotional response to it, and I knew that it was something quite special. Then I met Andrew [Haigh] and he’s just so open as a person, and unassuming about what he does, which is so encouraging because what he does is so tender and truthful and not precious in any way. I just thought, it’s going to be really special to be a part of this film.

DEADLINE: Did Andrew tell you whether your role of Mum was loosely based on his own mother? Or was it less specific?

FOY: I don’t know whether he was basing it on his mother or a generational group of parents who were the children of war babies in the U.K. And that’s quite a specific generation of people. You have a specific set of values and beliefs that have come out of the war generation about how they were brought up, what you do and don’t do, how you express yourself, what you talk about and don’t talk about. And then it’s like, someone like Adam is the fruit of those people.

I’m from a family where there’s a hell of a lot of women. I’ve got so many aunts in my family, so ‘mum’ became an amalgamation of the many different women in many different moments to me.

DEADLINE: When you knew that Jamie Bell was going to play your husband, did you spend some time with him to work on the relationship we see on screen?

FOY: Not really. I had never met him before in my life, and so when he signed up, I just knew that it wouldn’t be a problem. I think I have loved Jamie Bell since Billy Elliot, as everybody else in the world, and sort of feel a deep affection for him. He’s so engaged all the time, and his emotions are so close to the surface. It’s the most beautiful thing to see in a man that has such access to it all the time.

DEADLINE: It sounds like all the family moments between you, Jamie and Andrew were really natural to shoot.

FOY: I can’t really put my finger on what it was, but it was the coming together of three people who’d known each other a long time. And it was immediate. We were all there. We were kissing each other on the lips to say goodbye in that scene where we say goodbye. And it could have been a sort of weird thing where Adam is kissing his parents on the lips as an adult, but it just didn’t feel weird. It just felt so right. And I just don’t think you can fake things like that. I just think that’s incredible casting by Andrew [Haigh] in that he knew we’d all get on. But we’re also quite similar to Andrew, to the point where we had very little friction ever on set.

DEADLINE: Is it true that this is the first film where you’re not performing with an accent?

FOY: I was very much gunning for being Irish. My family is Irish, and I’ve always said I’m going to do an Irish accent in a film. There wasn’t a lot of prep time, but I was like, I don’t think it’s going to be a problem. So, I spoke to my friend who’s a dialect coach, and I went, “Here’s my Irish accent.” And he went, “OK, so the problem is, you speak with the accent of someone who lived in Ireland a hundred years ago and was a rural farmer.” I guess my accent was inspired by Barry, my granddad, who is 94 now [laughs]. But what’s so amazing about this film, is that it suspends everyone’s reality. Adam moved back to Ireland with his nan after his parents died, and hence he’s Irish and they’re not.

DEADLINE: The moment when Adam comes out to his mother is quite tough to watch. She doesn’t respond in a way that he hoped.

FOY: It’s not sentimental. Andrew Haigh had written it as complicated. I feel like Adam’s journey in the film is one that isn’t tied up in a bow. He has suffered a great tragedy. His parents died at the beginning of his adolescence. It’s terrible to lose to your parents in any way, but for Adam about to step out into the world, he doesn’t have them in a formative period of his life. That in itself is so heartbreaking.

It was really interesting being invited into that scene from a position of having the two Andrews talking about their own experiences. I think Andrew Scott didn’t want it to be a coming out scene. He didn’t want it to be that he had gone there to his mum’s house with the idea that he had to come out. Because he’s a man in his forties, and has an understanding of himself and his sexuality. There was no unresolved business there for him.

I didn’t want my modern sensibilities to get in the way of the fact that whilst everything she says is said dripping in love, he feels judged just by virtue of what she’s saying. I think it would short-change both the audience and the characters to make her say the right thing. I think it had to be that scenario where you had to see the difference in a time period that they haven’t had with each other.

DEADLINE: She’s also processing the information at the same time.

FOY: When we try to understand off thoughts and emotions, that’s when people get hurt because it comes out before you assimilate in your brain. I think she felt upset about missing so much out on his life. She didn’t know what his teenage years were like. She didn’t know what his twenties or his thirties were like. She didn’t know any of that. And then to have your son say something so fundamental about who he is, and she doesn’t know it, I think she’s deeply wounded by that and goes on the defense in a mundane way.

I felt a very strong instinct that she felt she was being criticized. Everything about who he was now as a person was an indication of how she hadn’t fulfilled her job as the mother properly. Everything is an exclusion from his life because she died. Because if she had lived, then she wouldn’t have a gay son. She would have a son who was married with twenty-five children and living in a house. It was really interesting because I genuinely felt like everything Andrew was doing was a criticism.

I also didn’t want to make her nicer. I didn’t want to make her say the right things. I wanted it to be truthful. I knew when I was shooting it that people would have visceral reactions to my portrayal of that person and they’re completely entitled to it. In fact, it is most truthful how these interactions go from what I have learned.

DEADLINE: Was there ever a scene that was even too much emotionally for you to be in?

FOY: The final scene in TGI Fridays with me, Andrew and Jamie. Sometimes something happens in a scene where you think it’s going to be one thing, you do all your prep, you have in your head what you think your character wants out of the scene and then an actor does something and it changes everything.

So Jamie just sat down and we did this bloody scene, and by the end, Andrew and I were just like howling, crying. All three of us were just bawling our eyes out and we were like, this is wrong. We shouldn’t be like this. It was really, really incredible. I suppose I believed everyone so much that I was just in there with them. And then at the end I just worship and bow down to them. That’s what I do.

DEADLINE: I have to ask, what is it like to have Andrew Scott climb into his parents bed in his childhood PJs?

FOY It didn’t feel weird. (laughs) The way Andrew was playing it was so childlike and I think me and Jamie have kids so were so used to that dynamic of, all right, come on in. The only thing about that was Paul Mescal was also in the bed because the scene then switches to Andrew being in bed with him at home. And so there was the added element of, “What’s going on here? I’m in bed with these three men. What’s happened to my life?”

DEADLINE: That’s a photo many people would like to see.

FOY: There is a photo! I’m hoping no one ever sees because I look like a competition winner and I could not be happier to be there. They look really cool and just like, “Yeah, whatever.” And I’m like, “Ahhhhhh!!!” It’s so embarrassing. No one’s ever seeing that photo. I’ll just have it for the rest of my life. I’m going to get it framed. (laughs)

DEADLINE: What is it like to work under the direction of Andrew Haigh?

FOY: He’s very similar to Sarah Polley, who I’ve worked with [on Women Talking]. Like Sarah, he doesn’t pretend to be the big all-knowing director. He often says, “I don’t know.” He’s very human and you feel like you’re genuinely having a conversation with him. I love how he picks up on little things you’re doing. He’s very observant. He’s also just a very kind person, very funny, very cynical, but also full of hope and love, and that’s made him a great director. As someone who is interested in human beings, I feel like he wants to get to the heart of most things in a truthful, honest way.

DEADLINE: The film is very subtle in its portayal of the ghosts that haunt Adam, and the way his denial of the past catches up with him.

FOY: There’s a scene in the film where Adam tells his new boyfriend Harry [Paul Mescal] about the fact that his parents died. And I think it’s the most brilliant piece of acting because it could be, “My parents died when I was 12.” But what he does is he says, “Oh no, it’s not a big deal,” because the trauma and the pain and the loss is so deep in his body, in his muscle, in his bones, he can’t touch it. He’s desensitized to it. This is what I’m projecting onto him in the film. He can’t access that, and the film is all about him attempting to access that grief in some way in order to be able to allow himself to love someone again.

I can think of nothing braver than losing someone you love and then being brave enough to try the whole thing all over again because what a terrifying concept that is. You have to live in denial or live every day knowing they could go, because either way, you can’t deal with it. It’s too much, that human connection. And it’s the one thing that makes human beings incredibly special is that we have the ability to do that.

To play the smells, the textures, the feeling of having parents — I think that’s what he misses his whole life. He didn’t have them, and then suddenly he has them, and he doesn’t want to leave them.

In the end, we’re all going to the same place. We like to pretend we’re not, but we’re all going to die. And inevitably it involves people being left behind. And that’s just the most incredibly painful concept, I think, of what it is to be alive.'

#Claire Foy #Jamie Bell #Andrew Haigh #Andrew Scott #All of Us Strangers #Taichi Yamada #Strangers #Paul Mescal #Billy Elliot #Sarah Polley

[breakfastteatime]

Here we go! Breakfast Tea's (vaguely) coherent Survivor Thoughts!

Spoliers under the cut. You have been warned.

Cal - HOW MUCH TRAUMA CAN YOU PUT ONE PERSON THROUGH?!?!?! My heart aches for him. When the game tells you to use his dark side powers in the third act, I absolutely refused, hoping the game would auto-continue because I refused to engage. NOPE! NO CHOICE. And okay, yeah, it was A LOT of fun but ow ow ow ow ow. He needs SO MUCH TIME to heal. The end of the game hit so hard because it feels so heavy and uncertain. We don't leave off with Cal feeling hopeful for the future. He admits he's scared, oh, and by the way, STILL TAPPED INTO THE DARK SIDE. Throughout the whole story, he just goes and goes and takes blow after blow, and then it ends with him hearing Cere. Watch me write fanfic set after the game in which I send Cal off on his own because REASONS. Ahem, anyway!

CANON JEDI CANNOT COOK AND ALSO DRINK TEA, THANK YOU.

BD-1 - BD remains the best droid. The BEST. He is always there for Cal, and he's so happy to see Cordova. And when he hugs Cal after Cere dies? *sobbing* Also, it did NOT escape my notice that the option to EMBRACE THE DARK SIDE comes up after Bode punts BD across the chamber. I LOVE THIS LITTLE DROID SO MUCH.

Echoes - I love how the echoes work in this game. The entire quest starts out partially because Cal finds an echo. Some echoes are visualised, and you can re-experience them, which is nice to see in canon. Cal also walks through Dagan's memory which intrigued me. Basically, they remain completely integral to both Cal and the wider narrative.

Also, as a game, it is just a lot of fun to play. There are puzzles that make you feel clever for solving them. Combat was fun and exciting, I loved all the lightsaber forms, and I have learned that I am over-reliant on Slow in JFO. Honestly, it's all still buzzing in my head. I need to replay it at a much slower pace now that I can relax about spoilers.

The Mantis Crew - While I knew they would've all gone their separate ways, it was still a lot to take in. It makes sense to me (Greez isn't cut out for this, Merrin wants to see the galaxy, and Cere's longing to reclaim the Jedi's legacy), and I'm glad everyone got together eventually, but I missed their vibe... At least we got flashbacks!

Cere - Absolutely devastated at her loss. She was Cal's mentor and therefore basically doomed by Star Wars law (she's the Obi-Wan), but it absolutely destroyed me. And it destroyed Cal, too. Cal, who was hanging by a thread for so much of this. Losing her, and the way he lost her, was too much for him. I wanted to see more of her SO MUCH, but I understand why we didn't. Ooof, I'm not getting over that anytime soon. I got my wish to play as her (and yes, she's WAY stronger than Cal), but... but...

Bode - I had a strong feeling he would betray Cal, but I had no idea WHY. It was a really nice touch and worked really well. His motivations make perfect sense, and they aren't some galaxy-bending quest to rule over others - he's just a father desperate to protect his daughter. I *love* how this series tells personal stories in the midst of such *literal* spectacle. Cal chasing after him, everything that's happening because Bode's a traitor... ow, ow, ow, ow, ow. And then the end, when Cal kills him to save himself and Merrin? GoodBYE. Oh, and now I'm walking around finishing up missions and there are NEW ECHOES EVERYWHERE that come from Bode.

Cordova - WHAT?!?!?! I screamed, I cried, first when he turned up, and then again when he died. Agony. I am in AGONY. I can barely think about the game right now without breaking down. Also loved the reference to Qui-Gon Jinn, although I also think that makes Cordova a lot younger than I've been headcanoning? Oh well!

Merrin - She remains so much fun. Her and Cal's relationship wasn't what I wanted, but it was handled well enough. The whole fight with the two of them against the giant drill was AMAZING. I absolutely loved the visualisation of her warping power. Oh, and when they take shelter from the sandstorm, and she holds his hand while he's having a nightmare? Perfect. While I would've preferred the two of them remaining friends, them being together doesn't bother me too much.

Greez - he is just so worried for Cal. HE MADE UP A ROOM FOR CAL IN HIS CANTINA AND MAKES HIM TAKE A NAP AND THEN WAKES HIM UP LIKE OLD TIMES YES I AM ALREADY COOKING UP A FANFIC FOR THIS I CAN'T HELP IT. I love how he's always checking in with Cal, making sure he's okay, telling him VERY firmly it is not his fault when Cere dies. Oh no, here I go again, can't stop crying...

Koboh - I love that town and building it up. I'm nowhere near finished yet, and in no rush to do so.

Finale - it took me a while to really sit and take that ending in. In recent years, we've become so used to second parts of trilogies not really having dark and uncertain endings that it really hit me how bleak it initially feels. We are leaving Cal still mourning, still struggling with his own darkness, still hurting... and that works. It works because he isn't finished growing and learning. He's a survivor, but he's a long, long way from thriving. The ending fits. It hurts. Everything hurts. But that story got the only ending that fit how dark it is.

Hey. Hey, Sequel Trilogy. THIS IS HOW YOU TELL A COHESIVE STORY ACROSS MULTIPLE PARTS.

HATE VADER'S REDEMPTION EVEN MORE THAN I ALREADY DID, THANK YOU.

#star wars jedi: survivor #jedi survivor spoilers

[flamingplay]

Everything Everything: “I’m just trying to reflect the effect of this system on humanity”

By Max Halton

Producing music at the experimental edge of alt-pop for the last fifteen years, Manchester’s Everything Everything are no strangers to the concept album. A quick scan of the always co-ordinated, often themed outfits the band have worn on stage over the years will tell you that much. As they prepare to release their seventh record, Mountainhead, frontman Jonathan Higgs tells me that they’re no slaves to allegory either.

“As the concept guy, I like a loose concept, something big and simple rather than getting too caught up in details and narrative and stuff like that,” he tells me, hair still bleached blonde after the music video for the album’s lead single, ‘Cold Reactor’. “I don’t really like a narrative, it takes over the songs and it becomes like a musical then.”

For this reason, though it might seem like high fantasy at first, the world of Mountainhead is “extremely, extremely simple.” “Everybody and everything is focused on building one huge mountain, and it must keep growing, that’s the only thing it must do. In order to keep adding material to this mountain you have to keep digging a bigger and bigger hole next to it, and that’s where everybody lives.”

In case the parallels to late capitalism hadn’t sunk in, Higgs stresses the problem, “their lives are getting steadily worse as the mountain grows, and a lot of people have forgotten why they’re building it… It’s all about growth without any thought,” he says, laughing as he drops a phrase used online to mock capitalism’s single-minded desire for exponential growth, “line go up.”

For Higgs, it doesn’t need to be any deeper than that. In fact, it’s better that it’s not. His goal isn’t to flesh out a world, giving the project over to a story, but to stage the songs in a space that feels exciting. “The best stuff lives between exposition and pure emotion, I think too much of either isn’t as satisfying as a good balance of both. If you can open some people’s mind to a fantastical idea but then at the same time hammer them emotionally, that’s the highest goal for any art, I think.”

“You can have as many ideas as you want but if there’s no emotion there it’s a completely pointless exercise, and similarly, you can have emotion coming out of your arse but if there’s nothing cool to hang it on it’s like, OK, you might as well be James Blunt,” he laughs, “and I have nothing against James Blunt, by the way.”

This emotional engagement is central to the album, a heartstring sewn through the record to stop it falling into musical theatre or academic exercise. Although Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism provided the germ of the album, economic critique isn’t what interests Higgs. “I’m not saying anything important about [capitalism], I’m not even judging it, really. I’m just trying to reflect the effect of this system on humanity, because I think that’s the thrust of that book, he talks about what it does to people. That’s what affected me when I read it and that’s what affects people when they listen to music.”

“I don’t care what the proposed solutions are, I just care about my fellow humans and how it’s going for them because that’s my life, and my life won’t last forever. I’m reflecting what’s around me and this is what I find.”

As we talk, Higgs runs through the eclectic list of artefacts that sit alongside Mark Fisher in influencing Mountainhead. The highlighter-yellow judo robes the band wear in the videos for ‘Cold Reactor’ and ‘The Mad Stone’, dyed in Jon’s washing machine, riff on Star Wars – “Mike [Spearman, drums] said monks are a bit overdone in rock videos, let’s see if we can try something else. What do the Jedis wear underneath their cloaks?”

Online culture, which sat at the centre of 2022’s Raw Data Feel, rears its head again in ‘Dagger’s Edge’, where Higgs interpolates a Reddit comment about Land Before Time – “someone had written ‘crying hysterically about the death of Littlefoot,’ and there was something about that which sparked my imagination, so I wrote it in my notes and it came back in song form.”

Even old Everything Everything tracks get lyrical nods, not so much as easter eggs but intertextuality. “I feel like I owe it to myself to reach a hand through to my younger self and go, ‘Come on mate, I’ve got your back and I still feel like the same person,’” Higgs tells me. “Some artists get to a certain age and they change completely, but I haven’t. I still feel like I did when I wrote some of those songs and I like to use some of those ideas that never got fully explained or realised. And I don’t want to explain them, but I like to join the past with the present like that.”

“Time and prehistory, it’s always got a hand round my neck. I’m always thinking about the passage of time, being a part of history and being a part of a future.” Luckily for Jon, when you build a career referencing cults, anticapitalism, Jedis, and internet forums, you tend to find a fan base that appreciates self-referentiality.

In the spirit of looking back, I ask Jon about the band’s early days in Manchester. Higgs met Jeremy Pritchard, the band’s bassist, while studying Popular Music and Recording at the University of Salford. After graduation, they “moved out to Burton Road, started the band there, and amazingly it worked! In terms of my time at Salford, I just felt like I needed to do something and Manchester was a good place to start a band, so it kind of worked for me to come here.”

“The city’s been really good to us. I guess when we first arrived we had a bit of a chip on our shoulder, we railed against some of the Manchester bands because we were trying to do something else. We thought, ‘We don’t want to be painted with that brush because we’re trying not to be Oasis, we want to make music that’s progressive,’ or whatever. But that’s fallen away and now it makes me really proud to see our name on a list of Manchester bands, even if it’s right at the bottom.”

“The city’s really embraced us, and it’s definitely a thing of pride to be from here. Although if Newcastle want to claim half of us, they can as well, that’s where two of us are from. We belong to the North, how about that.”

Tyneside origins aside, Manchester has always been the band’s home, and it’s being treated with three shows on the Mountainhead tour: back-to-back sell-outs at New Century Hall at the end of March and a special album release show on February 26 at Stockport Plaza. With the Plaza only five minutes from Jon’s front door and guest support coming from their long-time friends Dutch Uncles, the show feels so local that it’s “quite surreal actually, I’m going to be able to walk out of my house and walk on stage.”

Being able to put on a hometown gig with your friends is a highlight of where the band is now for Higgs, relatively stable in the industry after going fully independent during the pandemic. “It’s nice to be in that kind of position. I think it’s a pretty good place, actually, Stockport. I’ve been here for a few years now and it’s got a certain reputation that it’s doing its best to shake, and I’m happy to be part of that shaking.”

This seems to be the key to Everything Everything’s constant innovation. Finding a place that feels stable, even homely, but still shaking it, always moving to make it more exciting. It’s the kind of attitude that means Jon can laugh while wondering if “maybe now we should chuck [stability] out of the window and feel out of control again, I don’t know. But right now it does feel very good, we’ve got all our own eggs in our own basket.”

It’s a commitment to innovation which means that looking back doesn’t have to restrict. Having reissued their debut album as a “nostalgia package” last year, something they’re “probably going to do when it comes around for Get To Heaven, because that deserves it,” a continued insistence on creating new albums, worlds, and sounds stops them burning out and being confined to “heritage world,” like Higgs has seen happen to some of their contemporaries.

It’s a constant desire to make good on “stepping out of genre,” which means that a band who used to cite Radiohead as the origin of everything from their name to their guitar tone now find inspiration in Obongjayar, copying, tweaking, and iterating on their sound almost endlessly in an effort to “end up somewhere no one’s been, or someone’s been but you didn’t expect it.”

Most of all, it’s an attitude which means that even as they approach their seventh album, after 15 years of writing music together, Everything Everything don’t plan on meandering on as a nostalgia act, sleepwalking into stagnation. They are still climbing the mountain.

#Everything Everything #Jonathan Higgs #Mountainhead #Dagger's Edge

[ladystrallan]

Once Upon a Time season 6B thoughts

I’m rewatching OUAT and I wanted to share some of my opinions on each season!

- Ooh Ruth pulling the knife

- I was wondering for a second where snow was

- I forgot she was cursed

- Dad???

- “If I wanted advice I doubt I’d take it from a pirate” low blow

- Omg the coin

- “That demon box” not the alarm clock

- Robin coming back is so stupid I can’t believe it

- Hook is going to propose!!!

- The ring is not that fabulous though

- Daddy issues David

- His lucky coin :(

- Yikes Robin

- Aw he did the deal pro bono :(

- Rumple… what a softie

- “The hearts of my enemies” why do you still have those???

- I don’t even care that they’re kissing this is just stupid

- Not them spinning around

- Pleasure Island!!!

- Omg Pinocchio

- “I’m also your father” ok strange man I’ve never met

- Knife fight

- Sad moment for David

- Great acting though

- Awww this is cute

- Omg hook killed david’s dad!!!

- Noooo this is not good

- ‘The first ogres war’ so there’s multiple???

- They need to trip them or something

- Not the wilhelm scream lol

- Slayyyyyy Rumple

- Ogre war redemption arc

- No bae :(

- #bullying

- Rumple :(

- Bae I thought you wanted him to be good

- Giving mixed signals here

- Omg he memory erased him so he wouldn’t turn dark

- Awwww this is so cute

- They’re engaged!

- I am so sick of the EQ just go away

- “I sleep in hay! … which is on dirt” lol

- Oh no

- Emma is really good at finding out things before hook can tell her

- Not the ring coming off…

- I bet the arrow is gonna point at her

- They’re going to sword fight???

- I knew it

- Are they just twins now or what?

- This is stupid

- I thought Regina couldn’t use that wand

- Plot hole alert

- I completely forgot about this

- Oh no

- Gideon no

- Can they not stop the submarine once it goes?

- Kraken hunting time!

- Aladdin and jasmine are back!

- Did he just make him into a sceptre???

- No one remembers achmed I guess

- CGI is looking a little rough

- What is this outfit Regina???

- Ariel! Love her

- That magic carpet cgi… bad

- Drunk snow lol

- Omg it was Jafar!

- “I can see my hovel from here” why does everyone have a hovel in this show???

- Awwwww captainswan

- Of course it was Gideon

- Ok kill the black fairy is not a bad thing to do

- Not the minor miners

- Ooh spooky intro

- Slay

- Nothing beats a good left hook

- “I’m your real mother” okay grandma (literally)

- Is rumbelle back together???

- Yasssss

- Omg Henry is possessed

- “Let’s get my pirate back” awwwww

- Omg I hate this ugly cgi spider

- Nooooo it was Roderick

- Omg not Isaac

- He’s so creepy

- Gideon what the fuck

- Ooh the lost boys are back

- Lots of returning people this season

- I wish hades would return :(

- Rumple slayyyyy

- Why do her guards look like they’re from Star Wars?

- Nooooo she killed Roderick

- “This is on you, Gideon. And my boot.” Good line

- Omg she has his heart

- “Dark one junior” lol

- PTA meeting is getting intense

- RUMBELLE

- Omg she got through!!!

- She has such Coraline other mother vibes

- Lol peace out loser

- Omg tiger lily

- Omg underworld reference??? The flower growing in the crack

- Nice to see long hair rumple again

- Emma’s name was his curse break thingy!!!

- They’re going to burn him at the stake???

- Awwwww this is so cute

- Slay Leroy

- Get a room

- Omg they’re all asleep

- Oh good not for long

- Ooh zelena in the recap

- “Why don’t you practice on my axe” omg

- This is the tin man I know it

- Ooh you’re looking for trouble touching zelena’s baby

- Yikes captainswan keep it PG

- “Am I interrupting something?” Omg

- Omg is that the bassinet that Zelena was abandoned in?

- We love a girlboss that takes things into her own hands

- “I sacrificed hades for you” that was a mistake

- But seriously Regina is not one bit grateful for what Zelena did for her, give up her true love to save her life

- At a time when Regina had Henry and was friends with the Charmings and Zelena had no one

- And Regina even BLAMES her for Robin’s death

- Robin had it coming but that’s another thing

- Snow’s date with Whale…

- Slay zelena

- Like a lion could take her… let’s be real

- “Go back to Oz” LOW BLOW

- That was so unwarranted

- Maybe if you guys weren’t so awful to Zelena then she wouldn’t fall into those traps

- That is so selfless to give up her magic to help everyone

- She is amazing

- That apology is long overdue

- Omg not Malcom

- That pathetic little man

- Baby rumple!

- The perfect name? How did you end up with Rumplestiltskin?

- Omg Rumple was supposed to be the saviour! (I remembered that)

- Rumple smash!

- At least there was no glass involved

- OMG ITS THE BLACK FAIRY!!!

- AND GIDEON!!!

- Where did Regina get a green car?

- ZELENA HIT HER WITH THE CAR

- SLAYYYYYY

- Zelena 1, black fairy 0

- Twist!!!

- She is the evil omg

- “I need my power” Rumple really had no chance

- Nooo he named him that because he hated him

- Something is suspicious

- Awwww he asked Henry to be his best man

- I knew rumple was up to something

- Why is he doing this???

- I love this episode!

- I know a lot of people don’t like it but I think it makes so much sense for this show to have a musical episode

- Like the Disney movies are musicals

- And the songs slap

- Ooh slay intro

- Omg it’s just so good!!!

- Everyone is amazing but josh dallas has a great voice

- Ooh that neck brake choreo

- I’m not a Regina fan but I have to admit she slayed

- Lana did a great job

- “You’ve come to say goodbye” nooooo

- This is so sad

- Killian’s song might be my second favourite

- It just fits him so well and Colin slayed

- Poison dart!!!

- They should have brought Hades back for this episode

- Greg was in the obc of Assassins

- Rumple should have gotten a song tbh

- Zelena slays so hard!!!

- Wicked always wins is the best song

- Although they should have made a wicked reference

- Rebecca Mader is so awesome

- Rumple why are you being evil???

- It is a little silly that their plan is just sing at her

- Not Henry tossing the book

- That was kinda funny

- Slayyyy

- I love how her song is the OUAT theme

- Captainswan is so cute

- Their vows!!!

- I love happy beginning such a good closing number

- This is so beautiful

- “The black fairy’s curse, it’s here!” Slay Leroy we love an iconic line

- Awwww season 1 recap

- You know what I miss?

- THERE IS A TOWN IN MAINE

- Omg this is older Henry

- Oooh curse again

- Archie: Henry, I think you’re crazy

- Not Emma in the mental hospital

- Not Fiona being the new mayor!!!

- How many sons is she going to try and kidnap???

- Gold & Sons that’s kinda cute

- Lost their mother??? What happened to belle???

- Pull ups in the mental hospital lol

- I love a good hook and david team up

- “We fought for our love and we won” awwwww

- “She said she was going to the store and she never came back” noooo

- Deadbeat belle…

- Omg not the EQ

- Awwww he called Killian his son

- “Hmmm. Merlot” LOL

- A dragon… is that maleficent?

- NOT THE BADLY PHOTOSHOPPED PICTURES OF BELLE TRAVELLING

- I CANT OMG

- Rumple please tell me you don’t believe this

- Not the falling video

- Omg no don’t burn the book

- I can’t believe she did that

- “Hello there, mummy” KILLIAN

- Omg that is so funny

- She came back!!!

- Slayyy rumple

- Noooo tempting him with Bae

- “All magic comes with a price” slayyyyy

- Omg dead

- Lol slay Henry

- “Some honeymoon, huh?” Lol I love them

- Omg charming swearing now you know it’s serious

- Not his dark one self convincing him

- Yasssss Rumple character development

- Noooo he resisted but it didn’t work

- Wtf

- Omg gideon is a baby again

- A little weird but ok

- Awwwww rumbelle

- Of course Robin proposed gotta do that fan service

- And in the tackiest way too

- OMG RUMBELLE

- THEY ARE ADORABLE

- Awww this is so cute

- Everyone got their happy ending

- Honestly a perfect finale

- Idk if I’m gonna watch season 7 because I remember hating it and this is such a perfect ending

How I feel about the characters this season

Love: Zelena, Emma, Hook

Like: Rumple, Belle, David, Jasmine, Ariel

Neutral: Henry, Snow, Gideon, Fiona (she’s camp idk), Aladdin, Regina

Dislike:

Hate:

I honestly can’t hate anyone this season

Season rating: 9/10

Not my favourite season but actually a really solid ending to an amazing show. Some of it was dumb but a lot of it was awesome. I loved the musical episode and the finale! Tbh it should have ended here.

#ouat thoughts #once upon a time season 6 #once upon a time #ouat season 6 #ouat season 6b #once upon a time season 6b #emma swan #killian jones #captain swan #regina mills #zelena mills #zelena ouat #henry mills #ouat rumple #rumplestiltskin #rumbelle #the song in your heart

[randomnameless]

I'm beginning to think there might have been discourse/debate between KT and IS regarding the Fodlan games. We'll never know of course but it would be amusing if that's the case considering how it translated to their audience.

lol

Some people already thought about it, and while Nopes was a heavily marketed/produced product by KT, at the end of the day, even for FE16, IS had to pop in and give a sign of approval.

I think the interview for Engage more or less revealed that while the two games weren't developed together, they were thought of as being wildly different experiences - both in gameplay and story, and while I have my own gripes with Engage's story especially in the last chapters, Engage's big character resolution is

Alear coming to terms with what they were born as, but deciding, nonetheless, to use their power to be and act as the divine dragon Lumera was, aka use their power to do something "good" even if they were born as Sombron's kid thus supposed to do "bad" things.

Compare this with "crust BaD" - nowhere in the Fodlan games is it ever mentionned, by one character who has a crust, that crust is only a power and not inherently bad or good, it's what you decided to do, you as someone who has the opportunity to use this power, who ultimately choose to do the right thing, or the wrong thing.

Hell, it's only when Fodlan met another game (fully developed by IS, for better and worse) that his question is raised, and quickly eluded by Supreme Leader warping away from Lissa, because hey, in an IS game, that question would have been raised, and defaulting to "crusts BaD" has never been the house's recipe to make a game - especially since this specific recipe has been overused, first in FE Jugdral (Loptyr blood isn't inherently evil, that was the teaching Blaggi tried to promote that was later ignored and then forgotten), then, sort of in FE6 (no Fa, divine dragons aren't doomed to become souless war dragon producing machins or humanity's enemies!), in FE13 with Robin and their fell blood, and finally, in FE17.

I think, even if FE16 still sells a lot of alts in FEH and DLC and what not, the lack of side materials and goodies is, imo, telling enough about what IS wants to do with it - FE17 got a manga release on the shonen jump + (i think?) even when the sales are inferior to FE16's (granted, if we compare something that was around for 4 years including 2020 to a game released in January, that's not very fair) - Nopes's DLC was called off and bar FEH milking the Fodlan verse to sell units, imo, IS wants to drop it and move forward.

And while it makes me sad because there are things I'm legit interested in (war of heroes guide like the tellius recollection guide plz), given what "Fodlan" ended up when KT was left (mostly?) alone in the form of Nopes (you effing beat up refugees to steal their gold! Like, we're the red units beating the green npcs, or the bandits burning houses??) - I am less and less sure I want to see more Fodlan content, even if I was pleasantly surprised with the Fodlan content - especially regarding Nabateans who are completely ignored by their source game - IS made up for FEH.

Sure we have some issues that are inherent to FEH's nature as a gacha selling game cajoling units who can sell a lot (Hilda's family never had slaves unfed servants! Syrup just had some adventures in Goneril!) but to the FEH team - from IS - Sothis is more pissed at Agarthans for having genocided her children and turned them into pincushions than for Billy's dad's death.

Hell, for what it's worth, Emblem!Dimitri mentions how much he likes the idea of a world/place without discriminations based on origins or races, something he cannot say in the KT Fodlan games, because it stars Ms "You are a Nabatean, you should not rule over Humans!" as the main character of the game - so it's not a lot, but imo, FEH + FE17 gives us clues as to what IS would have done with the Fodlan cast -

Even if I'm not kidding myself, Hresvelg Tea was always supposed to be the main selling point of that verse, so while I don't think we would have had less uwus, maybe we might have had some sort of "sekrit brainwash" to make Ashnard in an onesie still be marketable for FEH.

#anon #replies #idk if i was clear #i'm trying to clean the ask box lol #idk how came companies work and stuff #but i wonder if maybe in 5 years IS could take Fodlan from KT's hands and sort of try to tell the story they might have wanted to tell #with a lot less 'maybe the victims are wrong for fighting against their agressors' #and more disgusting stuff like Vero's retcons to uwu-ize Supreme Leader and sell alts #3 Nopes #FE16

[fandomshatepeopleofcolor]

This is less of a rant and more of a question but. Im chinese-american, and im really not used to seeing like. Good Chinese rep in popular media. Like. Genshin is the first thing Ive found where you know. Chinese ppl have actual personalities? And theres a very large cn fandom(and a big eng one too!)and its helped me reconnect with my culture in a way I cant ignore. But it's also Racist to a horrible degree. And I dont want to support that. But Genshin has helped me a lot so...What should I do?

OK so like I said to the last nonny that was talking about Genshin Impact... I don't believe this blog is here to like tell you what to do.

I will however suggest that you engage critically with genshin and in the fandom you can keep talking about the antiblackness/ antisemitism and other issues.

I also suggested to the other nonny that you start a blog to be critical of genshin impact. Like ok I've been a life long fan of star wars but it wasn't until oscar isaac that they had a latino in the star wars franchise. and even then I have lots of Opinions and Thoughts about how they made Oscar's character Poe a drug dealer and kinda like... didn't give his character the same weight narratively as Han Solo. Like for example how they gave Poe toxic masculinity traits and such. Like I know we haven't talked about it lately but we have talked about that and the antiblackness against John Boyega in the franchise and the fandom as well as the racialized misogyny of giving daisy ridley such a dark tan in the force awakens when she's really very pale.

Like it isn't enough to declare that a media is problematic and stop engaging with it. if you're going to continue with it you have to give reasons and essays and make your voice heard in the fandom. That's the burden of being a antiracist consumer of media.

mod ali

#genshin impact #fhpoc asks

[palfriendpatine66]

20 Question Fic Writer Tag

1.) How many works do you have on ao3?

19, soon to be 20! ( three are just little prompt fills/drabbles that I’ve considered removing but also – I want to be able to find them again just in case they ever turn into something more so.)

2.) What's your ao3 word count? 

306, 375

3.) What fandoms do you write for? 

Star Wars. That’s it, and probably all it will ever be (except for my crazy crossover aus). It’s a full time job over here.

4.) What are your top five fics by kudos?

DX:Lovesick (I had a really weird moment when this passed PIP in the kudos count. Like, I love it and was really proud of it, but also: how dare it). Anakin is an accident prone college student who winds up in the care of one very hot Dr. Obi-Wan Kenobi

Pining in Preschool: My first ever fic (started exactly one year ago!) Anakin is trying his best to be a good dad to his twins, and that probably means he shouldn’t be falling for their preschool teacher.

Hide Here Often: This is bottom Obi-Wan smutty one shot

Helicopter Dad: This is a continuation of Pining in Preschool: 4 times that Anakin was a Helicopter parent and one time Obi-Wan beat him to it. I’ve been intending to do a part two with Obi-Wan ever since, but it hasn’t happened yet.

With a Cherry on Top: This is a ridiculous continuation of Pining in Preschool – Obi-Wan and Anakin get in a fight about eating in bed that results in a sex ban until one of them backs down. Spoiler alert: it ends with a sexy food in bed scenario because *of course* if they break they have to prove a point about it

5.) Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I try to always yes. I used to have a 100% track record, and I really wish I was maintaining it. Comments are my lifeblood. I literally cannot tell you how important receiving comments is to me, it’s like, a problem honestly, and so it’s definitely something I want to encourage. I try to always respond to a comment at least as an acknowledgement of “I appreciate you were here and took the time to let me know you liked this”. BUT also I genuinely love engaging about my fics and am more than happy to go on my “Author’s Commentary” spiel at any given moment.

Life’s kind of been shit lately, and I’ve had a hard time if I don’t respond to comments right away as they come in they get lost in my inbox. Also. ADHD.

6.) What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

OoOoOo Window AU – to be revealed tomorrow. I don’t have the ending for Criminal Minds fully written, but even though it might be a “happy ending” it’s not going to be a happy ending, if you know what I mean. OH BUT if I ever write my post order 66 Obi-Wan on Tatooine vague idea for which the working title is “Obi-Wan Sads”. Yeah. That will probably be the worst.

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

Hmm. Pining for Preschool probably. It ends on a very high note, although also it’s not really an ending because I continued it into a potentially never ending series that seems to be 90% fluff after the angst I put them through in the original fic.

Also Center Stage (dance au)was a happy ending for sure.

8.) Do you get hate on fics?

No, generally all my comments are very positive. There was a weird moment in DX:Lovesick where I wasn’t necessarily getting the hate but Obi-Wan was, and he was getting a lot of it. I wasn’t upset by the comments so much as I was worried that I didn’t write well/clear enough to convey the situation as I thought I was, but I settled on people are going to read their own situations into stories and interpret it differently than intended and that’s okay.

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

Yes. The Obi-Wan and Anakin kind.

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

I had a fit of insanity and wrote an Obikin Titanic au.

11.) Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I hope not. That would be sad

12.) Have you ever had a fic translated?

I don’t think so no

13.) Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

Nope! I think I have too much anxiety to commit to doing this, even with the right people. Put expectations on things and I just…can’t.

14.) What's your all time favorite ship?

IDK man. Kovu and Kiara from Lion King II: Simba’s Pride

15.) What's a WIP you'd like to finish, but doubt you ever will?

Right at the time I started writing PiP I started a time travel (?) au that resulted in amnesiac Knight Skywalker as master to padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi right when he rejoins the order after returning from Melida/Daan, instead of rejoining Qui-Gon. I would be shocked if I ever get back to thin, I really jumped the gun and there’s so much of it I don’t have in me, but…there’s still something about it that calls to me.

16.) What are your writing strengths?

I always feel super awkward answering this, but I feel pretty good about capturing Obi-Wan and Anakin’s voices, especially their internal voices (if that makes sense) so that they still feel like them in other universes

17.) What are your writing weaknesses?

Oh gosh. I am learning as I go. Outlining/having a plan and sticking to it vs. just winging it as I go along. Knowing where paragraphs should start and end – which feels like you should just *know* but I don’t. Descriptions.

18.) Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

Great! But I’m not fluent enough in anything to do it

19.) First fandom you wrote for?

Star Wars – Hiiiii!

Also, though, the only other stuff I wrote was Star Wars but the year was 2005 and it was for an audience of one (me!). Your Pal was a nerd who carried around a little notebook and wrote down every piece of jedi wisdom and quotes I encountered while I wrote about Obi-Wan and his OC apprentice who was *definitely*not*me* (their name was literally an anagram of my name lol) on their long term undercover mission on Earth, among other things.

20.) Favorite fic you've ever written?

This varies by the mood. I genuinely love Pining in Preschool, and it will always have a really special place in my heart. Dx:Lovesick was a very fun ride, I really and truly enjoyed writing it  and I feel like it holds up. Right now I’m pretty attached to Criminal Minds, for a completely different dynamic and take on obikin.

No pressure tag to @renlyslittlerose and @grapenehifics