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evolution-ofa-geek · 4 months

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Episode 134

GLOW S1E9 - The Liberal Chokehold. Its Last episode of 2023! Open up with the outlook of what my personal fitblr goals for 2024 will look like. I relive childhood memories and a story of being in another country and my grandmother being a savage. On Glow, with the show's future in jeopardy, Bash and the ladies search for creative ways to drum up cash. A pair of revelations leaves Sam reeling.

Get 20% off on adult toys when you enter discount code "evo" at pleasurepassport.shop

#fitblr #2023 #GLOW #glow on netflix #gorgeous ladies of wrestling #wrestling #from under the apron #streamer #podcaster #grandma stories #goodbye 2023 #welcome 2024

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carriejonesbooks · 1 year

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Strange and Funny Grandma Stories

It’s time to talk about grandmothers. They can be strange. They can be blunt. They might even smoke blunts. We were live. It was fun. Have a listen. RESOURCES WE MENTION 16 Stories About Grannies Who Made The Childhood Of Their Grandchildren Unforgettable https://notalwaysright.com/tag/grandparents/page/2/ What’s a funny story about your grandma? from…

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#carriejones #funny grandma stories #grandma stories #live podcast #Loving The Strange #podcast #strange grandma stories

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rainbowonyourparade · 2 years

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Love showing my grandma weird youtube personalities the internet is into. She's in her 70s. My mom and I got her into buzzfeed unsolved and defunctland and now I'm having her watch bdg

#she was talking abt ice cream and bdg is where my brain went ok #grandma stories

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hopefullyandrogynousartist · 10 months

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so my grandma is 85, and at dinner she dropped the bomb of "Yeah, in Sheboygan, black people weren't allowed to live there at all. There wasn't a neighborhood or anything." like what. grandma. are you being so serious when you say the first time you saw a black person was when you were in eighth grade? or maybe at a family reunion a little before that? again: like what.

#queueueueueueueueueueueueueue #grandma #grandma stories #racism #i haven't seen my grandma in a fairly long time #so this? at the first dinner we've had in a while? fucking bonkers.

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starrspice · 4 months

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Have this Fairy Tale AU to reign in the new year!!

In this AU the prince(s) charming from all the classic stories falls in love with the woodsman rather than their Fairy tale loves after being saved from a band of marauders on their way to the castle one night

Meanwhile the woodsman (Y/N in this case) has decided to hunt down all the dark beasts in the shadows they can find to finally give the kingdom some peace, weather it be wolves or trolls or dragons, they want the people of the kingdom to feel safe. (Some more than others)

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beck-a-leck · 3 months

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Saw one too many posts along the lines of 'I put something not oven-safe in the turned off oven for Reasons and then my spouse/roommate/sibling turned on the oven and ruined it!' recently and that combined with my automatic pre-turning on the oven habit of opening the door to make sure there's nothing in there has got me thinking.

I Always check the oven before I turn it on. Doesn't matter if I know for a fact nothing is in there or the racks haven't moved out of the position i want, I always check. And I always check because that's the way I was taught. When I started learning how to cook from my mom, the first thing she taught me to do was check the oven. I always figured that was just a common sense safety thing she passed on, but it also occurred to me that my mom worked as a firefighter/paramedic for a good portion of my childhood. So maybe that was something she passed on from her experiences as a firefighter.

So now I'm curious, and in true tumblr fashion I'm gonna sate my curiosity with a poll.

Note: 'Raised' can mean you had a parent/parental figure who was a firefighter. Or an extended family member who was. Or a family friend. If they served a role in your life that taught you things, they had a hand in raising you.

Obligatory please reblog for sample size. I doubt this will break containment and get more than a dozen or so votes but it would be super cool if it did.

#i was thinking thoughts while i made me taquitos #like i feel like everyone's family has a story along these lines #in my family my grandma set a drawer full of hot pads on fire because she turned on the broiler drawer of my parent's range #not realizing it was full of flammable things #polls

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justasavebuttonforthemindseye · 9 months

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μεσημεριανό στης γιαγιάς

Kiato, Greece / June 2022

#grandma stories #kiato #kiatokorinthias #social documentary #ethnographical photography #ethnography

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iridescentmirrorsgenshin · 2 months

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The motif of home is an essential concept to his character. Kaveh describes ‘home’ being different than to that of a ‘house’, as in a house indicates a solitary object, whereas ‘home’ refers to people

This is explained in the loss of Kaveh’s family resulted in his home becoming a house: “"Home" went from a sanctuary of warmth and light to a cold and lonely hall” (Kaveh Character Story 2).

The concept of a home, then, is particularly important in regard to Alhaitham as Alhaitham invited Kaveh to live in his house after Kaveh sold his family house to pay for the re-building of the Palace of Alcazarzaray. Kaveh, at this point in time, is described to be “homeless”, which is indicative of him not only being without a place to live, but without people which ‘home’ could come into fruition. After meeting Alhaitham for the first time in years after their parting, the concept of ‘home’ is directly related to Alhaitham:

Upon seeing his family’s house, his old “home”, which he had sold in order to provide the funding to rebuild the Palace of Alcazarzaray, Alhaitham prompts Kaveh to reflect on the pursuit of his ideals, whereafter Kaveh acknowledges that his ideals were not in the wrong, it is his method of achieving them. Kaveh resolves not to give up, and a second chance is presented to him in Alhaitham inviting Kaveh to live with him.

Where Kaveh ‘sees’ his old “home”, the family he no longer belongs to, all he lost due to his regrets, Alhaitham “sees” through Kaveh, understands him, and asks him a question which simultaneously renews his beliefs in his ideals and the future. This passage links Alhaitham’s sense of home to Kaveh, and offers Alhaitham as a home for Kaveh.

(Update: For more analyses like this, the essay this is taken from is now uploaded! It can be accessed here and here as as a pdf <3)

#alhaitham #kaveh #haikaveh #kavetham #haikaveh meta #this is an excerpt from the essay which i thought was nice #the idea of alhaitham listening intently to kaveh haunts me #also they are each others family and home!!!#this theme of family and home is so integral to kavehs character and alhaithams character stories #alhaithams character story says that kaveh is similarly lacking in familial attachments just like alhaitham #and when they met it was after alhaithams grandma passed and he enrolled in the akademiya #and when kavehs mother had left for fontaine #the two meet after losing these family attachments and then go onto form their own family #but the whole thing about sumeru academic family is a whole other post!!

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officialjanetweiss · 2 years

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Interviewees in Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives (1992)

Keeley Moll, Stephanie Ozard, Reva Hutkin, Lois M. Stuart, Nairobi, Jeanne Healy, Amanda White, Carol Ritchie-Mackintosh, and Ruth Christine

#forbidden love the unashamed stories of lesbian lives #i love all my gay canadian grandmas #forbidden love #lesbian history

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vendetta-if · 25 days

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Just Posted a Public Side Story for Viktor! ✨

Hi guys! So, I just posted a free side story over on my Patreon and Ko-Fi. It's part of a backstory for Viktor and in this story, it'll be about how Viktor first discovered his power.

There are also bits on some of the other characters' first experiences with their own respective powers and you'll also get a glimpse on the different dynamics/relationships that little Viktor has with his father and his mother.

I've been writing it on the side for the past couple of weeks and it's a pretty long story, around 5K words long. And because of that, I've decided to split it into three parts--all are posted at the same time.

Since the posts, including this tumblr post were scheduled, when I was writing this post, I couldn't link to the posts specifically because they were not posted yet 😆

But if you're reading this, then that means the story (all 3 parts) is already up on both my Patreon page and Ko-Fi now. Just go to either page and you should be able to find them right away.

Sorry, for the pretty scuffed post. I'll make sure to update this post with the links once I'm home 😂

Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy the story! 🥰

[Patreon] | [Ko-Fi]

#writing updates #vendetta side story #char: viktor #char: grandpa #char: grandma #if: vendetta #vendetta if #if vendetta #if game #if wip #dashingdon #choicescript #hosted games #choice of games #interactive fiction #interactive novel #interactive story #interactive games

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monpalace · 1 year

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ships .. (ocarina of time/majora's mask) link/reader, fierce deity/reader.

content .. the boys (separately) with a reader who feeds them well, and the fruits of their loving labor.

warnings .. unedited. no pronouns used (you/your). reader is implied to have more meat on their bones (vaguely). reader is in their housespouse era and they aren't even married (legally). non-graphic vomit and forgetting to eat mentioned (link). link and fierce deity are taller than reader. fierce deity is named aram for writings sake. reader is implied to be a god of sorts (fierce deity). fierce deity is literally my oc at this point.

notes .. my schnookums thought they could have big cheeks and get away from me? my cutie patooties thought that i wouldn't write about them eating right? my pookie bears thought that i wouldn't fulfill my duties as their #1? my baby faced sweethearts thought i wouldn't spend 2hrs looking for pictures like those? my favorite white boys? my honeybuns? my hollywood stars? my sugarpies?

i'll eat them. omnom

LINK has always been rather thin. That was especially the case when he was a child. Something about a Kokiri child's diet not fitting what a Hylian needed always kept him frail.

When you both were children, he had quickly gotten used to you plucking his arm when it was idle to compare his lack of fat to your surplus.

(He never minded. He always looked forward to being reminded why he put one foot in front of the other every day during his fight against Ganon, or repeated cycle after cycle when it came to Majora.)

(Funnily enough, you had always made fun of him for being shorter than you as a child as well. You always mentioned he needed to drink more milk and eat more cuccos so he'd one day pass you.)

It was when you were able to cook more than simple meals and wouldn't risk burning down your cottage that you would invite (force) Link over more often than you already have.

Link had always tried to limit his visits to when he absolutely needed to. Free food, bed, shelter, care, supplies, clothes, bathes (the list was endless), and whatnot were always appreciated, but he never wanted to become to comfortable lest he wake up one day (or night. Or afternoon. His internal clock was always ruined when it came to sleeping at your cabin) and decide not return to the world outside.

He does his best to turn down any seconds, or thirds, or fourths, or fifths, and so on you may offer him when he does stay long enough for you to finish whatever extravagant meal you made just for him.

Past experiences often make him sick (with trauma or physically) and result in him vomiting his food, but there's always more from you to replace what he had just eaten and the meal before (if he remembered to eat it).

What he can't finish at the table (or on the sofa, or in the bed), he takes with him when he leaves. Link is respectful in all meanings of the word and hates to leave anything to waste.

When it comes to thanks, he either finds ways to help around your cottage or brings back items from new regions for you to cook. Whether it be repairing the busted bathroom door you've been complaining about before fixing your water faucet so the pressure is what you want it to be, or bringing back a spice the Gorons specialize in you've mentioned wanting to try, Link typically feels his gifts fall lackluster when compared to your treatment of him.

(He trusts your skill and creativity enough to know you won't poison him on accident. He never brings back any recipes or instructions either if it's not a dangerous material.)

(He's always excited to try whatever new dish you've concocted, so his only condition is that you wait for his return to cook whatever it is he brought you. "A celebration, of sorts," he calls it.)

A look in a lone puddle had told him his cheeks had gotten fatter. He supposes he now understands why he was refused entry into one of the pubs when he had to retrieve Malon and Cremia's uncle.

He had noticed that the details of his arms were less visible through his shirts when a Goron had pinched one,— not in the same way you did when you were younger— he had mentioned that he had an amount of muscle and fat to be proud of before asking him to join a tournament. Any attempts prior to were quickly shut down.

During a day of horseback archery with the Gerudo, the sweltering sun had gotten to him enough that he had to remove his tunic and the shirt underneath to feel some sort of relief. One of the women who were training him took a look at his stomach and nodded approvingly, mentioning that he should praise his soon-to-be spouse for feeding him so well.

The last nail in the coffin came when he was riding Epona into Castle Town. His tunic felt uncomfortably small and his tights (curse those damned tights) felt as thought they were stretched more across the expanse of his thighs than they usually were.

He's back in your cottage when he finally vocalizes his thoughts, preferring you to any other tailor or seamstress in the country. "I've gotten to big for my clothes," he either sighs or signs to you while eating. His gaze held a thousand yards in them, idly watching his clothes move with the wind.

The tunic, hat, tights, boots hang outside the window on a string connected to your shed. They had to be washed after a (admittedly well-planned— even if they don't think) ambush by a hoard of chu-chus.

You throw a hazy look to them before returning to the bowl you were tirelessly mixing. You were making dinner, he thinks, or maybe it was in preparation for the big breakfast you were making with the variety of bread from the Gerudo he brought back.

You'd already given him a large snack earlier.

The thought makes him look down at the plate in his lap. Every spot of it was filled and piled with bread, and eggs, and meats, and jams. He couldn't see the white bottom of it even as he pushed and prodded around.

He takes a bite of it gratefully.

"I saw you before you left not even three days ago. You fit everything fine enough to me." At some point you had stopped stirring and held the bowl out to him. Link grabs something off the plate and dips it in without a thought, eating it before responding with a hum of approval. "I can make adjustments to then, if you'd like."

You leave the bowl with him before attending to something on the stove.

"Please," he responds, halfway through another bite of the (what he now recognized as) Gerudo bread and cocoa dip you had made. "Different pants would be nice, though. It'd be a nice excuse to finally get rid of those tights." Both tasted sweet by themselves, he realized, but left a calmer aftertaste that he'd like to savor.

"You've always hated the tights," you hum in response, moving from the stove to the coolers that he'd built you after bringing you a large fish that only lived in Zora's Domain. "What would you want to move on to now? Leggings? Shorts?"

Link watches you remove a pitcher from one of the coolers. He isn't sure how long it's been in there (he doesn't even remember watching you make it), but he assumes you took some ice out so the pink liquid wouldn't freeze over into complete ice.

He watches you try to take a cup from one of the cupboards, watching you struggle to grab his favorite one from the higher shelves.

He stands from the chair sat just outside the kitchen (he liked to watch you cook when you had the time), placing the bowl and plate on one of the many cleared counters (you liked to clean as you worked), and grabs the cup for you.

Link lowers his head with his hand when he hands the cup off, head resting upon the crown of yours as he watches you pour the pink liquid into it, idle arms wrapping around your waist as he makes some slick comment about eating enough milk and cuccos for your liking.

You don't elbow him in the stomach like you might have when you were younger and he doesn't hold the cup above your head teasingly like when he was younger to (— then again, he had to climb a counter to get it out of your reach.)

Instead, you wordlessly pass the cup back to him and he wordlessly drinks it despite not knowing what it was.

He likes it, as he does all your works, and notes how it was both sweet and sour. A taste that fills both his childhood need for sweet all the time and his older palate's need for other tastes.

Handing the cup back, Link tilts his head so he can press a kiss to your crown. "Anything you'd think I'd look good in," he finally responds, the flavor of the moment leaving a tooth-achingly sweet taste on his tongue.

ARAM is often humbled in your abode.

He may have acted arrogant to others in his younger years and horrifyingly aloof now that he's a more seasoned god, but he never failed to (willingly) crumble to his knees when in your presence during either times of his life.

He had no need for the sustenance mortals require, prayers and whispers of his name were always good enough for him, but he'd kiss the ground you walk on if it meant you'd bless him with another food you've created (he already does).

Aram is the provider to your fire-lit home, an arrangement the two have been living by for as long as he can remember.

He is the sword to your shield. The arrow to your quiver. The moon to ever burning sun (which he did create for you, after all). The wound for your gauze. The life to your world— and one cannot live peacefully without the other.

Your food had quickly become an addiction to Aram. He'd eat as much as often as he could, giving little response to when questioned why he loves it so much.

("Because it comes from your hands," he once explained hours later when you were sleeping. "Your hands, that create all. That nourish all it touches and replenishes all that is extinct. I am your antithesis, and I must destroy that which I love."

(You never had the heart to ask again.)

He has enough sense to slow his eating around you. One concerned comment about him choking was enough for him to indulge in needless your wishes, but a question regarding its taste had him eating like a mortal.

His relationship with food prior to getting hooked onto yours was brief and filled with obligation. He never ate to feel full, only to make the people he was fighting with shut up and leave him out of whatever conversation they were having.

It never lingered in his stomach like a warm fireplace that others had described it as. It never made him warm and filled with love. It never gave him the energy he needed to keep fighting.

It just went through his digestive tract (why did he even have one?) and disappeared like an heavy smog finally dispersed by a strong gust of wind before he had to fight again.

When a war was over, you always came. You took the battle-shaken soldiers away when it was their time and healed their ailments if they were able to withstand everything. You went through war-stricken cities and set everything as they should have been. You feed and clothe and bandage and sew and reunite and Aram isn't sure why he lingered.

He's seen the effects of what you can do long after you've left. He knows of the good you're capable of doing just as much as he knows the bad he can cause.

He craves your touch when he sees it at its peak. He indulges himself when he sees it first-hand.

Aram understands what the soldiers mean when you beckon him closer and offer him food, uncaring of how he stands tall above all else.

The soup warms his insides. The flavor resides on his tongue hours after he's finished it. His energy, though far from depleted, had made him feel as though he were a youngling again.

He craves more.

The addiction to your presence and your food (and subsequently, you) had started then. It's an event he could easily recall when asked, one he would happily recount to you if you ever forgot where his devotion to you started.

Meeting after a war or battle had become frequent enough that he had finally learned your name; not some silly alias those who followed you often referred to you as. He felt like one of those lovesick children soldiers talk about, tripping over himself and his words.

He's curious to you, an admirer more than a stalker, fortunately. When he wasn't on the battlefront, he was always hovering around as you worked, busying his hands with whatever task you've given him after noticing his lack of mortality.

You treated him well; doing so even after the era of wars were long gone and he was seldom needed. You cared for him as though he were one of the many wounded soldiers with no family to return to once all was done and said— and to an extent, he was.

He's eating when you bring attention to his softer thigh.

You were reading to him, a romantic thriller that held as much of his attention that your captivating voice did. His gaze focused heavily on you, watching as you lick your lips after each page, how your eyes rake over the page to ensure the tone you speak the next sentence in is correct. He notes how you shift less often, how he doesn't have to move you further up his lap so you can lean against his stomach.

"It's not as painful to sit on you anymore." Aram doesn't think that line was in the book, but he doesn't mention it. It dawns that you were talking to him when you look up, using your finger as a bookmark as you closed the book around it. "Have you gained weight?"

He's a big man; it's a fact he's known since the beginning of his existence. He has large arms, muscles well know for how he snatched prey up to bring back to you. His height made it a simple feat to reach into the trees and capture any avian you wanted to experiment with that night. His legs that would stomp on any fish swimming downstream during a day at the lake you suggested.

He was sculpted by the Goddesses themselves. If they hadn't meant for his body to change along with his lifestyle, they wouldn't have designed him to dough.

(He'd never be ashamed in the fact either. He was contented knowing he had someone to dote over him constantly; a sentiment he had gained after recalling a conversation with wedded soldiers.)

(Also, the prospect of defacing what the Goddesses had long since disgraced was exciting, in a way.)

Aram doesn't look at himself, already well-acquainted with his body as his brow raises in amusement. "You feed me well, My Grace," he responds with a peck on your temple, "I would hope to become more comfortable for your pleasure." He refused to stop eating as he indulged you in conversation, the leg you sat on jumping once in place of his busy hands.

You hum that sweet, quiet hum of yours that Aram has come to associate with your contentedness (he aimed to hear to several tomes every day). Removing yourself from his lap, discarding the novel to the side as you raise your hands to cup his cheeks. "It suits you. You look healthy. Happy."

"Did I look ill before?"

You don't fluster as you might have like in your younger years. He's honored to have grown alongside you, reminiscent of the older couples you've both watched and escorted when he was still an active god.

The same filling feeling your food gives him fills his heart. The lingering sense of peace that he felt since meeting you dancing through his body when your thumbs rub the apples of his cheeks, the softest and fondest gaze anyone's ever given him in your eyes.

"No," you answer in a quiet voice only he'd be able to hear. "Never. You've always looked perfect."

And Aram has never been more thankful that he separated himself from the Goddesses as he preens under your touch. Never been more thankful that he lingered after the war was done. Never been more thankful that he had readjusted his psyche to more readily accept your gifts and affection.

He frees a hand to cradle to back of your head, a threat to all that aren't you, and brings you beneath his chin in a protective gesture. "As have you," he murmurs, pressing a kiss to the crown of your head. "And as you always will be."

#there's a mental health stat for link in oot/mm now.#the only way to keep it up (and him in good shape) is to go back and visit his s/o's house often and interact with them <3 #(you are immediately entered into one of those cutscenes with the grandma that tells the story of the giants from majoras mask-- but instead #of only telling you stories; you get to watch them do domestic things)#unless sky and wind have some photos dropped that reveal they have fat cheeks 2 im never doing this again #i am my oc. my ocs love language is food. i cannot cook.#elvira's notebook #legend of zelda x reader #loz x reader #linked universe x reader #lu x reader #ocarina of time x reader #majora's mask x reader #mm x reader #x reader #link x reader #fierce deity x reader #legend of zelda link x reader #loz link x reader #legend of zelda fierce deity x reader #loz fierce deity x reader #linked universe link x reader #lu link x reader #linked universe fierce deity x reader #lu fierce deity x reader #time x reader #legend of zelda time x reader #loz time x reader #linked universe time x reader #lu time x reader

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conundrumoftime · 8 months

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Fandom grandma tales: how I survived canon ruining two of the ships I liked.

(Written after a discussion with some of my TROP fan pals about how canon can break your heart re: shipping, and how fandom manages. There are spoilers here for the entire run of Babylon 5, and for one story JMS wrote after it. yes, that story. sorry.)

Babylon 5 was a sci-fi space opera show that ran from 1993 to 1998. It is sci-fi of the era of 22-episode seasons, of huge ensemble casts with characters who get their own B- and C-plots, with an effects and casting budget that doesn’t always match its ambition, and - something it was quite pioneering in, at the time - grand pre-planned story arcs.

It’s the first fandom that I was involved with in internet spaces as it was running, or at least when its final season was (there’s Discourse and drama from earlier years that I missed). Its showrunner, J. Michael Straczynski - ‘JMS’ - was very active in (non-fanfic) fan community spaces, and you always knew exactly what he was thinking about things because he was part of the discussion around them. There was also fanfic, which he didn’t stop but didn’t go near on the grounds of legal liability for story ideas.

Most of the fanfic in the early days as the show was airing was focused around two big ships, of which one was canon endgame (Delenn/Sheridan) and one was canon all-ends-in-despair (Marcus/Ivanova). I, as a teenager discovering a developing online fandom for the first time with all the overwhelm and excitement that causes (ask me anything about what reading fic was like before the days of tags/ratings/warnings!) got into Marcus/Ivanova and also into one of the minor ships, Delenn/Lennier.

Delenn/Lennier was never, ever going to happen in canon. This is obvious; it clashes with Delenn/Sheridan which was JMS’s baby darling OTP, the show’s big love story. Delenn is married for the later part of the show. Lennier is her diplomatic aide, is absolutely devoted to her, and they have a very intense mentor/student relationship, which it seems is kind of standard in their culture (when Delenn’s own mentor died she went briefly insane with grief and started a genocidal war over it) but is still Very Intense. He is canonically in love with her, but that’s as far as the explicit canon statements go.

However. HowEVER. Canon also gives us, for that relationship, some wonderful ship fuel. Lennier knows about every bad thing Delenn has done, including all the stuff she doesn’t/can’t tell her husband. He’s her link to her previous world and culture and stands by her even when they kick her out. She says at one point, “without him, I would stumble and fall and never get up again.”

And then… we had Season 5, the final season.

Season 5, for various complicated production reasons, was operating a little outside of pre-planned story arcs and in this season the Delenn/Lennier stuff ramped up about three gears in one go. It was still very obviously never, ever going to be canon, and was almost certainly not intended by the creator (who wrote most of the episodes himself) to look like there was even anything there. At this point Delenn is married; any relationship with her aide would not only be going against the show’s OTP, but going against it in the sense where she’s cheating on her husband, and there is Just No Way JMS would have gone there. And yet! Season 5 gave us:

A scene where Lennier says he can’t stay, it’s too painful to be around her now she’s married, and she’s devastated and has the following conversation with her husband about it:

S: I got your message about Lennier. Is there anything I can do?

D [snapping]: Almost certainly not.

S: Is it because of me?

D: In part, I think so.

S: Yeah, I was afraid of that. Well, as we say back on Earth, three’s a crowd.

D: On Minbar, three is sacred.

S [slightly uncomfortable laugh]: Well, I don’t think I’m ready to handle that one, Delenn.

Delenn then calling Lennier back to the station to do some secret mission thing for her, which involves her sneaking out of her bed while her husband sleeps to meet Lennier in a darkened alley behind a bar, where she tenderly strokes his face and they have a whole conversation about whether her husband understands her or not.

A scene where Lennier comes back from his secret mission to meet both Delenn and Sheridan, Delenn goes to greet him with a hug, and Lennier does this very pointed step back and nod in the direction of her husband, and she pulls back and just sort of pats him on the arms instead.

I MEAN.

But, the issue here is not what fans did about it but what canon did about it. Canon did the canon equivalent of dragging that ship outside and shooting it in the head.

In the final few episodes of the entire series, Lennier tries to kill Sheridan, runs away in shame, and then someone finds his diary in which he’d been writing for ages about what a bad decision he thought Delenn had made and how her whole marriage was an awful idea. Even to this day, it’s fun/awful watching people go through a first-time watch when they get to season 5 and hit that. ‘Character assassination in the form of a diary’ was a whole thing for a while. It’s been 20+ years and the actor who played Lennier is stilll mad about it (not because of shippy stuff, but because he - correctly! - thinks Lennier absolutely would not have done that).

What *fandom* did, on the other hand, was Fixed The Problem.

Delenn/Lennier was not at all a big ship when the series was airing, and for a few years after. Then the fandom dynamics started to change. With less pressure on what canon was going to do, it felt like fandom had more space to play around with things it didn’t do. Fanfic got less interested in trying to fit within the overall story being told and started spinning off in all its own directions. And *this* ship started getting bigger and bigger. People did really interesting things with it, canon divergence went in all directions, everyone wrote a fix-it story of some variety, some authors did a great series of connected stories based on an idea that Minbari have three genders, the quality of the writing has been brilliant. And I think without that absolute whiplash feeling of what happened in canon, there would never have been this feeling of “well I’m not having THAT” which led to all this.

We did not need canon! Canon had done its thing. And canon had broken our hearts enough ways with many of the other stories it told (entirely on purpose) and we weren’t just going to sit back and let it ruin us forever.

By comparison, the other ship I was into was Marcus/Ivanova. This is entirely doomed. Susan Ivanova’s love life is just perpetually doomed. The first partner of hers we meet is an ex who’s interested in getting back together, but then it turns out he’s just using her to infiltrate the station for the fascist terrorist group he’s secretly joined. Then she falls for an archrival of hers, Talia, who works for Psi Corps, the organisation she loathes most of all things - but it’s okay because it turns out Talia is starting to question them too! Maybe these crazy kids can make it work! They have one night together and then OOPS turns out Talia was being secretly controlled by a sleeper personality implanted in her by Psi Corps the whole time. Ivanova’s love life is doomed.

So for two seasons, she has this sort-of-flirty, sort-of-bickery, sort-of-friendship going with Marcus, who is on the surface of it very much “why not fall in love at first sight like a true romantic, YOLO!” but it turns out is actually deeply messed up himself and full of survivor’s guilt and pain and, you get the clear impression, would have died of shock if she’d actually called his bluff on the OTT flirting and said “yeah, let’s go for it”. And then he sacrifices himself to save her life. It is a very tragic ending, it is absolutely the way he would have wanted to go, she wakes up both furious and absolutely distraught, says that the last thing she heard was him saying “I love you”, says she wishes she’d at least slept with him once, and says that in a way all love is unrequited. PAIN.

So, lots of fix-it fanfic, lots of ‘Marcus comes back to life’, lots of canon divergence AUs where he doesn’t die and they live happily ever after and both get over their huge levels of unresolved pain. Pretty standard for that kind of pairing. And as a pairing it doesn’t get in the way of any big canon pairings, it doesn’t imply anything icky like mentor/student power imbalances or adultery. And JMS clearly quite liked it. So that’s better, right?

NO. It was WORSE.

JMS wrote an Marcus/Ivanova story himself, published in one of the sci-fi magazines, to try to give them a happy ending. This happy ending involves Marcus, many many years in the future, waking up from the cryogenic suspension he’s in (it’s sci-fi, keep up, keep up). Ivanova is long dead, but he isn’t about to let this get in the way, so what he does is to *create a new Ivanova* by getting some kind of DNA + computerised memory/personality bank thing, finding a doctor who will clone her, putting himself back into animated sleep until the clone reaches the age Ivanova was when she died, then - THEN, I’M STILL GOING - takes her to a distant planet where, with her memories wiped and their spaceship having deliberately been crashed BY HIM so there’s no way back, they live out their lives in peace.

WHAT.

That pairing still does okay in fandom but it’s not really taken on a post-show world of headcanons and riffing on other people’s ideas and tropes in the way that Delenn/Lennier has (and we all just pretend that story never existed).

So! This has been my experiences in the field of What We Do When The Show Has Thoughts On That Non-Endgame Ship We’re Into. Fandom manages. Fandom will see you through. And in the words of Susan Ivanova:

Babylon Five was the last of the Babylon stations; there would never be another. It changed the future, and it changed us. It taught us that we have to create the future, or others will do it for us. It showed us that we have to care for one another, for if we don’t, who will? And that true strength sometimes comes from the most unlikely places. Mostly though, I think it gave us hope that there can always be new beginnings - even for people like us.

#fandom grandma #fandom history #non-endgame ships #shipping #canon and non-canon ships #babylon 5 #delenn x lennier #marcus x ivanova #that story's not canon if I say it's not canon #b5 #what in the actual hell was that diary anyway #snarky bill mumy interview forever in our hearts #never have I seen a more perfect ot3 setup and YET

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