The Catwalk

me, anytime I leave the house

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Send questions about yourself

Ask questions to/about your characters

Ask about your headcanons 

Send questions about your works (fanfics, art, music, RPs, etc) 

Ask about popular ships/headcanons

Ask about plot ideas you’ve had but haven’t acted upon yet (snippets of AUs, a scenario you wish to write/draw but haven’t gotten to yet)

Questions about other ships/headcanons that aren’t as popular or are rarepairs

Questions or comments about favorite tropes, headcanons, characters, foods, weather, or anything else you are okay in answering!

When people don’t reply to me, my first thought is:

“Oh dear, I must have done something wrong and now they’re upset with me.”

Then after I’ve thought over all my recent interactions with them, I conclude that I probably haven’t done anything that would warrant them being really upset with me, and that I am probably just overthinking it and likely they’re just really busy.

Then my next thought - 

“Oh no maybe they’re dead!”

Then I proceed to go through all their recent social media posts to determine proof of life. 

When I don’t find anything up to date (i.e within a day), I message someone close to them and have a casual conversation and then casually drop in somewhere “oh have you heard from so and so lately?” 

And then the friend will confirm that they have. So I’m like, casually, “oh cool, great, yeah.”

And then in my head I’m like “so they’re alive but they haven’t replied back to me…

maybe I’ve done something wrong and now they’re upset with me.”

And I’m back to square one again. 

Post Captain The Wool Garment Part III

Desert crossing.

V - Which character do you relate to most?

L - Say something genuinely nice about a character who isn’t one of your faves. (Characters you’re neutral about are fair game, as are characters you merely dislike. Characters that you absolutely loathe with the fire of ten thousand suns are exempt, as there is no point in giving yourself an aneurysm over a character that you hate.)

T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending? 

Great questions thanks @thiefbird

L - Shran

I am a bit neutral about him but he strikes me as being really kind, like underneath it all.

T - yes, Trip lives! These are the voyages never happened!

V - I think it has to be Malcolm Reed 😁

So we are both introverts - that scene in Minefield where he has to have breakfast with the Captain and he’s so nervous walking up to the door, and then the small talk about sport and football which he fails at miserably - it’s just so excruciatingly relatable. 

We are both English and didn’t grow up in England - at least, there’s a hint in Enterprise that Malcolm spent part of his childhood in Malaysia. There’s a lot of assumptions that go with accents, and I love fics which explore how Malcolm might not have had the cultural upbringing that the crew were expecting, and their reactions to that. 

We are both from military families and I totally get the whole “I was taught not to fraternise with senior officers” bit and how difficult he finds it to relate to those in authority over him on a friendship level - like, he’s not got any script or frame of reference for what it looks like to be friends with your commanding officer / teacher / person in authority over you. I grew up on air bases and going to the military schools and being part of a community where everything is structured and hierarchical, where you know your place and what’s expected of you and what to expect of others. I can totally understand why Malcolm freaks out when Archer goes “off script” and deviates from what he expects his commanding officer to be like.  

The food thing - in one episode Trip tells another character in horror that Malcolm once ate the same thing every day for a year - I remember watching that for the first time thinking “oh thank goodness someone else does that too” because I eat the same things every day too. Steve Jobs wore the same black clothes each day so he wouldn’t have to waste brain energy on what to wear, and that’s how I feel about food, it’s just fuel.

Oh yes and he loves reading. When I read Ulysses by James Joyce for the first time people thought I was a bit strange and it felt a bit isolating, but then later when I watched Shuttlepod One and Malcolm told Trip he was reading it, it was the best feeling 😁

thanks for the ask! 🖖

G, N?

Thanks for these questions @saintzenni, really interesting to think about! 

G - Have you ever had an OTP? If so, do you remember your first one? Who was in it?

I feel like my OTP is my blueprint for all my other pairings that have come after - so it’s Lizzie and Darcy from Pride and Prejudice because I love how they go from enemies to friends (in their case more than friends ). So with all my other subsequent pairings - I really like it when the characters start off not liking each other, and yet there’s this spark of intrigue or interest or something, and then they become friends. E.g Jack and Stephen in the Aubrey / Maturin series where their first meeting they call each other out and arrange a duel. Or the film version of Man From Uncle where Illya and Napoleon keep fighting each other. Or Enterprise with Malcolm and Trip going at it in Shuttlepod One tearing strips off each other and then becoming best friends. 

N - Name three things you wish you saw more or in your main fandom (or a fandom of choice)

A general one for all fandoms - bibliographies at the end of fics! I would love to read the author’s bibliography and see what their influences have been for that particular fic, or research sources, web pages, or things that inspired them e.g a song or film or piece of art etc. 

2. This is a personal one but I wish there were more “Gen” stories of Malcolm and Trip, or Malcolm and Hayes - stories that focus on these pairings with all their complexities and nuances.

3. Probably following on from that - I wish there was more fanfic about the adult Madeleine Reed, interacting with Malcolm and the rest of the crew. I loved seeing her in Silent Enemy, how smiley and open she was and how different she was from Malcolm - I’d love to see more of her and how she relates to Malcolm and how he relates to her, like as adults.

Thanks for the ask! 🖖

B, C, and K, for the ask game!

Ooh great questions @themurdochmemesteries

B - A pairing–platonic, romantic or sexual–that you initially didn’t consider, but someone changed your mind.

I think it has to be Hayes and Malcolm - I never really looked too closely at them before as I just focused on Malcolm and Trip’s friendship, but the Enterprise fandom with its fanfic and Tumblr posts made me rethink their relationship, to the extent that I wrote my first Hayes and Malcolm fic a few weeks ago. I think there is something interesting about how finally Malcolm has someone who can understand where he’s coming from and help lighten the load security-wise but then instead of working together Malcolm just gets insanely paranoid round him and then they beat each other up. I haven’t quite got my head round this pairing yet but am already sold on it! 

C - A ship you have never liked and probably never will.

Chakoty and Seven of Nine. I’m still trying to convince myself it never happened. 

K - What character has your favorite development arc/the best development arc

I’m gonna say Malcolm - not just because he is my favourite character but I think it’s because of how, at the beginning, nobody knows much about him - Trip says they talked about power couplings when they spent time together in the armoury. But then as the series goes on, and Malcolm starts trusting people and getting comfortable with them, we see him actually volunteering information about himself. 

So, side tangent - when we adopted our little one, he didn’t speak to anyone for the longest time, and it’s only recently that he’s begun telling his teacher random facts and things, and it’s still so novel and rare that the teacher will tell me, “oh he told me this piece of information today!” and it just reminds me so much of Malcolm, how Malcolm just gradually starts randomly telling people stuff, like in Hatchery they’re all walking along the corridor in the alien ship and then Malcolm says out of nowhere, “my dad collected beetles” and then in another episode when he’s with Trip in engineering he just goes out of the blue  “when I was younger I always wanted to build a Time Machine”, like he’s gradually starting to trust these people to the extent that he starts blurting out random facts about himself, and I just think that’s really cool character development 😁

Thanks for the ask! 🖖

I wanted to spell you a word for the ask game and I've gone with WATCH 🖖

Ha that’s really cool @unmaskedcardinal I didn’t even think of using the letters to spell a word!

W - A trope which you are virtually certain to hate in any fandom.

Probably when the characters age up somehow and get old really quick. It happens sooooo much in sci-fi, usually to my favourite character too!

A - Ships that you currently like a lot. (They don’t have to be OTPs because not everyone has OTPs.) Friendships, pairings, threesomes, etc. are allowed.

Currently - (defining currently as in past week or so) - 

So my little one has happily become obsessed with Watership Down recently, we’ve watched the Netflix version with James McAvoy and John Boyega so many times (it’s really good, I tear up every time - you can see it on YouTube. Don’t watch the completely traumatising cartoon version though) - so I would say Hazel and Bigwig, they have a great enemies-to-friends thing going. 

Nathan and Kelly in Misfits, which I am rewatching just to chill my brain out from fanfic - I love how they just accept each other without trying to change each other, and just how much they delight in each other being themselves.

Jack and Stephen from Aubrey / Maturin series - @ola-na-tungee has been posting cartoons of various scenes from the books recently which are so well done. I love how they are both each other’s heroes.

T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending? 

Someone asked me a little while ago if I had any head canons and I thought I didn’t but I’ve since realised that I probably have quite a few - the main one being that Trip didn’t die in Star Trek Enterprise and that These are the voyages didn’t happen. I think a lot of Enterprise fans share this head canon! 

C - A ship you have never liked and probably never will

Chakotay and Seven of Nine in voyager. So wrong.

H - What is your favorite source text for fandom stuff (e.g., TV shows, movies, books, anime, Western animation, etc.)?

I think the original source which in my case is the TV shows or films. I need it to be visual.

Thank you for the ask! 🖖

E, n, u for the letters ask please! 🖖

E - Have you added anything cracky/hilarious to your fandom? If so, what?

Yes, but not recently! These were back in early early high school. I wrote a very short, very bad Draco Malfoy/Apple(as in the fruit) fic once. I hope to god it has been lost to time. I will not tell anyone what my fanfiction dot net username was. I also wrote a Doctor Who/Supernatural/Sherlock/X Files/Star Trek: The Original Series/Warehouse 13/The Yellow Submarine(not Beatles RPF because the only character was Jeremy Hillary Boob, PhD aka The Nowhere Man)/Invader Zim crackfic extravaganza in collab with @gabrielnovakgoestomyschool (there may have been another fandom that I forgot). I do not know if it has survived the passage of time. I almost hope it did. They were all in this incredibly Escher-esque grocery store trying to get milk. I guess recently I accidentally wrote "Loghain Mac Tit" instead of "Loghain Mac Tir" when starting a post, took one look at it, and just posted it without further elaboration. I don't know if anyone ELSE thought it was funny, but I definitely did.

N - Name three things you wish you saw more or in your main fandom (or a fandom of choice).

U - Three favorite characters from three different fandoms, and why they’re your favorites.

Anders - I love an underdog, I love a revolutionary, I love a pathetic tall man who looks like he hasn't slept in a month, I love a man who will make Those Sounds when he kisses me. Also he loves cats and complaining; same, Anders. More seriously, I think he's a deeply misunderstood character by both those around him in canon, by his writing team and Bioware as a whole, and by the general fandom(not any of my beloved mutuals, we are all in the Right About Anders club); despite this, I do think he is a cohesive character. I just don't necessarily think that he is a cohesive character on purpose. I love the implications of his bonding with Justice, and the avenues it opens up for writing. I fully believe that Anders believes that he corrupted Justice into Vengeance, and that Vengeance is a demon; I just don't believe it's true.

Stephen Maturin - Ohhh, Stephen, my beloved. Patrick O'Brian cooked you up in a lab specifically to make me insane (nevermind the fact that I was three years old when he died) - mine is a fated obsession, to the point that I actually had a crazy-dramatic, toxic relationship with an autistic Trinity College naturalist for four and a half years directly out of high school; my brain simply had not fully learned that Stephen Maturin existed (I'd seen the movie once or twice and listened to the soundtrack ad nauseum because of my mother but never payed much attention), and fixated on the next best thing. Here is my Stephen Maturin propaganda: He's a tiny, angry little man who calls animals and friends and his wife alike "honey" and "my dear" and "acushla/a chuisle" (I will never forget the "awwwwwwww" that came from my mouth the one time he called Tom Pullings honey). He calls his best friend "soul" and "joy", and his other best friend "honey-bun". He's an International Super Spy, one of the most effective in the British service, and refuses to be paid for it because he hates tyranny so much (he does not like English colonialism either, but he has decided that England is the best way to beat Napoleon). He's an Irish and Catalan revolutionary (I did say I love a revolutionary), who is somewhat in hiding in the first book because of his associations with The Society of United Irishmen, and therefore connections to the Irish Uprising of 1798. Despite this impressive resume, this man has never met a boat or ship he is not in danger of not falling out of - he has been at sea for the better part of twenty years by the end of the series, and he still must be Carefully Watched to make sure he does not drown, or get soaked through to the skin. He is an acclaimed surgeon, with a miraculous success rate. He is also a renowned natural philosopher who has discovered multiple species, including a giant tortoise. He is the least tidy or fastidious man in all of creation, and is constantly covered in blood and/or winestains and/or crumbs. He pours alcohol over surgical sites not because he knows of germ theory, but because he thinks it'll help with pain. The only non-familial friend he's had longer than Jack Aubrey(who lives longer than the first book. Sorry James, ily) is Adhemar de la Mothe, a known and flamboyantly queer Parisian. He regularly says that he does not see the harm in sodomy so long as no one is harassing the ship's boys, and that anything that adds more love to the world seems a good thing. He loses his mind over a woman, and the more awful she is to him the more he loses it.

Speaking of Diana Villiers - Oh, Diana. I am fully in understanding with Stephen over you. A beautiful, headstrong woman who can ride better than most men, stuck in the most boring atmosphere of Southern England with her aunt and cousins after the death of her husband and her father both made her leave India - I cannot blame her for many of her actions. Diana is a fascinating character, and to me she is proof of Patrick O'Brian's writing ability. Most authors of Men Go To War books don't really seem to know how to write women very well (C.S. Forester I am looking at you. I do not know who Maria is outside of her fawning over Hornblower), but Diana is a fully fledged person from the moment we meet her setting her horse over a gate, despite the fact that we never see any of the events of the twenty books through her eyes. Not only is she a fully realised character, but she is one that shows his understanding of the setting he writes in. Diana Villiers is coping with grief - not only grief for her husband and her father, but for her independence. Her life in India, keeping house for her father from her mid-teens, would have been almost as different as one can imagine from the life of a poor relation take in on charity by a widowed aunt. She feels stifled in the English countryside, forced to play second fiddle to her cousins in order to keep the peace and a roof over her head. I cannot blame her for toying with men's hearts as a source of entertainment. Going into keeping with Canning is Diana's attempt to regain at least some measure of independence, and it is successful, to some extent. She has money, she is back in a country she finds familiar and exciting - but she also has a jealous, suspicious lover who employs their servants as spies to watch her activities, and little company because she is herself a scandal. Stephen's proposal offers her a way out of her situation; it also, to her, seems like a loss of freedom, not only because Stephen loves her, but also because she loves him, and that terrifies her. So she instead runs away with Johnson to America. Johnson, of course, is worse than Canning, and she leaves him temporarily, but then her freedom in England is threatened, again, this time by suspicions of intelligence work (I always wonder just how she got tied up so tightly in Mrs Wogan's subterfuge; did Johnson have something to do with it?), and surprise! Johnson is there to whisk her away from the danger. But he's worse still, and Stephen manages to intervene(yay Stephen) and get her away and back to Europe. This just keeps happening. Diana wants something that is almost entirely impossible for a woman in the period she lives in: liberty. Anything that could interfere with her freedom and independence is avoided at any cost - even her own feelings for Stephen. Especially her feelings for Stephen. She also, to me as someone with BPD/cPTSD now pretty well in remission, reads as a very empathetic and accurate portrayal of someone with BPD/cPTSD. Personally I think Being A Woman In The Late 1700s is enough reason on its own to have it(and we don't know enough of Diana's life before the Peace of Amiens to speculate on other Sources Of Trauma other than the death of her husband and father), but a lot of her hot-and-cold feels so familiar to me. She can be so cruel, and mean it fully in the moment she's saying it, but almost immediately regret her cruelty while still doubling down because she feels she has no other options.

Wow. This got really long. I hope everyone enjoys my Aubreyad Opinions Of The Day

the x files as text posts, part 6

A - Ships that you currently like a lot. (They don’t have to be OTPs because not everyone has OTPs.) Friendships, pairings, threesomes, etc. are allowed.

B - A pairing–platonic, romantic or sexual–that you initially didn’t consider, but someone changed your mind.

C - A ship you have never liked and probably never will.

D - A pairing you wish you liked but just can’t.

E - Have you added anything cracky/hilarious to your fandom? If so, what?

F - What’s the longest you’ve ever been in a fandom?

G - Have you ever had an OTP? If so, do you remember your first one? Who was in it?

H - What is your favorite source text for fandom stuff (e.g., TV shows, movies, books, anime, Western animation, etc.)?

I - Has Tumblr caused you to stop liking any fandoms, if so, which and why?

J - Name a fandom you didn’t think about until you saw it all over Tumblr. (You don’t have to care about it or follow it; it just has to be something that Tumblr made you aware of.)

K - What character has your favorite development arc/the best development arc?

L - Say something genuinely nice about a character who isn’t one of your faves. (Characters you’re neutral about are fair game, as are characters you merely dislike. Characters that you absolutely loathe with the fire of ten thousand suns are exempt, as there is no point in giving yourself an aneurysm over a character that you hate.)

M - Name a character that you’d like to have for a friend.

N - Name three things you wish you saw more or in your main fandom (or a fandom of choice).

O - Choose a song at random. Which ship or character does it remind you of?

P - Invent a random AU for any fandom (we always need more ideas).

Q - A fandom you’ve abandoned and why.

R - Which friendship/platonic relationship is your favorite in fandom?

S - Show us an example of your personal headcanon (prompts optional but encouraged)

T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending? 

U - Three favorite characters from three different fandoms, and why they’re your favorites.

V - Which character do you relate to most?

W - A trope which you are virtually certain to hate in any fandom.

X - A trope which you are almost certain to love in any fandom.

Y - What are your secondhand fandoms (i.e., fandoms you aren’t in personally but are tangentially familiar with because your friends/people on your dash are in them)?

Z - Just ramble about something fan-related, go go go! (Prompts optional but encouraged.)

Malcolm Reed ║ Season 4