schwertlilie

Mixed personal & fandom blog. I also go by Iris, if the German makes your fingers cry. Singular they/them/their pronouns, please. Longer fanfic is on AO3 and DW, Tumblr short fic here. Frequently nsfw, anons welcome. Blanket transformative works statement.

[schwertlilie]

I saw Civil War today! ♥ I wanted to go last night for the opening but I couldn’t find any 2D showings Thursday night.

It was pleasing. :D Not perfect by any means, but there was some awesome choreography, shots, visual humour, FEELS, and Cap suffering team interactions. Steve/Tony + Steve/Bucky (+ Steve/Tony/Bucky) ships both had good shippy moments and I’m cautiously optimistic about T’Challa, though there were some things in the movie that didn’t quite work which I want to poke at once I’ve let it settle a bit. .

I spent most of the movie with my hands next to my face and grinning, except when I was flailing; eight hours later I’m still randomly smiling when I think about it.

8/10, would recommend.

[wtfbadromancecovers]

Congrats, you crazy bastard.

[schwertlilie]

[Image description: cover of Chuck Tingle’s new book “Slammed In The Butt By My Hugo Award Nomination”  (April 26, 2016)]

[schwertlilie]

(Volleybot: AU AMV where the best players are secretly robots)

^This convinced me to watch Haikyuu!!, the high school volleyball anime that has eaten my feels. Come flail with me about sparky rivalries and awesome teams and dedicated protaginists? :D?

Spoilers: the characters aren’t actually robots.

[wewerenotthefirst]

i came on to talk about dreams but now i’m here to challenge @schwertlilie to a fight

[schwertlilie]

#how dare u#u come onto my blog#u disrespect my mangos

How dare you, coming onto my dash and posting about gross yellow fruit. Mangoes are fibre-y and the juice coats my mouth in yuck. Watermelons are obviously superior, what with their clean, fresh taste. uwu

[theniftycat]

Speaking of angst (I finally had my breakfast and kinda can think).

I know many people headcanon Illya growing up in orphanage or even being in a concentration camp.

I object for many reasons. First of all, growing up in Kiev occupied by Nazis is difficult on itself. He probably had a lot of traumatic experience even if nothing particularly ghastly happened to him or his family.

Secondly, I don’t believe that he could become the Renaissance man he is without being systematically educated constantly during his childhood. Try studying languages or music or physics or athletics if you never did it when you were at school at least. That’s too difficult and he’d never learn it all.

Thirdly, his mother gets mentioned in the show. Napoleon even thanks her for her soup. I see no reason to think that she didn’t exist.

Fourthly, as a Russian, I can assure you that not everyone in the USSR was shot or ended up in Siberia. Illya must’d been from a trusted family if he was allowed to study and work abroad. No son of public enemies was ever able to do that. This fact completely excludes concentration camps (even German ones).

[schwertlilie]

I don’t disagree with your headcanon, per se, but I disagree with a lot of the evidence you use to get there.

While Illya could have been educated systematically, I don’t think it’s necessary. Illya’s knowledge base is huge, across a wide range of subjects: in Girls of Nazarone alone he 1) identifies a solenoid 2) as being from a race car; 3) identifies a poison by smell; and 4) goes head-to-head with a professional driver. That’s the kind of thing I would expect from someone who reads broadly and tries new things, and who probably read(s) the encyclopedia for fun.

Given that Illya is in his early- to mid-thirties during the series, that gives him lots of time to have picked up his skills. University classes (supposedly) teach language fluency within 2-3 years, so there’s his Bachelors/equivalent; he studied at the Sarbonne and Cambridge, iirc, so there’s French and English. And music is easier to pick up as a child, but as long as he got a good grounding in one instrument as a child/adolescent it would be reasonable for him to pick up the others later. Orphanages weren’t necessarily horrible cesspits, and if Illya ended up at a recruiting or military school there would have been opportunities for music education, such as through school or military bands, and extra athletics training. 

RE “Thank your mother for the chicken soup,” that’s a line Harlan Ellison slips into a lot of his work as an in-joke and it isn’t unique to MFU. It’s reasonable to believe it refers to Illya’s actual mother, but given that I can’t remember seeing any other references to her in the series I’m comfortable calling it non-canon.

All that said, I completely agree that Illya is a Soviet citizen in good standing during the series. From a watsonian/in-universe perspective, his part in The Neptune Affair hinges on not only being recalled to the navy but being allowed to share information with UNCLE. From a doyalist/authorial perspective, having the Russian character be a defector undercuts the idea of UNCLE as an international organization (in other words, not just NATO & unaligned countries) - there needs to be Bloc representation from a main character. Defection is interesting in a canon-divergent AU, but it can’t be canon in the first season.

[schwertlilie]

Why am I crying about sports anime, I'm not in high school and I don't play sports, let alone play volleyball. (Haikyuu has temporarily eaten my brain, apparently. Thank goodness I don't have to wait for the second season...)

[tea-time-with-mrs-waverly]

Fic name: The Mirror Mirror Affair

Author: Nix

Ships: Napoleon/Illya getting-together fic, with a few Napoleon/OFC dates on the way

Rating/any content warnings: NC-17 for two scenes, otherwise mostly PG-13; an incident of self-harm toward the end and some nonconsensual drugging

Summary: Napoleon is used to using his looks and charm to get through everything from missions to airplane flights, but a mission gone wrong leaves him with extensive facial scarring. Now he has to learn how to deal with people who pay more attention to his scars than his words, and how to look at himself in the mirror while he’s at it. It’s a good thing Illya’s there to chivvy him outside and watch his back. (Or, how Napoleon Solo gets his groove back.)

Size/length: 48K words, complete

This is slow build and long, and it has room for everything: missions, hurt/comfort (going both ways), good banter, totally-not-a-date NS/IK interactions, an unreliable narrator, and most of all - feelings. So many feelings. Napoleon’s changing feelings for Illya are gradual and believable, and Illya’s not quite as inscrutable as he pretends to be.

Mod addition: I’ve been asked to add that if you’re leaving feedback, please check the link includes the fic title, thus:

http://www.chromeandgunmetal.net/chrome/cgi-bin/contact.cgi?filename=1/themirror

[schwertlilie]

Thanks for adding in the link for the comment page, mod!

(But seriously people this fic is h/c gold, go read it.)

[schwertlilie]

What the fuck is this.

The label says it’s Alestorm’s cover of Barrett’s Privateers, but that doesn’t actually explain anything.

[schwertlilie]

mrsspooky answered: The Tumblr Savior.  It just blocks tags, but globally.  Mine is set up so that if someone I follow posts something that has a blacklisted term, it tells me that so and so blogged it and I have the opportunity to display it. I never do, but I can.

Thanks for the suggestion!

I’ve installed it, but it doesn’t seem to work on individual blog pages (like going to schwertlilie.tumblr.com instead of viewing it through my dash). *grumpy noises* The downsides of keeping my dash small, I guess?

[schwertlilie]

Does anyone know of a tumblr extension/blacklist that blocks posts on individual blog pages? There’s a topic I want to just Go Away Forever but some of the individual tumblrs I visit are discussing it and I’m just- (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻

Obligatory question mark?

[do-you-have-a-flag]

I watch this disturbing video every easter

[gingerblivet]

The entirely pastel backgrounds are what make this a masterpiece. 

[schwertlilie]

[Video description: hollow chocolate bunnies being slowly melted by household appliances to the tune of a calm & peaceful song.]

[theniftycat]

Quite often I see MFU fics on my dashboard and they look nice. But i don’t read fanfiction (I’m too emotional) and therefore I can’t reblog them to make recommendations.

I think we need to have a separate blog for fic recs with submissions and stuff. Would anyone care to make it?

[schwertlilie]

I don’t have the spoons to run it, but I would submit - especially if there were an easy copy-paste thing* to fill out, so I wouldn’t have to make up the formatting each time.

*(Something like title, author, rating + keywords/content, pairing/gen, approximate wordcount/size, summary, why reccing. Most of that is copy-able from the fic itself, making things easy on the reccers.)

[jackymedan]

THE MOMENT ILLYA REALIZES WHAT NAPOLEON IS UP TO AND HE’S LIKE “OOHHH” AND THEN A SPLIT SECOND LATER HE’S PLAYING ALONG LIKE “NO. >:( I WILL NOT HELP YOU” AND THEN THE WAY HE LOOKS AT NAPOLEON FOR GUIDANCE AND HOW EASILY HE UNDERSTANDS AND FOLLOWS HIS SIGNALS JUST FUCKING LEAVE ME HERE TO DIE THIS IS THE BEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED I AM DONE.

[schwertlilie]

#watching the man from uncle, ALSO HIS FACE AT THE END LOOK AT HIS FUCKING FACE HE IS SO PLEASED AND EXCITED TO BE IN ON THIS GAME, ALSO ALSO apparently he keeps a lock pick between his teeth and napoleon knows this ok then, NO SERIOUSLY I CANNOT STOP GRINNING AT HIS REACTION THIS IS AMAZING.

Illya’s deadpan/amused “No, definitely not” is one of my favourite bits of humour in the whole series, let alone this episode. :D

[necrofuturism]

ahaha this is such a cute character

I wanna see them

BEAT UP (◡ ‿ ◡ ✿)

BLOODY (o ‿ o ✿)

AND BROKEN (O ‿ O✿)

[jackymedan]

me: *watches 2 minute long scene of napoleon being psychologically manipulated/tortured full of extreme close ups of his distressed face*

me:

episode: *shows that ILLYA WAS WATCHING AND LISTENING IN BEHIND GLASS THE WHOLE TIME*

episode:

me:

[schwertlilie]

(I’ve been so excited for you to hit season four I have no words to express it)

[jackymedan]

Illya this entire episode:

Someone: *accuses Napoleon of being a double agent/thrush mole/murderer*

Illya: I HEAR YOU WERE TALKING SHIT ABOUT MY HUSBAND. FUCKING FIGHT ME BITCH (ง'̀-‘́)ง

[schwertlilie]

Random on-painkillers thoughts: It’s fascinating watching the different reactions people have to whump, hurt/comfort, angst, and the lot. (The following isn’t directed at/about anyone in particular, just reflections on my last ~6 months on tumblr.)

Tumblr MFU fandom is the first fandom I’ve been in in a long time where I’m regularly interacting with people really far away on the “yay/nay characters in pain” scale from where I am? Hetalia is big enough that I’ve ended up following mostly people who enjoy hurting each other’s hearts with painful stories/art/headcanons; MCU, Welcome to Night Vale, Pacific Rim, etc I mostly lurk, while dropping kudos on fics and having the occasional conversation in anon spaces.

I’m solidly on the “hello yes good” side of the “yay/nay characters in pain” scale, on a couple levels - an excuse to feel negative emotions, catharsis, opportunities for the comfort part of hurt/comfort Chris Evans & David McCallum being really pretty when they act out suffering. MCU-wise, I didn’t care about Steve/Bucky at all until CA:TWS came out, and I fell in love with Steve/Tony while they were pounding each other’s insecurities in the first Avengers movie; Civil War is going to be id candy for me, I can’t wait. (And it’s easy to find non-twu wuv fic on AO3!) For MFU, I’ve considered making a supercut of kinky spy bondage and/or emotional suffering for my own entertainment, except that I already know the episodes with my favourite scenes and a supercut would be too much work just for me.

And I keep being surprised when people have completely opposite reactions from me: what do you mean you don’t love MFU season four and all the horrible things it puts Illya & Napoleon through? Weren’t Bucky & Steve’s exquisitely painful fight sequences some of the best parts of TWS? Miss Diketon is a gift, how dare you speak poorly of her and her choice of entertainment.

It’s not a bad thing at all, more an “Oh yeah. Right, not everyone sends their mutuals asks full of ideas to make their angsty stories even more painful to read.”

Google bubble effect in action, I guess?

Now if I could only find an archive of all the Illya-torture fic fanlore promises me exists....