#I'm not sure how happy i am with the denouement of this one | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tinknevertalks · 1 month

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Omfg, I'm on a computer and can copy things easily! Let's do this!! XD

@chartreuseian tagged me in this game and I'm finally able to do it. :)

1. How many fics do you have on AO3?

241. Send help?

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

295,404 words. I write many drabbles.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Sanctuary mostly, although I do wander over to rogue simulant country Stargate SG1.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Ghost of the Machine - 160 - Stargate SG1

Brothers - 157 - Lucifer

Acceptance - 89 - Stargate SG1

A Missed Birthday (But We'll Always Have Cake) - 85 - Stargate SG1

Beer Basted Omelettes - 84 - Stargate SG1

And yet I mostly write Sanctuary fic? Shows popularity of fandom and ship counts a lot. (Lucifer was still fairly popular when I wrote that, and we all know how the Sam/Jack shippers are. XD)

5. Do you respond to comments?

Yaaaaas! I love it! Except for 19 edits. It's a big part of the fannish community - how else are we all meant to squee together?

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

Uhm... *Thinks in 241 fics* Maybe Fed is Best? It's certainly not a happy ending, anyways.

7. What is the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Most of them, really? Words Don't Come Easily and Of Sequins and Scalpels are proper happy ever after ends.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I don't get hate. I have had someone ranting about my choices but I just blocked that convo after saying, "Thank you. I don't agree. Have a good day." I do this for fun, I haven't time for negative vibes.

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

Yus. What kind? Kinda romantic, but also featuring many different walls (if I have a vampire who can hold someone up no problem I am going to use that to my advantage, lol!).

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

I've done a few crossovers, and a few fusions. Craziest crossover? It isn't that crazy (yet) but Sanctuary/Ted Lasso. Fusion? Sanctuary/Pokémon. I love the idea of Helen as a Pokémon trainer. Oh, but Helen as The Arrow from DC has a special place too.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Nope?

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Someone wanted to translate one of my smutty fics to Russian but I never heard anything from them again, so I assume nothing.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic?

Yes! With samsg1 when she came over to visit a few years back. We started planning it in my living room as our kids played Mario Kart then wrote it over GDocs together. Die Hard Isn't a Christmas Movie. It was fun, but brought up some residual feelings I had at school that I thought I had got through. Didn't tell her, because I didn't want to bring her down (because she is *so* so cool and I adore her). We do wanna write together again but we're both super busy (and I'm more a Sanctuary girlie at heart).

14. What’s your all time favourite ship?

Helen/Nikola. They bring me joy.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Comedic timing? I'm not sure tbh. Oh! I can write a bonzer last line. You need a great last line when you write drabbles.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Length. I cannot write long fic on the regular to save my life. Like, I know I got OSaS done, and I'm slowly getting to the denouement of In The Nice Part of Town (very slowly), but it's haaaaaard. I want the flash bang dopamine fix posting oneshots give me.

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

If it's a language I know well (aka Cymraeg) then I'm filling that dialogue up. If it's a language I have a tiny bit of passing knowledge on, or I can ask someone, "Omg, how do I say [xyz] in [language]?", I'll use a bit of it. If it's a language I know not, and I don't want to go looking stuff up, I don't use it. XD If someone else wants to do it, more power to them. :)

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Voyager? Yeah, pretty sure it was Voyager.

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

This is called cruelty. Today? Waves - Teslen, AU, everybody's human (kinda). It's rushed in places but I love that universe.

Tagging (if they wanna play): @drewsaturday, @cookie-sheet-toboggan, @ladyelysandra, @electricrogue, @zebsfloppyears and anyone else who wants to join in. XD

#tag game #chartreuseian #fanfic #fic recs #sanctuary #stargate sg1 #ok not the best answers but yaay I got to play for once! XD my phone does not like copy/pasting from tumblr

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drowninginredink · 3 months

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10 and 22 for the fic ask game [asoue]? :)

For 22? If I'm writing it, there is always going to be more angst than fluff. Especially in ASOUE. I mean, I've vaguely learned how to be fluffy in my adventures writing smosh fic (although I eventually got super sick of that fluff and my smosh WIPs have mostly gotten angsty again), but in ASOUE? No, if I'm writing for the "no happy endings" series, that's an excuse to go all in on the angst.

As for 10? Fuck it, let's share a whole 650 word scene from the Klaus/Lemony fic that I really like and should really go back to working on. God, talk about angst.

Klaus waited until they moved to a hotel room with a balcony to bring it up. By now, he knew that when Lemony was at his most melancholic, he smoked. Klaus wanted to save this particular observation for when Lemony was in one of his gloomier moods, and he didn't want to leave the hotel room to do so. It felt intrusive to follow Lemony all the way out the hotel doors. When Lemony was on the balcony, on the other hand, he’d never truly left. Klaus let Lemony get halfway through his cigarette before he stepped out onto the balcony. He tried to hide that he was checking Lemony’s progress, but knowing Lemony, he had probably still sensed that he was being watched. It was a tiny balcony. There were no chairs or table, just a few feet of space and a railing for Lemony to lean over. Klaus didn’t bother to close the door behind him. He knew he should to prevent the smoke from tainting the hotel room. But closing the door was admitting to starting a conversation. Klaus didn’t want a conversation, not really. He just wanted to get the thought out of his head. “We should have gone with you. That night, at the Hotel Denouement.”It was the first time Klaus admitted that he knew Lemony had been the taxi driver that night. Klaus hadn’t been able to see him, then, but the voice had stuck in his mind. It was calm, quiet, and gentle, the opposite of what one would expect from a man offering to spirit away wanted criminals. Maybe that was why the Baudelaires hadn’t gone with them. Its peace was too foreign. Their worlds hadn’t been calm or gentle for a long time. Lemony didn’t answer with words, instead turning to face Klaus. He simply stared at him. There was no furrow of his brow, no facial expression to indicate agreement or disagreement. Just the turn of his head, to prompt Klaus to continue. But what was there to say, except the obvious? “If we had gone with you, Violet and Sunny would be here. And Beatrice would be with Kit. They’d all be alive.” “Or we would all be dead.” This time, it was Klaus who stayed silent, waiting for his partner to continue. “I cannot know for sure what would have happened. I do know one thing, however; it is much easier to hide your identity when living alone. A large group is easier to track. Especially a group where one of the members is young and needs to attend school. We would not have been able to move and switch aliases frequently. I could have homeschooled Sunny, but even then, law enforcement take much more notice of children who move around frequently than of adult men. It would be difficult. I am not sure I would have succeeded.” Lemony finally broke eye contact with Klaus. He had to be finding the right thing to say, as if there were any words that could be comforting after such an admission. All Klaus’ weeks of waiting to broach the subject, and Lemony had already put it to rest. Klaus shouldn’t have been surprised. Klaus slipped back through the balcony door, and closed it behind him. He returned to his seat, though not to his novel. He needed a moment to think. Klaus had gotten what he wanted. Lemony made sure that thought would leave his head. As was Lemony’s nature, he replaced Klaus’ speculation with the grim truth. Somehow, the life Klaus was living was the best way things could have gone, with his siblings turned to ash, and himself little more than a ghost. This existence of wandering from place to place, attached to Lemony's side, was the greatest life he could have hoped for.

GOD I just. Them. The codependence. The way they are both shells of themselves, living ghosts haunted by everything they've lost. They have no one left but each other, so even though Lemony is old enough to be Klaus' father, they cling in this relationship that isn't really romantic or platonic, just sexual and codependent and there.

#a series of unfortunate events #asoue #snicketverse #lemony snicket #klaus baudelaire

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septembersghost · 2 years

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I'm confused as to why ppl think things can't have a happy ending. brba did have a happy ending. walt dies but was going to die anyway. he died saving jesse and had it set up to give the money to his family. like how could there have been a happier ending?bob said a chance at a 2nd life and that teaser of after all this, a happy ending? I'm sorry, but why the hell not. if ppl are punished then why can't they have their one true love? pretty sure the lesson has been learned.

you're preaching to the choir tbh, i am always a proponent of an earned happy ending, and "happy" can have a lot of different definitions. i don't necessarily think we're owed that in any given story, but i do fiercely believe we deserve narratively satisfying endings. i've written about this many times, but when i've hated and been very hurt by endings, it's not because they're tragic, it's because they're not satisfying and don't feel right for the stories' and characters' conclusions. tragedy can be beautiful and affecting and important, but it has to mean something, not be a last minute sadistic swerve to shock and hurt your audience. i probably have tons of posts about this, but i'm going to link these: 1, 2, 3 because they all very much speak to this idea.

i was just talking to @kendalroys about the ending of breaking bad - i think it's almost underappreciated now how much humanity and even hope is in that ending, after the oppressive darkness of the rest of the story. (granite state is, to me, by far the bleakest episode of the whole show, and felina is the denouement rising out of it again.) there could've been FAR more upsetting endings, but they didn't do that. like you said, walt manages to get his money to the schwartzes, he sees skyler and is able to give her some measure of closure, along with the coordinates to find hank and gomez's burial site (which is very sad, but better than leaving them unknown out there), he sees holly one last time, and flynn from afar (say what you will about walt, i never doubt he does love his children), and then he heads off to the nazi compound with his m60 in the trunk. he realizes jesse - his partner, his victim, his surrogate family, the person to whom he's most closely connected throughout the narrative - is a captive, and rescues him as he takes all of the nazis out (and they are so evil that we are geared to root for their deaths). his plan works. he dies entirely on his own terms (he's dying already, but wasting away from the cancer in jail would definitely have been a worse ending from walt's point of view), shot by his own weapon, standing in the lab amongst the chemistry that he put above everything. even after all he did and the depths he sunk to, there's still a shred of the person he was in his final actions. it's an oddly triumphant ending for him. jesse speeds away screaming into the night, and the coda of el camino resolves that fully, lets us know he escapes quietly into the light, with a long road of recovery doubtless ahead of him, but a feeling that he is going to find that.

the reason it's hailed as one of the best endings of any show is because it's narratively satisfying. it doesn't have to be nihilistic. it doesn't have to be punishing. it's a moving conclusion for its characters.

as a student of tolkien, i personally love/cling to his concept of the eucatastrophe - that moment when all hope seems lost, and then there is a turn of catharsis and joy. he meant it in the context of fantasy (as a genre), but it can be applied to fiction more broadly.

What made a good [story] not just enjoyable or aesthetically stimulating, but deeply moving? What did all good stories have in common? Eucatastrophe “is a sudden and miraculous grace [...] It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies… universal final defeat...giving a fleeting glimpse of joy...poignant as grief.

joy sometimes is seen as...lesser, or childish, or not as profound and mature as grief, and i just don't believe that or think it's a fair assessment. like i said in my other post earlier, hope can't exist without grief, the meaning of both functions together.

i'm wary about how much i say because i've been harassed about this (by another fandom entirely lol), and logically i KNOW bcs is very rooted in noir, and noir tends to be enigmatic in its conclusions at best, but bcs is also (i know i am a broken record here, but it's true!) a love story! that distinguishes it, that's something special about it. and it's part of this same universe they've built hand-in-hand with breaking bad and el camino, and i simply refuse to think that they're going to end bcs on a sadder or more desolate note for jimmy and kim, after everything we've been through with them, after how carefully they've layered their characters and their relationship all these years, than what happened to walt and jesse. i also don't think these writers are into relative moralism and teaching the audience some "lesson" and punishing us for loving morally complicated characters (which is, like, one of my LEAST favorite approaches from storytelling. don't build a story where i'm meant to feel empathy for complex people and then tell me i was wrong to feel it!).

if ppl are punished then why can't they have their one true love? pretty sure the lesson has been learned. right. they have been punished, they have suffered repercussions for their bad actions. i'd let them have each other and their love back if i could decide. <3

#better call saul #bcs spoilers #breaking bad #jimmy mcgill #kim wexler #anonymous #letterbox #*

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anthropologicalhands · 4 years

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r/n - i've been working on my backwards walk / there's nowhere else for me to go / except back to you just one last time / say yes before i change my mind

As Rebecca tries to be sanguine about nearing forty, seeing it as a peak rather than a slide into decay (a Naomi-fostered distortion that has proven remarkably difficult to shake), one thing that has comforted Rebecca over the last decade is that with experience, she’s learned how to handle all matter of situations with grace, simply because she’s seen them before.

Revisiting this particular situation, however, is not what she expected.

It starts with an invitation delivered to Rebecca’s house to Hebby’s fifth grade graduation. There wouldn’t be anything strange about such a thing, even after she gets over the orange-and-turquoise astronaut theme (Hebby was going through a bit of a NASA phase), were it not for the fact the invitation was also addressed to Nathaniel.

Rebecca and Nathaniel, specifically.

Still frowning and trying to ignore the weird ringing that just went through her head at the jolt of seeing hers and Nathaniel’s names juxtaposed across a piece of lurid cardstock—like they’re a unit, or something—Rebecca credits herself with just pulling her phone out and calling Darryl directly instead of diving headfirst into a panic spiral.

“Rebecca!” Darryl’s voice booms from the other end of the line, and Rebecca can’t help the reflexive grin—Darryl’s unflagging enthusiasm while raising four daughters remains nothing short than a scientific marvel. “What a surprise. How is my favorite pretzel singer?”

“Hey, Darryl. Quick question for you. I got your card—”

“Isn’t it great? Hebby picked out the colors specially.”

“I’ll bet she did. But that’s not why I was calling, actually. I was wondering if, perchance, you might have had a shortage of such eye-popping invitations?”

“What do you mean?”

“My invitation was addressed to me and Nathaniel, which, I can definitely send him the deets, no problem, but wouldn’t an email be easier?”

“Oh?” She can hear Darryl’s mustache frown from the other end of the phone. “You mean you and Nathaniel aren’t…”

“Well, he doesn’t live here,” snaps Rebecca, a little flustered. “Why would you think that? Why did you think—did he—”

“Hang on,” says Darryl, and she can hear him calling for April, leaving her stuttered rejection hanging.

Are her and Nathaniel—

How is that even a question anymore?

It’s been a decade, and everyone involved with that event has definitively moved forward with their lives. Her and Josh were a definitive ‘no’ from that fateful Valentine’s Day onwards, remaining dear friends instead, and she was very much the ‘cool aunt’ among his own children. Her and Greg had wavered briefly for a bit afterwards, ran into some seriously uncomfortable friction, and it took them the better part of two years to find a good balance. It probably helped that she accidentally connected him to the woman who would become his wife, but that was a story for another day.

And it was a similar story with Nathaniel. He went to Guatemala for two years, came back and split his time between helping at MountainTop and working with some volunteer legal capacity with the local zoos and her and him—

Ah. Well.

Okay, so it wasn’t quite as clearly defined with Nathaniel, beyond the general fact that she wanted him to be happy, and he wanted her to be happy, and generally their relationship since his return had been checking in on each other, making fun of their weird hobbies and still showing up to events that were important to each other. It was all very adult and friendly and open. Their friendship had appropriate limits and boundaries and they supported each other in the respective relationships they had tried over the years, and it was very platonic…

Well. Except when it wasn’t. There hadn’t been a repeat of the Mona incident ever, and Rebecca could honestly say that she really liked a couple of the long-term girlfriends he’d introduced to them since then, and was genuinely regretful when those relationships ended. Especially for Sylvia, the LA Zoo curator who had to move for her career. Not that the regret wasn’t complicated by other factors, like when Nathaniel had admitted privately to Rebecca later that as much as he liked Sylvia, he just couldn’t see himself leaving California again.

She didn’t get butterflies at that, exactly, because but there had been a comfort in knowing that Nathaniel was content to remain in her orbit.

Again, not entirely uncomplicated. But it was nothing beyond the usual messy spectrum of human emotion internally, and never acted on externally.

She’s dated on and off as suited her libido and her schedule and her desire to find a life partner. She’s had relationships that got serious enough to talk about the future on and off, but they’ve all ended too for reasons inherent to those dynamics themselves. Nathaniel had been a good friend while they were going on, and a shoulder to cry on after, and well, okay, they might have fallen back into bed together a few times over the years, but they never pretended that it was either more than it was or that it was some forbidden thing that wouldn’t happen again. It was what it was.

Well. And they hung out, sometimes. And occasionally were each other’s plus-ones to public events. And friends’ weddings. And quite possibly—

Hm.

It really, really doesn’t help her case that she’s going to see him tonight, either.

“Rebecca?” Darryl tears her out of her thoughts. “Sorry about that! I think there was just a mistake at the stationary shop and they put your cards in together. What are the odds? I might need to call the other parents on the list, just to make sure that they got theirs all right. Could you take that one to Nathaniel? I don’t know if it’s out of your way—”

“Not at all!” says Rebecca, smiling with all of her teeth even though Darryl can’t see her, her cheeks aching. “Not even remotely.”

“Good,” says Darryl, and she can hear him beaming from the other side of the line.

“So, a funny thing happened on the way to your apartment…”

“That’s ominous,” comments Nathaniel, taking the bag of groceries she shoves at him without complaint as he closes the door behind her. Rebecca kicks off her shoes and toes them out of the walkway, abiding by Nathaniel’s still oft-repeated entreaties to not leave her personal belongings strewn entirely across his apartment.

“It’s not ominous so much as luminous,” says Rebecca, reaching into her purse and withdrawing Hebby’s invitation with a little flourish of the wrist. “Well, fluorescent.”

“Oh my god.”

Nathaniel accepts the card and flicks it open, scanning through the cheerful, only slightly grammatically incorrect message, and cannot quite suppress an amused huff of laughter. Rebecca hides her own smile as she turns away to set her purse on the very useful hook Nathaniel installed for her own use. Like herself, Nathaniel has a soft spot for Hebby, despite his continued awkwardness around children.

“Right? She gets that from Darryl for sure.”

“I don’t know, I remember someone showing up in some pink and purple eyesore into a law firm the very first day I met her.”

“You just didn’t know fun when you saw it,” says Rebecca instead, perching on the edge of the couch. “But it was funny. I was worried for a second that he thought that we were a couple or something. How weird is that?”

She is completely, totally casual in her delivery of that line, she knows. A decade in community theater and singing gigs have certainly finetuned her ability to turn a phrase, if nothing else. But something must be slightly offkey, because Nathaniel snaps up from marveling at the card to eye her suspiciously.

“Very weird,” he says, after a slightly-too-long pause. “Do we seem like a couple? Why would we seem like a couple when we aren’t a couple?”

“That’s exactly what I thought!” She punches him companionably on the arm; apparently too hard, if the way he winces and rubs at his bicep is any consideration.

(She’s been taking workout classes with Valencia—she deserves something for all that pain.)

“But it’s probably nothing,” she adds, determined to address this weird little misstep directly, because they are both too old to be having any kinds of weird misunderstandings anymore. “We’re close. We have our own rhythm, our own special two step. No wonder Darryl got confused.”

“He’s getting old,” says Nathaniel.

“Dude, c’mon.”

“What? It’s true.”

“What about you, Mister Gray?” Rebecca challenges. Nathaniel pulls a face in response, clearly fighting the urge to brush his hand through the aforementioned silvering at his temples.

(He wasn’t quite vain enough to dye his hair yet, though Rebecca credits his restraint to the fact that she would never let him hear the end of it.)

“It’s just a couple of hairs,” he says inconsequentially, as though it hasn’t been long established that between the two of them, he’s the one with the greater fear of aging, and therefore in far more danger of aging gracelessly.

“Keep telling yourself that.” Rebecca hops off the couch and grabs him by the elbow. “Now c’mon, let’s make sure make these sweet potatoes are not oh-sweet-pies-don’t!”

Heading over to Nathaniel’s place had left Rebecca feeling on edge, not quite sure how to process the idea of someone, anyone, considering her and Nathaniel as a potential couple this late in the game.

Nothing is more grounding, however, than seeing Nathaniel being clearly so off kilter, missing steps in what should be a well-worn dance of theirs by now. Dancing has always been their thing—where they once threw each other off at every possible moment, shaking up their convictions about life and happiness and how that concept could exist within their previously compartmentalized existences. Now, they were familiar with each other. Comfortable. Predictable.

They knew each other’s moves now, which means that she could see Nathaniel’s as clear as water.

He’s unfocused during dinner, a little erratic in his answers, jittery, as if he’s had too much coffee. It’s putting her off her rhythm, and while she knows that not everything in life needs to be a big song and dance production, there does need to be some kind of continuity.

This evening was supposed to be easygoing and relaxing. And, yes, probably beneficial in that very particular friends-with-benefits way. But since that clearly wasn’t going to happen, they needed to execute a sharp left turn and get this all settled.

“Nathaniel?” she repeats, for the third time.

“Hm?”

“Are you getting hard of hearing in your old age?” He scowls deeply at her in response. “Yeah, yeah, I had to ask. So, what’s bugging you?”

He’s silent for a long minute. “Just something ridiculous.”

“Yeah?”

He shakes his head. “We don’t need to go through it again. It’s just spinning in circles around the same old subject.”

“Try a jazz square then.”

That startles a laugh out of him, much to Rebecca’s satisfaction. Good to know that she still has some capacity for surprise with him. She continues, “You know that move, right? Don’t tell me you forgot about Connie.”

“Are you kidding? I still have nightmares about her scarf strangling me to death.”

“Dark.”

“She was terrifying.”

“Yeah.” They sit in companionable silence. Then Nathaniel sighs.

“Sorry I’m being weird. I just…hearing that from you, I always thought it would just be a good laugh. You know, ridiculous to even think about romance again. But it made me feel weird instead, so now I’m acting slightly weird.”

“I wouldn’t say slightly,” teases Rebecca, unable to resist. Nathaniel doesn’t return her smile.

“Rebecca, I like where we are. I like that our relationship isn’t a big production anymore.”

“Don’t get me wrong—I love drama on the stage, but that’s definitely where it should stay.” She drums her fingers on her thigh, subconsciously tapping out a tune that’s been giving her trouble these last few weeks. “We can learn new steps, you know. Old dogs, new tricks? That doesn’t only apply to the bedroom.”

Nathaniel (again, predictably) groans.

“Aren’t you getting too old to have such a dirty mind?” But he’s smiling, now.

“Nah. I fully intend to be a filthy old woman. But seriously,” she adds, moving to sit besides him on the couch. “If just the thought of other people thinking that we’re a couple again is enough to send us both off balance, we need to center ourselves. Maybe it’s something worth talking about. What do you say?”

She reaches out and grabs his hand, and starts to tap a rhythm against his large palm—one of the first she ever composed, the first one her friends ever danced to. After a moment, he taps back, completing it.

“Yes.”

#writing meme reply #rebecca x nathaniel #crazy ex girlfriend #ellie writes fic #I'm not sure how happy i am with the denouement of this one #and it spun away a bit from the prompt #but i like enough of it #it's been forever since i've written fic #notbang

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