#firstelevens

hiiiiiiiiiii zainab <3

oh the final season of bbc merlin. lol. lmao even.

so like. here’s the thing about merlin and specifically about season 5 of merlin.

i think the writers were writing the best season they could write given they accidentally wrote themselves into a hole they could never feasibly get out of by allowing the conceit of their show to go on too long even when there were good places to pivot.

but the problem is that they wrote themselves into the hole. and the hole was bad.

they built up this entire promise of a golden age of camelot, with arthur as king and merlin beside him bringing magic back into the land. the kind of reign that would inspire people to talk about arthur for centuries to come, and the kind that would make his death a tragedy to all of his people.

instead they never took any of the chances to let arthur see merlin as he was, to give him a real chance of bringing magic back and ushering in the age. we see merlin turn more bitter, more angry—which colin morgan did beautifully—and in the end we see him sabotaging his own chance at that beautiful future bc it’s what he’s done for so long that he doesn’t know how to do anything else. it’s no longer about the future with arthur. it’s just about how to keep arthur safe even if he and everyone else is abjectly fucking miserable.

and then we end on merlin 1500 years later, alone and miserable and waiting on a promise not ever kept and unlikely to ever be kept, given camelot is gone forever even if arthur does return. how can there be a golden age of camelot when camelot has been paved over and magic is all but gone? even if the golden age was meant to be later, it was never gonna be what we were promised. and we would never see it.

instead we get all of that leading up to a death we all knew would come eventually, but one that is all the more tragic and frustrating and generally unacceptable bc it wasn’t earned. arthur didn’t die a legendary king (even if i do believe he was a very good one, magic prejudices aside). merlin never got his laurels; he was just bitter and less and less moral by the day until it bit him and everyone he loved in the ass. everyone suffered and for no reason. the legendary death of king arthur wasn’t a tragedy bc the world had lost one of the best men it had ever known. it was a tragedy bc he never got to be that man. and the writers gave us no good reason for it other than they found themselves in a hole and then they kept fucking digging.

HOWEVER, props to colin morgan and especially to bradley james, as they both acted their asses off in that season. merlin is genuinely chilling in much of season 5, and bradley james is heartwrenchingly sad and burdened like all of the time. his delivery of “why did you never tell me?” keeps me up at night. they both did everything they absolutely could do with what they were given, but the promise of what they could have been given hurts all the more knowing what they could’ve done with it given the talent they possessed.

anyways. i demand restitution from the bbc from all the christmas eves ruined forever.

(from this list of prompts)

Matt wakes up with a violent start, feeling hazy and slow and just wrong somehow. He knows instantly that he’s not in his apartment, because the bed feels different—it smells different, clean in a dull, itchy, cloying way that he doesn’t associate with his usual detergent—and there’s a bunch of sounds that he can’t identify, but they’re not the city sounds he’s accustomed to or the shuffling, mundane sounds of his neighbors going about their lives. There’s people about, certainly, but a lot of them, he thinks, and they sound urgent, even though when they speak, it’s at a whisper and when they move, it’s never at a run. But if he tries to sense much more than that, he just…can’t. It’s like there’s a wall inside his brain and it’s made out of cotton balls. It’s almost nice.

“Did you just say ‘balls…nice…’ to yourself?” Foggy asks, groggily, from his left. Matt realizes belatedly that the heartbeat he’d heard up close was Foggy’s and he’s just so used to it that his mind unconsciously filtered it out as background noise. God help him if Foggy ever goes rogue and tries to smother him (or just comes to his senses and tries it finally), he’ll have an exceptionally easy time getting past Matt’s defenses.

“Cotton balls,” Matt replies, even though that doesn’t really explain anything. Trying to string words together is exceptionally hard at the moment; it’s like the right ones are floating above his head but reaching for them only knocks them further out of his grasp.

Foggy yawns. “Oh, sure,” he says. “You’re in the hospital, by the way. And on massive amounts of painkillers, in case that wasn’t immediately obvious already.”

That explained a lot, including why the world felt so small to him suddenly. Any medication stronger than aspirin dulled the edges of the world for him significantly. His senses just didn’t reach as far and his reflexes were much slower. This is why he avoided painkillers normally. He didn’t enjoy this feeling.

“What happened?” he asked, trying to sit up. His body doesn’t feel terribly sore—thanks to the medication, probably—but it does feel stiff and misused. He’s got a bandage on his forehead and a few on his torso that he can feel and when he shifts—yep, that pulling sensation is stitches. Great.

“I don’t know,” Foggy answers, sharply. “I was really hoping you might be able to shed some light on the matter for me, considering you were there.”

🏡🌌

Thank you!! And yes, you are allowed! I decided to answer both. 😊

🏡 miscommunication roommates era fic

It’s not like he can ask Buck to disappear from the house for the evening while his parents are here.  Well, he could; Buck has offered.  But Eddie doesn’t want Buck to disappear for the evening. For one, Buck has been living here for months now, so it’s just as much his house as Eddie’s, as far as the Diaz boys are concerned.  And for two, well.  It’s a little selfish of him, Eddie thinks, but knowing Buck’ll be there, in the kitchen, at the table, on the couch, always only a few steps away? It makes the anxious ball rolling around in his stomach shrink just a bit. Because even if things start to get too awkward, too tense, too much, it’s okay. Because Buck will be right there, having his back. Like always. 

🌌 post jedi survivor fic

Merrin takes Cal’s hand and lays it gently over her abdomen. He inhales sharply.  “Can you sense them?” She asks, voice soft. She brushes her thumb over his knuckles, her palm warm on the back of his hand. Cal swallows down the sudden rush of emotion climbing his throat and closes his eyes, focusing on the tiny flutter of life growing in Merrin’s body. It reminds him of sitting by the fire, the warm green glow from her magic. He manages a choked, “Yeah. Yeah, I can sense them.”  He opens his eyes, looks up at Merrin to find she’s already looking back. There’s a vulnerability in her look, one he doesn’t see often but knows she shows to him more than anyone else. Her eyes tell him a thousand things. She’s afraid. Afraid to bring a child into this galaxy, afraid of the dangers their small family has faced already and will inevitably face in the future. But he can see her joy, too. And her love, for the tiny little spark of life they’re holding in the palms of their hands, and for him, too. 

ao3 wrapped

zainab i need you to know you asked me the exact same questions last year LMAO.

10. What work was the quickest to write?

probably one of the whumptober prompt fills. one of the Merlin ones for sure. (this was also my answer last year, hilariously enough. still making my way through the 2022 prompts!)

20. Which work of yours have you reread the most?

this year actually, one of my original ones. The Ferryman's Wife & The Black Fox.

29. Favourite line/passage you wrote this year?

There are some bits in Kind Regards I'm very fond of, but I think I do particularly like how this bit of the P&P spitefic came out:

That’s so hard! There are so many great episodes, I don’t think I can pick just one. So I am going to cheat and give three, in no particular order. 

Heeeeere's Lassie, Mr. Yin Presents*, & EDIT I’m dumb and got the episodes mixed up but I meant Right Turn or Left For Dead 

*picking just one part of the Yin-Yang trilogy almost killed me bc they are all so so good 

How I feel about this character: perfect man who’s never done anything wrong in his life. ever

All the people I ship romantically with this character: tandy (screams I miss them)

My non-romantic OTP for this character: wow its been so long sine I watched the show I cant even rmbr like...the other characters....

My unpopular opinion about this character: he’s never done anything wrong in his life....ever....

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: we should have gotten more seasons and tandy/tryone canon. Im mad

GIVE ME A CHARACTER;

i always try to make @firstelevens a little present in honor of our friendship anniversary, which was yesterday, so here's a few more book cover designs for her amazing sambucky fics that she's been so kind as to write for us all (and one that she co-wrote with me!) with a special appearance by @sambambucky with the pull quote of the century❣️

oooooh baby okay!!

-this good omens AU (that kind of turns into a good omens crossover) for daredevil written by @returnsandreturns is one of my favorite things in the whole world. It’s funny and romantic and sweet and historical and it provides me with lots of gender euphoria and regular euphoria when I first read it and every time I’ve re-read it since! Also, everything Chelsea’s ever written is perfect, she’s the ultimate mattfoggy writer in my opinion!

-I was originally not going to include Canon Divergence AUs on this list because that feels like a whole separate category (not exactly canon, not really an AU, but a secret third thing) but then I remembered this timeloop fic for the terror and I consider a timeloop enough of an AU to satisfy my own arbitrary definitions for this list. Everybody loves a timeloop we know, but this one is so well executed and thoughtful and heartbreaking and satisfying, everyone who wants to write a timeloop fic should take note.

-the terror fandom is quite frankly lousy with genius AUs (shocker) so two others worth mentioning are this series (you will always get me by taking a story set on a boat and putting it in space. Also I love stories about astronauts so this really has everything) and this fic (trading out Victorian naval expedition for an almost modern mountaineering setting works eerily well, and the details and characterizations are spot on along with great art!)

-I’ll read basically anything @ponyregrets decides to write at this point, but her pacific rim AU is what actually made me finally watch TOS, which feels like the best endorsement I can give any fic (and thank you to everyone for your patience as I’ve subsequently made Star Trek into a large part of my personality) I’ve now read this AU a dozen times and it truly hits every single time. It manages to perfectly integrate Pacific Rim canon into the Star Trek universe and it’s so sweet and compelling. Highly recommend!