#cerealninjakat

[cometcrystal]

cerealninjakat replied to your post: i love how you can very clearly tell who each...

My man Freddie Prinze Jr ruined his hair bleaching it to death, Robbie didn’t even try.

Put on the blonde bucket hat hair wig or don’t even bother

[laughingpinecone]

003 for James, Josie, and, just to mess with ya, John Justice Wheeler.

James

How I feel about this character: (does the bookhouse boys sign but on the other cheek and it stands for “James Hurley Defense Squad”)

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character: healthy options, none I can think of. I find his mess with Laura engaging; I find whatever it is that they wrote with him, Donna and Maddie potentially engaging (less so than him and Laura, but still engaging) but it didn’t even come close to its potential. Would it that we’d had FWWM-level laser-focused characterization throughout the show... his storyline would’ve been so good. So good.

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: Shelly!! Shelly knows what’s up. And Bobby. And the Bookhouse Boys damnit!

My unpopular opinion about this character: I fistpumped at that Shelly line.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: I wish we could have a better grasp of his social circle in the present day. I hope he can be close to Shelly and Bobby. Wish we had interactions with Audrey, way back when. And I wanna know what he’s done as a bookhouse boy!

Favorite friendship for this character: well, Freddie. But I’d like to see him bounce off literally all his generation and the entire Sheriff’s department (except Hawk because in this specific instance he’s a meanie)

My crossover ship: none I can think of...

Josie

How I feel about this character: how to take potential and compress it into a doorknob... in a world that’s not the show’s, not TSHOTP’s (still flat and racist, alas) and probably not Isabella Rossellini’s Josie either (I don’t trust them with writing her as Coop’s LI), she’s amazing. Somewhere out there.

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character: had they been written better, the doomed clash of loneliness that’s Josie/Harry would be interesting to me. I wouldn’t say I’d ship it in the sense I’d be wishing them to ride into the sunset together, but I’d be interested in the same way I’m interested in Laura/James or Laura/Bobby

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: Pete. As antagonistic relationships, Coop and Catherine

My unpopular opinion about this character: I keep spreading the word of the doorknob thing being potentially cool to anyone who’ll listen...

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: many things, but they should’ve managed to keep the centrality of both Josie and the mill plot even after the recast and trashfire LI switch. She’s as much of a Coop as they get, she deserves to be a main character!

Favorite friendship for this character: I hope she and Sam Lanterman can get along fine...?

My crossover ship: I know there’s a good joke in here but I can’t think of an

wait what Billy Zane was in Twin Peaks???

How I feel about this character: whomst

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character: shockingly enough, none whatsoever!

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: in my dreams, he’s depicted as sleazily as he is, and so is Ben, and then they can have scenes where they’re terrible together. Catherine can come too

My unpopular opinion about this character: if I squint real hard I can see some potential (see above) but it’s even further away from what’s actually on screen than the mental gymnastics we have to go through for poor Annie. Also like. He hits most of Audrey’s checkboxes of tall dark stranger etc (aside from yknow, the good taste checkbox), so I could theoretically see her fall back into her disaster pattern, same as with Coop, except this one’s sleazy and hurts her. It’s not a plot I wish for Audrey! But it would be a plot! As opposed to the black hole we got on screen.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: I wish SOME people hadn’t been childish, petty and incapable of writing characters without love interests for FIVE MINUTES. JJW wouldn’t have existed and I think to myself, what a wonderful world

Favorite friendship for this character: again, Ben

My crossover ship: it’s not even a crossover, JUDY is right there, go on boy, make like a Jeffries and poof out of reality never to be seen again unless as a metaphysical teapot (which in his case would be a massive improvement, lbr)

[michonnegrimes]

It is a scientifically proven fact that no one will ever love the Beatles more than the Beatles loved each other.

you’re absolutely right it’s part of what makes them so wonderful as people, not just musicians. the relationships between them are everything.

[corvidaedream]

Art assumptions: You watched that Pride & Prejudice movie with Colin Firth a lot, and was, at least partially, inspired by Noel Stevenson. Off hand remark: your style of inking reminds me a little of Shel Silversteins's stuff!

i actually have never seen that one, but i really liked the keira knightley one! and I loved noelle stevenson so much when i was like 14!! i mean i still enjoy her work, but i remember seeing this animated gif piece she did of an old sailor years back where the smoke from his pipe moved, and just losing my mind over how much i loved it.

ur second comment unearthed the memory of how my childhood copy of Where The Sidewalk Ends smelled and I need to go track it down now (I'm not sure if its somewhere here or at my parents' house...)

[renmorris]

✿▼■ ☯ I can't remember his name, but the OC blue rose desk guy. Whoever. I need to know more about him...

Gerald From HR

(my long suffering twin peaks oc, displaced by time and space, cursed to never age or die but spend forever working in every FBI office always. is he human? maybe! is he a spirit? maybe! is he extremely nervous and in possession of a great deal of enthusiasm for Garfield? absolutely!)

✿ - Sex headcanon: God I am not prepared to ask myself ‘does Gerald fuck?’ I have NO idea. 

▼ - Childhood headcanon: he’s vaguely Appalachian, might be from southwestern PN or thereabouts. I haven’t put…anything concrete down about Gerald in general because his existence is kind of…multiple. He’s multiple things and all of them are equally true. Hell, sometimes he’s a tulpa based on Gordon’s grandpa (in accordance with Mel’s hcs)  

■ -  Bedroom/house/living quarters headcanon: I haven’t thought much about his actual apartment but it’s probably cozy and cute. His office desk is covered in Garfield merch

☯ - likes/dislikes headcanon: 

Likes: Garfield, donuts, fresh coffee (Diane makes it best), positive reinforcement, chilling with his cat and watching television on occasions he’s allowed to exist outside of the office, chatting with Gordon about nonsense

Dislikes: having to talk to Albert about his behavior, being murdered (it’s happened a few times), being yelled at in general, when someone takes the last of the coffee and doesn’t put a new pot on! he put up a little sign and everything asking folks to be courteous and it STILL happens

[agent-randall-headley]

Oh my GAWD

I can’t explain this.

[deadendtracks]

Tagged by @ceebee-eebee

Nickname: a friend somehow started calling me Amelia Bedelia at one point, which got shortened to Bedelia, and makes zero sense in any context really. 

Star sign: Aries.

Favourite musicans:  uhhhh how many hours do you have? Radiohead, Nick Cave, David Bowie, Feist, Zoe Keating, PJ Harvey, Bjork, The National, Songs: Ohia/Magnolia Electric Company, Queens of the Stone Age, Siouxsie and the Banshees, DJ Shadow... those are just the ones that have stood the test of time. There’s always new stuff I play obsessively for awhile.

How many people do I follow: 137

Tumblr crush: probably @annaxmalina

Lucky number: Don’t have one, but I do tend to notice when the time is all one number like 1:11. I don’t know what that’s called. But you know, when you glance at the clock and it’s 2:22. That happens to me a couple of times a day. It supposedly means things.

Dream vacation: don’t really have a where so much as a what: love meeting up with people somewhere new and exploring or going for a specific reason, like a play or an exhibit or a concert. which isn’t going to happen for... a depressingly long time now.

Favourite food: I have no idea. I like most foods, food is good. I make a good lasagna.

Drink of choice: i drink a lot of water which is boring, but I have a weird fondness for carrot juice.

Instruments: played the cello through high school (because I didn’t own my own and had to give it back), played the electric bass for awhile but was never very skilled.

Languages: English. I ... have tried to learn other languages and do pretty well at reading/writing but I’m pretty sure I have audio processing issues and I have a very hard time with the hearing/speaking part. Probably if the American public school system started teaching kids another language in elementary school instead of high school/college I could have done better.

Celebrity crushes: Cillian Murphy (obviously), otherwise this is mostly “actors I admire and find super hot” because I don’t tend to pay enough attention to celebrity news to know anything about them as people: Eva Green, Tessa Thompson, Lucy Liu, Oscar Isaac, Zendaya, Cate Blanchett, Helen Mirren, Brit Marling.

Fun fact: The other day I accidentally interrupted a smol snake in the middle of trying to swallow a toad much larger than it. The toad hopped away a couple of inches and then they both just sat there waiting for me to leave and it got awkward as fuck so I left them to it.

Tagging: @weeo @bakedapplesauce @emjenenla @cerealninjakat

[aplaceofstone]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Twin Peaks Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Dale Cooper & Laura Palmer Characters: Dale Cooper (Twin Peaks), Laura Palmer Additional Tags: character-typical orientalism, Dreamscapes, Post-Canon, Symbolism, Road Trips, Future Fic, but also past fic! what year is this, trick - Freeform Summary:

Windom told Dale about the dugpas. Dale tells Laura about the dugpas. Laura doesn't say much in this one, already knowing that projection is one hell of a drug. And while they don't talk about it, they both remember peeking under the curtains only to find themselves staring at a vast and starless expanse beyond. In the end there is nothing to say.

My Trick or Treat story for @cerealninjakat!

ETA I’m told AO3 is being glitchy, does this work?

-

It's another all-night drive to nowhere. Town after town, highway after highway until time and distance lose meaning. Their whole world has shrunk to the space within the arcs of a rental car's headlights, all dark asphalt and road paint. The radio is broken. When words flow out of their throat, they come out heavy and full of static. All they fill the air with is ghosts.

"Have I told you of my encounter with the dugpas?" asks Cooper.

"The what?" asks back Laura, eager to break the silence, not quite sure this is the way to do it.

"Dugpas, Laura." He grows bold, there's an echo of an old story molding his words, it's an easy path to follow. "The dark magicians who are otherwise known as red caps, as Madame Helena Blavatsky describes them in her early theosophical writings. They are an old sect of monks who resisted the yellow-cap gelugpa reform of the fourteenth century - a deeply spiritual affair, the details of which, if I am to be completely honest, mostly elude me - and practice their drunken sorceries in the great monastery of Sakia-jong, deep in the heart of Tibet. Or… in Bhutan." He frowns, losing momentum, struggling to chase back that memory, that knowledge, the abstract idea of a geographical map, finding no help in Laura's distant gaze. "...sources differ. It is said... that they can imbue even common objects with their evil magnetism. It is a fearsome power to be sure. To hex pieces of cloth that they place on the mountain paths that lead to their monastery, so that incautious hikers will step upon them and be subject to a tremendous psychic shock, making them fall to their doom. The high path of knowledge and spirituality is indeed a treacherous one..."

"Oh, yes." She nods, slowly. It's a slow day. "I met those. Didn't think they were monks, though."

"What do you mean?"

"I met those. But I didn't think they were monks."

Cooper nods. Certainties like that, they go nowhere. One day he and Laura herself will find out what she meant by those words, if it was her memory, or his, or something they have not experienced yet, or they will not. Happens to the best of them.

Regardless, he has his tale to tell, a tale which, as he recalls, began when he appeared in the mountains, far, far away. "Laura, the mountains…"

In his memory, which is coming back to him as would a dream, one moment he was not there, the next he was, dragged through the ether by invisible forces. Summoned, is, the word, through obscure magic rituals. The mountains! The stone was old and heavy under the melting snow, banded, folded upon itself in so many layers that traced their parallel lines along the sharp cut of the mountainside; the gray horizon stretched farther than he had ever seen. Cooper stood motionless on a flat, dark rock. The pale six o'clock sun was still high in the sky. Amidst that stillness, a crimson line snaked through the valley, slowly marching toward him. It was a procession of monks, chanting in unison as they walked, and they wore red robes and red hats, and he knew what they were, and he could not move, overtaken as he was by fear. One by one, as they came next to him, they grabbed his face and observed it, tracing their fingers along his hairline and down to his jaw as if to find some secret there, a crack, a fault line. He didn't know their faces and they knew his face and they judged him. He knew, as he knows now, that there were good monks far away, in the monastery which lay at the end of the valley, whose golden domes could be seen on the horizon where the two mountains met. He thought, in his terror, that if he could get away, he would be able to take refuge there and the good monks would look after him. He thought they would show him their truths. But he could not get away. One by one, they grabbed his face and observed him, and they let him go.  Imperfect moon, they said. Imperfect moon. There was no moon in the sky, but that is what they said, and then they left. The valley was empty again. He wanted to run to the safety of the monastery, but as the last monk passed him by, he was not in the mountains anymore. Whatever mystical force had taken hold of him had loosened its grip, or another power had grown stronger. He found himself back in his bed, relieved by the simple familiarity of the objects around him, and went on to get a good cup of coffee, a fact which is positioned as the moral of the story, and maybe it is, he concludes with an awkward smile.

And then: with the gravity of the plate collision that gave birth to the mountains, this moment shifts, morphs, stretches, grows tighter and more brittle.

They linger in their motel room. The desert fills the horizon outside their window; Laura feels that she has seen this place already, with its vast clouds above and constellations of cacti on the ground, and lived this life already, and heard this story already. So it goes, on and on, swirling in the clouds, already written in secret patterns on the ground. They are tired.

"Have I told you of my encounter with the dugpas?" asks Cooper.

"The what?" asks back Laura.

"Dugpas, Laura. That is a name for the darker parts of the self. There is, you see, a tendency in occultist writings to speak in metaphors for the struggle of the human soul, so a text may describe the depraved dealings of a dark sorcerer, but when push comes to shove, what they mean to show is that all men may fall prey to those fallacies. It has long been proven that symbolic images are a way for the human brain to grasp abstract concepts that would be much too difficult to be absorbed directly. And so the Path of the Shadow, or the Left-Hand Path as it is also known, is a dark discipline for the the so-called black magicians of the Occident, but their archetype applies to us all. In a way, it is said, it stands for the selfish choices made by our ego in every little event in our lives, when we move away from universal unity and toward separation."

"Story of our lives," Laura laughs. There is no answer Cooper could offer that would make them feel better, so he offers none. Story of their lives.

Her laughter fades and he has to keep telling his story, to make sense of it. In this particular story of his life, then, the curtains parted and the mountains appeared before him.

"No, no, no, let me start again: I was standing in a small room, back then," he says, and they both know where that  back then is, and that it still looms over them, trembling red in the corner of their eye, chevron reflections in a diner's toilet. It is them. But back then they curtains and the chevron were all around them, they were a place, which usually affords a certain degree of separation from the self. Except all of a sudden the curtains came up to him, sneaking on the floor and rising up against him from all directions. His body was surrounded by heavy red velvet. He tried to fend off the attack, but he saw faces in the fabric's folds, sneering at him. What he had thought to be curtains were rows of men and women dressed in red vests and red caps, some of them old, some of them young, their faces were all harsh and marked by evil, and they were all him.

This sea of red-clad people who were him swarmed to him and parted back, and instead of the room, the mountains laid before him. The mountains! The stone was old and heavy under the melting snow, banded, folded upon itself in so many layers that traced their parallel lines along the sharp cut of the mountainside; the gray horizon stretched farther than he had ever seen. Cooper stood motionless on a flat, dark rock, trembling, feeling naked against the open expanse of the valley. The pale six o'clock sun was still high in the sky. The figures in red had swarmed the ground. A doctor came forward - long face, gray hair, a veterinarian, a distant part of Dale Cooper but a part of him nonetheless - and visited him as he stood there, paralyzed by fear. Cooper knew that this sea of red was not all of him: there was a house far away at the end of the valley, whose roofs could be seen where the two mountains met, where all the good he had done waited for him, wearing different vests and different faces, to look after him and to show him the way.

"Ever had any luck running from yourself?" asks Laura, her interest piqued.

"Oh, they let me go."

The doctor stitched him back up, shaking his head at the end of his exam. Instead of explaining himself, he fell atop him, unfolding like a piece of fabric, leaving behind only the echo of his words: he shall bring others. He was a curtain again, and so were the others, and Cooper was back there, back inside. He spent the rest of that day thinking about those faces, an instant and twenty-five years. But the curtains never showed them again. They were far away.

Once again the moment shifts. It cracks, splinters, gains new mass.

They walk, because a car will not lead them where they need to be. They have been walking for a long time. The day is cold for the season, the snow hasn't fully relented yet, but their jackets are warm and their boots well-worn. The slope is mild and they are not alone on the path, tourists and locals alike enjoying the pleasures of a sunny day.

A row of gaudy little flags planted on the edge of the path catches Dale's attention; he waves at Laura to wait for him and kneels down to check out the closest one. The fabric is smooth under his fingers. The ground is smooth under his knees and he falls off the path, down the cliff. The world goes dark. Eventually, he lands on a different path underneath, one they did not tread on their way up. Laura is following after him, balancing herself with her open arms as she steps on big, flat stones on the mountain's side. With one last hop, she is standing by his side, helping him back up with a steady hand. They look ahead, trying to find their bearings.

The mountains beckon them. The mountains! It comes back to them, as would a dream, or they come back to it, or both at once when seen from an impossible perspective encompassing both ends of the story. The stone is old and heavy under the melting snow, banded, folded upon itself in so many layers that trace their parallel lines along the sharp cut of the mountainside; the gray horizon stretches farther than he has ever seen. Cooper stands motionless on a flat, dark rock, Laura by his side. The pale six o'clock sun is still high in the sky.

There are people walking on the path above; some stop to look at them. There are rows of people on a path higher up still, and yet more on the other side. Wool hats all over, 'tis the season (although which season it is, they could not say); some of them are red. They stare, for a while. Then they walk away, carrying their red hats with them, struck by indifference, keeping their secrets, their vices, their miseries, spreading them into the world. This place does not care. They have fallen into a mirror of itself and see now with razor-sharp clarity the simplicity of it all under the tales and symbols. It is vast and terrifying.

"Have I... told you… about...?" Dale says, and they are among ghosts, and a cold fog covers his words.

"Tell me that story," says Laura with the same urgency in her voice. "How did you get out?"

"I…"

The valley ends somewhere up North, as all valleys do. But there is nothing at the end of the road, where the mountains meet. No-one has summoned them: no-one has the power to let them go. Evil exists. A desolate crossing place leads into the unknown.

"I don't think I ever did."

[whoslaurapalmer]

4, 15, 16, 10, and 27 for ATLA!

thank you sam!! 

4) Do you have a NoTP in your fandom? Are they a popular OTP?

it’s mostly not that they’re notps, it’s that i just have very little shipping stake here, ten year old!me when this was initially airing cared much more about shipping characters with OCs than any canon pairing, so 26 year old!me interacts with atla in a much more casual way, but lately i’ve seen a lot of sokka/zuko and i’m like, i get it, i suppose, but it’s just not something that vibes with me personally?? i’m assuming that one is big popular, though. 

15) Unpopular opinion about the manga/show?

you know what??? today it’s, they had like FIVE MINUTES OR SOMETHING LEFT IN THE SHOW WHEN ZUKO SAID ‘WHERE IS MY MOTHER’ LINE THERE WAS NO WAY THAT COULD’VE BEEN WRAPPED UP IN THAT TIME FRAME and to wrap it up in the comics afterwards in again i think kind of an unsatisfying way was cheap, i think the line should’ve been cut out point blank because then it went on to be baited again in korra and there was still no real actual resolution, it was like teasing a specific kind of sequel story so hard and then DIDN’T HAPPEN 

i don’t know though what they could’ve done with ursa to make any resolution truly satisfying, though. not sure. 

16) If you could change anything in the show, what would you change?

mai and ty lee with more screen time cause boy did they deserve it. i think an azula backstory episode would’ve been nice, especially in a parallel to zuko alone, and to learn more about, how azula and mai and ty lee function as friends. i mean we get that a little in the beginning of season 2, and there’s the beach episode in season 3, but. i always like more. 

10) Most disliked arc? Why?

i don’t think there’s an arc or episode or part of the show that i genuinely dislike? like, i even take some enjoyment in the great divide. (i think aang’s imaginary referee panda is cute.) i didn’t like jet much as a kid but as an adult i have more sympathy for him so even jet’s episodes aren’t something i completely dislike. 

27) Least shippable character?

goodness. ozai????? aang????? (ozai because who looks at ozai and says ‘mm yes. shippable.’ quite frankly who looks at any terrible parent character and considers them romance-shippable, in a way that’s not ‘honest character examination so it’s not even romance anyway’?????? and who looks at aang and says ‘you know what this twelve year old with the weight of the world on his shoulders needs? romance.’ ......well bryke clearly did. BUT ANYWAY) 

[random-red-ramblings]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Twin Peaks Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Characters: Dale Cooper (Twin Peaks), Laura Palmer Additional Tags: mentions of drug use Summary:

What are dreams? What is the difference between dreaming and reality? Is there one? Does it even matter?

Written for smallfandomfest

for @cerealninjakat

[laughingpinecone]

H, K, M, N, Z

H: How would you describe your style?

[ethereal whooshing], on a good day!

K: What’s the angstiest idea you’ve ever come upwith?

I’m pretty milquetoast with angst, generally it’s more of a... backhanded sadness with the characters making their peace with the sad situation at the end. There was that one time I ran with canon’s angst in the worst possible what-if for that angst. So there’s this one death row inmate who’s taking the fall for someone else, and someone is frantically trying to prove his innocence. The death row inmate is trying to make everyone else cut ties with him so they won’t mourn him when he’s gone, so he plans to send the proof of his innocence to this other person after his death. This ends up not happening in canon but it left me wondering, how would this person react to his death and this final sucker punch? So I wrote it. It was sad. Incidentally, #pleaseplayghosttrick

M: Got any premises on the back burner thatyou’d care to share?

Well I’m still writing down various ideas for that ensemble Twin Peaks postcanon...

N: Is there a fic you wish someone else wouldwrite (or finish) for you?

Yeah that’s what my #letters tag is for! o/ Yuletide here I come! ...I wish I could outsource said ensemble Twin Peaks postcanon... the singular parts are not ambitious at all but there are so many of them. It cast too big for it gotdamn runtime, dangit

Z: Major character death–do you ever write/readit? Is there a character whose death you can’t tolerate?

Depends on the character’s status in canon! I’m getting more and more soft-hearted - if I have the reassurance that they’re alright (ish) in canon, I can read sad divergences. If there’s no catharsis in sight, no thank you. Albert is a special case where he’s technically alrightish (...ISH) in canon as far as we know but I can’t do it.

[theskedaddling]

@cerealninjakat 

Sometimes i wish dib and zim were friends so we can see dumb shit like this

[corvidaedream]

Top 5/10 art supplies you like to work with. Top 5/10 favorite characters.

Crow quill pen nibs! I have like five or six of them bc they're so tiny and I keep forgetting where I put them, and they're only like 20 cents at the store so I'm slowly amassing a hoard of them. I really like the amount of control I can get with them, and how tiny the line can get.

India ink

Gouache! It's so expensive, though, so I always feel a little stressed out using it... but it's so smooth and matte...

Crayola washable markers. This isn't a joke. I love using them for doodling and thumbnails/composition stuff. they're cheap and they dont let me get bogged down in thinking about color or detail. I like starting with a yellow one and adding increasingly darker ones on top as I refine whatever I'm doing. I have no idea when or how I started doing this, but it's a thing I do now.

Pentalic Traveler Pocket Journal. I've been using these babies on and off since I was 14. If you wear pants from the men's section, they fit perfectly in the front pocket, or most coat pockets, or a tiny shoulder bag. They take watercolor decently enough, take glue very well. They have a secret pocket in the back cover, and I love a good secret pocket.

Magazine clippings

Risograph. We have one at school, and I love it so much. I'm going to be devastated when I graduate and have to actually hunt down a print shop that has one and pay to use it...

Cintiq. Another thing we have at school that I will almost definitely not have access to when I graduate bc they're so big and expensive.

I bought a bottle of Black 2.0 paint last semester for a project and it's absolutely lovely.

I'm starting to get into colored pencils lately also.

[renmorris]

cerealninjakat replied to your post “wow I can’t get over the fact that riverdale had the nerve to name an...”

I just learned that there are literally no references to Twin Peaks, but a character actually just walking on fire. I'm weazing.

I JUST SAW THAT...that’s...god that’s so good. that’s so fucking stupid

[life-on-the-geek-side]

Stop @cerealninjakat. This made me cringe so hard

My brother hates Twin Peaks, so he threatened me with the prediction that, 10 years down the line, the CW will reboot it with zero of the original cast or crew, music, props, sets, etc, and all of the characters are recast with younger, “more attractive” actors. Cooper is played by Stephen Amell and has hot, pg-rated sex with the 20-something, cleavage-exposing Log Lady, (who is only called such because she tripped over a log once in highschool and doesn’t actually talk to a log she carries around) all while the new pop hit single of the summer blares in the background. All of the male characters, Cooper included, make prostitution jokes as they uncover Laura’s past, who is unironically depicted as a sultry femme fatale. Nobody in the Black Lodge actually talks backwards, but all of that is informed to us as Coop recalls his dreams to Harry over beer, rather than coffee. They also refer to one another as “dude” and “bro.” Characters, even the Lodge spirits, make pop culture references to Taylor Swift, Game of Thrones, and The Walking Dead. Albert is white. BOB and Leland’s possession is used as a segway for a Supernatural crossover. Writers actually provide definitive, hastily put-together answers, and season 2 ends on a happy note.

[deadendtracks]

cerealninjakat

In my experience, h/c and whump are both often for characters that *could* have experienced suffering at a point in the narrative, but didn't, and there was wasted potential for growth or an interesting new angle. Agreeing with laughingpinecone, whump is kinda h/c without the comfort, but it is... easy to go overboard with it.

Like, I've seen it used to write torture porn (sometimes literally) about cute-but-troubled male characters that act too stoic sometimes. How exploitive something is can be subjective, but I find it's always reliant on context. I.e. introducing needless drama and abuse to a story that initially did not have it, or did so in a very cautious way.

Thanks for the response! Yeah alot of the genre in general is about digging into those missed opportunities for various reasons.

It's interesting to trace the conception that whump is h/c that has gone too far, overboard, into an exploitative place where there is needless drama, shading all the way to "problematic" in the more political sense.

It all feels very subjective to me so I'm very interested in where that line gets drawn and by whom, especially if there's a trend towards labeling something as "problematic."

This is the first time “torture porn” as a label has come up, and I’m also interested in what elements turn a fic from h/c to torture porn, I guess. Someone else called it “dead dove do not eat” which is a new fandom term to me as well, and that seems to have less of a value judgment connotation to it while possibly describing the same thing. That term seems to have developed because people clearly labeled their fics with all the possible triggers and warnings and were still getting complaints, which seems to imply that there’s some policing of what’s allowed in general going on (which I was aware of in genres other than h/c or whump).

It’s the value judgment aspect I’m really fascinated by. In discussion, it seems to be on a spectrum that goes from “vaguely embarassing, guilty pleasure, self-indulgent, cringey” all the way to “exploitative and problematic and bad.”