talk to me about the bucktommy invisible string theory, if you please 🎤
Okay hear me out. Without Tommy? Buck would not be where he is now, and so much of the 118 falls apart without him:
Tommy starts at the 118 closeted and desperate to hide it so he follows along with the boys club
Howie arrives and starts chipping away at that by trying to become actual friends with his team mates
Tommy only decides to open up after Howie stuck his neck out to save Tommy's life from that retail explosion. This is the start of his separation from the boys club mentality
Hen joins the 118 and Tommy sees how quickly Gerrard shits on her (his look when Gerrard calls Hen the "latest diversity hire" is almost sheer disgust, hidden fairly quickly) despite Hen proving that she is just as smart and capable as anyone else on the job
Hen's "I see you" speech is his catalyst; he files complaints against Captain Gerrard, contributing to Gerrard being fired and Bobby being instated as captain
The boys club is almost done with anyway, but Tommy's done playing with that mindset. He befriends Hen and Howie.
He is personally present to witness the shift in dynamic happening once again when Bobby instates family dinners as a 118 tradition
When he eventually leaves to join Harbour, he leaves a gap in the 118 A-shift to be filled by none other than Evan Buckley, probie.
If Chim hadn't saved Tommy's life: Tommy wouldn't have started to pull back from the boys club, or really understood the issues with Gerrard's captaincy.
If Tommy hadn't reported Gerrard: Bobby wouldn't have become captain.
If Tommy had stayed at the 118: there'd be no room for Buck.
If Tommy hadn't befriended Hen and Chim: Buck never would've met Tommy.
Tommy Kinard is the linchpin holding it all in place. If just one single decision had been changed, everything would be different. Buck is where he is, with the family he's found, because of Tommy Kinard. And he can't see it. Tommy can't see the bigger picture, the opportunities he created with his seemingly small actions. And Buck is exactly the same way.
Their paths were always meant to cross. They were always meant to know each other, to fall in love. Because without even knowing it, Tommy has always been making a space for Evan. And just like with their first date, it turns out that Tommy stepping away is exactly what Buck needed in order to step forward.
I guess if you really want to go in on the metaphor: Buck's been following the pull of this invisible string for a long time, following Tommy from such a distance that he can't see the other end of the string yet, can't see who he's following. He just knows he's searching for something. For someone. And then the pull slacked once Buck got to the 118. The tether relaxed when they both stood still, when they both found the right places to wait. And one act of loyalty and courage from a friend years ago echoed along the string to pull them closer together, until they were standing in the same place.
By a helicopter on an airfield, preparing to fly out into literally unknown waters, the string pulled them in tight and said: "There he is. He's what you've been looking for, what youve been waiting for. Go get him."
The more I think about the breakup the more annoyed I get. It's just bad writing, plain and simple. The reason it felt like whiplash is because it was bad writing.
I was tagged by @smallandalmosthonest who is trying to murder all of us with their "Eddie keeps walking in on Buck and Tommy having thee nastiest sex" fic.
I am in rarepair hell, I do admit, but I also hope to actually finish the two Buddie fics I've been promising so, have a snippet from The Gang Plays D&D*:
Of course, Atton’s an idiot, so it takes Chim’s character Hae-in pointing it out for Atton to realize he’s got a crush.
“So,” Hae-in says when Atton’s just stabbed a guy a few more times than necessary because the asshole jumped Imbolc, “are you ever going to tell him that you dream of kissing him under the moonlight or are poor underpaid knockoff assassins going to just keep suffering for your pent-up sexual frustration?”
“I don’t have any pent-up sexual frustration,” Atton replies, stabbing the corpse one more time just for the hell of it.
“Sure you don’t, buddy.”
I can’t believe it took Atton that long to realize, Eddie texts Buck later on, clearly amused.
Yeah, Buck texts back, his stomach weirdly in knots. What can I say, the guy’s high Intelligence and low Wisdom.
Who the hell is even writing. Um. @buckttommy and @princessfbi catch! *throws the hot potato at you*
Immediately, like they’re magnetized, Buck flicks his eyes up to meet Eddie’s gaze. He feels like he’s falling into the dark black eating away at Eddie’s honey brown irises. Everything feels hazy and far away, except for the grip in his hair and Eddie’s eyes pinning him in place. Without them, he thinks he might fly away.
“Let’s try that again,” Eddie hums, voice dark. Buck shivers again, clenching around the plug inside him and drawing out another whine. He resists rocking back to get more pressure on his prostate, but just barely. Eddie’s fingers twist tighter, pulling another gasp from Buck’s lungs.
“Are you ready to behave?” Eddie punctuates his words by yanking Buck’s head back, exposing the column of his throat.
this wip is so beloved to me I got carried away with the snippet 🫶🏻
Nobody tagged me but I'm having the time of my life with the banter in this fic so I'm sharing anyway. Have some tidbits!
(These are not necessarily in order of when they occur in the fic. I just picked out some bits I thought both showcased the banter and didn't give away plot.)
“Right, thank you. I’ll get him to bed. Can he walk?”
“I can walk fine.”
“I didn’t ask you, did I? I asked the trained medical professional.”
“Give me the fucking ring back, I want a divorce.”
“You say the sweetest things.”
This is extremely difficult to do seeing as that performance is burned into his brain with the kind of permanent intensity he thought only childhood trauma could attain.
“Well, I’m deeply flattered, but I simply can’t see myself holding your hand and calling you ‘dear’.”
“No offense, but the idea of waxing poetic about our wedding day makes me want to hang myself.”
“I’m flattered, actually. I’d be concerned if it was any other way.”
“Oh? Your wife never told you of my deep and unrequited feelings for you?”
“No, of course not, how else would she keep her psychosexual hold over you all these years?”
Someone passing by the table keeps them a very weird look.
“He’s got over her, in case you were worried about that. It was some years ago.”
“And here I was about to throw myself into traffic.”
“Traffic’s no good on this road, you’ll want to get over one onto the main thoroughfare.”
“You know exactly what to say to a man when he’s down.”
Anyway if you're sitting here wondering "is Mads having mayhaps too much fun?" the answer is yes.
Tagging @princessfbi and @buckttommy (you and your url changes I'm gonna strangle you...) since I'm not sure who else has WIPs at the moment. MWAH.
I was tagged by @alliaskisthepossibilityoflove and I felt like some public masochism so here we are!
Edit: Holy fuck this got long, putting it under a read-more.
How many works do you have on ao3?
258 although I orphaned 100 works back in 2020.
What's your total Ao3 word count?
Why. Why would you ask me this. Why would you do this to me.
4,578,245 - although I shudder to think how much it will have gone up by the end of the year.
What fandoms do you write for?
Mostly 9-1-1, but I took a nosedive into Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves last year and still have one more fic I'm writing for it. I tend to have quick little detours into other fandoms, which I think is overall a good thing since it helps me flex my writing muscles with different characters and settings. I'm currently working on a fic that is from a show where the main characters are all constantly sassing each other and bickering, and it's pushed me into being witty and sharp with the dialogue and humor in a way that I don't think I have been in quite some time.
Top 5 Fics by Kudos:
Even Steel Blades Need Fire - that's right, a WITCHER fic. HA. You all weren't expecting that!
Leading with the Left - yeah yeah we all knew this one was coming.
Drowning in Dreams (You're My Raft) - I'm constantly surprised this little oneshot I wrote post-tsunami is so popular.
Footprints are More Easily Seen in the Snow - my first Witcher fic I ever wrote and might still actually be my favorite.
Sometimes a Hammer, Sometimes a Lockpick - another Witcher fic! I had a lot of fun with this one.
Do you respond to comments?
I do! I try to respond to every comment I get. I know not everyone can but given the anxiety I know readers have around giving comments I try to show how much every comment is appreciated by me.
What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?
I do happy endings, overall, but every once in a while I decide to be evil, so it's a tie between the two fics that are about a character dying:
The Soft Goodbye - a Timeless fic that focuses on the idea that time travel, like being in space for a long time, wreaks havoc on your body.
Full Circle - a Doctor Who fic written years ago speculating about the Doctor gifting a dying Donna her memories back so they can say goodbye.
For those of you in the 9-1-1 fandom however, since I'm sure everyone's looking at those two fics going "wait what," the fic with the angstiest ending is:
I'm Not Breathing Unless I'm Giving You CPR - spoiler alert, but I end this fic on an angsty and purposefully ambiguous note. It's up to the reader to decide what sort of ending they get.
What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?
Uh. All of them, I'd say? With the exception of the two MCD fics above, I deliver happy endings. However based on reader feedback, I think I'll go with...
Your Love is an Oil Slick (It Glows Like Rainbows, It Stains My Soul) - the amount of angst in this fic, especially the Bobby and Buck relationship, seems to hit readers extra hard and so the happy ending, especially Buck's reunion with his father figure, is extra joyful and cathartic.
Do you get hate on fics?
I have once in a blue moon gotten "flames," as we used to say. Writing fanfic since I was thirteen, I don't think it's possible to fully avoid a few cranky people with nothing better to do than go around and shit on people's beds. But I've been extraordinarily lucky in the love and kindness I've gotten from my readers.
Do you write smut?
Baby, it's what I'm known for. Honestly sometimes to my chagrin - I hope people enjoy my worldbuilding, characterization, and plots as well - but overall I have a lot of fun writing smut and I love reducing people to slack-jawed water-chugging babbles.
Also someone had to bring the monsterfucking around here so by golly I'm reporting for duty.
Craziest crossover?
I don't do crossovers.
Have you ever had a fic stolen?
Yup! Someone stole my Budde Porn Star AU and turned it into a Rooster/Hangman from TG:M fic. Someone kindly alerted me and I was able to report it to Ao3. Truly a surreal experience.
Have you ever had a fic translated?
I have! Multiple times. It's deeply flattering and I really admire translators who put in the work to take something from one language and convey the same meanings, flow, and story in another. Translation is a genuine art form, if you ask me.
Have you co-written a fic before?
Yes! A few times, all with my beloved @extasiswings. We did one Timeless fic together whispers like poetry and we had such fun that when I started my first long, plot-ty Buddie fic I Hit the Accelerator (But the Car was in Reverse) and panicked, I roped her into finishing it with me.
We also co-wrote Carbon Date Me, Excavate Me because I was in a bad writing slump and she graciously made everything better, and then A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words (But Love is Undefinable) because she uno reverse'd me.
All time favorite ship?
I've been shipping for so long it's incredibly hard to pick just one, but I think given the sheer depth of my insanity, I have to say Buddie. I haven't had a ship grip me like this in... ever, actually. Honestly after being burned hard on some previous ships in my time, names redacted to protect the guilty (me), I didn't think it was possible to love a ship this much, and yet here I am.
What's a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?
I plan to finish all of my WIPs. Once I start a fic I'm committed to finishing it. I do however have a couple fic ideas that I don't think I'll ever actually write.
What are your writing strengths?
Um. Smut, apparently. I also seem to do well with fusions; that is, taking one trope or setting and fusing it with another in a sort of plot mash-up. And people seem to really like my world building.
What are your writing weaknesses?
I'm a hyper-sexual person who is very casual about sexual relationships and so sometimes I think as a result I have characters think with their cocks a bit too much and jump too quickly into sex, and sometimes there's more smut than plot. Run-on sentences, my beloved (and my editor's beloathed). I tend to write out-of-order and so sometimes little plot details can contradict, not be followed up on, or get lost in the shuffle.
Thoughts on dialogue in another language?
I don't really write dialogue in another language in most of my fandoms, but in a few it's come up and I've approached it in different ways.
In Timeless, the character Garcia Flynn's first language is Croatian, so I would have him sometimes speak in it. In my dragon!Jaskier series, I was able to bastardize some of the Draconic from D&D (mixed with some Germanic root languages) for when he was cursing or communicating with his draconic family. In both cases, the other language was limited to only a line or two of dialogue, or perhaps a single word, so I wrote the dialogue in that language, and then had a translation guide at the bottom of the fic.
This tends to be my modus operandi, an exception being Xenk speaking Thayan, because I couldn't find any actual Thayan for the life of me, so I just describe how the phrase sounds or allude to him muttering something/swearing/etc. Since Ed, a former spy, also speaks Thayan, he can then inform the reader through his thought-process what the Thayan meant.
Occasionally, I will have two characters speaking in another language and simply italicize their words and have a line of description saying "they switch to French" or something similar, since I don't want readers to have to scroll up and down to understand an entire conversation.
In my original novels, however - the Horsemen quartet specifically - the characters communicate about fifty percent of the time through sign language. It's become the lingua franca, because noise alerts zombies and ASL is a silent language. In the books, I write the dialogue as I would English, and simply have the dialogue tag "she signed" instead of "she said."
As someone who speaks other languages but for whom English is their first, I'm not sure I get to really speak on how and when one should use other languages in one's predominantly-English fic in a predominantly-English-speaking fandom and online space. All I can say is that I listen to what others say in regards to what is most respectful and comfortable, and I don't have any personal preference in how a writer handles the use of secondary languages in their writing.
First fandom you wrote in?
I'm not sure which came first since they were right on top of each other, but Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean.
Favorite fic you've written?
Well that's just mean. How dare you. I don't have one favorite fic, that's like asking me to choose a favorite child.
I will say I am particularly fond of In the Gray You are Golden. I banged it out in a day in some kind of fugue state and I do think it's one of my best works.
Someday when I am filthy rich I will commission someone to draw it as a comic, especially the reunion scene between Buck, Eddie, and Christopher.
Tagging, with no pressure:
@princessfbi @buckttommy @extasiswings @kitkatpancakestack @gracieryder (once again I typed your fucking old url like five times...)
