semi-hiatus for illness

So in the fic the boys get into the train station (Waverly) and cross the street to hail a taxi. Considering they crossed the street we can tell they went to the right of the station (or left? considering they’d crossed? ANYWAY-) and thus they either went down Leith Street or across the North Bridge. Considering once they get to the hotel they go explore a bit, I’m gonna say North Bridge since that’s more central to the city. 

Now here’s where I ran into some issues. I initally just wanted to post them up at good old fashioned Travel Lodge Edinburgh Central just off Nicholson Street. But then we come to where they got dinner. They went to a Thai restaurant, one that was nearby, because - “he’d said, apologetically, that he wouldn’t be up to much wandering, but they could take in a couple of streets at least” - so it would need to be a Thai restaurant - and it’s apparently a small one too - near Nicholson street. 

There is a LOT of hotels down this way, but I’m gonna keep it simple and say they stayed in a good old classic, Travel Lodge Edinburgh Central. Barring “Noodle ‘n Rice”, a Thai place on Nicholson street because while it is sit down it’s a little… Corporate? Their only option left within a few streets would be “Shamoli”, which has a weird off-the-street entrance, where you have to go up stairs because it’s above another shop, and considering in this fic Jon has a cane and is, as previously stated, exhausted, I find it hard to believe when choosing any restaurant in the city he’d go to the one up some stairs, especially considering you can’t really see that it’s a restaurant from street level. 

So now I’m adjusting the hotel again. This time I went by location of restaurants first and am working backwards from there. I considered that they might’ve gone somewhere close to the University of Edinburgh campus, which makes sense with the going down Nicholson Street in the taxi, but that makes our options “Soi 38″, which looks to be a little casual for perhaps their taste? Or the Teviot Place branch of “Ting Thai Caravan”, which has “hip” and “vibrant” on it’s google maps description which doesn’t really gel with the description of it being “a little sit-down meal in some small Thai place”.

So I move over to closer to the Royal Mile, and I’m looking at “Thai Orchid”. It currently shows up on google maps as a different Thai Restaurat, “Nok’s Kitchen”, as that has since taken over the premises, but on street maps, done in September 2020, it’s a closed down “Thai Orchird”, which as far as I can tell by Trip Advisor reviews, closed in February 2020, possibly later due to Covid. I.E, it still would’ve been there when the boys were there and it’s right next to the castle, something Jon probably would’ve pushed past pain to go see because he’s a nerd, thus mitigating the “would he have climbed the entire royal mile for that while tired?” question. EDIT: I checked and when it was operating, Thai Orchid DID serve Pad See Eew, which is what Martin ordered. 

This COULD mean they stayed at the Ibis if we’re assuming they went for a brand name hotel, and that’d work with the Nicholson Street thing, BUT. Edinburgh’s Ibis is at the foot of Old Fishmarket Close. Which Jon would not want to sleep next to for obvious reasons. 

IT WAS AT THIS POINT IN THE RESEARCH I REMEMBERED WAVERLY AS AN EXIT DIRECTLY OUT ONTO NICHOLSON STREET AS WELL INSTEAD OF JUST PRINCE’S STREET. I HAVE ELECTED TO IGNORE THIS AS THE OUTCOME IS LARGELY THE SAME, AND ALSO I HAVE ALREADY SPENT 45 MINUTES ON THIS.

ANYWAY. THUS. While it makes less sense to have driven to it from Nicholson Street it’s still possible (as the boys hadn’t been to the city before and thus didn’t know which direction the hotel was in they might’ve crossed just to get away from the crowd at the mouth of the escalators and stairs coming up from the train station) I think the final hotel destination I’m settling on is The Apex in Grassmarket, because it’s at the foot of the castle and has a nice view and I think that’s romantic :) 

Also as it turns out, when you google maps it, the car journey brings you to Grassmarket via Nicholson Street and not via Lothian road like I assumed! So there’s support for this! 

They also wouldn’t have walked up the full Royal Mile to get to it, thus meaning Jon doesn’t have to walk past Old Fishmarket Close, as they instead likely would’ve gone up the admittedly very steep, but very cool, West Bow, which Martin would’ve enjoyed the aesthetic of.

I’m so honored to have gotten to work on these illustrations for @gruhukens amazing fic, On the Subject of Our Former Selves, as part of @tmabigbang! Do yourself a favor and read this amazing, heartbreaking, hopeful story as soon as you can. I kept coming back to this one as when the summaries were released, and I am so happy that I was able to work on it.

Thanks to @gruhukens @fricklefracklefloof @jawbonemage for all of their help with reference images and feedback for how to depict Martin as explicitly Filipino and how to accurately show Jon using a cane. Also for their patience as I finished these up last minute and for help with the image IDs! Seriously, this was an amazing team to be on, I couldn't have asked for a more supportive group.

Why are you still here? Go read the fic!!

[Image ID: A digital painting of Martin Blackwood from The Magnus Archives. Martin is depicted as a fat tan-skinned Filipino man. He has streaks of gray hair in his bangs and the rest is his natural dark hair color. He wears rounded glasses and has a confused expression on his face. He wears a green tshirt and stands at the window of a London tube train car. The window has a thin black border, and the rest of the train car is red. Behind Martin is a blurry background of other train passengers. /end ID]

[Image ID: A digital painting of Jonathan Sims from The Magnus Archives. Jon is depicted as a dark skinned South Asian man. He has curly black hair with graying strands, and wears slightly squared glasses. He wears a light lavender-grey dress shirt, a dark purple waistcoat, and a rust colored brown dress jacket. His right hand grips the handle of a cane and his fingers are pressed against the window of a London tube train car. The window has a thin black border, and the rest of the train car is red. Behind Jon is a blurry background of other train passengers. His expression is shocked and distressed, with wide eyes and mouth hanging open. /end ID]

Here is my title card and podfic for @gruhukens fic on the subject of our former selves, written for @tmabigbang

“Have we met before?” the other man says, scrutinising him closely. “You’re from here? From London? Where?”

“Firstly,” Martin tells him, ticking off his fingers, “no, I’m not. Secondly, fuck off am I telling a stranger where I live. I have lived in London long enough to pick up that much, at least. Thirdly, who are you? And how do I know you?”

“I—“ the man says, frowning. “I don’t know either. But I know you.”

-

Somewhere else, through a train window, Martin spots a familiar face.

Podfic Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34892563

Rating: Teen

We did it! TMA Big Bang! It's done! I got to work with the incredibly talented @gruhukens on their piece On The Subject Of Our Former Selves. It's beautifully written, they've got heartache and humor and sweetness and creeping unease, and their depiction of Martin and Jon was SO DELIGHTFUL. You know when you find that multi-chap fic that keeps you on the edge of your seat but also wraps you up in love and softness? Yeah.... Yeah.

Go check it out, and the growing list of fics from the 2021 @tmabigbang in the AO3 collection (seriously, it's so good).

The lovely Good Cow illustration is by @speakerunfolding! 💜💜

ok hot take. daisy is not a character who should have gotten a redemption arc. i dont even think what she went through in the buried counts as a redemption.

i dont think tma was intending to write copaganda from the onset but thats what happens when you try to write about police brutality but center it around the police. now, like it or not, you’re empathizing more with the cop than the victims. and this WILL start to seep into how you treat real life situations; after all, from this point of view, real cops are “flawed characters” too, right? maybe they can’t be forgiven, but they’re trying to change and become different people, right? we don’t need that right now. our responses to this story seriously need reevaluation.

Going to copy this from another post:

[ID: And to piggyback on that post, copaganda shows aren’t meant to make you “love cops.” They’re meant to make you view police as individuals, and not institutions. That’s why every one of these shows, from Law and Order to present, has “bad cops” on the cast. Crooked cops, racist cops, misogynistic cops, asshole cops. They’re presented as the antagonists, in opposition to the “good” gay cops and black cops and single mom cops and dad who does his little girl’s hair cops.

If they can convince you to individualize cops into the good ones and the bad ones, even on a subconscious level, that’s half the battle. That gets their foot in the door. Cause now they can put forward the “good cops” to push legislation to increase their budgets. They can get “good cops” to testify to juries. “Good cops” who are gay or black or parents or older siblings would never falsify evidence or brutalize unarmed civilians or lie to protect a coworker, right?

—

Toni Bell, “I’m Not Your Token” via The Body Is Not an Apology

How one uses language can be so constructive for their (hopefully just) cause.

RWSWJ/RAWJ

day 14 - jet siquliak, the penumbra podcast (design by @robinkasznia)