Where Angels Fear to Tread on Ao3 (requires login)

A galactic war… and one lost Starfleet officer desperately trying to get home!

Just finished this cover for our Trek/Wars crossover fic! I’m incredibly proud of it (and of the fic too). Plo Koon gets to adopt a lost disaster goblin and Wolffe is Unhappy (but Dooku is unhappier).

⭐

"Soulmates complete-"

"You don't need another person to complete you," Barry said, gently but firmly. "You are an entire person by yourself. You don't need to have relationships if you don't want them, pursuing romantic love is not the point of life, I happen to want to be with Iris because she's my best friend and it makes me happy."

"What if everything in the world says otherwise?" Caitlin asked.

"Then the world is the thing that needs to change, not us."

Blank is another Writer's Month prompt fill, where the prompts were comfort and soulmate au.

It isn't the only soulmate au I've written- The Lovers and The Dreamers was also a Writer's Month prompt fill from a different year where the prompt was also soulmate au- but both of them are Gen fics which is I think a response to the prompt I would like to keep going, and Blank I feel like is more critical of soulmates?

The Lovers and The Dreamers takes place in a world where having multiple soulmates is the norm, where platonic soulmates are placed on the same level as romantic ones, and where- while Iris and Cisco don't have more than a suggestion yet- soulmates are made, not fated (they're just having Speed Force related things going on). Whereas Blank is more in line with the usual soulmate trope, in this case a world where you have a mark on your wrist that lights up when you meet your soulmate.

Caitlin and Barry do not have soulmarks, and with Barry this is explicitly because he's arospec (demi- in his own words it's because soulmates rely on immediate attraction, whereas for him it develops later). Caitlin is likely arospec too, though she doesn't know it yet, and Barry offers to help her find a reason she doesn't have a mark or not if she doesn't want one, saying it isn't as important as everyone makes it out to be.

It's very much a fic that came from me being aro.

I think that when the question of how aromantic people fit into soulmate worlds gets brought up the response often seems to be "oh they still have soulmates, it's just a queerplatonic relationship!" which does not work when you're a non-partnering aro (and there are so many other reasons people stay single too!), and it can sometimes read like "well the same thing happens to aros as the allos and also it's indistinguishable, but you can call it something different I guess" which I know is not how people mean it, but it doesn't always sit right.

So Blank takes the question of "how do aros fit into a soulmate world" and answers it "we don't and that's your problem, not ours". That part quoted above is the entire reason I wrote the fic, and I do have a soft spot for this fic because of those lines

Thank you!

[Director's Cut Ask Game]

'safe' for the wip guessing game?

He looked like some of the soldiers Bucky had met during the war, the ones who had been fighting for so long that they couldn’t recognize when the fighting was over, still waiting for the next barrage to begin even when they were home safe, or as close to home and as close to safe as you ever got out there. 

I've sent in many asks about OCs and I'm not going to stop: can I ask about Kevin and Jay adventures?

So 'Kevin and Jay adventures' is a doc with the current iteration of a 'verse I've been playing around with for literal years, which an urban fantasy thing set in Scotland and mostly just an excuse for me to set little stories about Magical Weird in places that I know. It's also called 'Brownies and Bogles', which I think I'm going to keep as a title (and the doc with that title is actually the one I'd been writing bits in, I got them mixed up, but whatever).

The basic gist is this: magical creatures from folklore and such exist, but people don't really notice because there's a magical perception filter of sorts. But the more you run across magical stuff, the more of it you start to notice going forward, so there's always going to be some people who end up aware of Everything, whether they like it or not. And, since I love stories about organisations that deal with weird stuff, there's an in-universe organisation I've yet to name whose job is to keep things ticking along and smooth over the complicated times when magic stuff and the human world interact a bit too closely. Their beat involves things like making sure the fairies who want to put on their own show during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival have signed all the paperwork promising not to abduct any humans at the end of it, keeping track of the kelpie population (not a job for the faint-hearted), and just generally making sure that both worlds coexist relatively peacefully. They're not exactly upholding the masquerade, more making sure that it never gets broken in Too Dramatic a fashion, and they're also the ones that deal with the fallout (a lot of which is paperwork) when it does.

Enter Kevin Merrick and Jay (currently making do without a surname), our protagonists and two employees of said organisation. Kevin is an almost hilariously normal middle-aged white bloke who likes sci-fi and Top Gear and should never have been introduced to the concept of Mythbusters, and he ran into a bunch of weird fey stuff in his 20s when he was still figuring his life out and turned out to be a very good fit for the organisation. He likes helping people, and these days that includes fairies and selkies and wulvers and all manner of other interesting folks, so he's having a great time. Oh, and one other thing about Kevin - he's aroace and he's been platonically married to his best mate Dave ever since that was legalised, and they were civil partners before that. He enjoys leveraging his Normal Middle-Aged White Bloke-ness when people are being queerphobic, he likes seeing the looks on their faces when they realise he's not on their side.

And then there's Jay, who's grumpy, queer, and about 300 years old thanks to being left on a fairy hill by parents who thought they were a changeling, and then taken in by said fairies who thought it would be really funny to send an actual changeling back in exchange for this perfectly human (and what we'd now call autistic) child. A century in a fairy hill will make anyone a bit weird, so by the time Jay got back out into the world they were immortal and gifted with the sort of shapeshifting that lets them trans their gender however they want at will, which is helpful because they turned out to be very gender weird. Jay's had a lot of identities and gotten into a lot of adventures over the last two centuries, and they've been working with the organisation (which I really need to name eventually...) on and off for decades. They've been partnered up with Kevin for a bunch of years now, and the two of them have a very entertaining odd friendship.

I'm currently thinking that their adventures would make for some fun short comics, 1-3 page kind of things even, exploring the wacky situations they get into while dealing with all sorts of magic stuff and giving me an excuse to poke at fun worldbuilding without worrying about a lot of plot. It's a lot of 'wouldn't it be amusing if' stuff centred around local folklore and places I'm fond of, but I'm sure it'll probably grow an arc plot eventually if I think about it for too long.

Here's a snippet of dialogue from the assignment that involves them visiting various castles in order to update the records on how many ghosts are currently active, one that Jay always hates because they've had to do it every five years or so for decades and have developed beef with most of the ghosts in question:

Jay: “I hate the ghost survey.”

Kevin: “You’ve said this before. Multiple times today, in fact.”

Jay, clearly not listening to him at all: “I hate the ghost survey, and you want to know why?”

Kevin: “You’re going to tell me anyway.”

Jay: “I hate the ghost survey, because do you have any idea how many Grey Ladies there are? Or Green Ladies? And don’t get me started on ghostly pipers! And then they get offended when you assign them numbers so that you can tell them apart, but oh, no, they’re not just going to give your their real names either because that would ruin their mystique and- You stopped listening a while ago, didn’t you?”

Kevin, patting them on the shoulder: “Only a wee while.”

9 for the spotify wrapped asks?

SQUIRE HELLOOOOO

Unconditional I (Lookout Kid) - Arcade Fire

oooh I'm curious about spy rendezvous?

It’s just a few paragraphs at the moment so I don’t know if it’ll go anywhere, but I was hit by the burning need to write Meng Yao and LXC meeting to exchange top secret info during Meng Yao’s time undercover in Nightless City - at a time where letters were not viable or fast enough. And then of course they have hurried sex in the woods. :)

42 for the spotify wrapped? :D

"Puzzlin' Evidence" by Talking Heads. Thanks for asking!

Andy Mientus's facial expressions are such a journey in the scene where EoWells confronts Hartley in the accelerator, don't mind me while I hyperanalyze every detail (thank you @squireofgeekdom for posting that glorious gif set) but-

first we have THIS right, that firm press of his lips he starts the scene looking almost like he wants to cry but is holding himself back THEN

you can literally see how much he WANTED EoWells to own up to it, to explain it away, to actually make it make sense

he's hurt, he's disappointed, he's heartbroken, and he's disgusted but also he's in disbelief, his lover idol/hero is finally showing his true colors and he's made the decision that he has to go against him for the good of everyone (attempted Flash murder notwithstanding Hartley is really a good person but I could go on about that in a separate post)

but then

his face falls SO fast, he pivots from fury to fear in an instant, that's a man who has been betrayed before and knows exactly how bad it can go for him when he doesn't fall in line, he's not scared of the big burly security men, he's scared of another person destroying his life (and I would be willing to bet those wounds are still fresh, he's only just managed to pick himself back up from having his life torn apart before and EoWells knows it)

anyway The Flash has a cast of some of the best actors and I'm so mad they didn't use Andy more he's SO talented

Where Angels Fear To Tread

Rating: T Characters: Plo Koon, Commander Wolffe, the Jedi Council, assorted Jedi & Clone side characters, a whole bunch of OCs Chapters: 9/? Fic Contains – star warstrek crossover, a whole lotta culture clash, discussion of genocide and war and other Clone Wars-typical topics, Jedi culture/worldbuilding, and the authors playing fast and loose with both canons.

THEN: In the midst of the Clone Wars, a newly-minted Jedi Knight vanishes, suspected of defecting. But the woman brought back to face the Council is not Knight Tulin, but an officer of an extragalactic organization that calls itself ‘Starfleet’. Curiosity, and a determination to rectify the mistake, drive Plo Koon to take the lost Commander Chester under his wing. But between Republic Intelligence’s sinister interest in their extra-galactic visitor, the growing Separatist determination to capture her for themselves, and the good Commander’s own determined escape attempts, keeping Chester alive is hard enough–let alone getting her home. NOW: In the horrific wake of Order 66, a badly injured Plo Koon stakes his survival on one last desperate hyperspace jump, to a mysterious anomaly that might offer hope for him–and for what little remains of the Jedi Order. For Captain Diane Chester, Plo’s arrival is confirmation of all her fears. Now, she’s got to keep the Empire’s grubby hands off the Alpha Quadrant with only one ship, one Jedi, and that greatest Starfleet tradition–a hell of a lot of showmanship.

...

sooooo a few months ago @severeannoyance and myself were yelling excitedly at each other about, respectively, star trek and star wars, and somehow this turned into inflicting our assorted blorbos on each other. Then @squireofgeekdom joined the crew, and suddenly we had approximately 150k words of narrative collision.

I have been meaning to post this link for like six weeks and I kept forgetting skjhgjdhf

So... I've been basically off tumblr for probably the longest I ever have since I joined in 2011.. lol...

Which is to say, 2-3 months, I think?

Long enough to realize that most of what I missed about tumblr was just a handful of people. So I came back and unfollowed most of the blogs I follow, keeping only my favs. Started working backwards through one of them and it felt really nice.

Life as a working person who's also doing an accelerated online masters program is making it very important for me to manage my time better and also my mental/emotional bandwidth. When I'm not at work wrangling little feral humans or slogging through special education textbooks I'm exercising (weights) 3 times a week and trying to get a garden going with my partner, and the rest of my time goes to RPing blorbos, for morale.

But this week I made bread, twice.

I used to post a lot more random art and personal updates on here, once upon a time, and my favorite blogs/tumblr friends are the ones that still do that, so I think maybe I should try to do simple stuff on here more, not just reblogging stuff... maybe it would help me feel more like a person while using this online space. I'm missing a feeling of community lately.

If you tagged or messaged me anything between now and March I probably missed it, I am lost in the homework anxiety vortex. I know I was tagged in at least one WIP game but I haven't done any creative writing lately, alas! Only a little drawing, and I'm torn on whether to upload it anywhere because of the AI "art" problem.

anyway shout out to @astriiformes, @tearlessrain, @squireofgeekdom, and @neil-gaiman, the main reasons I got back on tumblr tonight xD

Thank you to @aidanchaser for tagging me in a "Nine Books I'm Looking Forward to Reading in 2024" thing! :3 the first two I'm already in the midst of but I'll be finishing this year, the third one I've read before but I just got the collectors edition so I'm definitely doing a reread :D 4 & 5 are books coming out this year that I'm very excited about, and the rest are ones that have been on my list for a while that I would like to get to at some point!

I tend to be a pretty slow reader so we'll see if I actually get through all these but. Nice to have some goals! ^_^

Tagging: @severeannoyance @squireofgeekdom @theresa-of-liechtenstein @cassiesbox @alukardtheabysswalker @timewasjustadream tho no pressure as always :)

Ad Astra News - 8/27 - 9/2

State of the Archive Growth remains steady and the September Review Hunt is underway!  First prize being a full-color portrait of a character of your choosing, second prize being a black and white portrait of the same, or you can bank wins for a bigger piece of art!  Or you can toss me a wishlist, too.  Any which way, don't be shy about signing up; it costs nothing and you only have to read and review to participate!  In the meantime--

Weekly Challenge #19: Empathy Be it an actual psionic ability, or just the ability to feel as others do, go ahead and write between 100 and 700 words on empathy! Interpret as liberally or strictly as you like. When you post it to the archive, tag it with Weekly Challenge: Empathy.

Challenge ends September 8th at 11:59PM, Eastern.

Stories Archived ★ denotes Weekly Challenge Entry

Star Trek: Discovery

by lah_mrh Human Touch - G - Ash Tyler| Voq/Christopher Pike Those Left Behind - G - Ash Tyler| Voq & Christopher Pike Ends and Means - G - Christopher Pike, Spock Fragments - G - Ash Tyler| Voq & Christopher Pike

Star Trek: The Original Series

by TheQuietWings Aftermath of a Strange Encounter - G - Hikaru Sulu, Janice Rand, Nyota Uhura

Star Trek: Alternate Original Series

by lah_mrh All in a Day's Work - G - James T. Kirk (AOS)/Spock (AOS) Love and Marriage - G - James T. Kirk (AOS), Sam Kirk (AOS), Winona Kirk (AOS)

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

by nostalgia 501 For Beginners - M - Ezri Dax/Julian Bashir How To Fall Further - M - Julian Bashir/Luther Sloan Pollen - M - Julian Bashir/Miles O'Brien, Keiko O'Brien/Miles O'Brien Some Other Life - G - Julian Bashir/Miles O'Brien The Matter At Hand - M - Elim Garak/Julian Bashir

Star Trek: Voyager

by nostalgia Starless - M - Kathryn Janeway/Chakotay

Expanded Universes

by Hawku Flortarios III - G - Ensemble by LordMcCoveyCove [PODFIC] Communiques - G - Original Characters Damn the Torpedoes! - M - Ensemble Trial of Transfer - T - Ensemble Damn the Torpedoes! Part Two - M - Ensemble Damn the Torpedoes! Part Three - M - Ensemble Milk Run - M - Ensemble by Omicrex46 Star Trek: Fortitude (Season 2) - G - Ensemble Star Trek: Fortitude (Season 3) - G - Ensemble by SevereAnnoyance, squireofgeekdom Where Angels Fear To Tread - T - Plo Koone, Commander Wolffe, Original Characters, xover with Star Wars

If you're still taking au headcanon prompts, Hartley as a recurring rogue/ teaming up with more rogues circa s1/early s2 OR whoops, s1 Eddie got powers from the particle accelerator

Oh, they both sound fun though.

Hartley's plan worked. He got Harrison to admit he knew the accelerator was flawed. He got Ramon to get him out the Pipeline, and he pointed them in the direction they needed to look to find out how to help Ronnie (he will not admit this is part of his plan).

He saw Harrison run though, when he broke the window, saw the traces of red lightning, and that seems like bad news for him. He heard a rumour about another speedster, one who killed people at Mercury Labs, and Hartley has a terrible feeling he just inadvertently got on the wrong side of a murderer

But he does know the Flash has weaknesses, and knows Snart and Rory didn't make it to Iron Heights. He can find them, and he's sure he can build them new guns easily enough if Ramon can do it.

Leonard just steals the blueprints and Barry's name from Cisco, Hartley does build the guns, and Lisa's Gold Gun, and he's got an idea for a flute that might come in handy

Hartley helps with the not actually handing anyone over to shady government organisations part of the Pipeline plan. This is when they recruit Shawna to the Rogues, and maybe Mark.

Mark's still grumpy he didn't get to do his tidal wave plan and Leonard's very insistent the Flash made him promise not to kill people any more, but Hartley still persuades him to join the group by saying killing the Flash will give him some revenge for a few minutes, or he can cause problems for the Flash constantly by helping them steal things and cause chaos he's got to go deal with, and more of them have a better chance of beating him and showing him up in front of the whole city. Mark's a little dubious, but willing to give it a try, since it'll make them all rich

All the Rogues are willing to help with the stop Lewis Snart plan, especially when they find out what he's done to Lisa, even if it means teaming up with the Flash. Hartley goes in as the tech guy after Barry because Hartley figured out who he was ages ago, and he's obviously going to mess this up.

Working together once does not mean they're not all going to carry on with the ruin the Flash's Christmas by causing as many problems as they possibly can for him in a few months though. They already had to delay it because this other speedster went and hurt their enemy

(If anyone sees them helping stop Zoom's forces at the end of the series, that's only because they can't rob any banks if all the banks get destroyed. It's definitely not because they got attached to the Flash and he's their guy to fight, who does this other speedster think he is?)

Hartley's very happy with his new weird little family. They're planning on stealing from his parents next.

As for Eddie gets powers, I have less right now, but:

The windows shatter, the power goes out, and there's this huge bang from upstairs and before he's even thinking Eddie's sprinting to the lab.

He finds Barry unconscious lying on a set of shelves and immediately goes to start chest compressions. Only there's this residual charge left in Barry and Eddie's last thought as he's thrown back away from Barry's body is you're not meant to touch someone who's been electrocuted.

It would be suspicious to only take one of C.C.P.D.'s comatose employees into his care, so Eobard is forced to also bring his ancestor to S.T.A.R. Labs. He's very, very grumpy about this.

He's even more grumpy when Eddie wakes up about two weeks after Barry and also appears to be a speedster, but he had to inherit it from somewhere.

Eddie puts his foot down and the Pipeline doesn't happen. He's more hesitant about the superheroics too, technically it means being a vigilante which is illegal, but ultimately Eddie wants to help people, so he does put on a costume just to help Barry with the fires and things like that. He'll leave the dealing with criminals in costume to Barry, unless he really needs help, Eddie sticks to doing that part the normal way as his day job

Thank you!

[5+ headcanons for an AU]

Trick or treat! 🎃

You get...the alternate version of a scene from Better in the Morning! Marked in my files as coming from Chapter 4.

Now

“Well, this is all…awful,” Loki said to no one in particular.  Rather than attempt to join in the argument Odin and Frigga were having he sat down against the wall instead, pulling his knees up in front of him.  It wasn’t that he had nothing to contribute; it was just that at this point all he wanted to do was find somewhere quiet and scream for a while, but since that wasn’t an option he was going to have to settle for getting out of the way.  Maybe it would make his parents think he was a child; at the moment, he didn’t care.

Predictably, Thor immediately came over to sit down next to him.

“Go away,” Loki told him.

Thor shook his head. “There’s not exactly anywhere to go.”

“There’s the other end of the hallway.”

“Don’t be like that.”

Loki rubbed at his forehead. “I’ve had a very long day, Thor,” he said. “And any moment now the TVA’s goons will probably turn up again and we’ll both have to get up and fight for our lives, so I would just like to take a moment to sit here and pretend that our parents – or rather, our mother, from your past and my future, and your father from a different timeline entirely – aren’t arguing about whatever they’ve moved onto arguing about now, and that our genocidal big sister whom our father kept secret from us our entire lives isn’t here either.”  He thought about what he had said, then corrected himself, “Your father.”

“Not either of our fathers, apparently,” Thor said after a moment’s thought.  He frowned.  “That grammar doesn’t sound right.”

“Ugh.”  Loki let his head fall back against the wall.  It felt oddly warm, but he didn’t have the energy to investigate why; it was also entirely possible he was still mildly concussed from the Hulk, even though concussions didn’t typically last this long for Asgardians. “I hate this.”

“Me too.”

Thor was quiet for long enough that Loki shut his eyes again and was halfway to drifting off to sleep – he wasn’t making any attempt to listen to what Odin and Frigga were saying to each other, and the familiar sound of their voices was hypnotic – when Thor said abruptly, “I need to ask you something.”

“I really don’t think you need to,” Loki said, cracking open one eye.

“It’s about Thanos.”

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Spider-Gwen (Comics), Ghost Spider (Comics) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Gwen Stacy | Spider-Gwen & Harry Osborn (Earth-65) Characters: Gwen Stacy | Spider-Gwen, Harry Osborn (Earth-65) Additional Tags: Missing Scene Series: Part 1 of Intersections Summary:

Gwen and Harry, phone calls and text messages from Harry getting out of the hospital to Gwen leaving for 616.

(Can be read as a standalone)

I read Spider-Gwen & Ghost Spider with absolute fervor earlier this year, and was devastated when Ghost Spider was cut short, so of course fic had to happen! I wanted to bring in some extra callbacks to earlier bits I was interested in, and I was missing Harry through this bit of the series, I love his friendship with Gwen, these DnD nerds are A Lot.

Additions to this series will go up Sundays, so check out the series and subscribe if you're interested! Subsequent fics in the series will bridge past the end of Ghost Spider (including Gwenom vs Carnage), and involve some crossovers with Squirrel Girl, as well as plenty more Gwen, Harry, and some of their multiversal counterparts...

WIP Folder Game

Rules: Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! and then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

I got tagged by @squireofgeekdom (thanks!) and in the spirit of doing this properly as well as trying to get people to talk to me about my original stuff, here's the handful of active fanfic WIPs I've got that exist in their own docs:

RoL - Don't Carry It All, Don't Carry It All Nightingale and Galahad: the fic The Better Kingsman Sequel (technically only planning notes but it's still fun and eventually I want to do something with it)

Most of my fic gets thrown into big long docs organised by theme until it becomes A Thing and gets a doc to itself, so if you want to play pot luck with random bits and pieces that may or may not go anywhere, there's also:

RoL misc fic stuff RoL Crossovers (with sections for Temeraire, Torchwood, Captain America, Call the Midwife and Warehouse 13, among others) Nightingale and Galahad RoL + Silent Witness RoL PacRim AU Weirdness Orgs Crossover

(Yes like 90% of what I've been writing for the past six months is Rivers of London, I've got brainworms about the wizards, leave me alone)

I'm going to tag @altschmerzes and @johnbly, and if you'd also like to be tagged then consider yourself tagged!