#Doc watches The Haunting of Hill House | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

showmethesneer · 1 year ago

Text

AO3 Wrapped [Writer's Edition]

Taken from @pippinoftheshire

1. How many words have you written this year?

82,912 (😳 holy shit)

2. How many works did you publish this year?

13 plus an additional chapter to an older one

3. What work are you most proud of (regardless of hits/kudos)?

Beauty and Brains: A Night In The Capitol (The Hunger Games, Finnick Odair/Beetee Latier smut)

4. What work of yours has the most hits?

Rough Enough (The Witcher, Geralt/Jaskier smut)

5. What work of yours got more feedback than you expected?

Hands down, the best, most surprising comment I've ever gotten was on A Fire In The Belly (And Other Sensitive Organs) (The Witcher, Yennefer/Jaskier smut) but I got a couple "thank you for writing this" comments on Dance Little Liar (MCU, Bruce Banner/Natasha Romanov slow burn) that shocked me

6. Favourite title you used?

Lycan Subscribe (OUAT, Ruby Lucas/Belle French friends to lovers)

7. If you use song lyrics, which artist's songs did you pull from the most?

The Amazing Devil, usually cuz I write a lot of Jaskier fics

8. Pairing you wrote the most for this year?

Technically Geralt/Jaskier (The Witcher) with Rough Enough and A Fire In The Belly (And Other Sensitive Organs) but the pairing I wrote the longest fic (most words) for was Bruce/Natasha (MCU) in Dance Little Liar.

9. Favourite pairing you wrote for this year?

Asmodeus/Fizzarolli (Helluva Boss) with A Sensation

10. What work was the quickest to write?

Smart Mouth (Spiderman, Peter Parker/Ned Leeds smut)

11. What work took you the longest to write?

With pauses, Once Upon Your Dead Body (Stranger Things, Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson vampire smut) But straight through, Dance Little Liar (MCU, Bruce Banner/Natasha Romanov slow burn)

12. How many WIP's do you have in your docs for next year?

13. What's your longest work of the year?

Dance Little Liar (29,929 words) (MCU, Bruce Banner/Natasha Romanov slow burn)

14. What's your shortest work of the year?

Rock And Roll And Regret (832 words) (Daisy Jones and The Six, Billy Dunne/Daisy Jones angst)

15. What WIP are you taking into next year with you?

All of them, honestly. I'm probably most excited about rewriting Jane Eyre as Swan Queen (OUAT) smut

16. What's your most common "Additional Tags" tag?

Masturbation (5)

17. Your favourite character to write this year?

It's always Jaskier (The Witcher) but, this year specifically, Finnick Odair (The Hunger Games) and Fizzarolli (Helluva Boss) were really fucking therapeutic.

18. The character that gave you the most trouble writing this year?

Hugh Crain (The Haunting of Hill House) was pretty difficult to get a handle on despite the million times I've watched it

19. What's one pairing you want to explore next year?

Jaskier/Valdo Marx (The Witcher)

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

Either Beauty and Brains: A Night In The Capitol (The Hunger Games, Finnick Odair/Beetee Latier smut) or Lycan Subscribe (OUAT, Ruby Lucas/Belle French friends to lovers) because I'm probably most proud of those.

21. How many kudos in total did you get this year?

1,021 on fics published this year. I don't know how to calculate the kudos I got on older fics during this year.

22. Which work has the most comments?

Rough Enough (The Witcher, Geralt/Jaskier smut)

23. Did you do any collaborative works this year?

No, but someone wrote a sequel to one of my fics.

24. Did you write any gifts this year?

I wrote Rough Enough (The Witcher, Geralt/Jaskier smut) at my wife's suggestion/request. That's as close as I've gotten to writing a gift.

25. Did you receive any gifts this year?

I was gifted Old Stars Keep Shining, which was a sequel to my fic from last summer Star Maker (Star Wars, Poe Dameron/Luke Skywalker angsty smut)

26. What's your most common category?

M/M (8)

27. What do you listen to while writing?

I usually listen to The Amazing Devil when I'm writing Witcher fics. It differs when I write for other characters. I have a playlist for Ruby Lucas (OUAT) that's like wolf girl shit.

28. Favourite work you wrote this year?

I am so fucking proud of Beauty and Brains: A Night At The Capitol (The Hunger Games, Finnick Odair/Beetee Latier smut) i can't even tell you. Just.. please read it? If you never read any of my other fics ever, please read this one.

29. Favourite line/passage you wrote this year?

"He makes me feel like… I want to rip out all my internal organs," Yennefer confessed with a thoughtful intensity, "so he has room to ravage me. I want to be completely hollowed out. Carved out and empty. So that when he penetrates me, there’s nothing that can get in his way. So he fits. Completely. And never leaves."

from A Fire In The Belly (And Other Sensitive Organs) (The Witcher, Yennefer/Jaskier smut)

30. Biggest surprise while writing this year?

Maybe how inspired I was by the books I read this year. Especially when I wrote my Helluva Boss fic A Sensation. It was deeply inspired by The Body Keeps The Score.

#ao3 #fanfiction #lalorelei #2023 #ao3 wrapped #long post

4 notes · View notes

arpeggiios · 1 year ago

Text

( sophie thatcher, 22, cis woman, she/her) // * hello, HELENA SPELLING. i’ve kept a close eye on you for some time now. you sure know your way around the city, it’s obvious that you’re a local. i’ve memorized your schedule, i’ve seen you picking up shifts as a MUSIC STUDENT. i know your view from PARK EAST TOWER must be so nice, i bet you’re wondering if i can see you right now. i’m afraid you’re too IMPULSIVE and TRUSTING to survive this franchise. maybe if you’re lucky your KINDHEARTEDNESS and INTELLIGENCE nature will help you make it out alive. so, i have to ask what’s your favorite scary movie?

ᴘɪɴᴛᴇʀᴇꜱᴛ ✦ ᴍɪxᴛᴀᴘᴇ

✦ ・ ʙᴀꜱɪᴄꜱ

full name: helena rose spelling

nicknames: hellie, ellie, rosie

age: 22

date of birth: may 30, 2001

place of birth: manhattan, new york city

gender: cis woman

pronouns: she/her

sexual orientation: bisexual

occupation: music student at blackmore university

religion: raised roman catholic, helena is surprisingly still practicing to some level. mostly that means going to sunday mass with her grandmother.

✦ ・ ꜰᴀᴍɪʟʏ

mother: tori spelling, a famous actress who got her breakthrough in the role of sidney prescott in the stab franchise. she was infamously absent in the most recent installment, stab 8.

father: jacob spelling, whose family owns a couple of very lucrative wineries spread over the new york state but is mostly happy to sit back and watch his wife be a star. his birth name is jacob miller, but he took tori's surname.

other relatives: bernadette and elliot miller, her paternal grandparents. elliot died before helena was born, but she has a close relationship to bernadette.

siblings: an older sibling

pets: an orange tabby named pumpkin (because of his color, yes, but most importantly because of the smashing pumpkins)

✦ ・ ᴀᴘᴘᴇᴀʀᴀɴᴄᴇ

height: 5’2 or 160 cm

hair: naturally sits in between mousy brown and dirty blonde, though it has been dyed and redyed into a myriad of colors. right now, helena sports blonde locks, cut carelessly by herself over her bathroom sink.

eyes: bluish gray, with the kind of impossibly earnest stare that makes people look away. helena doesn’t wear her heart on her sleeve, but in her eyes.

tattoos: a small cross in her left wrist, a bat in her shoulder

piercings: three in both of her earlobes

fashion sense: either too large band shirts with days old eyeliner or flowy whimsical dresses, always in heavy doc martens and her trusted leather jacket, which she stole from her father. she also runs very cold and is always bundled in mittens, scarves and hats, all of them in ugly colors and poorly done knit work. helena tries very hard to knit and always fails spectacularly.

✦ ・ ᴘᴇʀꜱᴏɴᴀʟɪᴛʏ

traits: impulsive, trusting, kindhearted, intelligent, idealistic, self-involved, starry-eyed, quixotical, reckless

moral alignment: chaotic good

vice: pride

virtue: kindness

what’s your favorite scary movie? 1931’s dracula. helena is not a big fan of modern horror, but has always been fascinated by the black and white, eerily fantastical worlds of old horror. other favorites include the night of the living dead, house on haunted hill and the black cat.

✦ ・ ꜱᴏᴍᴇ ʜᴇᴀᴅᴄᴀɴᴏɴꜱ

at first glance, you would think helena spelling is the black sheep of the family. shaggy dyed hair, leather jacket and two day old eyeliner make a striking image, but they mostly serve to hide what’s peaking just underneath. hand knitted gloves, well loved books, carefully done assignments and a warm smile that spreads all over her face. you are as likely to find her crowd surfing in an underground punk bar as in the public library, nose buried in a verlaine poetry book.

although new york is her home, helena spent a lot of childhood divided between there and hollywood, accompanying her mother over shoots and promotional campaigns. she hated california, the coarse sand and scalding sun, always choosing to stay in new york with her grandmother when possible. these times are some of her most treasured childhood memories, going to mass at st. patrick’s cathedral, drinking warm tea and listening to her grandfather’s old vinyls.

being the daughter of a hollywood star, helena was almost fated to have a complicated relationship with her mother. it can, however, be summed up in two deceivingly simple phrases: tori spelling loves the spotlights. helena does not. she spent her childhood going by her father’s surname, avoiding any mention of the stab franchise or any slasher movies. as a kid, she was never just helena, but tori spelling’s daughter!

helena always loved music. from her grandparent’s vinyls to her father’s old and dusted gibson, and everything in between. her grandmother gave her piano lessons as a gift for her seventh birthday, and helena didn’t stop playing since then. she is one of the rare types of people who truly likes anything, as long as it is music. her own band is very pop punkish, but she studies classical composition at university.

#ghosthqintro #✦ ・ ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ

2 notes · View notes

misireads · 4 months ago

Text

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

[ audiobook, listened in english ]

an occult scholar doctor invites three people to join him to look for solid evidence of the phenomenon of haunting in an 80-year-old mansion named hill house that's said to be haunted because people keep dying around it.

the central character is a young woman with fragile mental health who steals a car to go to hill house in order to escape her own life. she's scared of the house, but things get bearable when she quickly befriends another woman who's been invited to the house. during the day, they seem to be enjoying the house. during the night, it's scaring them out of their minds. gradually, she starts to sense things that the others apparently don't.

🏡👻🚗

➕ i very much like the boo haunted house genre where a group of strange people go stay in a house to prove it's haunted, or to appease it or whatever.

➕ the real horror here is eleanor's mind, clearly. i enjoyed her unreliable narration a lot, this bitch got some issues. (what i liked a little less is that i related to a lot of it in the earlier chapters. she's overthinking every single thing, and thinks of theodora as her bff after knowing her for two hours because she's being nice to her, gets worried that theodora might start disliking her, then ends up disliking theodora herself for some petty little shit she says that can be interpreted as her making fun of eleanor. bonkers and unfortunately relatable for anyone with poor self esteem)

➕ i liked the prose… mostly. it's very poetic which i think works great for creating an atmosphere in horror.

➖ for an iconic work of the haunted house genre this sure had a lot of filler-y scheisse outside of the house being haunted. the characters just kind of go around doing random things. sometimes i wasn't really sure what they were even talking about anymore because the dialogue and their random actions go so off the rails. but it's like this from the beginning, eleanor does a couple of random stops on her way to hill house so the story takes a very long time to get to the point, and nothing really happens during those stops. like she looks at a child drinking from a cup and talks about the cup for five minutes or something.

➖ i wasn't really sure what luke was doing here. he didn't do much anything (until the very end anyway) nor did he have any personality or notable character traits. you have a cast of only four main characters and you couldn't even come up with a personality for one of them. the doc's wife also, she just appears and.. is a bit bitchy and.. nothing happens to her.

➖ relatedly, the pacing is weird. the only consistent is eleanor's succumb into madness but the rest was like see-saw where aooohh a spooky thing happenin!!! hehe never mind, we were just silly now we frolic in the sun. ouuuhhh now a spooky thing happenin again!!! hahaha never mind how silly it is to think there would be ghosts. there's no escalation or tension or progression of any kind and i found that very weird. actually just no plot. eleanor is the only character that matters and has any progression, the rest are just "shrug i guess i was a bit scared back there! but it's okay."

⭐ score: 3 -- a lukewarm three because i'm not really sure if i liked this or not. i zoned out a lot but then found the rare creepy parts decently entertaining, and i didn't mind that there weren't all that many of them, but this really did lack escalation. i've also watched the netflix show and liked it but don't remember it being like this book at all lol

#author: shirley jackson #genre: american lit #genre: horror #genre: suspense #theme: ghosts #theme: psychological #theme: gothic #score: 3 #read in: 2024

0 notes

justapillowpetpanda · 8 months ago

Text

Fantasia Festival 2024: Horror, Mike Flanagan & More!

The Fantasia International Film Festival will celebrate its upcoming 28th edition with an electrifying program of screenings, workshops, and launch events running from July 18 through August 4, 2024, returning to the Concordia Hall and J.A. de Sève cinemas, with additional screens and events at Montréal’s Cinémathèque Québécoise, Cinéma du Musée, Théâtre Plaza, and BBAM! Gallery. The festival website is now live with over 125 features and 200+ shorts available to be explored. Ticket pre-sales are now open. Plenty of excellent horror films and shorts are headed for audiences at the 28th Fantasia Festival. Let's examine some of the stories being told this year.

Mike Flanagan 2024 Career Achievement Award

For his imaginative and heartfelt horror visions; boundary-breaking achievements in making soulful, character-driven genre television commercially viable without compromises; and the extraordinary work he’s done in popularizing landmark authors to a new generation, Fantasia will be awarding their 2024 Cheval Noir career award to U.S. filmmaker Mike Flanagan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN1kyOUm8uk Flanagan is an artist Fantasia has adored since his first visit to the festival for the Canadian premiere of his haunting 2011 indie debut ABSENTIA, a foundational feature that contains all the core elements that have come to define the artist’s work: a unique perspective on occult possibilities, engrossing slow-burn storytelling approaches, inventively cinematic aesthetics, and above all else - deeply compassionate horror narratives built on agonizingly personal themes of loss. These elements have been consistent throughout his career, regardless of whether the work is a standalone creation or an adaptation of classic literature. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89UV8vmWXlY While it may strike some as odd to bestow an achievement award to an artist who’s almost certainly not yet reached a mid-career place, Flanagan has been so extraordinarily prolific and consistently brilliant in his output that the filmmaker has already accomplished several lifetimes of creation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_P8WCbhC6s Beyond being one of the most inspired storytelling voices of his generation, Mike Flanagan is a bona fide, culture-shifting master of horror, having changed the landscape of the genre since emerging on the scene in 2011. Since then, Flanagan has brought audiences such modern classics as OCULUS (2013), HUSH (2016), BEFORE I WAKE (2016), OUIJA: ORIGIN OF EVIL (2016), GERALD’S GAME (2017), and DOCTOR SLEEP (2019), as well as the Netflix miniseries events The Haunting of Hill House (2018), The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020), Midnight Mass (2021), The Midnight Club (2022), and The Fall of the House of Usher (2023). His next feature is the forthcoming Stephen King adaptation THE LIFE OF CHUCK (2024), starring Tom Hiddleston, Mark Hamill, and Chiwetel Ejiofor.

More Horror Arriving at Fantasia Festival

IN OUR BLOOD A perfectly calculated, slow-burn nightmare that opens with the feel of an indie doc and gradually evolves into something uniquely sinister, IN OUR BLOOD is the narrative feature debut of Oscar-nominated documentarian Pedro Kos (REBEL HEARTS, LEAD ME HOME). Nothing is as it seems when filmmaker Emily Wyland (a phenomenal Brittany O’Grady of HBO’s White Lotus) teams up with cinematographer Danny (E. J. Bonilla, FX’s The Old Man) to shoot an intimate documentary about reuniting with her mother (Alanna Ubach, HBO’s Euphoria) after a decade apart. When her mother suddenly goes missing, Emily and Danny must piece together increasingly disturbing clues, hoping to find her before it’s too late.

4PM Inspired by the book “The Stranger Next Door” from critically acclaimed Belgian writer Amélie Nothomb, 4PM is a riveting psychological thriller from director Jay Song (THE NIGHTMARE) drenched in silent tension. Jeong-in (OLDBOY’s Oh Dal-su), is taking a break from his life as a teacher in his new countryside house when a written invitation to a neighbor (Jang Yeong-nam, PROJECT WOLF HUNTING) turns into a nightmare of excruciatingly awkward visits every day at 4PM.

FRANKIE FREAKO! After the success of PSYCHO GOREMAN, FX artist and director Steven Kostanski hits back with the zany, over-the-top FRANKIE FREAKO! Starring Conor Sweeney and Adam Brooks of Astron-6 fame, the film follows a nerdy man who just isn’t cool. In an attempt to impress his wife and boss, he’s lured by a 1-900 TV ad to party with a strange little creature called Frankie Freako. All hell breaks loose when Conor calls and Frankie and his two friends wreak interdimensional havoc in Conor’s life.

BLACK EYED SUSAN It’s been 21 long years since Scooter McCrae (SHATTER DEAD) released a new feature, and he’s lost none of his smart, transgressive bite. Desperate for work, Derek (Damian Maffei, THE STRANGERS: PREY AT NIGHT) accepts a job at a shady tech start-up, working intimately with Susan (Yvonne Emilie Thälker in a powerful debut role), a bleeding-edge BDSM sex doll meant to receive and appreciate sexual punishment as an integral part of her evolving AI. Shot on Super 16, BLACK EYED SUSAN counterbalances its dark, vulgar core with a surprisingly tender vulnerability, creating a lo-fi science-fiction landscape infused with surprising fragility, as legendary Italian composer Fabio Frizzi (THE BEYOND, ZOMBIE) lends the picture a lush, atmospheric backdrop.

CHAINSAWS WERE SINGING A true DIY passion project from Estonian filmmaker Sander Maran, CHAINSAWS WERE SINGING is a zany, blood-soaked musical about lovers split up by a chainsaw-wielding killer. Over a decade in the making, Saran not only directed but wrote, scored, shot, and edited this colorful murder-fest that’s part gory horror movie and part ridiculous musical. The camerawork is inventive, the editing slapstick, and the tone truly absurdist. Most importantly, though, the songs are incredibly catchy, with Sander clearly deeply indebted to Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s CANNIBAL! THE MUSICAL and Frank Oz’s LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS.

STEPPENWOLF A bleakly pulverizing action thriller from celebrated Kazakh maverick Adilkhan Yerzhanov (THE GENTLE INDIFFERENCE OF THE WORLD, THE OWNERS) and Oscar nominated producer Alexander Rodnyansky (LEVIATHAN), STEPPENWOLF explodes off the screen with tension that will singe the flesh from your bones. Like a Kazakh MAD MAX directed by John Ford - or perhaps, THE SEARCHERS directed by George Miller - with a touch of Herman Hesse and classic samurai tales, STEPPENWOLF reinvents the codes of its inspirations with jolting doses of post-Soviet nihilism and morbid black humor. A desperate mother (Anna Starchenko, NARTAI) teams up with a psychopathic ex-cop (Berik Aitzhanov, GOLIATH, THE ASSAULT) to find her son who’s gone missing in a landscape consumed by riots and death.

HOUSE OF SAYURI Legendary J-horror director Koji Shiraishi (NOROI: THE CURSE) brings the genre to new levels of fun with HOUSE OF SAYURI. A vengeful ghost disseminates a family until a counterattack from a bold grandma brings a startling new dynamic into the house.

THE PARAGON Former Power Rangers director Michael Duignan’s utterly mad feature debut, THE PARAGON, electrifies with hilarity and trippy psychedelic visuals, delivers in the spirit of inspired low-budget New Zealand filmmaking that harkens back to early Peter Jackson. After experiencing a hit and run, an angry ex-tennis coach named Dutch (Benedict Wall, SHADOW IN THE CLOUD) embarks on a psychic training course to find the driver and get revenge. Alongside his witchy psychic coach Lyra (Florence Noble), Dutch must decide between being a victim of his fate or a slave to otherworldly evil in this spectacularly entertaining fantasy comedy where revenge becomes a cosmic experience. Co-starring an especially nuts Jonny Brugh (WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS).

THE CHAPEL The stunning sophomore feature from award-winning director Carlota Pereda (PIGGY), THE CHAPEL marks the fantastic return of atmospheric, character-driven supernatural Spanish horror. Emma (Maia Zaitegi) wants to learn how to communicate with the spirit of a little girl who has spent centuries trapped inside a chapel. She tries to convince Carol (THE ORPHANAGE’s Belen Rueda), a cynical and fake medium, to help her in the hopes that contacting the spirit may help her to remain close to her dying mother after she passes. What Carol doesn’t suspect is that Emma really does have “the gift” and, if she keeps on trying to use it without her guidance, she will be putting her young life at terrifying risk.

Pictured: Hunter Schafer, Credit: Neon CUCKOO A seventeen-year-old girl (Hunter Schafer, HBO’s Euphoria) is forced to move with her family to a resort where things are not what they seem in this astonishing mix of mix of domestic tension, body horror, and perverse science from the gifted director of LUZ. Co-starring Dan Stevens, Jessica Henwick, Marton Csókás, and Jan Bluthardt.

THE TENANTS In a dystopian Seoul, office worker Shin-dong, threatened with eviction, rents out his bathroom to an eccentric couple whose strange behavior quickly escalates into a waking nightmare. A rising talent in the indie horror scene, writer-director Yoon Eun-kyoung creates a unique blend of soft science fiction, Kafkaesque absurdism, and dark comedy to highlight Korea’s very real social inequality problems.

Special Book Launch - 'I Spit on Your Celluloid'

Source: Fantasia Festival HEIDI HONEYCUTT’S I SPIT ON YOUR CELLULOID: THE HISTORY OF WOMEN DIRECTING HORROR MOVIES (Headpress Books) Friday July 26, 5:15PM, Cinema J.A. DeSeve A legendary curator, historian, and critic, author Heidi Honeycutt co-founded the Etheria film Festival and has written for a vast number of publications and outlets, from Filmmaker, Ms. Magazine, Moviemaker, and Indiewire to Bloody Disgusting and Rue Morgue. Fantasia is hosting the World Premiere book launch of Honeycutt’s “I Spit on Your Celluloid: The History of Women Directing Horror Movies” (Headpress Books), a comprehensive 20-years-in-the-making work that covers the evolution of women in horror cinema from 1896 to the present day. The official book launch will be taking place with a special screening of Christina Hornisher’s once-thought-lost 1974 horror gem HOLLYWOOD 90028. Honeycutt will introduce the screening and advance copies of the book will be available for sale and signing.

Short Horror Films at Fantasia Festival 2024

ARE YOU AFRAID OF FANTASIA? 2024 Like the popular Canadian television series ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK? (1992-1996), this program is an international collection of horrific short films, many with comedic bite, and some dead serious. Amygdala (Sweden, dir. Oskar Johansson, Canadian Premiere) Coléoptère (France, dir. Martin Gouzou, Canadian Premiere) Dark Signals (USA, dir. Izzy Lee, Canadian Premiere) Hold Up (USA, dir. Ori Guendelman, World Premiere) Howl at the Dead (USA, dir. Gregg Bishop, Canadian Premiere) Monster Party (Canada, dir. Amara Burnett, World Premiere) Ouch! (USA, dir. Zach Kornfeld, International Premiere) Roger is a Serial Killer (USA, dir. Don Swaynos, International Premiere) Save Me (China, dir. Liu Di , International Premiere) Tinkerhell (United States of America, Noah Sterling, World Premiere) Read the full article

#2024horrorfilms #28thfantasiafilmfestival #fantasia #fantasiafilmfestival #Horror #horrorfilms #ispitonyourcelluloid #indiehorror #mikeflanagan #shortfilm

0 notes

6797968625078 · 1 year ago

Text

my official and complete and chronological list of my VERY FAVORITE new-to-me movies i watched in 2023 bc i watched kiind of a lot of movies: DEAD RINGERS, kwaku ananse, ticket of no return,

mulholland drive,

my dad is 100 years old, 🖤the🖤texas🖤chainsaw🖤massacre🖤2🖤, spirited away live on stage (that is the name of the filmed version of the stage play it had a brief theatrical release. and it was magnificent), MANHUNTER, BODY DOUBLE, dream demon, malignant, were all going to the worlds fair, bette gordons variety, the strange case of dr jekyll & miss osbourne, HEAT, society, sea devil (2014), 💚the💚return💚of💚the💚living💚dead💚, POINT BREAK, the queen of black magic, passionless moments, but im a cheerleader, totally fucked up, nostalgia, whats up doc, kyoshi kurosawas to the ends of the earth, under the skin, wittgenstein, thief, blood simple, california split, rob zombies halloween 2, cutters way, the doom generation, the gate, 976-evil, the faculty, brainscan, welcome to the dollhouse, fleshtone, SHOWGIRLS, chan is missing, idle hands, thir13en ghosts, zardoz, wishmaster, urban legend, urban legends final cut, pet semetary, exorcist 2, the craft, encounter of the spooky kind, final destination 3, chocolate babies, bunny lake is missing, wes cravens new nightmare, tales from the hood, house on haunted hill (1999), thomasine & bushrod, koji shiraishis OCCULT, by hook or by crook, housekeeping, mysterious skin, fresh kill, the long goodbye, paper moon,

inland empire,

troll, sleepwalk, body parts, the woods, valentino, the quiet, the raven (1935), you are not i, teknolust, RAVENOUS, when pigs fly, the old dark house, monkeybone

#i was going to put this on my main blog but im embarrassed to tell everybody i hadnt seen mulholland drive inland empire or all of showgirls #or welcome 2 the dollhouse before this year which is petrhaps a silly way 2 be but here we r so it goooes intoothe voooooooiiiiiidd oowoooo #i think several of these fundamentally changed me as a person maybe especially manhunter and heat #i feel like theres distinct pre- and post-heat (1995) mes #under the skin as well. augh #scrap diary

1 note · View note

docholligay · 2 months ago

Text

So, the first time I watched The Haunting of Hill House, I started it as a lark. I half-watched the first episode and then went, "Oh no, this is a real show" and went back, and then I watched one episode a day, giving myself time and space to enjoy and really take in everything about every episode, and think about it.

When I got to this monologue of Leigh's, I fucking screamed. I love it so much. It is my favorite part of the whole show. This is the house speaking to Steve, but it's speaking to Steve about his own insecurities and anxieties. Steve is, essentially, a creative nonfiction writer. He draws from people's actual lives, and twists it into something prettier, and sells it. I think any writer--and I think at least to some extent all writers do this--who draws from people they have met or seen or experienced, thinks about this, is doing this in some way.

Every person I have ever met gets marked down in some way on the notebook in my mind. Many of them actually end up in the journal in my bag. The way people talk and move and the stories they tell, all of it is part of eventually drawing richer characters. So how guilty am I of this?

Especially given that I DO tend to write about things that happen to me, and they do seem more real for being written down, for being thought about. When you understand the world via explaining it back to yourself, you wonder, "AM I capable of letting anything be real without writing it down?"

So of course Steve is thinking this, especially since this is his family he's written about. That maybe he is just an eater. Maybe he doesn't actually feel things like normal people, maybe all this rich interior life he's been imagining he has is nothing more than a collection prose pieces. Maybe he is ultimately hollow, at the core of it. Is art fed by the soul or is it a substitute for it?

#Doc watches The Haunting of Hill House #HHH episode 10 #Eight Days 2024

11 notes · View notes

fangirl-and-doctor-help · 2 years ago

Text

“These woods’ll keep you safe, if you keep ‘em safe” Everyone should read this sentence RIGHT NOW.

“Could ask you the same thing, Doc, how long you been up?” ARI AS A FED IS A CONCEPT I’VE NEVER READ BUT I’M SO INNNN (who am I kidding? He could be anyone but as ling as he’s Ari, this is enough for my heart to beat faster)

“What, can’t check in on you, Doc?” Stooooooop

“One day I’m gonna have you arrested for trespassin’,” why do I feel like he’d enjoy it? 😏

“The thing about names is how much power they hold.” I love how you brought this concept here

“Rogers”

“That night, the spirit formerly known as Jane Doe #117 comes with a friend. John Doe #43 is… less pleasant lookin’ than the girl whose ID he had hidden inside his flayed jaw, eyeless face staring at you from your kitchen window and tapping on the glass to be let in.” Not to be dramatic but I would shit my pants.

“Oh c’mon, Doc. I don’t fuckin’ know. Do you even know my birthday?” Ouch

“You know you have a skinless corpse on your porch?” So other people see them too?

“Personal protection, why else? There’s two dead bodies less than ten miles out from your property, Doc, or did you not notice?” Oh she noticed

“Please don’t tell me you came all the way over to my house just to tell me to use protection.” When she says it like that it sound a little… well you know 😏

“You watch him, stirring about three tablespoons worth of honey into your coffee,” honey in your coffee? Jail.

“I said I went to the crime scene, Doc. And then I walked for four miles… on a hunch.” I call bullshit

This is giving me Haunting of The Hill House vibes and I’m HERE FOR IT!

A Worthy Grave - Chapter 1

Chapter 1 - Everybody Dies Alone

Pairing: Federal Agent!Ari Levinson x Witch!Reader

Warnings: THIS IS A HORROR FIC, True Crime Elements, Police Procedural Elements, Possibly a little Twin Peaks, Violence, Murder, Death, Flayed Bodies, Ghosts, Ghouls, Violence Against Women, Violence Against Random Hikers, The Woods are Dangerous, Serial Killers, Choking, Gutting, Witchcraft, Blood, Appalachian Gothic Horror, Eventual Smut, Plot with Porn

PLEASE REMEMBER THAT YOUR CONSUMPTION OF MEDIA IS YOUR OWN RESPONSIBILITY AND IF YOU ARE UNCOMFORTABLE WITH THE CONTENT THAT IS BEING PRESENTED, PLEASE DO NOT READ

Chapter Summary: Any place with enough history in it is gonna have ghosts. And sometimes they call your name.

O Mother It is that fear that moves both heart and tongue To draw tight curtains so that we might let the darker hours pass unseen. We hear you call in the deepest night. We hear you call to us in voices that belong to our dead and gone And we know better, but we follow you into The darkened woods all the same.

— Old Gods of Appalachia Episode 31: Season 3 Prologue

Notes: I’M BACK, BITCHES. This fic is a sort of direct sequel to Glory, Amen, so keep that in mind as you read it, except I decided to include MORE CE babes into this fic and may also include other CE babes in the future. This is gonna be more Twin Peaks inspired than anything else, and I hope you enjoy it! I crave feedback, so tell me what you think!

All of my work is 18+ Only, Minors DO NOT INTERACT. I do not consent to my work being posted anywhere besides Tumblr or Ao3 and I post my work there myself. Do not copy, translate, or repost any of my content.

Any place with enough history in it is gonna have ghosts, and these mountains in particular — being the oldest mountains in the world — have the type of ghosts that predate the very humanity the spine of this land is afflicted with. The type of ghosts that — if you’re good and careful, if you find the right gaps ‘tween then and now t’slip between, say the right words to invite ‘em into your space — might just come pay you a visit.

Other times, you don’t gotta say shit.

These woods’ll keep you safe, if you keep ‘em safe, your momma would warn you with all the gravity of a stormcloud, wrist-deep in the rich black earth of her garden, digging out root vegetables and other sorts of magic from that treasure trove of life she’d spent more years cultivating than you’d actually been alive, This mountain will sustain you proper, if you sustain it.

These woods are deep and dark an’ full of the type of demons even your daddy’s Bible would have been scared to name, but you are the blood of both an’ your momma feared no man, woman, or haint in these or any mountains.

Which is why, when the specter shows up on your front porch, screamin’ for blood an’ justice, all you do is give her a name and offer her a plate of cornbread she’d never actually be able to eat.

Stops the screaming though.

Trouble with small towns — especially small towns in mountains like yours — is that sometimes, people go missing. People take walks out in the woods, fall into some mineshaft the State forgot to tag or get got by some apex predator lookin’ to prove just how wild God’s own country really is. People get lost, people just plain die. Nine times outta ten, nobody finds the body but the beasts an’ eventually nobody looks, all chalkin’ the loss up to some mountain sacrifice.

Blood for blood, what you make, I will take.

You’re no stranger to death — Hell, Cocke County coroner, you might almost call it your life’s work — but some parts of the job you could do without.

Parts which occasionally — and currently — include a sobbing woman sittin’ translucent an’ bloody in your kitchen.

You call her Janey, on account of the Jane Doe #117 title stamped on the manila folder sittin’ in your office, the one with the photos of a body that probably once belonged to the unsettled soul you’d invited inside and offered a sacrifice of fresh-baked bread. It ain’t her real name, but that’s what the boys over at Park Services are still trynna find out.

Ain’t nothin’ I can do about your body, honey, you tell her, sitting across from the glum-faced woman and trying to decipher the words she means to say between the static that just can’t stop pouring from that hollowed-out mouth.

Your daddy tried teachin’ you the language of the other side, all deep snarls an’ buzzin’ shadows, but sometimes it’s the words that manage to spill out that tell the truth, those last vestiges of humanity bubbling bloody an’ baleful from a tongueless mouth before death takes its last due.

You know her secrets.

You know she wore heels more than hiking shoes. You know she’s not from these mountains, not anywhere near these small towns. You scraped the dirt from under her fingernails and know she fought to survive with everything she had and you know, gut-sinkin’ and stomach churning, that she was not the first body her killer left behind.

You know you could write her name out on your paperwork and give her family some peace, tell ‘em she didn’t run away, tell ‘em she loved ‘em more than anything in the world.

You know you could tell her boyfriend she wasn’t cheating on him, that the man who picked her up and left her here for the beasts to find was someone she thought she could trust. You could tell her momma she was comin’ home from a good job, that she stopped drinkin’ four months ago, that therapy was goin’ well and she was gettin’ better. You could give her daddy a body to bury long before its time, an’ if this were the Holler you grew up in, you know that would be that.

But it ain’t, so nothin’s ever over, and now you’ve gotta figure out how to prove this shit.

You pour yourself a fourth cup of coffee, watching your cornbread offering slowly begin to mold, decay following death as it must always do. You gotta give me something to go off of for the Feds, honey.

You get static in return.

Well. That and the shrill ring of your landline, that old rotary thing you bought from a thrift shop on the other side of the state, kept connected just in case the towers don’t reach you through the early morning mist.

There’s only one goddamn asshole who’d call you on it at six in the goddamn morning.

You ever sleep, Levinson?

Could ask you the same thing, Doc, how long you been up?

Clockwork. The same conversation you’ve had every morning since Ari Levinson transferred from some national park you didn’t give a damn about up north, his drawl about as much a part of your morning routine as coffee and keeping Goatrude out of your vegetable garden.

You want something, Levinson, or you just callin’ to ask about my sleepin’ habits?

What, can’t check in on you, Doc? You can almost hear the casual smugness in his voice, imagining the way he might speak around the cigarette he’s probably smoking at too-early-in-the-morning, I got an update on Jane Doe. You need to get out here.

The grind of gravel tells you just how much choice you have in the matter, your houseguest disappearing the moment she realizes you are not about to be alone for much longer, Jesus, Levinson, you gotta give a lady some warning, you slam down the receiver with a satisfying sound, grabbing the thoroughly-molded cornbread and throwing the plate wholesale into the bin and dumping the rest of your coffee pot into a thermos, listening for the sound of his engine roaring to a stop as you rush through the rest of your morning.

You grab your bag as you leave, stalking your way down the gravel walk and flashing Ari Levinson — parked halfway up the driveway and mercifully blocked further by Goatrude doin’ her best guard dog impression — a hard glare in response to his lazy grin, One day I’m gonna have you arrested for trespassin’, you threaten as you get into the too-fancy-for-a-city-slicker truck he drives.

He doesn’t say a word as you get in, just turns the key in the ignition and with a wink and backs away from Goatrude threatening to headbutt his front bumper.

It takes about fifteen minutes to get to the scene, where your crew and work truck are already waiting, jumpsuit and booties prepared for you to pull on before you’re allowed past that yellow tape and allowed to face the scene before you.

And just what the Hell m’I supposed to do here?

Well, Doc, I’m pretty sure you’d say the next step’s the autopsy, Agent Ari Levinson, Park Services Investigation Division — or whatever the hell that formal title is that he handed off to the poor rookie trying to keep curious hikers away from the yellow tape — saunters up behind you, his cigarette put out so as not to contaminate the crime scene, taking it in with you.

Helluva scene too, with its most pertinent part — for you, right now — currently including a body layin’ pretty as a picture on a flat slab of rock, eyes closed and lips blue, naked as the day it was born.

Which all would’ve been fine, save for the lungs, kidneys, liver and contents of a final meal neatly poured from a stomach into a tupperware container and placed around the meatsack-that-had-once-been-a-human-being like an offering to some great and terrible mortician God.

If you got all the answers, Agent Obvious, you wanna explain to me just how the hell I’m supposed to autopsy a body that’s already been done?

Oh, we got a whole lot better than that. You contemplate turning him into a crime scene with your own gloved hands as he turns, gesturing towards the far side of the slab, just past the edge of a cluster of trees, where two of your staff stand with two large black dogs seated patiently in wait.

Surrounding a lump hidden by a big white sheet.

You can guess what’s underneath that sheet even before they remove it, like every shitty horror film you’ve seen. A chunk of meat vaguely shaped like a human, wearing none of its features, nothing identifiable ‘cept raw. meat.

We’ve been callin’ it Jekyll and Hyde all morning, Ari Levinson tells you, Deputy coroner’s fifty yards back dry heaving, so we—

Y’all brought in the big guns. Don’t tell me — that’s the same body.

Got it in one.

You close your eyes for a moment and take several breaths before looking at the scene once again, trying not to curse yourself or your momma for the way your day’s turned.

You got any more bad news for me, or am I allowed to start gettin’ in there and doing my job?

You try to ignore the way Ari Levinson’s gaze holds yours… and the way Jane Doe #117 shows up from over his shoulder, her hollow-mouthed scream silenced the moment the Agent starts to speak again, We got an ID on last week’s vic.

The thing about names is how much power they hold. Your daddy took his name, stole it off the corpse of a man too broken with hunger to protest. Your momma abandoned hers, becoming more of a title than a name, markin’ herself as matriarch an’ Queen of the verdant kingdom she clawed out from the hands of the ungrateful and the undeserving. Both of ‘em agonized over yours, planting seeds of bloom and prosperity in every theoretical letter before they finally settled on somethin’ proper.

Only for you to change it the moment you were old enough to move outta the family home, disappear to the big city an’ make a name for yourself, choosin’ to hide any connection you had to that Holler you called home, not outta shame but outta knowing.

And now it’s back. Starin’ at you from the ID card of a once-unidentified murder victim who’d spent your morning destroying a plate of your favorite cornbread recipe while her physical form remained in stasis in your morgue.

Rogers.

Bein’ the daughter of the town pastor and the town witch came easy for you, just like it did all your sisters. But outside the boundaries of the Holler where everybody knew to respect Ma an’ Pastor Rogers, you knew your family’s ghosts would be all too happy to eat you right up.

Ari Levinson brings you a cup of coffee as you step outside the cold storage of your morgue, looking a bit like you’d seen a ghost and like you’d suddenly regressed to being afraid of them. Alright, Doc?

Stupid questions ought to deserve stupid answers, but you have the good sense to nod your head and busy your mouth with scalding itself on fresh-brewed water somebody whispered about coffee to. Somebody contact her next of kin? You haven’t gotten used to saying her real name, your real name, so instead you just gesture vaguely at the morgue behind you, hoping the agent will have enough sense to use context clues and get to the point.

Thankfully, he does. Family’s coming down tomorrow. Folks live in North Dakota — got no idea how their girl ended up down here. Dad kept askin’.

You tell ‘em we got no idea?

You really think my bedside manner’s that bad, Doc?

Stupid questions ought to deserve stupid answers.

You continue to have the good sense to not respond, leaving Ari Levinson looking slightly more than insulted as you pretend to have heard your office phone ringing and walk right back into the icebox.

That night, the spirit formerly known as Jane Doe #117 comes with a friend. John Doe #43 is… less pleasant lookin’ than the girl whose ID he had hidden inside his flayed jaw, eyeless face staring at you from your kitchen window and tapping on the glass to be let in.

You don’t. Victims of violence like that come with haints attached to ‘em and you’re not about to invite that into your home. The offering of cornbread is left on your back porch instead, with a light left on so he wouldn’t get lost on his way to a meal that didn’t consist of Cliff bars and spinach tortellini. It doesn’t stop his knocking though, insistin’ that your presence alone is enough reason to get in here. That the door is only a few steps away.

As if you’ll risk getting hurt by this ghost who probably won’t even remember attacking you.

Maybe he’s the one that attacked her, maybe he never even saw her, maybe he just wants the same comfort she must’ve craved during her final minutes on this Earth, or maybe he’s just a figment of your imagination as you ruminate on why the idea of a dead girl sharin’ your old last name — not an uncommon last name either, owned by more than a hundred thousand people in the country alone — bothers you so goddamn much.

Whatever the case, you won’t open the door for him, not now. Not ever. You just keep your charms on you when you step outside and feed the goat before lockin’ up the house and going upstairs to go to bed, biddin’ them both goodnight and, We’ll do our best.

The knock on your front door comes not long after midnight, loud enough it echoes all the way to your bedroom, persistent and steady as a drum.

And when you don’t respond at first, it keeps right on banging on the damn thing until you’re convinced you’ll soon see a fist makin’ a dent through that thin wood as the sound becomes a steady pounding.

Doc! Doc, it’s Ari, you gotta let me in.

You’ve heard of haints makin’ mimics of voices, memories, an’ hell, even whole faces of both the living and the dead, so you know better than to fling that door wide open and let him in to see you in your nightclothes before he’s ever even bought you a damn dinner, but that tone of voice he bears chills you to the bone somehow.

Doc, I know you’re in there, you gotta—

Prove it’s you.

What?

You heard me. Tell me somethin’ only Ari Levinson would know I know about him.

Oh c’mon, Doc. I don’t fuckin’ know. Do you even know my birthday?

Okay, so he’s got a point. You don’t admit that.

Fine, fine. What’s the hurry, couldn’t this have waited ‘til tomorrow?

Ari Levinson looks half-wild as you let him in, glancing outside briefly to see the flayed figure of your most recent unwanted visitor still seated mutely on the porch, cornbread rotted to dust and Goatrude holding him at bay. The Agent either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care, eyes fixed on you instead, You got a gun?

Got a gu— the hell sorta shit are you up to, Levinson?!

His lips curl back from his teeth in a sort of grimace before he turns, glancing out your front windows and then back at you, You know you have a skinless corpse on your porch?

Oh, so he noticed.

I’ve been trynna ignore it. That’s besides the point, the fuck are you doing out here and why do I need a gun?!

Personal protection, why else? There’s two dead bodies less than ten miles out from your property, Doc, or did you not notice?

The point. You need him to get to the point, and you might actually kill him if he doesn’t, arms crossed over your chest and trying not to let your scowl get too deep. Please don’t tell me you came all the way over to my house just to tell me to use protection.

No, it’s cuz I figured out how to measure distances, he retorts, before… drawing himself up to his full height and letting his jaw set properly, Fine. You gotta promise not to say I’m crazy first though.

Not crazy, says the crazy motherfucker bangin’ on my front door at one in the goddamn morning. You take in the seriousness of his glare for a moment, processing how many times you’ve actually seen him be serious before, Fine. Fine, I got a skinless guy on my porch anyway. Nothin’s gonna beat that.

Famous last words, you know, as you head to your kitchen to start up coffee. There’s no sleep to be had for you tonight.

So you’re tellin’ me you’re the one who found this morning’s corpse?

You watch him, stirring about three tablespoons worth of honey into your coffee in a vain attempt to use the added sugar in your caffeine to stay awake, watch the way his eyes glance askance like he could hide the gears turning in his head, coming up with an excuse for his confession that doesn’t sound as insane as he feels.

You got no idea, you almost tell him, but it’s almost funnier to watch him sweat.

I was investigating a hunch on… the girl, he’s as used to calling her Jane Doe as you are, the name slipping from his mind.

You don’t tell him you appreciate it it.

A hunch. What, you got an informant I don’t know about?

He looks sheepish, which is new for a man you didn’t know had any concept of shame, I told you not to call me crazy, Doc.

So you did. Fine. Just go over this again for me — you went out lookin’ for clues on the Jane Doe cuz you just… thought you missed somethin’, four miles away from where they found her body?

I said I went to the crime scene, Doc. And then I walked for four miles… on a hunch.

You’re going to need more coffee.

Well. Gotta hand it to you, Levinson, you weren’t wrong on that one.

See? Told you. Found the body, but knew I wasn’t gonna be able to justify why the fuck I was out at the ass-crack of dawn, four miles away from the scene and following a hunch so…

So you just got lucky with the hikers comin’ up the way?

He nods, dragging his tongue along the inside of his cheek while he chews over what to say next, looking both thoughtful and displeased, Figured I’d be investigating the scene anyway, any bootprints I had could be explained later.

You have to hand it to him, he did think it out. You sit back, listening to him continue, go on about calling you to the scene — helps to call your partner out, you suppose — and then going back to both scenes to figure out the connection between the dead girl and the skinless meatsack.

Figured that if it worked once, it’d work for Flayed Doe over there, so I just… walked. Followed the hunch, and ended up here—

The Flayed fucker’s been here since sundown — it happens.

You eye him, watching the way he doesn’t react to your casual explanation of why there’s a skinless corpse on your front porch, measuring his words, letting coffee scald your tongue and pretending it doesn’t bother you none as you consider how much you should believe him.

Or how much of his own grave you should let him dig.

You’re pretty calm about the dead guy, Ari’s voice is halfway to an accusation, watching you right back as he processes, measures you up, weighs the way you glance past his shoulder to the thing still knocking at your window and the girl still hiding from the agent in your kitchen.

You don’t answer, not right away, grabbing the biscuit jar and half-slamming it down on the table between the two of you instead, figuring you’ll both need something to fill your bellies on top of the coffee while you so something close to talkin’ about… this place, an’ whatever the hell it’s doin’.

You’re not the only one telling lies, Levinson.

#punemy-spotted #A Worthy Grave #Chapter 1 #ari levinson x reader

174 notes · View notes

doks-aux · 4 years ago

Text

I just watched the first half of The Haunting of Hill House, and I have many thoughts and questions, but chief among them is this:

Were the Dudley’s named after Horace Horsecollar and Clarabelle Cow?

#The Haunting of Hill House #Horace Dudley #Clara Dudley #doc watches trailers

8 notes · View notes

lovenona · 4 years ago

Text

– two slow dancers; part of the artist!sukuna cinematic universe

(contains: hurt/comfort, mentions of suicidal thoughts, depression, and character death)

it’s snowing, you notice. a white blanket floats down from the heavens in a peaceful silence, enveloping the earth in a cold, wet hug. you have never loved the snow, sure – but when it looks like this, slow and pure in the glow of a lone streetlamp, you admit that there is a certain joy in feeling like the main character in a dramatic winter film.

you’re not alone in your little film, either – you notice a familiar figure poised just outside the light of the streetlamp, back turned to you. he shivers slightly, because, like always, he isn’t dressed for the weather. (it’ll ruin my aesthetic, he always tells you, as if winter coats and doc martens are mutually exclusive.) your best friend choso has always been one for visual presentation. he would never sacrifice fashion for comfort; that’s just who he is.

you know this better than anyone, because it is you that choso makes late for class when he borrows your eyeliner in a frenzy to spruce up the signature black line painted across his nose. (it’s fashion, he says. how else will i stand out in this shithole school?)

you don’t know quite what he’s staring at: there’s nothing particularly interesting in front of you, and the only people left on campus at this hour are professors heading home to their families, tummies rumbling, and the stray students heading to and from the library, heads bowed under stress. the rest of the university left early to avoid the current snowstorm that will most definitely threaten your commute home. you, of course, had tried your hardest to leave sooner to avoid such an inconveniencing mess, but a certain tattoo-covered art student had successfully held you captive in an empty art classroom for far longer than expected.

(you are glad that it is dark out and that your winter coat has a high neckline.)

“choso?” you call out, wading through the snow as you approach him gently. he remains still, like a porcelain statue, as if his soul had abandoned his body and left only a hollow shell behind. snow gathers like little microscopic diamonds on his dark hair, and, in a very un-choso-like fashion, he does not even attempt to brush them away.

“choso? it’s me,” you try again. you’re close enough now that you place a tentative mitten on his shoulder, brushing away the faint layer of snow settled there. he shivers under your touch, says nothing. you look down; your shoes (his doc martens, your doc martens – you’re humanities students, after all) sit buried beneath a quickly thickening blanket.

the snow floats down; it’s still, silent, as if you and him were the only two people in the entire world.

while choso appears to be watching the falling crystals, his gaze seeks something farther away, something distant and inaccessible to you. although he’s never been the most expressive person, you can’t help but feel a certain vacancy radiating from his form. the lights are flickering; no one’s home. you grip him tighter, as if the force of your affections will return him to himself, as if he has simply forgotten what it is to be and needs only a gentle reminder.

for an indefinite stretch of time, you both say nothing – it’s just you holding his shoulder and him watching the snow. it’s hard and fast, now; you can barely see anything beyond your own feet and the outline of the lone streetlamp. you’ve exited reality and entered a timeless place, a wordless place that exists suspended somewhere between here and there. you forget to feel the cold.

“they loved the snow,” choso finally says, so quietly you wonder if you imagined it. “they never looked like it, but they were always begging to go sledding. we would go to this big hill behind our house.”

you’re silent. choso never willingly mentions his two younger brothers, at least not while sober. you learned after a serious heart-to-heart with him your freshman year that they were murdered and that choso never really recovered from it. you’ve seen their photographs in his apartment: three boys, completely unalike in appearance and stature, posed in the youthful awkwardness of holiday greeting cards. three boys smiling together on choso’s middle school graduation. three boys playing board games, going hiking, holding up their christmas gifts with innocent grins. they were killed in a hit and run the night of his high school graduation, he’d told you, six shots in and barely standing on his feet.

his brothers were everything to him. and the choso you know now, the choso you pull all-nighters with and share greasy fries with and have stress meltdowns during finals with, you know that this choso is only an echo of what he could have been. you know that this choso is perpetually lonely, that he’s hurting a hurt that will haunt him like a chronic ache for the rest of his life. i tried to end it, he told you the night you both got your shit rocked at a house party and he threw up in his bathtub for an hour. i just hated being alone, he admitted, and then he was crying. why am i alone?

(you’re not alone, you’d said, holding his head in your hands like a baby bird. not anymore, not while i'm here.)

he’s not crying now, but there’s a look in his eye, a tone in his voice, that suggests he will shatter at any moment. so you do what you know best, what you always do; you hug him, tightly, because if you let go he’ll crumble to dust and you’ll be lost forever.

you must be a vision, you think, a vision of the beautiful couple embracing in the christmas romantic comedy, if a romantic comedy included two best friends and an emotional meltdown.

he shudders against you; you know he’s crying, it’s inevitable. your mittens rub his back in circles, you press yourself closer and closer as if you could enter his body yourself and steal all of the sadness away. he returns the gesture almost immediately, begging you silently for something that cannot be articulated in human language. he buries his head in your neck like a bird in the sand, and you wait patiently as he takes what comfort he needs.

“i miss them,” he tells you, and his words are choked.

“i know,” you respond. “and that’s okay.”

snow falls, timeless: gathered at your boots, suspended in the air, it defies gravitational laws, floating silently around the only two people in the universe.

“thank you,” choso mumbles after a thousand years, finally, voice steadier this time. he sniffles pitifully. “thank you for being here.”

you hug him just that much tighter, rubbing a mitten through his hair to shake the snow away. “i’m not going anywhere,” you tell him softly, and you mean it. “now, let’s go to my place. you’re soaking wet and i don’t want you to get sick.”

choso obliges, clumsily wiping away his tears and snot, pulling away from your hug with the reluctance of a child who does not want the holidays to end. his eyes are red, and his eyeliner wobbly, and his cheeks flushed with emotion. but he looks calmer, now, as if his soul has taken up residence in his body again and is ready to be alive once more.

and so you move forth, two lone souls together against the universe. you jostle shoulders, stomping through the thick white blanket at your feet, speaking the language of two dancers who know everything without having to say it out loud. together you reach the subway station, step out of the snow, and allow yourselves to be pulled into reality and the movement of the world at large.

as you reach for your subway pass, choso clears his throat, and you look to him expectantly.

“can i borrow your eyeliner when we get to yours? my nose is smudged.”

#this is for my baby choso because gege be doing him so DIRTY #he deserves a fucking hug #and a kiss #choso #choso x reader #jujutsu kaisen x reader #adele writes #artist!jjk #choso.

155 notes · View notes

benedictsvestcollection · 4 years ago

Text

Toepick!

Bucky Barnes x female reader AU

Summary: Bucky’s a hockey player turned pairs figure skater partner for reader who’s kind of a pain in the ass. (aka this is a Cutting Edge AU if anyone’s seen the movie)

Chapter warnings: Cursing, mentions of hockey violence, reader is a brat, Bucky is a sarcastic asshole (just like in the show!)

Author note: Unbetaed chapter, I don’t have a taglist for Bucky fics but send me a DM or ask if you want to be added to it I’ll make a taglist for my Bucky fics! Please reblog this and tell me what you think in my askbox!

Also thanks to @pisss-offf-ghostt for her hockey insight b/c I don’t know shit about hockey.

Chapter One

Bucky Barnes sat in a doctor’s office, two weeks after taking a puck to the face in a Winter Olympic game. It had hit him way too close to his eye and Coach Pierce had benched him the rest of the Games.

What’s worse is that it was his own fucking teammate who’d given him the injury. Brock Rumlow, their Enforcer, had always had it out for Bucky. God knows why, but maybe Rumlow had never forgiven his NHL team for beating theirs in the playoffs the year before. Or that Bucky had scored the winning goal of that same game.

Steve and Sam had always said Rumlow was a bad apple in the NHL and his Olympic spirit sucked too it seemed. So now, he was waiting on news from the doctor, telling him when he could start training for the next NHL season.

The doctor entered the room with Bucky’s file. “Well, doc? When can I get back on the ice?” He asked.

The doctor frowned at him and put his x-ray up on the lighted board to show him. “Son, I’m afraid you won’t be able to play hockey anymore.” He told him frankly. “You took quite a hit to your occipital bone and it hindered 80% of your peripheral vision in your right eye.”

“What?” He asked, unsure if he heard him right.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to go into retirement from hockey.” He told him, looking at the man with sympathetic eyes. He was a great player, had a lot of years left in him. He had watched that game, this wasn’t his fault.

Bucky sat there, shell shocked for several moments before slowly rising and putting his coat on. “Thanks doc.” He muttered before finally leaving the office and building. Fucking Brock Rumlow. He had seen the smirk on his lips after he’d opened his eyes from taking the hit to his face.

He pulled out his phone and dialed Steve’s number. “Hey, meet me at the usual place?”

“Everything okay Buck?” He’d asked his childhood best friend and now teammate.

“Just… I’ll tell you at the bar.” He growled out and then made his way to their favorite haunt. “Call Sam. I have news.”

Thirty minutes later, Bucky was nursing a beer at their favorite New York bar. Sam and Steve stared at him, shocked. “So what, now you have to retire? That’s bullshit man.” Sam shook his head.

“You think I don’t know that?” Bucky growled at his teammate. “My publicist wants to make an announcement soon.” He told them. “But I told her to hold off. I want some time to just… Absorb this.” He ran his hand through his hair frustratingly.

Bucky loved skating, how could he give it up? And Brock Rumlow gets to just keep playing? What a load of bullshit.

“Rumlow should be fined for that shit he pulled on you at the Games.” Steve shook his head.

“You really think being fined is what he deserves? Everyone knows it was a dirty move but Pierce is his coach in the NHL, he’s not gonna do shit about it.” Sam reminded Steve.

It was true, even the announcers had called it a dirty shot, and everyone who followed the NHL knew that Brock Rumlow had it out for Bucky Barnes. But Rumlow was Pierce’s guy and he wasn’t going to do anything to his player to jeopardize the next season of the NHL.

“Speak of the devil.” Sam whistled out and Bucky looked over his shoulder to see Rumlow entering the bar with his flavor of the month on his arm. Some up and coming model or something. Not that any of them kept track anymore of them.

“Hey boys! How’s the post-Olympics life treating you? As good as me?” He winked at his newest companion. “She’s a model.”

“Shocking.” Sam snorted from behind his beer. Smirking when Rumlow shot him a dirty look.

“So Barnes, how’s the eye?” Rumlow asked him casually, as if he hadn’t given him the very injury that now forced Bucky into early retirement.

Bucky’s grip tightened on his bottle. “It’s fine.” He ground out and gave him a hardened stare. It was true, physically he felt fine. But, he was about two seconds away from beating Rumlow to a pulp though. Hell, Steve and Sam would probably help him if he asked. But he also didn’t want any added press than the impending ‘early retirement’ announcement in the coming days.

“Look man, sorry about that. Guess the puck just got away from my stick, you know?” He said easily.

Holy shit, he was really just going to pretend it wasn’t his fault? Guess he shouldn’t be surprised.

“Yeah, you seemed real torn up about it.” Steve snapped at him. “The whole hockey world knows you have it out for Buck.” All four men, stood. All imposing figures as hockey players. “And everyone knows that was a dirty shot you took. The Olympics are supposed to be about coming together but you just used it for your own personal gain. You’re a disgrace.” Steve told him.

“You letting your pals stand up for you Barnes? What’s the matter? Too chicken shit to say anything yourself?” Rumlow taunted him.

Bucky stepped closer to him, almost chest to chest with the Enforcer. “Nope, I just know you’re not worth my time. You never have been, not even on the ice.” After several tense moments, Bucky finally stepped back. “I gotta go. I have a call to make. I’ll talk to you two later.” He looked at Sam and Steve before leaving some bills on the table for his beers and he purposely bumped into Rumlow before leaving the bar.

Once he was safely in his Brooklyn apartment, he called his publicist. “Mel? Hey, let’s just…. Make an announcement. Tomorrow. Just get it over with.” He told her. “There’s no point in delaying it.”

“Sure thing, we’ll just say you’re mulling over your post-hockey playing options. Maybe take a year off and figure out what you want. Book deals, coaching job, hell even a sports commentator.”

“Yeah. I’ll think about it, Mel. Thanks.” He hung up and tossed his phone on the counter and sighed.

Fucking Brock Rumlow.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“What part of locked arms don’t you fucking get?” You snapped at your latest partner ‘audition’ as you got up off your ass from being dropped again. “Where in the hell are you finding these idiots Maria?” You snapped at your coach as you skated away from the latest guy. “You’d think none of them knew a simple lift.”

Maria Hill, your coach for several years now was at the end of her rope. You’d rejected partner after partner for the past month and a half after you’d parted ways with your Olympic partner, from a disastrous showing at the Winter Olympics.

“Probably doesn’t help that you berate them before they even get their skates on.” She called from the side of the rink as Tony Stark, your guardian since you were fifteen years old (although you were in your twenties now and didn’t need a guardian anymore) and practically your big brother, entered with his five year old daughter Morgan in his arms.

“How’s it going?” He asked.

“You’re insane.” Your latest pairs auditioner told you as he hastily removed his skates and shoved his feet in his sneakers and grabbed his bag. “Good luck finding someone willing to put up with the ice princess.” He snorted and left.

“That good huh?” Tony asked with a sigh and watched you skate around the private ice rink on their property.

“I can’t help that they’re all idiots.” You told him and Maria sighed, rubbing her temples as Morgan giggled at your comment.

“You know, unless you work with any of these guys and Maria. You’re going to have to go to singles skating.” Tony warned you, knowing you hated singles skating. It always felt too lonely for you out on the ice alone. You had trust issues since you were a kid. Which was a double edged sword because you also had trouble trusting partners to not let you down.

“Alright, let’s just call it for the day. I have some calls to make for some more options.” Maria told you as you continued to skate. She turned to Tony. “Talk some sense into her. I don’t have many options left.” She muttered and then left.

Morgan sat at the edge of the rink putting her skates on to get ready for her private lesson. “Ice Princess, come on… Work with me.” Tony called to you.

You shot him a glare at the nickname but skated over to him, stopping promptly and showering his legs with ice. “Yes?” You asked him innocently.

“Don’t give me that shit. What’s your deal? You’ve rejected nearly eight perfectly good skaters in the past almost two months. And always over stupid shit.” He told you. “They’re either not strong enough, not fast enough, not graceful enough. None of which have been true.”

You wanted to curse back at him but knew Morgan was beginning to repeat everything and Tony was being hushed and you really didn’t want to hear Pepper ask why Morgan learned a new curse word from you. “I’m just particular, that’s all.” You defended yourself.

“Is that the word we’re using?” He snorted at you. “I know you have trust issues because of what happened. But you can’t keep using that excuse for skating. Not all those men are going to let you down. But they will if they pick up on your attitude and tension. You need to start giving some of them an actual chance.” He glanced over at Morgan who was starting to warm up on the ice before her lesson. “Just… Think about it, okay? And you’ll bring Morgan to the house after her lesson?”

You sighed and nodded at him. “Yeah okay, fine. I’ll think about it. And yes, I’ll stay here during her lesson.” You promised as you got off the ice and changed shoes while Morgan started her lesson.

“Thank you. Dinner’s at six.” He reminded you and kissed Morgan goodbye before leaving for a meeting.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Maria Hill was looking over all the options she had on her desk. None of them would be able to take any of the shit that you were dishing out. She needed someone who could dish it right back to you and who could skate. “Jesus this is a nightmare.” She muttered to herself.

“Might have a suggestion for you if you’re interested in hearing it and going to meet with him.” Nick Fury’s voice came from her office door. Nick was the trainer for you. Responsible for keeping you in shape and healthy.

“Yeah?” She asked him curiously and leaned back in her chair.

Nick walked over to the television and turned it on, turning it to the sports network talking about Bucky Barnes’ retirement and what his options were now. The news had been out for a week now and everyone was speculating what he was going to do now.

“Barnes? You expect me to get a hockey player to be her new partner and not have her throw another fit?” She asked incredulously.

“Hear me out Hill.” Fury told her and sat across from her. “He’s strong, a phenomenal skater. Actually graceful even in hockey. And, he won’t take any of her shit lying down. Everything else, you can teach him.” He mused with a shrug. “Besides, rumor has it that he wants to keep skating. Sure, this ain’t hockey but it’s better than nothing.”

Nick had made several good points. He was a great skater. And he was disciplined. It meant that he would stick to any regime of training and skating they threw at him.

“She won’t like this.” She told him bluntly.

“Does she like anything anyway?” He countered with a snort.

He had a point. You hadn’t liked any of the partners they’d brought you till now. So throwing Barnes into the mix wasn’t going to make it much worse.

“Fine. Let’s go talk to him.” She relented.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“You want me to what?” Bucky asked Maria and Nick. The two of them sat across from him in his Brooklyn apartment. Staring at them incredulously.

“We heard you wanted to keep skating. And while this isn’t hockey, we’re training someone who wants Olympic gold just as much as you do.” Maria told him. “I’ve seen you skate. You’re talented as hell and strong.”

Bucky looked back and forth between the two of them, expecting this to be some kind of joke. “What’s the catch?”

“No catch. You’ll be paid, there’s a guest house at the Stark estate for you if the audition goes well. So you can live and train and not have to commute. You’ll be well paid.” Nick told him as he casually leaned back in his seat.

Bucky snorted. “I’ve been doing this long enough to know that there’s always a catch.”

Maria and Nick exchanged looks before looking back at him. “She can be… Difficult to get along with.” She told him carefully.

“So she’s a pain in the ass.” He clarified flatly and snorted again. “Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had a pain in the ass on my team.” He muttered to himself.

“So you’ll come try out?” Maria asked him curiously. “Look, I know you don’t take any shit from anyone. So you and her might work because you can dish it out. You won’t put up with her attitude.” She explained.

Bucky considered his options. He didn’t want to stop skating. And it’s not like there were any open coaching positions currently. And he sure as shit didn’t want to write a memoir or work for ESPN while all his buddies were still skating. This was something for him. Plus he’d get to work with some hot girl instead of staring at Rumlow’s ugly face everywhere he went.

“When’s the tryout?” He finally asked.

Bucky Barnes’ fic taglist: @pisss-offf-ghostt

#Bucky Barnes x reader #Bucky Barnes #My writing #Marvel fic #MCU #I'm not tagging all the characters in this fic b/c that's so annoying #anyway #Please reblog this and tell me if you like it #xoxo

102 notes · View notes

innocentcurse · 3 months ago

Text

Ducky brought Floyd so much comfort; there was something so natural about their friendship, something so easy about their connection. Having grown up in the chaos of his family's carnival in Maine, it wasn't uncommon for Floyd to feel homesick, but with so much family around in Cardinal Hill, and his best friend there to spend each day with, too, Floyd felt incredibly blessed, and he felt more and more at home each day that went by. It definitely helped that Ducky was so wholeheartedly helpful and good-intentioned to live with, and that his family had completely embraced him as one of their own, too. The community Floyd had found himself immersed in there in Cardinal Hill was certainly different from the one he had grown up in, but most days it felt near perfect.

"You know I think you're amazing," he laughed. "I wouldn't keep you around if I didn't," he teased, though at this point Floyd was sure that he'd be kicked out of his grandmother's home before Ducky would have been, if anything between them soured. "It's okay Ducky, you don't have to make excuses for how many times you've watched the film," he teased his best friend once more, unable to help himself. "I think they're hot, too, so I get it. No judgement from me," he laughed. "I'd like to see you try to catch me under the mistletoe," Floyd laughed at the mental image of his entire, enormous family crowded together in the house, celebrating the holidays together, making it too hard for Ducky to even catch a glimpse of Floyd - let alone another kiss.

"I'm always hungry," Floyd nodded his head, though he knew that Ducky already knew that fact about him, and had a small inkling that that was one of the reasons why Ducky always ensured there was food for him to eat upon coming home from work. "Alright, alright," he held his hands up in surrender, before crouching down to take his Docs off, unsure as to whether or not the boots had dirt on them - a likely occurrence that Floyd knew to act upon rather than to question for the sake of ease. "I want to do the haunted house," he suggested, a mischievous grin on his face. Floyd missed the Halloween attractions in the carnival oh so much, but the town event for Halloween always made him feel a little less homesick. "Are you brave enough to join me?"

˙ ˖ ✶ Floyd & Ducky

How long is forever? This was a question Ducky had asked many times over the span of his very short life. When he spent many nights wondering when his next meal would be, when all of a sudden there was no roof over his head, and even when there was no guardian, for as bad as they may had been they were still something. For all intents and purposes the young witch should've been despondent. For all the times he lied at school when teachers asked why he wore the same clothes when he was younger. For all the times he showed up with good grades only to be met with disregard and closed doors. For all the nights he wondered if this was it, if this would be his life. Forever.

Then he met Floyd, and for all the darkness and sorrow in his life, he simply couldn't do much else but smile. A man who offered him solace and warmth when he'd known nothing else but loneliness and cold. It didn't take long for Ducky to fall for Floyd. Just once when he heard laugh for the first time, was all it took. Ducky knew his heart would always belong to this one man. Something Floyd's grandmother had picked up on, and with a glance she had known the boy was a witch. To go from being alone to having something akin to a family was nothing short of a miracle. Which is why Ducky cooked and cleaned with vigor, how he'd run errands for the woman and do everything in his power to make her comfortable. He loved her, in a way nobody else could understand. She was the first parental figure in his life.

"What me amazing? Oh you're just saying that, but don't stop I do love hearing it," Ducky giggled, feeling how his heart quickened at every word. Floyd. He'd always have this effect on him. Pressing his features against his best friend's chest, he took in his lynx, staring up at the work of art that were his features. "I do, and I had to get every detail perfect so the amount of times I watched that movie is pretty concerning. Mostly due to the fact that I forgot I could simply pause it to just get the details right." he sighed, an oversight on his part. Ducky's face went entirely red as he got his wish, and it didn't take much for him to pull his best friend closer and kiss him back, with a little more passion but a tender softness as he savored the taste. "Just figured I was owed a really good kiss, just practicing for when I catch you under a mistletoe," he teased.

"Now are you hungry? Because I did whip up supper for us, I ran down to the store to make sure the ingredients were fresh." Ducky commented as he stepped into the kitchen. "I also cleaned the house today, so don't bring any dirt in here otherwise I'll let grandma rip you a new one," he said sticking his tongue out at him. "Also what are we doing for halloween cause I'm obviously not going out alone, you're my date. Mostly because we're wearing matching costumes and because I need someone to stop me from hoarding candy." and as he looked back at the man he loved, that boy with cochlear implants and fluffy hair. He got the answer to his question. How long is forever? Sometimes only a second.

#∘₊✶────── floyd cardozo ; interaction #interaction #floyd & ducky #hxesandruin

5 notes · View notes