#like 1200 words

[batrogers]

Civilized Or Not

So there’s some common Zelda fanon I wanna talk about, relating to civilization tropes I think some of y’all haven’t really thought about in detail before, and that’s Hyrule (Zelda 1 &2 Link), Wild (BOTW mostly), and Ravio (LbW).

I’m using the Linked Universe names, because that’s where most of it comes up, because these things happen most often where you can contrast the boys with each other. This is often done, quick and dirty, by people assigning “roles” to each without much thought. Ravio’s unfortunately tends to be extremely pervasive outside LU spaces, too.

But, in brief, there is a trend for people to craft these characters in a framework of innocent vs savagery vs trickery that can have some really unfortunate implications I’m not sure many are even aware of. Hopefully I can explain better where these ideas come from, why they’re so easy and appealing, and why we should try to avoid repeating them for more than just the sake of “easy” but also to stop repeating some really nasty historical tropes.

I would start from what’s probably the simplest one to address: the tendency towards a “feral” personification of Wild. This tends to come from two places: Wild’s amnesia, and the collapse of society around him and his lost place in it.

Now, brain damage is complicated. You can lose a range of things to any given injury because of the way information is encoded differently and in different places. You can lose memory and/or skills and/or coordination and/or balance, etc, because it all depends on what got damaged. But in-game a lot of stuff suggests that Link retains things like speech, reading/writing, coordination, and martial skills. None of the people who knew Link prior to his injury suggest he seems changed in any way not attributed to stress and anxiety...

And, more importantly, real people suffer memory loss just like that in the real world. Treating him like he’s become “feral” due to memory loss is cruel to actual people living with brain damage today, and if you go there you should have a good reason for it.

Social collapse is a wide-spread theme in basically every Zelda game. The threat that the Big Bad poses is almost always the destruction of society as it exists: Malladus literally vanishes the infrastructure of New Hyrule in Spirit Tracks; the Twilight turns people into spirits living lives they don’t realize are questionably real in Twilight Princess; Veran freezes the passage of time to force people to work forever in Oracle of Ages. King Daphnes and Ganondorf under the sea vie over the fate of the world above in Wind Waker: keep what’s been made, or start all over again?

In modern culture, people tell a lot of stories about the fragility of civilization and what happens in its absence. You get the range from Lord of the Flies, in which children wrecked on an island attempt (and fail) to recreate civilization on their own, Kipling’s “The Jungle Book” in which Mowgli is treated as reckless and innocent, and a much more obscure piece from the 18th century “Paul et Virginie” (and likely many more I don’t know offhand.) Essentially all of them play with the question of how do people become civilized, and what happens when they do? In Lord of the Flies, the children were civilized and failed to maintain it; in the Jungle Book, the boy wasn’t civilized and innocently interacts with it. In Paul et Virginie, the children were (relatively) uncivilized on the (French colonized) Mauritius, raised by their mothers but when the girl was sent away, she becomes civilized and dies tragically to preserve it.

The two Links most removed from civilization are Hyrule and Wild. Wild “lost” civilization, losing both his memories of it and the structure of it. Making him feral, without manners, and without a place to belong is that kind of Lord of the Flies savagery mixed with Mowgli’s innocent playfulness: there isn’t a structure to adhere to, so he’s a savage. Whereas Hyrule is more like the Paul eg Virginie side: innocent of civilization, he remains pure and sweet and kind, unable to conceive of big concepts like evil or money or so on. Neither position permits them to interact with the civilization that is right there in front of them! Wild can buy a house; he has people who know and care for him. He has social connections and social rights. The world exists, but the fandom does not seem to want him to interact with it in favour of remaining “wild.” In Zelda 2 – a game explicitly set within a decade of Zelda 1 – there are whole towns with trade and a castle and massive structures with on-going life in them... but very few fans seem to ever reach into that story or relate it back to the first. Hyrule, the character, does not exist within Hyrule, the country.

Strangely, Wind Waker does not fall prey to this, I think because the structures are presented as fait accompli: Link wakes up with his grandmother and his sister, he has a defined home, and a society in which you spend the entire game forced to engage with. Zelda 1 & 2 were not sophisticated enough to waste resources on going as in depth in social terms (although such interactions absolutely exist in Zelda 2!) and BOTW leaves such interactions as optional: you can survive the game with minimal social contact... but it’s a choice to play with it that way, not the default. The ways in which this edges onto the noble savage trope, in which “uncivilized” tribes are either innocent or brutish (rather than complex social systems in their own right) is fairly obvious.

There is one other character in Zelda who gets treated to the question of whether he is an innocent, free of civilization and all its rigour... or something else. Ravio, coming from the devastated world of Lorule, can often wind up slotted into the scared, innocent child trope and unfortunately that’s the better position people frequently take. The worse one evokes the Merchant of Venice: the deceitful, Jewish merchant who values money over people’s lives.

Lorule (and Nintedo’s approach towards their humanoid Zelda villains in general) is near-eastern-coded in many ways, down to the fact that Yuga’s outfit is the spitting image of Ottoman dress. Yuga being a depraved bisexual (a common historical trope about Muslim men towards Christian men and boys), and Hilda being deceitful and conspiring against everyone she was once allied to are a backdrop to the ways in which Ravio is a greedy coward. He’s not an evil character in the game; the mechanic of penalizing death without being too severe is interesting and works well! But that doesn’t take away the stereotype, just like it’s not okay Nabooru is pretty explicitly predatory towards child Link in Ocarina of Time, too.

Arab and Jewish stereotypes often converge, because both people's originate from the same region, and both are hostile "Others" to Christian Europe and Nintendo doesn’t have a great track record of their near-Eastern coding in Zelda. It crosses the whole gamut from harem and amazon tropes with the Gerudo to breath-takingly anti-semitic or anti-black (Ganondorf being green, eg. non-human, in various incarnations), all packaged neatly in the ideal of medieval fantasy Europe. The scale would be impressive if it wasn’t so damn awful, but we can at least stop repeating it in our fanworks.

Wild doesn’t have to be feral to be a playful little shit; Hyrule doesn’t have to be pure and innocent to be kind. Ravio doesn’t need to be innocent or scheming, and he shouldn’t place money over Link’s well-being (If you chose to respawn at home, he is consistently only ever concerned for Link! Once you buy the items outright, he promises he'll still be there to take care of you.)

Do better. It’s more interesting that way, and I want to see that variety grow!

[If any of y'all would like me to dig up better sources on any point, I can do so but I didn't want to bog this post down further. I have largely left the anti-arab stuff alone because it's not the biggest issue with Ravio's fanon presence, which is the focus here.]

#Zelda Meta #Linked Universe #Ravio #LU Wild #LU Hyrule #antisemitism in media #noble savage tropes #bad tropes #Unfortunate implications #LOZ meta #LU meta #Long post #like 1200 words #I'm having a week okay #brain damage #mental illness

[rillils]

rils, absolutely nothing hurts more than bucky saying "its fine, im used to it, ive had worse.." whenever he gets beaten up a lot

It’s the simple, matter-of-fact way he says it, that makes it all the more heartbreaking.

If he were crying, if he were slamming his balled-up fists into the wall, screaming, rioting at the unfairness of it all, Steve thinks it might be just that bit easier. Then, at least he could wipe Bucky’s tears away, dull the sharp knife-edge of Bucky’s grief with his own hands, hold him in his arms until all the parts of him came back together.

But Bucky keeps his grief under the surface, silent; private, except for those glimpses his body lets slip sometimes, in the traitorous set of his tense shoulders, or the blanching of his knuckles digging tight into his thighs, or the painful clenching of his jaw.

He brushes off the bruises, the cuts, the dark blood crusting his suit, shrugging his shoulder as Steve coaxes him into the chair he pulled up for him from the kitchen table.

“I’m fine,” he says, his jaw blossoming purple and blue in Steve’s cupped hand. Says ‘I’m fine’ and means it, just the same as Steve meant it when he used to say ‘I can take it’ after each beating in a piss-rank alley, back in the day. He recognizes it; the intimate need to believe it, to make it true, speak it true, even on the days when it started to taste like a lie.

“I’m used to it,” Bucky assures him, speaking softly in the homely kitchen glow, hand squeezing Steve’s knee with gentle purpose – as though that wasn’t the worst part. As thought it wasn’t the cruelest piece of truth.

He’s used to it.

He’s grown used to it.

There are so many things humans can grow into. Grow better. Grow kinder. Grow older. But Bucky’s grown into the pain, was raised into it, shaped into it, until pain became a natural presence lingering under his skin, twining its ancient roots around his ribs.

“You shouldn’t be used to it,” Steve murmurs, dabbing iodine over the tender-looking cut cresting Bucky’s cheekbone.

He shouldn’t have to be used to it.

Habit can turn even the most terrible things into day-to-day routine, given enough time.

Habit will see the hurt and whisper, It’s okay, it’s just another Tuesday. It doesn’t matter. But it does. It matters so much, so much it’s all Steve can see right now. That’s what he tries to tell Bucky, with the swipe of his thumb over Bucky’s good cheekbone, seeking the places where touch won’t hurt, where the caress will stir only warmth, no lurking aches: It matters. That’s the salve he spreads on Bucky’s bruised cheek, before slipping the band-aid into place, smoothing it over with the pad of his thumb, tender like a naked heart: It matters.

So what if the black and blue will have faded tomorrow, leaving behind nothing but the olive skin Steve has worshipped longer and more fervently than any gods or holy ghosts? So what if the wounds will heal fast, and the flesh knit itself back together till there’s not a pale scar left behind? That doesn’t mean Bucky’s not hurting now. That doesn’t mean the heart won’t remember, even when all the evidence is gone.

Bucky must read his thoughts on his face, easy as leafing through a book.

“It’s nothing, I swear,” he insists, rubbing soothing circles on the meat of Steve’s kevlar-clad thigh, a small, lopsided grin slanted on his lips. “I’ve had much worse than this.”

He seems to regret the words as soon as they’re out of his mouth. Steve sees it, how the grin seals back up and Bucky’s eyes widen for a moment, as if he startled himself. The way his Adam’s apple bobs and his lips part and close and part again, hesitating. “Sweetheart.”

“I know,” Steve says. “It’s okay.”

Worse, in their two-people world, is barely a euphemism for the atrocities Bucky has borne, the likes of which Steve couldn’t have dreamed of even when he used to come home with more black eyes and fractured ribs than his stubborn body could afford to handle. Worse is a sore spot they only ever touch carefully, treading hand in hand on crumbling ground, and doing so takes its toll. There’s a time and a place for Worse, and tonight, Steve estimates, they both lack the spoons for it.

“Tell me something else you’re used to.” He wets his lips. “Something nice.”

Bucky’s eyes soften. In the dim, buttery light, his irises glitter like gems, startlingly pretty, and the corners crinkle just so, roped into a genuine smile. “Something nice, huh?”

His palms curl around Steve’s forearms, pulling him into Bucky’s space; and Steve goes, standing up from his chair only to step into Bucky’s inviting embrace, climbing into his lap, hoarded close in Bucky’s capable arms.

It’s precious, how Bucky has to tip his head back to look him in the eye like this. The way he looks up – looks up at Steve like he’s gazing at the stars, eyes full of wonder, of something soft like Oh, like How. How does something this beautiful exist. How does it bring light here, where the world is at its darkest.

Bucky’s flesh hand comes up to touch him, warm, brushing knuckle-first against his skin to stroke the soft underside of Steve’s chin, his fingers overlapping with Steve’s jawline, raspy with the day’s stubble.

“I could list you a whole bunch of nice somethings,” Bucky rumbles, gaze raking all over Steve’s face to drink him in, here, up close where he won’t miss a single detail. As though he could collect every freckle, every mole and laugh line and tuck them away for safekeeping, treasures that they are.

Steve exhales softly, feeling warmed through. Wanted. Desired. Craved, with that delicate, bone-deep hunger with which one craves a caress from their lover.

“Just give me the first one off the top of your head,” he prompts, whisper-soft, and tastes the word when Bucky breathes: “One”, against the curve of his lips, before capturing them in a kiss.

He lets Steve take the lead, and Steve moves them as he sees fit: slow and gentle, the bruises on Bucky’s face demanding that he take care, softly now, easy does it, as he tilts his head to the side and slips tender into the welcoming heat of Bucky’s mouth, dancing their tongues together.

His fingers sink in Bucky’s hair, cradling the nape of his neck as they part, lingering, close enough to breathe each other’s air.

“'Tell you a secret, though,” Bucky husks, breathing in with his eyes closed, his nose rubbing at Steve’s flushed cheek. He’s so warm, so warm all around him. Holding onto Steve with a need so deep, Steve is sure it’ll bruise him too, heart and soul. “I ain’t ever getting used to this, honey.”

Steve feels himself shiver, heat dripping down his spine. I love you, he feels, starting breathless in his lungs, tingling all the way into his fingertips, straining against the seams of his skin, too big to be held within. I love you, love you, love you–

In a cone of yellow light in their kitchen, he holds Bucky tight, and he doesn’t let go.

#stucky just stucky #but also #stucky #I'M SORRY HONEY THIS JUST HAPPENED I DON'T EVEN KNOW HOW #I TOOK ONE LOOK AT THAT ANGST AND MY BRAIN WAS LIKE 'NOPE. WE SMOOCHIN INSTEAD' #AFSHDGSDFJKFGFLGKHJGHòLKJJK #i'm sorry idek what this is #it's so laaaaaaaaaaaaaate #and i only read it once so god knows what kind of nonsense is hiding in there #halppp #rillers scribbles #some 1200 words pulled out of my aeeeeeeee #it's the sleep deprivation i'm telling ya #*cries in under-eye bags*

[ladyintree]

@warpainte  [...] everything was supposed to go back to ‘normal’ now.     she won the election against the odds,  the blackmailer was dead and no longer threatening to dig up their past,    mikayla was out of town and no longer taunting tai with their a history that no longer felt like history,    and tai assumed with all the stresses put to rest,   that she was finally done sleepwalking again,   and she could brush it all off as a fluke.    it was just the stress of the election,  the blackmail,   the blast from the past,   nothing more,   nothing real to worry herself with.   the rest was supposed to be simple   —    there was no reason for her family not to return to her now,   so that tai could finally repair that piece of her life as if it were that simple,   not taking into account that simone had her reasons for staying away — even before what exposed what tai herself was not aware of happening in their own basement.

simone’s warning forced tai to face what she had been avoiding  —   that this wasn’t just as simple as sleepwalking over temporary chaos,   it wasn’t as simple as accidentally letting their dog out,   it wasn’t as simple as a waiting it out until it was all over,  for her family to return to her as if nothing happened,   like taissa wasn’t struggling and hadn’t betrayed them.     something darker was going on here,   something taissa has told herself for 25 years now that she didn’t ever believe in —-  so why is it here,    and what does it mean?    sammy’s doll,    a picture-perfect image of her son,    along with their pet dog,   topped off with a symbol that used to make her angry,   horrify her,   and give her some strange sense of hope all at once.   in some way,   she does know what it all means:    it means that she was right to tell her family to leave,   and it means that simone was right to want to keep sammy away,   and worst of all,   it means simone is right about tai being sick.   she’s not ready to face that,   not ready to face her. 

is this what you wanted?    the words play on repeat in her head,   only from a dream,   but when she looked at simone in that hospital bed,   it’s all she can think about.   simone had done nothing but support her over the years,   but the idea of her trying to get tai help made her feel trapped,   completely out of control of her own life,   and tai refused to listen,   only making it so much worse in the process.   she was fine before simone exposed the altar in the basement,   she was convincing herself she was thriving,   that she was finally back on track —-  but now,   ever since seeing it for herself,   she’s only spiraled more,   to the point where she’s barely standing on her own anymore,   barely conscious,   and making no commitment to wait here with her wife.

she doesn’t remember how she got here.   that should terrify her,   because it means she’s only losing more control,    but for a moment,   she’s not thinking about that.   she’s never been here before,   but she knows exactly where she is —-   standing in front of mikayla’s home,   moments away from knocking and facing her again after she’d said goodbye just a few days ago,   assuming it was forever.   it’s finally starting to hit her what she’s really doing:    she’s almost ready to admit that she needs help,   but not from the person who’s been offering it,   trying so hard to give it to her even when tai doesn’t deserve the support from her.   no,   she came here because she’s always been drawn to her,   the person who has helped her before,   even when she didn’t know how,   because she wasn’t trying to give her help in ways that tai found so debilitating.   she helped her because she understood her —-  which is something tai has never given her wife the opportunity to do,   because the way she’s presented herself since rescue has always been so calculated,   so much so that even she could convince herself that was who she really was.   being around mikayla again only reminded her that it wasn’t,   that she was always going to be the person she was out in that wilderness with her —-   so now she's here,   despite no real welcome,   despite no preparation,   despite no reason for mikayla to actually give her the time of day,   but with as much as she’s lost even after assuming her life was finally settled,   this is the only place that feels right to be.    

the person on mikayla’s doorstep is not the same woman she almost kissed nights ago.   while her confidence was already faltering that night,  it’s nothing compared to this —-   bags under her bloodshot eyes,   shoulders slumped,  hair a mess,  clothes disheveled.   the state senator elect is certainly a sight to see like this,   but one that mikayla will likely be able to understand all too well:    it’s the same sleep deprived,  panicked,  barely coherent girl she used chase through the wilderness many years ago.   tai isn’t considering what it will be like for mikayla to see her like this,   she’s not considering the fact that reaching out to her like this is entirely unfair given her refusal to do the same for all those years mikayla was in prison,   and she’s definitely not considering the fact that it could be her wife who answers the door instead.    all she’s thinking about is that she needs mikayla desousa.    it’s selfish,  inconsiderate,  but maybe brave,  too —  because as she reaches her hand up to knock on the door,   she suddenly freezes.   instead of knocking,   her hand moves back to her hair,   attempting to tame the curls before smoothing her sweater in front of her.   she clears her throat,   trying to recall the last time she brushed or teeth or changed her clothes — everything before getting off that train is a blur to her now,   and she realizes she’s entirely unprepared for this,   but it’s far too late to turn back now.   

she takes a deep breath, but her usual attempt to collect herself before a confrontation fails. she realizes now that there's nothing that can properly prepare her for this conversation, she can only hope that mikayla will understand without forcing it out of her — or worse, slamming the door in her face. she shrugs it off, because she led herself here for a reason, leaving behind the people she should have been catering to instead; it can't be for nothing. finally, she knocks on the door, the tired eyes lifting into something that's almost a hopeful smile as she waits for her.

the door opens, and her legs suddenly feel wobbly, her hand quickly reaching for the door frame just to hold herself steady. but her features contradict the rest of her exhausted body language, and she starts to smile upon seeing her, as if that's going to distract her from everything else that's wrong with her ( everything mikayla knows so intimately, even years later. ) tai makes no effort to try to explain herself, no attempt to make this any less weird than it is. all she does is give her a small nod, her voice innocently muttering a simple, ❝  hi. ❞

#warpainte #arc: warpainte / adult. #arc: adult. #replies. #i love giving you a 1200 word starter with 1 word of dialogue. it's like home to me

[wistfulwatcher]

#SEND HELP MAN DOWN MAN DOWNNNNNNN #i literally stopped the episode and wrote 1200 words kskdjkskdkkd #the girls on the bus #tgotb spoilers #otp: reunited and it feels so good #I'm not even joking i haven't had any desire to write until i woke up today and wrote a practice drabble for another fandom #just to like see if the juices were flowing again and i was mildly happy about it. AND THEN. THAT PHONE CALL #wistfulwatcher text #sort of

[blusandbirds]

jason and bruce (went looking for a creation myth, ended up with a pair of cracked lips)

fight club (chuck palahniuk) // batman (#650) // batman: under the red hood (2010) // at the dinner table with god and my father (b: william bearhart) // corpus christi (terrence mcnally) // the sun is also a star (nicola yoon) // sun bleached flies (ethel cain) // i know the end (phoebe bridgers)

#web weaving #dc comics #jason todd #bruce wayne #batman #red hood #batman: under the red hood #utrh #ur fully welcome to ignore everything else i've ever posted but like yeah this is the one #this popped into my head when i had 1200 words of a paper left to write but took immediate precedence #fathers and sons #fathers and god #you know like theyre soo #if you love me its not in any way i understand #and so on

[grahamcore]

went over a year without writing and the thing that brings me back is the saw franchise i am so humiliated

#it’s just like. what does this say about me as a person #i’ve never even written for hannibal not because i don’t want to but because there’s so much to unpack there #i legitimately don’t know where to begin. one day i’ll do it it’s just daunting #but saw? no problem. i’ve got three wips. wrote 1200 words between classes. nothing can stop me #saw #chainshipping #bea buzzing

[djinn-ale]

girls when they bite and maim and plot your demise

#transformers #maccadam #<- using this tag bc everyone else seems to be.? transformers enjoyers please explain #transformers g1 #starscream #megatron #heh. <- his ass is NOT beating the starscream enjoyer allegations #ok listen i prommy he is not my favie hes just the first transformer i learned how to draw and i just stuck to it #erm also sorry to anyone who followed me for lupin LMAO ur gonna have to put up with me fandom hopping every 2 posts #man i cant believe im posting fanart again. what a 1200 word essay do to a mf #LOL I SCHEDULED THIS POST AND THEN FOUND OUT THAT SOMEONE BEAT ME TO THE AH ETO BLEH JOKE #whats even the point anymore. #<- /j but like um i swear i thought of it by myself :pray: #art tag

[zishuge]

i woke up last night in the middle of the night with the terrible, terrible thought that one day, hulijing would pass, and then it would be like li lianhua is gone for good

#and then i couldn't stop thinking about it #and then i wrote 1200 words about fang duobing and di feisheng and hulijing traveling (and aging) together in a world without li lianhua #i'm not well #mysterious lotus casebook #i'm not well. #cw: pet death #my dog is sick i think that's why #she's fine she's just unwell #like me #update it’s now 1700 words #my ramblings

[bryverros]

ao3 writers are my heroes. i love cherish and appreciate every single one of you, your dedication is so so admirable even though you sometimes get inconveniently sold for body parts and it takes you longer than a week to update

#the body parts part was a joke #:) #anyhow ive been working on a fic for the first time in like five years and i havent got the foggiest clue how people manage to write #decently looking fanfiction #ive been sitting over my document for what feels like centuries and i came up with 1200 words. theyre also really mid and really below #my standards so like wtf bye #ao3 #ac talks

[summerfevers]

if you’re up to it i would very much like to know your white collar neal timeline🎤🎤

this turned out to have many asides and be very long so the tl;dr is: peter have you considered that he's just a twenty-something teenage girl :( ?

timeline:

neal born 1984 ish. he's an aries and a millennial

neal, ellen, and neal's mom go into witsec 1987, neal age 3

2003 adler scandal i fucking guess. neal age 19

neal arrested probably mid 2005, 21

neal goes to jail for the first time, i want to say early 2006, age almost 22

pilot is set late summer 2009, age 25

same-sex marriage legalized in new york june 24th 2011, they talk about this in season 3 episode 14 which is soon after. neal's 27

more or less a year later–let's go with less–neal tells sam that he has spent the last decade running from the truth he learned at 18. taking him literally that it was 10 years ago he is now 28 it is the end of season 4 and 2012

the end of season 4 to the series finale is less than a year. he is 29 its 2013.

when we see him in paris he might be 30 but that doesn't count To Me

i present my evidence:

i don't know where we got "neal is 35" from i cant make it work. neal and co. went into witsec (which i have actually since learned is not available to people living in dc, they have their own version but it is not overseen by the federal marshalls, i don't think they can give you as many legal documents like a ssn, and they don't help you set up your new life as much? something about neal's life that would be interesting to explore.) when he was three and ellen says in season 4 that she's been in witsec for Nearly three decades. confirmed 33 or under in season 4

he also says to "sam" more than once that he's spent the last decade running from the truth he learned at 18–he very well could be rounding down here and mean like 12-13 years but i am Choosing to Believe he meant that literally. we are now at youngest 28, it is the last episode of season 4.

now due to the way the show is structured and the fact that it is never really winter. ok maybe winter 1 time because i can see in my mind neal in his little wool coat and earmuffs but largely it is summer and we never have a christmas episode. anyway due to All That our only real anchor in the timeline is that the episode where diana is Grappling with her engagement to Christie happens immediately following june 24th 2011, when same-sex marriage was legalized in new york. and also that later that season in the commutation hearing they say that neal has served 2 years of his sentence. so the pilot was set in 2009 when it aired we are at one year/season. but as the series goes on the episodes and even seasons have increasingly shorter gaps between them, and by season 6 we haven't even finished our four years. by the end of season 4 i want to say we are three years into his sentence and he's 28. between the end of season 4 and when neal dies in season 6 there has got to be less than a year that passes. actually deadass why was neal so obsessed with the pink panther case ending his sentence early we are like months out king. i get the injustice the system is broken they'd keep him forever but to people outside his circle he must have looked sooo silly for that. but whatever. he is 29 when he dies and 30 when we see him again in paris, his roaring 20s of crime and incarceration over.

Anyway where the "neal is 35 or at least claims to be much older than this timeline would say he is" probably came from in-universe is that the adler scandal takes place SEVEN years before s2 when peter confronts neal about it. 2003?????? guys the thing we have to understand, to embrace, about neal's personal timeline is that i do not think anyone in that writers room was really grasping how much they had neal do in so short a time. 2003 he is like 19 guys. maybe by the time peter says it was 7 years ago it was 2011 ? and the adler thing was 2004? but no that couldn't work because it's mid 2011 like a year later in s3. so basically neal walks out of st louis and has a magical girl transformation through which he immediately becomes a great conman and criminal. and he meets mozzie basically straight away. he should still be in like calculus and ap lit at this juncture. and then they go right into the adler con ??? and neal is obviously lying through his teeth to everyone saying he is at least 21 but probably more along the lines of 23. and while most of his aliases are eventually found out by peter if no one else, no one ever goes "wait IS HE a teenager?" no one is guessing this.

so we spend a couple months fucking around and fucking UP with adler, kate probably doesn't know how old we actually are, this relationship cannot actually last very long at all because we are truly on a time crunch right now. we have less than three years for neals entire criminal career before he goes to jail. i know i said on the bullet list he went to jail early 2006 he has got to have been arrested like summer 2005 at the latest to be tried and sentenced by then and i feel like even that might be tight because he was suspected of so many other things they wanted to get evidence for. but how is neal teaching kate to be a criminal less than a year into his own career. i think neal must have been a hardcore improv kid for this to work honestly. i bet he competed. so our golden days of mozzie neal and kate against the world lasts maybe a year at best before neal and kate fight and she leaves and he spends months trying to get her back and get her attention and commits a truly breathtaking amount of crimes in this time.

also i'm skipping through forging bonds right now trying to flesh out this timeline and it was incredibly shady of peter and co to see that kate is doing so much to stay hidden from her ex boyfriend and then to reveal her to neal in order to catch him. like that was fucked up they didn't know neal yet he hadn't been suspected of violent crimes but they didn't know why kate was working so hard to escape him. like it worked out ok (arguably, but that could be a different post) but they had no reason to trust neal not to hurt her like this. she could have been running from an abusive situation he's known to be a talented criminal with no fears about escalating his crimes he could have killed her. one thing about the fbi is that they never once care about kate's safety and it does indeed get her killed one day.

in conclusion neal is known as one of the best forgers in the world when he is arrested in 2005 at age 21 maybe 2 years into his criminal career. here i am 21 what have i accomplished

#hiiiiiii LOVE your wc fic explorations of neals childhood are everything To Me and really your characterization of danny brooks is exactly #the kind of child neal would have to be for him to have been essentially a child prodigy at white collar crime #truly hes gotta be canon #also one more thing why is james in that flashback like have a good day at school 🥰 or whatever. neal is 2 or 3 and his mom didnt seem #to work so he didnt have daycare. where tf is he going #anyway thank you for coming to my ted talk future talks will discuss my conflicting opinions on how neal and kates relationship is treated #in canon and how neal was obviously not an early 2000s emo kid but frankly? maybe he should have been. good night #white collar #poplars.txt #just put this throufh a word counter 1200??? sorry. #this post is nearly twice the word count of the assignment i was procrastinating while i wrote it 🧍

[elisedonut]

Ok but listen au where this event I wrote into Camera Cutie ended differently and Percy did confiscate Colin's camera meaning for it just to be temporarily like over night or something leading to Percy being stuck not only with the guilt of Colins death but also Colin's ghost following him around.

#percy weasley #Colin creevey #I fixed it #Why does tumblr hide stuff sometimes I don't understand #Why taking away the g word for a second added it to the tag who knows #fanfic preview #I'm like 1200 words into this so far #Colin Creevey/Percy Weasley

[nostalgia-tblr]

i need to stop writing fic with history footnotes D:

#1200 words of “ottoman succession thorki” whyyyyyy #actually it's not even thorki they're just brodinsons in this #*checks list* knives - yes; murder - yes; ambitious queens - yes... okay i think that's all the important stuff added. #it's important to me that people know what i stole from where!! and this particular fratricide contest is not an original concept! #i have ripped this plot from the 16th century headlines! like any normal person would! #(also i hope this fic doesn't end up being orientalist somehow - there's enough of that sort of thing in this fandom already)

[mydetheturk]

oh fuck its's sunday six sentences time

~~

Vash did something with his mouth that could be considered, if Wolfwood were generous, a smile. Not a nice or particularly pleasant smile, but a smile. It was more a baring of teeth than anything else, a reminder that Vash wasn’t human.

Wolfwood slipped the rosary off his neck, pooled the beads on Vash’s throat. “Don’t move,” he said. The wooden beads clicked together, vibrating slightly as Vash made a noise deep in his vocal cords.

#trigun #vashwood #vash the stampede #nicholas d. wolfwood #myde writes #i have been #working on this fic #for what feels like months #and its still only 1200 words #all i want out of it is wolfwood making vash come so hard he sees shrimp colors #thats all #maybe vash glows or sprouts feathers because of said aforementioned shrimp colors #also any excuse to write wolfwood having religious quandaries about having sex with an angel is always a good excuse #maybe i'll work on this on my day off this week #haha my tags are longer than my sentences #fuck me i guess

[imanes]

june so far part two (exhaustion and breakdowns were not catalogued)

#i was so proud of my 3000 words ON THE DOT #I did have to chop off like 1200 words but it’s fine

[presidentbungus]

after the war, engy calls spy. there are emotions involved. 1647 words

ao3

The phone rings.

Spy, standing to put away his book (he won't be needing it for the rest of the night, he supposes), waits for his caller to speak first, which as usual doesn't take long.

"Bonjour." He can practically hear the lopsided smile forming over the other end of the line. "May I ask who I'm speakin' to?"

"You were the one who called me, no?" He snuffs his cigarette out on an ashtray carefully placed on the windowsill and looks out onto the lights of the city. It's almost enough to make him miss seeing the stars, the way they were out in the desert. "Engineer, need I remind you that I specifically stated this line for emergencies?"

"You say that every time you pick up and ya still keep pickin' up…"

"And need I remind you, Engineer, that Paris is six hours ahead of your time, and that you are calling me at two AM."

"Seven," he says softly. "Seven hours. You weren't asleep, huh."

There are few things Spy hates more than the tone he tends to get when he asks those questions. "You could have woken me up."

"Could have."

He knows there's nothing else to say, really. "… I promise I'm managing without your tenacious insistence."

The sigh that comes rattling over the line makes him want to tear out his eyes, maybe. "Sure. Well, uh… how's everything else going? Smooth, I hope?"

"The status of my operations is classified…" Pause just long enough to hear him start to protest… "But yes, my day was alright."

"Just alright?"

"It was good."

"That's good."

Better, now that you called me.

… That sounds like something he'd say. Spy taps his fingers against the windowsill, letting himself lean against it even if his suit probably shouldn't be touching the plaster. "… Mmm-hmm. And I presume it is the same for you?"

"Yeah. Um, Medic finally wrote me back—got some country's various officials on his tail, I guess, so he told me he's coming down here and I guess we're gonna fake his death again."

"What's the current count?"

"Fourth… or fifth time. I think this time we're just gonna drop his coat in a river and call it good."

"Ingenious." (Pause for the 'shut up' rattling over the line). "And you're sure it'll work?"

"Yeah, sure. Some point they have to give up, right?"

Spy snorts. "Giving up is not a particular talent of a good number of international governments."

"Well, I didn't ask for your opinion, so how about that." There's a pause, then: "What about you, you got any word from anyone else?"

"Mmm… Scout's been sending me letters… it would be touching, if I could read them."

"If anyone could break through the impenetrable wall of Scout's handwriting, Spy, it'd be you. What's he saying?"

What to paraphrase? "That I still stink, that he's finding a bittersweet place in his old home as what I imagine to be a horrible uncle to his sibling’s children, that I should be paying three times as much for child support… and that, regrettably, he misses me and thinks that I should return home for the holidays.”

“Aw. You better make the trip.”

“If work permits,” Spy says, which by now Engie probably knows means: I’ll think about it. “What about you, laborer? Grand plans for Christmas?”

“Well…” He chuckles mischievously, which is a bad sign. “Actually, yeah. I’ve been cookin’ something up for a hot second. Don’t ask ‘cause it’s a secret.”

“Alright.”

Three, two, one…

“You piss me right off sometimes.”

“Gracias.”

“I’m gonna, uh… y’know, it hasn’t really worked out before, but I already got RSVP’s from most of everyone…”

“Oh no, don’t tell me.”

“Y’know how I always wanted to do a big ol’ team reunion? Well Scout was already inviting everyone he had an address for, so, like… might as well…”

“He didn’t invite me.”

“He did, he just didn’t say it was a team reunion ‘cause we were worried you’d try and weasel out of it.” He pauses for a second. “For the record, I wasn’t supposed to tell you.”

“Mmm.”

There’s a pause, for a little too long, and then: “Please just come, Spy. It’d mean a lot to Scout.”

“Just Scout?”

… That was more over the line than he usually goes. Whoops.

“I mean… I’d like to see you in person too. For once.”

Still lighthearted, but there’s a bit of bitterness there. Spy feels like he might’ve messed something up. “I see.”

“… Well… okay. Call me back whenever you’re ready to give an actual answer.”

He takes offense to this, but not enough to risk saying anything about it. “I will.”

“You’re just… you just get under my skin sometimes, y’know?”

“Hm?”

“All those little half-answers and… little digs, makin’ it hard to tell what you mean or not, like… is it that hard to just give a yes or no once in a while?”

Spy purses his lips, and apparently doesn’t give an answer fast enough, because Dell continues:

“It’s just… sometimes talking to you is a puzzle. And it used to be a fun puzzle but now it just gets exhausting, and I don’t goddamn know what goes on in your head but it just feels like apathy, or fear, or just period in general dislike—“

“What do you mean?”

“I’m telling you what I mean. Scout wants you to go home and see some people who care about you for the first time in ages and you won’t even answer me when I ask you to tell me if you’ll come or not…”

“You didn’t ask, you just implied a question—“

“And most people would pick up the goddamn question,” he barks. “What, do you need me to ask it explicitly? Look, are you coming or not? Yes or no?”

His chest burns, a little. “… Yes. Fine.”

“Good. Great. That wasn’t hard.”

“Dell, if you don’t enjoy calling me then you shouldn’t feel obligated to call me.”

He knows Dell enjoys calling him for some bizarre reason—and he knows this isn’t the issue, but it squirms out of his mouth anyway, in the way a lot of things do now. He knows there are a lot of things this is about. He can’t quantify anything specifically and he doesn’t want to.

The silence lasts a little too long, and it’s cutting. “You don’t think that’s what this is about, do you?”

Spy keeps his mouth shut.

He sighs. “I’m just… obviously I’d stop calling you if it was a problem, Spy. You know that.”

Of course he knows. He worries about it every night.

“There are some bits I like about you and there are some bits I don’t like. Same as everybody else. Fortunately for you, there are enough bits I like that I keep coming back—“ he laughs—“because I do enjoy talkin’ to you, even if the bits I don’t like are really goddamn infuriating sometimes.”

“…”

“And I’m, just… you’ve… god, how do I phrase it. Look, I know we’ve reached the time of night where you start shutting down, and I don’t need any more in-depth out of you, alright?”

“… Okay.”

He’s silent for a little bit. “Don’t ever imply again that I don’t like you, okay? ‘Cause I do. More than you…” He trails off. “Probably think.”

“Okay. I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright. And just… I dunno. I think you’re afraid of me sometimes, and I don’t get it, but I guess sometimes I just don’t get things and that’s fine. But if there’s anything you can do to get it through your head that you’re safe with me, however you define it—just—try it, okay?”

Spy rubs his eyes and his hands come away wet. “I… don’t… know.”

“I know. It’s fine.”

“… Okay.”

“A little bit of vulnerability once in a while ain’t gonna kill you, okay?”

“I know.”

“Do you want me to let you go now?”

He’s sobbing, now. Dell can probably hear it over the phone. “I think so.”

“Okay, Spy. If you need anything else you know where to find me.” He pauses. “Look forward to seeing you there. See if Scout left a date in the letters, and if he didn’t let me know so I can tell you when to be down there. All good?”

Spy hangs up, and stumbles over to his bed, and collapses, cringing when he feels his suit-collar wet with tears against his neck.

Damn it all to hell. Part of him just wants to get his number changed, move addresses, disappear into the ether (which is what he’s good at, anyway)—but the other part, stubborn and treacherous—the part Dell put there—tells him that he couldn’t do that to what are, regrettably, the only people who really care for him. Who care for him for stupid, dangerous, inexplicable reasons, but who care for him all the same, and who he unfortunately cares for as well.

In the end, he knows the conclusion he’s going to reach about Dell before he even starts analyzing the conversation line-by-line like he usually tends to do; it’s the same conclusion he reaches every single time, that he feels more for Dell than he should and it’s probably the same the other way around. He just desperately, desperately wishes he were brave enough to act on it, and he dreads the day that one of them finally does.

He’s still crying like a toddler when he tumbles into uneasy darkness, too exhausted to dream, and when he wakes up five hours later in a puddle of drool he knows something’s changed, and he just hopes it’s for the better, whatever that means.

Dell will call him again tonight. He won’t be ready, but it’ll be fine, because it’s Dell. He will not ponder the implications of this statement.

#I wrote 1200 words of this in one sitting lol #on a roll. something like that #bungus snippets #bungus fics #why not both #tf2 spy #tf2 engineer #engiespy #napoleon complex #tf2

[solstheimtxt]

i really wanna do the whole post me3 fic thing but also like

#delete later #i have ideas but no filler #also like 90% is ocs and thats only interesting to me #which is fine #but idkkkk #i barfed out 1200 words of idea (like a correspondance kind of thing) but also: i accidentally fucked my own timeline over lmaooo #i just need an action plan of how imma do thi #*this #hmmmm *thinking face emoji* #anyways bye