#anyway it’s a lotr fic that i’ve barely started
Text
went back to a fic I haven’t touched since december and found that I left off in the middle of a sentence, currently trying to figure out what I was going to say
#‘she is suddenly aware of’#AWARE OF WHAT??#what was past me thinking i need to know so i can keep writing#anyway it’s a lotr fic that i’ve barely started#it’s like almost 2000 words so far but I’m not even done with the first chapter#it’s a tenth walker bc i’ve needed a platonic one of those forever so i guess i gotta write it myself#it’s actually been in the works for like 6 years now but it’s changed so much over time#‘in the works’ meaning that i’ve been thinking of ideas i only started writing it towards the end of last year#also literally everyone is aspec because i said so#I have brainrot about this story and the character arcs/dynamics i will gladly talk about it at the slightest invitation
2 notes
·
View notes
Note
Steve not noticing that he goes into Tony kisses withdrawals when Tony’s away, but the rest of the team do. Like a first if Tony is out for a day or two and Steve doesn’t get his morning kiss he’s grumpy until after lunch, so the team introduces secret “Tony is away” brunch protocols, to get it over faster. After 4 days he’s moping unless he’s training or out with friends so it’s bootcamp/friend fieldtrips time.
2 weeks where he’s not on a mission and Tony’s out of the country and so busy he can barely video chat? The rest of the team sequesters him to the couch with ice cream and tv shows that Steve would like but aren’t on the “only watch first with Tony” list.
(The list includes all Star Wars’ and Treks, LoTR, Ghibli movies, and Die Hards. Steve can watch Mike Schur shows and Game of Thrones. While Disney movies and Romcoms are allowed by Tony without him, they are banned by the team cuz Steve starts crying during them at this point in the withdrawal process)
Eventually the team just kidnaps and throws him into a Quinjet and has him surprise Tony in his hotel after 3 weeks of no Tony and no mission calls. He is intolerably whiny, has grown his depression beard, and keeps calling the president, Fury, and other country’s heads of state to see if there’s aliens attacking.
LOOK LISTEN THE FIRST TIME I RECEIVED THIS ASK I WAS LIKE WOW ARE WE THE SAME PERSON??? Because Steve-suffering-from-Tony-withdrawal is also a personal headcanon of mine that I've carried in my head for years. It's my Favorite.
This ask is very fun and made me laugh a lot and I love it very, very much. Keep your brilliant ideas coming, Anon. I really love them.
(I am very sorry for taking a century to go through all of them 😔)
Also, since it's Steve's birthday (shhh I'm not late, what are you talking about, shhhhh), I decided to develop this lovely idea and turn it into a birthday fic! I hope you like it! 🤍
let the heart grow fonder
steve/tony, birthday fluff, established relationship, 1174 words
“Was the flight really worth it? A few more days and I would’ve been home anyway.”
“Yeah.” Steve noses the back of his ear and Tony shivers. “But I would’ve been all alone on my birthday.”
“You would hardly be alone. There’s the whole team, and besides— The entire country would practically be celebrating your birthday. Fireworks, barbecues, the whole nine yards.”
“Not the same,” Steve insists stubbornly. Tony sees Steve cupping his hands to gather some water from in front of Tony’s chest before dumping it on Tony’s head. Closing his eyes, Tony lets the warm water seep into his hair and trickle down his face, neck, and back.
He opens his eyes when he feels Steve’s fingers sweeping his hair away from his forehead. “I would trade all of it for a day of doing nothing with my fella.”
“Sweet talker.” Tony huffs.
“‘S true.” Steve punctuates his statement with a kiss on Tony’s shoulder.
“You’re ridiculous.”
“‘S all your fault. You’re the one who was gone for a ridiculously long time.”
“Honey, trust me, if I had the choice I would much rather stay at home with you.”
Steve sighs, the sound echoing in the bathroom. “I know.”
This time, Tony cups his hands together, gathering a mountain of soapsuds. He blows on it, sending suds and bubbles flying.
“Nat told me all about it, you know.”
“About what?” Steve asks, his luscious beard tickling Tony’s temple.
“About the depression beard. All your sulking and moping. And whining.”
“I did no such things. The beard is me… trying out a new look.”
Tony snorts. “And crying.”
“Natasha’s a lying liar,” Steve grumbles, hiding his face in Tony’s hair.
“Come on, which movie was it?”
Steve stays silent. With his movements hidden by the soapy water, Tony pokes Steve’s side stealthily.
“Ah!” Steve yelps.
“Which movie was it, baby?”
Steve huffs, resting his forehead against the back of Tony’s skull.
And then, finally:
“Dumbo,” Steve mumbles in defeat. Tony snickers.
“Oh, honey. You’re such a softie.” Tony sighs fondly as he leans back, letting more of his weight rest against Steve’s body. He lets out a delighted hum when Steve welcomes the extra weight by snaking an arm around his waist.
“No judging,” Steve whines, and Tony grins when he can hear the pout in his voice. “You’d been gone for two weeks by then and I really missed you. Besides, you have no room to talk. Remember The Fox and the Hound?”
“Please. That’s totally different.” Tony rolls his eyes. “Anyone who doesn’t cry at The Fox and the Hound is a monster.”
Submerged up to his shoulders in warm water and pressed up against his naked husband, Tony feels well-rested and content in a way he hadn’t been for the past few weeks.
Still, they only have a few days left before they have to leave for New York, so they should probably make good use of what little time they have left in Milan.
“I wanna take you to this really beautiful restaurant for your birthday dinner. Super romantic. We could get a private table. You’d love it.”
“Yeah?” Tony feels Steve’s hand stroking up and down his stomach.
“Mm-hm. We should probably get out soon. Get dressed. Look presentable,” Tony says, resting his head back on one of Steve’s shoulders and looking up at him.
Steve looks down at him, his unfairly long lashes wet and clumped together. For a moment, he simply stares back at Tony silently.
“What?” Tony eventually says, unable to withstand the silent scrutiny. He breaks eye contact and lifts one of his feet up and out of the water just because he can, just for something to do.
Tony watches his own foot hover above the surface of the water for a few seconds before another hairy leg breaks the surface of the water. The bigger foot settles on top of Tony’s hovering one until his leg buckles under the weight, sending the two left feet plunging back into the water.
“Rude,” Tony remarks with a frown, turning back to stare up at Steve again.
Steve is already looking at him, almost as if he never looked away in the first place.
“What?”
“Would you be mad at me,” Steve begins, one of his hands reaching up to bury itself in Tony’s damp hair, fingers lightly scratching his scalp, “if I said I’d much prefer it if we stayed in tonight and ordered room service?”
Tony leans back, incredulous. “Room service?”
Steve nods.
“For your birthday dinner?”
He nods again.
“Why?”
Steve shrugs, disturbing the water slightly with the movement. “I mean, I didn’t exactly fly all the way to Italy for the food.”
Tony softens and tries in vain to hold back his smile.
“Yeah?”
An answering smile blooms on Steve’s face. He leans in to nudge Tony’s nose affectionately with his own. “Uh-huh.”
“What did you come here for then?” Tony asks, voice dangerously low and eyes never leaving Steve’s.
“Oh.” Steve quirks an eyebrow. “Keep looking at me like that and I may just skip the room service and go straight for dessert.”
Tony smirks devilishly. “What’s stopping you?”
Blinking rapidly, Steve swallows. “Yeah?”
“I mean, you are the birthday boy.” Tony strokes the line of Steve’s throat with the back of his fingertips and watches in glee as the man shivers.
Eyes wide and cheeks flushed, Steve leans in close and—
“Actually, it’s me. I’m stopping you. I’m really craving some lasagna right now.”
Initially headed for Tony’s lips, Steve changes course and buries his face in Tony’s neck with a guttural groan.
“Sweetheart. You’re not making things easy for me.”
Tony chuckles. “Nothing about me is easy, honey. I’m a challenge.”
“But it’s my birthday,” Steve complains, voice muffled.
“You got off an eight-hour flight, got to the hotel, and immediately napped for four hours. You haven’t had a proper meal.”
“I ate on the plane.”
“No, we need to get you some proper Italian food. Hearty, heartwarming, fulfilling.”
“Food is just food. I just wanna have you.”
“Um, excuse me? That is deeply insulting. Authentic Italian food is not just food, it’s an experience.”
“I wanna have the Tony experience.”
“You’ll get the Tony experience after you have a proper meal. Look, we can order room service, but we can’t skip dinner.”
“Fine,” Steve grumbles, face finally emerging from its hiding place. “But can we stay like this for another fifteen minutes?”
Tony settles back against Steve’s chest and lets Steve pull him close. “Of course, birthday boy.”
Steve hums contentedly, resting his chin on the crown of Tony’s head. “You make me really happy, sweetheart. I love you.”
Tony feels Steve’s fingers interlocking on top of his stomach. He looks down, spotting the wedding ring worn on Steve’s ring finger, one that he knows is engraved with his own handwriting.
The image of the ring is distorted by the water, but still, it glints golden. Tony smiles to himself.
“I love you, too, honey. Happy birthday.”
#stevetony#stevetony fic#stony#stony fic#superhusbands#steve/tony#steve x tony#mine#earl wrote something#happy birthday steve#earl answers#anonymous#stevetony chatter
224 notes
·
View notes
Text
I guess this is a housekeeping post? I’ve written a lot of fic over the years and I’ve talked about my relationship with canon in my author’s notes and comment replies, but I’ve never actually written up a full explanation and posted it anywhere easy for people to find. So this is that!
TL;DR, courtesy of @ao3tagoftheday:
I engage with the Avatarverse on an extremely specific, transformative level, and that level is "my worldbuilding-centric headcanons showcased via fanfiction". I love ATLA, but for a long time now I’ve been less in it for the show, and more in it for what I can do while I’m standing on the show’s shoulders. Fanfiction is my creative genre of choice for a lot of reasons, but a big one is because it lets me immediately start having fun with the familiar without having to worry about establishing much set-up.
...Which is ironic because usually that aspect of fanfic means people are playing with familiar characters, whereas I ignore most of the canon characters and focus on stuff that’s either super obscure or completely made up by me, which involves establishing a lot of set-up, but whatever. The world is familiar, and I enjoy exploring new ideas within it.
I’m also a Fandom Old. I first watched ATLA all the way through a few months after the series finale in 2008. Consequently, most of my ATLA fandom experience was well after the show’s heyday, when all canon information was established and nothing new was on the horizon. It was a relief as I started playing around with fanfiction, because storytelling takes a lot out of me and I couldn’t bear the thought of getting jossed after spending so much time and effort on something. And it’s a lot of time and effort, for me - lots of the stories I put up on AO3 in the last few years are things I originally thought up a decade ago. I write slow, I take breaks, I think a lot, I don’t always have the understanding I need to execute the story I want and have to sit on it for a few years. It’s just the way my brain works, and I didn’t like the idea of potentially having to dismiss a story or concept I was still chewing on because Bryke jossed me.
I was a stickler for canon when I was younger. But as I grew up I realized that honestly, it’s not that important. The clincher was when JJ Abrams’ Star Trek reboot came out, and Star Trek fans hated it and were freaking out about What It Did To Star Trek Canon, and then someone wrote an article that went “You guys need to learn a lesson we Star Wars fans learned ages ago - it’s totally okay to point at a spot on your canon timeline and say ‘I don’t believe in anything that comes after this.’ Personally, I stop believing in anything that happens in Star Wars after they kill off Chewbacca by throwing a moon at him, because that was stupid.”
As a Star Wars fan who'd read a lot of the EU but had no interest in getting that far because I also thought killing off Chewbacca via moon was stupid, that resonated with me. Heck, there were entire books set before that point that the entire Star Wars fandom collectively ignored! That article writer was right - choosing your own canon was great and should be the norm!
Shifting into that mindset came pretty easily after that; it helped that my main fandoms have always had a tenuous relationship with what constitutes “canon” anyway. The Star Wars Expanded Universe was absolutely buck wild and often stupid, and was therefore easy to alternatively cherry-pick or ignore. The only official canon in Tolkien’s works is The Hobbit and LOTR, everything else is cobbled-together drafts that are so contradictory that Gil-Galad Son of Plot Hole is now a whole fandom thing. And pre-FiM, My Little Pony barely had canon and was essentially a free-for-all for the dozen of us who actually wrote fic - the focus of MLP fandom back then was very much on collecting, obviously.
So choosing my own canon is something I’ve been doing since...forever, actually. I only started doing consciously with ATLA, tho.
I’ll admit that TLoK disappointed me - probably not for the reasons you think, btw. (every time people start defending TLoK to me without asking what I dislike about it, they always defend stuff I think is perfectly defensible, and never address the stuff I dislike about it. but that’s an explanation for another time.) Once it became clear that the TLoK era wasn’t something I wanted to explore via fic anyway, tho...welp. *shrugs* Who cares?
And all the comics, books, this new RPG game, and whatever else that’s come out since? An even bigger shrug.
Frankly - and this is very silly and maybe even petty of me, lol - frankly, I don't actually consider anything beyond ATLA itself to be cold hard canon at all. (And not even all of ATLA either; they had to Word of God the timeline of Sozin’s death because the one given at Azulon’s funeral was ridiculous.) I reserve the right to park myself in what we knew when the show ended in 2008 and not bother with anything else if it doesn’t please me. I’ll use the other stuff sometimes and cherry-pick what I want, but most of my fic is written with an understanding of canon as it was in 2008 at its foundation.
The way I see it, if they wanted me to take new canon seriously, they should’ve released it back in like 2009 when I would’ve cared. And okay yeah sure that wasn’t feasible cuz Bryke wanted to do other things and Nickelodeon only valued ATLA for reruns, but them’s the breaks. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ They left me alone in the garden of canon for over a decade, and I planted new ideas and grew new stories and landscaped a crapton of worldbuilding until it was all just a delightful, fun, overgrown mess; they don’t get to come back now to tell me that actually none of that matters and expect me to care about what they’re saying.
And also, I just see no reason to be beholden to anything that can easily be wiped away at Nickelodeon’s whim. ATLA itself is the cornerstone upon which this universe rests, so it’d take an especially stupid executive to toss it. TLoK too, probably. But the comics, the books, that RPG game, anything else they come up with? Yeah, I consider all that B-canon at best. If you wanna insist that oh no, the comics totally are what canon is, I’m just gonna point you at the original Star Wars EU, rebranded now as Legends. Hundreds of books, comics, video games, and more, all treated as canon to the point that there was literally a guy at Lucasfilm whose job was rationalizing how they all fit together - and they all got swept away on Disney’s orders. *shrugs*
ATLA will probably still be canon in 10 years. The rest of it? With how often corporations like to reboot things these days, who really knows? And if all the extra stuff does get wiped away and people stop caring about it because “it’s not canon anymore”, did they really even care about it in the first place? I’d rather base my fics on stuff I know I like, build up my headcanons in the direction I want to take them, and just refuse to conform.
So yeah, don’t expect me to care for new canon or go looking for it or bother to make my fanfiction and headcanons compliant with it, because I don’t care on so many levels. ;)
So all that said, here’s a list of things you can expect me to not care about:
The comics in general
Queerphobia even being a thing in the Avatarverse
Ursa’s fate
Whatever’s going on with Azula
That Maiko breakup
Whatever’s going on with that RPG game
Probably a lot more as I think of it, lol
13 notes
·
View notes
Note
[1] I don't what point they're trying to get too, but CRWBY is going too fast. I mean I know the overall point they want to get for the series; stop Salem (and hopefully no further than thag). But the pacing is so off and that really shows in V7 & 8 particularly with Ironwood. They wanted Ironwood to be an evil dictator that would willingly bomb a city, but the thing is they did it in such a quick flip that is jarring.
When you're right, you're right. RWBY has always had a pretty bad pacing problem, whether it's 'fixing' Weiss's problems with Ruby in one episode in V1 or rushing Yang's V4 recovery arc, the show has always struggled to figure out how to prioritize and take its time. But, this problem has gotten a little more obvious in the last two seasons.
Hazel's redemption and Emerald's redemption were absolutely horribly done, partly because they rushed through them at the speed of light, while they contrast the 'fall' of James Ironwood into a villain role that went from zero to a hundred within the span of two to three in-universe days without the show taking the time to put much proper focus on it or give it the emotional depth it deserved. The Hound was in and out too quick, despite being one of the better concepts to come out of the eighth season. And that's the same with the Cinder/Neo/Watts team up of the century that a lot of people were really interested in and were calling it actual character development and a good change, and then had to put on clown paint when it ended an episode later with everything returning to the status quo. I'd say Ozpin's 'make up' with the team was rushed, too, but honestly that's the least of my concerns with him returning to the team. Qrow and Clover was so rushed that I was seriously weirded out and confused when Qrow's reaction to Clover's death was so big, because to me they seemed like they barely knew each other. I've never understood why both the show and a lot of the FNDM decided that Clover was so important to Qrow, and Qrow jumping to 'kill Ironwood' was also really weird, since we'd been given plenty of reason to believe that Ironwood was Qrow's trusted friend, and very little reason to believe that Qrow hated him, until the guy he'd known for like two months and one season died and suddenly Qrow didn't care about Ironwood at all.
On top of this, Blake and Yang's relationship was rushed in V6 and then stagnated, and the writer's attempt to make them 'fight' in volume eight was so stupid and ridiculous that it was comical (and very frustrating.) Them making everyone drop concerns they have with Ruby within a short while is - like you said - another example of everything going too fast. Weiss 'reconciling' with Whitley and Willow was done too fast and with very little depth, leaving it feeling lackluster and leaving Willow's affection for either of her children feeling fake as hell. Robyn Hill's entire character is a product of rushed and badly done 'growth,' and despite her and Qrow spending episodes together in prison with nothing to do, they still charged ahead with "now these two are friends" too fast and it fell totally flat. I liked May Marigold, but the HH were in the same boat as Robyn, not given enough development and feeling forced into important roles they didn't earn, and the same can be said for the Ace Ops. Salem herself, the main villain, came and went in less than a volume and the terrible way they thrust her into the story only to hastily try to find a way to make her not a threat made her seem so unscary that I can't take her seriously at all anymore.
I was literally shocked when I realized that they weren't spending another season in Atlas, and I even theorized that maybe RWBY was getting cancelled soon, and that's why they were rushing everything so fast in V8. But tbh, with the lack of faith I have in these writers, it's very possible that they just failed, that they just suck.
They didn't take the time to develop almost anything in Volumes seven and eight, and what development they did give us in volume seven seemed to fly out the window in volume eight anyway, or didn't matter anymore.
RWBY is a show that has always struggled to develop story beats and character arcs and dynamics and I and a lot of fans have 'filled in the blanks' on a lot of what they left empty or hastily glossed over, but that gets harder and harder to do the more they get sloppy and overconfident. The fanbase shouldn't have to do this. The fanbase shouldn't have to look at characters who are meant to matter to each other and sighingly try to headcanon up most of their relationship and/or dynamic. They shouldn't have to look at a Very Important arc that the writers are so proud of and then go "okay, time to figure out how to force this to make sense."
There's a certain amount of that in every piece of media, fleshing out characters and their pasts or their relationship is a fandom past-time no matter what fandom you're talking about (heck, I've seen it in the LOTR fandom,) but after a certain point, it starts to feel like we're putting way more work into it than the actual show writers, and that's weird and it's also tiring.
I've seen this argument from RWBY simps that RWDE posters are mad we "have to think about things" and that things aren't just handed to us on a silver platter, but I don't think that's true. We're willing to play a little catch up and flesh out dynamics here and there. I've been doing that in fandoms for forever. There's a difference between doing that, and needing to do a lot of work and a lot of re-writing and world building to make most of the show actually make sense or feel emotionally significant.
RWBY wasn't always like this. I was more than happy to fill in the blanks for seasons of it and get by on vibes and concepts to match what meat and substance we did get. But now I feel like almost everything is so rushed, underdeveloped, forced, or badly handled that trying to 'fill in the gaps' has turned into essentially writing a fix-it fic in your head. So I'd rather just put my mental energy into actually writing a fix-it fic instead of trying to force myself to put in the work that the writers don't for the show proper itself.
17 notes
·
View notes
Text
EPIX/Rise of Skywalker Reaction Post
So, I got back from seeing EPIX this morning, and I figured I should get all my thoughts down!
Everything spoilery is behind a cut, and this post is also tagged with the spoiler tags I’ve listed here. If you want me to add any additional tags, let me know and I will to this and any future EPIX posts.
Okay, so, before I really get into this, I should mention two relevant contextual things that probably strongly impacted my feelings on this movie.
I’m not super-invested in the sequel trilogy. I love (most of) the characters, I’m not really into the story that’s being told with them.
Given where TLJ left us, I went into the theatre expecting something between A Trainwreck with Some Delightful Moments and A Delightful Trainwreck. Basically, it was going to be a Hot Mess and I knew it, but I was pretty sure there was going to be something to love, even if the film as a whole didn’t delight me (which, honestly, is even where I stand with TLJ, which remains my least favorite film of the series). And, you know what? I got exactly that. A Sometimes-Delightful Trainwreck. I’d say it’s even towards the upper end of that Delightfulness scale.
All right, moving on to actual thoughts. I’m trying to focus on the positive here, mostly because I did overall enjoy this movie, but I also had some Problems with it.
I’m gonna talk about Kylo Ren first, mostly because I want to get this out of the way. I will say that--when I first saw TFA, I thought I could be interested in this character. I thought they were gonna maybe go the burnt-out gifted kid route with him, which would be hella interesting to explore for the child of Heroes like Han and Leia, and the Legacy he had to live up to. Obviously, they didn’t, and while the direction they went is certainly topical, it’s not super engaging, at least to me. I know it is to some people, and far be it from me to harsh anyone’s squee, but he basically doesn’t do anything for me. I personally don’t find him particularly interesting or intimidating.
Basically, I don’t particularly care about Kylo Ren. (I don’t know if I’m quite at the point where, as my roommate puts it, I aggressively Do Not Care, but the Not Caring is definitely a thing.)
Anyway, that disclaimer aside--his arc was okay, I guess? I mean...I think my general feelings on the subject are not that it felt phoned-in, exactly, but that it was mostly there because the writers thought it should be there, rather than it flowing organically from the character(s) involved. It also felt rushed, but that goes back to a problem with the movie as a whole that I will get into later in this post. But, given that, the actual beats that were involved in said arc I thought were effectively done. The bit with Han in the wreckage, in particular, was nice.
As for that Kiss though.
...I mean. I’m actually kind of pleased that the end of the film left the romantic threads dangling? It gave me plenty of OT3 feels (though I felt like, especially in the first third or so, the film was leaning more towards Rey/Poe and Finn/Rose, but there was some later stuff that seemed to hint at the full OT3 with a question mark on where Rose stands.)
But I do have a problem with the fact that the only on-screen kiss between Major Characters was between Rey and Kylo Ren/Ben Solo. That being said, I can backfill/justify it in that...you know how some people headcanon that Luke’s initial crush on Leia was some sort of “There is a Connection Here that I Cannot Name and it’s probably supposed to be Romantic given our ages and genders and presumed lack of other relationship so let’s go with that?” Between something like that and the fact that he just gave up his life for her in a very literal way (side note: the Force has always been New Powers as the Plot Demands; but the healing thing was a) if not actually in a canon novel at least strongly implied and b) ALL OVER fanon so even if I had a problem with Random Force Powers suddenly occurring I wouldn’t have an issue with this one; the Force Diad thing was ~handwave plot device~ sure fine whatever). ...anyway, given all of that, I can backfill it to a way where I don’t hate it (i.e., if he’d lived, I don’t think it would’ve been followed up on very much/they would’ve settled into a non-romantic relationship of some kind, whatever that might’ve been). Except that it’s the only one, which kind of leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
Then again, he did immediately die, so...yeah, I can live with this. I don’t like it, and I don’t think I ever will like it, but I don’t hate it either and it’s not a dealbreaker for me.
Most of the other problems I have with this film come down to structure and pacing. In that, thanks to where TLJ left us, this move had to do so much to bring the story to any kind of cohesive end, and not enough time to do it in. Trying to squeeze too much plot into too small a space.
(I actually had the same problem with ROTS initially--although that was more due to the PT having pacing issues as its Primary Narrative Flaw; TPM was way too slow; AOTC actually had good internal pacing but couldn’t quite make up for it; and then ROTS was as a consequence of that really rushed. Meanwhile, with the ST, I feel like the writers are relying on “it’s all there in the manual” a little too much, so not really...trying as hard, if that makes sense? To make it all connect within the film, I mean, as opposed to depending on people going into other/outside/supplemental material to connect the dots (still not as bad as the Prisoner of Azkaban movie on that front, but it’s still Bad; and, like, all film versions of novels leave some stuff out, just look at the LOTR films; but POA left out a key plot point and that--is a rant for another post. Back to EPIX). It’ll be interesting to see what kind of deleted scenes come out, or if it’ll grow on me in future watchings. Not that it’ll ever become a favorite, I don’t think, but it might improve in my eyes.)
Anyway, basically, a lot of this felt rushed or like...introduced but not really addressed/wrapped up in any kind of satisfactory fashion? Kylo Ren’s arc in particular, as I’ve mentioned before, plus the Threepio stuff felt rushed and non-consequential, and also with Rey’s arc to an extent (it...again, all the beats worked for me/I thought it was fairly effective, but it really needed two movies to pay off as well as it could have). ...I mean, there are more plot threads I could probably mention here, but those are the three that stuck out the most.
Also, this movie needed More Rose :( I LOVE HER and she was barely here!!!!!
Another thing I would’ve liked to see is...okay, I really liked the Overlapping Voices bit, but it would’ve been nice to have more Presence from the ghosts? Like...there’s a bit at the end of season 1 of Sailor Moon where she’s in the Final Battle, the other four have died (or just been left behind, if you’re watching the English dub), and their ghosts show up and place their hands on hers and lend her their strength? A visual cue like that would’ve been great and helped the arc feel more complete. Especially since Palpatine had all of his predecessors/Sith ghosts backing him in a more visible fashion. But, then again, that’s a Personal Taste thing and while it would’ve, IMO, made that moment better, not having it doesn’t make it worse, if that makes sense?
(Also, the credits moved too fast for me to track, but I definitely saw Qui-Gon Jinn listed, though I don’t recall hearing him, and I definitely recognized Anakin/Hayden Christensen and Mace/Samuel L. Jackson and Obi-Wan/Ewan McGreggor (and Alec Guinness I’m pretty sure?) and obvs. Yoda/Frank Oz when actually listening, but I couldn’t identify the other voices--anyone have the full list? Was Ahsoka and/or Kanan and/or Ezra involved, or was it restricted to movie-only Jedi?)
But...yeah. Apart from the Kiss being very ....:/ for me, most of my identifiable problems with the film is stuff like this.
I think the other thing I want to talk about in detail is the Rey Palpatine reveal.
So, up until this movie, I was actually in my corner flying my tiny but determined Rey Kenobi flag, and the more I think about it, the more I like Rey Palpatine for some of the same reasons? Like...I don’t remember everything I’d thought through about Rey Kenobi, but it had to do with the cyclical nature of Star Wars, and bringing it back where it started--and we get that with Rey Palpatine, in a nice arc, healing some of the damage her grandfather did, both to this family and to the galaxy as a whole.
That being said--those of you who know me and my fic projects know I’ve been writing a child (daughter) for Palpatine for quite some time now, and I have no intention of stopping, lol. Am I going to take this/Lavinia’s (presumably) half-brother into account in future projects? ...probably not. But I am looking forward to/hoping we get a novel or something about him and Rey’s mother. Because that is actually a story I’m interested in--why canon!Palpatine chose to have a kid, and how said kid managed to break away and got to this point. [...y’know, I actually think Rey Kenobi’s background/thread of descent would be less interesting to me? Since I subscribe to the idea that a) Korkie Kryze is Obi-Wan’s biological son; and b) Obi-Wan had many Friends With Benefits throughout the galaxy and figuring out exactly which one Rey descends from carries less weight for me.]
...okay, I think that’s all the Detaily Bits I want to get into, so here are some bullet points of things that really stuck out to me, in no particular order:
Bawled like a baby re: everything involving Carrie Fisher. Just...yeah. Miss you Space Mommy.
LANDO! I loved his entrance, I loved him adopting Jannah at the end, I loved all of it.
Chewie’s fake-out death was also actually pretty good/well-handled. I mean. First Boom happens and I’m like DDDDDDD: but then I remember how people reacted to his death in Legends and I’m like would they really do it and then DELIGHT.
HUX. Okay. I never really cared about this dude before, and honestly I still don’t really care about this dude but at the same time, those of you who know me know I have a Thing for double-agents and defectors and I LOVE THIS WHOLE ENTIRE PLOT THREAD. I LOVE THIS SHITHEAD TURNING TRAITOR FOR THE MOST VENAL REASONS AND STILL BEING A BAD GUY/EVIL/AN UNREPENTANT JACKASS. THIS WAS PERFECT.
(Also Finn shooting him in the leg instead of the arm as requested was DELIGHTFUL)
SPEAKING OF DELIGHTFUL gotta love Zombie Skeev Palpatine Unliving His Best Afterlife. Was he as Delightful as he is in ROTS or ROTJ? No. Did I still enjoy every minute of his scenery-chewing nonsense? You bet your ass. So happy, Ian McDiarmid looked like he was having tons of fun and honestly what more could I have asked for?
The whole scene on Ahch-To was just *chef’s kiss.* Use of Yoda’s theme with the rising X-Wing, Luke being snarky and kind and beautiful, him emerging from the fire with the saber...just loved it.
LEIA HAD JEDI TRAINING AND HER OWN LIGHTSABER. BB!MARK HAMILL AND BB!CARRIE FISHER’S FACES.
LEIA TRAINING REY. REY CALLING HER ‘MASTER.’
USING THE BOND TO ARM KYLO REN okay like I said I have Mixed Feelings about the arc as a whole but that moment was SO COOL.
Poe’s ex-girlfriend was pretty great, ngl.
JANNAH AND EX-STORMTROOPERS YESSSSSSSS
HINTS OF/SHREDS OF EVIDENCE FOR FORCE-SENSITIVE FINN GIVE THEM TO ME NOW.
D-0 was pretty cute!
All of the Badass Finn.
Also that MOMENT where Finn runs up to Poe like “I NEED TO TELL YOU A THING” and Poe is all “I NEED YOU TO FIGHT WITH ME” and Finn just interrupts himself to thank Poe and they have that “General” “General” moment and it’s SO CUTE I’m love it.
The entire thing at the Lars farm at the end. Just. Burying the lightsabers, seeing the twins’ ghosts, claiming the Skywalker name, Rey having her own saber now. This movie was a Hot Mess but it definitely ended on a high note.
...that’s pretty much what I have for right now. I will probably have more thoughts after discussing it with other people/seeing it again (because I will be seeing it again). But overall...do I like it? Well, it’s Star Wars, which I love and which frankly always has some Super Dumb and/or Frustrating Stuff, and the things I disliked weren’t bad enough to Ruin It for me, so yes, I liked it. Is it my favorite Star Wars/good for a Star Wars movie? ...not really, no. It did have some gorgeous moments, but it doesn’t really hang together. Like the rest of the ST, it relies way too much on It’s All There In The Manual and, between that and the fact that TLJ didn’t do the work necessary to set it up, the movie felt rushed and a little bit...I don’t want to say hollow, maybe shallow is a better word? I mean, I know this is Star Wars and It’s Not That Deep (but the ground is soft and I’m ready to dig or however the quote goes), but this felt particularly shallow even for Star Wars. Like...cotton candy, fairly good/tasty but a little bit prone to melting away and with very little substance holding it together. On that level, I’d actually probably rank it around Solo (which, let me say, I really like)--so, better than TLJ, but still A Hot Mess of a movie. But I enjoyed myself, and I think overall my feelings are middling-to-positive on it. Even if...honestly, even like less than four hours after the movie ending, I’m already forgetting like half the plot points...? Like I said. Cotton Candy.
What did/do you guys think?
#star wars spoilers#sw spoilers#epix spoilers#episode ix spoilers#spoilers#star wars epix#star wars episode ix#epix
4 notes
·
View notes
Text
beyond-far-horizons replied to your post:
Yeah!!!! I so wondered what you thought of it!! Glad you saved it for this difficult time. Self care is v.important okay. Sparda and his sons command you. Also Silmarrillion is v.cool. Reads like mythology/history but is super cool.
I also need to know if you thought Sparda was too much at the end…no-one has told me yet and I was worried but I wanted for drama for him to battle this longing for heaven that every demon must feel in some way.
I have just started reading it a few days ago but something happened and I just decided to keep it for when I had some true peace to read it... my life is very messy now, believe me its 24/7 something happening. Now I want to read it again a little more to make an appropriate reply so wait out!! So far I loved it so much.
I think tumblr ate out but I’ve said... I LOVE your Sparda. Again, believe its not just cause it was your writing but it pretty much aligns with my own idea of him. Kinda like he’s been struggling against this for centuries but it re-surfaces from time to time... more later! But I do feel a sympathy to this feeling and I can relate to it, it makes sense, also he’s absolutely fascinating as he is in your fic.
About Silm, I might take a while to finish it. Its a really weird book TBH and at parts I almost gave up and I still feel like skipping some parts (such as the chapters relating in excruciating detail the settling of the noldor, etc..), it goes crazy with names ans stuff and reads like a history book sometimes. Its interesting, I can’t deny... but one has to read it slowly, I guess? In order to absorb all that stuff?
Its eras after all and many generations, it has a complex narrative which changes tone weirdly. You have to be ‘in the mood’ to read it and I’m just a mobile-reader so I read it in chaotic environment (LMAO). I like mobile reading as a past-time when I’m stuck somewhere with my phone I start reading promptly and I rarely read formally, as in... with calm and silence, I don’t have much time... but I’ve read the entirety of ASOIAF like this so it works (LOL I might be screwing my eyes with it ._.)
TBH I knew nothing of Tolkien lore, now I see. I never got around knowing all of those things about the world and the elves, etc... I barely watched the movies and never got around much reading about it. I’ll be quite honest, the movies never made me much interested despite the cool visuals, as once I took the first book in my hands and the whole introduction regarding the Hobbits put me off, but it was roughly 12 years ago, so perhaps now I’m more mature and patient to get around it, who knows?
Plus I have next to 0 lotr knowledge so the places are like unknown to me and it should feel familiar, so, reading Sil. to me its mostly a huge wave of new names every page and every name has like 10 secondary names, etc... I guess I’m reading it in the wrong order, who cares? I like a challenge.
But so far I’m like 1/3 in it and I know the most of it should happen later so I’m sticking to it to see what it holds... I just want have a basic knowledge of it so I can interpret Vivi’s stuff properly and also enjoy all cool fanarts and stuff. I’m so glad for what I know right now makes me much more apt to talk with you guys without risking sounding overly stupid.
I’m not the biggest fan of some of the concepts (such as the bible-like morality among other stuff), but at the same time I really enjoyed reading some parts of it so it was worth, so far. I’m writing a review for later with more detail.
Anyway, its really almost ridiculous that someone so invested in fantasy and literature like me has never got around Tolkien. Its very different from what I imagined but at the same time, it sort of feels familiar, I think exactly because it IS mythological and founded on real life myths. I cannot deny it is a masterful work, esp. if you take in consideration the epoch of the writer and the sheer innovation it was to write something like that back then.
11 notes
·
View notes
Text
Movie meeeehm
Thanks to @nitrateglow for these!
1: A movie you enjoyed as a kid that you don't now
-Probs some comedy I'd find awfully sexist/racist/homophobic etc. now. But of course, I can't recall a specific one, probs because the experience is so deeply squicky and traumatic. Oh, wait, I know. I adored The Great Mouse Detective as a kid, but have heard so many "bleh" comments about it later that I don't want to ruin it by rewatching it as an adult. Why take a happy, cherished, pure and joyous memory away, especially as there are so few of those in my life anyway in proportion to the bad memories?
2: A movie you disliked as a kid that you like/love now
-Not a movie, but I was literally too fucking terrified to watch Doctor Who as a kid on cable, because the Tom Baker repeats they were showing terrified me with the title sequence alone. That empty stare and howling, diddly-duming music were enough to give me nightmares. So I only got into Who in my late teens!
3: Your favorite movie as a kid
-Define "kid." I went through several. I loved the Disney Robin Hood, of course, and at puberty, Wayne's World (yes) and The Princess Bride were my own cult movies, before I had anyone to fangirl them with. Ah, the pre-Internet era.
4: An actor/actress it took you time to warm up to
I remember being weirdly terrified and disturbed by Jeremy Brett as a kid, but then I felt the same about Bowie, and... well. Clearly it was my baby self not knowing WTF to do with all this stirring, restless energy that later turned out to be my skinnyandrogynousbisexualguy orientation thingy. And while I'd first seen Caligari and Casablanca as a teen in the early 90s, I wasn't ready for Connie until he pounced me in 2012. I would not have "got" him the same way and as hard until I was a grown-up, with a wide variety of experiences from many areas of life and a boatload of books/learning behind me. Just... no way.
5: A director it took you time to warm up to
-If anything, I've cooled off various directors I was impressed by when younger. So much of the auteur stuff gets wanky and self-imposing, in this Arrogant Artist Guy "look at my GENIUS big VISION and also insecurity about my penis size" kind of way. I like directors who can be warm and have fun and who show some real humanity (not wanky anvilly/kitchen sink-y sort of "humanity" either). Maybe Branagh? I found him a bit annoying as a kid, but now fap all over his stuff because now I'm old enough to Get It. He is the best kind of fanboy director; his geekiness is catching. Listening to his Thor commentary was a real eye-opener into my realising just how massive a nerd he is, and in a good, "one of us" kind of way.
6: Top five favorite soundtracks of your favorite movie composer
-There isn't just one! But Clint Mansell and Debbie Wiseman turn to gold everything they touch. Debbie especially is hugely unknown still, but she has this most amazing, swellingly Romantic music full of sweeping emotion that I just can't rec her enough. Do check her out; she'll give you goosebumps.
7: Three movies that defined your teen/childhood years
-I think I mentioned those already! But as a teenager, Bram Stoker's Dracula, La Reine Margot and Heavenly Creatures were formative. There were others I obsessed about way more than those, but they weren't as influential--it's more like they were massaging buttons I already had.
8: Sci-fi or westerns?
-Blake's 7! AKA "The Dirty Dozen in Space."
9: Are there any movies you own more than one copy of?
-Ahhahaha. AAAHHAHAHAHA! Of The Thief of Bagdad, I own: The Criterion clusterfuck with the awful clumsy cover someone had their 5-year-old draw, the Nordic DVD, the German Blu-Ray because I live on the edge (what with those Veidt Eye Closeups in HD being a hazard to any uterus) and at least three different digital copies. Because I'm me. I also own two digital copies and one DVD of Casablanca, three digital and one DVD of A Woman's Face and don't get me started on the British telefantasy I have on both DVD and VHS. I have spare copies of both the Caligari Masters of Cinema release and the ITV DVD of The Spy In Black, so I guess I should throw them at somebody.
10: Physical media or streaming?
-Neither. Video files firmly saved onto and run from my hard drive. Fuck streaming with its choppiness (ruins the viewing experience for me) and physical media are usually beyond my budget (unless I save up for a Connie DVD). Besides, I rip my favourite movie discs onto my HD anyway. I want to be able to gif that shit, dammit!
11: Are there any movies you watch on special occasions every year (Christmas, Halloween, birthdays, your mother's aunt's wedding anniversary, etc.)
-Used to do Nightmare Before Christmas on Halloween, but not any more. I still attempt ToB every Christmas. And I used to do All Through The Night with wine on my birthday, but as I can't tolerate alcohol anymore, the experience of Watching ATTN Drunk is no more. Someone start a Halloween tradition with me where we watch either The Student of Prague or Eerie Tales (or both) every year?
12: What movie do you most associate with your best friend(s)?
-Gosh, so few have stayed, so it's more like "movie that reminds you of a broken friendship," yay...?! I've learned to try and not associate movies with people that way any more, because it's more painful than it's worth. Connie is my best friend. He's like Krishna that way.
13: Name a movie adaptation you thought was better than or equal to its source material.
-LOTR put in more facial features and characterisation than Tolkien ever did, and did the tales far less fucking tediously. Imagine if you'd had to sit and watch hobbits walking through the countryside for 6 hours with barely anything happening?! Yeah...
14: What genres do your favorite movies tend to be?
-Historical, fantasy, Gothic Romantic, just Romantic stuff on the whole. More old than new movies these days. Why watch shitty modern chick flicks when I have far better characterisation and far less narrowly defined female lives in old-timey "women's pictures?" And guys who actually fucking shaved, dressed in clothes that were tailored for them instead of rented and saggy, whose bodily expressions weren't frozen for fear of "fagginess," and who weren't pumped full of 'roids.
15: Are you a fan of period dramas and if so, what era do you enjoy best?
-Yes. I love me some costume dramas, but I am seriously picky about them--most post-90s ones have been fucking awful and tend to feature shitty costumes and unkempt hair that would've sent real historical people to Bedlam, wobblycam from hell, vomit-inducingly excessive modernisation to be "edgy", and that one painfully skeletal bint they shove into every period drama ever these days, so it's... slim pickings for a history nerd, these days. There aren't many good ones set in the 17th century/Baroque era, which I love the most: the two Baroque dramas I wholeheartedly love are both series. (The Devil's Whore and By The Sword Divided.) The Angeliques and Musketeer adaptations are riddled with flaws, but there are some glowing bits within. As for The Golden Age of Islam... bloody hell, there really aren't that many good ones out there, are there?! ToB and Jodhaa Akbar and Disney's Aladdin, obviously. La Reine Margot isn't "my" period but it's great, as is Dangerous Liaisons (also not my period)--those are so fucking perfect. And the Connie period dramas, well... I think of them as primarily "silent movies" or "old movies," actually. Of those, The Student of Prague, ToB and The Wandering Jew are the best "costume" ones, IMHO. (I'd probs enjoy Lucrezia Borgia and Carlos and Elisabeth way more, were the copies we have not so smudgy.)
16: Name a movie you love that you would recommend to just about everyone.
-Ah, but we know there are always cynical cunts out there who'd give even Casablanca two stars, so what's the point? I'd still recommend it, though. And The Lion King, I guess.
17: Name a movie you love that you consider an acquired taste.
-Honestly, I'm thinking of telly rather than movies again. You will pry my cherished copy of The Time Monster from my cold, dead hands. Does The Devil of Winterborne count as a movie or TV? That's how far back my love for Mark Gatiss goes. Um... Don't Be A Menace To South Central While Drinking Your Juice In The Hood makes me fucking cry with laughter (the comedic timing is what does it. *beat* "Ain't dat some shit!"). Of Connie's oeuvre, yes, I know Bella Donna is rubbish, but Connie and Mary are SIZZLING and horny and juicy and it's Valid as a BDSM porn movie. And the novel is actually good.
18: Name a film you like directed by/starring a filmmaker/actor you normally don't care for.
-Not so much actor/director, but I did *not* expect to love Thor as much as I did, because I expected a dumb popcorn movie but got great adventure cinema with a touch of Shakespeare instead. I really am not the right audience for regular Marvel features at all, before or after. Fuck Marvel up its dumb macho Republican ass. But Thor is fucking beautiful and operatic and poetic and majestic and Pagan and shit. Branagh knows what I like.
19: Name a movie that blew your mind.
-A Woman's Face (1941). Because. Holy. Fuck. How can I keep on finding yet more details in it six years after first watching it, having watched it countless times by now?! And obvs all the other stuff, like the shockingly good female POV, amazing and complex woman protagonist, amazing writing, amazing ensemble cast, amazing direction, amazing lighting, amazing evil Torsten Slinkypussy Barring and The. Goddamn. Attic. Scene.
20: What genre mash-up would you most love to see that either hasn't been done yet or hasn't been done enough?
-Feminist-savvy historical romance with fantasy elements and hot explicit sex that's not shit. Basically, like the stuff you see in my fics, but better paced and woven into coherent adventure movies.
21: The coolest movie you've ever seen
-Too, too many. But Bogie was the coolest. And Claude Rains had the best acting skills. And Conrad Veidt was Conrad motherfucking Veidt. So what with those three mountains of coolness all converging under the Moroccan sky, I'm sure it's safe to say "Casablanca."
#movies#personal#meme#i am leaving out tons i know#but i must attempt sleep nao#i was quoting don't be a menace to myself just yesterday ffs#every time there's an anvilly Point in a movie#i keep screaming 'mmESSAGE!'
4 notes
·
View notes
Note
6, 11, 15, and 19, please!
6: Which OC did you forget about?
If I could remember them, then they wouldn’t qualify forthis question, would they? Okay, but more seriously, in most cases, if I havean OC, and I’ve forgotten about them, I’ve also forgotten about the entirestory they’re in, so at least they’re not forgotten all alone, but are in thecompany of everyone else in that story. I don’t make characters just to makecharacters, and honestly I’m always a little surprised every time I rememberthat sometimes others do exactly that. However, interpreting this questionslightly differently, in the original fiction edited version of A Draught ofLight, I do have a character who’s actually pretty significant who kind of justvanishes near the end of the story. Presumably she went home, but like…withouteven saying goodbye, or without even commenting on all the crazy shit thathappened? I need to do another edit to give her a better exit.
11: Share the last paragraph you wrote.
Ah, this question comes at like the worst possible time,because the last full paragraph I wrote (as opposed to editing), I was thinkingas I wrote it, “I need to fix this later, this is a wall of text.” But here itis, anyway:
The doors opened onto a warmly-litspace that was bright enough to see everything up close, but dim enough thatthe brain ignored most of what was going on in the distance. A plush, velvetycarpet enveloped his bare feet, in a violet-red that immediately called to mindancient royalty. It drew away from him in a straight line and Pitch Black feltsure he knew what awaited him at the end. Because he knew this, he didn’t lifthis eyes right away.. Not straight ahead, at least. He wanted to get a bettersense of the room around him, first. Out of the corner of his eyes, the roomwas not so huge as he had first thought. Some of the walls were deeply polishedwood, and they reflected light from the chandeliers that have light to thewhole room. Pitch Black wasn’t going to stare at them too closely now, but hehad the impression that they were quite intricate. Along the walls, where therewasn’t polished wood, there were sections of stone, that seemed to glitter—no.The stone wasn’t glittering, those were pools and fountains. There seemed likean excessive amount of them, even if Sandy had a serious bath sex fetish (whichwouldn’t be bad, just surprising that it hadn’t been mentioned when so muchelse had) but then Cosmo supplied a more sensible answer. The pools andfountains were for everyone, and not necessarily for having sex in. Obviously,in a space where everyone was expecting to have as much sex as they wanted, itwould be a good idea to give people a chance to wash between partners or acts.And if Sandy had the money to buy him gold jewelry to wear for one night, itmade sense that he had enough money to put bath fixtures in that were luxuriousand fit the theme. The space in the rest of the room was taken up with beds andcouches, tables and chairs of many kinds, some curtains and screens providingmoderate separation between groupings. Opulent patterns and deep jewel tonesdefined almost everything in fabric. Off to the left, deep in the room, heglimpsed the gleam of wood and glassware that indicated a bar. All thisinformation about the things in the room he took in in an instant. He didn’tworry about it too much, either. What ought to draw his attention, and did,were the people. There were maybe twenty people there, maybe a few more, butnot a crowd. Which made sense, considering, well, the limits of humanendurance—and probably the management of group dynamics. Cosmo was suddenlystruck by the thought that Sandy just really liked friends with benefitsrelationships, and he also liked having a lot of friends.
15: How do you name settings/characters?
With settings, the thing that I keep in mind is that peoplearen’t really that creative when naming things. Is there a hill by the place?The place is going to be named after that, or maybe it’ll be named somethinglike “Hill in the language spoken when people first started living here” Hill.Is there a river? Is there a bay? Is there a certain type of tree really commonhere? A certain kind of weather? Is there a natural feature that looks like aneyeball/arm/leg/head/whatever? What’s the most memorable thing in the place’shistory? The place can be named after any of those kinds of things, and inalternate world stories I think of my naming as using a translation conventionso that the place names sound to the reader the same as they sound to the mainpoint of view character. The characters aren’t speaking English, but if theyhear the name of a place as, I don’t know, Redleaf, or something, then it’sgoing to be called Redleaf in the story.
Sometimes I do like to make up names for the sound, though,and for that, it depends utterly on the connotations I have of certain sounds.And that’s going to depend on…well,the entire history of English as well as my vocabulary and all my reading andreal life experiences. Also Tolkien, probably, because I read the Hobbit andLOTR as a kid, and JRR was much more serious about the development and sound oflanguage than I will ever be.
Oh, and in one of my settings, I name places by trying toimagine what a current place-name would sound like if it was used and garbledover a few thousand years.
Characters are a bit different. Sometimes I do go tobaby-naming websites if I have an idea of the sort of name I want, but moreoften I don’t, because looking up names isn’t furthering the story. If thesetting is on Earth, I’ll pick a name that I won’t mind writing or hearing inmy head for the whole story. Something I’ve heard or seen before. I likelearning random names in the hope that one of them will stick and I’ll be ableto find it when I’m trying to think up a name again.
Other things I have done to name characters: picked a wordthat has something to do with the character and run it through severaldifferent languages in a translator and changed it until it seemed more name-y;had a fantasy world where, for no reason but my whims, people’s names wereunusual, polysyllabic, but real, English words (I never finished that story butI had so much fun with the part I did write); and done the hideousaren’t-I-clever thing of naming my characters after other famous characters inthe English language literary canon. Hopefully I’ve given up this last.
Mainly, I try to choose ordinary names for characters thatcome from Earth, because I don’t really care for generational stories, sothere’s no way that the parents of a baby would know, when naming their baby,that the child would end up in any kind of adventure.
19: What does your editing/revising process look like?
For short things: I allow myself to write slowly, and then Ido one read through for both copyediting and content-level edits. This would bewhat I did for the stories for the kinkmeme prompts. I know it might sound alittle strange to characterize the writing of a story every two days as ‘slowwriting,’ but the stories were very short, of course.
And, honestly, for longer fics, it’s mostly the sameprocess, except chapter by chapter. For the novels that I really, really wantto be good, there’s at least two full editing rounds, as well as searches forwords that signal I used a weaker word than I could have (very, really, andothers).
But the process is just…reading everything slowly andcarefully, and changing what needs to be changed to make the story work betterand say what I want it to say. I don’t do things like printing everything outto make pen corrections by hand, I don’t change the size or font to literallysee the words differently, I don’t, Heaven forbid, just straight-up rewrite thewhole thing from scratch…I don’t do a lot of things.
Maybe I should, but no one’s called me out on my terribleediting yet.
Oh, and I also have a document where I can paste substantialsections or well-written, but irrelevant sentences that have been cut from thework to be published. That way I don’t have to feel bad about deleting stuffthat took me plenty of time and energy to produce, but I can still effectivelyget rid of it, while I know it’s still there if I need to put it back later. That’sprobably the closest thing to a Real Writing Tip here.
2 notes
·
View notes
Note
Hey you, during the course of this season i Have seen more and more people leave the fandom or grow disinterested in spn, and im confused why that it. I get why maybe s12 wouldnt be a fave season but if I look at the wank and bads of the previous ones (destiel fiasco in/out the show s9, charlies death Dean cruelty to Cas in s10, Dean/baby love interest s11) s12 didnt really do much that would drive people away en masse I feel? Yet it seems like more people left it :(
Heya! :D
Idk, maybe it was that more vocal people drifted off? I always feel like people’s attention spans are usually only a few years or so. I mean, I feel like I’ve been in the fandom a Long Time and I’ve only been here since the end of season 9, so really this is only my 3rd hiatus, and coming up to 4th year watching with fandom, on a 12 year show I’ve been watching for nearly 10 years, for the most part as a moderately casual viewer… I think I clock up about 5 years major interest and then drift, based on me vs several other things like how invested I was in LotR or Harry Potter or Animorphs, or whatever (to go back in time to my pre-teen interests :P) and it’s not a bad thing and I still love 2 of those franchises and have engagement in them but back to being a casual fan (if “religiously watches LotR at Christmas” is casual allowing for cultural/social stuff, but I’m not composing Legolas/Aragon smut in my teenage journal in secret code any more :P)
Anyway the season 8 bubble of fandom could be deflating about now - that’s long enough for people to feel they’ve given the show their full attention and it’s still going so it’s getting tiring. That’s the major feeling I get - people are exhausted and we had a baby boomer fandom around season 8 so that ~generation~ of fans is now reaching the natural end of its attention span in a very human natural way. But there’s a ton of new or newer fans who are still enjoying the heck out of it, and the fandom’s still huge and full of people with a commitment to the show or ships. And some people don’t work like that and are loyal from start to finish or commit to TV shows fully to see them to their end. I would dump a show I was getting bored of but come back to watch the end later in a big marathon to find out what happened, but Supernatural hasn’t given me a reason to get totally un-invested until that time… I suspect a lot of people will watch the entire show ONE DAY but don’t want to do fandom and give it all their leisure time any more either.
[under a cut for meandering rambling]
But yeah I think you’ve named some pretty big mass exodus moments (I would like to clarify “Dean/baby” is “Dean/Amara-as-an-infant” right? Because Dean/Baby totally was a thing in 11x04 and it was GLORIOUS :P) and I feel like I DID lose people from my dash all through the time I’ve been watching. Heck, I hit up fandom right after 9x18, and started following people, and that was the JIB of “we don’t play it that way” so I immediately was following several abandoned blogs and I’d barely even started to get to know the landscape :P I feel like people HAVE been jumping ship the entire time and I remember most of those instances as sadly clearing several favourite people off my dash or turning them into different fandom blogs that I eventually unfollowed out of confusion…
I don’t know, I think people leave when they want to leave because as long as you like the core of a thing and it holds your interest, you can forgive or ignore or scowl at but hold out for better the bad bits and problematic parts. I’m sort of weary of them killing all the women and PoC but I’m still at the stage where I identify it sucks, but I still care too much about the main characters that I’m sort of stuck on this ride with them.
(I have 2x21 paused on the screen next to me right as Sam meets all the special children, aka introducing Lily the lesbian who dies horribly as a disposable red shirt to show how awful this situation is, and Jake, a black guy whose power is being super strong and to fall to Azazel’s manipulation, kill Sam, and then get killed with extreme overkill by Sam. In the same season he set the cops on Gordon, also a black man who was really aggro and cruel, but in the next season becomes a monster and Sam kills him also one of the most brutal kills he has up there with Jake. Basically, the show’s always had some issues and if we carried on watching all the way to season 12, well, apply self-reflection, but at this point if you’ve been watching as long as I have, you just kind of accept the show sucks at certain things, and for ME personally it’s not kicking off the sort of weariness that others felt about Billie and Alicia and Eileen being killed off this season)
… I don’t really have a point, expect about the demographics of fandom during season 8 getting to the end of their interest now. I don’t think EVERYONE who did will leave, and we’re getting fresh blood all the time, but I think that’s just part of the nature of being in fandom. I don’t think season 12 is particularly bad from my experience, although some pretty high profile bloggers have gotten exhausted - again, they’ve been maintaining blogs and producing content since single digit seasons so they’ve contributed a LOT to the fandom and there’s a fatigue about contribution as well…
That’s partially why I meta and gif and write fic and occasionally make random shitposts… I don’t want to burn out because any one of those things on its own can get pretty boring, even writing fic. Or especially, idk, as a writer I tend to bounce around projects, so this is keeping me weirdly focused on writing my original fiction on one side of my brain and fan fic on the other and it seems to be a better way of splitting my attention… But I digress. :P
I know how to manage my own brain to some degree but I have a lot of time to contemplate and self-reflect on why I’m in fandom and what I get out of it, and mostly I just conclude I’m bored and house-bound and I’ve found a few tried and tested things that get me some positive attention in a non-weird rat with a pleasure button way like people running hate blogs or something… But I know my own head and that I can get bored of stuff so I marathon a lot of other shows and think about other things than fandom stuff as much as possible and just let this be the gutter my brain drains into when my attention span is too shot to hell to do anything else and I just want to slump over a keyboard and do the easiest activity I know bar playing Animal Crossing for hours.
Other people with busier lives and actual jobs and energy and limbs that don’t just randomly stop working when they do anything for more than 5 minutes and so on might not be casual fans but they make a certain space in their life for fandom and get out of it what they need but it’s a high quality demand thing so if their carefully allocated me-time isn’t rewarding them like it should it’s totally their right to go find another OTP to amuse themselves with a fandom producing stuff they want to see and a media source that’s giving them what they want immediately and in a way they don’t have to “look for scraps” as some people were saying about Destiel in season 9, 10 and 11 while things were thinner on the ground.
And as one of the too-much-free-time fandom contributors, I’ve got an enormous luxury to stick out things people who don’t have time for being jerked around or over-analysing to find what they want to see have… Although I’ll try and pass on my thoughts for the people with less time to think them to try and help them enjoy themselves as much as possible :P Anyway I think a whole range of reasons happen that people might get fatigued of the show especially as lives change and people blogging enthusiastically one day might get a job or a new relationship or a dog or SOMETHING and just not spend quite so much time online and then discover they don’t NEED to spend so much time on fandom, and drift naturally… Then try and find some reason on the show they’ve stopped watching, but often it’s just that things look worse after time away when the spark has started to fade because it’s not being nurtured in the same way any more.
And 12 years is a LONG ASS TIME to be invested in something, so I think in general the fatigue or changing interests is all over the place and we might see it more and more as people drift… People who might watch it all as a catch up one day maybe a year or two after the show ends, but just don’t have the patience to stay in fandom and put in that energy over and over and over.
Also the show is in a really weird place where it has some of the best writers it’s ever had in Berens and the newbie writers, and Dabb’s doing some fascinating things with the plot, but Buckleming are the executors of the story, in several interpretations of that phrase :P And there are people who skip MotW and find them unimportant or would judge the season on the plot, not the heart of the story… It’s a pretty precarious place, quality-wise. I think season 11 and 12 are a proper like, silver age revival of the MotW (with Nancy Won and Robbie giving last season a massive boost) where I think those episodes are really innovative and interesting, and the writers are being allowed a lot of freedom to play on THOSE canvases, but while the character development and *reasons* for the story have been fascinating and important, obviously 5 of the plot episodes this latest season were Buckleming and crucial to watch to know wtf was going on, even though the writers of those episodes seem to have such a terrible problem with hating the audience (literally, it’s in their scripts and off-screen comments), the genre, second drafts, common human decency towards characters and understanding why they’re important, pacing, you name it… :P So the show literally has 2 faces these days and depending on which one you see when you think of season 12, probably defines how you feel about the show as a whole and all that. I treat the plot episodes these days as a necessary evil between episodes written by people who actually like the show and care about it and its characters (see also: my non-stop sobbing about 12x22 since it aired)… But seeing the other face can really cast a cloud over the show and I’ve seen it make people wonder why the other writers even try. (I mean Perez did an incredible salvage job on Crowley in 12x15 only for it to immediately get yanked away again the next time BL wrote him and I think only they really got to play with him for the rest of the season, meaning all that work to make it seem important and thematically relevant that Perez had set up in 12x12 and messed with in 12x15 ended up being for nothing and Dabb had no time to do anything deep with Crowley, because 12x13 turns out to be the big Crowley & Rowena farewell episode, except for how it flubbed the entire premise of Grand Send Off Episode a la 7x10 or something despite all the ingredients being there…)
I am just rambling now so… Gonna hit post. Hope this makes sense :P This is just my interpretation of how people are feeling/how fandom as an entity seems to work, so it’s pretty subjective and others might feel very differently especially people who have been in negative echo chambers while I’ve built myself a reasonably positive one plus SENSIBLE and CONSTRUCTIVE wanky criticism that doesn’t go off the deep end :P
12 notes
·
View notes
Text
What Has Been Done Part Two
Part One
A/N: Hey! So I don’t know if I linked the first part right? XD I hope I did? Someone tell me if I didn’t please? X’D So this took longer than I thought it would, but today I was watching LOTR after posting a chapter in a different fic on AO3, and my muse was like “HEY, WHAT IF WE DID THE THING”, and I was like “I’d love to do the thing!” so we did the thing, and here it is! <3 It’s pretty long, so if you’re on mobile you might not get to see it all - still not sure how that all works. XD Thanks for reading, and I hope it was worth the wait!
The first order of business, Bucky knew, was to show Tony that he was absolutely and without a doubt not on Wanda’s side. Most of the Avengers seemed pretty eager to defend the little witch – something he just couldn’t wrap his head around, if he were being honest. She wasn’t a kid, no matter what Steve said, and she’d been neck-deep in some seriously shady shit of her own volition. And yet he’d been eyed with deep suspicion when he joined the group while most of his housemates seemed happy to hand her the keys to the kingdom.
Since everyone who’d demonstrated themselves to be on her side were clueless as to the tension between her and Tony, Bucky’d come to an obvious conclusion. He’d never find out the ‘why’ of their dynamic until he could show Tony that not only was he not on Wanda’s side, but he was in fact firmly on Tony’s. First thing’s first though – he wasn’t going to trust Bucky even a little until he had some data that showed Bucky didn’t like or trust Wanda. Bucky was happy to provide all the data he could.
His chance came one night at a team dinner. Though they’d been deemed ‘mandatory’ by Stevie, Tony often found a way to wriggle out of them. But their gear was all in tip-top shape, the idiot genius was well-rested, and he was ahead of schedule when it came to his SI projects. That Trifecta of Doom (Tony’s words) meant that Stevie ruthlessly enforced the ‘you must show up and socialize like a normal human being or so help me God’ rule.
Bucky hated that rule.
Still, it meant that Tony joined them for dinner, so it was working in his favor for the moment. The whole team was present except Thor and including the current object of his ire. He knew it was only a matter of time before she gave him an opening.
He would wait.
He could be patient, for Tony’s sake.
~.~.~
“So Rhodes will be here next week?”
“Yeah. My platypus finally convinced his CO’s that he needs me to check over the armor. I wish he’d tell the Air Force to stuff it and just come around to see me more often. I love doing upgrades, but I’d like more time to just hang out and blow shit up. It has been months since I’ve had my hands on my baby though, so I am looking forward to it. If they outfitted War Machine-”
“Iron Patriot.” Steve corrected with an unholy amount of glee, not bothering to duck when Tony chucked a roll at him. The little shit just caught it in his mouth and started to eat it, clearly enjoying the chance to tweak Tony’s nose a bit.
“We do not speak that name in this house, you heathen,” Tony hissed, a playful glint in his eyes. Bucky loved him like this – open and playful, willing to play a role to make them all laugh. “Anyway, like I was saying. If they put any filthy, unreliable HammerTech on War Machine,” he continued, glaring at Steve as he emphasized the name. Stevie just continued to grin unrepentantly. “Then I’m gonna hack the Pentagon again in retaliation.”
“Tony. You can’t-”
“Again?”
“Yes! That is an awesome plan, and I for one am fully in favor!”
“Clint, don’t encourage him. Please.” They were all smiling and chuckling, having a good time and enjoying each others company for once. Even Vision’s lips were curved in a vague expression of humor as Tony announced his plan to play the ‘Numa Numa’ song over the Pentagon’s loudspeakers for at least half an hour or until they got him out of the system – whichever came first. So, of course, Wanda took the opportunity to ruin everything.
“So your ego is so big you cannot allow anyone else to have a hand in your work?” It was fucking unfair that she had such a lyrical, lilting voice and that she could sound so sweet while poking and digging at old wounds. “And your little… prank would put the whole of this country at risk as well, would it not Stark?”
She always spat his name like she was throwing down a gauntlet, and it raised Bucky’s hackles immediately. He’d had handlers address him like that, always trying to push his buttons so they could see where his lines were. It wasn’t done to find boundaries to respect, oh no – it was so they knew exactly where and how hard to prod to make him snap, and then they could laugh as they watched him punished for giving in. No one else but Tony seemed to notice the tone though. They just kept eating, smiling like this was business as usual.
It pissed him off that it really fucking was.
“HammerTech is notoriously unreliable,” Tony told Wanda carefully, most of his good humor already gone. Now he was wary and defensive, readying himself for the attacks he knew were yet to come, prepared to face them alone because the rest of their team was made up of morons. “If the military had someone even halfway competent fiddling with my designs, I wouldn’t mind quite so much. And I’d have Friday monitoring everything at the Pentagon – she’d make sure any actual emergencies trumped the prank.”
“Ah, so we should trust national security to one of your AI’s. It always goes so well.” Wanda’s smile was sharper than the knives Bucky carried hidden on his person at all times, and there was a disturbing glitter in her eyes. Everything in him was screaming that she was a threat, and that he needed to take her down… but if he tried without the backing of the team, he would look like the crazy one. They might decide he needed to be confined and watched again; he couldn’t protect Tony if that happened, so it was imperative he keep calm until the most opportune moment. Everyone else looked uncomfortable now too, which should have made him feel better.
Except the were all of them – all except Vision – side-eying Tony, not Wanda. The slightest, vaguest mention of Ultron, and they were all looking at the genius in suspicion, like he was harboring horrid plans for world domination. It was enough to make him growl softly and clench both hands around his silverware hard enough that he bent the metal. Only Stevie and Nat noticed, or at least they were the only ones who glanced his way. Vision was still staring at his plate and shifting uneasily, while Sam and Clint were watching Tony with narrowed eyes. Wanda, of course, was still staring down Tony. God he wanted to stab the lot of them.
Murder wasn’t necessarily always bad.
Tony was still and wearing the smile he usually broke out for the press when they were being especially vicious. He shouldn’t have to wear that smile in his own fucking home. “Ha. Well, Friday is… she’s a lot more limited than even… than even JARVIS was. More a VI than an AI. Could someone pass the potatoes please?”
Bucky’d been wound tighter than coiled steel for a good five minutes; at the slightest hint that it would please Tony, he’d happily kill Wanda and offer him her head on a silver fucking platter. At the moment, he’d deliver a non-fatal stab wound to the rest of the team with a smile on his lips and a song in his heart. So when Wanda finally, finally gave him an excuse, he maybe overreacted just a little.
Or maybe they’d all been under-reacting for too fucking long.
As soon as the scarlet mist wrapped around the dish that held the scalloped potatoes, Bucky reacted. He didn’t wait to process the cruel glee in the witch’s expression; he didn’t stop to look for the indulgent smile he knew he’d find on Steve’s lips or for the terror that would be in Tony’s eyes. No, with the speed and ease born from years of cruel training at Hydra’s hands, Bucky reached for one of his knives and threw; when he heard the ‘thunk’ of it hitting wood and sticking, he didn’t bother to fight the satisfied smile that briefly curved his lips.
Though he’d barely aimed, the tip of the knife had managed to pierce Wanda’s sleeve as well, drawing a shriek from the woman. Now the little witch’s hand was pinned to her chair, and she was glaring at him with murderous intent. Her surprise had made her lose control of her powers; Nat being on her game was the only thing that saved the potatoes. She caught them before they could hit the table, and it was only after setting them down that she joined the rest of the team (sans Wanda and Bucky) in jumping to her feet and watching Bucky carefully. None of them were side-eying Tony anymore, he noticed cheerfully, and they were even reaching for their weapons. That was a definite improvement, because outta the two of them, he was infinitely more dangerous. He schooled his expression, making it blank as he pinned a dead-eyed stare on Wanda.
“What the fuck is your problem?” she demanded, tugging at the knife. It was in deep enough that it took quite a bit of her strength to pull it free. He was almost sorry she didn’t use her magic to get herself loose; he’d have been happy to go for the other sleeve. Or even her hand, really – he wasn’t feeling too picky just then.
“Keep your magic to yourself, witch,” he ground out, purposefully using something close to his ‘Winter Soldier’ voice. Right now that had everyone even more worried, but in a minute or so it’d land them all firmly on his side in this little spat. If they thought her magic was a trigger… well. It really was, though not in the way they’d think, and it was something he could handle. He’d never have brought it up if it weren’t a way to protect Tony and show him that Bucky was not going to join Wanda’s band of defenders. “We’re not inna fight, and we aren’t training neither. We’ve all got fucking hands, so we can pass shit around like regular folk.”
“Bucky-”
“No, Stevie. Been lettin’ this go long enough. I been tryin’, honest, but – no. She’s Hydra-”
“I am NOT-”
“Oh, not anymore or so you say. But you were, and they’re the ones who gave you those powers! Every time I see ‘em… no. I get it in training, which I understand – gotta learn to work with it if I ever want to be cleared to go out in the field. But I shouldn’t have to think about Hydra every time we sit down to eat!” Stevie’s face had already melted into an expression of warm, anxious concern. Bucky might have felt guilty for milking this if the blond idiot hadn’t left his Tony to suffer alone for so long.
“Buck… why didn’t you say anything before now?”
“… ‘Cause I didn’t wanna hurt team morale.” Oh, Wanda knew he was bullshitting – he could tell by the fury in her eyes. “B’sides, she can mess with my head if she’s mad at me, right? ‘M tired of people fucking around with my brain.” It was true, even if he didn’t let himself think about that too often. He let out a little too much of that, and he hated the vulnerability he could hear in his voice… at least, he hated it until Tony took a step towards him and laid a hand on his shoulder in a show of solidarity.
When Sam tried to do the same thing, Bucky couldn’t help but bare his teeth at his sometimes-friend, sometimes-enemy. “Hey, hey. We aren’t gonna let anyone do that, man. You gotta trust us on that one. Wanda isn’t poking around in anyone’s head. Sometimes she can’t help the vibes she gets, but she’s not purposefully digging for anything. Right?” As Sam looked to Wanda for confirmation, Bucky sent her a mental dare.
He almost hoped she did call BS, because it would prove that she was in his head. And Steve would ask why he’d really done it, which meant they’d all have to talk about the actual issue. Somehow he thought she’d be as eager for that discussion as Tony was… meaning they’d both rather have their spleens operated on with a rusty saw. When she only glowered at him in petulant defeat, he had to fight back the urge to crow – he’d backed her into a corner, alright. Served the bitch right, for making Tony scared, and for forcing him to whip out his press smile in a place where he should feel completely safe.
“Right. I don’t do that anymore.” Wanda told them all stiffly, tossing his knife onto the table in front of Bucky. Tony jerked, like he’d expected the knife to hit him, which fuck that shit all the way back to Russia, and Bucky had had enough.
“Yeah, well I don’t trust you,” he sneered, shoving away from the table as he grabbed first his knife and then his plate. “You were Hydra because you wanted to be. I don’t like Hydra, and I don’t like you. And how’m I supposed ta trust that she’s behavin’ when she can’t even keep her powers under wraps long enough to eat?” he demanded of Sam and – more importantly – Steve, jutting out his jaw stubbornly. “I’ll learn to live with that shit when I hafta, but I don’t need her turnin’ my stomach inside out while I’m tryin’ ta eat. I don’t need to be thinkin’ about that fuckin’ chair-” The way he choked on his words was real, as was the fear that spiked inside of him.
Steve moved to offer him reassurance, but Tony got there first, wrapping his fingers around Bucky’s metal arm and squeezing tightly. Their eyes met, both of them searching, and after a moment Bucky was able to offer him a weak smile. “Thanks doll,” he murmured, shifting so he was between the genius and the witch. “I can’t… I don’t wanna be here right now. Wanna… wanna maybe grab your plate and eat in the ‘shop with me?”
The thing about Steve’s puppy-dog eyes was that he’d learned ‘em late – when he was a skinny bit of nothing, he hadn’t needed to do anything but exist and all the old ladies were desperate to stuff him with food. No, he’d learned to don the pitiful expression later, after his body changed on him and would have denied him free food for the rest of his life. Bucky’d been the one to teach him, and Steve’d never, ever quite reached his level of expertise.
So he wasn’t real surprised when Tony caved after less than a second of Bucky’s sad, soulful eyes begging him to give in; neither was Steve. The rest of them all looked a bit shocked when the genius reached to grab his plate. When Wanda gave a sound that seemed vaguely protesting, Bucky turned to her and delivered a vicious snarl, continuing to put his body between her and his Tony. The man in question seemed to realize it, and the look he shot Bucky before starting towards the elevator was one of both gratitude and consideration.
“I’ll start eatin’ with you lot again when the witch learns to keep her fucking magic under wraps at the dinner table.” He told them all, giving a dismissive sniff and then turning to stalk after Tony. Before the elevator doors closed, he could hear Wanda wailing about the unfairness of it all… but Stevie would have his back. Stevie and Sam would be all for aiding Bucky in his continued recovery, while Nat and Clint would be all in favor of making sure the Winter Soldier never came to dinner uninvited. Vision… Vision he didn’t have much of a read on, but he knew how the discussion would end.
Maybe now Tony could eat with the team more often. It would make the genius happy to spend time with them, and he wouldn’t have to worry that Wanda would use her magic against him. If Bucky kept making sure the bitch’d have to physically go through him to try anything else, that would mean even less stress at dinner, which would mean an even happier Tony! And surely, surely the genius would realize that it was all for him, that Bucky was doing it because he was special. Yup, this first part of the plan had gone off without a hitch.
It was really, really hard to keep a gloating smirk off his face.
~.~.~
“Knock knock.”
“Bucky-babe! You know you don’t have to knock. You have a lifetime free pass to enter this house of madness.” Distracted Tony was always fun to listen to, because he gave out the most ridiculous (sweetest) nicknames and didn’t really pay attention to what was coming out of his mouth. “Honestly I should just set you up a little corner of your own, you’re down here so often. Maybe I’ll get rid of DUM-E and his charging station – yes, you!” he answered the sad, inquiring little whistle. “You know what you did! You’re lucky you aren’t already on your way to McDonald’s to become their latest employee. You’d really shine there, but here you’re almost useless. Don’t droop and give me the sad claw, you pile of metal. Be better and you can stick around.”
A robot shouldn’t be able to sigh soulfully, but somehow DUM-E managed before zooming over to Bucky and tucking his bulky, unwieldy frame against his left side. “Hey, bud. Don’t worry – he loves you too much to give ya up. You know that.” DUM-E only made another sulky noise, trundling along after Bucky close enough to continuously almost trip him as he crossed the floor to where Tony was working. “An’ I don’t need my own space, ya loon. ‘M good just sittin’ on the couch and watchin’ you make the future.”
“Stop, you’re making me blush. God, I’m going to swoon, and the welder is still on. You’re gonna make me burn down the whole tower- DUM-E NO! It was a-”
It was too late – as soon as the word ‘welder’ had been mentioned, the pouting ‘bot cheered and zoomed off to grab his favorite toy. Any idiot would have known how that was going to turn out, and Bucky couldn’t wait for the show. Sure enough, when ‘burn’ left Tony’s mouth, the ‘bot pulled the pin and began to hose down Tony’s work area with abandon.
Moments later, the workbench was covered in white foam, as was Tony’s right side and a good portion of the floor. The welder was off at least when it clattered to the ground, and the genius looked torn between laughter and fury while the poor, hapless DUM-E was doing spins and twirls in celebration, holding the extinguisher aloft. U hurried over to join the party, the ‘bots ‘discussing’ DUM-E’s ‘daring rescue’ as Bucky lost the fight against laughter.
His guffaws only got louder when Tony whirled to face him, a playful scowl on his handsome face. “You think this is funny, Buck-a-boo? You come into my house on the day when I am about to catapult us into the future, and you show such disrespect? In my house, Buck-a-roo? You do this in my own house?”
“That’s not even close ta the fuckin’ quote Tony,” he challenged, grinning and backing away from the approaching and very messy genius – both plates of dinner he carried needed to be kept safe at all costs. “What’re ya doin’? You comin’ after me now? After I slaved over-a hot stove to bring you food?”
“… put the plates down, Bucking Bronco, and it’ll be fine.”
“‘Bucking Bronco’? Really?”
“Shut up and put the plates down.”
“Not ‘til you tell me why.”
“I gotta teach you some respect, Bucky Brewster. Was that one better?”
“You’re fucking nuts.” Still, Bucky did put down their dinner on a surface he deemed safe enough – there was a distinct lack of motor oil, and DUM-E and U were still having a ball with the now-empty fire extinguisher. “There, ya happy now doll?”
“Very. So you think it’s funny that my excitable, idiotic child ruined a full day’s worth of work, do you?”
“Little bit,” Bucky answered casually, loving the sparkle in Tony’s eyes as he continued to advance. He let the man almost get within reach, then danced back again, arching a brow. “You’re the one who talked about shit being on fire when he was around. It’s kinda your fault sweetheart.”
“Really. You think it’s my fault that a fortune in electronics is covered in shitty white foam?”
“Yup.” He returned, making sure to pop the ‘p’ extra loud.
“Then I bet you also think it’s my fault that I’m covered in foam,” he murmured thoughtfully, still coming after Bucky in a slow dance of chase and retreat. They both knew where this was going… and really, Bucky thought the end result would be well worth it. “And you must find it absolutely hilarious to boot.”
“Little bit, yeah.”
“Huh. Interesting.” This time when Tony lunged, Bucky only pretended to evade; he willingly let the genius catch him in his arms, delivering a warm, tight hug… and also a crap ton of the shitty white foam. Worth it, Bucky decided happily, wrapping his own arms around Tony in turn. In a fit of playfulness, he lifted the other man off the floor and twirled him in a circle reminiscent of the ‘bots happy dance. That immediately started the pair of them off again, which made him laugh over the exuberant beeps and whistles. After only a moment, Tony joined in even as he held on for dear life, allowing himself to be swung without complaint. Once he was on the ground though, he punched Bucky’s shoulder lightly and began to scowl.
“Ow! Hey, c’mon now. That was fun – admit it.”
“Whatever. Still funny now that you’re all foam-y?”
“Yup.”
“Loser.”
“Nerd.”
“Ugh.” Turning away, Tony stripped off his tank-top casually, an act Bucky absolutely would have fallen for if it wasn’t for the bit of pink on Tony’s cheeks when he turned back around. “Don’t want foam in my food,” he muttered by way of explanation, and this encounter was officially not funny anymore. Bucky felt his mouth go bone-dry as he allowed his eyes to roam over all of the muscled flesh Tony had on display. He found himself lingering on the scars left behind by the arc reactor, and he wanted more than anything to settle his metal hand over the marks and promise to protect Tony’s heart for the rest of his life.
Thankfully even he wasn’t so far gone that he thought that would be anything other than creepy to the extreme. They were just barely friends! Friends did not go around making sappy declarations like that!
To keep himself from doing it anyway, he shrugged and pulled off his shirt as well, tossing it to the couch. “Good idea. No wonder they gave ya the genius label.”
“Yeah. That’s what did it – my extensive knowledge of when to get naked. Not that I’m going to! Or that you should. Half nude is good. It’s better. It’s best! Because we’re eating dinner, not… uh. Yeah. So. Ducking out on another team dinner, or did you just miss me?”
“Why can’t it be both? I like hanging out with you, and I’m still not convinced that the witch isn’t gonna activate her creepy-ass magic just to mess with me. Steve promised, but… uh. I was wonderin’ if maybe you’d be there? Next time I eat with the whole team I mean,” he elaborated as he grabbed his plate and watched Tony do the same. “I feel like you’re the only other person in this place who doesn’t buy her sob-story one hundred percent. So I’d like it if you were… you know. Around. Just in case. You watch out for me, and I’ll take care-a you. Even trade.”
“… I don’t know. She… ah. She doesn’t like me very much. We have… history. Sucky history. Pain and death and terrible choices and her creepy-ass magic… none of it fun. I don’t… I don’t like to intrude.”
“But you live here too! You should be able ta eat with us if you want. I should feel comfortable eatin’ at the table, or watchin’ movies, or doin’ whatever without worryin’ that she’s gonna be… fuck. I don’t know. Pulling killer rabbits outta hats.”
“That’s not her party trick.”
“Then what is?” At first, Bucky thought he’d pushed too far. Tony paled and set the forkful of food he’d been about to eat back onto his plate with a fairly loud clatter. The man gulped convulsively, and the plate began to shake – no, that was Tony. He was shivering, and there was fear and guilt and self-loathing all jumbled up in his eyes, and Bucky just couldn’t take it. Swearing softly, he dropped his own dinner back on the bench it had been on and crossed to Tony in two quick steps; after removing the genius’ plate from his hands, it was his turn to initiate a hug. This one should have been better, what with all the skin-on-skin contact, and in some ways it was. Tony was warm, though not as warm as Bucky, and their bare chests pressed together would have been cause for a prayer of gratitude and a more thorough exploration if it had happened under different circumstances. As it was, Bucky only pulled Tony close, tucking his head under his chin. “Hey, hey. I’m sorry doll,” he soothed, running one hand up and down Tony’s spine. He hated the way the man trembled, and he felt a vengeful fury building in his heart again.
Most of it was for Wanda – she was the one making Tony so afraid. The little witch had done something, and he was gonna find a way to make her pay. But the rest of them, the whole bunch of Tony’s so-called friends? They’d let it go on. They’d ignored the signs, and Tony’d been carrying this weight all by himself, and it wasn’t fucking fair. He was going to pound them all into the ground, and if he didn’t actually kill Wanda he’d be very proud of his restraint.
“Shouldn’ta asked. Sorry. You don’t gotta say nothin’ Tony. But hey,” here he pulled back a little and took gentle hold of Tony’s chin, tipping it back so their eyes met once more. “I won’t ever let her hurt you, ya know. I’ll do whatever I gotta to make sure she can’t… do whatever the fuck she did again. I mean it. You name it, doll, and it’s fucking done.” When he let go, Tony was quick to hide away again, holding on to Bucky like he was Tony’s anchor.
Bucky liked the thought as much as he hated the way Tony needed one.
“You… you really wanna know?”
“Yeah. I… I wanna know everything about you Tones. But you don’t gotta tell me if you don’t want to. This is about you right now, not makin’ me feel better.” Bucky hesitated a moment, then shrugged and threw caution to the wind. In a single easy motion, he lifted Tony up off the ground – he only just managed to grip the back of the man’s thighs instead of his ass. The genius immediately wrapped his legs around Bucky’s waist, which was surprising and thrilling in equal measure – he’d expected Tony to protest, maybe even yell and threaten to beat him up if he didn’t let go. This… this was a lot better, and also just a little scary.
Did… did Tony really trust him that much?
That was a question for another time; at the moment he needed to focus on caring for the shaking man in his arms. Bucky walked them over to the couch, then sat down carefully. He thought Tony would scramble to get away from him, or even just slide to one side so he could be close but not in Bucky’s lap. But no – once again his expectations were shattered, because Tony seemed quite happy to stay right where he was. He didn’t even protest when DUM-E wheeled over and draped a worn blanket over the both of them.
“I haven’t… told anyone else. They wouldn’t… I didn’t think they’d believe me.” Tony whimpered into his bare shoulder, rousing every protective instinct Bucky possessed.
“Well I’m gonna believe you, so you don’t have to worry about that.”
“You won’t… you won’t be mad?”
“Why’d I be mad, doll? It’s the witch who hurt you, not the other way ‘round.”
“… I’m not trying to deny responsibility. I know it was my fault, and it was my idea. Even Bruce wasn’t sure, and I bullied him into… it was all my fault. It’s on me, and I know that. I’m not trying to… to blame her. It was originally my idea, and anyway the rest of the team shook it off fine. So I should have been okay. I was okay. It wasn’t even affecting me by the time I… I know it was my fault Bucky, I promise. I’m not trying to m-make you hate her, or make it seem like-”
“Hey, hey… easy sweetheart. Easy.” Bewildered and not quite sure what exactly Tony was talking about, Bucky just held him closer and stroked his hands over the expanse of the man’s back. It felt almost like Tony was a horse about to spook; if he didn’t do this right, Tony would run, and he’d never have this chance again. He had to do this right. “You take responsibility better’n anyone I know, and I know Steve Rogers. You never avoid shouldering your fair share of the blame – more than your share, most times. So… don’t worry ‘bout that, or me being mad. And I hate to break this to you doll, but I hated Wanda way before you’n me started hangin’ out.” That got a choked little sob of a laugh, and Bucky vowed to set the whole goddamned world aflame if it didn’t stop hurting the guy he loved.
“Right… right. You never did seem to… and you said… and you… right. Okay. It’s… it’s about Ultron.”
Somehow, as soon as those words were out of Tony’s mouth and they slotted with the rest of the word-vomit the genius had spewed, Bucky knew that there was a good chance he was going to commit murder before the night was over. If this was what he thought it was…
Well. It just might be time for a good old fashioned witch hunt.
#WinterIron#my fic#What Has Been Done#Tony Stark#Bucky Barnes#Tony Stark/Bucky Barnes#anonymous prompt
73 notes
·
View notes
Text
Fanfic Recs pt.1
Soo this was long overdue. I don’t really read fanfic that often, and when I do it is mostly things other people have reccomended to me. So i’ve always wanted to create my own rec list to return the favour, but somehow never got around to it. So yay years later, here’s at least a start. Will probably sort it better if i update it. Anyways if fanfic and any of these fandoms are your cup of tea, enjoy. Mostly gen and either humour or horror, it think.
Fandoms included: Harry Potter, Death Note, MCU, LOTR, Sherlock Holmes, Original Fiction and weirdly, Samurai Champloo
Harry Potter (and Crossovers with Harry Potter)
https://m.fanfiction.net/s/9238861/1/Applied-Cultural-Anthropology-or Applied Cultural Anthropology (Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the Cruciatus) (Hermione/Tom Riddle) Really well done, pairing is not the main focus (they’re not even together yet), instead hermione being her usual brilliant self but being sorted into slytherin. She isn’t just suddenly evil, she’s still righteous and wants to better the world. But exactly this (with a little help of a unassuming black diary) leads her down a slippery slope. (Ongoing.)
https://m.fanfiction.net/s/11160991/1/0800-Rent-A-Hero 0800-Rent-A-Hero. Harry has finally gotten rid of snake-face and settled down with Teddy and Andromeda. Cue inter-dimensional space vortex opening in his living room. Summoned from his finally peaceful life by Dumbledore and the Order to solve their voldemort problem, Harry is less than pleased. But can he truly just ignore them? Grudgingly „Harry White“ accepts the free post as divination teacher at hogwarts and starts befriending his female interdimensional counterpart, Iris Potter, all while wanting to get revenge on Dumbledore and trying not to get too involved with Tonks… The beginning is a bit grizzly but overall it is definitely more on the humorous side, and also poking fun at so many fandom chliches! (Last updated 6 months ago, so there is still hope…)
https://m.fanfiction.net/s/10954546/1/Framed-Fractured Framed and fractured. During the fiendfyre-incident in the Room of Requirement Harry barely escapes through some kind of black hole. Now he’s stuck as a painting in the RoR, with a surprisingly sane, young and healthy looking Tom Riddle as the only visitor. The painting only decipts a bleak room, the door is shut and strange shadows lurk in the 4th wall whenever the RoR is not used. There is also an old diary there, speaking of monsters just outside of the room… – very interesting start, tom and harry haven’t really interacted yet but the descriptions of the timelessness in the painting and the “unexplained horror” vibe are fab. (Ongoing.)
https://m.fanfiction.net/s/10136762/21/ The Case of the Man who was wanted. (Harry Potter x Sherlock crossover) Harry Potter lives as a fugitive after being accused and imprisoned of a string of murders after the defeat of voldemort. Sherlock gets called to solve the case of the mysterious death of the Dursley couple in Surrey and finds known terrorist and fugitive Harry Potter inside, who, unexpectedly, claims to be innocent. Sherlock gets involved in not only the world of witchcraft and wizardry, but also in a strange man who seems kind of hollow and has many well-kept secrets… (Again, the kind of lovecraftian creepy horror vibe i love. Ongoing.)
https://m.fanfiction.net/s/11115934/1/The-Shadow-of-Angmar The Shadow of Angmar. (HP x LOTR crossover) Harry gets summoned by the witch king as „the master of Death“. Broken and battered, he starts searching for a way home in an unknown world where his magic doesn’t work. Has FANTASTIC world building and a very bitter and world-weary Harry. (Ongoing)
Marvel Cinematic Universe
http://archiveofourown.org/chapters/425428 The Calculator by katsu. THIS IS MY FAVORITE FANFIC IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD. Just imagine Good Omens but more superheroes-and-supervillain themed. Loki is not going full villain like in the thor movie, but instead is more of a chaotic-neutral kind of guy more keeping the supervillainery for appearance’s sake and the occasional meddling to aleviate the boredom. But then he takes the meddling a bit too far, and karme comes to bite him in the butt. Big time. I really don’t want to say more about the plot bc it is so brilliant and original. Just read it. Also, have a quote (this is only a footnote, actually, so imagine what the real fic mus be like): “yes, he had filled several little leather-bound diaries with childish scrawls of red ink that read things like, “Die Thor” and “You never really accepted me!” And then he’d attended a few sessions of primal scream therapy and taken a modern dance course at the local community college. Between finding a constructive way to express his anger and making some lovely friends that he still had tea with every Wednesday afternoon while they chatted manicures, fashion, and lap dogs, he felt much more comfortable in his own skin these days. All it had really taken was escaping the poisonously macho atmosphere of Asgard, which according to Kevin was something like living in Omaha and not being interested in Football.“
http://archiveofourown.org/works/5460221 Genesis by teaberryblue. Reluctant to make the truth about their secret weapon known, the American Government tells the world that Captain America is a man named Steve Rogers. According to public record, he died, tragically, in 1945, and he became legend.In 1998, the Avengers find a body trapped in ice. She’s alive. Her name is Eve. She has Captain America’s shield. Featuring a slightly different cast as the Avengers and brilliant discussion of gender issues, kinda whimsical-poetical writing style. (Oneshot, completed.)
Death Note
http://archiveofourown.org/works/461685 Murmur in the Shell. Light Yagami’s dead, L is dead. Yet the idea of them stays in the world, embodied by black notebooks that always will fall. History repeats, even if nobody wants to be a part of it. After all, there will always be new players. (Near, new!Kira. Really nice, jus a short ficlet about the roles we sometimes must play and the ideas of dead men we pick up along the way.) (Oneshot, completed).
https://m.fanfiction.net/s/9380249/2/ Rationalising Death. Light Yagami finds the Death Note, we know the rest. But in this story, light talks all his steps through with his inner voices (like „Test It“ aka „Death“, Moral which everyone kinda ignores and also could be called Caution, or Practice). Its less cracky than it sounds now, i promise. Rather, it’s a very interesting character study bc it doesn’t just paint Kira as a sociopath with a god-complex (well, that too -) but explains his actions as being very, very human (while not excusing them). Seems to be dead at 10 chapters but i still would recommend reading it bc its brilliant, the style is a bit like hpmor’s. It explains the thought processes of everyone (L, Light, Misa, Ryuk, all that jazz)) very thoroughly and is also quite amusing (light comparing hinself to batman consantly, e.g.). But the best part is probably Misa’s characterisation (i’m not gonna spoil it for you but omg)
–> https://m.fanfiction.net/s/10580913/1/Rationalising-Fiction Rationalising Fiction also check out this nice lil’ timestamp (recursive ff?) of another author wherein Misa realises she is a fictional character. Very meta, very lovely.
https://m.fanfiction.net/s/8415898/1/God-of-the-Machine God of the Machine by The Carnivourous Muffin. The OC/SI Anna Jones suddenly appears in Light Yagami’s bedroom. When you read about fictional characters they can fall kind of flat, not that they’re not interesting but you always know they’re not really like you. Light seems less scary, L less creepy and Misa… well Misa always seems insane, even in the Manga. So Anna Jones is fucking terrified, curses herself for not paying better attention to the details in the manga and has to consider her survival and the prices she’s willing to pay. (Yes, this is the Self-Insert Trope but played so well. Also very philosophical. Ongoing. Also, go read everything by this author while you’re at it.)
Other
https://m.fanfiction.net/s/9915682/5/ The Last Christmas. A industrial engineer takes up the mantle of santa claus and gets some dangerous ideas about the true meaning of Christmas… (No fandom, or is that like the mythology fandom?, anyways, it’s creepy and give’s you some food for thought, although the story itself isn’t that polished. Very interesting and original take on santa claus!) (Completed.)
https://m.fanfiction.net/s/2865379/1/Nenju Nenju. Samurai Champloo. Because no anime has ever kindled a bigger need for a love triangle. This one’s fairly good and really long, with a nice dose of angst but a happy ending. (Mugen/Fuu, Jin/Fuu, Mugen/Yanusha)
#fanfic rec#fic rec#death note fanfiction#harry potter fanfiction#mcu fanfiction#rec list#if anyone ever reads this enjoy#how do i put a cut in this srsly#typos in abundance bc mobile#also bc english tbh#sorry for that
3 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
kyttenrage
Kat
lauras-blogs-world
him and i
goldrothira01-blog
PM Capital Gold Roth Ira Announcements
start-acting-like-a-lady
Pure Imagination