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happy74827 · 6 months

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Happy Accidents

[Todd Ingram x Female!Reader]

Synopsis: You might've broken your leg due to Todd, but that didn't mean you couldn't still have quality time together.

WC: 2672

Category: Hurt/Comfort, Fluff

This was such a random plot I came up with, but I’m actually in love with it. I feel that this little one-shot is 100% Todd accurate (I say little but it’s literally 2k words lol).

Also, please don’t send the vegan police after me for my inaccuracies (lmao). Google was my only option 😭😭

『••✎••』

Spending time at the hospital wasn’t the plan you had in mind for your Friday night. You expected it with you curled up on your couch watching whatever crappy reality show that was airing with Todd by your side.

He was always the perfect person to binge with; his reactions were an endless source of sarcastic commentary. It actually made it funnier.

But you couldn't be too upset. You still had Todd, and you had… some television. Sure, it wasn’t 90 Day Fiancé, but it was better than nothing.

Usually, when it came to broken legs, you were at the hospital for two hours. Two. Hours. Not you, of course. Your boyfriend had to be a vegan and have those whacked-out powers. It was a given that there’d be an accident.

Who knew a flying amp could be so hard to catch?

At least you didn't have a concussion. The only injury was your leg, but your leg was completely messed up. Three different fractures in your femur and a torn ligament. It was the most you had ever been injured in your life, including all those times you fell off your bike or when you broke your arm in third grade.

The doctors at the hospital said that they couldn't let you leave until Monday. Surgery was also still on the table and could happen as early as tomorrow, which you definitely weren’t paying for

So, you were stuck in the hospital, eating the terrible hospital food and watching stupid television.

And the worst part about all of this was that it was slowly taking your mind off of Todd.

It was only the last couple months when the two of you started dating. Neither of you were exactly serious or anything, but you had feelings.

He was a big guy and a real sweetheart, not to mention a badass with those powers of his. It was obvious that he had a good heart, and he didn't take shit from anybody. That included you.

You had to admit that it was cute when he got jealous. He never had to worry, though. You were never interested in guys like him. You had your eye on Todd, and now you were stuck in a hospital bed because of him.

Now that it was just a memory, the moment you broke your leg was pretty comical. Envy needed a rehearsal before their band went out on tour the following week, and since you and Todd planned the night out together, you attended their quick practice.

As usual, they were awesome. You were like a little fangirl when Envy started singing. You kept your cool, though, sitting on the couch while they ran tempo and entrances. You weren't paying too much attention either, until you heard a voice and turned your head.

Lynette, the drummer, apparently had a very salty day and decided to pick fights with Envy’s ideas. She even suggested that she should learn how to write songs. That was a big no-no when it came to Envy, and it was made very clear that it would be her last comment for the day.

It was a blur, really. Envy and Lynette were throwing insults at each other, and Todd was caught in the middle of it. He was pretty bad at confrontation when it didn’t technically involve him and so he usually let it slide, but something about Lynette had pissed him off this time.

You could still remember the words he said.

"You know what I hate about you? Your hair."

You giggled, and that was your mistake. Lynette absolutely loved her hair. That haircut was her pride and joy. Todd could never understand what it was about it, but it was Lynette's favorite feature.

So, when he insulted her favorite thing in the world, she immediately started attacking your boyfriend, causing you to go over and try to stop this before it escalated.

Well, it escalated. Todd subconsciously went into “vegan mode” when he was mad. It was a defense mechanism or something like that. In any case, an accidental movement of his hand had an expensive amplifier aimed right at your leg.

Envy saw it coming and screamed his name to get his attention, but he couldn’t hear her over Lynette, and you couldn't move out of the way fast enough.

And then, everything stopped. All you felt was the excruciating pain that was apparently your broken bone, multiple places, as you later found out. Your mind went blank for a moment as all the horrified expressions of each band member turned towards you.

Todd threw the amplifier aside with his powers, profusely apologizing to you. His hair settled back down to normal as he took you in his arms.

"Oh, god, am I an idiot." He said. "I didn't mean to… oh, man, you’re okay, right?"

You were on the verge of tears when you nodded your head. The adrenaline of the moment had taken over your pain as you wrapped your arms around his neck and squeezed him tight.

Envy most definitely cursed him out on your behalf. Lynette was still pissed as she stood off to the side, crossing her arms with a huff. She didn’t really know you, so she didn’t really care that you got hurt.

But Todd knew you, and he cared a whole hell of a lot about you. He was going to be making up to you for a while. You were going to get the apology of a lifetime and probably an entire chocolate cake with strawberries. You loved strawberries.

You did not care about your injury at that moment, though. The scene of Todd apologizing to you, Envy yelling derogatory words at him that were obviously unknown to him, and Lynette's head turning in the other direction was probably one of the best sights you had ever witnessed in your life.

“How’re you feeling?” Todd’s voice snapped you out of your memory. He was in the chair beside you with a hospital pillow on his lap. He had a bag of Doritos in his hand, which he was munching on.

You turned your head over to him and couldn't help but smile. It was a smile full of love and adoration, one that made Todd raise an eyebrow.

"I'm alright," you replied, reaching for the water that was by your bedside. You failed miserably, but Todd noticed it and hovered it over to your hands.

He took the opportunity to grab another chip and take a bite before looking back at you.

"You sure you're okay? I mean, you got hurt 'cause of me.”

"That's what I get for dating a badass, I guess." You laughed, shaking your head.

Todd scoffed, "That's not funny."

"It kinda is."

"Whatever." He crossed his arms and pouted a little bit. "I'll have to watch my back more now. I could have killed you."

“It’s okay. Envy would’ve reunited us if you had. She would’ve torn you a new one. I'd say you dodged a bullet there.”

As Todd munched on his Doritos, nodding along to your words, you knew there was nothing in his brain that connected what you’d just said. He was most definitely agreeing, just to agree.

And just because of that, you couldn't help but admire him. He was sitting there with his messy hair and those brown eyes of his. His clothes were wrinkled, and you could see the tiredness in his eyes, but none of it mattered to you because he was still so beautiful.

Todd being a vegan was also a blessing because it gave him such an amazing physique. He was lean but toned, his abs always visible even under his baggy shirts. Not that you cared if they were showing or not.

"Can I have a chip?” You asked him.

He turned towards you with a look of horror on his face. "You don’t like these. You like the non-vegan Doritos.”

“Aren’t they all… not vegan?”

Todd let out a sigh, his eyes rolling back.

"Not these. Spicy Sweet Chili. I got these from the vending machine. They're for me."

He sounded like a little child, which you couldn't help but laugh at. He always was so serious about these things, even though they were snacks that were meant to be shared with people.

"That's not what I asked." You said.

"Yeah, but-"

You made grabby hands at him. You were starting to feel that pain again as your muscles were getting tired. You needed those chips.

"Todd, please."

He let out a sigh, trying to hold back a smile. He was always such a big softie for you.

He handed over a bag of chips, and you wasted no time in taking one. Immediate regret as you took a bite out of the spicy snack, choking as you did so. You managed to swallow it down before taking in a drink of water to wash it all down.

"Told you that you wouldn't like them." He said with a grin.

"I… like them. I just don't like how I feel after I eat them."

"Mhmm.”

You glared at him, narrowing your eyes. "Stop being smug."

"I can't help it if I'm so cool." He winked.

He wasn't wrong, though. Todd had a very good self-esteem about himself and was never shy to tell you so. But it was the way he said it, that smug look of his and his stupid wink, that made you want to punch him and kiss him.

It was those little things.

"You know," you said as you crossed your arms, "this isn't how I planned on spending my Friday night."

"I know, babe. I know."

"I mean, I thought we were going to have some quality time. The two of us and the TV, I really wanted to catch up on that old Ed and Rose storyline.”

"I know, I know.”

"And instead, I'm here with and because of you." You glared at him as you finished your sentence.

He was ready for your attack, crossing his arms to match yours. You two were in the middle of a staring contest when Todd opened his mouth to say something, but the nurse came in at the worst possible moment to interrupt him.

"Ah, you're awake. How're you feeling?”

Unfortunately, this made Todd win the battle as you were forced to look at the nurse. She had a smile on her face, one that made you feel relaxed. Todd turned to look at her as well.

"I'm feeling better now." You said. "Thank you for asking."

The nurse nodded her head, writing down your words before turning to Todd with a smile. "Since your friend—”

“Girlfriend.” He corrected her, pointing a finger at you.

You couldn't help but laugh, turning your head to the side as you did so. Your laughter got the nurse to smile.

"I apologize. Since your girlfriend is doing better, you’re welcome to visit back in the morning. Visitation hours are from eight to twelve and one to three. After that, only family will be allowed in.”

Todd turned to look at you, and you could see that he wanted to say something, but with a simple nod from you, he leaned back in the chair with his arms crossed, giving the nurse his attention.

She gave him another smile as she looked back at you. "I’ll come back in about an hour for a checkup. Press the button if you need anything in the meantime."

"Thank you." You replied.

She left the room smiling, leaving the two of you to look at each other.

You let out a sigh as you leaned your head back on the bed, closing your eyes. Todd's eyes never left you, staring at you as you did so.

“Should've said we were married. I would've been able to stay the night here." He said.

"Yeah, but then I wouldn't be able to sleep because of your snoring. You know, that's why I get up so early in the mornings. I have no choice but to leave the bed when you're snoozing away."

Todd had the audacity to smile at that, shaking his head.

"Whatever, I don't snore. Besides, you love the way my arms feel around you."

You opened one eye, staring at him. "Are you trying to make me feel bad?"

"No. I'm just stating the facts. I have great arms if you hadn't noticed."

You scoffed at him and his bragging. You closed your eyes again.

"I hate you so much."

"I know." He said with a smirk on his face. “Can I have my chips back now? You ate almost all of them."

You handed the bag back to him without another word, sighing deeply. You could feel Todd's stare at you as he opened up the bag again.

You heard him take another chip into his mouth as he stared at you, but he was too quiet, so you knew he had something else to say.

"What?" You asked, already knowing the answer.

"You know that I meant it when I said sorry, right?"

"Of course I know, Todd. You always apologize."

He swallowed down his chips. "Yeah, but this time I really meant it. I was so scared when you got hurt. I didn’t mean to; I just got pissed at Lynette, and that all happened."

"Todd, it's okay. I know you didn't mean it. You would never hurt me."

"You're sure?" He asked.

You opened up your eyes again, looking at him. He was staring down at his lap as he said those words, biting his lip. You could tell that he was genuinely worried about this, so you reached over and made grabby hands again, but instead of the chips, you were looking for him.

Todd looked up at you and raised an eyebrow. He placed the bag of chips aside and got out of his chair, going over to the side of the bed to look at you. You placed both of your hands on either side of his neck, smiling at him.

"I'm positive. I know how much I mean to you, Todd. You don't need to worry. I'm not mad at you."

He was looking right into your eyes as you said that and nodded his head, moving closer toward you as he placed his hands on the side of the bed. You didn't want him to be too far away from you, so you wrapped your arms around his neck.

"I'm just glad you're okay. I didn't mean for this to happen. I swear."

"I know." You replied. "It's not your fault."

You stared at each other for a few more moments before he leaned down and kissed you. He placed both of his hands on either side of the bed as he deepened the kiss. He didn't do this often, but when he did, he knew exactly what he was doing.

He was also extremely careful now that you had broken your leg, making sure that he wasn't putting any pressure on your side. He placed one hand on your face to hold you in place as he kissed you while his other hand supported his body.

It felt like a few minutes had passed before he broke the kiss. He leaned down and rested his forehead against yours, closing his eyes.

"I love you." He whispered.

"I love you too."

It wasn't the first time he said it, and it definitely wasn't the first time you had said it to him, but it was the first time you heard those words without any fear in his voice. There was no worry, no hesitation, only love.

He opened his eyes, looking at you with a smile on his face. His brown eyes always captivated you, especially when he smiled.

You felt your own smile spread as you looked into those beautiful eyes of his, kissing him on the cheek before snuggling up to him.

You felt his hands wrap around your body and sighed contently. Eventually, he’d have to leave, but until then, you were going to enjoy this.

And if it came with spicy chips, then even better.

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enpr-ss · 2 months

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Hermitcraft charity stream 2022 Highlights:

- 25k goal being broken by the Australians even before the event started, and the jokes about ending the stream there and seeing them next year

- Getting Martyn to do the donation readouts is GENIUS. He makes it actually entertaining to listen to!

- Martyn listening to Ren the most lol

- The bell bringing back Techno money bell memories

- Basalt Assault being broken by too much boomification (as predicted by Bdubs)

- Doc falling into Dunk Tank in the final winner-take-all round

- All the goofy skins (especially Grian’s cursed skins) and IRL costumes (Pearl’s old man mask, and Tango’s millions of hats)

- Every time Etho is confused about his fanbase

- Grian finishing backwards because “it’s the only way he can see” with his built-in rear view mirror

- Pearl getting to keep her horse from Horse Course!

- “Coming in not least but last” - Bdubs

- Scar actually doing so well on all the games actually?! I didn’t realize he was second on Horse Course

- “MY BLADDER’S FULL OF URINE” - Bdubs

- “While we were on our pee-pee break for the weak bladder people” - Doc

- Etho’s elytra glitching, with Cleo and Grian hitting him around

- Racers stealing other boats. Tango and Cub winning the race by a mile through switching drivers at the bubblevator

- Jevin fell down the powdered snow section LOL!

- Iskall fixing the Hermit Incentives redstone by just moving the dispenser and the button

- The speed at which Doc’s diamonds DISAPPEARED and then all the subsequent mocking just as a 5k soon came through

- Ren: “Nothing will calm your nerves more than Grian’s gong”

Grian: screaming “LALALALALAAAAAL” as he smashes the gong repeatedly (twice)

- Bdubs being spleefed by Tango (VIA PREINSTALLED REDSTONE) into a hole and Doc not caring because he doesn’t have any diamonds. And then Etho punching Tango into the same hole.

- Grian: “I need everyone to take a really nice deep breath in through the nose-”

Everyone: *exaggerated gasps and choking noises*

Grian: “We’re doing that again because everyone FAILED at breathing”

Doc’s panicked breathing and getting TNT to blow everyone up

Scar: “Can I get another dong real quick?”

Grian: “With a g, yes you can.”

- Scar made Panda Resue (lol) in ONE NIGHT?!?! But with no pandas lol

- Doc on strike until he gets his diamonds back

- Bucket rush more entertaining than expected and Scar absolutely killing it

- Hermits interpreting the 350k goal as returning Doc’s diamonds (THEN GRIAN RESTEALING THEM AND SETTING 400K AS THE GOAL FOR THE RETURN LOL)

- All the lore that I’m getting it discover as a new fan!!!

- How the hermits are perfectly quiet whenever another is explaining game rules or when Martyn is reading out donos.

- Impulse being absolutely on the ball with all the drumrolls

- Etho and his pvp player head + item collection mechanics

- Scar absolutely bowspamming yellow team, and Red Team continuing to kill for the spawn mechanics lol. ALMOST WINNING BY 1 POINT!!!

- Martyn with the stellar Battle Bane commentary!

- Scar donating on behalf on those who cannot donate, and apparently this is a common thing with him??? Amazing.

- The carts will have hermitcraft plaques!!

- Glasgow family’s 1k dono: Donated in memory of Technoblade.

- All the smooth backend operations by fans and others! Nothing broken amazingly.

- Doc still asking about the diamonds and Martyn announcing that he had them in a plot twist and logging out

- Only 1 week of prep??!! Insane

- $425k raised!!!! Incredible!!!!!

- Bro when Ren and Tango said Joe’s beard had legos and pinballs in it THEY WERE NOT JOKING. Omg. I genuinely thought the mechanical part was like part of his microphone set up. A SIX DOLLAR HUNTING KNIFE?!???? FROM THE GROCERY OUTLET??? WITH BRASS KNUCKLES??? FOR PIZZA???? This is my first time watching a Joe stream. is he always like this. His transparent facecam overlay is also cool; I like it better than the usual corner ones. HE ACTUALLY WENT WITH THE CRAYOLA SCISSORS??? No mirror only OBS??? His concern with accidentally hurting himself is not being able to talk and violating TOS LOL. HES GOING TO FILTER OUT THE BLOOD SO THAT TWITCH DOESNT BAN HIM. He’s doing it in the worst way possible as a commitment to the bit. He’s so hostile to capitalism it’s great. All after an 8 hour driver from Chicago. MUMBO COSPLAY LOL

#hermitcraft charity #hermitcraft #gtws #grian #docm77 #joe hills #itlw #etho #rendog #pearlescentmoon #bdubs #tango #impulse #this has been sitting in my drafts for a while #better publish before someone mistakes it for the new charity stream like they did with decked out lol #enpr-ss

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inchidentally · 5 months

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https://www.tumblr.com/piastrisms/738775293993549824?source=share

I NEED YOUR ANALYSIS OF THIS VIDEO! PLEASE <3

okay listen this has spun me out into a whOLE thing so let's take another trip down a road I like to call Why is the Non-RPF Real Life Relationship between Oscar and Lando So Endearing and Boyish and Sweet:

so my absolute favorite thing about Lando's face when he's relaxed or in his natural element is how absolutely every. single. emotion. he's feeling is broadcast at equal volume. his vulnerability is a massive part of his charisma. but! he has to have the right habitat! streaming, Youtube, his lifelong friends - those are the right habitat.

F1 is not naturally the right habitat.

when Carlos found Lando on his proverbial driver's doorstep he did not know what to make of him and Lando was barely able to squeak out a few words around anyone new or when a camera was around. but! Carlos trained Lando into how to bounce a dynamic between the two of them just like he'd been doing with his last awkward baby, Max. interestingly Max was much more excitable and eager to please of the two and Lando's intense shyness took a LOT of work to get past. but once Carlos had gotten the drift of Lando's super silly sense of humor it was smooth sailing. and then with Daniel it was even easier because half the time Daniel knew he was expected to carry the conversation. it's interesting because Lando allowed a bit of that old shyness to come back and it definitely disarmed Daniel a bit in a satisfying way. but thanks to those big personalities, Lando found his F1 self and even started to deal back and lead occasionally. of course DTS and a lot of media pilloried him for this because apparently what Carlos and Daniel do naturally is seen as snottish and bratty for him to do. the Youtube/streamer personality where he felt so safe did not at all translate onto other platforms and media.

so it hasn't been smooth sailing for Little Lando Norris to know how to be as a person in F1.

cut to 2023 and with the advent of Oscar we've seen a slow dismantling of Lando's F1 PR personality completely in his content with Oscar over the season. their very first unboxeds Lando was still wearing his guarded PR face and assuming he should lead and carry all the content. it was still sort of around for the Jenga/Garden Games challenges but had started to soften around the Austin filming (including the Finish the Lyrics classics). at some point, Lando truly realized that Oscar would still be fond of him even when Lando was in a terrible, low blood sugar type mood (Tic Tac Toe etc) and oh wow!

their content could really just be Lando being whatever he was feeling that day/that moment and Oscar smiling and finding him funny/cute/fascinating! that was enough! he didn't even know that was allowed! (and maybe it wouldn't have been if Oscar wasn't there to bolster him)

and that's when we started getting unguarded, authentic Lando instead of entertaining Lando. and it's because Oscar was the person next to him representing all of us, trying to tell Lando that we just wanted to see him. we didn't care if he was 'on' or not. he's just an interesting outdoor cat we want to watch go about his life.

which is why we got Lando letting himself sit and stare right back at Oscar like this.

where we can see his expressions do that slow blossoming thing, and right in full view of just Oscar. it's the anti-DTS material because it isn't open to the camera and easy to manipulate. narrative television hates when two people go into quiet, subtle communication because it can't be made into a false dramatic arc. (trust me they'll invent one using chopped up footage and even more chopped up commentary lol they always do but it'll be uphill work)

but when you contrast this with the nonstop, quick back-and-forth Lando has with Carlos and Daniel it's where we pick up on the something that's so unique to Lando with Oscar. it's wrong and making way too big an assumption to say it's a closer friendship bc you can't quantify other people's friendships that way. but it's very, very different to those friendships. and the biggest difference that we on the outside can see is that Lando allows himself to determine exactly How He Will Be. and that might change from one minute to the next! and that doesn't always go down well with most people!

but every time, no matter what, Oscar smiles and laughs and everything Lando does is alright. he gets it. Lando means no harm and he's got a good, warm heart. if he likes you then that won't change just because his mood changes.

like their end of season message. Lando went from doing a great job summarizing his thoughts for the viewers, handed it over to Oscar and just... watched. didn't get bored and stare at the camera or off into space. I actually compiled just how often Lando spends staring openly at Oscar into one long gif lol:

he fully knows he's still on camera but he turns himself into a viewer instead of bouncing around and off of what Oscar is saying. Oscar gave him that, he can give it right back.

and there's no specific Lando-Oscar dynamic like there is Lando-Carlos and Lando-Daniel. hell, Lando's got a dynamic with just about anyone. except! Max F, Martin Garrix (and probably quite a few of his friendships that we're never actually even shown) and Oscar. with those people we see Lando be precisely whatever he's feeling at that moment because they'll either indulge it or enjoy it depending on how good or bad the mood is. if it's Lando, it's all good.

I feel like there's a commonality with those people of being quiet but strong as opposed to the big and bold of most of the F1 drivers on the grid. Max F absolutely has obvious similarities to Oscar (I still love how much he sided with Oscar when he watched the 'most likely to' video). I don't know a lot about Martin but it's literally a DJ's job to be enough apart from the crowd to read it and they set the energy passively through what they spin. Oscar is a fun guy who loves being around the people he cares about but he's never The Guy that it all turns around.

and for their own reasons, they find Lando inherently fascinating and lovable. whereas Lando has to inhabit Carlos', Daniel's, George's, etc etc worlds because they are in themselves The Guy Everyone's Watching just like Lando. Lando has to share. he has to figure it out. but guys like Max F and Oscar do not have the energy or interest in being The Guy. they'd choose privacy over popularity every single time if they were made to. and actually come to think of it, they have actively chosen privacy at the expense of popularity quite a few times.

because let's look at Oscar's face when Lando teasingly brings up Oscar's sprint win:

Oscar gives Lando that genuine, affectionate smile and ducks his head because he wants Lando to know that he appreciates it. in truth, that Sprint win was hailed by wider F1 community as being a massive achievement for a rookie in the Max V era of dominance. they both know that it is. but Oscar didn't posture or show off about it and for that Lando has made sure to bring it up on his behalf time and again. Oscar gave him that, Lando can give it back to him.

which is even sweeter going back to that post race video because Oscar gives Lando that same affectionate, private smile. he's had to throw the video's content over to Lando and Lando gave him that big affectionate smile first because this is how they do these videos. it's always awkward - especially if their results that day weren't great - but they know that together they can do these videos and share a laugh over how absurd it feels sometimes.

and the hint of a private joke between the two of them is there early on and you can just feel Lando relax into it.

and when you skip all the way to their last race media duties and this interview, it truly surprised me how much Lando kept checking in with Oscar - the rookie! -as he was answering. when he found himself giving boring PR answers he threw in a joke that he knew Oscar would crease up over. sure enough it loosened them both up.

and like, that's where the vulnerability and openness comes from now with Lando. he's got a teammate who is basically the same age, who gets him and who actively wants Lando to just be Lando. who clearly threw Lando at first by inadvertently foiling those attempts to establish a dynamic or a bromance. who Lando probably at first thought was just shy and awkward. but Oscar stayed true to who he is and kept that door open for Lando to eventually walk through.

so when it's the two of them, it's everyone else who's on the outside looking in. they're just being themselves. if that doesn't make everyone else feel entertained or happy they honestly don't care - and will probably share a secretive little smile about it.

it's also why they sometimes do that twinning thing and creep everyone out asfgjlaflsgjf

#inchreplies #landoscar #I may have outdone myself this time lol #might actually test the patience of some folks #inch gets weird #mine #inchidentallyanessay

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quincywillows · 4 months

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a scattered and overall supportive review of percy jackson season 1

let me just say first of all, it's extremely fun to be enthused about a tv show like this again. the adaptation isn't perfect, but it's a lot of fun, and you can tell there's plenty of heart and good intention behind what they're doing. i'm very much enjoying tuning in every couple of episodes and catching up -- and avoiding the relentless commentary of the internet while i do so lol.

but now it's time for MY commentary!! to preface, i was a huge fan of the books when i was younger, am a stalwart long-term advocate of the original five books as some of the best children's lit of our lifetime, but i also enjoyed the films a decade ago for what they were and think people (including cough rick cough) are way too harsh about them. justice for logan lerman. anyway

i'm not going to do like a play-by-play, but in summary, here are my takeaways from the first season -- what i thought worked, what did not, and things i'm optimistic about going into the future seasons.

the good

for an adaptation of the original series (which, to be fair, i have not reread in years), i felt this was honest and faithful. there were tweaks, obviously, but none that took me too out of it or felt irredeemable. there was a lot to like about this show, so i want to start right from the top with my highest highs.

the worldbuilding / production design. i absolutely loved getting to see how they imagined certain iconic characters, locations, and sequences from the books. it was so exciting to get to see camp halfblood for the first time on screen (at least, in this adaption) -- that moment in episode two definitely felt like a turning point where we picked up from the somewhat laggy pilot episode. i especially loved the design of mount olympus, aspects of the underworld (hades and his upside down castle were baller, though how did percy and grover get up there lol; and i absolutely loved the choice for asphodel and the ghosts being rooted like trees, i never would've thought of that myself but it was so chilling and unique... just wish i could see it better through the terrible lighting, but we'll come back to that), and of course, camp. even down to the small details, like the camp beads... it's just very cool to see it come to life.

the casting. i wasn't sure about some of the casting when the news was breaking, but i'm very happy to have been pleasantly surprised all around (and have majorly avoided people bitching about every single thing). there wasn't any role where i felt like someone was horribly miscast, and you could tell that everyone involved really wanted to be there and committed. i thought the casting of the gods was especially inspired at times. some of the highlights for me personally:

adam copeland as ares. i had no idea he was apparently a wrestler turned actor until my sister told me, but i thought he was absolutely spectacular. very charismatic, with just the right amount of cringefail that ares needed. i found him thoroughly enjoyable in all his scenes.

lance reddick as zeus. having just played horizon zero dawn recently, oh my lorde was this an inspired choice. he was absolutely brilliant. i'm so so sad about his passing, i don't know how they're going to recapture his performance, but i have faith now that they'll find a way.

timothy omundson as hephaestus. i love that they took a softer, more mad scientist approach to his role than like ugly basement blacksmith vibes... i just thought it was really refreshing. his scene with annabeth, where we got so much humanity from him in such a short span of time, was one of my favorite scenes of the season.

jason mantzoukas as dionysus. i mean. what else can be said. obvious choice, but he was so fun lol. i hope they give him more to do next season.

other standouts beyond the main youth cast for me were jay duplass as hades (his brief appearance in 107 was thoroughly enjoyable) and dior goodjohn as clarisse (she was by far the acting standout of the first couple episodes to me). also very happy to see jessica kennedy parker and sinclair from the 100 get work, lol.

walker as percy jackson. it was really wonderful watching walker grow as an actor even just through the first eight episodes. the difference from 101 to 108 is almost night and day. you can tell how much he cares about the project and percy as a character, and he upped his game with every episode. i cannot wait to see what he turns out in the coming seasons. to be fair, i thought all of the youth cast did a decent job, and i'm giving them a lot of leeway and room to grow since they are literally child actors -- it takes time to hone your craft, and im optimistic they're all going to do a great job as the series goes on. but walker was, definitively and thankfully as the protagonist, the standout.

charlie bushnell as luke. i was so excited when i heard he got cast because i loved him in diary of a future president, and he did not disappoint. i kind of wish he had more to do, but all of that was forgiven in the finale when he had his final confrontation with percy. oh, the acting popped off then -- i can't wait for him to get to chew up the scenery more in the coming seasons.

grover and percy's friendship. it was so sweet to see this come alive, and i thought walker and aryan had excellent natural chemistry together. they were so endearing, and i really believed their friendship basically from the start (them swapping their sandwich fillings is a tiny detail from the pilot that has stuck with me since; i just loved that choice so much). they definitely provided a lot of my favorite moments in the season, and i think evoked the most genuine "aw wow" moments from me.

percy's relationship with sally. since sally was, understandably, absent from the original novel, it was awesome to get the flashbacks here that allowed us to more deeply understand their bond. i thought walker and virginia did a great job with this, and the young actor who played little percy also did a surprisingly great job (he was actually one of the stronger youth actors in the pilot imo lol). you totally understood why percy was doing everything he was, because that mother-son bond felt believable. big shout-out to the absolutely baller line "i am sally jackson's son." one of the first writing moments where i was like oh snap!

the music. a good score really can't be understated, and this one did not disappoint. did just what it needed to do. i also loved the closing title sequence and the art direction there with the epic music -- just such a nice touch that i'm so glad they included.

some of the writing. i'll get more into some of my qualms with the writing below, but there were definitely some great moments that deserve their flowers. i thought they did a great job weaving in some early themes without being heavy-handed about it (percy having to define who he is for himself, mostly). there were some genuinely funny moments that made me laugh out loud, including "i am impertinent," annabeth's "i'm multitalented," and the entire exchange on the road side when the trio to ares are like no... we're fine... ahaha bye... oh and percy trying to drive the taxi out of the garage at the casino was absolutely hysterical.

pivotal scenes hitting their mark. when the show needed to deliver, i thought they really delivered. i absolutely loved the staging and acting in the final luke and percy confrontation -- the lighting of the fireworks was such a cinematic touch. percy's arrival at olympus and scene with zeus was also a big standout. i loved a lot of the st. louis arch episode, and thought the hephaestus golden chair sequence was really well done. overall, the episodes i thought were strongest were without a doubt 104, 105, and 108.

expansion where expansion was welcome. one of my favorite aspects of the series is how it's giving more nuance to the monsters and "villains" of the books. i loved that we got a little more motivation for alecto beyond evil -- that she clearly wanted to accomplish her own mission and retrieve the helm, whether out of loyalty or fear. i loved how medusa got much more depth and humanity, that we're sort of reexamining the fairness of how myths are told rather than just taking it all at face value. i'm really looking forward to seeing how that continues in the next seasons.

the decent

percy and annabeth. to be fair, i think my issue with this is more on the fan reaction than the show itself. i think the show is doing a decent, if somewhat awkwardly paced job, of building their friendship and offering small little hints of what could blossom in the future in classic youth awkward ways -- unexpected hugs, banter, etc. i think walker and leah are both doing a good job, and i look forward to seeing how it develops. but my god, people on the internet are really jumping the shark so hard here. i can't handle seeing more "uwu percy is in love" posts when it's like. y'all. THEY ARE 12. THEY JUST MET. LET THEM ORGANICALLY BECOME FRIENDS FIRST... i just hope the creators don't feed into that and also jump the shark. like yes, we all know where this is going, but can't we enjoy the actual journey to get there instead of forcing what isn't there yet? in any case, on the positive side, some of the moments between them i really enjoyed: the conversation on the train when grover was asleep, the hephaestus chair sequence, annabeth giving him her camp beads before going to olympus (that was a slay... that was a legendary slow burn start moment worth hyping up), the way percy smiled at her in their last scene... that's the good stuff. let's not rush through what we're getting folks. the water is fine.

lin manuel as hermes. here is the thing. i thought lin did a good job. i thought his casting was apt, and fun, and he did a great balance of hermes charisma and like, a darker edge. it's just... the thing about lin manuel is that he's lin manuel. and this is coming from someone who likes him, but it's like he shows up on screen and i'm just like. hey it's lin manuel. it's a bit of a "takes you out of the moment" stunt casting, but i'm not mad about it. i wouldn't call it a bad thing. hopefully it'll wear off (though i doubt it). i guess i'm just deciding that hermes is just lin manuel, which honestly, would kind of track.

the youth acting. mentioned this above, but again, some of that early delivery was rough. but i am giving a lot of grace, and i think they've already improved plenty in the first eight episodes. i felt the same way about shadowhunters back in the day when i thought kat mcnmara was hard to watch in season 1, but by season 3 she was my absolute favorite cast member and came so far. i have no doubt these kiddos will do the same. so very much looking forward to that.

the not so great

the pacing. this was definitely the weakest part of the story writing wise. it wasn't irredeemable, but it did hinder the first half of the show (which didn't lock in for me until about 104, when the stakes truly shot up at st. louis). and that also affected how dynamics and plot points were able to unravel. the biggest victim of this...

the luke reveal. from the start, i was worried about this. since luke was only really in episode 2, i had doubts about whether the reveal of his betrayal would be at all satisfying or earned. i don't know that i can speak on it for sure, since i knew what was going to happen as someone who read the books, but i still feel we should have gotten more of those luke-and-percy-bonding scenes and convos earlier in the series rather than tacked onto the finale as flashbacks. it worked there, but i think it could've been better. thankfully, all of that didn't hinder the delivery of the finale confrontation, which as i said, was a standout moment for me.

the fight scenes. with rare exception, i was pretty underwhelmed with many of the monster battles and confrontations this season. given that's such a huge gimmick of the novels, i hope they're able to revisit and polish up the pacing of these in the future... i just felt that scenes like the museum clash with dodds were so rushed and anticlimactic. or not even confrontations at all, like the scene with crusty. we got a bit more of this at the back half of the season, in the sword fights with ares and luke, but i wanted more of that epic feeling throughout. i'm hoping it's maybe just a budget concern and that it'll improve in the coming seasons -- especially as the bosses get bigger and the stakes get higher -- but i'm not sure i'm optimistic just yet.

some of the dialogue. it was... wooden, to say the least. i think the worst moments of this were when they were trying to force Kid Bants -- which just felt stilted in the earlier episodes -- and whenever they were explaining greek myths point blank to the audience. there were moments it worked, but many where it didn't, and i hope they flesh out how to better info dump in the future episodes. i didn't mind the change of having percy be more familiar with the myths and thus more aware, but they could afford to finesse how they relay that information to us in the audience without basically reading from wikipedia in percy's voice.

the ugly

oh my god i can't see. i can't SEE. this show went to the teen wolf academy of employing one lightbulb and it's actually criminal. there were so many scenes where i really wanted to see what was happening because the stakes were high or the scenery was so pivotal -- the entry into the underworld for the first time, the vastness of medusa's basement of stone, THE FIELDS OF ASPHODEL -- but the lighting was so god awful i legitimately couldn't see a thing. in asphodel i literally could barely see the trio's expressions, it was that bad / flat. the audience is smart, we understand it's dark out. we can suspend our disbelief so you can add some visibility to this thing. i was turning up my brightness constantly but it wouldn't go any higher. please, disney execs, rick, anyone -- GET ANOTHER LIGHTBULB. i'm losing key immersive aspects of the show to this and it's a bummer. when they were walking through waterland for the first time and annabeth was like "wow can you believe this craftsmanship" i was like i don't know, girl, I CAN'T SEE ANY OF IT. begging on my knees that they fix this next season.

well, that ended up longer than expected, but oh my gods it is so nice to be writing paragraphs about a tv show again. all in all, i'd say 7.5/10 from me in this first season. there's so much to be keen for here, and i'm really happy with how it's going so far.

friends and fellow demigods, what did we all think?

#percy jackson #pjo tv #pjo tv show #pjo series #pjo #idk what y'all are tagging with lol #maggie watches tv #maggie.txt

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bella-rose29 · 3 months

Text

episode 1 commentary - This Will Be Us

Lockwood and Co on Netflix

spoilers obviously (for both the books and the show), and I'm gonna put swearing even though I haven't written anything yet, I was apparently very in love with all three of them and also I was very feral about lockwood too (that's definitely a warning)

edit: definitely swearing, and also there's no context for most of this so if you don't know the show that well then good luck (and go watch it, it's really good!)

omg I just realised that the first episode starts with a ghost lamp and the last episode starts with a ghost lamp

cameron's voice omg

cameron's hands omg

I need to calm down it's like 30 seconds in

I love that before they show their faces they show all the equipment it really sets the vibe omg

"Greek fire, which should only ever be used indoors under carefully controlled circumstances" lol

don't think of another four, Lockwood, you don't remember the ones 6 you have

lockwood straightening up his tie and sniffing is so funny to me and idk why

I love that they use the shadow inside mrs hope's house!!!

"problem" being emphasised omg (I'm almost certainly reading into everything too much)

Cameron Chapman you beautiful beautiful boy

omg I just realised they switched lockwood and lucy's lines around??? in the books lockwood's the one who calls adults useless and I think that sets up his charm in the show so much better but also sets up their personalities much better? like lockwood is the charming smiley one that everyone loves, and Lucy is prone to being a bit of a menace

the way lockwood looks around at her after she says adults are useless 💀

mrs hope is so much posher than I remember her being

love that she just ignores lockwood and only talks to lucy

omg they swapped again, in the book lockwood is the one who says 'the cleverer one' after Lucy asks 'sarcastic or ironic?' - don't get me wrong I love this show so much but I feel like it takes away some of lockwood's childish-ness (idk if that's a word)? like in the books he's quite often just a silly little boy making jokes

his hands

I love that they have loads of green lighting

oh lockwood you silly little man you absolutely need chains

eat that biscuit luce (now I want a biscuit)

wooo ghost

yeah no shit lockwood

"been too busy trying to make contact with the living" mood

"of course she is, she's dead" lockwood my man 💀

how the hell did Lucy manage to hold on to that painting I would have just fallen off and died

omgomgomg starting credits omgomgomg

ew mrs carlyle can go suck a dick

Lucy looks like she'd much rather be anywhere else in the world

ugh don't say that "gonna give me a smile, young lady?" fuck off

omg Lucy :(

I love that they show us the defences omg

Lucy and norrie omg

"the more proficient you become, the longer you'll live" how come that doesn't happen with lockwood then bc he's very proficient with a rapier but he has such a death wish

oh luce

"we'll be on the cover of every magazine" crazy how in the space of less than a year Lucy changes from being like lockwood and wanting to be "the most famous agents in the country" to not wanting her face on tv or on any papers at all

Marissa fittes? coming back? from the dead? whaaat that would never happen norrie don't be sillyyyy

THIS WILL BE US omg I never realised I always thought it was like 'oh, this'll be us' like George or lockwood saying that to Lucy when she first comes to Portland Row bc that's what people say when they're being walked back or something idk I just never realised it was Lucy and norrie???

is anything more lesbian than giving your solemn and binding promise to each other and then threading your fingers through her hair?

everything points to a type one bro shut the fuck up

"she changed everything" Marissa sure did

"closer to her than you'll ever be. closer to history" oh my dear Jacobs, you have no idea what lucy's gonna do

Paul you are so right you would love to meet George (kinda sad they didn't meet tbh)

Jacobs you prick

ngl that ghost sounds terrifying wtf

Paul don't be silly

don't be silly paul

idiots

Jacobs you prick

JACOBS YOU PRICK

what did Lucy trip over?

:(((( Paul :((((

no way that bastard didn't hear her screaming

JACOBS YOU PRICK

YOU DID HEAR CRIES FOR HELP YOU PRICKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

can you tell I'm mad I was so angrily smashing that k key

norrie :(((((((

SHE DIDNT CAUSE THEIR DEATHS OMG YOU BITCH

omg parallel!! bc lockwood thinks he caused his family's death (especially jess') even though he didn't and Lucy didn't cause their deaths but she doesn't blame herself

"you are deader than dead" ooooo burn

where tf did she get that sellotape from

omg fittes building

is there anything more British than a really long queue

poor babygirl is hungry :(((

paused to read the paper cutting of lockwood and co's ad and I can just imagine lockwood telling George what to put omg "prestigious Psychical Investigations agency", "well dressed", "UNSUCCESSFUL APPLICANTS will include time-wasters, fraudsters and persons with criminal records" love the range there

also the address is literally just 35 Portland Row, London, like is there only one 35 Portland Row in the entirety of London??? apparently so

AAA PORTLAND ROW

AAA GEORGE

he looks and sounds so dead inside

omg it's so homely

she's a wimp

George wtf "see, told you so, okie-dokie"

heart eyes immediately lol (honestly same I love them both - the joys of being bi ig)

"hello, I'm Anthony Lockwood" hello, I'm your future wife

make the tea and drink the extra cup, George, that's what I would do

I love that he doesn't pressure her for the story!!! because he knows what that's like!!!

Anthony Lockwood chooses bourbons everyone

Skully!!!

George picking up his comic is so passive aggressive

are all of his family dead wtf?

he's so excited to talk about Harold beck

George is interested now ooo creepy cup

I love that Lucy and George immediately don't like each other

omg George's laugh

jokes on you lockwood's parents are dead (bad joke)

"deep armchair" I'm sure it is, Georgie.

"miss carlyle" bro

you can definitely give me a tour of the house anytime (especially your room)

"teen prodigy slays the competition" fuck yeah he slays

if you pause the episode and squint really hard you can read the article on the fencing matches he did and they actually wrote an article - my favourite quote (from what I could make out) is "Kipps attempted a few bold lunges but missed Lockwood each time"

also he looks so happy in the photo omg so baby

his hands

HIS HANDS omg I think I'm going feral for them

his smile ughhhhh

lockwood you're talking very fast I can't keep up

the face he makes when he turns the smoke jets on his fucking hilarious

literally this one:

also the way he stands??? I think I'm in too deep oh dear

"high security storeroom" sure honey tell yourself that

HIS SMILE

if lockwood was my landlord I don't think I'd have quite so much stress about finding a place to rent next year

HIS. SMILE.

"you saw those" yeah of course she did, they're in plain view bestie

"that's... if you'll take the job?" bro's so in love and he doesn't even know it yet (I need to stop using bro unironically bc it's making me sad)

HIS. SMILE.

can you tell I love his smile

George just spawning out of nowhere with no trousers on

if I didn't already know that Georgie really needs a wee I'd be able to tell from how he answered her questions before she'd even finished talking

AAAAAAA A A A AAAAAAAAAA

your honour I love him

ok but the apple core being left on a chair is such a boy thing my brother does that

bitch why do you wanna see his picture you've got the real thing right in front of you

ok but if he talked to me the way he talks to Lucy in the library I would simply pass away

"I want you to be part of it" OKAY SIR. OKAY.

"how do I know you're good enough for me?" cuts to him saving her life

he did not need to do that fancy kick off the wall but he did it anyway

okay but they hold each other so much it's ridiculous

why can't someone hold me like that

"ghosts don't have feelings" 🥺

"oops" lockwood I love you but you can't just break the circle

"you've done that already, try something new why don't you" 😭

oh no

fire

boy desperately calls out for his wife when she stares at a dead body instead of jumping from a burning building

#belle's episode commentaries #lockwood and co #lockwood & co #anthony lockwood #lucy carlyle #george karim/george cubbins #quill kipps #montague barnes

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mirzamsaiph · 2 months

Note

IT’S ME, I’M ALIVE, UR GIRL IS BACK FR FR.

Okay, calming down now. Hi, how are you doing? I hope you’ve been good. I AM SO SORRY I haven’t commented on your new chapter releases, I’ve been having a rough time, year 12 is hard man, and I still have like two more terms of school after this one, and then university. I promise you I have read every chapter you’ve dropped, even if I haven’t commented. I’ve been lamenting for days on whether or not to send you an ask bcs like, ur my fav and ya know, it’s only fair I do bcs I follow you anyway lol but I also have no idea what to say, ur making me shy, damn. I’ve just been lurking in your Tumblr feed, liking all ur posts like a gremlin bcs sending an ask is too scary, (forgive me, for I am a coward). How long has it been since I last commented, I don’t even know 🙁.

I’m writing this as a draft in Google Docs in the middle of my maths double, who writes a draft for an ask? Me, I write drafts for asks apparently, yikes man. The maths part doesn't matter, I do not care for it.

I still love every single one of your chapters, ESPECIALLY THE READING THE BOOK ONES!! LIKE HELLO?!?!? POSEIDON FOR BEST FATHER!?!?! Sobbing, screaming, crying after reading that, I love the sea fam. Percy is so bbg too, like hold him in my hands and give him lil forehead kisses kinda bbg, so precious. AND just the campers, they're so cute, I love when Camp Half-Blood actually comes across as a family, or like an actual camp, the singing around the camp-fire is so wholesome, and Will being Percy's hype-man, like c'mon man, they're just best buddies, I love that for them.

It is deeply important to me that you understand just how much I love your fics, and just like ur content in general. When I get bored I always check my emails for updates or I go on ur Tumblr and just scroll, like I love u pookie, fr.

I’m just gonna send this as is, I’m psyching myself out over this hahah. I’ll try and get around to commenting on chapters again, especially one’s I’ve missed, and if I have time I might just start sending them via Tumblr. I need like somewhere to list everything I wanna talk abt in the comments.

Anyway, bye bye, see u soon.

Fun fact, in however long I’ve had Tumblr, this is my first ask :3

PS: I just realised I never put my name lol, it’s Smoll_Satan. This is my Tumblr account 👍.

OH MY GOD HELLO??? WELCOME BACK GIRL??? YOU HAVE BEEN MISSED TRUST 🤞🏻

I’m doing great, school is kicking my butt :( trying not fail this semester as the moment. Year 12 (which I’m taking a wild guess and saying that is junior year, in American terms) is known as the hardest and most stressful year, so no judgement here girlie!

Don’t fear girl! I’m not scary at all, I’m like the literal least intimidating person on the planet. I’m just a girl I promise. I saw you go through and like my posts and I was giggling everytime I got a notification bc that was really nice 😭

Writing in your docs is so real because I have done the EXACT same thing so many times, mostly bc I fear tumblr is gonna bug out on me ;( Also I hate math too, it irks my soul.

THANK YOU. POSEIDON IS GETTING HIS REDEMPTION ARK. TRUST ME. I was screaming writing that, i was just so surprised that I wrote that because I lovedddd it.

Will and Percy are best bro’s but Percy is ready to threaten him when he and Nico get together. Trust Percy is a protective older brother… (the singing was so sweet :(()

GIRL I LOVE YOU OH M GEE YOU’RE SO SWEET. I love seeing your comments, whilst you look for my chapters I go looking in my comments for your comment.

Don’t psych yourself out when it comes to Tumblr asks! I love them, like I find it so amazing. If you do comment trust I’ll be replying to each one, they are the source of my amusement for each chapter. (literally have cackled reading your commentary)

BYE! 🫶🏻🫶🏻

#girl your amazing #it’s the best part of posting my chapters is seeing long commenters like you #percy jackson #fanfiction #mir answers

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tired-reader-writer · 4 months

Text

Arslan Senki Chapter 125

So I meant to do this last night but apparently I had accidentally hit the daily tumblr post limit, and was stuck unable to post or reblog anything up until now! I AM FREE, MUAHAHAHAHA.

I will be cannibalizing the discussion @innerchorus and I had in our DMs since all of that was what I meant to put in the post all along, though I'm running a bit low on energy so I won't be weaving screencaps into the post.

One of the first things that stuck out to me was how humble the residence of Arslan's birth parents was, when I read spoilers and it said “knight”, I had assumed something... a little larger than that. Nothing grand, not a mansion or anything, they weren't prominent knights, but... not this. I wonder what the social standing of “knights” in general are? Zaravant also described himself as a knight, iirc. Though it's likely that knight in this case was used to refer to a warrior in general than a specific caste/rank? Maybe cavalry officers of any rank were deemed knights?

I apologize for jumping backwards but oh, oh man I want to hug Arslan so bad. His face! The way Arakawa took the time and panel space to really show how he tried to hold his reaction back. He's trying to be composed and he succeeds. Even something of this caliber (even if he did suspect it all along) didn't make him lash out. He has incredible self-control, or maybe he's just too used to setting his own feelings and reaction aside. I don't think he's repressing it here though, rather he's facing it head-on.

(I wonder how Andragoras even managed to find Arslan, and that swiftly, too.)

Turns out the marzban thing was a translation error, which is good because I was raising my eyebrow skeptically at that panel when I first read it.

Man something about the memory and deaths of a family who were basically exploited just vanish away, paved over and buried. There's just something so relevant to my interests and the themes of Wolfpack about this all. The clan is all about remembering and protecting those the world would've deliberately chosen to forget, after all.

Also, Arslan's father wasn't prepared to raise his own child? Boo. Wolfpack!Shapur was twice the single father by age 22, LOL. (I jest, it would've been harder for him than it would've Shapur, considering the financial situation and the fact that he doesn't have people he can leave the baby to when out at battle or something. It's natural for him to be worried. I'm sure he saw this as the best path possible, and hey, his son will be a prince! Surely a better life than he could ever lead as the son of an insignificant knight.

Arslan considering the notion of Andragoras possibly planning to sire another male heir... I don't have any intelligent commentary to give on the matter but I found it interesting. Perhaps another king in Andragoras' shoes might've done it. Gotarzes certainly did.

Tahamenay sure did go through a lot, and the dehumanizing lenses everybody saw her through meant that she was villified and demonized for just trying to survive (or just existing, period! the things that happened to the shitty men in her life was NOT her fault) She's not my fave, no, but I do feel for her. Like, her homeland got annexed! As someone from a country that got occupied by both Britain AND Japan and suffered under them, that really resonates with me. And while Pars fights for its freedom (and it should, I'm not arguing otherwise), Badakhshan???? Still under occupation for more than sixteen years, if I'm correct. There's just something heartbreaking about it.

Arslan confirming that his wet nurse and her husband being purposefully murdered to tidy up loose ends! And he's rightfully angry at the answer— we don't see his face in full, his eyes are shadowed when he asks the question, he clenches his hands when he hears the answer, and grits his teeth too. I may be reading too much into this but the agony on Tahamenay's face being replaced by cold distance when she said “They were. To avoid any complications later.”, the almost clinical way she delivered it, it's such a stark contrast from her emotion mere moments before. Maybe, just maybe, the delivery of the truth on top of the truth itself was what set Arslan off (though of course, he still does not act on it). Maybe there's something to be said about the disregard of “insignificant” lives.

I think Tahamenay has shut her feelings down, and her daughter is the only thing she'll let herself feel anything over. The sheer trauma and the constant bombardment of such vitriol from all angles meant that completely shutting down all emotion was... probably the only way to cope. Conceal it, don't feel it.

The thing is, though, even if he were to “Arslan: exit stage left” out of this conflict, where would he go? I'm sure he'd have little problem finding happiness in a humble life, he's never been one to care about stuff like birthrights and status, but where would he go???? The people he loved before his life as a prince are gone. Wet nurse and husband, dead. Everyone else? The kids he played with? Probably don't even remember him anymore due to the distance (I assume they didn't know he was the prince). Would he even be able to recognize them anymore? And would Team Arslan follow him into exile? There is technically an out, yes, but it's not a meaningful one. Just like how Hilmes is trapped in his own identity, Arslan also is, though Hilmes chose to build his own cage and Arslan was unknowingly put into it. And there's something to be said about how both their claims/identities were laundered. Hilmes is not the son and heir of Osroes. Arslan does not possess royal blood.

@innerchorus pointed out that Tahamenay was offering Arslan what she would have chosen herself (and this lines up with novel canon where she retreats to her homeland and distances herself from court), and it makes sense, this was a game she never asked to play. Still, it's just really sad that Arslan can never truly go back to who he was before all this.

I also loved the way his dialogue was paired with the internal monologue in black panels, even if I can't quite put my finger on why. That part was brilliantly done. (Maybe the way the “camera” comes closer and closer to his face as he proceeds?)

And the way that Tahamenay was prepared to receive angry words and even physical violence as a matter of course, it either speaks to her own guilt about the situation, OR the way she was treated so shittily by all the men and people in her life. Or maybe it is both. A brilliant moment of characterization, where she is shaped by her experiences and is in turn, blinded by them. Arslan is not that kind of person. He bows to her, and then leaves.

I have nothing to say about Kishward's worried face, but Arslan declaring his will is such a powerful moment. I'm reminded of a very early Narsus moment that's very relevant, I went and dug this out from my reread tag:

Here's what I had to say about it back then:

“What Narsus basically means here is: State a concrete vision, a cause, a goal, and people will naturally gather round to support it— to garner allies, you must basically broadcast what it is that you wish to achieve.”

And Arslan here is doing just that. Fantastic.

I know I said no screencaps in this post but I couldn't help it! It's such a powerful moment.

Arslan has really grown into his role and he's embodying the counsel Narsus gave him all those chapters ago!

And Hilmes, I see, is having a not-so-spectacular time.

The way Osroes spoke of Hilmes makes my skin crawl. He doesn't even deign to refer to the boy as “he”, and “send the thing to meet its true father” is just. YIKES. It's not the child's fault he was born into shitty circumstances, Osroes! How could he have raised Hilmes all those years (eleven!) with no outward sign of contempt, and just. Never develop any sort of attachment to him? No hesitation? Maybe it's the fever that's making it worse but I don't believe it was all delirium which just makes it worse. I hate Osroes.

Andragoras really did it as revenge, which seals the deal that he is, in fact, speaking the truth. It's just like him, and loathe as Hilmes is to admit it, he does realize that. This boy too deserves hugs. SOMEBODY COME HUG YOUR PRINCE.

And even still, even as his world is crumbling around him with no preamble, he still has enough headspace to process and start piecing the pieces together. Hilmes has POTENTIAL, he's a good commander and this right here shows his intelligence and relative ability to keep it straight in stressful conditions (relative, because of his whole consumed by revenge thing). If only he wasn't led astray perhaps, he could've made a good Shah. He unfortunately harbors some very typical biases about social class or whatever, but perhaps it could've been given a chance to change. But as things are now, his chance of being a Shah at all is...

Another Arslan-Hilmes parallel: they're both refusing to back down even as their lack of claim is revealed, and though the refusal stems from very different emotional roots there's a commonality in that they keep at it because if they stop now then what did all those people fight for? Though, Arslan's motive is selfless (he's doing it because it's his duty to the people who gave so much for him) while Hilmes' is selfish (it's tied to his sense of self-worth).

And Hilmes putting things together (so close, so close!) signifying his refusal to give up, that's what spurs Andragoras into action.

Man, what a fucking chapter, amirite?

Now with all that out of the way—

ITTY BITTY BABY BABY BABYYYYY HE'S BARELY LARGER THAN A COIN POUCH (and if we remove the swaddling cloth he might actually be smaller oh godddd) like I would've made infant Areyan tiny anyways but ohhhh god I'm about to cry. He's so huggable. I WILL SOB.

#arslan senki #the heroic legend of arslan #heroic legend of arslan #arslan senki spoilers #lil tufts of hair! so adorable #those cheeeeeks #arslan #tahamenay #andragoras #hilmes

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burberrycanary · 1 day

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Hi there! I am about midway through reading your story Lost Vocabularies and it is amazing!! The whole series has been so lovely, I’m obsessed with the way you write! The way that you convey the boys complicated emotions and capture all the little nuances of their dynamic has me feral!! Beyond even them the way you inject so much personality into the locations is so good, I feel like I am there!! So thank you for writing this lovely story 💕 I was wondering if you happen to have a list of all the books that Bucky and Steve read? I have been looking up a lot of them and adding them to my to read list bc they sound so interesting lol! On that same note, how did you decide what books to mention? Are they all ones that you have read or did you do research to find ones you thought they would like?

I’ve been coming back and rereading this kind and wonderful comment in my inbox over the last few weeks when way too many massive, stressful, time-sensitive things were all happening at once. 💕 But since I have a little breather between crazy periods, I get to dive in here as a treat.

Lost Vocabularies involved a lot of research, which I hope isn’t apparent because I didn’t want there to be any noticeable difference between the parts of the story that are based on places I’d been, foods I’d tried and books I’d read personally—and what was created purely based on research. Fingers crossed that the seams don't show!

In this series, we see both Steve and Bucky use art to process—helping them understand themselves and connect to the world again. Bucky is drawn to stories while Steve as an artist is much more visual, but the underlying impulse is similar. In the same way that you learn a lot by glancing through someone’s bookshelves, what characters read is interesting to me, and revealing. This version of Bucky is a very private person so these books offer a glimpse into his inner life. And as the POV character we get to experience all these things alongside Steve.

I’m not much of a sci-fi or fantasy reader so some of Bucky’s picks were a real challenge for me. But I wanted these to be grounded in the characters and the storytelling functions, not based on my own taste and opinions, though of course those always bleed through.

Steve’s Reading List

The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

Alice Neel: People Come First by Kelly Baum and Randall Griffey

The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories by H. P. Lovecraft

The Beautiful Mysterious: The Extraordinary Gaze of William Eggleston, edited by Ann J. Abadie

One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965 by Jia Lynn Yang

Bucky’s Reading List

The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories by H. P. Lovecraft

A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick

QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard Feynman

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

Six Not-So-Easy Pieces: Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time by Richard Feynman

Nonlinear Dynamics And Chaos by Steven H. Strogatz

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

I’ve included some notes and commentary on why I picked each of these works under the cut.

The Same River, Twice (The Man Is Still Left with His Hands)

The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

Classic post-WWII dystopian sci-fi that focuses on society collapsing after a series of catastrophes that were unintentional but very much caused by people, which leads to a lot of the population becoming blind. Thematically this work engages with the loss of identity that people, both abled and disabled, face in the process of survival and a dark look at what happens after societies break down. How this applies to Bucky is obvious, but part of the argument of this post-Endgame series is that it applies to Steve, too.

Also, there are huge mobile carnivorous plants.

Fun fact: the opening of this novel is said to have been the inspiration for 28 Days Later!

Still Left with the River (The Paradox of Motion)

Alice Neel: People Come First by Kelly Baum and Randall Griffey

Alice Neel’s portraits are extraordinary, almost unnervingly vivid. In this story, Steve is familiar with her work as a fellow New York-based artist active in communist circles in the 1930s. She also worked for the WPA, producing wonderful street scenes that documented New York neighborhoods of the era.

To be honest, I have so many questions about what Steve was up to in the late 1930s before his war mania of the 40s hits.

One of the core themes of this series is Steve struggling with what his body is for if it’s no longer for violence. Who is he if he’s not a soldier? What is his radically changed body if it’s not a weapon? How do you come home from the war?

In this regard, Steve and Bucky have all kinds of shared life experience.

So thematically I include Neel because of her startling gift for capturing personalities and bodies through a process of frank, earnest, truthful observation of the integrated completeness of body and self: this space that’s you.

But a book of Alice Neel’s work with her sensitive portraits and fleshy frank nudes pulls him into flipping through page after page of these personalities and bodies, not idealized: seen.

Steve isn’t ready for that when he bumps into this big “impractical” art book in a holdover Barnes & Noble in Brooklyn, not when he’s still so shook up and adrift. But he will be.

There’s such empathy and radical humanism to her pieces. “People,” as she famously said, “come first.” I stand by the conclusion that Steve would love her work.

The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories by H. P. Lovecraft

Lovecraft was relatively unknown in his lifetime—he died in 1937—but his stories were published in popular fantasy pulp magazines like Weird Tales and Astounding Stories, which is where Bucky would have come across his work. The fact that Steve recognizes Lovecraft by name means that teenage Bucky must have talked about what he was reading and the pulp stories he liked with teenage Steve, which is adorable—“this Lovecraft fellow, Steve, you wouldn’t believe the stuff he comes up with.” And Steve was paying attention enough to remember two decades and change later without the benefit of his serum-enhanced memory, which hurts my heart a little in the best possible way.

That’s how Steve all these years and decades later is able to wordlessly toss this collection of H. P. Lovecraft’s stories at Bucky on a hot hazy stumbled-upon beach in northern Florida and watch Bucky’s whole face light up.

And of course Bucky would view Lovecraft as a great beach read 😂

But this is the basis for something I’ve written into this series: Bucky excitedly sharing things he finds interesting with Steve—wanting to tell Steve first, Steve most. And although Steve is quiet, stoical and very self-contained, he’s paying a whole hell of a lot of attention.

Given that Bucky is canonically a Tolkien fan, I think the imaginativeness and ranging scope of Lovecraft’s complex, often interconnected stories would appeal to him. And, thematically, Lovecraft is distinctive for the era for having characters psychologically fragment when confronting these vast inhuman others.

“The Call of Cthulhu” opens with:

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.

Steve and Bucky have each voyaged out a long way.

Trauma, in a way, is a form of terrible knowledge. You can heal but you can’t unknow things.

Not Language but a Map (The Grammar of Sensation)

A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick

This is the first book in the series that we see Bucky pick for himself. And, wow, he picks a doozy with themes of multiple and unstable identities, invasive surveillance, manipulation, psychosis, and how individuals can get chewed up by larger systems, falling through the cracks of society. Dick was writing based on his own troubled experiences with southern California drug culture of the early 70s, but this work gets at much more fundamental darknesses that I think would speak to some of the horrors Bucky has gone through and won’t talk about, not even with Steve.

Within the first few pages, we get this:

It was midday, in June of 1994. In California, in a tract area of cheap but durable plastic houses, long ago vacated by the straights. Jerry had at an earlier date sprayed metal paint over all the windows, though, to keep out the light; the illumination for the room came from a pole lamp into which he had screwed nothing but spot lamps, which shone day and night, so as to abolish time for him and his friends. He liked that; he liked to get rid of time. By doing that he could concentrate on important things without interruption.

The Beautiful Mysterious: The Extraordinary Gaze of William Eggleston, edited by Ann J. Abadie

Eggleston was an early pioneer in color photography and that fascination with color is very apparent in his work. I think this focus would grab Steve as an artist who doesn’t take seeing the full spectrum of color for granted. Even in the MCU’s thin action-film scripts, Steve comments on things that offend his aesthetic sensibilities even when that has absolutely no bearing on the situation at hand, from Stark Tower to Lang’s van.

Not even a world-ending crisis can keep Steve from going, wow, no, that’s ugly. I enjoyed running with that 😂

Steve’s view of Eggleston’s photographs shifts over the course of the series, reflecting what he’s feeling, from the fragmented and disconnected detachment—“isolated and off-kilter”— that he sees in them at the beginning that shifts to the passionate engagement in the world he finds in them later.

Steve looks through the whole book of William Eggleston’s photographs again and at first the colors still roll over him like the shockwave of a distant explosion, all he can focus on. But gradually the subjects and compositions pull forward, too: monumentalized images of the everyday that at first seem neutral, the work of a detached observer. But the off-center framing of ordinary life is so deliberate as though everything might be important and where every detail deserves attention—that’s nothing like neutral. That’s not detached at all. You have to care a whole hell of a lot.

This mirrors the journey this post-Endgame Steve goes on. Because Steve Rogers should be a character who cares a whole hell of a lot, not what the MCU writers eventually reduced him to. And that’s what this fix-it is trying to fix.

Lost Vocabularies that Might Express (The Memory of These Broken Impressions)

QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard Feynman

I love writing Bucky as a big fucking science nerd. His last night in New York and how does he want to spend the time? At a science fair with his best friend and a couple of pretty girls. So Bucky reading about quantum electrodynamics is delightful to me. The thing is, though, Bucky is a bright enough guy with a high school education. He’s not a genius—and the MCU is lousy with geniuses. But if Bucky wanted to learn a little more about all this quantum stuff he heard about in passing during some vague and very improbable sounding explanations, which by the way also allowed one of the few people still living who truly matters to him and the closest thing Bucky had left to family to fuck off to the past, well, Feynman’s QED isn’t a bad place to start in understanding some of this quantum stuff, at least.

Feynman here is very much writing for a popular audience. His writing is conversational—the book is adapted from a set of lectures he gave—and his voice is witty, casual and surprisingly light, but at the same time Feynman is deeply invested in helping lay people understand quantum mechanics. The book opens with:

Alix Mautner was very curious about physics and often asked me to explain things to her. I would do all right, just as I do with a group of students at Caltech that come to me for an hour on Thursdays, but eventually I’d fail at what is to me the most interesting part: We would always get hung up on the crazy ideas of quantum mechanics. I told her I couldn’t explain these ideas in an hour or an evening—it would take a long time—but I promised her that someday I’d prepare a set of lectures on the subject.

I prepared some lectures, and I went to New Zealand to try them out—because New Zealand is far enough away that if they weren’t successful, it would be all right! Well, the people in New Zealand thought they were okay, so I guess they’re okay—at least for New Zealand! So here are the lectures I really prepared for Alix, but unfortunately I can’t tell them to her directly, now.

C’mon! Tell me Bucky Barnes would not be hooked by this opening.

Thematically, and more seriously, the question of how could Steve do this? has two very different meanings. So far in this series Bucky isn’t ready to confront the harder version of that question which comes potentially with some very painful answers: how could Steve make that choice? Nope, he’s not ready for that. Instead, his brain unconsciously takes the easier way out: trying to understand quantum electrodynamics. 😂😭

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

Bucky must have liked A Scanner Darkly, because he went for another Philip K. Dick novel. Today remembered mostly as the source material for Blade Runner, this bleak dystopian novel is set in the aftermath of a devastating nuclear war that destroys most life on Earth. The work has themes around empathy—who feels empathy and for what?—materialism and what really makes us human.

I find it interesting how Sebastian Stan talks about The Winter Soldier in terms of someone who has undergone a process of total desensitization, which to varying degrees is deliberately part of the training of all soldiers. But rebuilding his core sense of empathy was one of the things Bucky chose to do as soon as he had any agency in that two-year period where he was on the run, which is remarkable. As a person who has been treated as though he wasn’t human and had his empathy forcibly stripped from him, I think Bucky would have a lot of complicated feelings about the enslaved androids who escape but are ruthlessly tracked down and killed. Some of these escaped androids are dangerous and do lack basic empathy—shown in the book by torturing and mutilating an animal—while other androids seem like ordinary people just trying to live their lives.

I like that Bucky talks about the book with Steve later in the story, returning in my view to a very old habit of bookworm Bucky wanting to share what he’d been reading with Steve <333

“I need to find something to read next,” Bucky says after wrapping up his description of an imagined religion that involved plugging into a box to virtually suffer the existence of a man forever walking up a steep hill while struck by crashing stones.

“Well, did the androids dream of electric sheep?” Steve asks.

“Who knows?” Bucky knocks into him gently as he takes the bowl Steve passes over. “They just wanted to be free. Though the free people just wanted to own stuff or plug into a box and suffer. So, you know, sort of a grim outlook. ”

“A little light, cheerful reading.”

“Hey, we live in a world where people write ‘Take back what’s yours’ in the streets and then smash up the windows. Dystopias don’t seem so far off the mark.”

Six Not-So-Easy Pieces: Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time by Richard Feynman

Another case of Bucky sticking with an author he likes! To me, this implies that Bucky has already read Feynman’s Six Easy Pieces, which explains some of the foundational basics of physics for a very broad and non-technical audience. Six Not-So-Easy Pieces is also drawn from Feynman’s famous Lectures on Physics, focusing here on relativity and space-time, but this work assumes a greater knowledge of math, hence the name. But as a legendary sniper Bucky must have a strong aptitude for math and anyway I just leaned into making Bucky an all-around nerd, because Bucky Barnes, nerd who grew up hot, is delightful to me.

Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time are all on point for a post-Endgame fix-it, which I think should count as a not-so-easy piece in its own right.

Throughout the series, we see Bucky using physical copies when he reads fiction, more or less from unconscious nostalgia: connecting back to memories of his younger self who was an avid reader of pulp magazines and cheap paperbacks. Once Steve gets him going with that first quietly tossed-over gift, Bucky always carries around a sci-fi or fantasy book in this series despite the limited space in his backpack. And this familiarity wouldn’t just be from his pre-war life since I figure Bucky would have gone for the Armed Services Editions that were distributed for free to soldiers. Bucky likely traded with other soldiers once he finished a book if he couldn’t get a new ASE distribution: trading in his finished novel for a new one is Bucky unconsciously falling back into another old habit.

But for non-fiction, Bucky is absolutely here for the Modern Marvel of being able to carry around as many books as he likes on his phone. I figure Bucky would have used public libraries during certain stages of his recovery when he was homeless and migratory since they are a place to get information that is consistently available in cities; and a warm, quiet place you can go with a minimal number of security cameras. I headcanon a middle-aged librarian who has a few streaks of gray in her dark hair—and who reminds Bucky of someone but he has no idea who—explaining what e-books are to this tall, gaunt, soft-spoken homeless guy with an eye contact problem. And this person who isn’t the Asset anymore and isn’t Bucky Barnes yet has the out-of-nowhere thought: huh, whaddaya know. That’s pretty neat.

Nonlinear Dynamics And Chaos: With Applications To Physics, Biology, Chemistry, And Engineering by Steven H. Strogatz

Isolated systems tend to evolve towards a single equilibrium and these equilibrium points have been the focus of many-body research for centuries. But life is generally not that simple because most systems aren’t isolated. Often the dynamics of a system result from the product of multiple different interacting forces and objects in these systems can change between multiple different attractor wells over time. Or as Strogatz puts it:

As we’ve mentioned earlier, most nonlinear systems are impossible to solve analytically. Why are nonlinear systems so much harder to analyze than linear ones? The essential difference is that linear systems can be broken down into parts. Then each part can be solved separately and finally recombined to get the answer. This idea allows a fantastic simplification of complex problems, and underlies such methods as normal modes, Laplace transforms, superposition arguments, and Fourier analysis. In this sense, a linear system is precisely equal to the sum of its parts.

But many things in nature don’t act this way. Whenever parts of a system interfere, or cooperate, or compete, there are nonlinear interactions going on. Most of everyday life is nonlinear, and the principle of superposition fails spectacularly.

You can think of nonlinear dynamics as situations in which the sum of the parts is insufficient to understand the whole. This connects to multiple themes in this story as Bucky and Steve try to understand themselves, their lives and each other. But here Bucky is also just continuing to live his best life as a nerd with a strong intuitive knack for math, a high school education, an internet connection and a growing collection of science e-books. Or as Bucky puts it:

“It’s nice, though, like this smart guy is just talking to you but doesn’t assume you’re dumb because of what you don’t know.”

It’s touched on only very lightly in the series so far, but Bucky has a lot of complex feelings about higher education that relate to class, indirectly to sexuality, and go back to the experience of being the son of upwardly mobile working-class immigrants who were very bought-in on a traditional take on the American Dream.

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

I picked this partly because I thought the title would grab Bucky, who has been a stranger in a strange land several times over. Thematically this midcentury sci-fi novel focuses on challenging social norms through having the main character, a human who’d been raised by Martians on Mars, come back to Earth as an adult. A best-seller in its day that was controversial for its rejection of Christianity, monogamy and the nuclear family, the work is very tied to the looming cultural changes of the 60s and 70s.

The novel’s critical reputation has been steadily in decline for decades, but I think Bucky would find it interesting since he grew up within the traditional early 20th-century culture this novel satirizes and challenges—mores that this story’s version of Bucky didn’t unquestioningly accept but didn’t openly challenge, either.

Having Bucky pick this novel reflects the themes for the last act of this story that focus more on Steve and Bucky's different experiences as closeted queer men growing up in a deeply homophobic society. These experiences continue to shape and impact them and yet are also a past these two are coming to terms with and growing beyond.

Fun fact: this novel coined the word “grok.”

One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965 by Jia Lynn Yang

Of all the books featured in this series, One Mighty and Irresistible Tide is my top recommendation. This is an accessible, well-written history of a topic that haunts American history: immigration. The specific focus is the waves of legislation passed in the first half of the 20th century that tried—and often succeeded—in limiting who could legally immigrate based on the racial and ethnic hierarchies that equally haunt American history, right down to the foundation.

In this series, I wanted to pick up the themes of social justice and immigration that were so vaguely and incoherently included in TFATWS. These themes are inherent in the Snap and Return plotline except that Disney does not want to touch any of these politics with a ten-foot pole. But I remain fascinated by trying to wrap my mind around what it would mean for half the population to vanish and then return five years later, catastrophically in both cases. It’s a huge, intricate, sticky, difficult world-building problem that’s inescapably political.

Steve isn’t quite ready to dive into facing or helping to fix the problems of the post-Return world that his actions helped to create. But here we get to see Steve’s burned-out passion and conviction slowly rekindle as he reads about the complicated and often ugly history of American immigration—and he gets mad about it. Of course, he gets mad about it! This is my answer to the ludicrous idea that Steve Rogers could quietly sit out the second half of the twentieth century.

At the same time, I can have compassion for Steve knowing he can’t keep going but not knowing how to help himself, only to be given the cursed monkey’s paw of time travel. And he fucks up. His actions have real and lasting consequences. But that doesn’t make the situation hopeless or mean Steve can’t try to repair the relationships he damaged or work to regain the trust he lost, assuming he’s lucky enough to be given another chance by people who love him but have been hurt by his choices.

One of the greatest challenges in writing this Endgame fix-it was accepting Endgame as the starting point of the story and trying to reconcile a character I love with the choices canon has him make. Over the course of these stories, the central point isn’t Steve coming back to Bucky. It’s Steve coming back to himself. Through a slow and painful struggle, Steve finds himself again—rediscovering his stubborn endurance, his compassion for others and his drive to set wrongs right. Steve stumbled, badly, but he gets back up. Because that’s who Steve Rogers is.

And because of who Bucky Barnes is—his innate kindness, his warm-hearted generosity and his stubborn loyalty that isn’t blind but runs deep—that’s how these two characters come back to each other, after everything.

Deliberately, this series is the first hard-fought and hopeful glimmer in a long trudging process that can get so heavy to carry forward, day after day, but is shot through with moments of beauty and joy all the same.

I can't go on; I'll go on.

In other words, to quote one of my favorite poets: what the living do.

#thanks for the ask!#and the lovely comment #<333 #book recommendations #stucky #stucky meta #lost vocabularies that might express #otp: till the end of the line #otp: even when i had nothing i had you #the existential loneliness of steven g. rogers #bucky barnes needs a hug #steve rogers also needs a hug #steve makes better choices #he's trying folks #all of my stories end up including a bunch of art and history #and I'm okay with that

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noddytheornithopod · 7 months

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PnF Season 5 Title Speculation

Okay first thing's first, found out through this (click on "relationships"), which I found out through the PnF Wiki twitter.

As for the episode titles themselves, I will list what's been confirmed here.

501: Summer Block Buster/Cloudy with a Chance of Mom

502: Appetite for Adventure/License to Bust

503: Dry Another Day/Deconstructing Doof

504: Tropey McTropeface/Biblio-Blast!

505: A Chip to the Vet/More Than an Intern

506: The Aurora Perry-Alis/Lord of the Firesides

507: Agent T (for Teen)/The Haberdasher

508: [Title TBD]/Out of Character

Alright, now that's out of the way, time to get crazy and speculate nonsense based on titles alone

Summer Block Buster: I don't really have much to say besides the fact the title is very fitting. Yeah Summer Block Busters are a thing, but I won't be surprised if this episode is just one big grand re-entrance for everyone. I expect it to be very meta about it too, some of the dialogue Dan recorded for Doof even suggests this.

License to Bust: IDK what to say here but the whole pun on "licence to kill" (which is also the title of a Bond movie). I don't think puns are emblematic of much, but it's most explicit confirmation Candace is still trying to bust her brothers, which people understandable debated after Candace Against the Universe. Wonder if the licence thing is going to be relevant.

Dry Another Day: Second Bond title pun, lol.

Deconstructing Doof: Not sure what's being gotten at here, but it's an intriguing title to say the least. Very uh interesting. I could make a joke about how it's about how they don't know what to do with him post Summer but I'm not here for snarky commentary.

Tropey McTropeface: Uh... very interesting. Named after Boaty McBoatface, apparently. IDK what tropey nonsense they're getting up to though.

Biblio-Blast: I feel like SOMETHING is being said here but I don't know what. Was pointed out to me it could be something about weaponised books but IDK what that even looks like.

A Chip to the Vet: Okay this is very interesting. Firstly, it's probably Perry going to the vet. Secondly... one thing done for pets at vets is to get chipped. Whether it's just something the vet does or it's a deliberate request so they can get an idea of where Perry wanders off to... it's gonna be a big problem for Perry. Hopefully OWCA has a way to get around that lol.

More than an Intern: Carl episode. Nuff said. More trying to prove himself to Monogram probably even as Monogram treats him like shit, lmao.

The Aurora Perry-Alis: Aurora Borealis? At this time of year, at this time of- yeah we all know Steamed Hams probably. No idea what this will add up to honestly, maybe some kind of astronomical phenomenon that looks like a platypus, or the gang make one? If there's anything I have to say though, there's a chance it might run parallel to the next episode in a Bubble Boys or Bee Day type fashion, because...

Lord of the Firesides: Yeah you know I'm gonna be talking about what is obviously a Fireside Girls episode as that guy with the Isabella brainrot. So if it works like Temple of Sap or Bee Story, it COULD run parallel to the last episode, but that's not guaranteed. Either way... some friction between the Fireside Girls is going to come up. The title obviously references Lord of the Flies, aka the story where kids turn brutal and try to dominate each other or whatever. Maybe there's a split Isabella is caught in the middle of. Or perhaps... Isabella is removed as troop leader. She could make some serious blunder (could even be unrelated to Phineas even if that bias does affect her activities a lot), but maybe the other girls just end up being sick of Isabella's Phineas nonsense after something went too far. :P If Isabella is kicked out, I feel like she'd really struggle with that, because being a Fireside Girl is really important to her. Also, IDK who would replace Isabella as leader (honestly this ep would be good to just flesh out the other girls more in general), but I did see a hilarious suggestion that maybe it could be Candace. Would be similar to We Call it Maize (a very underrated episode IMO) but with more serious consequences. Not something I'm riding on, but it's a fun idea, especially if she proves she's more egotistical or just outright doesn't know what she's doing. Also saw a hilarious yet touching idea that somehow PHINEAS helps Isabella regain her leadership, he'd reassure her of why she's a good Fireside Girl and all that (cuz he believes in her to the ends of the Universe guys, shit my Phinabella is showing), or just somehow help her prove herself again. Also, the solution coming from what the girls thought was the problem would just be ironic and funny in a very PnF way. Either way... amazing at what a mere title can make me wonder.

Agent T (for Teen): Perry the teenage girl??? Okay so I've already seen this catch on from many people, but if there's one thing everyone in the Phineas and Ferb fandom wants, it's more Stacy and Perry interaction. Sure, maybe it could be someone else (Monty's a teenager, where's he been? maybe something leading to or following up Vanessa's internship based on when the revival takes place, or even some weird Candace shenanigans)... but come on. Even if it isn't, we all are gonna see this and hope it's Stacy related as she gets roped back into Perry's world again.

The Haberdasher: So something to do with selling men's clothing? Definitely a scheme PnF could enact. Also there's the meaning of stuff for things like sewing but that's supposedly British and the men's clothing thing is American soooo we know what's more likely. I wonder who's gonna get the glow up though? Baljeet? Jeremy? Maybe the guys just wanna slay? Shit, Phinabella brainrot is back, what happens when she sees whatever Phineas puts on? :v Of course, this could somehow tie to the B-plot too, maybe Doof needs to dress nicely for something.

TBD: Truly a profound title. So much is said with mere letters... okay yeah I can't do this lol

Out of Character: So much is said with so little. The first thing that came to mind was once someone asked Dan and Swampy at I believe SDCC if they'd ever do a personality swap episode, and their response was to look at each other and be like "maybe we will now" (it was likely too late before the show ended then but yeah). Point is... maybe we're finally seeing this idea. It can be very easy to have characters act out of character through whatever means ie an inator or invention, but if you're going to name an episode that, I think you're going to have something that really commits to that premise. There is ENDLESS potential of weird dynamic shifts you could do with this, it could be truly hilarious. Maybe it's also body swap shenanigans, but well I think I made my case for personality swap. Just imagine Perry trying to take over the Tri-State Area, or Baljeet bullying Buford, or Ferb talking while Phineas is silent, or *could go on for hours*.

Soooo yeah that's way more speculation than I expected, let's see if any of this leads to anything lol

#phineas and ferb #pnf leaks #pnf spoilers

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starry-mist · 3 months

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S5e15 and s5e16 thoughts:

Obviously I need to do these ones together. I'm also going to try to do this as sort of a review rather than general thoughts...it's my first time trying this so be nice, LOL.

I have a few thoughts before I jump into the episodes.

One of the main reasons (other than the obvious one of having these additional characters with their own storyline that initially seems separate from what the series regulars are doing) that this initially felt like a backdoor pilot is because one of the titular characters is noticeably absent. And we know this was because John and Meghan were expecting their third child to be born right around the time this was scheduled to film, so he wasn't available. I'm not saying it couldn't still be a backdoor pilot, but I think it's unlikely for the moment.

The story we got was very different from the original synopsis in the article about the Ontario government funding production in Northern Ontario (https://www.nugget.ca/news/five-film-tv-productions-receive-funding) which again, is likely because John was unavailable so they launched Sarah and Jesse into the spotlight for this one.

I know Jesse fans have a lot of feelings about his glasses, and I agree that the explanation for why he no longer wears them is pretty weak. Fans of this show do have a tendency to fixate on changes in character appearances (see also: much controversy on Facebook about Charlie's season 6 hair.) Anyway, characters evolve, people change, I'm just going to leave it at that. Maybe Justin was just sick of wearing them.

Without further ado:

We open with a lovely aerial shot of “Webster Bay,” which I’m sure is 100% a real place and totally not North Bay, Ontario. (It's absolutely not a real place.) A couple is having a romantic moment by the side of the road. Very sweet. Until it turns out the man is there to rob the house across the street. That's...perhaps a little less sweet.

The home invasion/robbery hits a little snag when the homeowner is, well, home, and goes at the would-be robber with a sizeable pair of scissors. He accidentally knocks her out trying to disarm her, and it's time for the happy couple to GTFO.

Roll credits.

Back in St. John's, the Major Crimes team has ordered lunch. Jesse gets an ominous phone call from his previously-never-mentioned sister.

It's the season of new family members coming out of the woodwork. Sigh.

Anyway, Jesse's sister is in Northern Ontario, as far as he knows (which is apparently where they both grew up...look I'm just going to keep rolling my eyes at all of these things that could have been mentioned IN FOUR PREVIOUS SEASONS) and is in trouble. Come quick. No cops. Doesn't sound sketchy at all...

Jesse's ready to go to her rescue, but Charlie doesn't think he should go alone.

Sarah: You want to go with him?

Charlie: I was thinking you. And Rex.

(Yeah, remember those establishing moments I mentioned in the previous two episodes? Those are now relevant.)

Apparently Charlie has some important stuff he has to take care of.

(Please remind me I need to someday write a fic about Charlie’s guilt at sending the trio into harms way.)

This whole scene is a little forced, IMHO, but anyway, off they go.

Cut to Ontario, where we now have MEGAN FREAKING FOLLOWS, OMG, BE STILL MY ANNE OF GREEN GABLES-LOVING HEART. At this point, I should note that I do love these fleshed-out original characters and their stories, which initially feel strange given we've never seen them before, but will make sense later.

(Pause for my usual commentary of same actor, different character: Cihang Ma previously played Holly in s3’s Seeing is Deceiving. Here they play Detective Kai Huang, and let me just express my appreciation for a non-binary actor playing a non-binary role.)

Anyway, Detective Anne of Green Gables Sidney Scott is on scene and having flashbacks. It looks like she lost someone close to her. Kai thinks the people who broke in were addicts. Sidney has other ideas. She talks to the victim's husband, Tim Cooper, who apparently worked with her husband as well. But she makes it clear that she's definitely off work and totally not on the case.

Right...

Back to St. John’s, Charlie is having someone dig up Constable Charlie Hudson’s incident reports from October 30, 2009. Okay first off, I would have appreciated some flashbacks to a younger Charlie, but I don't always get what I want (rarely, in fact.) And we find out that Charlie is investigating his "white whale" of a child abduction case that has haunted him for 14 years, which has of course been foreshadowed in prior seasons because this show is so amazing at continuity. /s

Cut to Charlie's house, with him taping up a makeshift "murder board" on the wall. My dude, you're going to need to repaint...

Meanwhile in Ontario, we have lovely wide shots of fall colours. So pretty. We also have rapid-fire voiceover exposition from Sarah and Jesse on their arrival, where they're going, how long it's taken them to get there, and honestly, this is yet another of those "show, don't tell" moments that this show struggles with.

The trio arrive at “an old Cold War missile site” where Jesse and Crystal came when they were kids, riding their bikes down from his uncle’s place. Questions abound about who actually raised Jesse, who has mentioned his mom (in a throwaway line in s2) and a deceased father. Now there was apparently an uncle? Okay we'll go with it. Anyway, Jesse and Crystal used to hang out here and build camps in abandoned buildings.

Sarah and Rex are the third wheels (actually fourth and fifth, I suppose) in the Jesse/Crystal/random sketchy boyfriend scene as they head into an abandoned hangar. Sketchy boyfriend (who has a name that I'm not bothering to look it up given he won't be around that long) wants to know if these new additions are cool.

Sarah: Dr. Sarah Truong, hi. We’re cool.

(I don't know why I find that line so amusing.)

Rex senses danger. Looks like it's time to GTFO of the hangar.

This is where I point out that two of these characters are weapons-trained cops, one of whom we have seen is basically a sharpshooter…And none of this apparently matters as neither of them have a weapon on hand that they can use. Oops.

Going to have to suspend disbelief at the fact that the sniper can instantly kill the bf, shoot out the tires on Sarah and Jesse's rental car (that's going to be a hefty repair bill,) but then they're all just able to run out in the open and magically escape…right.

This is pretty elaborate for a scene that is essentially just a setup for the plane crash.

Sidney Scott visits a man named Elvis Migwan outside the local hospital. We learn that there is a local Indigenous community whose water has apparently been affected by runoff from a mining operation. Elvis's daughter is sick. And this is a really relevant topic given how many Indigenous communities in Canada lack access to clean water.

Back to the airfield, and I'm just going to speculate that they blew the budget on this next scene and on the plane crash.

Apparently flight simulator games have taught Jesse enough that he can figure out how to fly a plane...again, suspending disbelief. The team take to the skies and are promptly shot down by the sniper, as my anxiety begins to ratchet up.

The remote lake where they crash would be a pretty place to camp in any other circumstance.

Anne of Green Gables Sidney has a nice, large house. It's actually pretty big for one person. Hey, Sidney has that in common with Charlie. They should hang out. Inspector Yousef Ali stops by and brings Sidney dinner. It's a salad. She's displeased. I start to ship them.

Charlie and Joe have a scene at Charlie’s house and it's just not working for me. I can't help it. The whole Alison case appearing out of the blue feels forced.

(However, Joe is totally checking out the new, shall we say, feminine touches in Charlie’s house.)

At the crash site, Jesse manages to smash open his door when there were two perfectly good open ones on the other side of the plane, because reasons? Crystal’s wrist is probably broken, Jesse’s got some cracked ribs…but at least they have a doctor with them who’s totally in one piece and definitely not injured.

Sarah asks for a first aid kit, presumably to do, you know, actual first aid...oh wait, no, instead she scribbles some notes on a piece of paper, which she rolls into a little case that she attaches to Rex's collar. With a tearful hug, she sends Rex off into the wilderness.

Cue “The Littlest Hobo” theme.

Rex wanders the woods.

Sidney Scott decides to go back to work.

Back at the crash site, we find out Crystal’s a pretty big screwup, and Jesse chastises her for her messing up her life. Not super helpful at the moment, Jesse.

Sarah starts to look disoriented and possibly in pain. This is going to get worse before it gets better.

Rex encounters some sort of bird of prey (I think it's a hawk, but I'm not an expert.) No worries, he'll just hide under a bridge for a moment.

Another "same actor different character" moment: the actor playing Bertrand Boyle previously appeared as Tucker Moore in s4’s No Man is an Island.

Rex is under a sky full of stars, which I'm sure he'd pause to appreciate if there weren't a pack of wolves nearby. I believe I read somewhere that Sherri Davis who trains the dogs actually trained all the animals that appeared in this one. I’m in awe of her talent.

Morning at the crash site. Crystal is about to peace out. Jesse talks her into staying. And Sarah wakes up in rough shape.

And here is where I state that Mayko Nguyen is the best actor on this show, fight me. She completely nailed that subtle shift when Sarah realizes that she's injured, and more seriously than she initially thought.

(Side note: I love that Mayko is wearing her trademark huge puffy warm coat. She is apparently always cold.)

So anyway, Sarah has realized that she's bleeding internally, and tells Jesse that he'll need to operate.

Right…

Sarah: You can do anything you put your mind to, Jesse Mills. You just flew a plane!

I really hope they submitted this episode for this year's Canadian Screen Awards.

On his continued trek through the wilderness, Rex encounters the most fearsome of woodland creatures: a skunk. Oh no! What if he ends up smelly?!! Anyway, Rex wins the territorial battle, and over the log bridge he goes.

Oh look, an owl.

So many critters.

There's a road! And with a short swim, Rex has officially made it back to civilization where he is promptly picked up by some sinister characters in a truck.

I'm not going into the gory details of Jesse doing field surgery on Sarah, because I still find it hard to watch, but anyway, give Mayko an Emmy. Hell, give her an Oscar. Give her all the things.

...right now, because I’m not watching these separately.

Ugh. Field surgery. I feel very much the same way as Jesse does when it comes to blood.

Cut to the Ontario Police Service (or whatever they’re calling their version of Ontario Provincial Police) HQ building, which I’m pretty sure is part of Nipissing University, as is the “hospital” we see later.

Detective Scott, meet Rex. He'll keep you on your toes.

See you later, sketchbags in the pickup truck. Nobody messes with our boy Rex.

Oh hey, it’s Charlie Hudson. Kind of forgot about that guy for a moment. Anyway Charlie and Joe get a call from Sidney about the plane crash. Charlie holds back...really any emotion whatsoever.

Sidney! Rex! Helicopter!

Sidney sends Charlie a photo of the note that Rex brought her, and Charlie recognizes Sarah’s handwriting. Joe tries to be reassuring. Okay, now they're showing a little bit of worry at the unknown fate of their friends.

Sarah is now semi-conscious and making last requests.

Sarah: If I don’t make it you have to find Rex…tell Charlie…

Jesse: No, you’re gonna tell him yourself…

Me: Tell him what, exactly? Because you've been a couple more than long enough that I refuse to believe there have been no "I love yous" exchanged, even if we've yet to see it said on screen.

Anyway Sarah passes back out, while I continue to hyperventilate.

Cut to St. John's. Charlie feels guilty for not going. Joe steers him back into his B plot. It still feels forced.

Sidney chatting "with" Rex as he leads her through the woods cracks me up.

At the crash site, Sarah wakes up feverish. She knows she probably an infection. So she should totally drink the unfiltered lake water Crystal brings her, because what’s a little E. coli going to do? Anyway apparently it’s all good as long as the paramedics push IV antibiotics…whatever. Sidney and Rex of course arrive at exactly the right time!

Rex lays protectively on his “mom.”

And the look Sidney gives Crystal tells us her shit is officially about to hit the fan.

Jesse has a phone call with Joe and Charlie to fill them in on all the nitty-gritty. Charlie wants to talk to Sarah, who is now in actual surgery. Jesse goes to check on his sister, who is now under arrest.

Crystal: I just watched my boyfriend get shot and killed and was pretty sure we were all gonna die in a plane crash. It’s been a lot.

Sarah Swire's deadpan delivery of the above lines is just so good.

Sidney questions Crystal, and it become clear that she definitely has a personal stake in this. Crystal swears there was no gun at the house her boyfriend robbed. She wants Jesse to cover for her by taking the backpack full of money, which of course he does. For now.

Sidney: Are you here as a cop or a brother?

Jesse: I have to be both.

Rex wants to help Sidney track the shooter. This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship!

In Sarah's hospital room, she's sitting up in bed and talking to Charlie, albeit briefly. That conversation should have been longer and more emotional.

Tracking the shooter leads to more amusing Sidney and Rex "conversation." They find the type of gun that was used to kill Sidney’s husband. Suddenly Sidney's personal stake in the case makes sense.

Jesse and Sarah chat in her hospital room where she's looking pretty well recovered considering she just had two abdominal surgeries...and then she’s up and at it looking over forensics with Kai. It turns out Kai had the wrong time of death.

Joe reassures Charlie, who is feeling stuck on the Alison case, that he’s a great cop, great detective, blah blah. Says he needs to figure out how to move on so he can be ready for the next people who need his help. So clearly we’re done with this case and it definitely won’t reappear in a future episode...*eyes the next episode on the list*

The totally-not-the-shooter guy whose name I can’t be bothered to learn thinks Sidney’s husband would want her to move on and enjoy the life she has left. Okay then.

It seems that Crystal did in fact know that there would be money in the house. Also she knows about the contaminated runoff situation from the mine. Working as a cleaner, she managed to overhear all kinds of things, and through creative use of french fries, casually explains to Jesse how the mine’s money laundering scheme worked.

Incoming sniper. Again. Rex attempts a takedown but the sniper nearly runs him over with his car. Well, at least they should have a license plate now, assuming Jesse can actually see it without his glasses.

Seeing that it's time to come clean, the Mills siblings take the backpack full of money to Sidney. Crystal reveals how she knew the money was at the Cooper house by basically rehashing everything she just told Jesse. And maintains that her brush with law-breaking was "just one time."

Jesse to Crystal: Rex is really disappointed in you.

Sidney goes back to Elvis Migwan and asks how he knew about the mine runoff. And we now know that her husband faked the reports that said the water was clean.

Back at home, Sidney rips down her wall murder board. She's coming to terms with who her husband really was. He was killed in order to keep him quiet, but he knew a lot more than he let on.

Sidney goes off to question Tim Cooper, who is the actual mastermind behind all of this. Inspector Ali tells her she needs backup. It looks like she rolls up with just Rex, who stays in the car.

Sniper dude is on the scene. Oh, apparently his name is Wayne.

Rex takes him down.

Sidney gets a confession from Cooper.

And the rest of the backup team comes out of hiding.

Sidney, needing to make amends, takes a USB with proof of the falsified mine records to Elvis Migwan. It's everything he will need for his lawsuit against the mining company.

Jesse and Crystal chat as he is ready to head back home. Maybe she'll visit St. John's someday. (Here’s hoping.)

Sid puts away a photo of her and her husband. Ali shows up. Sidney tells him she's planning to sell the house, and that she doesn’t like salad. He's brought her a burger this time.

Could be love.

Sidney swears she's getting groceries tomorrow, and will be back at work on Monday. She's picking up the pieces. She also wants to choose her own partner. Say hello to Little Rex.

Sarah, Jesse and Rex head for the plane.

Jesse: You know, second time's the charm flying the plane.

Sarah: Too soon!

Charlie pulls the pictures of Alison off his wall. He's letting it go.

The door opens, and we get probably my favourite Charah scene ever. The clinging hug. The concern for each other. The intimacy of their foreheads pressed together as they gently sway.

Swoon.

Best episodes ever.

#hudson & rex #charah #charlie hudson x sarah truong #damn this got long #thanks for reading

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wingsonghalo · 5 months

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20 Questions for Fic Writers

Tagged by @cnnmonbimee! Thank you for the tag!! Read her awesome answers here!

1. How many works do you have on Ao3? 66! More than I thought were on there tbh!

2. What’s your total Ao3 word count? Uhhh apparently it's 684,757! Less than I thought!

3. What fandoms do you write for? In order of most fics to least: Ace Attorney, JSHK, My Hero Academia, Mob Psycho 100, Homestuck, Hunter x Hunter, Phineas and Ferb, and Supernatural. I've also written a lot of Pokemon stuff, but somehow that has escaped Ao3 despite it being my longest fandom LOL. Working on a Pokemon SV one currently though 👀

4. What are your top five fics by kudos? Project: Matchmakers (shocker, I know), Sleep (Too) Tight (It's always been slowly but steadily popular), Force of Habit (bit of a surprise there honestly), Project: Matrimony (less surprising), and The Stuff of Dreams. So what I am seeing here is that no one leaves kudos on my JSHK or MP100 or MHA fics :') Some of these fics are one-shots, so it's kind of surprising! I wish PlayWright had gotten more attention; that fic killed me while I was writing it. I'm not giving number of kudos because I'm not comfortable with that and it makes me feel bad about myself haha,,,

5. Do you respond to comments? I try to! I've fallen behind on responding to them in the past 2 years or so because life has been so busy, though…

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Probably A Practice, For Now?? LMAO it's also my first JSHK and the one with the most kudos HMM COULD THIS FANDOM BE ADDICTED TO ANGST PERHAPS??! I don't write angst a lot!! What can I say, I'm a sucker for a happy ending.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Almost all of my fics end happily, LOL. Pick any of them that actually has an ending.

8. Do you get hate on fics? Not commonly. I've gotten anon hate before about them on tumblr on rare occasions, but usually my comments on ao3 stay pretty nice.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? I do sometimes, but I'm so shy about it that I rarely ever post it /)//w//(\ Usually I just share it among friends, haha!

10. Do you write crossovers? Nope, and I never will!

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Yes. Someone tried to run Project: Matchmakers through a translator to hide the word matches and sell it as an ebook on Amazon, but they only bothered to hide it for chapter 1 so someone reported it to me and then in retaliation I started actually selling it on Amazon for the lowest price I could because the thief was trying to sell the shittier version for like 7 dollars LSFJ;AKLD. Read about the whole debacle here.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? Yes, quite a few! People have been great about asking me for permission! 💖

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? Yes, here and there! Usually it's either fics where I have written one part and someone else has written another scene, or someone had me look over something they'd written and I added so much commentary or threw additional ideas at them so much that the story ended up changing and I somehow became a co-author, LOL.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship? Oh my god don't make me answer that ;alskdjfl;k. If I wrote a fic for them ever, they're my favorite. I have so many favorites that I've never written fics for, too.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? THE UNDERCOVER FIIIIIC [sobs] and also Left on Read hnnngh

16. What are your writing strengths? Emotions!! I'm super good at those! I'm also really strong at dialogue and banter, and making my writing kinda witty/funny.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? Describing settings ;w; I write my scenes like I draw my art: in Descriptionless Blank Voids lkas;dlkf. I also struggle with the flow of action scenes sometimes, though I think they usually turn out okay if I spend enough time on them. I also probably use too many adverbs and adjectives, but y'know what? Fuck it I like my descriptive words thank you very much

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? As long as you're checking that it means what you think it means, or possibly asking a native speaker if you're unsure about context or need a sensitivity reader, I think it's fine. It annoys me if I have to check a footnote every other line, but if you can mostly understand it without a translation in context, it can be kinda nice! At least it says you're trying more than phonetically spelling out an accent, which--remember, kids!--is always cringe! 👍

19. First fandom you wrote for? On Ao3, it was Homestuck. On the internet in general, it was Animal Crossing and Pokemon, LOL.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written? Don't make me cHOOSE BETWEEN MY BABIESSS 😭 I dunno man! Project: Matchmakers is my magnum opus, but the PlayWright is lowkey kind of a masterpiece, I love so many of my JSHK fics to bits and pieces, a lot of my MP100 and MHA fics are very special to me, I've been trying to write a HxH one for YEARS and have poured my heart into making it beautiful, just UGHHH every single one of my fics I have vivid memories of conceptualizing and working on and most of them are my favorite to some degree!

I tag @carochinha, @kittykatz009, @toastytoaster22, @ittybittytoostormy, and anyone else who would like to answer these questions!!

#stuff i write #jibaku shounen hanako kun #narumitsu #ace attorney #mp100 #tagged me #hxh #pokemon #friends

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