Discovered that the pop-up Kingsman shop on St James Street coincided with my time in London. I couldn’t resist. :D
Photos are allowed in the shop. The staff are also super duper nice. They were very kind to the various fans who came, and even shared trivia.
I took a bunch of photos, for friends who could not travel there. Sharing them here too. :) I’m completely wow-ed by the attention to detail in setting up this shopfront. <3
The shopfront. I took so many photos in front of it. I must have amused the shop staff.
I just wanna say God bless anyone and everyone in the tmfu fandom who are still making graphics and fanfictions, whether we get a sequel or not u are highly appreciated.
Not participated in TMFU fandom for a good while, and I now kinda guilty about the couple of fic WIPs I have for it ahahaha.
Still, the #napollya tag on tumblr continues to make me happy whenever I check it out, so thank you, o wonderful people still active in this fandom! <3
What if Yurio picked Otabek’s yukata for him, so that they’d match?
So here are 200-ish words exploring precisely that. :D;;
Otabek doesn’t catch on immediately. It’s not the first time that he’s gone shopping with Yuri, and it’s not the first time that Yuri’s tried to pick clothes for him. He still has that t-shirt from Barcelona, the one Yuri insisted he get because it brought out his eyes - whatever that meant.
As yukata go, Otabek supposes this one’s alright. It’s black, a colour he likes, and the silver design is pretty cool. Yuri’s also really keen on it, which is a plus.
He’s still a little self conscious, however, when he steps out of the changing room. “Ta-dah,” he says, putting on his best please-like-me smile.
Yuri gives him a thumbs-up, which is enough to convince Otabek to pay for the yukata shortly after.
It’s only later, when he’s drinking some kind of sweet, fizzy lemonade from a blue bottle, that he catches on.
Yuri hooks his arm around the crook of Otabek’s elbow, snuggling againat Otabek’s bare arm. (Otabek had folded the sleeves of his yukata up by then, the weather hot as it is.)
“I’m glad we match,” Yuri says cheerfully.
Otabek glances at the pattern on Yuri’s yukata, takes in the colours. He looks down at his.
Celebrating my having (finally!) finished my Victuuri reverse bang fic… by writing more Victuuri. :D This time, a sequel to the short Mafia AU I did in February.
I quite like how the first bit of the sequel is shaping out so far. Here’s hoping I actually finish it for posting, instead of letting it die in WIP hell. :D;;
Meanwhile, my Victuuri RB fic will be posted on 28 June. Stay tuned!
An urban fantasy in which Otabek Altin is a consulting wizard, Yuri Plisetsky is a member of the fae, and together they fight crime have to find the mythical Grand Prix medal before another person dies.
This was meant for Otayuri Week 2017, Day 7: “Fantasy” on 26 February, but I fell behind because of work. Still, better late than never, and at least I caught Yurio’s birthday on 1 March. Happy birthday, our favourite Russian ice tiger!
- calling his date’s friend for help on what to wear
- green sunglasses pink superstar jacket
- facing the world but sinking into an existential crisis when a kid doesn’t like him
- praying he’s not drunk when he wakes up in the morning
- aggressively longing for inner peace
- high key avengers nostalgia
- asking and remembering stark industries employees names
- personally lending a hand in the rehabilitation process of known criminals
- “don’t you believe in dreams?”
- broken mirrors
- divine comedy references
- “malory” and “captain america” passwords
- the “&$&@ it, fire everything” protocol
- waking up in a hospital and, “don’t sedate me, i’m an alcoholic”
- to a little girl “don’t be frightened. i’ll be right back. and one day, you can sing me a song”
- riding on the back of the motorcycle
- using pictures of his girlfriend as a bookmark
- “this is a heist movie”
- stark datashades
- the blonde clean-shaven steve rogers-esque undercover look
- casually owning a captain america costume
- sad post-mortem videos
- growing up as a “sensitive boy” who cried ~too much
- james bond references
- drawing heart shapes on fogged glass
- getting his nose broken trying to defend a woman from harassment
- keeping wedding pictures of happy and pepper on his mantelpiece like an actual grandmother
- having vivaldi play as soon as he steps into the house
- extreme sports junkie
- “the drink or the dream?”
- talking about both “tony stark” and “iron man” as entities separate from each other and separate from himself
- a part of him is dead and the other is screaming in pain
- space fascination
- rollerskates
- being scared of the dark
- feeling bad about killing sewer rats and lizards
- FEAR OF COCKROACHES
- horoscope nerd
- e X t r e M e horoscope nerd
- wanting to die but not dying because he doesn’t think he has done enough even though he also thinks he’s done too much lol “necessary monster”
- weird choices for sleeping places
- the “grinding but hollow feeling” that makes him want to drink
- slipping AA sayings into casual conversation
- tony’s personal christmas shopping = christmas shopping for people at the homeless shelter he funds
- christmas wish: “someone to watch over me”
- hating magic
- hiring anyone who demonstrates valor on the spot (pepper potts, happy hogan, marcy pearson, etc) almost like he’s knighting them 😎
- broken bones and coughing blood inside the armors
- when the suit fails: “don’t be a coffin”
- disturbing medical protocols
- the creepy satanic undertones in several of his nightmares
- not believing in heaven and hell but believing he’d go to hell if it existed
- also high key wondering if he IS in hell
- to be continued
- buying out entire disneyland to go on a lunch with a woman he just met
- making a black woman head of stark enterprises in case of his death
- making RHODEY head of stark enterprises in case of his death
- code names “mother hen” and “papa bear”
- being “uncle tony” to cassie lang
- “damn you for making me do this” when forced to kill a terrorist
- “i hate when you look at me like that”
- basically adopting babyvengers
- being carol’s sponsor
- considering a baby of a woman he lived briefly on the streets with one of “the people close to him” to the point that actual supervillain kidnapped her to get to him
- keeping signed photos of his girlfriends next to his bed like some kind of 40s dweeb
- giant avengers pictures aka tony stark decorating 101
- letting his chestplate battery run out to the point of heart attack on daily basics
- *tony stark jumps into the bushes* *iron man jumps out* ‘i took mr stark to safety’
- being the worst at secret identity, seriously, THE worst
Fastest fic I’ve written, ever, to just meet the Victuuri Week Day 5 deadline. Also much longer than I expected. It’s really just a self-indulgent a love song to two of my favourite fandoms. I hope people like it. :) More information about the “Inception” movie and terminology in the AO3 end-notes, for those unfamiliar with the film.
Let’s just write 1k words about superpowers, I said. This shouldn’t be too long, I said. Famous last words, ahaha. Third offering for the Victuuri Week challenge - I hope people like this one too. :) More story and character background in the AO3 end-notes.
There are now spaces in his apartment. When he finally slumps into bed, the mattress suddenly feels too wide, the sheets too cold, and the other pillow beside him still dips in the centre with the memory of someone else’s head.
—
Or: The one in which Yuuri is away and Victor pines.
My second offering for the Victuuri Week challenge, for the prompts of “travelling - long distance & reunion”. In my head, this is set between the first and soon-to-be second season, after Yuuri moves to Russia, but before the European Championships in end-January. I hope people like this one too. :) Still haven’t finished my third yet - eep!
Yuuri turns to regard him. “You look very young for a businessman,” he says.
Victor laughs. “Mine’s a family business, too.”
It’s not exactly a lie.
—
Or: The Mafia AU in which Victor’s an heir to the Russian mob, Yuuri just so happens to be visiting St. Petersburg, and there’s a hitman loose in the city.
Well, it’s been a while since I last posted any writings. The first fic in a new fandom is always nerve-wrecking. I hope people like this one, indulgent as it is. :) With any luck, I should be posting a couple more offerings in the Victuuri Week challenge.
Just watched both the TMFU and Spectre films on a flight, and I’m brimming with fannish feels once again. I feel quite inspired to poke at my unfinished Napollya, 00Q and MalloryQ fics. :D
hey i just wanna say that i love ur malloryq fic 2 death ok (it's legit my fave fic tbqh) and i <3 ur characterisation (esp. mallory's taste in literature) and honestly tht domestic!malloryq fic sounds rly gr10 like thnk u 4 writing xx <3
You’re really too kind, anonymous reader! Thank you so much for your lovely comment. I’m very glad that the fic worked for you. :) I’ll probably revisit this story with a sequel at some point in the future (after I finish at least a couple more other WIPs *cough*), because I feel that there’s so much more of a story to tell. :)
He imagines every now and then that this, perhaps, this is what he likes best about Gareth Mallory. They are both weapons in their own individual ways, questions of life and death reduced to a single alphabet, and Q has always had thing for ruthlessly competent bastards anyway.
Or: A story about crushes, semi-drunken confessions, and gunfire somewhere along the way.
I watched Spectre as a 00Q fangirl, but emerged shipping Mallory’s M and Q after that delicious showdown scene at the end. This fic is the result, with an obvious warning for Spectre spoilers, and I wish I had the time to write more, because I can just picture them being all domestic except for when there are awesome spy shenanigans. Meanwhile, the rest of MI6 secretly fanboys/fangirls about their boss shagging their quartermaster, in between gossiping about the latest stunt 007 has pulled.
All the same, I’ve a 00Q fic and two Napollya (TMFU) fics still in the works, and I had best get on with those, now that I’ve (temporarily) silenced the clamorous MalloryxQ voice in my head. :D;;
So I re-watched the movie last night, and I’ve been thinking about those credit scenes, in which you see glimpses of their confidential files, and in which the rawest, ugliest bits of their characters are laid out (and this is related to why I think Gaby Teller is poorly written, because she is without essential flaws, but that will be a subsequent rant about misogynistic writing in general.) Anyway, Napoleon is a gambler, and addict, a con man, a thief. In other words: a liar. Illya’s chief flaw, of course, is what his file calls “violent personality disorder.” In other words: a psychopath. I’ve talked before about how interaction with Napoleon leads to his first psychotic episode that a) occurs because he does NOT want to commit violence, and b) ends in something other than violence. (We’ll come back to that last point.)
At issue here is how each man helps the other begin to resolve their chief character flaw — or at least, begin to grapple with it. Because Napoleon is a liar, and every iteration of him as a person — art thief, spy, man of the world — is just him being a liar, because that’s what lying liars do. They create a persona and then inhabit it, and Napoleon’s persona is the sophisticated confidence man who “prefers to work alone” and needs nothing and no one, whose sense of personal integrity is elastic at best, and who certainly feels no loyalty to anyone, anything, or any idea other than himself. He is not a nice man. He is not a particularly good man. It is not a particularly good man who ditches Illya in that boat and swims to shore, then sits there — in one of the film’s most hilarious sequences — calmly eating a sandwich and some warm chianti while Illya literally goes down in flames in the background. He even starts to drive off, because of all the victims of his lies, there is none greater than Napoleon himself. He has lied to himself about who he is, because the lie to oneself is the chief and greatest con of all, and he’s mastered it. He is Napoleon Solo, and he doesn’t care about anyone, because that will just weigh you down, and he won’t tolerate so much as a speck of lint on his jacket. So he starts to drive off, leaving Illya to certain death.
Only he can’t, quite.
You can see the moment when it happens: Is this who I am? Of course it is, what you are talking about, just drive! But… it’s not who I am, is it? You can see the moment when he accepts that he has been lying to himself; he is not the person who can drive away, dammit. He wishes he were. But he’s not, and he accepts that, and he drives back, launching himself into the water, because when Napoleon decides to do a thing, it will not be done by halves.
Illya helps him stop lying.
From that point on in the film, there is a realness to Napoleon that Cavill plays beautifully. He has been stripped of the ability to lie to himself, and while he still lies to others with perfect ease — he wouldn’t be much of a spy if he couldn’t — he can no longer lie to himself. He is a person with loyalties, and he does care what happens to other people, in particular this strange and provoking man who has made him start to question every assumption about himself and the world he has made.
And what of Illya?
He does not lie to himself, and never has. He is a person of extraordinary honesty and directness — Napoleon’s true foil. But he has other problems, a lot of them. And for the first time, like I said above, he experiences a psychotic episode because he DOESN’T want to kill, and not because he longs to. But even more importantly: for the first time he has a psychotic episode that does not end in someone getting hurt. Napoleon just quietly ripped the lid off the box he has been trapped in, and he did it by tossing him his father’s watch, by reminding him that a world of actual loyalties, of true integrity, of real connection, lies behind the shadow world of politics and espionage that is their day job. That moment of connection is his way out of his prison of psychosis, like the moment of rescuing Illya was Napoleon’s way out of his prison of lies. And even more beautifully, one moment is the direct cause of the other. When Napoleon stops lying to himself, and allows himself to form connections, then he does things like retrieve Nikolai Kuryakin’s watch for no other reason than it is important to Illya. Seeing Napoleon’s connection, and his willingness to own it, defuses the psychosis in Illya. And that connection — that ability to connect, rather, that willingness to admit the capacity for connection lay within him — that was because of Illya. Illya sets the whole loop in motion.
These two deeply flawed men can only be healed by each other, and can only be whole with each other. That is just basic cinematic exposition. That is exactly what the film is saying. Now, as a fangirl and a queer-eyed reader, naturally I am going to extend that connection sexually, which is my prerogative as an imaginative viewer. I’m not saying the film itself connects them sexually. I am saying the film creates their deepest emotional bond with each other, and makes it perfectly clear that there is ONLY ONE PERSON who holds the key to unlocking each of them from their private hells. Call it a romantic connection, call it a soul bond, call it the deepest form of brotherhood, it doesn’t matter — at the end of the day, they are the piece that makes the other whole.
The whole business about God creating Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, makes him laugh. For one, he had there, too. For another, pretty much everything back then had been made by God, when the world was still all shiny and new.
He doesn’t think he has ever gone by the name of Steve, though. Not that it matters much. These days, he usually goes by the name of Napoleon Solo.
—
Or: The one where Illya and Gaby are reincarnated throughout history, but Napoleon still manages to find them anyway. Please be warned that this fic contains liberal reinterpretation of biblical themes and references. If this is not your cup of tea, you may wish to give this fic a pass.
I think the only thing I can say to about this is, what did I even write ohmygod. More author’s notes and fun history facts on the AO3 page. And again, please be warned for the liberal reinterpretation of biblical themes and references (if it isn’t evident from the opening lines)!
I cannot get away from thinking about that last scene with Illya, in which he is ordered to kill Napoleon because Napoleon has the disc.
Now, here’s the thing: this is some clever film-making. Because of course, Illya begins to have a psychosis reaction as soon as he gets this information, right? But which information? In other words, there are two important bits of information Illya is handed in that phone call: a) Solo has managed to snake the disc out from under him, and b) he has been ordered to kill Solo. So… which one is it? Is he freaking out because Solo got the better of him, or is he freaking out because he has to kill this man he has come to respect, to like, and to trust as he has very few, maybe, in his adult life? The film teases the viewer, and refuses to give us the answer directly.
The clue is this: every other time Illya has a psychosis reaction, it is in response to verbal or physical violence, threatened or otherwise. He does NOT have a psychosis reaction because someone has gotten the better of him, or because a strategy has not turned out the way he hoped, or because of a sudden plot twist. It is violence that he responds to, every time. Violence begets violence.
Illya has a psychosis reaction because he is being asked to kill. He knows it is unavoidable. He knows – or thinks he does, until Solo shows him the way out – that he has no choice. It is the imminent violence that is causing his reaction, and for the very FIRST TIME, he is having a psychosis reaction not because he is longing to kill, but because HE DOES NOT WANT TO KILL. This is huge. This is a character-defining moment for Illya. It is his first moment of powerful revulsion at violence, his first rejection of it.
Illya Kuryakin has a psychosis reaction because he does not want to kill; because something – someone – has become more important to him than his orders. I’m not trying to suggest that Illya at this point has a romantic attachment to Solo; I’m suggesting that their partnership, and loyalty to that partnership, has quietly become the single most important thing to him. If you doubt me, check out his foot pressing that pedal on the torturer’s electric chair, the torturer who caused Solo such unimaginable pain.
So this beautiful scene is doing double duty: it is showing us how deep, how powerful, is Illya’s connection to his partner, and it is showing us that maybe, just possibly, with a lot of help from that partner, he will be able one day to emerge from this horrible feedback loop his body is caught in, of pathological desire for violence.
tl;dr Illya loves Napoleon all other interpretations are WRONG WRONG WRONG.
Trying to write TMFU fic - always difficult, because I write so slowly, and real life often interferes - and my draft basically features text place-holders like:
Illya’s voice is husky. Napoleon’s mouth goes dry. They fuck.
I wish fic-writing were so easy as to be able to just leave the text like that.
Napoleon was used to seeing all sorts in his shop: harried office types who knocked back their espressos before grabbing a long black to go, bored housewife types who took their lattes heavy on the syrups and low on the fat, tourists who ordered their coffees topped with whipped cream as they embraced a certain vacation-based joie de vie, college kids simply looking for a cheap caffeine fix while they took advantage of his free Wi-Fi.
Six foot five, blond and leanly muscled, on the other hand, at seven in the morning and with the most delicious jawline Napoleon had seen in days, was certainly a first.
—
Or: The modern day coffee shop AU in which Napoleon makes Illya all kinds of coffee except for Illya’s actual order, and things aren’t all quite what they seem to be.
This started because I had discovered an interesting coffee place near my office two weeks ago, which (naturally, when you’re a fangirl) led to Napollya thoughts along the lines of: “Napoleon tries to woo Illya with coffee. Illya wants something black and simple. Napoleon insists on making him all kinds of fancy drinks to show his ~adoration. Illya despairs.” The original idea was only supposed to be ~1k long. I’m not sure how it became ten times longer than that. While I’m holidaying in London this past week, no less.