#can absolutely try to write the fucked up going ons in the other reblog chain as a fic tho

[whumpofalltime]

whump of all time

SEMIFINALS!

Find links and propaganda under the cut. Quarterfinalist and later match-ups are untagged, so your votes and reblogs matter!

Once Upon A Time:

(gifset 1, gifset 2)

"There's blood, wounds, captivity, bondage, a slow-dipping-mechanism, a big rescue, and excellent acting by Colin O'Donoghue - who delivers the tiniest whimper and the most delectable of trembles for our whump-loving eyes to devour!" ~ @killian-whump

"[...] Killian was BROKEN. Absolutely and heart-wrenchingly devastated. He was tortured within an inch of his life (… or death, I guess) and practically left to slowly drop into a pit of eternal despair.

Killian was not easy to break. He would get injured and get back up with a sneer and an "I'm alright love you should see the other guy".

But to reach that point? The point of telling Emma she should have kept herself safe instead of saving him from this torment, to hold on to her like she was his lifeline, to SMILE that small smile from the first bit of hope he'd gotten since he ended up there?

The relief upon watching this episode for the first time was visceral. For two episodes we knew Hook was being tortured, we saw him try and fail to limp to safety, we saw his resolve and defiance desperately hold on, we saw him accept his fate, we saw him preferring to be tortured further than hurt his friends… And then he got saved! And he had no witty comeback, no effort to hide his pain. He just fucking collapsed in the arms of his beloved, of his saviour, and held on for a moment to realize that it was real, she was there, he was finally safe.

Add to that some amazing, jaw-dropping, emotional acting by Colin O'Donoghue, how can you get any better than that?

Anyway vote for ouat. Because this whole torture mini arc existing is probably what caused a chain reaction of me understanding and accepting I love whump, so. I wouldn't be here torturing blorbos if it weren't for it 🤣" @piracytheorist

"god tier acting" ~ @caliburn-the-sword

The Young Blood Chronicles (Save Rock and Roll's music videos, Fall Out Boy):

(link)

"Everyone gets bloodied, bruised, beaten up, tortured, rescued, limbs are amputated - it's brutal. Alone Together is particularly strong."

sorry for being late, but you want YBC propaganda? then you're getting YBC propaganda. I know you're a FOB fan, but I will be writing this for the benefit of those who don't know what YBC is, for better propaganda purposes! and yeah this is gonna be LONG. sorry.

So! The Youngblood Chronicles (shortened to YBC) is a series of 11 music videos made by the band Fall Out Boy, for their album Save Rock And Roll (you know this album, it's the one with My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark on it). The whole thing is quite short, less than fifty minutes long (even shorter if you don't count the uncut version's credits!!), and every single music video has some element of whump in it. This propaganda is gonna break down each individual music vid, and at i'll also talk a little bit about the irl context the album was written in, and why even THAT can be a little bit whumpy if you're insane like me!

(note: i'm going in the original release order over the uncut order, hence why i'm starting with MSKWYDITD instead of The Phoenix)

My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark: Arguably the least whump-y out of all of them, but man, seeing all of Fall Out Boy's discography and memorabilia be burnt while people are dancing around the destruction? Man, when you know the real life stuff (the reception the band had in 2009, leading to them to take a three year hiatus)... and at the end, you see four guys bound in the back of a van!! And that van is getting burnt!! Burn everything you love and burn the... ashes.

The Phoenix: NOW here's the first of MANY whump tastes you'll get. Patrick Stump, the singer/cutie of the band, gets kidnapped, tied to a chair, has his hand CHOPPED OFF and mailed to his bandmate/best friend Pete Wentz, then gets tied down and utterly tortured by women who are laughing at his misery the entire time, getting prodded and stabbed by tools for... well, you'll see. By the end of the video, Pete and the other two members of FOB (Joe Trohman and Andy Hurley) have been kidnapped by these mysterious women too, with Pete specifically getting kidnapped by the blonde woman he was in bed with when Patrick's hand got delivered to him. If you enjoy cute boys getting tied down, covered in blood, and writhing around like worms while getting tortured... well you'll enjoy all of YBC but specifically you'll enjoy this!! I did :D! The war is won, before it's begun, release the doves, surrender love...

Young Volcanoes: Good news, FOB has been reunited! Bad news, by the women who dismembered Patrick! And now all the band members are tied to chairs, hooked up to IVs full of god knows what types of drugs, and blindfolded (all except Patrick). They are then forced to drink, snort hard drugs, and are force fed Patrick's organs! Yep, all four of them are forced to eat their lead singer's guts, and are so fucking drugged up they don't even realize what's happening (and now you know what the women were doing to him in the last mv, and you even get a nice little shot of the hack job of stitching him back up)!! Patrick hallucinates everyone having fun, but of course, at the end, all of them are knocked out because of the drugs. Americana, exotica, do you wanna feel a little beautiful baby?

Alone Together: This is the song the OG propaganda mentioned, and for good reason. All four of them are shipped off into little personalized torture rooms, and, well, tortured! Pete is able to break out and even steals the hook from the girl who was torturing him, but little does he know that'll be his own undoing... also, in general, this song has some whumpy elements, specifically the line "my heart is like a stallion/they love it more when it's broke-in"... but notice how easy it is to hear "broke-in" as "broken"! At the end of the video, Pete is at least able to find Patrick (Joe and Andy have NOT been having a good time, either!! But sadly, they aren't found by Pete, but Pete DOES find Big Sean), and is even able to attach the hook to the stump (ha!) where his hand used to be. But something is clearly wrong with Patrick now. His eyes are yellow, and as the song ends, we hold on him, sneering and twitching. This is the road to ruin - and we're started at the end...

The Mighty Fall: First off if you say this is the worst song off of SRAR I will hunt you for sport. OKAY ANYWAYS, chronologically this comes after MSKWYDITD, and yeah, the four guys are the members of FOB. Pete is able to free himself with Patrick's new hook hand, and is able to get the other three out while Pete is hacking up a lung from the fire they just barely escaped. But they're not done getting their shit rocked yet. A gang of children show up (the leader being the kid Patrick waved at right before he was kidnapped back in the Phoenix MV), and proceed to separate them and beat the living shit out of them. The leader kid who's chasing Patrick plays something on a boombox... which triggers Patrick to go yellow-eyed again (from here on out i'll call it "going Youngblood" or "Youngblood self"). It was confirmed in the commentary track that ANY music would cause him to go Youngblood. And knowing Patrick IRL fucking loves to create/compose music... yeah! Take something he loves and turn it into something that drives him insane!! I'm normal!! And also the irl parallel you could draw to his solo career doing the same thing to him (on a less uh Dramatic level but you know)!!! Ouch!!!! Big Sean is able to save Patrick, but at the cost of his own life (and a killer rap verse... HELL YEAH I'M A DICK GIRL, ADDICTED TO YOU). Oh, how the mighty fall in love...

Just One Yesterday: The last vestiges of comfort you're gonna get for a WHILE. The four are separated, getting even more beaten up, Pete vomits up a snake, Andy gets his shit rocked by a homeless guy, Joe has to use white sheets as a makeshift tourniquet bc his leg got fucked up in The Mighty Fall MV, and Patrick is picked up by a kind stranger (hi Foxes! you have a very pretty voice! PLEASE KEEP YOUR HANDS ON THE STEERING WHEEL!). And finally, finally we get a hope spot. Fall Out Boy is reunited (the part where Andy just grabs onto Patrick's arm, in disbelief they're both alive... augh!!! AUGH!!!!), and for a moment, it seems they've been delivered to a hospital... before Foxes' eyes go completely black, looking at Patrick... and turns on the radio. She's able to trigger the Youngblood. And now Patrick is gone. The other three scramble into the hospital, Patrick not far behind, determined to kill them to stop the noise in his head. If Heaven's grief brings Hell's reign, then I'd trade all my tomorrows for just one yesterday...

Where Did The Party Go: Patrick, now fully consumed by the Youngblood brainwashing, is now stalking his bandmates in a hospital. Patrick is seeing visions of the hospital as an abandoned party, Andy has to painfully disinfect the wounds he's gotten, Pete is able to call for the police, and Joe... oh, poor Joe. He barricades himself into a room, but not well enough. Patrick finds him, and kills him, slitting his throat with the hook hand, showing no remorse at all... until Andy and Pete find them. The Youngblood wears off, and Patrick looks to what he's done, and is horrified at what he's done to his friend. And, bad news for him, the police are here, ready to arrest the murderer. All Andy and Pete can do is watch as tears roll down Patrick's eyes. And for the extra IRL context, this was the first song written for the album that made Pete and Patrick realize they had to get FOB back together... so lets match that with a music video where the member who helped get the band together in the first place dies. By the hands of the kid he found. Let's fade away together, one dream at a time...

Death Valley: Joe gets... uh, a little comfort? I mean, he thinks he's getting sent to heaven but goes to hell, buuuuut I think doing drugs in rock and roll hell with Tommy Lee is actually a pretty sweet deal, better than the deal the other three got! Pete and Andy are being interrogated while Patrick is in a jail cell. We find out that the cult that kidnapped them, Silence the Noise, is lead by Pete's girlfriend from WAAAAY back in the Phoenix MV, Courtney Love. And at the end of the MV... Patrick is bailed out of jail by Silence the Noise. They have him again. And this time, they're not gonna let him walk out until he's fully under their control. 'Cause tonight it's just fire alarms and losing you...

Rat a Tat: Silence the Noise has Patrick, and they utterly brainwash him, A Clockwork Orange style, with electroshock stimulation to keep him from looking away or closing his eyes, until there is nothing left. Patrick Stump does not exist anymore. Only the Youngblood, pliant under the control of Silence the Noise, tasked to destroy what he once loved; music. Andy dies at the hands of the cult, and now Pete has to protect a briefcase, the thing that got them into this mess, and keep it away from Silence the Noise, all while his best friend hunts him down. Are you ready for another bad poem?

Miss Missing You: THE WHUMPIEST OF THE WHUMP. What if we were best friends but you've been driven insane and I know the only way to stop you is to kill you and it was my fault you got into this mess and I was the one who gave you the weapon that will be my own undoing. What if we both died at the same time. What if we died, both of us failing the mission we had before us. What if that was a reference to one of their first music videos. What if this song was originally written for Patrick's solo album but he realized it was more of a Fall Out Boy song so it was scrapped until now. What if there's a legit argument to be made that half the lyrics for this song was written by Patrick. What if we were both boys. Grips walls, yeha i'm normal. If you don't watch ANY other music vid, watch Miss Missing You. Sometimes before it gets better, the darkness gets bigger. The person that you'd take a bullet for is behind the trigger.

Save Rock And Roll: And our final track gives us a final bit of comfort. Patrick is able to overcome the Youngblood, and gets into heaven, where all of FOB is finally, finally reunited. God (aka Elton John) gives them new instruments and brings them back to earth, so they can do what they love; play music together. Which just so happens to release people from the control of Silence the Noise! But, because we can't have nice things, a cult within Silence the Noise got a hold of the briefcase, and summoned a spirit that starts to kill everyone. FOB stands together, and blasts the evil spirit, the blood coming up to the gates of heaven and covering Elton John in it. And... that's how it ends. No true resolution. Just Elton John covered in blood, as the song fades out. Oh, no! Wherever I go, go! Trouble seems to follow! I only plugged in to save rock and roll!

UH. AGAIN I APOLOGIZE FOR THE LENGTH. but i really wanted to express just how much WHUMP they manage to fit into less than fifty minutes, all backed by an amazing album colored by the three years they were apart. colored by how they grew, colored by how bad the hiatus was for Patrick specifically, colored by how Confessions of a Pariah got Pete to reach out to help him, and this album came out of it, Fall Out Boy came back out of it, and now here we are, ten years later, with the title track being performed every night for their concert, with all the band singing the final lines together, and the line you are what you love, not who loves you hitting every single night.

SORRY. LISTEN TO FALL OUT BOY. thanks for letting me rant.

[caliburn-the-sword]

help that would be so cute!!!! always been a big fan of their friendship (side eyeing a different reblog chain of this exact post that dives into how fucked up they are early season 2 but like affectionately)

i will admit. when i was watching season 2 of ouat. i shipped hook and belle. not in a serious way but not in a crackship way either. just in a "it would be SO fucking funny if hook stole both rumpelstiltskin's wife AND new gf" way. up until he shot her i was like. yeah i can see this developing into romantic chemistry. a funky little enemies to lovers if you will. but you know what, not JUST for the joke also because it would be thematic. rumpelstiltskin is narratively punished for being a coward, and then is narratively punished AGAIN for being a huge manipulative dickhead, BY THE SAME MAN BOTH TIMES. this makes sense in my head i swear

[pancakes4two]

CATALYST | I

preview: “Can’t stand it when they scream,” Harry explains to you. He grabs your wrist and lifts it up, his sleeve fluttering down to reveal the tattoos on his lower arm. You focus on the ink as he begins to explain something to you, tracing the lines of the anchor that decorates his skin.

“There’s a small cluster of veins at the side of his neck here. If you hit them, he’ll bleed out fairly quickly and painlessly.”

“H-here?” You ask, shakily pointing at a spot right above where George’s neck meets his shoulder.

“A little higher,” Harry directs you, “There. Hold the knife steady now. You have to do it fast or it’ll slip.”

chapter specific warnings: drug mentions, graphic violence, murder

a/n: here it is! chapter one of catalyst. if you haven’t look at it yet, i would highly recommend reading the intro post here first as that has content warnings and a synopsis. also please bear with me as this is my first time writing this kind of concept ahhh!! 

reminder that this is purely a work of fiction! i (obviously) have zero real knowledge on making drug deals and murdering people lmao. i’m not condoning/romanticizing any of the events in this fic and none of the faceclaims are affiliated with any of the events/actions that occur.

with that being said, reblogs are much appreciated & thank you all for reading!

(p.s. the soundtrack adds a lot to the reading experience imo so if you can/want to please listen to the songs at the beginning of each section!)

MY OTHER BLURBS/FICS | SEND ME A REQUEST

TRACK: GLORY BOX

It happens on a Tuesday morning. Three sharp knocks on your apartment door. The impatient tapping of a foot against linoleum, getting louder as you slowly make your way out of bed. You push the lock out of place, chain dangling back and forth while you twist the silver doorknob. You’re greeted with the last person on Earth you were expecting to see: your former boss at Interpol, Naomi Rossi.

“What are you doing here?” You ask, rubbing the sleep out of your eyes. Naomi lets herself into your apartment, flitting through the living room like a butterfly, brushing past your curtains and touching the spines of the books on your coffee table. She never did have any sense of personal boundaries.

“Looks like you’ve settled in nicely,” Naomi ignores your question, sitting down on your couch and gesturing for you to take a seat as well. “Listen, my presence here isn’t welcome, I know that. I care about you deeply, and I wouldn’t be here asking you to do this if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.”

You stare at your former boss, waiting for her to continue. Distantly, your alarm sounds from your bedroom, and your fingers itch to go and shut it off, but the grim expression on Naomi’s face pins you to your place. You sit there frozen, heart pounding, desperately hoping she’s not going to make the request you think she’s about to make.

“I need you to go back undercover.” Naomi says, confirming your suspicions. She crosses one leg over the other, her fingers tapping nervously against a cushion as she waits for you to respond.

“Are you insane?” You laugh, pushing yourself off the couch. You point at your front door aggressively, trying to steady your breathing. “I thought you might ask me that, but I didn’t think you’d be so insensitive as to actually do it. No way. I’m not fucking going back there.”

“You’re done with Interpol, and I’ve respected that for the past three years,” Naomi replies curtly. She lifts a perfectly-manicured hand and rests it lightly on the glass of your coffee table. “But people are dying, Y/N. Seven murders in just under eight months. The last three in the past month. All public figures. The police discovered a mixture of fentanyl, ecstasy, and sedatives in their bloodstreams after we ordered tox screens.”

“It’s Cherry,” you sigh, watching Naomi pull a stack of paper from her briefcase. She hands them to you and you scan the documents. They’re medical reports for all seven victims, confirming a lethal amount of drugs in their blood at the time of their deaths.

“We just can’t twiddle our thumbs while people are dying,” Naomi says, her dark eyes searching your features. “No one knows Cherry like you do. You’re our only hope at stopping this, Y/N, I’m pleading with you. Hasn’t three years away been enough?”

You swallowed. No, you wanted to scream at her. No amount of time away could ever undo the damage that being undercover did to me.

But Naomi was right. Interpol would never be able to get as close to Cherry as you did ever again. They didn’t stand a chance at solving the murders without sending someone inside. Unfortunately, your untimely exit three years ago effectively ended any sort of outside recruitment that the syndicate was doing. You were, as Naomi said, the only hope. If you didn’t say yes, more people would die, and their blood would be on your hands.

“I go in for two weeks,” you say, walking into your kitchen and reaching for your kettle. You hold it under the tap, plugging the appliance into the wall and turning it on once it’s filled with water. “No security details, no bugs. No rendezvous, either. I’m there for the entire time, and you don’t bother me until those two weeks are up.”

“I can’t let you do that,” Naomi protests over the sound of the water coming to a rolling boil.

“Then I’m not doing the job,” you reply as the kettle switches off. You dig in your cabinets for a tin of green tea, exclaiming softly when you find it. “You’re not going to pin a hidden camera to my shirt and send me in with a bodyguard, they’ll fucking kill me as soon as I step onto their territory. You either trust me to do this my way, or refuse and see what happens.”

“Fine,” Naomi tosses her hands in the air in exasperation while you scoop loose tea leaves into a mug. “We need to do a security clearance, and I have to send you in with one of our phones no matter what, in case of dire emergency. Can you agree to those terms?”

“Whatever,” you concede, “just go if there’s nothing else. I’ll stop by the office today to do what you need me to do.”

“Thank you, Y/N,” Naomi says sincerely, “I know things got murky towards the end, but ultimately you’ve always stuck to your morals when it mattered the most. I’ve always admired that about you, and I’m glad you’re coming back to do this. The city needs you.”

You hum softly, bringing your tea to your lips. You show Naomi to the door and watch through the window as her car pulls out of the parking lot. Once the black SUV has turned the corner, you lean against the wall and watch as the ceiling spins. You let your head fall into your hands and take a few gasping breaths, before settling yourself and gulping down the last bit of your drink.

You’re honestly not sure what you’re more afraid of: dying, or having to face him again.

THREE YEARS EARLIER

TRACK: RANGE BROTHERS

Heavy bass pounds through the black speakers propped up at the front of the stage, the vibrations sliding down from the ceilings to the floor and landing at the base of your shoes. From the outside, Temptress looks like any other exclusive nightclub in London’s party district. Its black exterior is unassuming; there’s no signage save for the glow of a neon sign that spells out the club’s name in messy red cursive, and a single bouncer stands at the front door, smartly dressed and covered in tattoos. Temptress caters to a more high-brow clientele than the other nightclubs on Lexington street. On any given night, the  space is occupied by socialites and wealthy businessmen. Bartenders are at the guests’ beck-and-call, opening up five-thousand pound bar tabs and collecting one-hundred pound tips all night. It touts state-of-the-art sound systems, a massive marble bar that stretches across the expanse of the floor, and women and men alike adorned with glitter and ready to entertain. Most importantly, Temptress offers a level of anonymity that its competitors don’t offer: all guests and employees are required to wear eye masks that conceal their identities. Such a policy makes way for more under-the-table activity, although the majority of individuals who walk through the bulletproof glass doors of the club hardly do much more than what might be considered a minor felony.

The real business, and what you were here for, happened in the private lounges around the back.

“Coucou,” you call to a security guard standing in front of one of the rooms, “Hayes sent me here for a meeting.”

He looks you up and down while chewing on a piece of gum, blue eyes piercing as he scans every inch of your body. You wipe one hand quickly down the side of your skirt: now wasn’t the time to get nervous, you’re already in too deep.

“What’s your name?”

“Y/N, sir.”

“Need to check if the Boss is available,” motioning for you to get closer. You touch the tiny microphone pinned to the back of your blouse, just to make sure it was still secure.

“Okay,” you oblige. As the man pats you down, you notice a small red name-tag pinned to his collar. Briggs, it read, though you highly doubted that was his real name. “Thanks, Briggs.”

Briggs grunts in response, running his hand through a biometric scanner. Once the machine finishes reading his fingerprints, the door in front of you unlocks with a click. The inside is made to look like a regular lounge. It’s furnished with sofas and has a tiny chandelier dangling from the ceiling. There’s a mirror propped up against the wall and a small ice bucket filled with drinks on a table. You get distracted looking around until Briggs makes a noise beside you. When you turn to him, you find that he’s lifted the carpet that was previously spread out in the middle of the floor and revealed an opening that leads down towards the basement.

“Follow me down,” Briggs says, offering you a hand as you crouched into the small space. “Close the door behind you.”

You follow his orders and shut the small door, plunging the two of you into darkness. Distantly, you see a row of lights flickering softly.

“Careful,” Briggs calls out, “the next step is the last one.”

Once your feet have returned to solid ground, Briggs guides you to look to your left. What you see is a massive grey hallway filled with doors. The only sources of light comes from small antique lanterns that are placed between every door. A night-vision security camera turns robotically, capturing any slight movement that occurs in the hallway on video. You notice four other security guards of similar build to Briggs walking up and down slowly, their hands resting protectively over the handguns clipped to their sides.

“Stay here,” Briggs says, before walking towards the door at the very end of the hallway. It’s significantly larger than the rest and made of mahogany. The top is built like an archway and some of the wood is darker than the rest. You think it might be engravings, but you’re not close enough to tell. Briggs whispers to the man stationed at the front of the door briefly, then looks back at you and signals for you to walk over to him.

“You can go in now. He’s just finishing up another meeting.”

“Alright,” you respond, and the other security guard lets you in. There’s a lot to take in with this office: the walls are painted a dark, velvet-y purple and giant bookshelves line the sides. A group of three men are standing in front of the desk in the middle of the room, which is made of the same mahogany wood as the massive front door. They’re having a hushed conversation that you can’t quite listen in on. Suddenly, the man in the middle kneels down to the floor, hand shaking. The absence of his standing body reveals another man sitting at the desk, his fingers curled around a sharp knife. He’s wearing a red silk shirt that’s been unbuttoned down to the base of his chest, revealing tattoos of two birds sitting just below his collarbones. He looks down at the kneeling man, then at you. Green eyes completely devoid of emotion, he flashes you a saccharine-sweet smile.

You would recognize that face anywhere. Harry Styles, the most ruthless man in all of the United Kingdom and Europe. Inheriting the Cherry syndicate after the untimely death of his father, Harry was known for his clinical way of doing business and unrelenting cruelty. He had taken his father’s modest crime organization and transformed it into an empire before he even turned thirty. Nearly ninety percent of all drugs and weapons coming into the city of London originate from deals brokered by Cherry. Most importantly, Harry conducts all of his business by proxy. Hidden in the shadows of the Temptress basement, Harry’s men do all of his dirty work for him while he plays puppet master from the very desk in front of you. It’s impossible to definitively connect him to any crime, and up until two weeks ago, Interpol didn’t even know what he looked like. He’s cunning, charismatic, and extremely talented at evading the law. 

“You’re just in time,” Harry says, raising the knife in his hand with a flourish. “George here is about to select which one of his friends is going to kill him for compromising a million-pound shipment.”

“Right,” you say, while the two men next to George sputter in protest. George gaze shifts from the two men to Harry frantically, and cranes his neck to look at you desperately.

You swallow the bile quickly rising into your throat and watch as Harry stands up and leans against the front of his desk, the glistening blade of his knife pressed lightly to his chin as he looks to the distraught men carefully.

One of the men speaks up, voice shaking so much that the words tumbling out of his mouth are barely comprehensible. “W-we won’t do th-that Boss, it-it’s not fair. H-he made a m-mistake. But that d-don’t discount the l-loyalty he’s given y-you for years.”

“I don’t give a shit about that! His mistake cost me a million pounds, and a client that could’ve brought in millions in future revenue. That’s not how I run my business. I don’t care for bumbling idiots who can’t transport basic cargo.”

“S-sorry Boss, truly-y.”

Harry tuts, crossing one leg over the other. “Look at the three of you. So pathetic. Won’t kill your friend for me? I’ll remember that next time you’re kneeling at my desk begging me to spare you like George is right now. You must remember I take loyalty very seriously here.”

“Fortunately for you, I’m feeling nice today,” Harry says, walking up to the men and looking them up and down. “Don’t look so excited, George. You’re still dying today, but it won’t be by the hands of your friends.”

TRACK: ARABELLA

“Tell me,” Harry says, looking through the gap between the men’s three shaking silhouettes to where you stand frozen in place. “How would you like for this pretty lady to be the one to kill you?”

The thing is, both you and Interpol were fully aware that you were going to have to commit some crimes and serious moral sins in order to maintain your cover. But murder on the first day was a bit too much. You looked at Harry, your breaths coming out in short puffs. You racked your brain for the right thing to say. You knew he was probably bluffing, trying to intimidate you into submission on your first meeting with him.

Come on, words, you tried to speak but your mouth was hopelessly dry and nothing was coming out.

“Don’t be nervous, love,” Harry smiles, beckoning you to come closer to him. He hands the knife to you and gingerly closes your fingers around the handle.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” you manage to get out, feeling the weight of the weapon against your palm.

“Is it your first time doing something like this?” He asks. He opens his mouth to say something, but then seems to change his mind after realizing something. “I’m sorry, I’m being rude. I haven’t even asked you for your name yet.”

“My name’s Y/N.”

“Such a pretty name,” Harry coos, “is it your first time doing something like this, Y/N?”

You nod, fearing that if you say anything else you might vomit all over Harry, and something tells you he wouldn’t appreciate that very much.

“Everyone's nervous their first time,” Harry hums, “it’s normal to get a little stage fright. But I’m right here, and I’ll help you through it.”

You watch as Harry reaches over his desk and opens a small cabinet. He pulls out a piece of cloth and gags George with it, pushing George’s head back violently when he’s finished wrapping the cloth around his mouth.

“Can’t stand it when they scream,” Harry explains to you. He grabs your wrist and lifts it up, his sleeve fluttering down to reveal the tattoos on his lower arm. You focus on the ink as he begins to explain something to you, tracing the lines of the anchor that decorates his skin.

“There’s a small cluster of veins at the side of his neck here. If you hit them, he’ll bleed out fairly quickly and painlessly.”

“H-here?” You ask, shakily pointing at a spot right above where George’s neck meets his shoulder.

“A little higher,” Harry directs you, “There. Hold the knife steady now. You have to do it fast or it’ll slip.”

You steady your hand as much as you possibly can, shifting your weight more towards your back leg. George looks up at you pleadingly and you flash him an apologetic look before shifting your gaze to the wall behind him: you couldn’t possibly look this man in the eyes as you killed him. Holding your breath, you bring the knife back and penetrate it into his neck, feeling warm blood splatter onto your hand and the front of your shirt.

“Oh, you did so good,” Harry says as you pull the knife out. George lets out a muffled scream and takes multiple gasping breaths. You close your eyes, starting to feel quite dizzy. “Such a good job, Y/N.”

“I-is that all you needed me to do?” You breathe out. You hear a body, presumably George’s fall to the ground with a thump.

“I need you to stay for a little while longer. Our meeting didn’t go quite like I had planned,” Harry sighs. He turns to the two men slowly inching away from George’s dead body, and points at the door. “You two need to get the fuck out of here, and remember next time I won’t let you off so easily.”

“Y-yes, Boss,” the one on the left says, before the two of them shuffle quickly out of the room.

The door slams shut behind the two of them, leaving you in the room alone with Harry. He brings you around to the bathroom that’s connected to his office, carefully pulling the knife out of your hands and placing them under the running water. He helps scrub the blood out of your skin, alternating between rubbing bar soap on your palms and rinsing them off with warm water. You wondered how many other people he’d cleaned up at this sink, how many other innocent people’s blood had trickled down this drain. 

Once your hands are cleaned, Harry wipes them off with a towel and guides you back towards his desk.

“I’m sorry you had to experience that,” Harry says, using the same towel to polish off his knife before placing it next to his arm. “Things aren’t usually so messy around here, but understandably, sometimes you just have to dispose of dead weight quickly.”

“I wanted to thank you,” He continues, “most of my men mumble and grumble about hurting people for their first six months at Cherry, but you killed for me on your first day. I can’t tell you how much that means to me.”

“You did say you took loyalty very seriously,” is what you reply with, watching his tricep muscles flex underneath his shirt.

“That’s right,” Harry assents, “And I always reward loyalty, which is why I would like to offer you to join me at a very important business meeting at the end of this week. It’s very rare that I step out and do these dealings on my own, so I need my absolute best men with me. I’m taking a gamble on you, Y/N, based on the loyalty that you displayed in front of me just now. You’re getting a chance to do big things, here. What do you say?”

You smile at Harry, though he’s unaware the reason why you’re truly happy is because he’s just handed you a perfect opportunity to pin him to something that’ll potentially put him behind bars for a long, long time.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“Perfect,” Harry smiles back, getting up and showing you back towards the door. 

“I have a feeling you’re going to be something special.”

You have no idea, Harry, you thought to yourself.

[bananasher1337]

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[plaid-shirtsandvibranium-arms]

Nemesis: Retribution (4)

Summary: 10 years after the Avengers had left you for dead during a mission gone wrong, you unexpectedly re-enter their lives. Wholly unrecognizable from the person they used to know and now with a new team behind you, they ask for your help to stop a chain of syndicates who were manufacturing and peddling the super soldier serum. You were determined to say no until the chance at the vengeance you had been chasing for years was added to the offer.

Fandoms: Avengers, Marvel, MCU, The Punisher, Daredevil

Pairings: Female Reader x (Frank Castle, Billy Russo, Matt Murdock, Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes, Pietro Maximoff)

Warnings: EXPLICIT SMUT. SHAMELESS SEXUAL BEHAVIOUR (18+ ONLY. I WILL BLOCK YOU), voyeurism, exhibitionism, authority kink, praise kink, spanking, slight dom themes, polyamorous relationships, reverse harem, blatant disregard for canon timelines and events, angst, Punisher canon level of violence and gore, strong language, mentions of trauma, mentions of character death, fluff if you squint, 

A/N: Slowing it down just a bit to move plot along. Freaking out on the reblogs and comments are encouraged and will be rewarded with cookies. Seriously though, I love hearing what you guys think and use some of it to make the next chapters better. I adore you all! Have at it!

No permission is granted to repost, steal, or translate my work. Not even a credit makes it okay. Tumblr is the only place I post my writing. If you see it anywhere else please report it.

Series Masterlist | Full Masterlist

1:4 Apple Crumble

Steve Rogers had kindly offered for you and your team to stay at the Compound. For however long this mission would take, you were all going to start running straight at it early tomorrow. In terms of the mission, he was relieved to have your help. The sooner the serum was out of circulation the better and they truthfully did need your help. This underground world was more your scene now and you could better navigate it.

On a personal level, he was glad that you were sticking around even if it was on a contract. He would take whatever opportunity he can and make the best of it. That's how he's always been and he wasn't going to change that now.

He told himself that it was because he was the Captain that he was at your door this late after you all had agreed to part for the night. It was out of consideration that he carried with him some of his own clothes to offer you in case you needed something to change into. It was out of a need to clear the tension with you now that you were going to work as a team again that he was knocking on your door.

That was all.

You opened the door a moment later wrapped only in a short towel and with your hair still dripping wet from the shower. The smile that rose on your face was sly as you leaned on the doorframe with your arms crossed and your hip cocked to one side. He swallowed.

Maybe that wasn't all.

"What can I do for you, Cap?"

He opened his mouth, but no words came out. He was far too distracted by the little droplet that rolled down from your temple to the valley of your breasts. He shook his head and cleared his throat, forcing himself to focus only on your eyes and not the inappropriate answers that sprung to mind at your question.

"I brought you a change of clothes in case you need it," he managed to say. "And I wanted to talk to you if you're not too tired."

You opened the door wider and took the clothes from him without a word, turning into the room toward the bathroom. You casually dropped your towel to the floor and Steve choked at the sight of your bare back, a small set of black panties the only stitch you wore. The breath in his chest released only when you disappeared into the bathroom, the door cracked open offering him enticing glimpses as you moved around.

Steve hurriedly closed the door behind him and as he made his way further in, he caught sight of an open go bag beside your bed with clothes clearly visible. There was also a shirt and sweats beside it, the design he knew belonged to Pietro. He felt a little embarrassed. Of course Pietro would have already beaten him to it and that your team always came prepared. Still there was a satisfaction that bloomed in him when you stepped out clad in his shirt, the hem barely reaching mid thigh and bare feet soundlessly crossing the carpeted floor until you came to sit with him on the sofa. You tucked your legs under you and rested your head on your hand over the back of the seat.

"Gotta say I like this look, Steve," you grinned at him.

He chuckled, self-consciously rubbing at his beard and pulling at the hair at the back of his collar. The light dusting of red on his cheeks didn't go unnoticed by you.

"What? You don't like the all American apple pie look?"

You hummed and took a leisurely look at him from head to toe. Rugged and imposing as he appeared, the heat on his face intensified at your obvious appreciation and the way you swiped your tongue along your bottom lip. You were biting your lip when your eyes met his again, trying to stop yourself from laughing at how flustered he was getting and how much you were enjoying it. You've always found Steve handsome and he made apple pie look damn good, but this look on him was just so dangerously delicious.

You had a type.

"I'm more of an apple crumble kind of girl. I like the texture better," you winked. "And I don't mind a little beard burn."

"Will your team mind that I'm talking to you without one of them here?"

You raised an eyebrow and held his unsteady gaze, clearly understanding he meant more than just your professional relationship with the three men.

"You're curious."

"It's none of my business. That's not what I came to talk to you about," he stammered, unaccustomed to how forward you were.

"What did you want to talk about then?"

"I wanted to apologize properly and thank you for agreeing to help."

You groaned and threw your whole body back on the seat, causing Steve's shirt to ride up just shy of completely flashing him. You sat back up and pinched the bridge of your nose, letting out a long breath. It was only the fact that it was Steve that you were even entertaining this conversation.

"You have nothing to apologize for, Steve," you firmly dismissed.

"I do, Nem. We all do."

"Fine. List down what you're sorry about. Let's go through it one by one or we can draw lots to make it interesting."

"Nem," he said, low and clear with warning yet imploring you to listen. "Can you take this seriously for one second?"

The ever present smirk on your face dropped as you sighed heavily and ran a hand through your hair. For the first time since he's seen you, your expression softened a fraction and a shadow of the person he used to know passed across your features.

"Listen to me, Steve. I don't blame any of you. I'm not angry at any of you. I honestly have no room for more anger even if I wanted to be."

In the beginning you were. There were days while you were getting tortured that you hated them while you pleaded to the heavens for them to rescue you. It had taken a decade and three incredible men for that inferno of fury to turn into a manageable bitterness.

"Do you know how tiring it is to be so fucking angry all the time?" you chuckled darkly. "It took a while, but I learned to prioritize what I choose to be angry about."

"Salvacion," he muttered and you nodded, your eyes staring blankly forward.

"I've carried that name for a decade, Steve. That asshole has to die by my hands."

Steve saw now how selfish he was for forcing the conversation with the purpose of earning your forgiveness. It was for easing his own guilt that he was doing it when instead he should have just been thanking you for what you did and had to endure.

"Why didn't you ever come back?"

"I tried, Steve. When I was recovered enough I tried to go back. Did you know my sister had a girlfriend?"

He shook his head, throat suddenly closing at the sight of absolute misery in your eyes. He regretted starting this conversation even more.

"Jill. She was amazing to Lily and she was like a sister to me too," you smiled a little, not in your usual sarcastic way but with a hint of gentle fondness before your expression hardened once more.

"I saw her and I just couldn't bring myself to face her. I'm the reason the love of her life is dead. I couldn't, Steve"

It started off with the fear that they might have killed Jill too. You told yourself you had to know, but truthfully you were trying desperately to find a connection to Lily. You found her visiting the graveyard, laying flowers on two stones and spending the afternoon sitting on the ground tearfully talking to the dead. The shame burned through you and from then on you made it your sole purpose to destroy the man who took Lily from you both. Until then you had no right to face her. You had no right to return to the life you once knew.

Steve noticed that you weren't crying although the look in your eyes was swimming with grief. He expected you to cry, but somehow seeing you with dry eyes only made you look more in pain. You only clenched your fists, your shoulders tense and your jaw stiff. Steve decided he would tell the others instead of having you go through this conversation again.

He would do that for you.

You woke up surprisingly refreshed the following morning, strangely lighter than you have felt in the past decade. You didn't expect for that talk with Steve to have such an impact on you. You smiled ruefully, remembering your many counseling sessions with Curtis before and that maybe you were finally seeing his point.

FRIDAY had directed you to the larger conference room for today's briefing session with the rest of the team. You were wearing another one of Steve's shirts paired with your usual cargo pants, a fact that didn't go unnoticed judging by the raised eyebrows and teasing smiles. Billy in particular was leaning in to whisper to Matt what was going on.

"You don't have to tell me. I can smell it," Matt chuckles, crinkles visible at the edges of his dark sunglasses. "His cologne is quite distinct."

You smacked Billy on the arm, but laughed with them as well before throwing a wink at Steve who proceeded to blush a deep red. As you took your seat, a cup of coffee suddenly materialized in front of you accompanied by Pietro's ever bright smile. You smiled gratefully and took a sip, eyes slightly rounding in surprise at the taste.

"You remembered how I took my coffee."

"I've forgotten nothing about you, little star."

You haven't taken your coffee that way in so long. It's been just strong plain black coffee lately, the lack of sugar and cream where you lived with the boys being a factor. It had seemed pointless to eat something sweet when there was a permanent sour taste in your mouth from life. Now though you couldn't seem to help taking one sip after another, licking your lips before going in for more.

Right now this tasted right.

You didn't notice that Billy was smiling adoringly at you and sharing a look of approval with Frank as the briefing began, happy that someone aside from him was spoiling you. You certainly didn't know that Matt was smirking because he heard your heart literally skip a beat at the sweet gesture.

It took hours for the meeting to wrap up, but there was still more to do before you could actually take action. A number of the Avengers were sent out to gather more intel while the rest would stay to make further preparations.

"I only really need to talk to Frank a bit more," Steve said as he approached your group. "Why don't we have Pietro show you guys around the Compound? There are some improvements I think you'll find interesting."

Your tour guide for the afternoon appeared beside you, taking your hand in his and bouncing on the balls of his feet in his excitement. He was just too cute that you couldn't help but let out a small smile. The effect he had on you remained it seems.

"A tour would be really helpful for me," Matt easily agreed.

"And I go wherever the pretty girl goes," Billy added, slinging his arm over your shoulders.

"Great. Surrender your weapons and you should be good to go," Steve asked with a pointed look at both you and Billy who groaned in answer.

Billy was ready with a string of complaints and counter arguments when the clang of metal on the glass conference table stunned him into silence. He watched in complete disbelief as you removed every gun and blade attached to your body, efficiently dismantling them and lining them up on the table.

"Is she?" Matt murmured, leaning closer to Billy.

"Yeah."

"All of them?"

"Yeah."

By the time you stepped back, there was practically a decent sized armory on the table. How and where you managed to fit all of it on your person was a mystery to them.

"You missed one," Billy said, snapping out of his daze.

He stepped in front of you and casually slipped his arm up the front of your shirt and under your sports bra. His fingers grazed unnecessarily close to your now hardened nipples and he simply winked when you raised an eyebrow at him. Billy pulled out two small throwing daggers soon after and placed them alongside your other weapons.

"Oh yeah. I keep forgetting about those," you chuckled.

"Do you always come armed to the teeth?" Bucky snapped, clearly bothered by the display.

"She doesn't want her team to carry extra ammo for her, Sergeant," Billy scowled at him, the obvious animosity surprising Bucky. When he turned back to Pietro, his expression was back to his usual playful one. "So how about that tour?"

Frank turned to Steve when you had exited the room. "You gotta teach me that trick, Cap."

"What trick?"

"First time in 10 years I've seen her take any kind of order without a knife fight first," he said, cracking a smile and shaking his head.

It turns out that coming back was doing some good for you and this made him more comfortable around the Avengers. He wasn't about to braid them friendship bracelets but he was less inclined to pop a cap in their ass. At least for the time being.

Walking around the Compound brought back some of that wonder you felt when you first stepped in, but it recalled everything you had lost. Sensing the sudden tension in you, Billy gripped you by the waist and pulled you into his side. He kissed your temple, a silent reminder of what you had gained.

Pietro had been an absolute sweetheart, specifically describing what was in the area for Matt's benefit and pointing out the changes to you. The training area was your last stop, the place you had spent the most time in during your short stint here. There were loud sounds coming from the area and walking in you saw fresh-faced recruits in paired off sparring sessions.

Your full attention was on Pietro as he happily listed off the new features and answered questions from Matt and Billy, the latter now in businessman mode as he thought of what he could implement for Anvil. You were having an unusually pleasant time until a familiar shrill voice demanded your attention.

"Well look what the street cat dragged in. Y/N?"

You knew that voice. A decade with torture and trauma included apparently couldn't change how much her voice grated at you. The cold smirk made a reappearance on your face as you slowly turned to face her, the three men with you were instantly alarmed at the change in your demeanor.

"Kim," you nodded.

"Thought you were dead."

"Thanks. Can't say I thought about you at all though."

"I see you're still pathetically clinging to Pietro."

"What can I say? He's really cute," you said with a wink at Pietro who seemed to enjoy the compliment.

She sneered at you, her irritation rising when you weren't backing down like you used to do. She couldn't quite put her finger on what had changed about you, but you seemed rougher around the edges and far too cocky for her liking. Luckily, she still remembered a sure-fire way to take you down a few pegs.

"I'm teaching a class on hand to hand combat. How about we show them a demonstration on what a real fight looks like?"

You giggled as your smile grew, a disturbing sight that made even Kim doubt herself for a moment. You nodded your head in easy acceptance and she looked like she was pleased at herself for getting this opportunity. Before you could step forward though, you found Matt's walking stick blocking your path.

"What? It's not assault if it's provoked," you grinned at the frown on his face.

He hated it when you found loopholes, but he relented with a heavy sigh. He was too used to this. He leaned toward Pietro and told him that he should inform the Captain.

"Get some snacks too, roadrunner," Billy chuckled, delightedly watching you strip off your shirt and walking confidently towards Kim on the sparring mats.

Pietro had returned a moment later after completing his task, actually handing Billy a bag of fresh popcorn. The smile on his face froze when he caught sight of your bare skin. So far all he had seen as evidence of your torture was what was visible on your neck and face. He had stupidly brushed that fact aside, too excited to have found you again. Now the vicious marring on your beautiful skin was a cruel reminder of their failure as your team. They had failed you.

He had failed you.

Back in the conference room, the same feelings were shared by two super soldiers. They had pulled up surveillance on the training area after Pietro's message, just in time to see you take off that shirt.

Bucky felt the air leave his lungs at the horrific sight. He was alive and you had paid a heavy price for saving him. He could barely keep his eyes on you, the shame burning through him. He didn't want to imagine the amount of pain you had to endure to sustain those injuries.

"Don't you people dare look at her with pity," Frank warned. "Those scars are a testament to her strength. She's damn beautiful."

Steve agreed. He'd caught a glimpse of your scars last night and jarring as they were, your complete lack of self consciousness to them just made you more alluring. Looking back at the screen though he was concerned that you could hurt yourself. Kim was a top agent now, high enough in the ranks to be training recruits and leading missions. She had proven herself deadly in combat, but the way you were grinning was chilling in itself.

"One question before we start," you said.

"What?" Kim scoffed, flipping her braided hair over her shoulder.

"When's your next mission?"

"2 weeks. Why?" she answered, perfect brow raised in confusion.

"Just calculating your recovery time," you shrugged. "I'm nice that way."

Kim predictably charged at you then, growling and cursing at you under her breath. You smirked, standard SHIELD movements were easy to read for you. You stayed completely still and relaxed in your stance as she lunged at you with her fist. You timed your movement precisely, sidestepping at the absolute last moment. One hand grabbed at the back of her head, forcing it down to ram against your oncoming fist with a sickening crack.

Broken nose.

Kim shrieked in pain as the blood gushed from her nose and she tried to pull away from you. You didn't let her. You pulled her down by the shoulder to bend her over before driving your knee up her midsection. She wheezed at the impact, the mat below her smattered with her blood.

Bruised ribs. Maybe slightly broken.

You unceremoniously threw her aside, letting her fall groaning on her side. You clicked your tongue, watching her struggle and turning to the class she was supposed to be teaching.

"Lesson 1, kids," you waved your hands in Kim's general direction. "Don't end up like that."

Broken ego.

You turned to go back to your boys when the glint of metal caught your eye. You tilted your head just in time for the dagger to zip past your eye line, only thinly scratching at your cheek. Your hands reacted on instinct, reaching for the small hidden pocket along the waistband of you pants. You flicked the thin blade with deft fingers, embedding on the mat and landing it purposely close to Kim's eyes that it cut through her fake lashes.

"Nem!" Steve's unmistakable voice boomed through the speakers. You had forgotten that they had FRIDAY everywhere. "We said no weapons."

You rolled your eyes and smiled cheekily at the cameras. "It's just a nail file. I don't like keeping blood under my nails."

"You call that training?" Steve groaned rubbing his eyes and turning to Frank.

"I call that anger management," Frank said, amused at how unpredictable to handle they already found you when they've barely scratched the surface. He noticed how Bucky looked furious, his metal hand clutching a little too hard onto the table. "Don't like what you see, Sarge?"

Bucky didn't answer. He didn't tell them that he didn't like what he saw because he knew he was a major contributor in what caused it. If only he had been kinder, gentler, more honest. Maybe things would have turned out differently.

He walked down the hallways much later gripping a first aid kit in his metal hand and nervously running the other through his cropped hair. The cut on your face was barely anything, but he needed an excuse to talk to you. He was afraid you would turn him away, but he was terrified that you wouldn't. He didn't know what to say to you. He didn't know how to begin to apologize for everything he's done. His palm grew sweaty and beads were beginning to form on his brow.

He was only a few steps away from your bedroom door and he was sorely tempted to turn back around when he noticed that it was cracked open and he could hear voices from inside. He should have followed his instinct to keep his distance but a high whine that definitely came from you pushed him to peak through the small opening.

What he saw made his already thumping heartbeat grow quicker. His eyes grew wide and his throat went dry. Whatever he was expecting, it definitely wasn't this.

You. Stark naked. Grinding your mound on someone's face.

You looked absolutely glorious as you wound your hips in your chase for release; head thrown, back arched, and lips in a dreamy smile. The view he had of you, facing him and deep into your pleasure, was enough to cause his pants to tighten. He couldn't see which one of your teammates was beneath you, the bedframe blocking his view. Whoever they were, Bucky was jealous. He wanted to taste you too.

He felt that stirring of longing again now as he watched you in the throes of passion with another man. He felt it the moment you stepped back into their lives. He felt it during the 10 years they thought you were dead. And he felt it when you were still in training as a recruit every time you smiled at Pietro and Steve.

You picked up your pace and he could see muscular arms reach up to grip your waist and pull you down harder. You were panting curses, your breathing turning erratic and Bucky could see your thighs begin to shake. The sight of you coming undone has to be the most entrancing thing he's ever seen.

Movement from you and your partner pulled him from the hypnosis caused by your erotic display. His face heated up, deeply embarrassed at having watched you for so long and finding enjoyment in basically violating your privacy. He was about to leave when the man whose face you had been riding, came up to kneel behind you.

He pulled your hips back against his own, sliding his hard length easily into your dripping cunt causing you to moan so deliciously that Bucky felt a shiver run down his spine. You reached your hand up to grip the back of his head, letting him bury his own in your neck as he set a languid pace with his thrusts.

Your head rolled to the side and your eyes opened, locking directly with Bucky's. You smirked and reached down to circle your swollen bud, pressing your back further against the hard body rutting behind you and purposely putting on a show. You winked at him.

He bolted out of there.

"That wasn't very nice, honey," the low voice was thick with lust in your ear. His breathing was growing labored too, finding your heat wrapping around him overwhelming.

"I don't see you stopping, Captain."

"How can I when you're gripping me so tight?" He snapped his hips earning a sharp moan from you. "Did you like that? Torturing my best pal with me balls deep inside you?"

You sighed and closed your eyes. Apple pie Steve wouldn't have whispered such sinful things to you, but this Steve could make you cum with just filthy words alone.

"Yeah, you did. Look at you clenching and soaking my cock from having Bucky watch you. You like being bad to him, honey?"

A sudden smack to your ass had you snapping your eyes open. He chuckled into your neck, biting down hard on the juncture as he felt you gripping him even tighter.

"Answer," he growled, landing a harsher smack to your bottom.

"Yes! Yes, Captain, I did."

"Good. Will you be good for me now, honey? You caused a bit of trouble today." His thrusting was still slow, making sure you felt every ridge and vein with each stroke as he drove you into a stupor. "Will you be a good girl for your Captain now?"

"Yes, Captain."

He smirked against your skin, pleased at your compliance. He was reveling in the power he had over you. Frank had said that you never took orders without a fight, but here you were being so good for him. Pliable. Yielding. He was enjoying it.

He gathered your hair in one hand and pulled, your back arching beautifully and emphasizing where his cock was buried deep inside you. With each thrust his cock came out glistening with your slick. The image made him lose control, abruptly escalating his pace to rail feverishly into you.

He had you gasping and clutching at the sheets instantly, begging for him to go harder and push you over the edge. He bent over you and reached around to rub furiously at your throbbing clit.

"Cum like a good girl, honey. Cum around my cock," he commanded. "I wanna feel you fucking drown me."

You came, lights dancing in your eyes and your head empty of all thoughts aside from the pleasure that racked your body. He followed soon after with a loud grunt, the sensation of you fluttering around him too much to resist.

He fell on top of you, spent and satisfied. Your sweat and heavy breaths mingling together as you both tried to return back to the world. You liked the heavy feel of him on top of you, strangely finding comfort in the weight.

He dragged you with him when he rolled off you, spooning you and planting kisses on the back of your shoulders that had your skin tingling from his beard.

"When are you going to put him out of his misery?"

"When it stops being fun?" you chuckled.

Steve wasn't going to push the issue. He knew that it was up to you whether you forgave Bucky or not and when that would be. It would be on your own terms how things moved. Just like what happened between you two. He wasn't expecting it, but the heated argument about the injuries you inflicted on one of his best agents had somehow escalated into him spanking you and you growing wet from it.

Not that either of you were complaining.

You turned around in his arms to face him, looking up at him with a taunting smirk. "You sure your old heart can take being in a polyamorous relationship?"

He chuckled and pecked your lips before going back in for a much deeper kiss that had you swooning. When he pulled back, he was looking at you lovingly.

"I'm known for waiting too long about things like this. I lost my shot at you 10 years ago. I'm not missing out on you again."

His words were firm and genuine. He honestly thought that he would mind having to share you with several other men. He thought that he would feel jealous and possessive. Instead, he felt reassured. He knew that wherever and whenever he lacked, someone else would pick it up and he would be the same. There was a sense of relief knowing that you would always be taken cared of by people who felt the same for you as he did.

"Well then you have some making up to do for waiting so long," you said nibbling at his lower lip.

He groaned and grabbed your thigh, hitching your leg up on his hip. Your thighs and core were still sticky and slippery from both your releases. His tongue dove into your mouth and he could feel you moan against his lips as he ran the tip of his cock against your still sensitive core. Your nails dug into his back as he sunk in, fitting perfectly inside you.

"You're running with a super soldier now, honey," he said, eyes burning with want. "I can do this all day."

------------------------------------------------

A/N: Some asked about Jill and Kim so here you go, lovelies. Come freak out with me in the comments and reblogs. Thank you all for the support! More coming soon. 

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Series Masterlist | Full Masterlist

[emerald-studies]

How to be an ally

(I fixed ALL the links so fucking reblog)

1.  Check In On Your Black Friends/Acquaintances

In my opinion, I believe the best way to be an ally is to reach out to your Black friends and check in on them, consistently. If you can recognize the times we are living in are absolute hell, you should be checking in on the most effected. None of my friends have checked up on me to see how I was doing or just to talk. They didn’t even bring up the protests until I did. It feels very very lonely and scary to not be checked up on by the people who say they support and love you. So, I’m making this the first point because I don’t want anyone else to feel this way, not trying to complain.

2.  Learn More About Black History

It’s important to learn about the Black activists that our history books left out. Yes, Martin Luther King Jr. was, and is, important but we need to reflect on why he was pushed on us so much in our history classes, compared to other Black leaders. Is it because our government would rather us walk down the street holding signs than actually defending ourselves against the cop who’s beating us?

Here’s a master list of activists to start you off.

3.  Go to Rallies and Protests (If you can)

Find protests and rallies in your area by looking on Twitter and search #yourcityprotest. Or watch your local news channel to see where they are (if they’re being covered on the news). Also search on Facebook. Wear a mask.

4. Donate and Sign Petitions

If you don’t have extra money to donate, that’s fine. If you still want to be an ally then sign all the petitions you can. Take a day to research all the ones you can sign/haven’t signed and sign them!

(Also you don’t need to donate to change.org! Directly donate to non-profit organizations and victims’ families!)

George Floyd - change.org

George Floyd - amnesty.org

George Floyd - colorofchange.org

Get The Officers Charged

Charge All Four Officers

Breonna Taylor - moveon.org

Breonna Taylor - colorofchange.org

Breonna Taylor - justiceforbreonna.org

Breonna Taylor - change.org

Breonna Taylor - thepetitionsite.com

Ahmaud Arbery - change.org

Ahmaud Arbery - change.org 2

Ahmaud Arbery - change.org 3

Justice for Oluwatoyin Salau

Pass The Georgia Hate Crime Bill

Defund MPD

Life Sentence For Police Brutality

Regis Korchinski - change.org

Tete Gulley - change.org

Tony McDade - change.org

Tony McDade - actionnetwork.org

Tony McDade - thepetitionsite.com

Joao Pedro - change.org

Julius Jones - change.org

Belly Mujinga - change.org

Willie Simmons - change.org

Hands Up Act - change.org

National Action Against Police Brutality

Kyjuanzi Harris - change.org

Alejandro Vargas Martinez - change.org

Censorship Of Police Brutality In France

Sean Reed - change.org

Sean Reed - change.org 2

Kendrick Johnson - change.org

Tamir Rice - change.org

Tamir Rice - change.org 2

Fire Racist Criminal From The NYPD

Jamee Johnson - organizefor.org

Darius Stewart - change.org

Darius Stewart - moveon.org

Abolish Prison Labor

Free Siyanda - change.org

Chrystul Kizer - change.org

Chrystul Kizer - change.org 2

Andile Mchunu (Bobo) - change.org

Eric Riddick - change.org

Amiya Braxton - change.org

Emerald Black - change.org

Elijah Nichols - change.org

Zinedine Karabo Gioia - change.org

Angel Bumpass - change.org

Sheku Bayoh - change.org

Visit these sites for more info:

http://www.pb-resources.com/

https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/

5. Educate yourself and others.

Articles:

- “America’s Racial Contract Is Killing Us” by Adam Serwer | Atlantic (May 8, 2020)

- Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement (Mentoring a New Generation of Activists

- ”My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant” by Jose Antonio Vargas | NYT Mag (June 22, 2011)

- The 1619 Project (all the articles) | The New York Times Magazine

- The Combahee River Collective Statement

- “The Intersectionality Wars” by Jane Coaston | Vox (May 28, 2019)

- Tips for Creating Effective White Caucus Groups developed by Craig Elliott PhD

- “Where do I donate? Why is the uprising violent? Should I go protest?” by Courtney Martin (June 1, 2020)

- ”White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Knapsack Peggy McIntosh

- “Who Gets to Be Afraid in America?” by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi | Atlantic (May 12, 2020)

Movies/TV Shows:

When They See Us

American Son

Hello Privilege, It’s Me, Chelsea

The 13th

Murder to Mercy: The Cyntoia Brown Story

What Happened Miss Simone?

The Two Killings of Sam Cooke

Who Killed Malcolm X?

The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson

Homecoming: A Film by Beyonce (Lighter in tone)

LA 92

Dear White People

Videos:

- Black Feminism & the Movement for Black Lives: Barbara Smith, Reina Gossett, Charlene Carruthers (50:48)

- “How Studying Privilege Systems Can Strengthen Compassion” | Peggy McIntosh at TEDxTimberlaneSchools (18:26)

- American Oxygen - Rihanna

- Formation - Beyonce

Podcasts:

- Malcolm X Speeches

- 1619 (New York Times)

- About Race

- Code Switch (NPR)

- Intersectionality Matters! hosted by Kimberlé Crenshaw

- Momentum: A Race Forward Podcast

Books:

- The Autobiography of Malcolm X

- Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About RaceBook by Reni Eddo-Lodge

- Black Feminist Thought by Patricia Hill Collins

- Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower by Dr. Brittney Cooper

- Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon

- How To Be An Antiracist by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi

- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

- Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

- Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad

- Redefining Realness by Janet Mock

- So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo

- The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

- The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

- The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century by Grace Lee Boggs

- The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

- This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color by Cherríe Moraga

- When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America by Ira Katznelson

- White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo, PhD

Follow:

- Shaun King: Instagram | Website

- Antiracism Center: Twitter

- Black Women’s Blueprint: Website

- Color Of Change: Website

- The Conscious Kid: Website | Instagram

- Equal Justice Initiative (EJI): Website | Twitter | Instagram

- NAACP: Twitter | Instagram |

- Ziwe | Instagram | (She has discussions about race with White people, kinda grilling them, every Thursday at 8 p.m. EST. Super thrilling to watch.)

Here’s Some Music Too:

Change Gonna Come - Sam Cooke

Chain Gang - Nina Simone

Missisippi Goddamn - Nina Simone

Fuck Da’ Police - N.W.A.

This is America - Childish Gambino

I’m Not Racist - Joyner Lucas

Fight the Power - Public Enemy

Freedom (Live) - Beyonce

I Can’t Breathe - H.E.R.

American Oxygen - Rihanna

Brown Skin Girl - Beyonce

+

My Playlist With A Few More

Black Artists Matter Playlist

What a large list! It looks so overwhelming! Don’t worry, you don’t have to read/watch/listen to everything. It takes a lot of effort!

Jk.

[danniburgh]

Rushingly Bittersweet (Javier Peña x f!reader) part 23

Pairing: Javier Peña x ofc//f!reader with name.

Summary: After the fall of Escobar everything starts happening way too fast for Javier; his raise, his new office, his new team, the Cali cartel’s operation, the sudden arrival of a new agent that was transferred to his team for no apparent reason, the way he was falling in love with her almost unintentionally.

And he couldn’t seem to stop any of that.

Word count: +6.4k

Chapter warnings: lmao angst and then fluff, a brief mention of food, and drugs and a dog.

A/N: This chapter is set after season three. // aAAAAAA this is so long i dont even why but it took me like ALL day FUCK FUCK FUCK anyway thanks to all my babies that got me through the desperation of wanting this to write itself lmao, also two chapters and we are DONE with the main story holy shit

ao3 // fic index // Masterlist // fic playlist

comments and reblogs are eternally appreciated 💓 let me know if you wanna be tagged

←previous // next→

gifs: @pascalsky

Javier groaned when he sat up and moved his legs to get them out of the bed and looked at the alarm clock on his nightstand; three forty-eight in the morning. He turned on the lamp, reached at his nape and scratched with blunt nails and reached for the pack of smokes that he left on the nightstand before laying down to try to sleep with the other hand.

He pulled the last one out of the pack and stood up to throw the empty carton in the trashcan near the door; he eyed the empty pack from the day before in the bottom of the can with the cigarette clinging to his lips thanks to near dry spit making them sticky and let out a deep sigh.

It wasn’t working.

His tongue moved to shift the cigarette from his lips and he let it fall inside the trashcan, knowing it wouldn’t be the last one he put between his lips, but at least he didn’t light it.

Javier thought of getting out of the room and raiding his dad’s bar again, but he knew it wouldn’t do him any good.

It wasn’t working.

He knew it, and it couldn't be denied any longer. He wasn’t getting any younger and his old ways weren’t helping him forget as they used to ten or fifteen years before.

Javier walked back to the bed and sat on the edge, letting his half naked body fall backwards on the mattress and looking at the ceiling, he felt his hand twitch and he felt it empty without a nicotine stick firmly pressed between his index and his thumb but did nothing to calm it down.

Ten or fifteen years before: had it really been that long? Javier huffed at nothing and scratched his chest, leaving his hand there, uselessly wondering what would it be of him if he did something different; incidentally working through years and years of missteps, mishappens, mistakes, and shaping them in some other way that would have saved him from five months of poor sleep and constant drunkenness, five months of chain-smoking and lack of sharpness, five months of only remembering the bad things he had done and the bad things he deserved.

He huffed again because of course his retirement wouldn’t be him sitting on a porch to enjoy the evening Texas breeze and a glass of scotch; even if he had tried it.

It was having nightmares every third night he wanted nothing but to shove deep inside his head, but that then, reluctantly, he had to tell his new therapist his dad had forced him to go to.

It was having to remember all the men he saw dying every time he heard the words war or coke or shooting. Having to remember them changing and fighting and dying for a cause he wasn’t sure if he still believed in. Having to remember Carrillo every time he and Steve talked on the phone.

It was remembering you each time someone sent him a letter congratulating his work or asking for consultation or asking for an interview; because he had an idea of what you had been through and he was sure he didn’t deserve all that claptrap. He did nothing but cause chaos and destruction and death and even though his therapist said it wasn’t his fault he knew it was because he aided for it to happen.

But you? You did everything you could to find yourself a way to recover what was yours, and you still lost it.

Javier sat up again and after six exact seconds of consideration, he leaned forward and opened his nightstand drawer. He took the black tape he had been clinging to for five months and held it in front of him for a couple of minutes.

He chuckled at himself and gripped the small cassette, took from the drawer his tape player, pressed the red button for it to open, let the tape fall in the slit and closed it, turned it on and rewinded the tape, trying to make the calculations in his head of how many times he had repeated that process as the tape ran to the beginning.

He put the headphones on, laid down back on the bed and pressed play.

“Hi, Javi, uhm…”

God, how he missed you.

The phone rang again, fuck the phone, you thought, and hid your face under a pillow, trying to fall asleep again despite the clear signal that you were no longer sleepy.

And the phone rang again, you lifted your head from the cocoon of pillows and eyed the clock on your nightstand, who was calling you at five seventeen in the morning?

Grunting, you got out of the bed and walked out of the bedroom to the small space that made your living room, dining room and kitchen and got to the phone.

“Hello?” your voice was a deep groan, and you cleared your throat.

“Another letter came for you, when are you gonna change your address?” your dad’s voice broke through the receiver and you closed your eyes, breathing in and out the stress it was already provoking in you.

“I’ll get to it, dad,” you replied “are you gonna send it to me or can I go to the house?” you questioned, feeling already your lower lip tremble.

“I’ll send it, your mom doesn’t wanna see you yet,” he let out in a stern voice “sorry, pumpkin.” he whispered and hung up the phone.

You sat on the armrest of the loveseat next to the phone and let your tears fall from your eyes, not even bothering about cleaning them anymore.

You sighed and nodded to yourself, letting your tired gaze roam around your tiny living space and you missed the openness of your family house, the one you had come back to and were expelled from by an angry mother that felt ashamed of the truth you told them.

But you had to give it to her, she didn’t even know you went down to Colombia, or that you’d been having drug issues, or that they fired you.

She had told you she didn’t know who you were anymore.

Neither did you.

So you left, they couldn’t be more disappointed in you than you were in yourself, so you walked out as your mom wanted and tried to find a home for yourself as you still wondered what the hell were you supposed to do. There wasn’t a handbook or a protocol that taught people how to stop being a DEA agent, the government didn’t train people to go back to civility or even offered a program to forget all the shit you had lived in the places they had sent you.

You stayed in your hometown, unknowingly to your old friends and twenty minutes away from your parent’s home and didn’t leave your house unless absolutely necessary; Albuquerque wasn’t a small town, but it wasn’t big, and you were dreading walking past someone who knew you before you had lost yourself and tried to explain all your baggage, you didn’t have the time, or the energy. And you didn’t want people feeling sorry for yourself, with the woman in the mirror you had enough.

Everything seemed pointless, and you felt heavy all the time, as if you were carrying a chain ball in each foot and shackles in your hands while being dragged down by quicksand.

In the kitchen's corner you saw the last two boxes you still didn’t have energy to unpack after moving them across the continent and let out a teary sight as you stood from the armrest and walked to them.

You opened the first box and saw it filled with office clutter; pencils, markers, some notebooks and notepads, the brown journal you had been looking for to burn on your stove; a set of keys you weren’t sure what they opened and in the bottom, folded pieces of paper.

“Oh, no.” you muttered to the air of the warm kitchen and you doubted reaching in for it… The hesitation lasted two minutes but for you it was like two hours, you knew what it was, you knew why it was in that box and when you took it it felt hot and heavy. You were holding feelings in that letter, you were holding hours of shed tears and memories you didn’t want to have anymore. Memories that still haunted you whenever you smelled roasted colombian coffee and saw an ad of Malduros on tv.

You didn’t open it. You knew what was written there. And for a few seconds you thought of burning it on the stove instead.

“Well, I don’t want this, might as well send it.” you muttered under your breath, recognizing it would do you some good to stop holding to it, acknowledging it would do you some good to know he had it. If he wanted to rip it into millions of pieces or burn it or toss it in the trash or eat it, it was his problem.

You bit your lip as you walked to the phone; you hadn’t thought of him in a while. But as you sat on the loveseat all the shit you wanted to bury if not get rid of came back to your mind like a high wave of a rough sea; sharp, cold, gritty.

“Shit.” you gasped, trying to breathe in and out several times because you didn’t want to cry. It was too early for crying.

You grabbed the phone and thought who could have Javier’s address. God, even thinking of his name made your chest flutter and your stomach churn. You had fooled yourself into thinking he didn’t have an effect on you anymore, into even assuring five months was enough to forget him. What a fool.

You dialed the number of the only person you knew for sure knew the address by heart; the phone rang three times before it was answered.

“Hello?” a sleepy nasal voice greeted, and you smiled through the few tears that had accumulated in your eyes, grateful that he still had his embassy issued cell phone.

“Stod!” your smile was making your cheeks hurt, and you wondered in the back of your head when was the last time you had smiled.

“Who’s this? Flor?” he asked and you let out a stiff chuckle. You decided not to be a huge asshole and dump something heavy as your actual name that early in the morning, so you went with it.

“Yeah, sorry to call at this hour, did I wake you?” you played with the edge of the loveseat’s armrest.

“Kinda,” a noise of shuffle was heard “but it’s almost seven here, so I’m not that mad,” he teased, making you chuckle again “how are you? to what do I owe the honor?”

“Uhm, I–‌I’m calling to take advantage of you,” you said, hearing his chuckle through the line and a whisper of of course you did, “by any chance do you know Peña’s address in Texas?” you asked, closing your eyes and crossing your fingers, wishing for him to not ask:

“Why?”

“I–‌I have something of his...” you mumbled under your breath “I just found it and I wanna send it.” you said, which wasn’t technically a lie.

“Uh…” Stoddard hesitated, and you heard a faint of a pouring noise in the back that made you sigh, a cup of coffee would do you wonders, “well I do–I don't know if I’m allowed to just say it, y’know?” you frowned.

“Oh, come on, please?” you pleaded, your leg started bouncing because of the anxiety that was growing in your chest.

“What is it? is something important?” he asked.

“Super important,” you nodded even though he couldn’t see, “he needs it.”

“How do you know?” he questioned again, and you whined under your breath.

“Uhm, I ju–‌I just know, uhm…” since when were you a twitchy, nervous mess? “can’t you just tell me?”

“Not really, no.” he muttered in that voice that made you want to punch him and hug him at the same time.

You let out the air of your lungs and controlled your body.

You had promised yourself to tell the truth when it was necessary. So you were going to.

“Look, Stod, this is long to explain, okay?” you began, and he hummed affirmatively in response, “the only thing you need to know is that the thing I have here is very important that he gets because he needs to know that I kept it for him.” you said, closing your eyes again.

“Flor you just told me nothing.” he let out, his voice was being muffled and it sounded like he had something in his mouth.

“Fuck, Stoddard, I love him, okay?” you let out “and this thing I have is a letter that I need him to have so he knows I love him!” you panted and bit your lip when he didn’t answer.

You just had said out loud you loved someone, you just had said to someone you loved Javier Peña for the first time. Shit.

“Oh,” Stoddard said after a moment and you held your breath, “you have where to write?”

“You’re a fucking king!”

Six hours later, you wanted nothing else but to turn the fucking car around.

“This is a mistake, this is a fucking mistake!” you yelled inside your car, opening the glove box to toss there your sunglasses. The highway 285 was eternal, and you hated driving through it; it was empty, there was nothing but desert landscapes and the occasional tree, but you were halfway, just crossing the state border and there was nothing in the everlasting earth that would make you drive back home, not even your fucking hesitation, not even your self-doubt.

“What the fuck am I gonna say?” you asked yourself again, chewing on your lower lip and gripping the steering wheel, “am I just pulling on his driveway and knocking on his door and saying hi I’m sorry I broke your heart I have a letter for you? Fuck!” you saw the beginning of yet another town and you drove slowly looking for a gas station, “or better yet, I read this shit to him to complete the humiliation!” you turned your head for a second at the letter resting easily in the co-pilot’s seat and you groaned, finding a gas station. You were also hungry.

With the car’s tank full and a plastic bag filled with snacks for the remaining six hours, you sighed to yourself and started driving again.

“You’re doing this because you need closure,” you told yourself, shoving your hand into a bag of salted chips and bringing three to your mouth “if he doesn’t wanna see you, too bad, he’s gonna miss your haircut,” you mumbled, chewing at the same time “you leave the letter and let him decide what to do with it.”

With the highway 285 long behind you and the sky just beginning to turn orange, you had convinced yourself of your own reasons and you even had a plan to go back home as soon as you were done in Laredo. You also had promised yourself and all your Muertos, you wouldn’t react to Javier Peña if he didn’t react to you and as you had learned in your three-year station in México, you can’t break a promise you made to dead people.

“Shit, shit, shit,” you said when the marked map told you you were a block away from the Peña’s ranch house, you were chewing the last bit of a nearly melted chocolate bar you had bought hours ago as your nervousness betrayed you and you started chuckling at your impulses, “holy fuck, I wanna go home!”

But you were already there. The gate was open and there were two trucks parked on the driveway. So you sucked everything you were feeling, and you turned off the ignition. Fuck. It.

You breathed in and out several times before you unbuckled your seatbelt, grabbed the letter and opened the door. You did it again as you walked the gravel path to the house and were grateful it was already dark, so at least the night could help you hide until the last second.

You stopped walking, rationality coming back to you.

“What the fuck am I doing?” you whispered to yourself and turned around, shaking your head as you walked back to the car.

“Mija!” you heard behind you, you froze in place and stiffened at the sound of a thick accent in a rough and warm voice.

“Oh, no.” you said under your breath.

“It’s you!” you turned around, and you saw the face of the man you had only met through an old picture Javier carried with him at all times. “viniste.” (you came) behind him walked a black, large dog that ignored the man and huffed at you.

“I’m sorry?” your voice went out thin and high, and you wanted to chastise yourself for it. You had given yourself a seven-hour pep talk on the way, and you were already breaking.

“I told him,” the man rolled his eyes behind the glasses he was wearing and gestured for you to walk closer “Jesús Peña, nice to finally meet you,” he extended his hand to you and you took it and shook it, the dog got closer to you and smelled your legs, you tried to smile at him and at the dog but tears were already gathering inside your eyes “le dije que ibas a venir a buscarlo.” (I told him you’ll come looking for him)

“I’m sorry, Mr. Peña, I–‌I do–‌”

“Mr. Peña nada,” he interrupted, “call me Chucho,” you nodded and sniffed slightly “ven,” (come) he gestured again and started walking towards the house, “Pepe, métete.” (get inside) he called, and the dog trotted to his side.

“Wait, Chucho, wait!” you called him under your breath as you followed him, he didn’t stop.

“Come on in,” he opened the house door and waited for you to get inside. He nodded his head for you to walk in and you frowned.

“You don’t even know who I am, what ar–‌”

“I know enough,” he said solemnly, walked inside and you and the dog did too and he pointed to an armchair “siéntate, mija, he’s on the back.” he turned around and walked through an archway to what it looked like the kitchen and disappeared through a door, Pepe behind him.

“What the fuck.” you sobbed out, knowing you had little time to leave the letter you were clutching in your hands on the coffee table in front of you and walk out and leave for good. But you couldn’t move, you were in Javier’s house and you wanted to stop being there, but your body was frozen in place and you felt like you couldn’t breathe. You wanted to scream at yourself, at your fucking impulses; you had all the opportunities to turn around and go back home, why didn’t you listen to your logical, rational, always right brain?

“Hi.” you heard behind your back and you covered your mouth with the hand that wasn’t holding the fucking letter.

You turned around and blinked the first two tears of what you already knew was going to be a sea of them.

He was wearing the red shirt. And God, it was his color.

Javier wanted to run away and hide.

He had just made peace with never seeing you again; he had just accepted that the only part he would have of you was that voice mail you had left him months before. But there you were, teary and gorgeous in front of him. Shaking and with your hands holding a piece of paper as if it were your lifeline.

His head was a contradiction, because he wanted to grab you and hug you all the same he wanted to grab you and shove you out of his house and his life.

“What are you doing here?” Javier asked, knowing deep inside him he wanted to tell you how good you looked and how much he liked your new hair. You let out a shaky breath at his deep voice. You had missed it.

It was the first time you saw him in five months, and the weight of your feelings for him fell again on your shoulders like a recently broken off boulder, heavy, rough edged and shapeless.

“I don’t know.” you answered truthfully, he sighed and deviated his eyes from you, you breathed in heavily and the only thing that got into your lungs was his essence. You cursed under your breath and he huffed, putting his hands on his hips and leaning to the side.

“How d'you found me?” he questioned, and you huffed through the tears.

“I have my resources.” you let out on a whisper. Trying to find his eyes, you needed to see his eyes.

“What do you want?” Javier asked again, and you deflated at the tone of his voice. The rational part of your brain yelled I told you so at your feelings and you knew it was right, you were expecting too much of yourself and of him.

“See you,” you bit your lower lip and Javier saw from the corner of his eyes how you scrunched up your nose, and he felt something inside his chest flutter, hating and loving all the same how much of you he still had stored inside his memory, “I have something for you.”

“Keep it.” he let out. You shook your head and raised your hand with the letter on it.

“Read it.” you half ordered, half pleaded, Javier chuckled and then shook his head, mimicking you.

“I don’t want it.” he knew he was lying to himself, he wanted to know what it was, he wanted to grip it and smell the paper and read it over and over but his body wasn’t responding to what his feelings were telling him and only responded, almost in automatic, to his prideful side, to that side of him that still resented you and himself.

“Alright then,” you said, standing straight after realizing you had regained the ability to read him even through your tears, and understanding there was something he was struggling with, “I’ll read it.”

“Stop.” Javier frowned and looked at you, his eyes pleading for you to do something you couldn’t decipher.

“I know, okay?” you said, trying to reassure him and yourself “I know I’m in no position to ask for shit,” Javier dropped his hands to the sides “but I just want ten minutes, just ten of your life, and you’ll never have to see me again if that’s what you want.”

You knew it was a risky thing to say, but you needed him to know, you needed him to understand you because you knew and he knew you did understand him. And he needed to know you. You and your version.

He said nothing, you took it as his queue to start so you breathed in deeply and unfolded the letter.

“Stop.” Javier said under his breath.

“No,” you wiped a tear off your cheek “I wrote this when I went back to Colombia after I got fired,” Javier looked at you and you saw his face quirk in something close to pain “uhm, before I wrote this I drove around Bogotá,” you recalled that last day in the city and how much it pained you to be there, “I went–‌I went to some of the places you told me you liked” you tried to smile and dropped your eyes to your shoes, trying to find something to cling to and compose yourself “even that little cafe you told me about, near the palace of justice, remember?” you sobbed out. And he called your name. Making you gasp.

“Stop,” you looked up at him and saw him frowning, his eyes glistening with unshed tears, “we don’t need this.”

“I do!” you let out, Javier brushed his lips with his thumb and felt his hand twitch in need of nicotine again “I need to tell you all this!” you wiped your tears away again “I need closure!” you cried out.

Javier felt his stomach turn around and all the blood of his body went to his feet. Fuck. 

How could he had been so stupid? he got into his own feelings too much and he forgot that you had cried your eyes out to him all those months ago when you handed him everything you were in a couple of manila folders. He had gotten wrapped by his own feelings and the hurricane your declaration had created in his life that he had forgotten just how much you were suffering as well. Because he might have thought about you; all the time, every day; he thought about your past and your reasons and motivations. He even thought of you naked on his bed in Colombia, under his body, moaning and gasping when he needed some release, but he forgot to think about your feelings.

“I didn’t come here to ask for forgiveness because I know I don’t deserve it,” you said and Javier felt the wetness of a tear escaping his eye and making its way through his cheek, “I’m trying to get closure, Javier, please let me try.”

Javier nodded.

You cried more when you saw him brush a tear off with his thumb and chew the inside of his mouth. You wanted to run away; you were sure he was better before you came to his house and disrupted his peace; you were hurting him again, and you wanted to kneel in front of him and ask him for what you said you weren’t seeking. He made you want so much.

You sniffed and dropped your eyes to the open letter in your hand, Javier didn’t move from where he was standing.

“No amount of guilt will or can change the past,” you began, Javier crossed his arms on his chest and saw movement to his side, “that much I know. I kno–‌know that it doesn’t matter,” you sniffed again and Javier turned his head to watch the dog casually walking towards him and sitting next to his boots. You saw it too, and you let out a sad chuckle.

“Ignore him.” he just said. You nodded.

“Uhm, it doesn’t matter how much I apologize, or how many I’m sorry’s I mouth, forgiveness doesn’t come for free.” you didn’t want to lift your eyes to see him, so you continued.

Javier only saw you reading him something he was sure you had poured your heart into, and he wanted nothing but to hear what you wanted to say to him, but he couldn’t focus into listening, because there you were, again in front of him doing what he never dared to do.

Opening your fucking chest, taking your heart out and giving it raw to him.

“...knowing and realizing and acknowledging just how much I love you.”

Javier drowned a gasp, as he fell in love with you all over again, you were doing what he didn’t have the balls to do, because in his sleepless sleep he wanted to look for you, in the middle of his idle nights, just after waking up after a nightmare, he wanted to find you and go to you and tell you whatever the fuck he could to be back with you. But he never did, he never did because he was a coward, because he feared his own feelings so fucking much.

He couldn't hear anything of it after your declaration of love. God, how much he loved you. You were standing there, with your eternally hopeful eyes filled with crystalline tears and several pages of written feelings. And he realized, there, with you in the middle of his living room, shifting to the next page, that even though you were extremely similar, you were also very different.

“...with you I found a reason to give up after all the shit I've lived in…” you muttered and he found the differences inside him; you were braver than him, you were smarter and more connected with what you felt; you weren’t scared of your feelings as he was. You went for what you wanted and even though it had been five months of that dreadful day when he saw his heart squeezed out of his body by your hesitant hand, that day he still replayed inside his head when the day was just over and his brain was floating between sleep and awakeness, he still wondered why you were bothering.

“There were so many things I thought…” you kept reading as he wondered if it was possible for the two of you to connect with each other outside of shared trauma and sympathy for each other’s experiences. But he answered to himself that even if you two weren’t as emotionally available as you needed to be to build a relationship or if you both were having a hard time adapting to be and live out of the system, maybe the love was real.

You stopped reading after noticing he was just standing there with his arms crossed and his eyes on you but not seeing you; you wiped the last of your tears and chuckled bitterly to yourself. Making him blink a few times.

“Fuck this,” you crumpled the pages in your hands and dropped them on the coffee table, shaking your head. Javier frowned, “it doesn’t matter what I read, I shouldn’t have come.” you said, drowning your sobs and gasping for air. He wasn’t paying attention, and nothing about it was making you feel any better about anything.

“What?” Javier whispered, dropping his hands to his sides.

“A’right, then…” you didn’t look at him and tried to control your breathing again “I guess that’s what I wanted to do,” you walked to the door and opened it, Javier wanted to ask what the fuck was happening, he wanted to grab your arm and stop you as he didn’t do it when you were leaving his office back in Colombia “I’m sorry to have bothered you, Javier,” he winced slightly involuntarily at the way you sobbed out his name “I’ll go.”

You walked out of the house covering your mouth with your hand to muffle your sobs, your rational brain was right, it was a mistake; it was a complete and utter mistake, and you were so ashamed of yourself for even thinking it would change anything. You walked to your car feeling the sharp, stinging sensation of a migraine settling in your head. You heard steps behind you and you turned around slowly, not wanting to put hope on the source being Javier.

“Mija,” you look at Chucho trying to catch up with you, “¿a dónde vas?” (where are you going?)

“I’m going home.” you said, shrugging at the man when he stopped in front of you.

“Why?” he asked, frowning.

“Because he said nothing, Chucho,” you bit your lip and looked at the Texan night sky and huffed at yourself, “he said nothing.”

“But he wants you, mija!” he assured you, and you shook your head several times.

“If he wants me as you say,” you pointed towards the house behind him, “then how come I’m not with him?” you reasoned, “he doesn’t want me.”

You dropped your eyes to the gravel path as Chucho sighed and raised his hand to squeeze your shoulder just enough for you to feel less sad. Just how a father would do.

Chucho glared at the house, the door open and Pepe standing in the threshold; his son had been back for months, he had been living next to him, eating next to him, working next to him and breathing next to him just as he did before he went away but he knew, just like a father could, he was not the same man that left.

He reminisced over the muchacho his son was before he left Laredo, so eager to get out of the small town he grew up in and that harbored his family home, so anxious to meet new horizons, so keen to find and explore new places and learn new things; he sometimes found himself missing that boy, he sometimes missed his Javi; the one that helped him build a paddock for his own horse, the one that washed his truck without asking and without failing each friday evening, the one that took care of his Mamá’s funeral at sixteen when himself was too sad to think about coffins or tombstones; because the man that came back to him after almost two decades too far away from home wasn’t the same.

He had seen and done things that Chucho never wanted to to ask about but he imagined, his Javier wasn’t the same. And Chucho knew why, but he also knew about you. Javi had talked about you way too much for his own good, as he did everything. And Chucho also knew why, he wasn’t letting the woman that made his son come back home run away.

“He does want you,” he said, slowly, with a low voice, as if it were a secret, “mijo… es un idiota a veces, but he loves you.” (he’s an idiot sometimes)

“You don’t know that.” you refuted.

“I do,” he gave you a smile that was barely visible under the white mustache “el te ama, y yo…” (he loves you, and I…) “I’m so grateful.” you shook your head as two thick tears left your eyes.

“I broke his heart.” you sobbed out.

“Y me lo trajiste a casa, Florecita” (and you brought him home to me, little flower) you sobbed harder, not able to control it anymore, and he brought you to him, and held you.

“He told you my fake name?” you asked between sobs.

“He told me what you look like.” he muttered.

“I’m so sorry.” you let yourself be wrapped by him and you hid your face on his shoulder.

“Don’t be, without you I would’ve lost my only child.” you held him tighter.

“Please.” you pleaded for nothing and everything at the same time.

“You gotta fight for him, mija.” he muttered to your ear, and you shook your head, still leaning into him.

“I’m fighting for him!” you almost yelled “I’m here, aren’t I?” you lifted your head to look at the man and you gasped for air, dropping your hands to your sides “I drove almost thirteen hours non-stop all the way from Albuquerque just to be here!” you told him and the man stiffened as you lost your shit in front of him, you gripped your head between your hands “thirteen hours to read him that stupid letter and he didn’t say shit!”

“You did what?” you heard and lifted your head to see Javier standing behind his dad.

Chucho looked at Javier and then at you with your cheeks dampened with tears. He squeezed your shoulder again and turned to walk to the house.

“You were in Albuquerque all this time?” he said, and you nodded, noticing he was holding the letter in his hand “when you said you’d go you meant back there?” he frowned in confusion.

“Well, yeah, I have nowhere to stay so I might as well drive home.” you muttered, Javier’s frown deepened, and he stepped towards you.

“Stay here,” he said, “if you wanna leave you leave in the morning.” his voice was thin and low. You looked at his eyes and saw them reddened and wet.

“Did you read it?” you whispered out. He stepped towards you again, nodding.

“Stay.” he whispered back.

“You don’t want me.” you said under your breath as shook your head and he stepped closer.

“Who says that?” he asked, and you looked at the gravel path again.

“I won’t stay.” you felt Javier’s warm fingers graze under your chin and lift your head to him slowly.

“Don’t be so stubborn,” he chastised you with half a smirk forming on his lips “stay with us.” you shook your head again.

“You don’t want me here but you want me to stay,” you said, frowning at him “Javier you can’t have it bo–‌”

“I want you to stay,” he interrupted you “I want you to stay with me,” he whispered as his fingers moved to your cheek and wiped away a tear. “please.”

Javier had read your letter after you walked out and realized, at the prospect of you leaving for what it seemed like forever, at the possibility of you leaving him for good and he never getting to see you or your gorgeous face or your hypnotizing eyes or hearing your voice that did so many things on him, that the balance of his other losses leaned upwards when he weighed the probability of losing you.

Did he care about what you did? of course he did, it still stung sometimes deep inside his chest, it still filled him with something close to grief.

Was he willing to work it out and let it aside because he didn’t want to feel the agony and deep sorrow of not having you by his side he had been feeling for the last five months again? yes.

And the answer to that question inside his head startled him and shook him deeply.

You were there. God, you were there, there was no way he was going to let you leave.

Javier decided you could work it out later, he loved you way too much not to try. He didn’t even plan to love you the way he did, the way he discovered by reading that letter or remembering the man he was without you. He didn’t even plan to love you at all, but he did. He was madly, insanely, deeply in love with you.

Javier moved his hand to your shoulder and let the one holding the letter find its way to your waist. Find its way home.

“Don’t go.” he whispered again. He moved the last step to wrap his hands around you. You let out a low yelp at the feeling of his body so close to you, for a second you froze in place, your eyes closed and his warmth invaded your entire body as he hid his head in the crook of your neck. He inhaled your essence as you hugged him back and gripped him tightly against you.

Javier felt as if all his parts were being glued back together.

“Stay with me.” he whispered against the skin of your neck.

So you stayed.

←previous // next→

*THE LETTER*

Pepe:

pedrito's perma list: @queenofthefaceless​ @northernpunk​ @pascalesque​ @sleep-tight1​ @cheekygeek05​ @bii-aan-ckaa​ @letaliabane​ @starlightmornings​ @mouthymandalorianalso​ @supernaturalgirl​ @metalarmsandmanbuns​ @purplepascal042​ @asta-lily​ @greeneyedblondie44​ @missswriter​ @juletheghoul​ @pedro-pastel​ @agirllovespancakes​

Javi's babies: @pulplorrd​

RushBit tag list: @shestillwrites1​ @alliterative-albatross​ @absurdthirst​ @thoughtfulpandawasteland​ @wifeofdindjarin​ @lank-sextburg @the-ginger-hedge-witch​ @helloannbananalove​ @diogodxlot​ @pascalslittlebrat​ @sarahjkl82-blog​ @pedritobalmando​ @a-court-of-feysand-and-elorcan​ @mamacitapascal​ @dobbyjen​ @callsigncatfish​ @feminist-violinist​ @jasmincita​ @pascalove​ @eury-dice3​ @gingaahhhh @athalien​

[sweetiebriar]

Don't look surprised or dismayed, this is a rant. I'm going to be deliberately mean, accusatory, and probably a little injuring too. Minors and sensitive people out, I guess? Anyway, I expect nothing from this post except to put my exasperation into words, let alone ❤️s unless perhaps you share my opinion. No comments allowed either unless you follow me so if you have something to say to me after that, there’re always reblogs (which I leave open) and asks (any insults or abusive language will be deleted immediately and the person blocked, of course). You have been warned.

So, a minute ago, Tumblr addict that I am, I was scrolling through posts looking for new blogs to follow when I came across a reblog comment from a user who was offended by a ship and its fans (no idea what fandom that was) because the characters included a minor and an adult.

Aaaand the writer in me just snapped and rose up. Still, it wouldn't have had to end in a rant, I could have just brooded in my corner as usual... if only the response that followed this reblog hadn’t made my hair stand on end just as much. And so, my legendary patience reached its limits. I'm not trying to make a fuss, but as a confirmed author, avid reader, and occasional shipper, I simply can't understand WHY people are always trying to apply the moral codes of today's society to works of fiction! Forgive me but it's crazy!

IT'S A FUCKING WORK OF FICTION, IT'S NOT REAL, I DON'T HAVE TO FEEL ASHAMED TO WRITE ABOUT WHAT I WANT!

There is such a desire for revolt these days, that others are desperate to create chaos wherever they can.

'Oh, this book must be banned because it contains racist remarks within; It doesn't matter that it was written at a time when these sort of remarks did not reflect the same offence as today and that it is a great classic!'

'Oh, this horror book certainly is outrageous since it depicts a serial killer who abuses his daughter; It doesn't matter that this man is a psychopath and therefore this is the behaviour one can expect from such a character!'

And when a fanfiction writer gets lynched online because she wrote in vampiric fandom where the main couple are brother and sister… They are bloody vampires! In the vampiric genre, incest is not considered an issue!

What the bloody, fucking hell! What do you not you understand in 'work of FICTION'!?

The fictional does not encourage reality or imitation, the fictional is here to make you dream, travel, and escape into an imaginary universe where the world as you know it would no longer exist. Authors shouldn't have to restrict themselves for fear of 'what will people say'. Writers shouldn't have to censor themselves because brainless idiots will take offence and trolls will just want to screw things up wherever they go. Inspiration is such a precious feeling that one should not put chains on the few souls who possess it. I'm tired of reading comments similar to this reblog, I'm tired of seeing passionate authors feeling their work being reduced to nothing because wimp people don't understand anything about freedom of writing! We defend freedom of expression, but we oppress authors about what they’re writing. This is absolute madness!

However, I really, sincerely understand that people can feel outraged or uncomfortable with certain subjects, but in this case, then go on your way. Nothing obliges you to read this story which could fascinate many others.

And I say the same thing about fans a bit too radical who destroy the canon of a story to just impose their own ideas and ships! This. is. not. normal! Of course, you can create your own world within a fandom (that's what fanfictions are all about), but you don't have to impose it on those who don't share your views, or even on the authors themselves. In the same way, one mustn’t blame others for liking something that they dislike themselves.

Yet, banning books for this or that a reason, bringing authors down for this and that thing; there is nothing modern about it! Nothing revolutionary about it! And there is absolutely nothing justified about it!

So leave works of fiction in peace! Unless it physically hurts others or morally/psychologically hurts an actual person/community, it’s perfectly legitimate! That I choose in my fictional story to address incest, abuse, paedophilia, murder, unbridled sexuality, cannibalism, suicide, mutilation, religious truths, profanity, or disease-type mental disorders etc, it's my right! And in particular, if these subjects concern fictional characters to whom moral human codes do not apply and do not have to be applied.

[anarmorofwords]

Hi! You're probably not going to like this ask, but before getting into it I'd just like to say that this isn't meant as Kamala hate or anything, and I don't really want to offend.

Having said that, wouldn't it make sense that we get to see how Kamala treated Anna after she came out? It's in all likelihood one of the things that's weighing on Anna the most.

Obviously Kamala had her valid reasons: her parents aren't as liberal as the Lightwoods, she believes (knows?) their love is conditional as she's adopted, she's not white and not being heterosexual could further any treatment she's suffered from being different... Her reasons have already been listed multiple times by multiple people. Kamala has the right to stay in the closet and fear coming out. And while that shouldn't be villianised, we can't forget that closeted people can harm those around them.

If Kamala had kept treating Anna like a good friend, rumour would've sparked, and even if it was denied, she'd have been harmed by merely associating with Anna. Especially with the life Anna began leading; she could have been labelled as one of Anna's 'conquests' by the Clave. That, as we've established, is detrimental for her safety.

But at the same time, it would create a breach between Anna and Kamala. And Anna had the right to be hurt by it and weary of it when Kamala said she wanted a relationship.

If we look at it from that perspective, Anna's actions (though inexcusable in how they treated Kamala --who was also at fault for not accepting a negative for four months) make sense. Kamala wasn't only a fling of a week*, but also the girl she lost her virginity with, who asked her to be her secret (until she married Charles, after which Anna's affections would be discarded), who hid her sexuality for two years and sat back while Anna suffered from homophobic commentary, and who now wants a relationship hidden from most of the people that know her.

Kamala shouldn't be forced to come out; but the harm that can do to the women she may engage with is reflective of what happens nowadays. I can mostly think of examples with gay men, so my apologies in advance. But how many women have seen their marriages ruined by their husband having affairs with men?

Creating characters that reflect a toxic part of the 'hidden' LGBT community shouldn't be seen as hating or villinifying. Thomas isn't out and he isn't labelled a villain by the narrative --because his actions don't harm anyone. The hate Alastair gets in-universe is because of his past as a bully, not because he's gay. Matthew's not fully out and he isn't villianised --like Thomas, because the decisions he makes to keep his sexuality hidden don't impact anyone negatively.

I'll even go as far as saying that not even the narrative villianises characters like Kamala and Charles. If it were, they'd be seen more like Grace in Chain of Gold. We'd see how Kamala's actions are affecting Anna's in more ways than anger (that in itself put the fandom against Anna), and the characters would note so. We wouldn't see scenes were Cordelia empathised with Charles, nor Matthew said he loved him.

Be it as it may, Kamala and Charles represent ugly parts of being closeted that can naturally occur when someone is in their position. LGBT people are human. Humans, when put into very difficult situations (and Charles risks his career; Kamala her safety), can make decisions that harm those around them. Consequently, the people they're harming have a right to feel, well, harmed in whatever range of ways --this goes mostly for Alastair, and very partly for Anna, whose treatment of Kamala was horrible.

Readers need to understand what is pushing these 'villianised' characters to harm (again, mostly for Alastair) the more prominent characters and go beyond how they are instantly depicted. Because these are complex characters based on complex real people influenced by very ugly realities we will move on from someday, but sadly not yet.

By the way, Charles and Kamala's situations aren't that similar beyond the closeted thing, but I crammed them together because of a post I saw you reblog.

Please understand I'm not justifying Charles's actions; that I understand the pain he's put Alastair through, and know that he shouldn't ever be near Alastair. Nor am I trying to justify Anna's actions nor hate on Kamala.

I'll just finish my pointless rant by adding that I do think cc has sensitivity readers. I think she asked a gay man to go through tec (I don't know if he still revised her other books, though), and know she asked POC's input when writing someone for their culture. I don't know much beyond that, but I doubt who revises her stuff is up to her. Wouldn't that be something the publisher is responsible for (honest question)?

*I've also noticed people using the argument that they didn't know each other long enough for Anna to harbour such ugly emotions towards Kamala, but Kamala also remembered Anna pretty deeply and is 'in love' with her. I just wanted to say that considering cc writes (fantastical) romance where someone can ask a woman they met two months ago marriage, stressing over time spaces doesn't make much sense. Just my take.

hi!!

alright, where do I start? probably would be best with stating that while I can analyse Kamala's situation with what I know/see/read about racism and discrimination and reasonably apply things I've read/heard from PoC to the discussion, as well as try to be as sensitive about it as possible, I'm still a white woman, so not a person that's best qualified to talk about this.

that being said - if someone wants to add something to this conversation, you're obviously more than welcome to, and if there's something in my answer that you don't agree with or find in some way insensitive or offensive - please don't hesitate to call me out on that.

back to your points though: (this turned into a whole ass essay, so under the cut)

I don't think Anna shouldn't be able to reminiscent on Kamala's behaviour/reaction to her coming out, or be hurt by it. what bothers me is the way CC talks about it - I can't remember the exact phrasing, but the post where she mentioned this suggested something along the lines of "you'll see how Kamala sided with the Clave and didn't defend Anna after her coming out", therefore putting the blame on Kamala and completely disregarding the fact that Kamala wasn't in position to do much at all. It suggest that their situation was "poor Anna being mistreated by Kamala". therefore I'm afraid Kamanna's main problem/conflict will remain to be portrayed as "Anna having to allow themselves to love again and forgive Kamala", while Anna's shortcomings - and Kamala's vulnerable position - are never discussed. I think it would be possible to acknowledge both Kamala's difficult situation and the possible hurt her behaviour caused Anna without being insensitive towards Kamala's character, but it would take a really skilled - and caring - author to do both of the perspectives justice. CC would have to find a balance between being aware of the racism/prejudice Kamala faced/ writing her with lots of awareness and empathy, and still allowing her to make mistakes and acknowledging them. As it is however, I'm under impression that she's just treating it as a plot device, a relationship drama.

I'd say no one expects characters of color to be written as flawless or never making mistakes, it's mostly the way these mistakes are written and what things these characters are judged/shamed/

And that's - at least in my understanding and opinion - where the problem is. it's that the narrative never even addresses Anna's faults, and portrays Kamala as the one that caused all - or most of - the pain, without ever even acknowledging her problems and background.

White characters in TLH make mistakes and fuck up - because they're human and they're absolutely allowed to - but the thing is, non-white characters aren't afforded that privilege. Anna's behaviour is never questioned - none of it, shaming Kamala for not being able to come out, dismissing her desire to be a mother, or any of the questionable things she did in ChoI. Same with Matthew, James, Thomas. Alastair and Kamala however? they're constantly viewed through their past mistakes, and forced to apologize for them over and over, forced to almost beg for forgiveness. Moreover, those past mistakes are used as a justification of all and any shitty behaviour the other characters exhibit towards them now, which is simply unfair and cruel. They're held to a much higher standard.

So I'd like to say that yes, Kamala was in the wrong to keep nagging Anna after numerous rejections, and she was in the wrong to not inform Anna about Charles prior to them having sex - but that doesn't give Anna a free pass to constantly mistreat Kamala. And let's be real, Anna isn't stupid - while at 17 she could be naive and uninformed, I can't imagine how after years of hanging out with the Downworlders and numerous affairs and being out and judged by the Clave she's still so ignorant about Kamala's situation. I definitely think she's allowed to be hurt, but to still not understand why Kamala did what she did? Anna isn't blaming her for not telling her about Charles earlier - which would be fair - but instead for refusing to engage in an outright romance with her. She's being ignorant - and consciously so, I think.

Overall, I think you're definitely right about how coming out - or staying closeted - can be messy and hurt people in the process, especially in unaccepting environments/time periods, and I've seen enough discourse online to know there will never be a verdict/stance on this that will satisfy everyone. I, for one, would really like to refrain from putting all the blame on a single person - but, at least the way I see it, CC is pointing fingers. maybe not directly, but she is. Kamala, Alastair and Charles have no friends or support systems, and the only people in the narrative that defend them are themselves (ok, Cordelia does defend Alastair from Charles, but not from shitty takes about him and his "sins"). Also, sorry, but I don't like how you say "hid her sexuality for two years and sat back while Anna experienced homophobic comments" - it sounds very much judgemental. Kamala had every right to do that? The fact that she slept with Anna doesn't means she owed her something, and certainly not coming out and most probably destroying her life, or even defending her at the - again - expense of her own reputation, or more possibly safety.

As for Charles - it's a different issue here, at least imo - I fear that it'll be implied that his refusing to come out will is his main "sin", and therefore not something he can be judged for, which ironically, will be villainizing, but mostly will mean his actual sins are dismissed. This is where the scene with Cordelia feeling a pang of sympathy for him comes into play, and it worries me. I've never hated Charles for not wanting to come out, but rather for, let's see - grooming Alastair, disregarding Alastair's needs and feelings, disrespecting his mother, being a sexist prick, being low-key far-right coded "make Shadowhunters great again" etc.

As for sensitivity readers - I'm no expert, so I don't think my input is worth much. From what I've gathered from multiple threads/discussions on twitter, tho it is probably consulted/approved by the publisher, many authors push for that - and authors less famous and "powerful" than her. I'm not a hater, but seeing fandoms' opinions on much of her rep, I think she could do better. Because if she does have sensitivity readers, then they don't seem to be doing a great job - maybe they're friends who don't wanna hurt her feelings? Or maybe she thinks a gay guy's feedback will be enough for any queer content - which, judging by the opinions I've seen from the fans, doesn't seem to be true.

Again, these are mostly my thoughts and I'm more than open to reading other opinions, because *sigh* I really don't know how to handle this.

Bottom line - I really really don't want to be hating on the characters in general, playing God in regards to judging the struggles of minorities, or even criticising the characters too harshly for being human, flawed etc. What my main issue is is how CC handles those complex and heavy topics.

I hope I make sense and this answer satisfies you somehow - I also hope someone better equipped to answer might wanna join this conversation.

* I desperately need a reread of TLH before I engage in any more conversations like this, but I didn't wanna leave you hanging. So yeah, I might be remembering things wrong. Again, let me know, I'm very much open to being corrected as well as to further discussion.

* I use she/her pronouns for Anna because that's what she uses in canon

[foibles-fables]

Can I ask something off the board? You're a very talented writer, but I am sure that just means you have more than your share of struggles with motivation and getting stuck. Do you ever have trouble "starting" and do you have any tips on how to overcome this? I often have ideas but getting those first few paragraphs down and initiating a flow is the bane of my existence.

I FEEL YOU, NONNY.

Motivation can be hard to scrape up more often than not, and getting started is super rough, so--first of all, know that you're not alone. Sometimes I just wanna bash my head against the keyboard until those lurking, esoteric ideas spring fully-formed from my brain like Athena from Zeus. Unless/until that tech is developed, we're all fucked on that front, and our struggle is universal.

I can, however, try to lend a couple pieces of advice! Also, other folks, please feel free to reply/reblog with anything that's been helpful for you in particular!

Write down the ideas you do have, in any amount of detail! A blank page is an intimidating page, and sometimes getting any words out makes the task less arduous. If you're one of the lucky folks who can write out of order (which I, personally, am not), sometimes this can result in fully-fledged scenes. If you're not, you might have at least some bullet points to jump off of and add detail to, like muscles on a skeleton. I need to do a lot better about following this one myself, but it's worth a shot.

Set a time aside every day to try writing. I don't mean chain yourself to your desk chair and feel guilty if nothing happens. Try to focus and minimize distractions, but not so much that you're just staring at the wall in despair. Try for an 30-60 minutes and if you get some words out, great! Feel free to stop, but if you want to keep going, do it! And if you didn't get any down, you did your due diligence and can come back to it the next day. Always feel free to write between these sessions if the mood strikes, but keep your time as consistent as you can to build the habit and the stamina (again, for trying, not necessarily time spent actually plucking away!).

Remember that time spent thinking about/planning your story/making supplemental materials is time spent creating, and that in and of itself has great value.

Might not exactly relate to your question, but has merit--I wanna share my absolute favorite concept and infographic with all of you. It's here on tumblr. I'm a huge fan of the knowledge vs. skill curve of the improvement process because, even when our brains are being incredibly rude to us, there's a rational and logical reminder that slumps and frustration are all a part of it. We learn how to do better and to see better at different rates. You're likely doing a lot better than you think, nonny.

Remember that this is supposed to be fun! If you're talking fic writing, we don't have a publisher's deadline looming over our shoulders or a paycheck waiting on the other side of the "Post" button. Try to come to terms with and accept your own quirks and writing pace, and know that sometimes they can change! I've written entire pieces over the course of a day, and I've taken months to write 2K words. Once you make peace with your own habits, it becomes a lot easier to ask yourself what you need to succeed.

I hope this helps at least a little!! Thank you so much for both the compliment and the helpful ask, and good luck with your endeavors!

[lvnatiq]

Modern!au Felix Escellun x tattoo artist!gn!reader | Headcanons

a/n: Hey!!! I’m back at it again with my beautifully fucked up request fill. I’m still working on three other things, while I make you wait I took it upon myself to not starve this fandom. So here you have it. Please reblog or comment so that I have a crumb of motivation to keep up.

Should I do a smutty pt. 2 ? Who knows lmao.

Your hand slipped through the pile of designs that your colleague (and your close friend) had sent you to choose and pick apart from.

Unfortunately you were spending the night at the beautiful library of your uni, trying to balance off your school work with your actual work.

You didn’t mind spending your time under the faint scent of books and the mere sound of wood beneath you feet, but what you ‘do’ mind is the fact that the library is way colder than you thought it would be after the midnight.

Good thing that the yearning for finishing your work and leaving as soon as possible made it easier to concentrate on the task at hand.

It also made it easier for you to not notice the presence of an unexpected company.

That was until you felt the warm floral yet musky scent invade your senses as you felt the weight of cotton drape around your shoulders.

You slowly turn your head towards the owner of the coat who’s already making their way out. Desperately trying to find a way to make them stop but failing to raise your voice because of the circumstances.

The last picture of the person buried in your head was their hair caressed by the wind and their quick steps.

Fast forward to a week later, going completely out of luck with finding a place to stay you decide to ask help from your friend whom interestingly has a lot to offer.

With things going a lot smoother than you expected you stopped by the tattoo shop to finish your appointments with couple of customers before you left to meet up with your possible candidate.

“Don’t bother I’ll just call him here so you could talk comfortably.”

Your work seemed to take a lot longer than usual. So you kindly accepted your friends offer as you wrapped up the leftover stuff, finishing up the last customer.

“Hey, oh-“

The sight of your guest tickled your memories as you kept glaring at the glorious figure in front of you.

Felix, completely avoiding eye contact, placed the fallen hair strand behind his ear as he kept his eyes on the table of the tattoo equipments.

You quickly got up as you grabbed his coat from the hanger and walked back where you left him.

“Thank you for the coat, you really saved me back there.”

“Oh- no problem.”

That day you two chatted and melted the ice in between. Deciding to rent the close by apartment and start your roommate era.

Your friend smiled to themselves knowing all too well that felix was completely crazy about you.

Your encounter at the library wasn’t a coincidence either, well don’t think of him as a stalker now, he just dumped a couple of coins in the fountain wishing that you would be there that night. That’s all.

As you two moved in together you realized that there were a lot of things to be ‘caught off guard’ about him but you were most baffled by the tremendous amount of books felix owned.

“Hey Lover boy ! Would you mind recommending me some of them ?”

Felix blushes terribly and you love it so much that you constantly bother him in order to catch a glimpse of his flustered state.

Unbeknownst to you, the pile that felix left on the doorstep of your room was consisted of the books that he thought of you as he read.

Felix, abandoning his night owl habit, decided to fix his sleeping schedule for the better. Definitely not because he wanted to see you at morning before you got off to the work.

Insisting on offering you a ride on your way back home with his nice car.

Nearly every single day.

He knows that it may annoy you but he knows how much you are devoted to your responsibilities so he at least wants for you to save a bit of energy before you dive into the work.

Speaking of his nice car, it tickled your curiosity so you decided to check the price tag on the web and... well...

“Felix... you don’t so some sketchy illegal shit for a living right ?”

“It’s nearly impossible for me to work at the moment because of my studies. Why did you ask ?”

“Your car costs more than the apartment we are living in right now.”

With that, you discover that Felix’s father owns one of the most prominent chains of pharmaceutical companies and that he basically flee from his fathers mansion because he was pressuring Felix to take over his position in the future.

Being his puppet was not a thing to be tolerated in Felix’s book.

That being said, your domestic life with felix was pretty soft to say the least.

Cleaning together, cooking while talking about how your day went or getting to enjoy his expressions while he spilled his frustration against authors that didn’t affect him well.

Occasionally noticing the new cooking books appearing out of nowhere

and the delicious smell of food welcoming you after work, quite often than you expect.

Finally, more skinship.

One day whilst you two got through the gates of your apartment block you noticed the open doors of the elevator so instinctively you held Felix by the hand and ran into the mirrored box.

What you didn’t notice was the fact that you didn’t let go of his hand as you two went up.

From that day on Felix used every single opportunity to sneak his hand into yours.

Don’t blame him, it’s just that your hands are warm and the feeling of security that radiates from your fingertips is his medicine.

You absolutely avoided to tease or point it out to him because you knew that he would never do it again so you went with the flow.

You really enjoyed it though.

Snaking your arms around his waist while he is organizing the bookshelf. Feeling him shutter into your arms.

Nights became more and more enjoyable once he started to accompany you.

Everytime you caught him slacking on the sofa, you used his lap as a pillow.

Felix is extremely easy to figure out, mainly because he can’t hide anything.

Also, well

He is ticklish and you use his weakness against him, a lot.

Diving your fingers down to the sides of his tummy you started to tickle every possible sensitive spot you could catch on.

“Spit it out.”

“I-I wan’t you to- give me my first tattoo.”

Telling his words apart from his adorable giggles, needless to say you were ecstatic.

“Alright. What do I get in return ?”

“Name your price.”

You thoughtfully stared at the ceiling, humming as you blurted out your very obviously well thought out response.

“I want you to show me what keeps you up all night.”

You can’t be serious.

If you asked for an organ, he would’ve been more compliant.

You didn’t know what you got yourself into.

You basically asked for him to show you his ‘masterpieces’ that he showcases on AO3. Something that you were already well aware of.

“Deal ?”

“No !”

“Good ! Let’s see what you got.”

Felix anonymously contributed to the community by writing some of the most famous slow-burn stories on the web.

Just so you know, his author persona blew up thanks to the mind blowing, earth shattering smuts he wrote.

Yeah you heard that right

Smuts

Well he is fucking panicking now.

Nonetheless days kept on going as felix prayed each night to every single deity that you forgot your ‘deal’.

The days go on even if his worries don’t.

Did I say that Felix is a whimpering, whiny mess ? he struggles to stay in one position as the needle drags upon his skin.

“If you plan to keep on moving, I might as well strap you down felix. 5 more minutes and then we are done. Please behave.”

When you put it like that how can he refuse I mean you made things worse he is internally screaming at what you just said but he is not going to refuse a command when it’s given by you.

In exchange for giving him a tattoo you decide to let him give you one even though he’s inexperienced.

He’s terrified because he thinks that something would go wrong, his hand would slip or something and he would scratch that pretty skin of yours with a horrendous tattoo.

But you assured him nevertheless and offered him to draw something very minimal and easy. He accepted eventually.

As it turns out Felix is a natural. His hand is extremely steady and the tattoo turns out great.

Throughout the process he’s constantly asking if you’re hurt because he thinks that he’s doing something wrong but in fact he’s very delicate and gentle with the strokes and his touch.

You decide to be evil and use it against him. After you touch up your tattoo you lean in very closely and turn your cheek towards him.

“What are you doing ?” He stutters.

“I can’t possibly ask you to kiss my freshly made tattoo, so won’t you give me a kiss so that it heals faster.”

If his hands were steady before they weren’t now.

As soon as his lips left your cheek you held him by his wrist and pull him back close again so that you can lean in onto his ear.

“Don’t think that I’ve forgotten our deal. I am excited to see what you have in store for me tonight.” You winked.

Then the worst thing happened

The “tonight” came.

Felix was running in circles around the living room with one hand on his forehead wondering what could get worse after this.

Maybe you’ll be disgusted or scared hell if he knows.

He wanted to do nothing to harm your relationship in anyway because you and what you two have is all he ever wanted.

...and he believes that he has a tendency to ruin things.

But what happened was beyond his expectations.

Your eyes followed every single sentence throughout the screen, the white light traced your expressions as your eyebrows raised up and down and the corners of your lips inched closer to your ears. Your lower lip became a victim of your teeth’s assault.

He was so confused. Still waiting for you to lash out or make fun of him, at least.

“I used to think ‘what am I gonna do with you’ when it comes to you. Mostly out of frustration.”

Yet here you were with the laptop closed shut and your arms behind your head as you closed your eyes and groaned.

Slowly the smile plastered on your face grew.

”Now I know what to with you.”

[bitchin-beskar]

no body, no crime

Rating: M

Warnings: murderrrrrrr. allusions to smut. but like... murderrrrr.  (Actual warnings: mentions of infidelity, light descriptions of torture, allusions to murder, vague mentions of smut)

Pairing: Maxwell Lord x Reader (no use of y/n)

Word Count: 

A/N: So, this story is based off the song, no body, no crime from T. Swift’s new album, evermore. I listened to it, and immediately knew it was perfect for the bastard man himself. (Also, this fic is entirely @perropascal‘s fault, if she hadn’t posted the absolutely amazing fic (fucked my way) to the top featuring the asshole himself, I would never have even thought about him, so... blame her ;)) I hope y’all like this! (I will probably write a companion piece for this with actual smut, but I wanted to stick with the lyrics of the song for this one, and it just didn’t fit in. Believe me, I tried.)

P.S. You all should check @perropascal out. she’s amazing and this story is dedicated to her beautiful self!

Please consider reblogging and leaving a comment!! I’d love to hear what you guys think!!

“He’s cheating.”

You look over at your best friend, taking in her tired eyes and her slumped shoulders, the way that she desperately grips her glass of wine with two hands. She’s not been getting enough sleep, and its beginning to take it’s toll. 

“Did you catch him?”

You keep your voice soft, not wanting to draw any attention to yourself or Este. You’re at your regular table in the Olive Garden that you and Este have been going to since high school. Even though you’re in the back of the restaurant, and there aren’t any people at the nearby tables, Este looks like she’s about to break down, and you know she wouldn’t want an audience for that. 

“He’s coming home with stains around his lips. He says they’re from merlot, but I don’t believe him. And there’s jewelry purchases on our joint account, but it’s not mine.” 

She looks miserable, and you reach out, squeezing her hand tightly. You’d never liked Aaron, her husband. He always seemed a little off, a little too controlling and quick to anger, and your best friend deserved better dammit. 

“Do you have any ideas as to who he’s with?”

Este just shook her head miserably. “It’s probably someone from his work, but I have no idea who. No body, no crime, right?” She buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking. 

Pushing your chair back, you stand up and move around to hug Este, pulling her into your arms and stroking her hair. She’s trembling like a leaf, and you wish you could take her pain away.

“I’ve gotta call him out,” she mutters into your shoulder. “I refuse to be the stupid housewife who pretends she doesn’t know just to save her marriage.”

You pull back slightly, a concerned look in your eyes. “I don’t trust him, Este. Be careful, okay? I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

Este nods, drying her tears. “I’ll be careful. I have to do this though. There’s no doubt in my mind, I have to call him out.”

***

The next week, you knew something was wrong. Este hadn’t answered your texts all week, and she wasn’t there at Olive Garden for your weekly dinner. She’d never missed a dinner night, not once. You called her workplace, only to find out she’d been out all week. 

Near frantic, you drove to the police station, hoping that they might have information, or at the very least, you could file a missing person’s report. To your surprise, however, a report had already been filed. 

When you asked who had filed it and when, the answer shocked you. Aaron had filed the missing person’s report last Tuesday. 

The same Tuesday that Este had told you she was going to confront Aaron about his infidelity. 

You asked if there was any chance the report’s filing date could be off, but the officer assured you that it wasn’t. A one Aaron Stover had filed a missing person’s report on his wife on Tuesday night, mere hours after you and Este had parted ways. 

You left the police station, shaken to your core. Your mind was racing as you tried to come up with a reason for why Aaron would have reported Este missing so quickly after you’d last seen her. Unfortunately, you knew there was only one logical explanation. He’d reported her missing because he knew that she was going to be missing. You were driving on autopilot, and when you finally began to pay attention again, you realized where you were.

Sitting behind the wheel of your car, you were parked across the street from Aaron and Este’s house. His truck was in the driveway, and you noticed he had four brand new, shiny tires. As you were watching, another car drove up, and a gorgeous woman got out of the driver’s seat. She walked up to the front door, and walked right into the house. You frowned. 

You noticed sweet old Mrs. Cratchit was gardening outside, and you quickly got out to speak with her. Mrs. Cratchit was a notorious gossip, and if anyone had seen or heard anything, she was bound to know. 

“Hi, Mrs. Cratchit!” You forced a cheerful tone into your voice, despite the dread that weighed heavy in your heart. “How are you?”

She looked up from her flowerbed, grinning toothily as she saw you. “Hello sweetie! It’s been far too long! I’m doing just fine, thank you. How are you, dear?” She paused, a slight frown maring her wrinkled features. “How is Este, dear? Have you talked to her?” 

Mrs. Cratchit didn’t pause for you to answer, instead plowing on. “It’s just shameful, what that husband of hers is doing. Shameful, I say! Bringing his little side piece into their home. Apparently, she’s a secretary at the same company. It’s just shameful.” She shook her head. “I even heard that the little trollop is sleeping over, if you know what I mean.” She winked at you, and you forced a strangled laugh. “Anyways, is Este doing alright?”

You opened your mouth to tell Mrs. Cratchit the truth, but the words caught in your throat. You still couldn’t believe that your best friend was missing, you didn’t want to believe it. 

“Este’s fine, Mrs. Cratchit. I should probably go, though. It was good seeing you!” You forced the lie out of your mouth, giving the sweet, clueless old woman a kiss on the cheek before heading back to your car, your mind racing. 

So not only was Aaron cheating on Este, he’d done something to her, and, instead of even acting concerned, he’d decided to move his mistress into your best friend’s house. Hell, his mistress was sleeping in Este’s bed! 

Furious, you decided then and there that you were going to do something about it. You knew he did it, but you just couldn’t prove it, not in a court of law. So, you’d have to take matters into your own hands. 

***

Planning a murder was surprisingly simple.

Your daddy made you get a boating license when you were fifteen, and he was more than willing to lend you his thirty-eight foot, 2000 Cruisers 3870 Express for a weekend on the lake. 

Your aunt cleaned houses for a living, and all you had to do was ask, and she was all too willing to give you what you needed. 

Este’s sister was an orderly at a small, local hospital, and it was all too easy for her to slip a tiny vial of succinylcholine into her purse one day after her shift. 

And Aaron. 

Poor, foolish, unsuspecting Aaron.

You’d just had to “accidentally” run into him one day after work, bat your eyes and run your hands over his chest as you invited him over for lunch. Playing the facade of a concerned well-wisher, wanting to make sure your best friend’s husband was doing alright in this horrible time, was ridiculously easy. Dress a little too low cut, heels a little too high, lips a little too red, it was easy to catch his attention. 

You’re sure he thought he would be warming your bed after your “lunch” but you had other plans. 

***

You heard a thump behind you, and you turned, seeing Aaron blinking blearily up at you, terror in his eyes. You left the controls of the boat, turning and yanking the duct tape off of his mouth violently. He whimpered at the sting, and you smirked. 

“W–W–What are you doing?! Are you insane?! I could have you arrested for this–”

You stood up, kicking Aaron in the gut, and he groaned, curling up as best he could with his hands duct taped behind his back.

“You could,” you drawled, placing your hands on your hips as you looked down at him condescendingly. “But it’s a little hard to have me arrested when you’re dead, darling.”

His eyes widened, and he opened his mouth and began screaming. You only laughed, waiting for him to run out of air. He finally had to stop, gasping for breath, at which point you knelt back down by his face, stroking his tear-stained cheek with one finger. 

“There’s one way you can get out of this alive Aaron. All you have to do is tell me one itty, bitty little thing. Think you can do that for me?”

He nodded frantically, terrified whimpers escaping from his throat as he tried to shuffle back from you, unsuccessfully. 

You patted his cheek sharply. “Good boy.” Gripping his chin, you jerked his face up so he was forced to look you in the eyes. “What did you do to Este?” 

At the look on Aaron’s face, you felt your heart sink. Aaron had never been good at keeping secrets, which is part of how Este had caught him cheating in the first place. The look on his face told you everything. Este was gone, and she wasn’t coming back. 

You quickly schooled your features. Though you were devastated, there was no way you were letting this bastard know that. He’d murdered your best friend in cold blood, all because he couldn’t stand the fact that he’d been caught cheating, and because he knew Este would leave him destitute when she took him to court. 

“Such a shame,” you tutted, voice dripping with venom. “I was really hoping you’d have a different answer for me.” 

Aaron immediately began to squirm, begging, pleading with you, trying to get you to spare his life. His pathetic whimpers had no effect, and you delivered another satisfying kick to his gut before turning and grabbing the bag holding the heavy cinder blocks and the padlock and chains. 

His eyes widened when he watched you pull out the chains and the cinder blocks, and you chuckled lowly. 

***

The police had questioned you, of course, but Este’s sister swore up and down that you were with her, so you were quickly eliminated as a suspect in Aaron’s disappearance. 

Jessica, Aaron’s mistress, wasn’t so lucky. She’d taken out a two million dollar life insurance policy on him, the stupid woman, which immediately made her the prime suspect. Apparently, she was also being looked at as a suspect in Este’s disappearance as well.

The news was making her out to be some kind of black widow, ruthlessly taking out anyone in her way to fame, glory, and riches. Honestly, they were laying it on a bit thick, but as long as they were focused on her and not you, it didn’t matter. 

But the cherry on the sundae was when your firm was hired by corporate executives from the company Jessica worked for, to conduct an investigation into both her and Aaron. Apparently, Aaron had been working on a rather sensitive project for the company, and now with his disappearance and the suspicion resting on Jessica, their company wanted to make sure that none of their projects would be compromised. 

Jessica was the reason your best friend was dead. You were going to make her life hell.

***

“Mr. Lord? There’s a young woman from that firm corporate hired here to see you.”

Maxwell looked up to see Cherrie standing in the doorway, and he took a moment to appreciate how her skirt made her legs look fantastic. She flushed prettily under his gaze, like always. 

“Thanks, babes, send her on in.” 

Max settled back into his chair, steepling his fingers as he waited for you to arrive. He’d been shocked when the bosses had told him one of his secretaries was the subject of a police investigation into the disappearance of another of his employees, Aaron. 

He’d also been shocked, and more than a little angry to find out that apparently, Jessica was sleeping with Aaron. One of his employees, sleeping with his secretary? It pissed him off, and if Aaron wasn’t already missing, he’d be tempted to kill the man. 

As he watched a gorgeous young woman step into his office, briefcase in hand and a smirk on her face, he felt his own smirk grow. He had a feeling things were going to get interesting.

***

You woke slowly, the faint sensation of touch ghosting across your bare back sending tingles down your spine. You smiled sleepily, sighing when a pair of lips pressed against your bare shoulder.

“Did I wake you, gorgeous?”

Rolling over, you looked at the man who lay propped up beside you, his blonde hair falling mused over his forehead. You’re both naked under the sheets, skin sweaty from the hours spent pressed into the mattress, against the wall, on the desk, and even the floor. 

“I should probably be getting up anyways, Max. I’ve gotta present my findings to the board on Jessica.”

Max chuckled, his hand tracing over your bare flesh, stroking the side of your breast, the gold of his rings cool against your skin. “Ah yes, the findings that prove her guilt in a corporate espionage scheme, those findings?”

You giggled, tangling your fingers in his hair as you pulled him closer to you, your lips ghosting over his. “It’s like I told you, darling. I’m not letting up until the day she dies.”

Permanent Tags: @theocatkov, @cosmicbug379, @marydjarin, @perropascal, @mxndoscyarika, @hayley-the-comet, @phoenixhalliwell, @ahopelessromanticwritersworld, @pedroepascal, @roxypeanut, @rynadjarin-reading, @anerdydragon, @justanotherblonde23, @rosiefridayrogersunday, @meshlamando, @sunsetmando, @bucketbunny, @mudhornchronicles, @huliabitch, @nerdypinupcrystal, @blackmarketmummy, @dinsbeskar, @mischiefnevermanaged94, @randomness501, @bisexual-space-slut

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[the-lincyclopedia]

* adapted from @librajiminn on twitter

A fun game to celebrate 2020 ending! The rules are simple: recommend your favorite OMGCP fics so everyone can enjoy them, while trying to fill in enough slots to get a bingo!

This is going to get long, so I’ll put it under a cut. Also, I’m too orderly to try to shoehorn my favorite fics into these particular prompts, so I’m just going to go right to left, top to bottom, taking the prompts literally, until it’s bedtime. 

1. first fic you bookmarked: “Here Comes the Sun” by @doggernaut, 19k, G, no warnings, Zimbits

For the past month, the man with the baby and the sad blue eyes has been stopping in for a cup of coffee an hour before closing. He always sits in an overstuffed chair in the corner and drinks his coffee while his baby sleeps next to him in the stroller. Sometimes he pulls a book out from the diaper bag he carries with him; other times he just stares straight ahead as if in a daze. He never asks for a refill, always respectfully gathers his things and leaves ten minutes before the shop officially closes. Eric desperately wants to ask him what his story is. 

My notes: I read Check Please over the course of two days in June of 2019. On the second day, right after catching up, I looked at @peppermintfeminist‘s AO3 bookmarks and found a fic by @doggernaut. Then I read just about everything @doggernaut had ever posted. It was glorious. This fic in particular is so cute. 

2. most recent fic you bookmarked: “Flight Check” by @edgarallanrose, 15k, E, no warnings (though there is a creepy/handsy guy at a club to watch out for), primarily Zimbits with most of the other popular pairings in the background

Flight attendant Eric “Bitty” Bittle has been working his way up at Samwell Airlines for the past four years, and his new promotion has provided him the opportunity to work with a brand-new crew. Unfortunately for Bitty, that crew includes an incredibly handsome but equally grumpy pilot, Captain Jack Zimmermann, who seems to want nothing to do with Bitty. Even worse, Jack refuses to eat any of Bitty's baked goods. Will Bitty be able to win the captain over? Or is there another reason Jack has been avoiding Bitty?

My notes: There are a lot of great things about this fic--Jack’s character arc, Lardo’s dialogue, that scene in Seattle--but the reason I bookmarked it is the scene where Bitty’s basically slut-shaming himself and Jack gently but firmly tells Bitty not to do that and that it was the creep’s fault. 

3. a fic that made you cry actual tears: “a little bit more” by @ivecarvedawoodenheart, 14k, T, no warnings, Holsom

“I just wanted,” he says, “a perfect day. With you. Because it’s our last day together and our last day being here as undergrads and we’re kissing the ice tonight, and the weather’s supposed to be beautiful, and you’re moving tomorrow and Holtzy I just — I don’t want to be missing you already.” Holster wipes his eyes before he even realizes he’s crying. Behind him, Ransom sighs. “One more day where everything’s the same,” he says, feeling around blindly for Rans’ fingers. He feels Rans nod as he laces their fingers together. “Yeah. Yeah, Rans. I’d like that a lot.” __________________________

Holsom after graduation and throughout the subsequent six months after Holster signs to an expansion team in Oregon, and realizes his feelings for Ransom too late. Holster's POV :) kinda angsty, but there's a happy ending :)

Inspired by shitty-check-please-aus: "Holster moves to Oregon while Ransom stays on the east coast. The time difference makes it difficult to talk and one day they wake up and realize they aren’t best bros anymore."

My notes: I almost never cry at fics. I searched “tears” in my fandom email account and only a handful of my fic comments came up, but Syd is a literal master of Holsom angst, always. 

4. longest fic you’ve read: “Like Real People Do” by @xiaq, 153k, M, No Warnings, Kent Parson x OC

Parson gestures with his spoon toward Hawke. “So am I allowed to ask about the service dog or is that not PC?”

“My medical history is more of a 3rd date conversation," Eli says.

“Oh? Why’s that?”

“Because. No one sticks around afterward and I like to live in glorious denial for a short period beforehand.”

It comes out more self-deprecating than he intended.

Parson looks…thoughtful. “Well, does this count as one or two?

“Pardon?”

“This. Ice cream. I mean, technically it’s a second location, but still the same night. So is this one date or two?”

“One,” Eli says firmly. “If it’s happening within the same three-hour period.”

“You’re the expert,” Parson says, which, he’s really, really, not, but ok.

“So still two dates to go then?” Parson continues.

“I—what?”

“We’ve got a roadie coming up but then we’re home for almost two weeks. When does your semester start?”

“You want to do this again?” Eli asks.

Parson stops idly twirling his spoon.

“You don’t?”

He does, Eli realizes. He really does. Because apparently he actually likes Kent fucking Parson.

My notes: Okay, this fic has my whole entire heart. I’ve read it multiple times in its entirety, and it’s almost twice as long as the full-length novel I’m querying. Eli is one of my favorite OCs I’ve ever seen in a fic (probably tied with Damian Navarro and Ari Paxton, both brainchildren of @fozmeadows). Anyway, this is probably going to be the next thing @themeaningoflifeischeese and I read out loud to each other. 

5. a fic you almost didn’t read: “when all else fails (i’ll still be right here)” by @whoacanada, 6k, T, Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings (and I don’t remember if I think there’s stuff to warn for, sorry), Zimbits

The National Hockey League is resurrecting the Quebec City Nordiques, and the expansion draft hits the Falconers much harder than expected.

My notes: Given that this was for @omgcpheartbreakfest, I was worried this would be all angst--all hurt and no comfort. Which made me sad, because I love @whoacanada‘s writing but I wasn’t up for reading unresolved angst. But @doggernaut reblogged the fic, so I asked if the ending was sad, and it’s NOT! There is quite a bit of angst but the ending isn’t sad. 

6. a fic that convinced you on a ship you didn’t ship before: “it drops with the gravity of rain” by @geniusorinsanity, 16k, T, Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings (attempted sexual assault by an OC), Nurseydex

It happens like this:

“I don’t--this is a bad idea,” Dex says, his lips still tingling, his hands shaking on Nursey’s hips where he’s shoved him away. “This is a really bad idea, Nurse. I can’t--We can’t do this.”

And there’s hurt in Nursey’s eyes and his bottom lip is swollen from Dex’s teeth, but he says, “Okay.” And then, “It’s chill, Dex. Just friends, then.”

It happens like this:

“Actually,” Nursey says, talking more to his granola than to them, “I kind of have a date.”

It happens like this:

When Nursey calls, Dex almost doesn’t pick up the phone.

My notes: So I was really confused and a little disturbed when I first found out people shipped Nursey and Dex. Like, Dex just wasn’t someone I trusted. But then I was moving out of the house I’d been living in, and I needed stuff to listen to as I packed and cleaned, and @khashanakalashtar‘s podfics came in clutch. I gave this one a try even though I didn’t like Dex, and @geniusorinsanity blew. My. Mind.

7. a fic from an unusual POV: “Excuse Me While I Kiss This Guy” by @porcupine-girl, 8k, G, no warnings, Zimbits

Jesse Snowden knows all the best restaurants and gourmet food shops in Providence, so when Jack Zimmermann starts bringing in incredible baked goods, he's eager to find out where the new bakery is. When he meets the man behind the pies, he decides that there's no way Jack could really appreciate this guy's talent the way he does, even if they are friends. He starts hiring Jack's chef on the side, in the hopes that maybe once Bitty's done with college he'll come work for Jesse.

Good thing there is absolutely no way whatsoever that Jesse could possibly be misinterpreting this situation.

My notes: Oh my gosh this is so funny. The secondhand embarrassment factor is huge, but like, the hilarity. 

8. a comfort fic: “Don’t Need to Compromise” by @khashanakalashtar, 11k, E, no warnings, PB&J

“Hey,” said Kent, unknowingly setting off a chain of events that would change his entire life, “you said that like you know from experience. Have you done this before?”

Jack and Bitty have not done polyamory before, but they do know Ransom and Holster’s polycule, which contains March.

And March?

March is trans.

My notes: I’m in love with @khashanakalashtar‘s entire Directionverse series (and honestly a lot of their other writing), but “Don’t Need to Compromise,” which is the second fic in the series, just makes my heart swell especially much. The gender feels are so good, and all the characters are so good to each other, and when I listen to this on walks I have to actively try not to arm-flap. 

9. a fic you wish could be a movie: “Ice Crew Please!” by @petals42, 61k, T, no warnings, Zimbits

Jack Zimmermann was drafted first by the Providence Falconers when he was eighteen years old. He is good at hockey. Very good. His team won the Cup his second year and now, in his third year, they are looking good. Jack should be on top of the world. And some days, he manages to convince himself he is.

He’s not, of course.

Enter the Ice Crew.

AKA: The Ice Crew AU

My notes: This fic has its tender moments, but what I love most about it is the sheer goofiness. Ransom and Holster and Shitty are HILARIOUS in this one. I’d love to see their shenanigans in movie form. 

10. a WIP you read as it was updated: “Something Borrowed” by @fozmeadows, 48k, M, no warnings, Kent x OC

All things considered, Ari did his best to prepare himself for the advent of Kent Parson, Potentially Difficult Housemate and New Star Liney. The problem was that his best was an idiot.

My notes: So technically I didn’t start reading this until the first 19 chapters were posted. But there was still plenty of anticipation for the final few chapters. And like, @fozmeadows (as mentioned above) makes EXCELLENT OCs. And I love how their fics consistently convey that having bad things happen to you does not mark the end of your story. 

Okay, it’s bedtime, so have 10 excellent fics. I got bingo twice, because I went straight across on the top two rows.

[wildlittlefoxsworld]

Hey! I saw you were thirsty for Andy requests and I was wondering if you could do one were reader is possible Merrick’s sibling and they are there when Merrick meets with Copley and they don’t want Merrick hurting people so they head out to try and help the gang? I hope that makes sense and reader falls in love with Andy?

Rescue Mission | The Old Guard | Andy x Fem!Merrick!Reader

A/N: I liked to write this, and at the end there's a little Andy x reader bonding ;)

***

You were the COO of your brothers pharmacy company and worked for him since you graduated from college. Your brother and you had never a good relationship, but you were still family and you took the job to make him a favor. He wanted the best person and you were the best.

You were sitting in the car on the way back from the conference with your brother and Dr. Meta Kozak. But a man named James Copley, a former CIA agent, accompanied you and showed Steven a video that catched his interest.

Steven gave the tablet to Dr. Kozak and you watched it with her. “Is that real?” you asked shocked and your eyes widened.

“Yes, as real as all of us,” Copley responded seriously.

“Get them all. I want them,” Steven demanded and Copled nodded sharply.

“What do you want with them? What does this mean?” you interrupted him angirly.

“They're immortal, sister. And I want to discover their secret, well, Dr. Kozak will and with the knowlegde we could save thousands of life. You will make sure everything runs smoothly and we make profit as soon as possible.”

You gulped when he observed you strictly and you nodded in understanding.

“That will change the world, sister,” Steven added pleased and winked at you.

Suddenly you felt very nauseous and rolled the car window down to get fresh air.

You couldn't believe that your brother wanted to experiment with humans. Innocent humans that would suffer, because of Steven's greed for profit and power in the pharmacy industry.

You didn't agree with his plans and you needed something to do.

“When will they arrive?” you tried to sound professional and looked at Steven and Copley.

“If everything works like planned we will have them here tomorrow.”

“Perfect,” you confirmed and watched the video a second time. You wouldn't let your brother and his team hurt them.

The next morning they brought two men with chained hands in front of their bodies in the private suite that you shared with your brother.

“Welcome gentlemen,” Steven exclaimed and started to explain the men why they were here. The arabic man banged Steven's head with his and Steven attacked him with a paper knife afterwards.

“Steven! Are you insane?” you yelled, but no one paid intention to you, because all watched the man healing and Dr. Kozak mumbled something about the noble price. You shook your head in disbelief and you heard your brother said that he won't ask for any permission. After the events of the last few minutes you realized that there wasn't any moral or compassion inside of your brother or Dr. Kozak.

After the men were numbed and carried in the laboratory, you took deep breaths to calm your racing pulse.

“Sister, watch your tone. I was very patient with you, one more and you're no longer part of this project or company anymore.”

“You're a monster, Steven. Watch out that someone won't stab you with a paper knife some day,” you snapped at him and your voice was filled with disgust and hate.

Steven blinked a few times and looked stunned.

“If you excuse me, I need to work,” you spoke firmly and walked out before he could respond.

You found only the two men strapped down with their torso bare in the laboratory.

Dr. Kozak was no where to see and you approached the sleeping men carefully. You admitted that they were very handsome, despite they were covered in blood. Well, you didn't really have a plan how you could help them, but first they needed to be awake.

“Can you hear me?” you asked quietly and touched the shoulder of the arabic man with the beard.

“Come on, wake up,” you said louder, but he stayed unconscious.

“Don't touch him,” a voice behind you mumbled and you flinched. You glanced at the other man and smiled a little.

“Alright, you're awake, listen to me. I know you see in me enemy and all, but we have no time for this and need to be quick before anyone gets a clue what is going on. I'm sure you're advanced in fighting, because there are many guards outside and if you're capable of disarming them, then you could find a way out of here. I will make your straps off now,” you explained your plan and the man watched you suspicious. Well, of course, he was confused, but you didn't wait for an answer and reached for the straps.

In the next moment the door of the lab was pushed open with a bang and you stopped in your tracks.

“Miss Merrick, I instruct you to step away from the test subjects and put your hands behind your head,” the aimed guard shouted.

You needed to handle fast and unstrapped the man, but you couldn't turn around to his friend, because pain exploded in your back when a bullet hit you there.

Your breath hitched and you broke down on the floor. You were sure the bullet injured your ribs and your lungs, because every try to breath hurt and it felt like you couldn't fill your lungs with air. There was preasure in your chest and your sight got blurry.

You heard Dr. Kozak yelling something, but then everything went dark.

You felt something pulling you out of your unconsciousness and you heard muffled voices. You couldn't remember what happened, but you knew that your body hurt so much when you breathed and you braced yourself for the pain when you inhaled the much needed air. But there wasn't any pain and you took a few more breaths.

You realized you laid on your back and there was a thin white linen over your face, you panicked and pulled the fabric down with your hands. In the process you sat up and looked at five persons that starred shocked at you.

“What the fuck happened?” you cursed and your head spunned for a second.

“You were shot and then you died, we saw it,” one of the persons told you and you recognized him as the man you freed from the straps.

“Am I still dead? No, I'm not, because you can't die and… well, I lose the thread,” you responded and you climbed off the table you had laid on. You looked down on your body, there was a lot of blood and you only wore your skirt and a black bra.

“Why am I almost naked?” you asked dumfounded.

“The doctor tried to save your life, but she failed,” the man explained further.

There were three men and two women. One of the men was blonde and pulled off his leather-jacket to give it to you. “Thank you,” you said relieved and put it on, it was too big, but at least you were covered.

“Seems we got another one,” the arabic man deadpanned and you quirked an eyebrow.

“Welcome to the team,” the brunette woman acknowledged and handed you a gun. “You can handle a this thing?”

“Well, my daddy loved guns and we spend many days on the shooting stand. At least I never miss my target.”

“Well, these are humans…,” the italien man started to explain, but you snorted and loaded the gun.

“I like hunting, and this… it's familiar.” You nodded certainly to show you were determined to fight.

“Let's go,” the brunette woman ordered and you followed them outside the laboratory.

“Y/N,” your brother whispered confused and shocked. “You are alive?”

“Surprise.”

The way to the suite was sustained and you shot so many men you had lost counting. Now your brother pointed a gun on Andy, the brunette woman, and hold an axe in his other hand.

“That's interesting. I should tell you that I odered to shoot you if you wouldn't obey. Well, doesn't matter, I'll shoot her and at least I got one victory out of this…”

You laughed short. “I live, but you'll die today and you won't come back, so you could never hurt anyone of us again.”

“Hey, Nile,” Andy muttered. “You think he speaks russian?”

Then everything went very fast and Nile jumped out of the broken window with your brother. You looked down on the street. “Rest in hell, asshole.”

Andy gave you a side glance and a slight smile.

“You're a very tough and brave. You're a good shooter and on your fighting skills we will work,” she praised you and you felt flattered. A little blush was spreading on your cheeks and you smiled back. You had to admit you felt attracted to her.

A few days later you were with your friends and sort of family somewhere in a unknown cottage in the woods.

You learned that Andy was mortal now and Nicky and Joe were absolute most adorable couple you ever met. The blonde man named Booker was exiled, because he betrayed the group when he helped Copley to kidnap his family members, so your brother could experiment on them.

And you were the new immortal ‘baby’ in the group, well, Nile and you.

“Are you alright?” Andy asked you when she found you sitting in the garden.

“I'm okay. Most of my questions are answered and I need to get used to the thought that I will live for a very long time. It's a bit scary,” you replied and shrugged sighing.

“It will get better.”

“I hope.”

“Can I ask you something?” Andy sounded suddenly nervous and you watched her worriedly.

“Of course,” you encouraged her.

“I know I'm mortal now and I don't have the best expectations for the future… but I would like getting to know you better. Is there any chance you want that too?”

“I don't care if you're mortal or not. I like you anyway and yes, I would like to know you better,” you answered smiling and took her hand in yours.

She smiled back and sat down on the bench beside you.

“I think I'm a little rosted to court someone. But what would you like to do?” Andy suggested.

“We can sit here and telling each other something about our lifes and we see what we both like to do.”

***

Please like, comment and reblog ;)

[olderthannetfic]

Hey, sorry to ask this, but a few days ago I saw a post/discussion about the history of original work on ao3 (i.e. how and when it was allowed). I thought it was in my likes, but it's not, and I thought you had reblogged it recently, but I didn't find it. I was wondering if you have seen this discussion around? Or where I can find more about it? This specific post talked abt how who defended original work on ao3 were not the BNFs, if that helps.

That was me running my mouth in the reblogs of something or other. It’s just the one comment.

But what’s that you say? Some tl;dr about a pet topic? Don’t mind if I do! ;) (To be honest, most of this debate happened years ago, and a lot of the long meta was by me back then too, so…)

Okay, so, the situation with Original Works is actually super interesting and a microcosm of early years OTW wank.

This is going to be even more tl;dr than my usual. To try to summarize very briefly:

There were two big cultural factions. One thought “original” was the opposite of “fan”. That one was in charge of OTW. It was hard to get voices from the other side into the debate because they already felt excluded from OTW.

This divide broke down more or less into Ye Olde Slash Fandom on the “it’s the opposite” side and anime fandom on the “WTF?” side. Americans on one side and a lot of non-US, non-English language fandom on the other.

I. Media Fandom, Anime Fandom, and Early OTW

I went to that first fundraising party that astolat threw in New York City back in… god… 2007? 2008? I wasn’t on the Board or any official position until the committees got started later, but I was around right from the very beginning.

Whether you’re looking at volunteers or at people who commented on astolat’s original post, there were always a variety of fans from a variety of fannish backgrounds. People aren’t absolutely in one camp or another, and fannish interests change over time. If you go dig through Dreamwidth posts to find who was actually participating in this debate at the time, half of them are probably in the other camp now.

If you think like that sounds like a preamble to me making a bunch of offensively sweeping generalizations and divvying fans up into little groups, you’d be right! Haha.

I.a. Ye Olde Media Fandom

There are a lot of camps of people who like fanfic. One of the biggest divisions has been Ye Olde Media Fandom vs. anime fandom. Astolat’s social circle–my LJ social circle–was filled with people with decades of fannish experience and a deep knowledge of the Media Fandom side of things.

Those fandom history treatises that start with K/S zines in Star Trek fandom in the 70s and move on through the mainstream buddy cops like Starsky & Hutch to the more niche, sff buddy cops like Fraser and Ray or Jim and Blair are talking about Media Fandom. I try to always capitalize it because the name is lulzy and bizarre to me unless it’s a proper noun for a specific historical thing. It was coined as a rude term for “mass media” fandom aka dumb people who like, ughhhh, Star Trek, ughhh, instead of books. This is a very ancient slapfight from the type of fandom you find at Worldcon, often called “SF fandom” or plain “fandom”.

(Yes, this leads to mega confusion on the part of some old dudes when they find Fanlore and fail to understand that “fandom” there refers to what these people would call “Media Fandom”. They think only they get the unmarked form. But I digress…)

Media Fandom is a specific flavor of fandom. It’s where the slash zines were. It’s where the fans of live action US TV shows were. It’s the history that acafans have laid out well and that tends to get used to defend the idea of a female subculture writing transgressive and transformative fanfic. On the video side, Media Fandom is where Kandy Fong invented vidding by making Star Trek slideshows.

(Kandy’s still around, BTW. She’s usually at Escapade in L.A. Ask her to tell you about the dancing penises sketch in person. She’s hilarious.)

Astolat and friends had been going to slash cons for years. They founded Vividcon. And Yuletide. That meant that when astolat said “Hey kids, let’s put on a show!” we all jumped to help. This is a lady who gets things done.

From a Worldcon perspective, or even from an older Media Fandom perspective, this group was comparatively young, hip, and welcoming. Their fandom interests were comparatively broad. Just look at Yuletide!

In fact, yes, let us look at Yuletide… [ominous music]

I.b. Yuletide sucks at anime

From the very first year (2003), Yuletide mods have asked for help with anime fandoms, been confused about anime fandoms, or made bad judgment calls about anime fandoms. They’ve fucked up on Superhero comics and plenty of other things over the years, but anime has been the most consistent (well, and JRPGs, but there’s so much overlap in those fic fandoms).

There was already bad feeling about this. There were years of bad feeling about this.

I.c. Where are the historians?

Academic study of fanficcy things pretty much got started with Textual Poachers and Enterprising Women. Other acafans who are well known to LJ and later Tumblr are people like Francesca Coppa who wrote a very nice summary of the history of Media Fandom. These are not the only academics who exist, these academics themselves have written about many other things, and by now, OTW’s own journal has covered a lot of other territory, but to this day I see complaints on Tumblr that “acafans” only care about K/S and oldschool slash fandom.

There were years of bad feeling about this as well.

I.d. What kind of fan was I?

Now, by the time OTW got started, I’d moseyed over to not only a lot of live action US TV but a lot of old-as-fuck US TV that is squarely in the Media Fandom camp. But once upon a time, I was a weeaboo hanging out with my weeaboo friends in college. I learned Japanese (sort of). I moved to Japan. Livin’ the weeaboo dream!

More importantly, I used to be a member of a lot of anime mailing lists back in the Yahoo Groups days. I didn’t realize what a cultural gap that would cause until the original works issue came up on AO3.

I.e. Anime Fandom, German-language Fandom, Original M/M

Once upon a time–namely in that Yahoo Groups era–there was an archive called Boys in Chains. It was where you found The Good Stuff™. Heavy kink and power exchange galore! It was extremely well known in the parts of fandom I was in, even if you weren’t on the associated mailing list. It contained lots of fic, but it also had lots of original work.

Around that same era, I was on a critique list called Crimson Ink, which was mixed fic and original. The “original slash” and “original yaoi” crowds mixed freely and were in fanfic spaces. Remember, this is like 2003. You’re never going to get your gay fantasy novel published in English in the US. A couple of fangirl presses started around then, but they died an ignominious death after their first print run.

Fanfiction.net used to allow original work before it spun that off into FictionPress. We forget this today, but if you were an early FFN person, the separation wasn’t so great either.

Meanwhile, German-language fandom was hanging out on sites like Animexx.de, a big-ass fic archive that prominently mentions also including original work. I have the impression that Spanish-language fandom was similar too.

Shousetsu Bang*Bang was founded in 2005. It was a webzine for original m/m, but it was entirely populated by fanfic fandom types.

In all of those kinds of spaces, there was a lot of “original” work that was kind of slash or BL-ish and seen as fannish if it was posted in the fannish space. These weren’t anime-only spaces. They were multifandom spaces where it was seen as obvious and normal that a couple of huge fandoms like Harry Potter would dominate but that everything else big would naturally be anime.

While fans from every background are everywhere, I found that the concentration of EFL fans living in Continental Europe, South America, and Asia was much higher in this kind of space, even the exclusively English language part of it, than in my US TV fandoms.

II. AO3 Early Adopters

AO3 went into closed beta in 2009. In 2010, it was open to the general public (albeit with the invitation queue it still has). But not everyone was interested yet. Just like fandom is loath to leave the dying, shambling mess of Tumblr, fandom was loath to leave dwindling LJ/DW circles or was happy enough on Fanfiction.net. I used to see a lot of posts like “Why are you guys trying to STEAL fanfic from the original! FFN is enough!”

I literally could not give away the invitations I had. No one wanted them.

So who was on AO3? Obviously enough, it was all of us who built it and our friends. So that means a bunch of oldschool Livejournal slashers coming from fandoms like Due South or Stargate Atlantis.

The queue was open. Anyone could make an account. Everyone was welcome. In theory…

But more and more, there started to be these posts about how “AO3 Hates Anime Fandom” and “FFN is for anime. AO3 is for Western fandoms.” and “If you guys actually wanted anime fandom on there, you’d invite us better and make us more welcome.”

At the time, I found these posts obnoxious. People aren’t purely in one sort of fandom or the other. No one was stopping anime fandom from making accounts. No one was banning anime fandom. If there wasn’t much from old fandoms, that was because old fandoms seldom move.

Things began to change. Trolls on FFN forced the Twilight porn writers out, creating enough fuss and brouhaha to mobilize people who would rather have stayed put. AO3 got big enough that randos found it by accident. Original work started to pop up, posted by people who’d never looked at the rules and had no idea it was not allowed.

III. History of AO3’s Policy

I had argued for allowing “original work” during the initial discussions about the ToS. On one side of this issue was me. On the other, everyone else on the committee.

I was overruled.

Open Door started importing old archives to save them. Boys in Chains was hugely important to fandom history from my point of view. It was slated to be imported… maybe. Except that Boys in Chains is half original. AO3 was happy to grandfather in those stories, but the final archive owner felt, quite rightly, that it would be unfair to tell half of the authors they were welcome in the new space while spitting on the other half.

I was pissed. I had been pissed since being overruled the first time. To me, the fact that it should be allowed was so blatantly obvious that it was hard to even explain why.

(To be honest, this difficulty in explaining why and the even greater difficulty in figuring out the source of that difficulty is what held the discussion back for so long. When every assumption on either side is completely opposite, it’s hard to communicate.)

I felt betrayed. It would be like if you helped build something, and everyone was suddenly like “Well, obviously, we can’t allow m/m. It’s not normal fanfic.”

So we discussed it again and, again, it was me vs. literally everyone else. And still the “AO3 is only for Western slash fandom” bitching rose in volume and more and more people complained of feeling excluded from the new fandom hub. Finally, the committee agreed to open the issue up for public comment and get some more input. I was a fool and neither wrote nor proofread the post. It went out phrasing the question as allowing “non fannish” work or something of that sort.

I was furious. The entire point of the whole debate was that I saw some original work, the original work that belongs on AO3, as inherently fannish. And now this had been presented to the AO3 audience as something completely different. Think pieces were popping up in the journals of everyone I knew about diluting AO3’s mission and how we needed to save AO3 from encroachment. Public opinion was very negative. That’s both because of how the post was phrased and because OTW die hards at the time were mostly from the same fannish background. This tidal wave of negativity meant that there was virtually no chance of changing this poisonous rule. And if the rule didn’t change, the people who wanted the rule change were never going to show up to explain why it mattered.

If you’ve been reading my tumblr, I think you can guess what happened next.

I posted a long post to my Dreamwidth. It was a masterwork of passive aggression. In it, I wrung my hands about how simply tragic it would be if AO3 had to delete all of the original work… like anthropomorfic.

Now, I think anthropomorfic counts as fanfic as much as anything else, but I also knew that it fails most rigorous “based on a canon” type definitions of fic and, more importantly, it’s a favorite Yuletide fandom of many of the people on the side that wanted to ban original work.

That’s a nice fandom of yours. It would be a pity if something happened to it. 

Yup. Passive aggressive blackmail. Go me. Suddenly, there was a lot of awkward backtracking and confused running in circles in various journals. The committee agreed to table the idea for a while but not rule out the idea of allowing original works in the future. We agreed to halt all deletions of original work. If a fan posted it, the Abuse Committee (which I was also head of at the time) would not delete that work even though it was technically against the rules.

Time passed. The people on the negative side got tired. I wanted off that committee and had wanted off for ages, but I was damned if I was going to leave before ramming through this piece of policy. Grudgematch till I die! (Look, I never said I wasn’t a wanker.)

After a while, some other fans came forward with more types of “original work” as evidence that it should be allowed. These were from parts of fandom none of us on the committee knew a damn thing about.

This new evidence combined with the gradual accretion of original stuff on AO3 without the sky falling eventually led us to quietly rule Original Work a valid fandom. There was never even a big announcement post. I slipped a word to the Boys in Chains mod myself.

IV. What Were They So Afraid Of Anyway?

So why were people so resistant? Seems like a dick move, right?

Not exactly.

I mean, I was enraged and waged a one-woman war to change the rules, but the other side wasn’t nuts. The objections were usually the following:

I just don’t get why it would be allowed. It never was in my fannish spaces.

Most of our members don’t want this.

Most of the examples of things that ought to be included are m/m. We are privileging m/m if we allow it, and AO3 already has a m/m-centric reputation that can feel exclusionary to some fans.

AO3 is a young, shaky platform that can barely handle the load and content we already have. If we open to original work, we’ll be opening the floodgates. The volume of posting will be so high, it will drown out the fic we’re actually here to protect.

Protecting stuff that doesn’t need protection because it’s not an IP issue would dilute OTW’s mission.

If we allow it, idiots will try to turn AO3 into advertising space, posting only the first chapter and a link to where you can pay to read the rest.

If we add another category of text before we add fan art, that’s a slap in the face of the fan artists we are already failing.

These arguments all make perfect sense in context.

Obvously, the issue with the first two is that different fannish communities have different norms. I knew that a very large community disagreed with the then current AO3 policy, but since so few of them were around to comment, it seemed like a tiny fringe minority.

The m/m thing is… complex. M/M content with zero IP issues is at risk. It is always at risk in a way that even f/f is not (though f/f is also always at risk). Asking for m/m to be exactly equivalent to f/f or m/f in numbers, tropes, whatever is ignoring the historical realities. In our current moment of queer activism in the West, we treat all types of queerness as part of one community with one set of goals, but once you get to culture and art or even more specific activism, this forced homogenization is neither useful nor healthy.

OTOH, AO3 really did have PR problems related to the perception that we gave m/m fandom the kid glove treatment. That objection wasn’t coming from nowhere.

AO3 was shaky. It was tiny when I first brought up this argument. Hell, it wasn’t even in closed beta the first time we discussed this. Part of what made the quiet rules change possible was AO3 organically getting much bigger and OTW having to buy many more servers for unrelated reasons.

The “floodgates” thing was put to rest by tacitly allowing original work before the rules change. We had a period to study how fans actually behaved, and as I predicted, only a small amount of original work got posted. It was indeed mostly things like original BL-ish stories or original work that had been part of a mixed original/fic fest, exchange, zine, etc. Currently, the “Original Work” fandom on AO3 only has 76,348 works. That’s pretty big compared to individual fandoms but tiny compared to AO3’s current size.

The commercial argument was spurious because commercial spam had been against the rules from the very beginning. OH THE IRONY that nowadays AO3 has all these idiots trying to post the first chapter of their fanfic and then direct you to where you can buy the rest.

AO3 has plenty of fanfic of public domain works. One of the problems with gatekeeping original work is that any way you try to distinguish it (not based on a specific canon, not an IP issue, etc.) will apply to some set of obviously allowable fandoms.

As for fan art… OTW has failed fan artists. They needed protection as much as or even more than fic writers. Just look at Tumblr! If we had succeeded at making DeviantArt but allowing boners, fan art fandom could have been safe all these years. Or when Tumblr inevitably shat the bed, we could have scooped up all those people instead of them scattering to twitter and god knows where.

OTW has failed vidders too, at least in terms of preservation. I know I’m not the only one who thinks this. Other major people from like the first Board and shit have discussed this with me offline. Doing some kind of vidding project, possibly outside of OTW is on a lot of our to-do lists. But at least one of OTW’s biggest victories has been that copyright exemption. OTW has demonstrably done really positive things for vidders that other organizations and sites have not. As a vidder, I never expected to see good hosting for the actual video files, and I’m quite content.

But fan artists… yeah. That argument makes sense at least from a place of frustration.

BTW, for the love of god, if you’re a n00b to OTW stuff, please do not reblog this post excitedly telling me that hosting fan art is on OTW’s road map, so yay, good news. Someone always does that, and it’s so irritating. I haven’t been involved in OTW in years, but I used to be, and I know what is on the roadmap. The couple of you who do heavy lifting on sysadmin and coding and policy things are welcome to weigh in as usual. I know none of us like that we can’t host fan art. It’s not what we intended.

Nonetheless, I found this argument to be the perfect being the enemy of the good. If we can save more text now without losing much of anything, we should do it. The fact that we’re fucking up on the fan art front is not a reason to spread the misery around.

V. Is “Original” the Opposite of “Fanfic”?

Okay, so that tl;dr above is why “BNFs” were on one side and “nobodies” were on the other. BNFs from one cultural background founded OTW. BNFs from the other cultural background weren’t even aware that the debate was going on.

But what was the underlying philosophical problem in even having the conversation?

It took me a long time, but I finally worked it out: We had two completely different ways of categorizing writing, and they were so baked into how we phrased questions that everything ended up being unanswerable to the other side. Here is what I came up with:

Schema 1

Fanfic - based on someone else’s IP

Original Work - the opposite

Schema 2

Non-Fannish Work - School essays, stories you are writing to try to sell to a mainstream publisher

Fannish Work Type 1 - based on other people’s characters directly (i.e. fanfic) Type 2 - based on tropes or whatever (“original slash” and the like)

Now, in the current moment when half of Tumblr just got into Chinese webnovels and the m/m ebook industry is thriving in English, original, tropey, BL-ish work is no longer different from “things I am trying to sell”. But this is how the divide was circa 2005 on fannish websites, and it’s the divide that was driving this internal OTW debate.

VI. Let’s Summarize the Camps One More Time

So, again, the debate makes perfect sense if you understand who was involved.

On the mainstream “But that’s not fanfic? I’m confused?” side:

Big US TV fandoms in English

Fandom historians of K/S–>buddy cop slash–>SGA, etc.

Americans

On the other side:

Anime fandom

“Original slash” fandom that had already been chased off of everywhere

People upset that AO3 wasn’t farther on translating the interface and supporting non-English language fandom.

People upset about US-centrism in fandom

Yes, I am very white, very American, and by now very into old buddy cop shows, but this was basically how the breakdown worked. It meant that something that looked like a minor quibble to one side was really, really not.

[emerald-studies]

How to be an Ally

 Discussions on Race Pt. 2

June 29, 2020

Day 1 of 7

Post with fixed links here!: 

https://emerald-studies.tumblr.com/post/626271345488150528/how-to-be-an-ally

Reblog this one!

[ These are just some thoughts I have in my head about this topic, it isn’t meant to be a purely academic discussion. It’s meant to be a conversation to learn about another perspective. ]     

Also sorry this one took longer than previous posts, I had to do a lot of research.     

-

1.  Check In On Your Black Friends/Acquaintances 

 In my opinion, I believe the best way to be an ally is to reach out to your Black friends and check in on them, consistently. If you can recognize the times we are living in are absolute hell, you should be checking in on the most effected. None of my friends have checked up on me to see how I was doing or just to talk. They didn’t even bring up the protests until I did. It feels very very lonely and scary to not be checked up on by the people who say they support and love you. So, I’m making this the first point because I don’t want anyone else to feel this way, not trying to complain.

2.  Learn More About Black History

It’s important to learn about the Black activists that our history books left out. Yes, Martin Luther King Jr. was, and is, important but we need to reflect on why he was pushed on us so much in our history classes, compared to other Black leaders. Is it because our government would rather us walk down the street holding signs than actually defending ourselves against the cop who’s beating us?

Here’s a master list of activists to start you off.

3.  Go to Rallies and Protests

Find protests and rallies in your area by looking on Twitter and search #yourcityprotest. Or watch your local news channel to see where they are (if they’re being covered on the news). Also search on Facebook. Wear a mask.

4. Donate and Sign Petitions

If you don’t have extra money to donate, that’s fine. If you still want to be an ally then sign all the petitions you can. Take a day to research all the ones you can sign/haven’t signed and sign them!

(Also you don’t need to donate to change.org! Directly donate to non-profit organizations and victims’ families!)

George Floyd - change.org

George Floyd - amnesty.org

George Floyd - colorofchange.org

Get The Officers Charged

Charge All Four Officers

Breonna Taylor - moveon.org

Breonna Taylor - colorofchange.org

Breonna Taylor - justiceforbreonna.org

Breonna Taylor - change.org

Breonna Taylor - thepetitionsite.com

Ahmaud Arbery - change.org

Ahmaud Arbery - change.org 2

Ahmaud Arbery - change.org 3

Justice for Oluwatoyin Salau

Pass The Georgia Hate Crime Bill

Defund MPD

Life Sentence For Police Brutality

Regis Korchinski - change.org

Tete Gulley - change.org

Tony McDade - change.org

Tony McDade - actionnetwork.org

Tony McDade - thepetitionsite.com

Joao Pedro - change.org

Julius Jones - change.org

Belly Mujinga - change.org

Willie Simmons - change.org

Hands Up Act - change.org

National Action Against Police Brutality

Kyjuanzi Harris - change.org

Alejandro Vargas Martinez - change.org

Censorship Of Police Brutality In France

Sean Reed - change.org

Sean Reed - change.org 2

Kendrick Johnson - change.org

Tamir Rice - change.org

Tamir Rice - change.org 2

Fire Racist Criminal From The NYPD

Jamee Johnson - organizefor.org

Darius Stewart - change.org

Darius Stewart - moveon.org

Abolish Prison Labor

Free Siyanda - change.org

Chrystul Kizer - change.org

Chrystul Kizer - change.org 2

Andile Mchunu (Bobo) - change.org

Eric Riddick - change.org

Amiya Braxton - change.org

Emerald Black - change.org

Elijah Nichols - change.org

Zinedine Karabo Gioia - change.org

Angel Bumpass - change.org

Sheku Bayoh - change.org

Angel DeCarlo - change.org

Sandra Bland - change.org

Sherrie Walker - change.org

Darrien Hunt - change.org

Cornelius Fredericks - change.org

Elijah McClain - change.org

James Scurlock - change.org

Darren Rainey- change.org

Visit these sites for more info:

http://www.pb-resources.com/

https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/

5. Educate yourself and others.

Articles: 

- “America’s Racial Contract Is Killing Us” by Adam Serwer | Atlantic (May 8, 2020)

- Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement (Mentoring a New Generation of Activists

- ”My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant” by Jose Antonio Vargas | NYT Mag (June 22, 2011)

- The 1619 Project (all the articles) | The New York Times Magazine

- The Combahee River Collective Statement

- “The Intersectionality Wars” by Jane Coaston | Vox (May 28, 2019)

- Tips for Creating Effective White Caucus Groups developed by Craig Elliott PhD

- “Where do I donate? Why is the uprising violent? Should I go protest?” by Courtney Martin (June 1, 2020)

- ”White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Knapsack Peggy McIntosh

- “Who Gets to Be Afraid in America?” by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi | Atlantic (May 12, 2020)

Movies/TV Shows: 

When They See Us

American Son

Hello Privilege, It’s Me, Chelsea

The 13th

Murder to Mercy: The Cyntoia Brown Story 

What Happened Miss Simone?

The Two Killings of Sam Cooke

Who Killed Malcolm X?

The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson

Homecoming: A Film by Beyonce (Lighter in tone)

LA 92

Dear White People

Videos:

- Black Feminism & the Movement for Black Lives: Barbara Smith, Reina Gossett, Charlene Carruthers (50:48)

- “How Studying Privilege Systems Can Strengthen Compassion” | Peggy McIntosh at TEDxTimberlaneSchools (18:26)

- American Oxygen - Rihanna

- Formation - Beyonce 

Podcasts:

- Malcolm X Speeches

- 1619 (New York Times)

- About Race

- Code Switch (NPR)

- Intersectionality Matters! hosted by Kimberlé Crenshaw

- Momentum: A Race Forward Podcast

- Pod For The Cause (from The Leadership Conference on Civil & Human Rights)

- Pod Save the People (Crooked Media)

- Seeing White

Books:

- The Autobiography of Malcolm X

- Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About RaceBook by Reni Eddo-Lodge

- Black Feminist Thought by Patricia Hill Collins

- Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower by Dr. Brittney Cooper

- Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon

- How To Be An Antiracist by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi

- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

- Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

- Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad

- Raising Our Hands by Jenna Arnold

- Redefining Realness by Janet Mock

- Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde

- So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo

- The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

- The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

- The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

- The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century by Grace Lee Boggs

- The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

- Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

- This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color by Cherríe Moraga

- When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America by Ira Katznelson

- White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo, PhD

Follow:

- Shaun King: Instagram | Twitter | Website

- Antiracism Center: Twitter

- Audre Lorde Project: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook

- Black Women’s Blueprint: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook

- Color Of Change: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook

- Colorlines: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook

- The Conscious Kid: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook

- Equal Justice Initiative (EJI): Twitter | Instagram | Facebook

- Families Belong Together: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook

- The Leadership Conference on Civil & Human Rights: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook

- MPowerChange: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook

- Muslim Girl: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook

- NAACP: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook

- National Domestic Workers Alliance: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook

- Ziwe | Instagram | (She has discussions about race with White people, kinda grilling them, every Thursday at 8 p.m. EST. Super thrilling to watch.)

Here’s Some Music Too:

Change Gonna Come - Sam Cooke

Chain Gang - Nina Simone

Missisippi Goddamn - Nina Simone

Fuck Da’ Police - N.W.A.

New Slaves - Kanye

This is America - Childish Gambino

I’m Not Racist - Joyner Lucas

Fight the Power - Public Enemy

Glory - Common, John Legend

Freedom (Live) - Beyonce

I Can’t Breathe - H.E.R.

American Oxygen - Rihanna

Brown Skin Girl - Beyonce 

+

My Playlist With A Few More

Black Artists Matter Playlist

What a large list! It looks so overwhelming! Don’t worry, you don’t have to read/watch/listen to everything. It takes a lot of effort!

  Jk. 

If you don’t want to do some homework and good deeds, then you don’t want to be an ally. And that’s perfectly fine. Just don’t lie to yourself about it.

Tough shit.

-

Discussion time.

Who are your favorite Black activists that you didn’t learn about in school?

(Mine is Huey P. Newton)

Favorite song by a Black artist? 

(Mine is Freedom by Beyonce but the live version)

Let me know what you think here

-Faith