Yet Another Sideblog

Mostly Star Trek & LotR

[of-scythia]

Booker and Joe bonding by going to the movies to make fun of the outrageous stunts in action films. Booker and Nicky bond by sorting through receipts, phone notes, drunken scribbles on napkins, and working out how much money they owe each other. Booker owes Nicky €753, but Nicky is in debt in five different currencies that are no longer legal tender.

i LOVE this SO MUCH i love the BONDING i also think nile tries to introduce them to venmo and it DOES NOT TAKE OFF

[bookersebastien]

how about every couple of weeks nicky requests money from booker for the randomest things like a meal he had with joe, even tho booker wasn't even there, and booker is already calling nile to ask her why the fuck she'd show nicky what venmo was. nile pretends it wasn't her, and bookers like everyone here is over 200, you think we know how the fuck venmo works

[of-scythia]

i woke up to get water and i am VERY glad i saw this notif because it reminds me of one of my favorite bits my friends does on venmo which is requesting absurdly small amounts of money from her little brother for no reason at all. one time she requested $0.75 from him and he (broke college student) just sent her a screenshot of his bank account with $0.74 in it and an angry face emoji

ANYWAY: this is to say that nicky absolutely does this and it drives booker up the wall. like €0.88 for ‘toothpaste’; $0.45 for ‘metro’; ¥1 for ‘you know why’. he gets a £2.29 charge for ‘being french’ and flings his phone out a window.

[puncertainty]

oh worm?

[lifes-pinata]

One of the compelling things about Project Hail Mary is that you can't fix it.

"What if Stratt didn't force Grace to go?" Then the Earth dies.

"What if Yao and Ilyukhina had survived?" Then they all would have died in space, not enough food to get to Earth or Erid

If the Taomoeba hadn't escaped then Grace would have never seen his best friend again. Returning to a world he loves but no longer recognizes.

If the stars weren't dying then Grace never would have met his best friend at all. Living content but alone.

Project Hail Mary is a hopeful story. It is a story of friendship and what it means to be brave. It's a story about saving the world.

But you can't remove the tragedy of the story without making it unrecognizable. It's written into the bones.

[artchivary]

That one platform decay scene. To me 👍

Stills of MB's signs ⬇️

[limbel]

we have to thank our brave soldiers in fandom who write gen fics. we have to thank our brave soldiers in fandom who write character studies and stories with no focus on romance or sex. we have to get on our knees and thank the brave soldiers in fandom who write about minor characters and friendship and family with no focus on romance or sex. i know it’s hard to care about characters in a world that seems to only revolve around ships but i see you. and i love you

[adhd-merlin]

I hope it's okay to add links in a reblog! (I'm on my phone so it's easier to do it here than in a comment)

I realised I suck at bookmarking apparently. but still here's a few:

The "Arthur knows about Merlin's magic" series by onceandfuturewarlock (37k words)

A series of ficlets focusing on Arthur and Merlin's (platonic) relationship in an unspecified post-magic reveal AU in which Arthur didn't die. I'm probably fond of this series because it's one of the very first fics I read in this fandom, but it's funny and cute. Background Merlin/Freya – it is in fact the fic that injected "he's married to a lake!" into my vocabulary, for which I will always be grateful. Technically not complete but each part can be read as a standalone ficlet.

Quiet, still by onceandfuturewarlock (~400 words)

Really short Gaius-centric ficlet but I'm sneaking this in because Gaius and Merlin's relationship is literally my favourite in the show.

Something Blue by alittleacatalepsy (10.5k words)

In which Gwen is getting married, but as far as I remember the focus is more on Gwen and Merlin than Arwen? It's marked as gen, anyway. The closest thing to "Merlin goes full wedding planner mode" I could ever find (we were robbed by the time skip!). Don't remember much else but I liked it enough to bookmark it.

Unfit by s0mmerspr0ssen (106k words)

An AU fic in which Arthur is disabled (leg amputation) and suffering from "fits of madness", and thus in danger of losing his claim to the throne. It deals with themes of disability and depression, but less gloomy than it might sound (again, from what I remember). Some budding romance between Arthur and Gwen but that isn't the focus (though I found it sweet!) – the central relationship is Arthur and Merlin's friendship.

Bloodbind rabies by agapantoblu (3.4k words)

In the author's own words: Arthur has "rescued" Morgana from the Sarrum's wells, so now it's like having a rabid raccoon under house arrest in Camelot. Forced "rehabilitation" by awkward family dinner? Or, Arthur won't give up on his sister no matter what. (I'm sure @agapantoblu has written more gen fics so check her other AO3 fics – I trust my friend Agap, she write extremely well <3)

And if self recs are okay... [looks around nervously]

An Act of Balance (6.5k words)

Daemons!AU, because... I love creatures! Background Arthur/Gwen, but really only a dash. The main relationship is Arthur & Merlin.

The Game of Kings (4k words)

Same as above – minus the daemons. A post-magic reveal AU, follows the evolution of Arthur and Merlin's relationship through a series of (chess-themed) vignettes.

+ a short one, but it fits the theme:

season of mists and mellow fruitfulness (~1k words)

Aroace Merlin. In which Gwen asks Merlin something she's been wondering about for a while. (Post-Canon AU, Queen Gwen & Court Sorcerer Merlin).

[thefollow-spot]

Adding some of my own Merlin genfic reccs <3

⭐️ Wheel of the Year by panharmonium (100k words)

Brilliant pre-canon fic about Merlin & Will. Super immersive & well researched. A textured, compelling version of Will. Beautiful, ambling, pastoral prose, and vivid, tactile description of setting.

Knights of the Round Table by panharmonium (~6k words)

A series of charming portraits that examine Merlin’s relationships with each of the knights. Really sweet, fun & heartwarming. Panharmonium’s approach to describing Merlin’s magic is unmatched!

Words Are Dead by LeMightyWorrier (500 words)

Devastating shortfic about returned!Arthur, immortal!Merlin, and a language barrier. Merlin can't remember how to speak Arthur's language, and Arthur does not know Merlin's. The dialogue in this fic is painful, desperate, and masterfully concise. Reading it is having violence done to you.

A Moment of Reprieve by adhd-merlin (544 words)

Gwaine and Elyan share a moment in the dungeons as Morgana tortures and toys with them. This fic picks just the right little details to give their friendship, nobility, and ordeal depth and grace.

[clotpolesonly]

some self-promo if nobody minds that 😅

To Be A King (127k words)

When Merlin discovers that his father was an estranged prince and he himself is now the only heir to the throne of a magical kingdom, he is forced to leave Camelot for the perils of a royal court. Will Merlin be able to win Arthur's favor again before Morgana launches an attack on a defenseless Camelot? Will he be able to defend his own kingdom at the same time or will all be lost?

^ contains canonically established Arthur/Gwen, but the primary focus is on the platonic relationships

Onsægness (5.6 words)

Onsægness (f. noun): a sacrifice. As Arthur lies dying, Merlin summons up the spirit of Nimueh so that he may learn to use the Cup of Life to trade his life for Arthur's, but will the revelations Nimueh brings with her be enough to break Merlin for good?

To The Death and companion piece Nothing to Prove (7.9k, 10.2k)

An unknown knight arrives at Camelot to challenge Merlin to single combat, a fight to the death. He accepts it willingly, but will he be able to survive the duel without using his magic?

A foreign knight challenges Merlin to mortal combat. Arthur tries to persuade Merlin to withdraw from the duel, and come to terms with the possibility of losing his best friend.

[kerink]

i can't stop thinking about this part from the eridian lore bible

the biodome team watching grace get up in the middle of the night and easily navigate his hut without turning any lights on:

[coloredlion]

Day ONE of filling this with aro and/or ace characters

Starting off strong with Ryland Grace from Project Hail Mary!! While he is not canonically aroace, I felt as though he’s really spearheaded the aroace community these past few months and helped many people feel seen and accepted :)

[salmonpiffy]

PHM spaceships gijinka

[dumbledoreisabamf-deactivated20]

[hash-tag-whatever]

Merry: confused awe

Frodo: confused awe

Sam: confused awe

Pippin: finally i’m getting the respect i deserve from these peasants 

so accurate i am choking on my carrot. this is making me giggle harder than it should. I love Pippin so much.

I don’t think there will come time when I’m not reblogging this. Sorry guys. 

[pippin4242]

no no no you guys don’t understand, Pippin is someone really important in the Shire! The books don’t talk about it a lot, and the movies won’t touch that stuff with a bargepole, but Pippin will be inheriting land rights to about a quarter of the Shire. He’s second in line to becoming military leader of all Hobbits. His dad is currently in charge of that stuff, but he’s completely aware of it, and educated for it, and that’s why he’s such an over privileged little shit in the books.

I thought it was a shame the movies didn’t talk about class differences in the Shire. Also puts M&P stealing food in an uglier light.

[animate-mush]

To be fair, at the time of the Party, Pippin would have been 12, which puts it back into a more acceptable light.  And they’re stealing food from Bilbo, a wealthy and eccentric family member, which again makes things a bit different.

But yes, when they call Pippin Ernil i Perrianath - Prince of the Halflings - they are actually completely spot on.

And when Pippin tells Bergil “my father farms the land around Tuckborough” he’s deliberately downplaying his class so that he can greet the boy as an equal rather than a superior.  It’s Pippin’s most adult moment in the series.  Bergil is engaging in a status contest which Pippin can totally win - but instead chooses not to compete.  Pippin is a gilded and spoiled lordling in the Shire, but he becomes a Man of Gondor.

[iridescentoracle]

Yeah, to add a bit of unnecessary trivia/level of preciseness, Frodo is the oldest of the four; he was born in 2968, was (obviously) 33 at the time of the Party, and so he’s 51 here. Sam’s second-oldest; born in 2980, he was 21 when Bilbo left and is 39 at this point. Merry’s two years younger than Sam, making him 18 or 19 in 3001, when the Party took place, and Pippin was born in 2990, so he was actually 10 or 11 during the Party, and during this scene they’re ~37 and ~29, respectively.

So yeah, Pippin’s the youngest by a lot. Plus, taking hobbit aging into account, he really is still in the equivalent of his teens; remember the Party was half to celebrate Frodo’s coming-of-age at 33, and Pippin’s around twenty years younger than Frodo. 

This fucked me up. I didn’t read the books and in the movie it was shown like Frodo took off with the ring like 2 days after Bilbo’s gone away, but it was 17 years after that. OMFG.

[bramblepatch]

Also worth noting that “Merry and Pippin stealing food” isn’t in the book - raiding Farmer Maggot’s fields, specifically the mushrooms, is something Frodo used to do when he was a kid, before his parents died and he moved to Hobbiton to live with Bilbo. Frodo’s still afraid of Maggot’s guard dogs, but the farmer himself is sympathetic and helpful when he finds Frodo & Co. cutting through his field.

[mikkeneko]

And this is specifically invoked in the books at the Council of Elrond, where Elrond argues against Pippin in particular going, because  he is so young. He’s okay with Merry going but wants to keep Pippin in Rivendell. Elrond has serious misgivings against sending an early-teenager off to face the Shadow, and given what happens to Pippin in The Two Towers, he was not wrong.

[library-seraph]

@cyrefinns

[krool-gwooptsoov]

@cyrefinns

[the-books-we-travel]

This is just so great. I just–I can’t.

[wrangletangle]

Merry is also a prince of sorts - his father is Master of Buckland, which is the semi-autonomous boundary community between the Brandywine river and the Old Forest (never, alas, discussed in the movies). Merry and Pippin are friends in the books in part because they’re of relatively equal status and in part because they’re cousins (like all nobs, Shire nobs mostly marry each other).

However, the books also clearly make Merry the Responsible One, even though he’s only been a full adult for four years. (Think early 20s in human terms.) Merry buys and prepares the house at Crickhollow. Merry figures out the secret of the ring before Bilbo even gives it to Frodo, but Merry keeps Bilbo’s secret. Merry convinces Sam to spy on Frodo. Merry explains that they’re all joining Frodo on the Quest, whether Frodo wants them to or not. Merry cautions about the Old Forest and doesn’t go down to drink in the taproom at the Prancing Pony.

So in the books, Merry isn’t Pippin’s partner in pranks - instead, Merry and Pippin spend all their time together on the Quest because Merry’s looking after his younger cousin. Can you imagine what his mother would say if he came home without Pippin? Merry can, and that’s why he takes some pretty absurd personal risks during the books to make sure that doesn’t happen. Like, he literally rides into battle on the back of someone else’s horse, in disguise, because Pippin is probably somewhere in that battle.

Merry is 99%* common sense unless Pippin is involved, and then he is 100% save/rescue/protect/support Pippin. The character growth and maturation we see in Merry in the movies isn’t in the books; instead he has almost the exact opposite arc of becoming an extreme risk-taker, driven by his protective instincts.

(*The other 1% stabbed a ringwraith in the calf that one time, but we can argue that this was due to a natural expansion of Merry’s protective instincts toward Eowyn, with whom he’d bonded quite a lot recently, and toward Theoden, who he deeply respected as being kind of like his dad.)

[mikkeneko]

bonus kleenex moment:

when pippin finds merry stumbling half-blind and sick through the streets of Minas Tirith after killing the Ringwraith, he tells Merry “Poor old fellow! I’ll look after you,” half-carries him to the healing halls, and is worried sick about him until he can finally get Aragorn in to give him medicine.

It’s the first time in the story that Pippin  has looked after Merry, instead of the other way around.

It shows that Pippin has grown up, that he can protect the people who always protected him.

[inthroughthesunroof]

This is also why it’s awesome when they finally come back to the Shire, and Saruman’s made a right mess of things, and it’s Merry and Pippin that kick ass and take names. They’re the closest things the Shire has to princes and military leaders, and they’ve just had adventures that make this look like a minor action. Frodo’s tired, and Sam’s just worried about Frodo, and Merry and Pippin are like hold my pint, I got this.

[amuseoffyre]

Something I noticed when seeing the Fellowship on the big screen again for the first time in 20-ish years was the details they put into the character costumes that tell you a lot about the hobbits without even saying a word.

While the clothing is of a general style - shirt, waistcoat for gentlefolk, breeches and coat, it’s the details on all of them that show how much thought was put into the costumes.

Compared to the average hobbit, Bilbo and Frodo both have well cut shirts made of fine fabrics and velvet or brocade waistcoats, showing their respectable and comfortably wealthy status.

Compare Frodo’s clothing with Sam and the other hobbits in the bar - similar in style, but Frodo’s is clearly well-to-do compared to the coarser fabrics Sam and the others wear, which makes sense when Sam is a gardener and doing manual labour.

Then we have Merry and Pippin in the same scene:

Like Frodo, Merry does have a nicer cut of shirt and waistcoat in a bold colour, but not quite as fancy. Meanwhile Pip, who is a kid at this point, doesn’t wear one yet.

And this shot of the boys in Rivendell really brings home the difference in the quality and expense of their clothes.

Pippin has a fine white shirt with a lace patterned collar and his braces are intricately woven, both things that would be markers of high-quality, labour intensive fibrework, not to mention the fancy white buttons.

Sam’s collar, by comparison has clear hand-stitching and the fabric of both the shirt and waistcoat are much coarser and more natural colours with buttons probably made from horn or wood.

Merry’s shirt is definitely a step or two up from Sam, but definitely not near the fanciness and quality of Pippin’s or Frodo’s. Likewise, his waistcoat is more elaborate than Sam’s with quilted patterning, but it’s also not the same quality as Frodo’s velvets and brocades.

They didn’t say much about the shire class structure in the film, but the costume designers definitely knew what they were about.

[ketchuplaser]

[wife-of-legolas]

For all that is talked about, Legolas does not get nearly enough praise for how kind he is.

Joins the fellowship on a mission almost guaranteed to take all their lives in sacrifice without blinking. Never uses his title of prince and, in fact, doesn’t mention it at all. Takes part in the battle despite it having little effect on him, with his people sailing west and leaving the war-torn shores.

He rebuilds the rubbles of cities destroyed, makes the world better and filled with life, both flora and fauna. He stays beyond the calling of the sea, resisting the desperate urge engraved in his bones calling him to sail. He, with a gentle hand and a brave heart, handbuilds a ship and takes the risk of bringing Gimli along with him.

He doesn’t have to, but he did.

[amandayetagain]

"Long live the Queen." Say My Name In Your Sleep by Maisie Peters, 3.08, 3.12, 3.10, 5.13, 4.09, 3.13, 5.06, 5.09, 5.13x2.

[dinodoggie]

Heres some more Project Hail Mary comics, just for fun!

Its a long way to Erid so like they got alot of time to do whatever, i think theyd have to talk about pokemon at SOME point at least! XD

i hope you enjoy, and have an AWESOME day!!!

[deepwaterfiction]

Text: As the sole apothecary, I've long accepted there are some things you can only find in nightmares. I leave my assistant in charge, and drink the vile concoction that will strand me in one for a week of foraging.

[avoid-avoidance]

what if Grace’s earnest desire to learn all he can about his new home Erid runs into a serious snag, when he finds out that almost all levels of existing Eridian formal academic institutions are intertwined with the cultural practice of thrumming — which Grace is not biologically capable of participating in

and so Grace ends up implementing an “Opposite Day” routine with his first classes of young Eridian students, where he periodically assigns a group of his kids to create and deliver to him an in-class presentation, human-style, on any topic of “Eridian common knowledge” of their choosing

imagine how hyped the little pebbles would be to bunch up in front of the classroom’s clear Xenonite barrier and chatter about, like, the differences in local postal services across Erid, while their cool alien teacher — who’s teaching them the basics of super advanced new concepts that even the really old and smart Eridians don’t fully understand yet!! — sits utterly rapt and LOCKED IN, taking copious notes and peppering them with questions

[pineappical]

funny idea i just got for an Eridian character. meet Hardtack

[pineappical]

like a sick victorian child

[saltwater-goldfishy]

ok I know everyone’s considered Ryland grace wearing an “I put the ace in space” t shirt but. have we considered the infinitely funnier option of putting this shirt on eva stratt