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youwontlikethisblog · 3 years ago

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A lil rant

After watching this episode a fourth time and certain scenes a lot and thinking about it a lot I wanted to explain further than I did in the last post.

I focused a lot on explaining the consensual aspect of their first time and explaining the motivation behind Armando's actions as well as Betty's, but didn't elaborate much more, for one like I said I'm an insomniac and was out of it lol, try writing a post for nearly twelve hours and tell me you wouldn't either. I do see that I should probably draft a lot of my "analysis" when I write them because I am not all there so I don't explain things as well so I'll start doing that so the post are a lot more consistent and clear as opposed to me starting with one point and never finishing it. Anyway now that this disclaimer is out of the way here are my thoughts on said episodes as a writer.

Many times when writing we have to revisit our work as we are writing it. This allows us to pick up on certain plot holes and mistakes as well as even figure out some plot twist in the future. Often times when you know your characters and the moral and ending of your story, the story ends up writing itself and forming it's own path. I've mentioned in past posts that the first draft is to write with tears and blood and the when that's over you clean up your crime scene.

Now, all writers are imperfect and we make mistakes, duh, so there's inconsistent things in this show, like the dog, Camila, Beatriz Valencia, etc.. etc.. however when it comes to the main character's personality there really isn't much of a flaw, in fact they are very realistic and consistent, the actors did a phenomenal job bringing said characters to life, one of my all time favorite details of the characters in this show is how they all have ticks. Guti Guti does that thing with his lips, Patricia flips her hair, Betty worries her lips a lot and when she is explaining certain things she often has this really adorable thing where she rocks on her feet and speaks very certain of what she's saying. Armando has so many ticks that it's hard to keep up with them. Point is they all have so many realistic behaviors that it's hard not to notice them and even harder to disregard them as not part of the story when they are. They are a huge part of being able to credit or discredit the motives and actions that move these characters.

For that exact reason Betty's character in the past few episodes was so heavily important to understand where she was coming from. It wasn't just that she was drinking that got her all riled up and excited that night. It wasn't just that she missed him days without him made her longing and desire increase ten fold. There is always a cause and effect.

What caused Betty to behave this way? How did that effect her relationship? What caused Armando to react that way? How did that effect their relationship? Most importantly, how did this affect them both?

There's a clear understanding of who Armando is and what his secret desire and motive is to make Betty fall in love with him. Though his pride and ego are so huge he can't see past it to dissect and understand his feelings aside from the prejudice he has against women who are not the status quota, in the mildest of all of that there lays one true objective: Betty's heart. We mustn't forget that Armando IS worried about Eco Moda and most certainly that he never wants to admit that he was wrong.

However much like a future dream demonstrates it, Eco Moda is just a farce for his feelings towards Betty. Though outwardly he is motivated by the desperate desire to be validated and loved by his parents, to be better than Daniel, and not admit that he was wrong, inwardly what really pushes him and makes him go after Betty is his desire for her.

How does this start off? He blurs the line at work, where things no longer are just professional coming from him. He makes certain achievements of Betty's in her profession and even morale his own, as if they were a team facing the challenges together. He inserts himself into Betty's life and he inserts Betty into his personal life a lot. With his affairs, his feelings regarding the company and his worries. He trust her as his confidant, as his best friend. He trust her with his feelings more than he does with his actual best friend and his fiancé and this all starts days before the plan is even a plan to him.

The cause of this? Betty's faithfulness and unconditionality.

The effect? He feels like he is special to Betty, as he said himself he had been so special with her(If you haven't yet I suggest that you read the posts Nicolas Mora, Un Amigo, Betty, My Betty! Parts 1-3).

As their relationship progressed his feelings continued to grow to the point that this night, not after he slept with her but before he did, he fell in love. It was when Betty was being vulnerable and apologizing to him for having been overbearing that he fell in love.

However Betty had already been in love with him, way before. She knew him in and out. She knew the good and the bad. She accepted him as is and all she wanted to do was give him her affection and love and that's what she's done, it's all she's done and this feeds a cycle of desire and motivation for Armando where her love motivates him to change, it inspires him to be a better version of himself to make Betty happy because seeing her happy makes him happy, it challenges him to change his own prejudice of society and people. She is a safe haven and she achieves that, how wasn't he supposed to fall in love with her this night when she does exactly that?

Betty's cause to behave like this was her conversation with Aura Maria days before where she questioned if Armando felt more for her than just admiration. She questioned if he too desired her. The effect of that conversation was her testing to see if Armando did in fact feel the same way, that he was on the same page.

It is also so satisfying to see the parallels! Oh how wonderful they are!

The extreme contrast between Betty and Marcela are so visible, so vivid, so in your face that you cannot say that Marcela is a victim of Betty's.

I won't defend Betty's actions for involving herself with a man that was in a contract with another woman(I say contract because it was not an engagement. What Marcela and Armando had was a contract, he did her the favor of marrying her and she owned him.) I understand that she is insecure but she was always shown to have morals and ethics above all, where did those go? Out the window that's where. However I still love her so imma be a supportive mother to Betty and call her out but lend her my two shoulders to cry on, okay?

Moving on.

Betty did not and I will repeat this BETTY DID NOT MANIPULATE OR FORCE ARMANDO TO SLEEP WITH HER.

We get two contrast of the exact same scenario for that exact reason people.

Betty and Marcela literally ask the exact same questions to Armando: Am I making you uncomfortable? Am I bothering you? Do you not want to be with me?(Marcela asked Do you want me to leave?)

However they ask it with different intentions and motivation.

Marcela never pays attention to Armando's body language. Instead she focuses solely on herself, her feelings, and what she wants, this is not a person who is insecure, this is not a person who has no self-worth. This is a person who has a huge ego. MARCELA IS SELF-CENTERED AND SELFISH TO THE CORE. For this exact reason she refuses to let go of Armando because she believes that she deserves him not as a human being but as a trophy to satisfy herself that she tamed a man who sluts it out left and right.

This night we get to see that.

While Betty asked him these questions to make sure he was on the same page as her, that he too desired her just as she desired him; Marcela asked these questions to trap him. She wanted to be like "Aha! You do have a lover! Now I'm going to make your life a living hell because I was right!"

No sis, calm your tits, you need a therapist.

While Betty was legit asking for it, for Armando to consent, Marcela was asking for him to satisfy her. There is a huge, and I mean huge difference between asking for consent and wanting to be satisfied.

Ironically my current WIP pushed me down a rabbit hole on information that explains the dynamics of a survivor and a romantic relationship and how to be a supportive S.O and a lot of the articles I read mentioned the importance of intimacy.

What is intimacy? It is forming a friendship with your S.O and establishing honesty and respect. It comes above the physical aspect of the relationship because it makes you feel safe when things are leading to something physical.

Marcela and Armando don't have that. Armando has even told Marcela that he doesn't want her to have his intimacy. When I first saw that scene I was like "Take a look at this an*s! Why is she with him?" and then I saw why... Marcela be blabbering his business to everyone. She tells everyone that Armando is unfaithful(I mean in that aspect he do be deserving that) but it goes so much deeper than that. The reason he cheats on her is because he is trying to escape, have control, and feel validated and then that feeds her possessiveness over him, which then feeds his desire to cheat(@el-moscorrofio-y-el-mercachifle already made a meme about that lol). She never does anything to gain his trust, instead she demands it and when she doesn't get it she has this "Aha! It's because you're a cheating whore and I'll destroy the woman but stay with you because you belong to me you puny little man! But I will also ruin you if you leave me!" Their relationship sucks. It's honestly just a moral enemies to sex trope. That's it. Like there's nothing there.

Which is not the case for Betty and Armando.

They in fact do have intimacy. They talk about their feelings, they face trials together, as a team, they push one another and inspire one another. They were friends(a lil more than friends doe) long before. In the scene where they are talking in the hotel room Betty tells him she understand him, that she understands that he doesn't feel that sort of attraction towards her and just because she loves him he isn't obligated to sleep with her.

I want to repeat this in cause people are still confused or saying Betty forced Armando to sleep with her: She said :YOU ARE NOT UNDER THE OBLIGATION TO HAVE RELATIONS WITH ME JUST BECAUSE I WANT TO.

What does that sound like to you?

Imma wait for crickets.

When Armando then tries to engage into relations she pulls away and tells him that he doesn't have to.

She is literally placing his needs, his feelings, before her own, however Armando has just barely fallen in love and he wants to. He wants to sleep with her. He wants to engage in fornication and sinful actions with Betty.

He gets frustrated when Betty tells him that he doesn't have to and we know it's because he hates it when people, especially Betty, invalidate his feelings or efforts. The fact that Betty now was telling him no upset him because he did want to sleep with her, however he did not pressure her either. He explained why he did want to sleep with her and when she consented and he too consented they sinned.

However later that night we get almost the exact same scenario but with a different tone.

Marcela, after they argued, sits by his bed where he is laying down and goes to take off his tie and tells him that she desires him. Armando was laying still he told her he was tired, wanted to wash up and go to sleep before she did this. He did not look nor welcome her actions, which is different from when Betty told him that she wanted to make him feel better. In that scene Armando asked her how she was going to do that and when she said with her kisses, they both leaned in to kiss. This time Armando just lays there, like all the other times before but he looks at her with a cold stare.

When he jumped back from Betty when they were making out, Betty asked him what was wrong and he expressed himself.

However this time when Marcela asks him her tone is different. This time she's angry at him as she yells at him to deny that he has a lover now.

Marcela wasn't looking to be with her man, she was looking for her man to be with her. She wanted him to prove to her that he hadn't been sluting it out(like how was he supposed to prove that when she been knew that he still went and slept with her after he slept with whomever? Like she knew he did that and she still consented? WHAT? which y'know feeds the notion that she just wanted her socks rocked) but it contradicts what she says the next day to Patsy Pats at the office. Marcela just wanted him to satisfy her. She wasn't looking for it to be team work, she was looking for it to be about her.

This is why that night was so important. These little scenes, movements, play on words and parrales are there to show us two different relationships; a healthy one and a toxic one.

Marcela didn't respect Armando's no, she just had no other option because this time he wasn't just laying there letting her do what she wanted, this time her emotional manipulation didn't work, this time her seggsual manipulation doesn't work so unless she was gonna r-word him than she had no other choice but to be pissed about it.

Betty did respect Armando's no. She tried to explain herself and apologize to him. She even double checked with him when he told her he did want to. Betty was willing to not have relations with Armando if he didn't want to, for the sake of their relationship and what they have, she would not jeopardize their relationship just to get her socks rocked nor would she make him feel guilty for it.

It wasn't a happy little accident that we get these parrales in one episode.

Understanding the cause and effect helps us determine this.

Understanding the character's inner desires and dilemas helps us understand this.

So no, once again, Betty did not force Armando to sleep with her. Everything before, during, and after that scene shows us and tells us this.

We get both a cause and effect with the added bonus of show, not tell.

This novela reads like a book, so there isn't much of a speculation when we are being shown to compare both of these relationships when they are saying the same things, in the same scenario but with different tone and reaction from the character of interest in both scenarios.

The purpose of this novela was to break social norms of how certain women and men are presented in the media and to question why that is. It isn't simply a love story, if it was I wouldn't be able to watch it as stuff like that makes me want to puke, again this is all a funny ironic joke that someone is playing on me.

[EDIT:

Another key things to take into account(I mentioned it in the Forgive Me post) is that even Mario's tactic to manipulate Armando had nothing to do with Eco Moda or his ego. It had everything to do with Betty's feelings and Armando's desire to make her happy. That same day Mario took notice of Armando's behavior towards Betty at the office and the guilt he felt over forgetting her B-day. Mario played with Armando's feelings and he pushed his buttons to see just how much it mattered to Armando.

When Armando said at the bar that he couldn't go through with it, Mario told him he was convinced, a sincere reaction of his, and he didn't have to do it anymore. However when Armando said he couldn't do that to Betty because she was really looking forward to it, Armando was smiling when he was talking about her enthusiasm to spend time with him, and Mario took notice of that.

So again, Armando did want to sleep with Betty, he just didn't want to do it under deceit or manipulation. He didn't want to be Betty's "First" under those conditions and Betty didn't force him.

My rant is over.

[EDIT: On the Forgive Me post I went back and did two corrections, they are in bold so if y'all want to read them, that would be awesome :)]

#don armando #armando mendoza #armando ysblf #betty pinzón solano #beatriz pinzón solano #beatriz pinzon solano #betty ysblf #yo soy betty la fea #morch #marcela ysblf #marcela valencia

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missroserose · 3 years ago

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Fic Writer Question Meme!

Thanks for the tag, @venhedish—I love stuff like this! I'd apologize in advance for how long this is likely to be, but I suspect we share that tendency, haha.

How many works do you have on AO3?

20 total. I've been publishing there since late 2018, so about three years now. That sounds right for me—I'm way too perfectionist to ever be prolific.

What's your total AO3 word count?

125,744! Apparently it takes me three years to write a novel's worth of words I feel are worth publishing...which also sounds right.

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Three, primarily: The Lost Boys, Stranger Things, and Supernatural. Mostly Stranger Things, since I was pretty enmeshed in the Harringrove community for about a year and a half, though these days I'm hanging out more with the SPN crowd. We'll see if that translates to more fics.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

1.) Sunflower (524) 2.) Quickly, look away (506) 3.) We'll Become Who We Meant To Be (383) 4.) Too Young To Fall In Love (333) 5.) When the Waters Start to Cross (283)

First, what's not surprising: all are Stranger Things/Harringrove works. I'm a little surprised to see that "Sunflower" had edged out "Quickly" as my most-kudosed story, for years it was the other way around—but maybe that's actually not that surprising—part of the reason I haven't been as active in the fandom is that I really love the darker and more complex renditions of Billy Hargrove's character (a la "Quickly") and since S3 aired it seems like the fashion has moved more towards more lighthearted fluff (a la "Sunflower"). Still, both are pretty undemanding smut, so it makes sense that they're on top; similarly, I'm not surprised to see "Too Young To Fall In Love" in the top five either.

I am a little surprised that "We'll Become Who We Meant To Be" is #3—it's honestly close to genfic, there's only the tiniest moment of hinted-at attraction in there. I'm not mad about it, I honestly feel like it's one of my better efforts; on the other hand, "Wake Me Up" was in a similar vein and it's close to the bottom. I guess there's just no telling what's going to catch on...in fairness, a 25K outsider POV novella is a much bigger ask than a 3K short story.

Honestly, I'm probably most surprised at "When the Waters Start to Cross" cracking the top five—it's a 52K+ WIP and a profoundly complex atmospheric existential horror/romance, which is, like, five strikes against it. I'm not mad about it, though—I love that fic, even if it is a huge time and energy suck, and it definitely contains some of my best writing.

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I do! Sometimes it takes me a while, but I genuinely appreciate people taking the time to leave feedback (even if it's just a string of emoji!). And every once in a while I'll get really thoughtful or incisive comments that spark whole conversations—that's one of the best reasons to write fic!

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

Hmm...to be honest, nothing immediately comes to mind; I love angst but tend to want it to serve a purpose, i.e. it gets a character closer to who they want to be. So most of my endings are at least hopeful. *checks list* It looks like probably my angstiest ending is also my first fic posted, "Blue Masquerade". Poor Michael.

Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you've written?

I don't currently write crossovers; I wouldn't rule it out, but frankly I haven't come across an idea that appeals to me. Waaaaaay back in the mists of time I had a Daria/Harry Potter crossover that I was actually pretty proud of, but I got about as far as getting them to Hogwarts and then kinda ran out of ideas, so I never posted it.

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Not that I can think of? I'm not big-time enough to get hate, haha. Worst I ever got was some rando asking for top or bottom tags, which I just ignored, and one person on "We'll Become" who was like "I don't like this pairing but you did a good job", which kinda had me like ??? thanks, I guess? I did get one comment on "Quickly, look away" from someone who felt like it was in a different headspace from the fic I wrote it as a sequel to, but that didn't strike me as hate, it's a perfectly fair observation.

Do you write smut? If so what kind?

So first off, yes, and second...I recently came across this great Garth Greenwell quote that really gets at what I'm trying to do when I write smut:

In America in 2019 we are inundated with images of bodies to an absolutely unprecedented degree—images of eroticized bodies, images of sexual bodies; the Internet makes all our fantasies visible, and it trains us in new fantasies. And yet it also seems to me that our culture suffers from a dearth of representations of embodiedness, by which I mean of bodies imbued with consciousness. I’m not at all antiporn, but sometimes pornography (maybe especially Internet pornography, with its arms race of extremity) seems to want to evacuate bodies of personhood, to present them as objects. I think literature is the best technology we have for representing consciousness, and so I think there’s a kind of intervention that literature can perform in representing sex explicitly: it can reclaim the sexual body as a site of consciousness.

"Embodied porn" is probably the best description I can come up with—I love writing sex precisely because it's such a charged form of communication (Greenwell's words again), because there are things a character can do and say in that context that they never would normally. Like, sex acts are great and all, but what really does it for me is what's going on in their head, what's the history that brought the character to this point, how're they handling the inherent vulnerability and intimacy of this incredibly risky but potentially rewarding moment. Kink (whether through roleplaying, props, costumes, or whatever) is really just another way of adding to that personal meaning, since without the characters' reactions any trappings are meaningless.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of!

Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, although I'd love to work with a translator someday (whether with fic or another context)—I'm fascinated by the inherent puzzles in translating between languages, especially with informal speech and its many idioms and cultural references.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Not yet! I'd be open to the idea, but it definitely has to be with the right person...

What's your all time favorite ship?

Isn't that basically like asking a mom to choose her favorite kid? Seriously, I like different things about all of them...which one's getting the most attention depends entirely on mood and headspace and other effectively random variables.

What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

I don't have any I've given up on entirely, yet. Even Waters, as beastly complicated as it is, I've been ruminating on and adding to and arranging in my head lately...

What are your writing strengths?

Atmosphere, character, dialogue. I've said it before, I'm a capital-R Romantic at heart: I love writing settings that reflect and reinforce a character's headspace—while also implying what said character might be missing in their viewpoint.

Something I've noticed—my husband worked for years as a penetration tester, which meant he would regularly have to talk his way past people on a moment's notice. So, unsurprisingly, we both notice people, but he tends to observe their presentation (clothing, accessories, especially ones that're markers of social class and group belonging that allow him to tailor his approach), whereas I notice what they say and how they say it—and, often, what they don't say.

What are your writing weaknesses?

I suddenly feel like I'm in a job interview, haha. Perfectionism is a big one—I have a tendency to feel hopeless and quit if something's taking too long, rather than persisting until I get it sorted, even though some of my best work is stuff where I persisted. Also, I'm big on emotional intensity—which isn't a bad thing, necessarily, but I sometimes read back over my stuff and I'm like "geez, Ambrosia, ease up a bit"...I could definitely use some comic relief in my writing sometimes, but I think I'm often too insecure to try it.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I don't have any in particular—I rarely do it myself, because I don't trust myself to do it properly. (Perfectionism again!)

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Daria, way back in the day. My work is still up on FF.net...sometimes I wonder if anyone's ever going to dig it up and confront me with it, haha. (I doubt anyone will ever care that much...I guess I'm more just curious if my style from twenty years ago is recognizably me.)

What's your favorite fic you've written?

If we're talking about finished fics, probably either "Wake Me Up" or "Young At Heart"—they're both pretty oddball, but both required a fuckton of work and both came out pretty close to what I wanted. But "Waters" is my biggest baby...maybe I'll open up Act III to work on today...

Thanks again for the tag, Ven! I'm going to tag @ihni, @redmyeyes, @twobrokenwyngs, @skybound2, @sambrosia, @shewritesdirty, @introvertia, @coffeeandchemicals, and @anarchist-billy—if you're up for some rumination, I'd love to hear your thoughts on your writing!

#author stuff #my writing #fanfic culture #about me #tag games

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galacticlamps · 3 years ago

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Tagged by @the--highlanders ! Thanks!

How many works do you have on AO3?

What’s your total AO3 word count?

76,200

(oh what a nice even number - I should try to mess that up as soon as possible, shouldn’t I?)

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Aw man is this intentionally worded to be really hard to answer? I get that it says ‘written’ and not ‘posted’ but then what constitutes a ‘fandom?’ I definitely wrote fics for stuff I was interested in long before I even knew the word ‘fic’ - I did it throughout my childhood, and then in high school, and while I didn’t do it as much in college, it still happened from time to time. So a lot of the books/movies/tv shows/plays/musicals I wrote things for aren’t really fandoms, and frankly, I had to check my old folder just now to even remember some of them existed. I’ll just list the ones that I know for sure had fandoms, since that’s more fun (and embarrassing), right?

Obviously Doctor Who, classic and modern, Torchwood, Sherlock Holmes (ironically more of these seem to be about the books, but yes, I will admit, some for that tv show too), Les Mis, a couple different Marvel comics & movies, Good Omens, hell, I even found a Night Vale fic in there just now.

And I know there are other older things not even in that folder, some of which never made it to a computer at all, so if I had to ballpark a number I’d probably say around 25ish but really, who knows?

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Across the Gap

On the Spot

Expectations

Shards of Memories & Fragments of Glass

Itemized

(this was fun, I’d never noticed Ao3 even had a stats page until now lol)

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I try to! Sometimes I take a long time to do so but for the most part, I usually get around to it. The rare exception would be if I first saw the comment when I was super busy/distracted and then felt like way too much time passed before I noticed it again, that it might be awkward if I said something at that point.

I do genuinely enjoy hearing what people think, but I’m also weirdly terrified of making anyone feel like they have to reply to my comments. I know that’s probably a little strange, but it’s actually a large part of why I made this Ao3 account in the first place - my original one, from high school, is followed by some long-time friends of mine who aren’t interested in this fandom, some of whom are involved in art & writing professionally. The thought of anyone like that reading something I wrote out of friendliness or even just curiosity and potentially having to pretend they liked it for the same reasons stressed me tf out, so I like having this virtually anonymous one because I can relax knowing that anyone who reads or interacts with something I wrote has probably done so only because they wanted to, rather than feeling obligated, and there’s no pressure on them to be nice to me about it if anything I write or post annoys them - so I really hope nobody who does just know me as an anonymous blog has ever worried about offending me by not replying to something, trust me, I’m perfectly happy with it!

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

I don’t think I’ve really written any angsty endings? I guess the answer would have to be Reckless just because it involves the characters arguing about sad/weighty things and there isn’t really any solution to those issues - but even then I think I ended it with a kind of acceptance that stops it from really qualifying as angst? I also set it in the the same universe as other fics, so maybe that doesn’t even count as an ending? Am I that bad at ending things on angst? Lol

Do you write crossovers? If so what’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Obviously none of the fics I’ve posted are crossovers but I’m trying to think now if any of my WIP’s are - I’ve definitely poached setting/premise ideas from other media, but in terms of actual crossovers . . . I’ve got a few cross-era or cross-Doctor, a few involving Torchwood, but that’s already the same universe, so the only thing that’d qualify as a true crossover would be some vague pieces of a fic where Jamie, Zoe, and Two end up on the Enterprise, since I think the 60s series of Star Trek and Dr Who feel kind of compatible, don’t they? In fact, aren’t there like officially licensed crossover comics or something? Or did I make that up? Idk, and the ideas are very loose, so it’s not much of a WIP either

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Nope, never

Do you write smut? If so what kind?

I’ve never written smut, but I’m wondering if it’s possible that could change soon. There’s a longish multi-chapter fic I’ve been working on for a frankly embarrassing amount of time, and the plot does call for a sex scene at one point towards the end, but I can’t seem to make up my mind on how - uh, I guess the word is explicit? - it should get. I know I could easily do a fade to black/implication thing, but it’s kind of a source of contention and anxiety for the characters, so to skip over writing the actual scene and just revisit them afterwards rings of “and they slept together and now everything’s fine!” which feels kinda cheap to me - in this context, anyway - and not the right payoff for a long fic that’s otherwise more of an interpersonal drama/slightly a period piece, if I had to place it in a genre. I feel like my aversion to actually writing the scene might just be prudishness I should get over, or maybe just self-doubt, because I know I’d rather have a well-written, funny, character-development-supporting sex scene than nothing at all, but since I’ve never had any interest in writing a scene like that before, I don’t know if I can do it well, and I also don’t want to ruin a fic I’m otherwise proud of by doing it badly... ugh I have to figure this out

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I seriously doubt it

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope

What’s your all time favorite ship?

I mean, it’s gotta be Two & Jamie. I’ve shipped things before with varying levels of investment, but I’ve never been able to use the term ‘otp’ in a literal sense until I came across them, and now it’s already basically gone out of fashion, go figure!

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

I’m not sure if I have one? My WIP doc is huge, but I don’t actually intend to get around to finishing everything in it, so I’d like to think that anything I’ve currently singled out to complete can actually get done.

That said, I do have a few AU’s that I don’t really plan to finish, but it might be cool if I could. Two of them are for all the main + some supporting characters of the Second Doctor’s era - one’s a modern day school teachers AU, and the other is a typical fantasy/fairy tale AU. Another is just Two/Jamie, based on Doctor Faustus (specifically the Marlowe play version) but right now there are two different versions of the ending coexisting in my head. I’ve written parts of scenes & some gen. backstory for all of those ideas, but I don’t know if I’ll ever try to finish them, or what form a finished product would even take - a series of one-shots set in the same universe? one long multi-chapter fic with some kind of overarching plot? And the amount of context/worldbuilding a big AU like these would require might not make them very appealing fics for people to read, so maybe it is better if I just keep them to myself, since in my head I already know what’s going on in those worlds lol.

What are your writing strengths?

I honestly don’t know. I haven’t had a creative writing class since middle school, and since then I’ve only ever shown creative writing to others in a fandom context, so it’s been a while since I’ve discussed it or gotten critical feedback. I suppose when I work in other arts or even academic writing contexts, people usually say I’m kind of insightful or at least detail oriented, which might just be another way of saying I overthink things, but I like to imagine I’m decent at finding little points of interest to expand upon.

What are your writing weaknesses?

If you’ve read this far I feel like you must know what I’m about to say: I do not know how to be concise.

Usually when I’m writing a fic, I put down the dialogue first on its own, leaving out the action of the scene and whatever plot/context led there, even if I’ve already figured all of that out. But then when I go to add those things in, they’re always longer than I wanted them to be. I don’t mind writing something long, but I don’t want my fics to be a slog to get through either, and there can be a point at which the stuff I’ve added for context overwhelms the stuff that I wanted the fic to be about in the first place, so it becomes a structural/proportion issue too. I haven’t completely given up on any fics because of this yet, but there’s one I’ve been struggling with for a couple months now - probably because I’m even second-guessing myself on which scenes need to be written out and which can just be referenced like a recap. Hopefully I figure that one out soon.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

((this is karma isn’t it? i posted a fic last week with two words of gaelic in it and was worried about that and now this is karma))

In general, I don’t want to do it. I feel like you’ve gotta have a really good grasp of a language to write dialogue & speech patterns for someone who’s a native speaker, and since I’m far from fluent in any language the characters I write for are, I wouldn’t feel confident writing any significant amount of dialogue in, say, Gaelic.

As a sidenote, though, I kinda love it when other people do it, particularly for Jamie. Irish (Gaeilge) and Scottish (Gàidhlig) are both languages I’ve wanted to learn for a long time, because my family’s fresh out of living speakers of either & I think that’s a shame, but I started with Irish and at the moment I’m still very much learning it. As different as they are, it still helps me understand parts of lyrics or texts that I come across in Gàidhlig fairly frequently, so when it comes up in a fic I get to feel like I’m being responsible and practicing, and it’s great when I can actually understand what’s being said.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

I’m gonna go with Harry Potter even though that’s probably not a perfectly accurate answer - it’s almost certainly the first thing that has a fandom that I ever wrote for, but it was in a notebook when I was a kid and never something that I even typed on a computer, much less posted online or shared with other members of a fandom. But even then, I’m sure it wasn’t the first pre-existing fictional universe I ever set an original story in, because I did that a lot when I was a kid, it’s just hard to remember those clearly or on any kind of timeline.

What’s your favorite fic that you’ve written?

I’m very partial to Across the Gap, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that ranked first on the kudos thing above - but I’ve also got a soft spot for So Merrily We’ll Sing. It’s so self-indulgent it feels silly saying ‘it was so easy to write!’ but I guess having a fic that’s already just 100% headcaonons and fluff tied together by a song you really love does prevent it from being much of a labor (I also managed to refrain from making that one unnecessarily long, so that’s another win there)

tagging @terryfphanatics and anyone else who wants to do it - sorry I’m bad at remembering whose tumblr goes with whose Ao3 account, but I really would be interested to read this if anyone else feels like answering them!

#oh boy that was long #sorry #also sorry if the 13 is really big for some reason #i dont know how it got that way so i dont know how to change it #it doesnt look like that when i edit the post only when i save it #not fic but fic talk

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villa-kulla · 3 years ago

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Fic Writer Review

Tagged by @fontainebleau22, thanks for the tag, sorry for the delay!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

26 at the moment.

2. What’s your total AO3 wordcount?

722 309. I’d have thought it would be more considering how long some of mine seem to get, although looking at other people’s answers to this meme, I guess 26 isn’t really a huge number!

3. How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

My first fic ever was a little Lord of the Rings experiment for an exchange thing. But my first proper dip into writing for a fandom would have been Breaking Bad, where I wrote for a couple of years before it felt like my ideas had run their course. Then there was a Kingsman fic, and then Mag7 where - similarly to BrBa - wrote feverishly for a couple years until it felt like the well had been plumbed. Oh yeah and then jumped into the Marvel fandom to drop one Marvel fic before immediately jumping back out lol.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

So the Marvel fic has officially just become my most kudoed fic, which is kind of hilarious considering it was a SUEZ! CANAL! FIC! But in my opinion, a good one lol. So yeah, it would be 1. The SamBucky Suez Canal fic, 2. The Kingsman soccer AU, 3. Desert Sand, 4. Chisolm’s 7, and 5. Blue Devils. That last one surprises me, but I guess it was an early one for the fandom, so I think it became an automatic read.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not

I do! It’s possible I’ve missed some here and there, but generally I try to get them all.

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

I don’t think any of them! While my fics definitely include angst, ideally it’s still in a fun way, or at minimum, bittersweet? I don’t generally want the last taste in a reader’s mouth to be angst. ALTHOUGH. I really really wanted to include an epilogue to the selkie fic that’s kind of angsty. Basically the story would end, but then many years later we’d see an old man get off a bus on the coastal road, carrying a suitcase. He’d be wearing a suit, clearly back from many years travelling. He’d walk to the coast, back over a hill where there’d once been a little fishing cottage, long since torn down. He’d walk down to the beach and into a little cove where he’d kneel by the water he knew better than anyone. Opening the suitcase he’d take out a box which he’d then empty into the ocean, ashes spreading across the water. He’d take out a folded bundle of cloth and wrap it around his shoulders. Then he’d dive into the water, disappearing into the waves, leaving nothing but an empty suitcase behind him, and a folded pile of clothes.

I loved that ending but I’m still not 100% sure if it was keeping in tone with the actual ending, so I left it out. Maybe one day I’ll go and add it as en extra chapter snippet.

7. Do you write crossovers? If so what’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I don’t know if I’d call them ‘crossovers’ exactly, although I did stick Goody and Billy into a Some Like it Hot ‘jazz band on a train’ situation, and I also did a Breaking Bad one that used some elements of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Those feel more like ‘AUs’ though. I like situational crossovers, but I’ve never been super into fics where characters from different fandoms actually interact.

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Thankfully not. The most off-putting comment I’ve gotten was someone who - despite being very complimentary - decided to make a full-on laundry list all the anachronisms in a chapter lmao, like what. Stuff like "interesting that this character used this expression when XYZ would only been invented 10 years later!” etc. I’m positive they didn’t realize how it came off, but still, that was kind of hilarious in its.....obliviousness lol. It was special.

9. Do you write smut? If so what kind?

I do. And I guess I’ve done the full spectrum of ‘fade to black’ to ‘describe every bead of sweat in pearlescent detail’. It really depends on what the fic calls for! I’ve done some I’m quite proud of tbh, but there are others I’d like to go back and have another stab at, just because they felt kinda cookie-cutter.

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of!

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

There’ve been a couple! I can’t remember which ones specially, but I had some people asking to translate some Breaking Bad ones, and I think a Mag7 one too. I remember someone messaging to ask permission like “We love your fics in Russia!” and that was a very sweet and wild thing to hear.

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes, I wrote one with @yoporkchopsandwiches! Our Victorian opium dens Breaking Bad AU lol. I was just thinking of that recently actually and remembering how fun it was to read what the other wrote! We plotted out most of it together, and then took turns writing chapters or scenes. But of course while writing you come up with other details or ideas, so we’d then present the new chapter to the other with all the new bits added. And it was so fun to read what the other came up with like ‘omg no way didn’t see that coming/good idea!’ and then picking up their idea from there. In that sense it was almost like improv but for writers.

13. What’s your all-time favourite ship?

That I’ve written? I think I’ve had the most fun with Goodnight/Billy, partly for the time period, partly for the dynamic, but mostly for the plausibility. While I really enjoyed writing BrBa, it felt more like it came from enthusiasm for the show, not the central ship lol. Don’t get me wrong, the chemistry and its potential was extremely fun to write in a fic setting, but I don’t find I actually shipped it while watching the show itself. Whereas it’s been nice with Mag7 to write for a ship that’s actually....more believable lol.

14. What’s a wip that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Ugh I can’t beLIEVE I have an unfinished fic up on ao3 lol it haunts me. I was sure I was done with Goodnight/Billy, and then early quarantine last year I had a train robbers AU idea, so I posted a couple chapters. But I don’t think my heart was super in it, I was more just messing around with the idea. I don’t want to delete it, but I’m also not super motivated to finish it haha, but we’ll see what happens. But tbh I like the poem summary better than the fic itself:P

15. What are your writing strengths?

Plotting, keeping things moving, and making stories feel visual maybe? They’re almost all movies in my head anyways, so I think I have good instincts for ‘cinematic moments’.

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

I think I’m a little lazy, and also ‘end-product oriented’. In some ways it’s helpful to picture the whole fic before you write it, but sometimes it results in some scenes feeling slightly slapdash because I’m just trying to get them out to move onto the next. Like ‘everyone did everything I wanted to in this scene? Great, next.’ I could stand to ‘stop and smell the roses’ more while I write, and actually see what else I can do to improve a scene.

(also if I use a word once it sticks in my head I end up using it like 5 other times in a scene and don’t notice lol, I need to stop that)

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

All for it! Depends how it’s done though. I personally find long scenes of dialogue where you have to constantly jump down to the author’s notes for the translations to be distracting. I like when it’s integrated more naturally where actual translations aren’t super important. Like in River Grit, Billy overhears this little exchange between Goodnight and his childhood nanny:

“Ah c’est vrai, mon petit Bonsoir! J’en peux pas le croire!” she cried out and laughed as she embraced Goody. Billy realized with a start that he actually recognized one of the words: ‘Bonsoir’. Goodnight. (insert brief flashback of Goody teaching him the nickname) / “Ma Serafine,” Goodnight said with a laugh. “C’est vrai que tu ne vieillis pas. Tu vas me rendre jaloux, heh?” / Billy had no idea what Goodnight was saying, but he sure as hell recognized Goodnight’s tone for flattery, and it was confirmed when the old woman laughed and smacked his arm.

What they’re actually saying is: “Oh it’s true, my little Goodnight! I can’t believe it!” / “My Serafine, it’s true you never age. You’re going to make me jealous”. But it doesn’t matter because this fic is from Billy’s POV so it’s about how he experiences the language around him, which is why I wouldn’t have included a translation for the reader. If you understand it then it’s a bonus, but the words themselves aren’t really the point!

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

That lil Lord of the Rings fic.

19. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

Hmm for Mag7 I’ve always liked River Grit and love how it turned out. I also think Ashes feels very complete as a fic and I liked the flashback format. And while it’s not my favourite fic, in hindsight I’m impressed with the Kingsman football fic and how I had to write about 5 different soccer games and make them all feel different and exciting, and not just some variation of ‘He kicked the ball!’ I’m really pleased with how those sequences all turned out.

La fin! Not tagging anyone this time, but please feel free to do this if you see it! I love when people just take initiative to do these things without waiting for a tag (also please tag me in it if you do, ‘cause I love reading these things lol)

#shares #fontainebleau22

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sukugo · 3 years ago

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Hi!!! Ngl I was intrigued by hehe pain but I think I'll go with me and my predictable ass for that wip meme!! 😂

hiii! well, i'll decribe both then :D

hehe pain is a lil stony ficlet set right after tony's death, where steve carries tony's body and there's angsty regretful thoughts. here's a little smth from it:

And Steve looks down at Tony’s face.

Tony’s skin is pale. It yellows. It drapes over his bones, the flesh underneath slumping into itself, his plump face falling, as if a toy unstuffed.

Tony’s eyelids are closed, dark lashes falling over his sinking skin. And oh, realization hits Steve, he won’t get to see Tony’s eyes glow ever again. Another sob twists his face.

Despair dampens his cheeks, tears falling onto Tony as a plea, a call, an apology, a demand for the other. And the muscles of his body tremble around Tony, his body shakes with each sob.

And he wants to wrap his arms tighter around Tony, pull him as close as he can, keep him against him forever.

But it feels like he was to fall apart under Steve. Like if he were to crumble and disappear if held too tight. And Steve’s afraid, with the way his touch has only ever hurt Tony in the past.

Tony’s head rolls against Steve’s chest and Steve wonders if he can hear the way his heart grieves.

as for me and my predictable ass lmao, it's a stony college au fic. i think the first lines in the doc are pretty explanatory ahdasjkda:

so!! basically steve moves in to the college dorms and he’s put to room with tony. steve’s all cool, just hopes tony’s a cool guy and they get along. turns out, according to steve’s friends, tony has a Reputation. apparently he’s filthy rich, kind of an ass and well, publicly renowned for being the best fuck.

“publicly renowed,” bucky says, “as in everyone has slept with him at least once” “have you?” “:)”

now, steve could honestly not give any less shits about tony being the resident Whore™, as his friends say he’s called, except for the fact that sometimes tony has his partners come to their room and well, steve has walked in on tony having sex a little too many times for it to be considered socially acceptable

which like, wouldn’t even be that bad if it weren’t for the fact that steve has never even had a proper conversation with him. hell, he’s never even been able to take a good look at the person who’s supposedly rooming with him (supposedly, bc tony’s never there when he goes to sleep or when he wakes up)

well, u know how it goes. they meet some day, steve’s in awe at how pretty tony is bc of course he is, i’m the one writing this asdjashd. as he gets to know him it turns out, tony’s not really as bad as people make him out to be. sure, he’s a huge flirt, he’s arrogant, but as steve gets to know him (through various scenarios) he realizes that tony’s incredibly smart (he’d been told, but he never expected tony to be an actual genius), he’s kind of a dork and he’s just. so small.

slowly, steve starts developing feelings (but he doesn’t know that :D) so we have steve getting jealous of people touching tony so easily and sometimes in inappropriate ways, which then turns into realization which then turns into steve not having any idea what to do in tony’s presence bc this man is way too pretty and way too cute and he can’t handle it.

then feelings come to light and love flourishes !! and all that

im gonna stop and not give too many details bc i could literally go on and on about this shdjasdh. i actually have the whole thing planned in my head, but i havent properly written anything down. as for the name, it’s bc i’m a huge sucker for the whole character sleeps around and has people treat them as a sexual object thing, it's one of my fave tropes

#that... got kinda long shdhfhd #i just!! love that fic #i spent the entirety of a 3 hr long drive imagining it svdjdhjdhf #now i just have to u know #write it #f.ask

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phantomchick · 4 years ago

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List of wips - aka struggles

Call Me A Jason Todd fic I started two years ago and still go back to poke at longingly, will the second and final chapter ever be posted? Who can know for sure.

I tell myself that I don't need Anyone (But the truth is no one needs Me) Another Jason Todd fic I haven't completed, posted two years ago for whumptober, it was the only day of whumptober I participated in, intended to be full of Captain Atom and Jason Todd interacting during the fall out of Bludhaven getting chemo'd but he doesn't show up in the first chapter and have you ever tried to read Infinite Crisis? It's a fucking mess. With this wip I have a close to justifiable excuse in that I refuse to write without knowing the canon, and reading through all the canon that's relevant is A Task.

The Monster in The Man A Merlin fic floating around my drafts, currently at a good bit over 5k wherein Merlin gets POSSESSED by an old enchantment gone mad. Written because a Merlin fic I read ended on a horror style cliffhanger and I couldn't handle it so I charged my way through the first 2k of a sequel and I've been adding to it ever since. Angst with a hopefully happy ending, if I ever frikking finish it.

The Dragon Lord In the aftermath of his father's death after Merlin inherits his father's dragon lord abilities he notices some minor changes to his interactions with his friends, the thing is that Merlin is a dragon lord and unusually what he hoards is people, things might just turn out the better for it.

Maelstrom A Naruto time travel fix it fic that wouldn't leave me alone until I got the first chapter out, ironically it has left me entirely alone since I finished the first chapter and I have no idea if inspiration for it will ever return or when that will be.

You Don't Know Anything Long long ago in a land of asks and a time of legend @paradise-runway sent me a fic request for "one where the other Bat boys find out the circumstances of Jason's death and resurrection and their reaction?" it has been lingering in my drafts haunting me ever since, someday, someday I shall fulfill what has been promised.

Of Curses and Covenants A longfic exploring the magical underbelly of Gotham's history, focuses on the intertwined relationship of the Wayne Family and the Zatara Family brought about by how often Waynes through the generations have ended up being cursed. I have an index of all the curses ready, the problem with this one is the plot and the story.

Vicki Finds a Bat (temporary title) Vicki Vale stumbles upon a still alive young adult Jason Todd at a wafflehouse on the way back from snooping into Cobblepot's latest criminal schemes. Convincing the young man to go back home to his loving father might prove more of a challenge than she thinks however. (will have a happy ending if I ever fucking finish it, for now it looms in my drafts like an unhappy gargoyle)

Hug Deficit A fic about Jason being touch starved and his family fixing it, hurt/comfort all the way, post resurrection.

Stephanie Brown and The Mansion of Man Pain Robin Era Steph, she and Alfred have pumpkin spice lattes together, it's their thing because I say it is. Includes, Alfred raised 5 boys counting Bruce, he's not sure how to handle a little girl and Bruce trying to dad plus Steph trying her best. Would be a lot easier to write if I was any good at comedy.

Another Time, Another Place Some twenty years or so after their death, Martha and Thomas Wayne appear in the middle of Wayne Manor's ground floor parlour room, the major problem with this? Not only are Bruce and Dick away, Alfred's on holiday in England! Which is why Jason as the eldest has been unwillingly nominated by his younger siblings to deal with the situation at hand. Martha and Thomas in this are heavily inspired by @unpretty's amazing portrayals in her fics with them.

- Queen Blackfire and the Lazarus Lord An au with Soulmate identifying marks: Jason Todd was having an okay time as de-facto leader of The Outlaws, a band of misfits and rebels with hearts of gold (or at least silver) saving the world the best they could and filling in the gaps the more straightforward heroes tended to miss while they were at it. Then he found out he was soulmates with the Alien Warrior Queen bent on declaring war on planet Earth if the Justice League didn't find her soulmate for her. Things with his friend, team mate and potential future sister in law Kori just got super awkward and the only good thing he can find about this situation is how angry (and protective? But maybe he's just imagining that) Bruce seems over the whole thing.

Side note: Kommand'r freaked out during the years Jason was 'dead' and accidentally brought peace to a huge chunk of space and intergalactic society via building up her empire after throwing herself into work to escape the grief.

- To Grasp The Hand of a Fox Naruto and Kurama travel back in time to save the world but unfortunately they land in the same moment that Kurama's just been put under a genjutsu by Madara Uchiha, Naruto has to make his way to Konoha and wake Kurama up before the villagers seal him away inside Mito. Can he save his friend in time to save them all?

Those Winter Sundays Mcu fic. Snapshots of Tony working hard for the avengers and no one noticing. Civil War Team Iron Man.

- Salvation Rides a Solar Wind Iron Man fic in a Science fiction / Western style fic where Tony's presence is described through the eyes of the aliens he helps. Au where the war with Thanos goes very differently. The type of fic that needs like 5 multi chapter fics in a single series to truly shine, hence why I will likely never finish it.

And We Break Away Again Jason goes back to Talia after Damian is brought back from the dead by Bruce. It's not that he begrudges his little brother his resurrection, the opposite, but he can't ignore what Bruce did to him by taking him to the magdala valley and he can't ignore what Bruce doing for Damian what he didn't do for him, (do for Dick, do for any of them besides the blood related one) means. So he decides to go back to the only person who ever seemed to understand why he wanted to avenge himself in the first place, the only person who seemed to agree that he had a right to be angry that he'd died at all, the only person he can trust to hold him together while he feels like he's falling apart that won't judge him against the heroic mold while they're at it. Not sure if this will be a oneshot or a series but we're going good Talia with this one regardless, DC's been ruining her lately but through fanfic all things are possible so fuck them.

Fan The Flames In the aftermath of a magical fire taking hold of the Daily Planet in Metropolis, Superman is missing, can Batman and the rest of the Justice League find their friend as well as the identity of the evil arsonist before Lex Luther does it first?

In a Whisper (In a Wish) Ichigo Kurosaki protects people, it's not just who he is, it's what he is, down to the core of his very soul. The only problem is, that a few weeks ago he sacrificed half his soul to protect the world. It aches inside where he knows something important used to be. When everyone he cares for is avoiding him and he's starting to feel more like a shadow than a person, that aches at him too and he can't help but wish, quietly, privately, painfully, to himself if no one else that things were different, that he wasn't so broken or so alone. But if wishes were fishes they'd fill a whole sea (just be careful not to whisper them within the hearing range of the Hōgyoku).

An Honest Conversation (Is A Bitter Thing To Crave) Jason kidnaps Bruce but things don't go as Bruce expects. First of all the reason Jason was able to kidnap him was because Stephanie of all people was his insider, why would she support someone Batman knows she's only met once. And second of all the reason he's been abducted - So that Jason can drug them both with the same substance. And when Bruce asks what he's doing this for Jason only responds, "We don't trust each other enough to have a truthful conversation otherwise" and refuses to say anything more while they wait for it to kick in. What will be revealed by this forced honest encounter on both sides? -

carrying the world on thin shoulders Midoriya Izuku deserves better from literally all the adults in his life so this is part whump part hurt comfort part fix it fic that sprawls out from time to time but it's pretty bad tbh, at some point I'll probably make it neater and give it something resembling a coherent plot. Hopefully. -

Trust Issues HP fic. Harry gets dosed with a potion that's supposed to reinforce your strongest survival instinct, the person who drugged him might've intended to be helpful but said potion happened to be at extra strength and he was given what would be a normal fix for the regular version but for this one is twice the recommended amount. Great.. The biggest problem about all this - beyond his internationally wanted godfather Sirius endangering himself by hiding out in a cave near Hogsmeade against all rational advice, his best friend Ron hating him, everyone in school besides his other best friend Hermione also hating him or avoiding him and the entire Goblet of Fire problem - is that he can't bring himself to trust anyone enough to tell them what's wrong.

Truth is Treason in the Empire of Lies A post marvel avengers story, thor pov probably, made because I like to dive into a pool of thor & loki sibling feels sometimes: Starts off as Thor regales his new human shield brothers with the story of his banishment and return to Asgard ending with Loki falling into the Void and the Avengers have some questions, questions Thor had not thought of, remarks on things that Thor doesn’t know how to explain away. After he goes to Loki’s cell and asks him some things he becomes more and more angry despite having no one he can punch > Gets drunk and criticises Sif and The Warriors Three after they try to calm him down > mention of Loki still being underage by Aesir standards during Thor 1 seeing as Thor was being crowned due to being of age in the movie > heavy inspiration drawn from queen regnant by peaceheather. “For while the Treason I detest, the Traitor I love still.” Currently just an outline.

Separation Split personality disorder Red Hood and Jason Todd, alternatively, Red Hood is a demon/parasite latched on to Jay. A lot of work necessary considering right now it’s currently just an idea inspired by a cool tumblr fanart.

A Trinity of Head Wounds The dcu trinity in the aftermath of a fight against some alien invaders (or something along those lines), whump, hurt/comfort, starts with them arguing, ends with them bleeding on each other in a friendship way, whole thing should take place in a single room on the watchtower and be a oneshot so it's gotta be a short and sweet one-two gut punch with the feelings which is difficuuult.

A Stark in The Stars an mcu fic, a really over complicated mcu fic, mostly because of Steve Roger's timeline fuckery, Tony's alive but he's not supposed to be, but so are a lot of people who were dead but aren't now you might say what with the snap and the blip. The thing is that Steve's timeline fuckery is making it so that everyone keeps getting confused between the two different timelines of events, obviously more confused the more that their characters were connected to the films/the events that were altered, the punchline of this particular fic though is that Tony's still alive and he's unaware of the timeline of events where he died. And as he's currently in space he's also unaware that everyone on Earth thinks he's dead (because why wouldn't they? he died in endgame after all). That makes this fic super tough to write because like ultimate unreliable narrator right here and not sure how to tie in the whole 'oh wait actually everyone on Earth thinks I'm dead because of the canon timelines' thing in or at what point of the story to do that at. The fuckery of it all gives me a headache. Plot is hard. Also all of that's basically background to the actual focus of most of the fic thus far which is Tony travelling around space in an Iron Man suit up until the point where it won't be background.

Magic Chained Merlin au. When you put magic restraining cuffs on Magic himself you don't just bind him you bind all magic the world over. It is therefore, infinitely lucky that Uther Pendragon never became aware of this fact.

A Child in The Cold bnha Midoriya deserves better also Recovery Girl and Aizawa have shit to answer for as far as I'm concerned.

#i have #so many #wiiiiiiiips #there's probably more hidden in various word docs but #blah #personal

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nightwingshero · 5 years ago

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Stay on the Path Chapter 1

Guys, I have to say, that I’ve been having so much fun with my AU’s, really. And I know I’ve taken it pretty easy here lately with my writing because it was honestly such a struggle for me. And while I’m still working on those AU’s....I am proud to announce that it’s here. That’s right, I’ve finally gotten around to finishing the first chapter to Wren’s canon! I have so many uncompleted chapters to this, but I’m so happy to be finally posting it!

A quick thank you to @xbaebsae and @chazz-anova for sticking with me and encouraging me to keep going with this. Honestly, without you two, this would still be a WIP. So, thank you!!!

This wasn’t how I imagined my first week to go. Hope County was small. Smaller than what I was used to. I hadn’t really settled in yet, I just showed up at the station eager to jump into an easy day of training. It didn’t faze me that Hudson barely acknowledged me or that Pratt was overly excited to show me the ropes. I just wanted to put my head down and do right; to make up for the “wasted time” I spent in college. That is, according to what my father believed. His dream was to have a son who would follow in the legacy of joining the military. Unfortunately for him, none of those things happened.

When I had arrived at the jail earlier today, my black hair was in a half-assed ponytail out of convenience. I had the sleeves of my uniform rolled up, but I had the first button or two unbuttoned. I didn’t do well with uniforms. Another reason why the military would never work for me. But when I walked in and began to get settled for the day, a U.S. Marshal had stormed in with a warrant talking about “the Seed family”. I honestly didn’t understand what the hell he was talking about. I mean, I had heard the name, but I kept to myself most of the time. I didn’t get out much and we hadn’t really been on patrol since I started. The Sheriff ushered him into his office as Nancy chatted us up over donuts and coffee. They had stayed in there for hours while Nancy asked me questions about my life, and she was beginning to become a friendly face.

But that conversation with the Marshal is what led me to the helicopter I was flying in tonight. I wasn’t the epitome of a perfect cop. In fact, this whole thing was new to me. I had experience shooting guns, sure. My father wouldn’t let that slip, so I started young. But I was new to the law enforcement career. It wasn’t my dream job, but it was something I could do if it meant doing what was right, if it meant setting my life right. So, I had went to the academy. The problem was that I knew people saw right through it, which was probably why the U.S Marshal, Burke, kept throwing me looks. I honestly couldn’t help it. That was my father, not me. It made me nervous that I was taking down a such a big operation, knowing that I had little to no experience in this field, other than the classes and little training I had to do in order to even get the position. I knew how to shoot a gun, my father taught me some survival skills, but that was it. The ramblings of a mad, bitter man didn’t do me much good here.

I just continued to look at my reflection in the window, my blue-green eyes stared back at me in wonder as I took in the beautiful landscape of Hope County from this height. I huffed and began watching the video that ended up bringing Cameron Burke here in the first place. It opened nicely with interviews with a pretty woman in a bar, a Father in a church, and a guy sitting on the couch. If you asked me, he looked like a rejected member of a rock band. It was a welcome of Montana at first, and then it began to speak of a cult, but before I could really get into it, the signal cutting in and out after it showed this “Joseph Seed” gauging someone’s eyes out with his bare hands. My stomach flipped uneasily, and I frowned as the signal went completely dead.

“Hey, Blake. Blake! You’re wasting your time. No signal out here.” Whitehorse called as I looked up at him and I caught the judging eyes of the Marshal before he went back to looking over his warrant.

“We’re crossing over the Henbane now.” Pratt informed us over the radio as I looked back out the window only to see a huge statue of a man with a beard and a man bun. I didn’t know how the hell I missed that when I was coming in, but all I could do now was stare at it. This guy has been busy.

“Oh fuck. There he is.” Hudson said with pure contempt in her voice.

“Crazy motherfucker.” Pratt commented back.

“Jesus….” The Marshall breathed.

“We’re in Peggie country.” I didn’t understand what Hudson meant by calling them Peggies, but her tone gave me chills. I knew that I heard a lot of people from around the town use it, I just never thought to ask. I thought it was a Montana thing. The Marshall ignored her and looked at Sheriff Earl Whitehorse.

“How much longer?”

“Just long enough for you to change your mind,” he turned his head to Burke. “so, we can turn this bird around.” I became more tense. I still didn’t truly understand what was really going on. Sure, I’ve heard some talk about the Seed family, but I honestly never paid attention to it. Everyone always had something to say about someone, so I always stuck to myself and I’ve lived that way for years. I didn’t know how long I was going to be out here, anyways. But they were just a religious family with followers, right? They couldn’t be that dangerous, could they? The video definitely suggested otherwise.

“You want me to ignore a federal warrant, Sheriff?” He asked icily. I raised my brows in surprise at his tone towards Whitehorse.

“No, sir. I want you to understand the reality of this situation.” He shifted and looked him straight in the eye. “Joseph Seed is not a man to be fucked with.” A chill ran down my spine at the weight of his words before he continued. “We’ve had run ins with him before and they haven’t always gone our way. Sometimes…just sometimes it’s best to leave well enough alone.”

“Yeah, well, we have laws for a reason. And Joseph Seed is going to learn that.” With that, he tucked the warrant away and looked out the window. It almost reminded me of a small child throwing a fit. Sheriff had an almost defeated look on his face before looking over his shoulder.

“Pratt, open up a call with dispatch.”

“10-4.”

“Whitehorse to dispatch, over.”

“Go ahead, Earl.” Nancy responded immediately.

“We’re approaching the compound, Nancy. Over.” My heart leaped when I realized we were close. I began to wish that I had stayed behind with Nancy. She brought in cookies earlier and anything would have been better than this situation.

“Roger, Sheriff. Still planning on going through with this? Over.”

“We are—unfortunately—still trying to talk sense into our friend, the Marshal. Over.”

“Alright. Lucky I’m not there. If you get into any trouble, you just let me know. Over.” I couldn’t help but smile at her response.

“10-4. Over and out.” It went silent until Pratt turned to Hudson.

“Maybe we should have brought Nancy along instead of the Probie. These Peggies wouldn’t fuck with her.”

“Pratt.” Hudson scolded. I rolled my eyes as I glanced back out the window. I didn’t need reminding how new I was to this; my nerves did that for me. The Marshal turned back to Whitehorse with a bit of a frown.

“Why do they keep calling them Peggies?”

“The Project of Eden’s Gate. P.E.G. Peggie. It’s what the locals call them. They started out harmless a few years back, but now they’re armed to the teeth. They’re looking for a fight.”

“…are you scared, Sheriff?” Burke asked incredulously. I studied the Sheriff out of the corner of my eye, waiting to hear his response, but none came.

“We’re here. Compounds just below.” Pratt said and I looked to see a decent sized church and some building surrounding it as we lowered.

“Oh, my Jesus.” Burke groaned as he studied our new surroundings.

“Damn.” I breathed out in shock at the sheer size on the compound.

“Oh man, this is a bad idea.” Hudson commented to herself.

“Last chance, Marshal.” Burke sighed for a second before replying.

“We’re going in.” I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until that very moment. My heart sank at Burke’s words. I had a bad feeling about this, and I didn’t want to be here. Anxiety clawed at my insides.

“Set ‘er down.” Whitehorse ordered and I wanted nothing more than to beg him to change his mind.

“Roger that.” The helicopter began to descend all the way down and I could see people armed with assault rifles and someone with a flamethrower that was burning a pile of wood. My uneasy feeling intensified. I knew we were on private property, so technically speaking, that was legal for them to do. I didn’t know what was on the Marshal’s warrant, but that definitely couldn’t be it. They were in their rights. As the helicopter landed, Whitehorse called out to Nancy.

“Dispatch, are you still there?”

“Yeah, go ahead, Sheriff.”

“If you don’t hear from us in 15 minutes, send in everyone. Send in the goddam National Guard if you have to. Over.” The blood in my veins went cold. What the fuck did I get myself into?

“Yes sir, Sheriff. I’ll be praying for you.” We took our headsets off and Whitehorse turned to us.

“Now listen up. Three rules. Stick close. Keep your guns in your holsters. And let me do the talking. Got it?”

“Got it.” Burke replied. But I wasn’t so confident. Everything was screaming for me to stay in the helicopter. I wasn’t welcome here; I could feel that, and I hadn’t even stepped out of the copter.

“Blake?” he called. I looked at him and gave him a quick nod, not trusting my voice. “Alright everyone, stay sharp. Let’s go.” I followed their lead as we stepped out of the helicopter, even though everything in me was screaming not to. Hudson, Burke, and Whitehorse began to make their way forward. “They’ll be in the church. Stay close.” I begrudgingly began to follow behind them. They were walking at a faster pace than I was, and to be honest, I lagged a little behind out of reluctance. All the people were glaring at me and they had way bigger guns than I did. I was allowed to feel a little nervous.

“Eyes open, these folks spook easily.” Whitehorse called from over his shoulder. Hudson slowed and began to walk alongside me.

“Blake, on me. Stay loose, huh?” she said, giving me a quick look. I guess it was obvious I was that nervous. I tried my best to hide it, but my heart was pounding. It wasn’t exactly comforting to have people with assault rifles glare at you. I just gave her a quick nod in response. Apparently, it was the only way I knew how to communicate right now.

“We didn’t do anything wrong!”

“What the hell are they doing here?” Voices rang out from the people as confusion turned to anger. If Hudson hadn’t been there, I probably would have tucked tail. This wasn’t something I was used to. Sure, I could hold my own. But I came here for a fresh start. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy being in law enforcement, but I felt like things had escalated quickly for me. I wasn’t about to pick a fight with someone that carried a damn flamethrower when all I had was a service pistol. I would do anything in that moment to trade with Hudson so I could have the shotgun.

“Be calm. Stay calm everyone. Just go about your business. This doesn’t concern you.” Whitehorse said as he continued to walk confidently through the gate.

“Sheriff, I don’t like this.” Hudson chimed in, saying exactly what I had been thinking. I was new, but Hudson wasn’t, and even she was picking up on it.

“Everything is fine, Hudson. Everything is just fine.” He reassured her. It didn’t feel fine, and I desperately wanted to believe him, but I wasn’t even sure if he believed himself.

“Jesus Christ, you’re wearing badges, aren’t you?” Burke spoke out condescendingly. I frowned and felt the strong urge to punch him. He spoke a lot like my father and that wasn’t something I really wanted to listen to. This badge meant nothing. It was a piece of metal. It was person that held that weight, not the badge, and people saw through that. Especially for those who didn’t care much for authority in the first place.

“Yeah, but they don’t respect badges much out here.” Hudson shot back, confirming my fears. I couldn’t help but smile just a bit at her sharp tongue. Subtle, but sharp. Maybe one day, we could actually be friends. Maybe.

“They’ll respect a nine-millimeter.” I looked at his back with disgust. I was liking this Marshal less and less by the second. I was tempted to ask him if he knew my father, and if not, they would make a great miserable pair. There was always some sort of power play, and I had a feeling that the Marshal enjoyed that badge a little bit more than he should and for the wrong reasons.

“Not every problem can be solved by a bullet, Marshal.” I spoke out. Hudson raised a brow at me as Burke shot me a glare which I returned. Hearing a clank behind me, I look over my shoulder to find them closing the gate behind us. I swallowed with another twist in my gut. That couldn’t be a good sign, and I had the heavy feeling of our fates being sealed along with it.

We finally came to a stop right in front of the church and I could hear them singing Amazing Grace. Curiosity began to outweigh the uneasiness I had felt. Burke must have been feeling eager as he was quick to just grab the door handle, but Whitehorse stopped him before he had a chance to open it.

“Whoa Marshal. Now we do this, we do it my way. Quietly. Calmly. You got it?” he asked as Burke let go of the door.

“Fine.” He huffed. The Sheriff turned to Hudson and me.

“Hudson, on the door. Watch our backs. Don’t let any of these people get in. Blake—on me.” I was only partially excited and that was just from the curiosity, which I knew was dangerous. It was my flaw. My curiosity always got the better of me, and I have been put in some bad situations because of it. The more logical side of me wished I could have stayed outside with Hudson and her shotgun. “And you,” he turned to Burke “just try not to do anything stupid.” I caught my laugh, but I couldn’t hide the smirk that bled through. Hudson turned and nudged me with her shoulder, and I could see the laughter in her eyes. I had a feeling we were going to get along. Friends, indeed.

“Relax, Sheriff. You’re about to get your name in the paper.” The Marshal replied as he put his hand on Whitehorse’s shoulder. It became very clear as to what drove Burke: Glory. Sheriff gave him grim look and turned to the door. Hudson took a step towards me, gaining my attention again.

“You’ll be fine.” She assured me quietly.

“Thanks.” I whispered back as I took a deep breath and squared my shoulders. I couldn’t let my feelings get the better of me, no matter how unnerving they were. Whitehorse finally opened the door and you could see how old the church was. The singing came to an end, and I could make out the pews with a few people and a man standing on a platform in front. Light poured out of the window, giving him a glow that definitely seemed holy. Above us were dozens of empty bird cages, lightly swaying. Some had candles in them, while the others were dark and empty, all of them giving off a haunting beauty. They were strangely similar to the cage tattooed on the inside of my forearm. Too familiar. A shiver ran down my spine as I caught myself from tracing over it.

“Something is coming.” His voice rang through the church, bringing me out of my daze. “You can feel it, can’t you? That we are creeping toward the edge…and there will be a reckoning.” The hair on the back of my neck stood on end as the faceless figure turned to us once the door shut behind me. He continued as we slowly made our way forward. “That’s why we started the Project. Because we know what happens next.” His voice rose an octave. “They will come. They will take from us.” Burke looked at Earl and he raised his hand in a calming manner. “Take our guns. Take our freedom…take our faith.” My heart leapt a bit as everyone in the pews began to stand as we passed them. I could see the tv monitors now that had scripture and the logo for their Project. This was Eden’s Gate. I became more nervous as I could feel the anger from their followers for our intrusion. I wanted to run and hide from their eyes. “We will not let them.”

“Sheriff, c’mon—” I wanted to scream at him, to tell him to shut up and not say another word. Abrasiveness was all Burke knew, and the last thing we need was for him to light a match in the powder keg this situation had turned into.

“Just hold on, Marshal.” Whitehorse warned.

“We will not let their greed, or their immorality, or their depravity hurt us anymore.” We were finally close up enough to see a man with no shirt standing above everyone else. He wore yellow aviators and his long hair was in a bun. His beard wasn’t the longest, but it wasn’t short either. His jeans were worn, and his chest was covered in tattoos and scars. Out of the corner of my eye, there were people standing to the side, but I could only just take in this man: Joseph Seed.

“Sheriff…” Burke’s rang like a warning, my eyes only darting to his back briefly.

“There will be no more suffering….”

“Do not pull that trigger. Remain calm.” Whitehorse responded to him lowly.

“No. Fuck this.” Burke whipped out the warrant and faced Joseph Seed head on. I inhaled sharply through my nose and moved forward to grab Burke, my fight or flight response urging me to pull him back like the idiot he was. Whitehorse quickly placed his hand on my arm, stopping me. I glanced at the Sheriff, catching his eye in confusion. I couldn’t put a name on the look he gave me, but I knew what he was trying to tell me. Burke’s idiot decision would remain his, not mine. I took a slight step back as my attention moved back to the Marshal.

“Joseph Seed! I have a warrant for your arrest on the suspicion of kidnapping with the intent of harm!” I furrowed my brow and looked at him. What? My heart was racing, but the blood drained from my face. I was supposed to keep my composure. It’s one of the things that they teach you. But I couldn’t help my face contorting in disbelief. On suspicion. We had barged into a dangerous situation with a warrant due to suspicion. I clenched my teeth in frustration at the Marshal for believing he knew better than the Sheriff. “Now, I want you to step forward and keep your hands where I can see them.” I held my breath as I kept my eyes on Joseph, waiting to see what he would do or how he would respond. He lifted his hands and regarded us.

“There they are…the Locusts in our garden…you see, they’ve come for me.” As he spoke, all of the people in the pews began to make their way in front and around us, protecting their Father from the threat we had become. “They’ve come to take me away from you. They’ve come to destroy all that we built!” The crowd became rowdier and more aggressive. I began to feel panicked and overwhelmed, the claws of my claustrophobia wrapping around my throat, but Burke and Whitehorse held their ground.

“Alright, now. Put your guns down. Put your guns down!” Burke responded as he reached for his gun. Whitehorse and I took a step back as I watched the Marshal in horror.

“Dude, what are you—?” I called out as my hand brushed my holster, but the Sheriff put his hands up in defense, cutting me off as he addressed the mob and Burke.

“Now hold on, do not touch that service weapon and stand down! Stand down! Everyone, calm down!” Whitehorse raised his voice to try and get through the yelling and protests of the people in front of us, but it went unnoticed. Joseph stepped down, his hands finding the shoulders of some of his men, and everyone began to quiet as they turned to him.

“We knew this moment would come. We have prepared for it. Go. Go…” And just like that, they turned and began to walk out of the church as a man began to come up from behind Joseph Seed. I watched, as he walked across the platform, with another man finding his way next to Joseph. I frowned as the two men looked each other, giving a quick exchange I couldn’t quite hear, but one of the people shoulder-checked me on his way past us, pulling my attention only briefly. “God will not let them take me.” I frowned as I watched them leave, curiosity biting in the back of my mind. With just a touch on a shoulder, he had completely defused the situation.

“I saw when the Lamb opened the First Seal,” Joseph’s voice had me turning my head back to him. His hands were raised up over his head as he spoke, but he wasn’t alone. Along with the two men was a young woman with light dirty blond hair and a white dress that now stood to his left. I kept my focus on Joseph, the others “as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts say, come and see…”

“Step forward.” Burke sneered. Joseph dropped his hands and looked at the Marshal, allowing me a better view of the people that moved to support The Father. The man to his right had his arms crossed over his chest, legs spread as he stood firm. I knew immediately to be wary of him. Just size alone, he would be someone rough to go up against. The girl just stood there at ease, her green eyes light and scanning me with a soft smile on her face. She swayed, making her white dress move at the slightest movement. Then my eyes finally landed on the other man.

He looked younger than the other men, and I wondered if they were actually brothers. I couldn’t make out a lot from the distance, but he had dark hair and a well-manicured beard. He wore a trench coat and had a pair of blue sunglasses on his head. His eyes caught with mine as his brother eyed us, sizing us up. This guy seemed to have his hands behind his back, his head tilting back a bit, the lines of his chest flexing as more skin is revealed through his unbuttoned shirt, and a smug look on his face, completely at ease with no care in the world, and I couldn’t help but stare at him. But his smirk widened as he licked his lips, and then it occurred to me. He knew I was staring. I chided myself and I forced my eyes away as Joseph continued.

“…and I saw,” he pointed his finger in Burke’s face and I pursed my lips to keep myself from smirking. “and behold it was a white horse,” he looked at the Sheriff, before turning to me directly. I inhaled sharply at the unexpected attention. “And Hell followed with him.” A chill went down my spine as he refused to break eye contact with me. The heaviness of his words felt like it weighed down my soul. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. He then raised his hands and I stepped closer to him, unsure of what I was actually going to do. I broke eye contact only to find another pair of deep, dark blue ones staring at me with curiosity, smirk completely gone. I didn’t know what it was, I couldn’t really explain it, but the pull was there. He shifted a bit, his hands coming in front of him briefly as adjusted his coat, a quick roll of his shoulders that brought my attention back to his chest. I wanted to run up and…I don’t know. I felt like I was bare, that he could see right through me, and I didn’t know if that terrified or excited me.

“Blake,” Burke’s voice pulled me back to reality and I looked at him. “cuff this son of a bitch.” I frowned at his crass wording and glared while jutting my chin out, remembering how he pretty much fucked the entire situation. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the red head shift on his feet, throwing a glance at his other brother. Burke returned my glare tenfold, and I turned back to Joseph, not wanting to get into any more trouble I may have already been in. I hesitated, and as subtly as I could, I threw a look at the man in the trench coat again. I didn’t know why I was hesitating, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

“God will not let you take me.” Joseph said confidently and I looked back at him. Something twinkled in his eyes, and I wasn’t sure as to what it was, it seemed there was a knowing intelligence that told me that perhaps I wasn’t as subtle as I thought. But his eyes were on me, too and so were everyone else’s. The last thing I wanted was for the red-haired soldier to come at me. He looked like he was ready to take on the world. I would probably weigh nothing to him. Fear danced across my neck, creating goosebumps in its wake.

“Blake! Put the cuffs on him!” Burke snapped, making me cringe. I took a calming breath before I looked back at Joseph. I was conflicted. I didn’t want things to get violent and I had a very bad feeling that they wouldn’t just let us take him, the sting of my shoulder still there. I just wanted to keep the peace.

“Put down your guns. Take your friends. Walk away.” Joseph said calmly, soothingly. I bit my lip, it was so easy to fall into his voice, to second guess everything. It did sound tempting, to just walk away and go against Burke. I could. We could. We could walk out of here like nothing ever happened. “God is watching. And he will judge you for what you do in this moment.”

“Come on, Rookie…” Burke groaned as I looked over to the Sheriff, irritated at the nickname. We both didn’t want this, right? He didn’t want things to escalate any more than I did. Would he really let us walk out of here? I continued to study the Sheriff, searching for some sort of indication. Anything. He had a look of reluctance and he clenched his jaw. I had a feeling that this was going to have to be my decision and I bit of frustration whispered in the back of my mind. “God damn it Blake, seriously? What are you doing? Asking your dad for permission?” I flinched slightly at his word choice, but I kept my focus on Whitehorse, not taking the bait. The man in the trench coat scoffed as he shifted, my eyes following his movement only briefly.

“Sheriff?” I asked, and even I could hear the doubt and uncertainty in my voice. Earl sighed in response.

“We came here for a reason, Deputy.” He replied, his eyes full of defeat as his eyes fell from mine. My shoulders caved a bit at his response, but before I could do or say anything else, Burke had elbowed me out of the way, and I stumbled to the side from being taken off guard. Joseph frowned as his siblings shifted a bit.

“Fuck this. I’ll do it my goddamn self.”

I shot him a glare, my anger momentarily pumping through my veins. The urge to mouth off to him was strong, but I held my tongue, even though his actions were uncalled for and aggressive. I took another breath as I tried to shove my retort back down my throat. Now was definitely not the time for me to run my mouth, it would only make things worse, and like it or not, he was still a superior of sorts.

“Easy, Marshal.” Whitehorse responded quickly but remaining calm. I dared a glance at the Sheriff in shock, not expecting him to defend me. I exhaled shakily as I turned, watching as Burke looked ready to blow and I bit my lip. Burke sneered as he roughly pulled Joseph forward and tightly cuffed one of his wrists. I winced at the click, but Joseph didn’t even flinch or make a sound. I took a step forward with a frown.

“You know that’s too tight.” I said lowly, but my voice echoed through the quiet church. I could feel Burke glaring at me, but I didn’t really care. I just wanted this to be over. I could feel the Seed family drilling holes into me with their piercing blue eyes.

“Who cares?” Burke sneered at me. I looked down as I fought back the tears of anger that were threatening to humiliate me in front of my superiors and our audience.

“If this is how you’re going do it, then step aside, Marshal. Deputy Blake, cuff him properly.” Whitehorse asserted. Burke’s face twisted as he took a step away from Joseph and I took a calculated step forward, my eyes watching his every move. I didn’t trust Burke, badge or not. I turned to Joseph and began to redo the cuffs, making sure they weren’t cutting off his circulation. I looked up to catch his intense stare.

“Sometimes…the best thing to do is to walk away.” He whispered to me and my heart stopped as the blood drained from my face. I opened my mouth, but I didn’t know what to say. Not that Burke really gave me an option to.

“Jesus Christ. Let’s just fucking go.” He muttered and the Sheriff sighed. I put a gloved hand on Joseph’s shoulder, prepared to walk him out.

“You have the right to remain silent,” Burke groaned out his frustration and I expected him to stop me, but he didn’t. He knew we couldn’t just arrest people without reading them their rights. “anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you. Do you understand the rights I have just read to you?”

“Yes.” Joseph replied softly.

“Let’s go.” Whitehorse turned, and began to make his way to the church doors with Burke beside him.

“Drag him if you have to.” Marshal called over his shoulder tauntingly.

“Dick.” I replied quietly to myself without thinking. A cough and a light giggle were the responses I got behind me as Joseph shot me a look from the corner of his eye. I chided myself and began to follow the two men while gently escorting the brother. Burke and Whitehorse opened the doors, and there seemed to be a start of an uproar. Hudson looked over at us in panic.

“We gotta get the fuck outta here.” She said as a truck of men pulled up with guns.

“Marshal take point. On the right.” The Sheriff ordered as I saw that the path we had taken before was closed off and sealed.

“On it.” I was honestly shocked that he took an order easily, but it was probably due to the fact that he had what he wanted, and to him, that was all that mattered.

“Stay on the path, Blake.” Whitehorse called out over his shoulder as I began to take everything in. People were starting to get more and more stirred out. Yelling out and asking about us taking “The Father”. Amazing Grace began to play loudly, and dogs were barking viciously. Once or twice I got spooked, thinking that someone was going to grab me.

“Keep up, Rookie.” Hudson called out nervously. People began to pull out their guns.

“Stand back, I’m a Federal Marshal!” Burke yelled, but that didn’t stop them. They began to swarm us, and my pace quickened. Burke and Whitehorse then pulled out their service pistols in defense as we got closer the copter. Burke shot two warning shots into the air and Hudson and I rushed quickly to the bird. Hudson jumped on and ushered me forward, helping me situate Joseph. Pratt was freaking out in the pilot seat while Whitehorse and Burke were on my tail. We finally were able to get in after Joseph was taken care of, but someone grabbed Burke and he tried shaking them off. His followers began to climb on the helicopter. I looked around, panicked and in awe. I’ve never seen anything like this. Burke ended up shooting the guy in the head, and we both began to hastily buckle ourselves in. I gagged, cutting off the scream in my throat, at the sight of the blood and gore as my hands shook, and I could feel myself slipping into a full panic attack. My hand covered my mouth to keep myself from either puking or crying out as Whitehorse was trying to call Nancy from the front, but she wouldn’t answer. Joseph just sat there calmly with his head back and sang Amazing Grace. We couldn’t shake them off, even in the air, and then a man jumped up into the wings and blood splattered all over the windshield. My stomach lurched as alarms began to blare. We began to spin out of control, and I began to hyperventilate with the panic attack getting worse, but Joseph just kept singing.

“Brace for impact—" I couldn’t hear the rest of it as we hit the ground, everything turning black, and Joseph’s voice was still singing in my ears.

The smell of smoke was the first thing that caught my attention. Then it was Nancy’s voice over the radio that made me open my eyes. My body hurt, my head pounded, and my vision was a bit blurry. Across from me, Burke hung unconscious, which explained why my head felt the way it did.

“…This is Nancy, is everything okay? Over.” I looked to my side to see Hudson in a state that was no better than mine, but when I looked for the Sheriff, he was nowhere in sight. A headpiece just hung there, swinging back and forth. “Please, are you there? Are you there? Are you there, Sheriff?” I began to panic as I noticed that the seat Joseph occupied was now empty. Where was he? My heart started to pound, and I let out a whimper as I looked around. “Deputy Hudson, if you’re there, please pick up.”

“Amazing Grace…how sweet the sound.” Ice filled my veins and I began to desperately reach for the headset.

“Deputy Pratt, are you there? Are you there?” I almost cried when my fingers wrapped around it, and I pulled it to my face. A hand stopped mine, making me gasp in shock as Joseph Seed continued to sing.

“That saved…”

“Earl? Please, come in.”

“A wretch…like me...” he finished as he studied me. Tears were streaming down my face at this point, both from the smoke and the absolute terror I felt. Joseph only had a broken nose and a few bruises on his face and his yellow tinted glasses had made it through with on a crack in one of the lenses. I was too in shock to say a word.

“Are you there? Is somebody there? Please.” Nancy was becoming more frantic and my heart broke for her. Any words I was prepared to say choked in my throat as he leaned in closer, his eyes big and bright as the bore into mine.

“I told you that God wouldn’t let you take me.” He whispered and I exhaled shakily.

“Please…I need to know what’s going on.” Nancy pleaded as she began to cry. I wanted to scream and yell, to tell her that I was alive and to send for help. Send anyone. But Joseph reached for the headset and pulled the mic to his face while staring at me.

“Dispatch…”

“Oh, my God…” Nancy breathed a sigh of relief and I frowned.

“Everything is just fine over here. No need to call anyone.” There was a split second as I held my breath, waiting for Nancy to respond.

“Yes, Father. Praise be to you.” My heart sank at her words as I realized what that meant. She tipped them off. She was a part of it. A dry sob raked through my body in disbelief and heartbreak. Joseph leaned in closer as he let go of the headset.

“No one is coming to save you.” He whispered and another sob raked through me with new tears as the empty feeling of helplessness buried itself in the pit of my stomach. A car pulled up, gaining his attention and I watched as he left the helicopter. They rejoiced at the sight of their Father and he stood on the hood of the car to address the four men that stood before him.

“The First Seal has been broken. The Collapse is upon us. And we will take what we need. And preserve what we have.” I watched as Hudson and Burke stirred awake, coughing from the smoke. A sense of relief filled me. I wasn’t alone. “And we will kill all those that stand in our way!” I caught Hudson’s eye as Joseph focused his attention on us. “And these. The harbingers of doom will see the truth.”

“We gotta get outta here...we gotta get outta here.” Burke murmured, but I wasn’t paying attention to him. I was watching Hudson, making sure she was okay. I could see Joseph addressing his flock as she processed our situation.

“Begin the reaping!” Joseph yelled with his hands spread out to the sky.

“We gotta get out of here!” Burke said urgently and I watched as Hudson began to pull and struggle at the seatbelt. I turned and began to do the same as they approached Hudson and began to tug her out.

“NO!” I tried to yell as I reached for her, but it came out as a mere croak. We clasped hands briefly, before our grip was easily broken by the men dragging her. I tried pulling on her pants leg, but she was just out of reach. “Hudson!”

“Get the fuck off me! Pratt! Pratt!” she screamed, and I realized that they were taking him, too. They kicked as they fought against their captors.

“Jesus Christ, we got to get the fuck out of here!” The men turned back to us, but before they could reach in, the flames surged forward, blocking us from them momentarily. Burke dropped down and I felt a tiny bit of hope bloom in my chest.

“Help me out!” I cried at him as he took a second to collect himself.

“Let them burn. This is God’s will. This is their punishment.” Before I could say a word, Burke took off running out of the bird and I watched in disbelief. He was leaving me behind. That little snake was leaving me to die. I began to struggle even more as panic made it hard to breathe, pulling at the buckle, begging and praying for it to come loose. I needed to run. I didn’t want to die like this. I wished more than anything that I could go back in time. I should have listened. I should have listened.

Sometimes it’s better to just walk away.

The buckle finally gave, dropping me on the roof. I winced in pain at the impact on my side. It was hot and hard to breath. Stray strands of hair clung to my face from the sweat and tears as I coughed a bit before getting to my knees and facing towards the woods. I had to run for it. I got to my feet as they finally caught on that we were free.

“Oh, whoa, whoa. Oh, hey! They’re getting away!” one of them yelled and I took a run for it. The sound of gunfire and bullets whizzing past me drove me to run faster than I ever have in my life. I dodged trees, branches, and logs as I made my way through unknown territory. I looked behind me briefly to see if anyone had followed, causing me to trip forward and hit the ground hard. I was shaking and my limbs felt like jelly. I was dizzy from the blood rushing to and from my head, and I vomited from the turning of my stomach. I steeled my resolve and stood again. I had to keep going. If I stayed there, I was going to either get caught or killed. Maybe both, if Joseph’s words rang true. All I could do was keep stumbling forward as I wiped my mouth on the back of my gloved hand.

It was super dark out, but the moon was bright enough to allow me to at least see my surroundings. I could see a cabin on my left, and I ducked down to avoid being spotted. I don’t know what had happened, but my pistol was gone. I was unarmed and definitely in over my head. I could hear them shouting in the distance, hunting us down. My radio came alive, making me jump clean out of my skin.

“Hello…? Anyone hearing me? Hello? It’s Burke…Hello?” I had a mix of emotions as his voice came through. Relief that he had made it out alive but pissed off that he had left me behind. I also didn’t want to be out here alone, so knowing that he was out here too made me feel just a bit better. “I think I lost them. I see a…a trailer nearby. It’s next to a long bridge. I’m gonna try and get inside…if anyone’s still out there…Listen, if anyone is still alive, meet me there.”

I breathed a sigh of relief as I spotted the bridge through the trees. He wasn’t far. I picked up my pace as best as I could and made my way to the steep incline, my muscles protesting in agony. Once I reached the top, I bent over to catch my breath. I almost cried in relief at the sight on the trailer once I started to walk over the bridge, but I honestly didn’t think I had any tears left. Exhaustion threatened to seep in, but I forced myself to keep going. I jogged lightly the closer I got, the trailer door a beacon of safety. I pushed it open and turned just as Burke yelled and grabbed my neck. I screamed in response as I tried to push him away. His eyes widened in realization and his grip loosened.

“Jesus Christ, Blake. I’m sorry…I thought they got you. Come on.” He stumbled back and motioned for me to follow him through another door. “Check the room.” He pointed to a bedroom on our right and as I looked in, I could see pictures and posters all over the walls. Pictures of the Father and Eden’s Gate. As I turned to take in the rest of the house, I realized how much of a mess it was. Burke was sneaking around, like some sort of burglar and had it been any other scenario, I would have laughed. He turned to me, pale and panting. The ashen tint on his face showed just how freaked out he was, which wasn’t reassuring in the slightest.

“Oh Jesus! I had no idea.” And I just stared at him. No idea? I wanted to yell, to scream at him that Whitehorse had warned him, but I didn’t really have the energy to do so, the panic attack and adrenaline slowly starting to wear off. Whitehorse told him that we shouldn’t do it, but Burke wanted the glory. His pride was more important. He turned to the wall of framed pictures and pointed. “Fuck!” He approached the wall as I finally caught sight of what he was looking at. It looked like a family photo that was professionally done, but Burke yanked it off the wall before I could get a closer look and looked me in the eye. “We’re putting this whole family away. All of ‘em. Fucking lunatics!”

He threw the frame down in anger and stomped away. I took a step closer to the table to actually get a look of the photo. Joseph sat in a chair in the middle, back straight with no emotion whatsoever. The girl sat on the floor to his right, with her arm on his leg. The red-haired brother stood behind Joseph with a red sniper rifle in his hands, and I couldn’t help but praise myself for not doing anything too stupid in the church. I couldn’t say the same about the Marshal though. Lastly, the youngest brother leaned against the back of Joseph’s chair with a book in his hand.

“We’re going to get out of this, Rookie. First things first, we gotta arm ourselves.”

“What’s the plan?” I finally asked as I looked back up at him and followed. I didn’t want to follow him, deep down, but I didn’t have a choice. I was way over my head, and I knew I couldn’t get out of this alone. He picked up a rifle and shoved it in my hands before grabbing the pistol for himself. I followed him as he approached a window and crouched down.

“Alright, here’s what we’re going to do.” He blew on the ammo cartridge before slapping it into the butt of his pistol before holstering it. “There’s a road out there. We’re gonna take it, and head Northeast. It’s probably only a few hours back to Missoula. And then,” he turned and grabbed my shoulder. I bit my tongue from biting his head off for daring to touch me. “we’re gonna come back here with the damn National Guard. And we’re gonna take out the rest of these—"

He was cut off by a couple of voices outside the trailer. I frowned. How did they find us so quickly? My eyes widened as it dawned on me. They took Hudson and Pratt, which meant they probably had their radios, too. If I had heard Burke’s message, then they had as well. I clenched my jaw in frustration. I wanted to strangle the Marshal for his constant stupidity, him and that joke of a warrant. You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. I looked at Burke with a twist of my mouth. “You idiot—"

“They came around this way!”

“Check inside the trailer!”

“Shh!” Burke whispered lowly as he motioned towards the other window. I gave a quick nod before I began my way over.

“They’re in there!” someone yelled as a rock was thrown through the window. I covered my face as glass exploded, landing on the carpet. I looked out to see a bunch of men running around, taking cover, and shooting at us with their own rifles. Great. Way to get your feet wet, Wren. Burke quickly ran to the other window on my side and began to return fire. To say the least, I was fucking terrified. I have done a lot of shit in my life, but I had never done this.

Aiming out the window, I tried to only land wounding shots instead of kill shots. I wasn’t prepared to take a life. I put my head down, made it through the academy, did everything I had to in order to get my life back on track. To get away from the shitty past. This wasn’t something I had asked for. The AR was digging into my shoulder, and I wondered briefly if I was holding it incorrectly. Burke cursed under his breath before jumping out through the window. As I returned fire, a stray bullet hit a red metal canister, causing an explosion that blew people off their feet.

I took advantage and followed Burke, trying to stay close enough to keep both of us protected. As much as I couldn’t stand him, I knew we were better off sticking together. The rush and panic were back, my heart pounding hard in my chest. Burke dashed, yelling me to cover him, as he ran towards a white truck.”

“Cover you with what?!” I shrieked, paranoid that he was going to take off without me, so I run towards the truck after him.

He was cursing, trying to get the thing started, throwing me an incredulous look as I yanked open the passenger door. “I told you to cover me!” he hissed.

“And give you a chance to leave me again?” I snapped, throwing him a look, finally losing my patience and giving into the fear that was pumping in my veins…I wasn’t keeping my mouth shut anymore, not after the shit he kept pulling. “Not likely.”

He grumbled something about not doing it again with a half-assed apology, but I wasn’t paying attention. I was watching the next wave of cultists running towards us, clinging tightly to the gun in my hands. With a victorious yell, the truck started just as a bullet ricocheted off the door next to my head. I quickly ducked in the cab of the truck as he slammed on the gas.

“Up ahead, watch it!” Burke yelled and I looked up to see two of them shooting at us, but Burke just pressed the gas harder. “Hold on!”

He rammed the truck into the chain-link gates, tearing it down as the yelling and gunshots faded behind us. I was drenched in sweat, my breathing quick. “Holy fuck.” I breathed out, one hand gripping on the door handle and the other cradling my rifle.

“You ok?” Burke asked, throwing me a glance. I gave a quick nod before his attention went back to the road. “Nice work back there. I’d be dead if it weren’t for you. We gotta get back…but we gotta be smart. We don’t know who we can trust…fucking Nancy.”

“Fucking Nancy.” I echoed with malice. I hadn’t gotten super close with Nancy, but her betrayal still stung. She was so nice, praising and talking about the niece she was so damn proud of all the time. She welcomed me into that station with open arms.

“Oh no…oh no, they got the roads blocked.”

“They what?” My eyes widened as I took in the amass of trucks and concrete blocks. I could see barbed wire and stop signs in the back of a few. The cultists turned to us, and opened fire. “Oh shit!”

“Shoot!!” Burke shouted at me, and I pulled the rifle up, aiming out of the window. Of all the things I expected from a small town, this definitely wasn’t one of them. I wanted to cry, curl up in a ball, and set on the floorboard of the truck. I was done with this shit, but I tried my best to defend us as Burke drove like a damn madman.

“For the Father!” A man shouted as two white trucks showed up out of nowhere, shooting at us.

“Behind us, keep them off us!” Burke yelled.

The panic was starting to spread again, from the yelling and the gunfire, it was just all too much. And then I see a burst of red on a windshield, the white truck swerving and hitting the other. But all I could think of was the blood. I killed someone...I just fucking killed someone! My chest pulled painfully as my eyes swam with tears.

“Jesus Christ, we can’t get around it! Hold on, we gotta get off the main road.” Burke jerks the truck roughly, knocking me back from the window and my thoughts. I gasped as he ran through a fence, pieces of metal and wood flying. “They keep coming, Blake! Get back out there!”

“How about you focus on not getting us killed?” I snapped as he flew off a hill, the truck slamming against the ground.

“Could say the same to you!” he retorted. “There’s a case of dynamite in the back of the truck, use it!”

“What?!”

He didn’t answer as I popped my head back out, eyeing the back to see an open wooden box. The sticks of dynamite were everywhere, strewn around from all the momentum, so I could only reach a few without falling. Burke swerved, and I gripped the truck tighter, praying to whatever higher being there was that I wouldn’t die like this.

The shooting continued as I, finally, made it securely back into the somewhat-safe interior of the truck. Reaching into my back pocket, I pull out a metal litter as my hands shook violently, flipping the top and lighting one of the sticks to throw. I wouldn’t normally condone this kind of thing, and nor have I ever done this, but my instinct to survive was above everything else. My body was just reacting, and my mind was still miles behind, with that red stained truck.

I would never claim to have the best aim in the world, but trying to throw something out of a moving vehicle, hanging out of the window, with a bulky rifle against you…well, it wasn’t the best. Most that I threw went off too late or landed too far away. Burke’s curses joined the choir of gunfire and the shocks on the old truck as it rumbled along. Then it was joined by an odd sound that I didn’t recognize.

“John’s here!” Someone yelled.

Who the fuck was John?!

“Is that a fucking plane? Don’t tell me they got fucking air support!” Burke yelled, slamming his hand against the wheel.

My face twisted in confusion as I tried to adjust my rifle, but I froze, eyes wide, as I saw what Burke was screaming about. I didn’t know much about planes, and I would never pretend to, but the black one I saw was gorgeous. Or at least, from what I saw of it before it started shooting at us, coming a little too close for my comfort. Quickly flipping off the plane, I went back to fending off Peggies in trucks and ATVs, people shooting us from the side of the road. The plane made another round, Burke doing what he could to avoid getting us killed.

“Motherfucking psychopaths!!” Burke screamed as he drove straight towards a roadblock. “Motherfucking Peggies!!”

“Burke, we’re not going to make that!” I yelled over the chaos. The truck was already trashed, I wasn’t sure how much it could take, but it wasn’t just that. It was the fact he was going to crash us into a fucking roadblock. I tried hard to keep the flashbacks at bay, fear overcoming the adrenaline.

We hit it head on with a huge bang, but somehow, we were still going. Burke straightened out, slamming the gas again to speed back up as we approached a bridge. Relief and hope dared to spread in my chest until a truck cut in front of us, laying down heavy fire. What the fuck was wrong with this county?!

“You’ve gotta be kidding me?!” he roared beside me.

“Is that…what is that?!” I screamed. “A mounted machine gun?”

He was about to answer until the color drained from his face. “Oh no—”

I turned just in time to see a glimpse of the plane and the explosion quickly after. I screamed as the Marshal jerked the wheel, launching us right into a free fall. My heart stopped and my breathing was caught in my throat as we nosedived towards the river. Flashes of memories buried deep flew in my mind: broken glass, the deployed airbag, the pain, the blood…

Gasping quickly, the truck landed hard in the water, the cab filling quickly through the open window. I’m too shocked to move at first as I watch Burke shoot out the windshield with his pistol. He moves forward, and I reach out to grab him in desperation, but he’s already swimming away. I clench my teeth in rage as I finally free myself from the seat belt.

I’m running out of air as I swim up, breaching the surface with a loud gasp, trying to breathe in as much as my lungs can handle. It’s a struggle, but I make my way to the riverbank, my muscles screaming. I whimper as I crawl, my body finally giving out from under me, and I collapse, rolling on my back. My focus is in and out as I fight to stay awake. The adrenaline, the panic, everything has left me numb and cold, pushed way past my limits.

“Let me go!!! I’m a federal Marshal—”

Burke’s words are cut off with the sound of him getting hit with something a distance away and I scoff. Fucker deserved that. “This one needs a little faith…look along the banks, there was another one. We need to take them to the Father.”

I groan as an older man came into view. My vision was too blurry to make out any features and I cough then take another deep breath. I don’t have the energy to say a word to this man, let alone fight him when he starts to drag me away. The last thing I see before my vision goes black is the starry night, wondering where the plane went.

#deputy wren blake #joseph seed #john seed #faith seed #jacob seed #Far Cry 5 #my writing #stay on the path #IT'S FINALLY HERE

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schnaphan · 4 years ago

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the ultimate 2020 masterlist ayeeeee! 🎉

2020 has been a busy year. i wrote and published a bunch of phanfics, adding up to 124,433 words. i’m also currently working on my ospbb fic which adds another 25k to the word count! on top of that, i wrote a fic i’m going to publish in the next few days, adding another 10k. almost 160k in the phandom! 🎉

that’s enough for the stats. here are the bebes.

SMOL BEBES ring my bells ~ You try to hide it I know you do When all you really want is me to come and get you ~ my contribution to the wipswap 2020! i didn’t have a wip to do a proper exchange but i was very happy to help out as a pinch hitter ♥ Rain ~ When their dinner date gets ruined, the boys need to find a way to make it work. ~ my first collab in YEARS. @jorzuela and me decided to spend one evening writing, posting the result right afterwards. the ideas were all over the place but we managed to build a neat little story ♥

IMPROMPTU CHALLENGE what’s a great idea if you want to participate in nanowrimo? yep - spend a big part of october writing. i had a lot of fun, tho! ♥ it was really awesome to try out so many different stories and oooooof returning to short stories helped me SO MUCH. cliffhanger It happened so out of the blue. One day, Dan's twin brother was gone. He didn't return home that night - he never did. The sea took him and Dan was left alone. Just like that. the emperor's new clothes Dan picked a special outfit for their dinner date. Phil doesn't quite know how to deal with it. with you by my side Dan and Phil spend their first night together. But Dan can’t fall asleep. family of ten Having a serious conversation with your biggest daughter is rather difficult. Especially when she wants to know if you regret having children. drifting Dan is in love. But his love is confined to a place with blue dim and an electrical hum. exclusive content: murder Meeting with this guy from the internet is kind of risky, kind of sketchy. But it's not just some random guy, it's Phil. So Dan feels safe. Is he right, though? scars of luck Luck. That's what Phil calls it. But Dan knows better. cutting ties Phil likes Dan a lot, he really does. Still, he can't let him know more about his life. But apparently, Dan didn't get the memo. you still have a wish Dan wants to have anonymous sex. Phil agrees. trampoline Whenever Dan is overwhelmed, he runs. Running is the one thing that makes him feel free, the one thing that clears his mind. So it just seems natural to run from Phil. pandemonium The world collapses. And Phil is gone. forever. The waves keep rolling in. Forever. Phil is by Dan's side. Forever. dornröschenschlaf On a trip through the city, looking for picturesque places, Phil stumbles across a seemingly enchanted place. But who knows, maybe he's part of the fairytale too. blessed with a curse everything i touch turns to stone. so wrap your arms around me and leave me on my own. phantom butterflies Dan still got butterflies in his stomach when he sees Phil. But what if they're only phantom butterflies? drown my demons Whenever Phil feels all alone, he knows he can rely on Dan. But maybe he shouldn't. And apparently, demons know how to swim. whiffs of autumn The world is an amazing place. Look at it instead of your flaws. - It doesn't work all the time. But autumn makes things easier. just Dan and Phil are friends. Not ‘just’ friends - they’re friends, there’s no doubt about that. And yet, Dan feels like he’s missing a piece. 知己知己 - zhiji: the one who knows me. soulmate. confidant. THE BIG STUFF

A Song for Lottie ~ Dan was quite happy without Phil in his life. But then, Lottie came along. Lottie, the annoying girl with a sweet tooth and a bad mouth. And you just can't say no to Lottie. Even when she wants you to meet Phil again. ~ sooo i volunteered to be a pinch hitter for the phandom reverse bang. (just in case you can’t tell - i love pinch hitting ♥ just hit me up - pun intended - whenever you need a pinch hitter. i’m a sucker for challenges ♥) and i did what you do as pinch hitter - begin a multi-chapter fic with several storylines. wait, you usually don’t do that? damn, nobody told me :D the story has been on a break for a while but i’m planning to write the next chapter this week! doppelt. ~ The big wheel in Manchester. The big wheel in another Manchester. Phil's disappearance. Finding Phil - twice. Dealing with Doppelgängers. That's not exactly what Dan expected from their first meeting. But in the end, being with Phil is all that matters. ~ i’m not only a sucker for pinch hitting - i also love projects. this time, i took part in the phandom big bang. the first ideas were super ambitious and nobody could understand them and i couldn’t wrap them up so i broke it down a lot. i guess i shouldn’t try to enter metaphysics into a fic - especially considering i have no clue about metaphysics. :D thriving. ~ Sometimes, you meet someone who changes your life. Someone who becomes your best friend. Someone who becomes more to you than just a best friend. Someone who helps you thrive. ~ my actual contribution to the phandom big bang - the one i signed up for. :D i spent so much time looking up flowers, oof. i ended up with 19, one for each chapter and aaaah i just love that feeling so much when everything adds up. common theme, chapter names, even formatting... i still enjoy it. :D MISC writing and posting all these fics wouldn’t have been possible without someone i met in 2020 - my beloved phandom beta @jorzuela ♥ we got to know each other during the phandom reverse bang in summer and i already told you 32763249 times that i was so glad i picked your artwork because it brought us together ♥ thanks for your patience, time, energy, everything ♥ and f... you for stealing my commas. they are essential OKAY 😤 last but not least... i got nominated twice for the phanfic awards?!?!?!!?! i’m still speechless, i can’t even put into words how much it means to me. since i started writing, it has been a dream of mine to win an award but i’ve written off that dream long ago. so it came as a huge surprise when i saw the nominations. y’all are insane, thank you so so so so so so so much for nominating me! ♥ i got nominated in two categories - A Song for Lottie in “best angst” and doppelt. in “best scifi fic”. if you want to vote for me, here’s the link! i would be more than happy to receive your vote ♥ so - that’s it! 2020 wrapped up in a neat post. thanks to everyone who was a part of my journey 🎉

#phanfic #phanfiction

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isoisolated · 4 years ago

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I have ADHD and it's not fun

29/12 edit: coming back to this post, I just wanted to add that at the time of writing, my adhd was unmedicated. Thought this might be good thing to note.

My friend Ondrej kept sending me articles and texts posts written by other adhd people (mostly adult males) that it finally pushed me to write my own, because even though I could relate to some minor and major parts, something always felt a bit of and also because ADHD is a condition that's been heavily ignored by medical professionals not only in adults, but especially in adult women, which is a group I sort of represent myself.

I could talk about this for ages, my therapist frequently tells me that I have this gift of intense self-analysis and immense passion to get it all sorted out once for all. I guess it's another way of saying I'm so hyperaware of my own existence and my brain simply latches onto it and constantly tries to solve its own problems.

If you do not care about my own personal history, just skip to second headline.

I was clueless for the first 20 years of my existence

Now, ADHD isn't the only thing that's been making me feel almost alien, I dare to say that my puberty years were mostly about developing and internalising bit of trauma and processes that do no good in later life.

I love music. And I mean I truly endlessly unconditionally love music. Being a daughter of music composer, I was 6 when I first asked my dad to show me where to press record in Logic Pro and told him to leave me alone while I recorded my first song. It was called Autumn is here and it sounded like something made by 6 years old.

I remember we were attending castings for TV shows or commercials and later I was told that it was me who initiated such trips and that I always wanted to be a part of such things. I don't remember initiating such things but I remember for sure that I was very shy and uncomfortable when I was supposed to show off.

I remember I was supposed to take piano lessons. And I was so baffled that I had to follow the book and play what's in the book, instead of playing thing I wanted. I think I told my parents after few lessons that I do not like it and was dropped outta it. This became a pattern, if I recall correctly.

But that's nothing out of ordinary, kids are harder to get focused and entertained. I remember two moments from elementary school where I was told by my classmates that I'm acting like I have ADHD and it got me real mad every time, because in my head ADHD looked like not paying attention in class, being body hyper and overall just annoying.

I could find a proof that I made myself first to-do list when I was 14. Since 14 I felt like I need more self control and self regulation, that I need to fit myself more into ambitions I had and have and in order to do that, I started making to-do lists with ambiguous tasks such as “work more on music” and “work-out”. It was also in during my great isolation era, I had no real life friends but one that I was seeing occasionally, I wasn't going out, I came from school on Friday afternoon and left my room on Monday morning. I was making friends online since I was 11 and lived mostly online.

At that time I also started figuring out what was wrong with me. Since ever I always felt a bit “off” compared to my peers, I always felt weird (and was told that thousand of times in my life), I always felt like I was thinking about things a bit differently and my humour was different and my hobbies were seen obscure by my classmates (even though they weren't obscure at all). I felt alone for most of my growing up and feelings of complete loneliness and detachment haunt me to this day, making me spiral.

I thought I might suffer from bipolar disorder, because I had high energy episodes and my emotions were so intense. I was crying almost everyday for both external and internal reasons, my head sometimes felt like too much and I found temporary peace in self-help books and esotericism.

I was around 17-18 when I realised all of this is bullshit and that no book can make me do things that I wanna do. I'd spent hours, days and months thinking about doing things, being crippled by this weird force that hold my body down, unable to do anything, no matter how much I wanted it. I'd beat myself up for it, thinking I was just so damn lazy and stupid and pretentious. I wanna be a popstar, a successful musician, I have to do all these things and if not, I'm gonna fail so much and my life will lose its meaning.

When I was 17, I released my first EP and for some reason, it found some attention and success, if we might call it that. Suddenly I felt on the right path, I was seen as a musician and also very young one. Even though I still was sad almost every day or had intense sadness episodes that could last for a week, it felt right and I couldn't wait to finish high school and become a full time musician.

I'd produce music in unplanned episodes of total focus, where I would sit and do things for hours straight, without eating. My most favorite songs were made during 6-8 hour sessions and it felt amazing. I couldn't bring myself to produce music if I hadn't the right vibe or idea for it.

It was around that time this woman texted me, saying she wants to be my manager and that she really likes my music. It felt so unreal but here I am, with my own professional manager, on my way to be the most amazing music person.

I'd crush on people (and mostly boys and men) constantly, it was also very episodic, could last for days to month where I'd had nothing on my mind but them, drowned in daydreaming and just imagining things and also letting them know all of that. It was magical but it was fleeting. It still is. But it is the greatest inspiration, where I feel so much emotions it makes me see things and then I can transform them into music.

But there was still something wrong with me, I was very emotional, still struggling with making my routines work, I'd come up with new plans and schedules every week just to fail them the day after. It was exhausting and I saw nothing alike in my world too, I was alone and my experience was just not enough will power.

I could get mad so easily, I'd clench my fists and was so close to punching someone and when I hated someone I hated them with immense passion and spent hours just imagining myself confronting them. I was so mad all the time on background too and even slightest thing would put me in classic rage mode.

I have problems remembering dates and names, I'm bad at remembering people's faces, I'm bad at learning things by myself even though I have interest in them. I'm bad at making routine for myself and actually following it.

I finished high school and planned to go study abroad but it turned out it isn't what I want so I came back and started looking for a job. Around that time I met my now best friend and thanks to him I actually started thinking even harder what might be wrong with me, so I looked up ADHD. And didn't believe that at all. I wasn't like this, was I?

Then, the summer came and I met my friend (and also a fan) while being out for a beer. We chatted, had a great time and then told me I kinda am like a person with ADD. I was confused because I didn't recall what that does mean, later I remembered it's another (and outdated) term for ADHD, but it's the “quiet type”, where the hype happens mostly inside and doesn't manifest outside that much. So I started researching once again, because I trusted him and it was that one push I needed.

It's been year since that moment and it took me months to accept that I might suffer from ADHD and to this day I still have feelings of impostor syndrome, making it all harder for myself just like that, to be more interesting for myself. I still yet have to accept this.

I was transitioning into adulthood and yet had actual emotional breakdowns, I was crying and my heart was aching and I couldn't bring myself to do things I want, to learn more about music production, to learn how to sing better, to learn my favorite k-pop choreos, to work-out, to embody my own vision of who I want to be. With music, I am my own boss and it's the worst.

Covid-19 hit our country and here came the first lockdown. It pushed me over the edge and I felt like I was losing all of my friends, I felt those feelings of loneliness and weirdness again, I felt like nobody knows what's wrong because I don't have it as bad as others, I was hurting so much my body was shaking and twisting. I decided to try medication, even though I told my psychiatrist I don't want to, I just felt like I cannot be like this anymore, it's too much pain and no matter how much I try, I can't make it better, I can't make it work.

I started taking Strattera and after month or two, I saw it working. A bit, I could focus better and bring myself to do things more and more frequently, and if I had these weird emotional meltdowns, they weren't as intense as before. This serves me as ultimate proof that I am not making this up, because if I were, the medication wouldn't work and make me feel better, right?

So, what am I doing now?

I'm still a huge mess and I cannot see myself in a better light. Even though I have job that I perform at at stable rate, even though I have just a little problem cooking for myself, even though I have no troubles falling asleep, even though I can enjoy things greatly when those high energy waves hit me.

I'm tired of myself, I'm tired of myself not being able to do anything again. I ignore my manager because I already know I have nothing else to say than “I cannot bring myself to do things and you know that, I'm sorry for being a constant failure.” When people compliment me, I thank them but deep inside I don't accept it.

I have unreleased and WIP songs I can see never being released, ever. When I listen to music from my favorite artists, I can also feel the pain from the fact that I'm not like them and that I probably won't ever be, because my brain sabotages me every damn time.

From the very moment I wake up to the very moment I fall asleep, there's music playing in my head. I don't choose what's playing, sometimes it's song I don't even like and yet it's stuck on loop. I talk with my therapist in my head, I'm having weird flashbacks in my head to my memories, I'm having “you should do X right now” and “why aren't you doing Y” stuck on loop too. This all is happening at once, every moment I'm awake, even when I'm talking with people. It's exhausting.

I'm bored most of the time, I have interesting books in my bookshelf and still cannot read them because I have to reread paragraphs in order to actually understand them. And even then, I find my mind wandering again. I have problems with long texts and long tutorials.

I get frustrated easily, my head is overflowing with ideas I can't act on. I'm living in weird worlds I made up for myself, and then reality hits me.

I had my first depressive episode few months ago. I felt like nothing matters, that I don't matter, I felt nothing and emptiness, I crawled up in bed and was mindlessly watching youtube videos. I didn't want to eat or drink, I wanted to not exist at all. That episode passed but it was my first encounter with actual depressive state and I know I can slip into it more easily now, it simply developed along the way, after 21 years without acknowledging that I have problems and I struggle.

People don't understand the struggle, when talking to them about my problems, it's like talking to an automated assistant, coming up with phrases like “Did you try yoga?” “everyone struggles sometime” “you cannot accomplish everything”. They say they wanna listen and help until they don't.

I have a mental graveyard for ideas I won't ever finish, no matter how good they are, because my brain won't let me. Proper medication would help, therapy also helps but I can't talk myself out of actual executive dysfunction.

ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder, our brains are literally underdeveloped in some areas and wired differently. Our emotions lack regulation normal people have and our motivation is fragile. This can't be changed with yoga, this cannot be solved by trying more. Not to even mention, capitalist society is especially damaging to neurodivergent people (and not only them, of course).

While on this journey, I am still meeting more and more people having same struggles like me, finding people who understand you is the best thing to battle impostor syndrome. Sometimes I can't help them and sometimes they can't help me, but it's okay, because we know we understand each other and if I wanna complain and vent, we can do so without having to explain this condition over and over.

And I hope that someone finds this relatable too, because as a woman I know my group isn't represented enough. We are not children, nor adult males, we need more attention and more support, from both healthcare system and each other.

While doing this, I hope to get myself proper medication and continue doing what I love the most - music. I don't love anything else more than that. I hope to get rid of “all or nothing” mindset, I hope to be more consistent, I hope my music will reach its listeners and fans. I still have enough time, I think, even though my sense of time is neurologically altered.

#adhd #actually adhd

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theemptyquarto · 4 years ago

Text

Abandoned WIP

This is a melancholy little entry that I stopped working on back in 2015, apparently, since Mary and John’s daughter is an “Amelia” rather than a “Rosie,” and Mary’s real name is “Angela” not “Rosamund” During the period in which I was writing it they announced, filmed, and released the film “Mr. Holmes” which deals with some similar subjects but which I did NOT rip off. I ripped off a Mitchell and Webb sketch:)

Age, eventually, makes mockeries of all of us. When I was in my sixties and seventies, I discovered that I did in fact have a heart. And a pancreas. And many joints, none of which seemed to want to work together properly anymore. And several other failing body parts that required me to take a dozen pills every single day of my life.

None of this happened to Sherlock. He remained more or less exactly as he’d always been, just craggier. He kept his hair, and when it changed color it started in elegant wings over his temples then became a flattering overall silver. Meanwhile I discovered that even once I gave up on blonde, I would have to keep coloring my hair, since it was an unattractive yellowish grey when left to its own devices.

Despite my array of minor ailments, our life together was… good. We split our time between the Sussex downs, where his bees were, and London, where our grandchildren were. He took cases, but only the most interesting ones. I wrote my novels, but only every three years, instead of the annual volumes I’d churned out in my prime. Sherlock wrote a practical handbook on beekeeping and was furious that nobody wished to buy it.

It was a snowy winter afternoon in Baker Street, and he’d just come in from the cold. He was flushed and excited to tell me all about what he’d been up to since he’d been gone for a week: a commonplace-seeming garroting that had led to the discovery of an active human-sacrifice cult with multiple sites across Europe. I vaguely considered putting it into a story but decided it was so wildly implausible that even my extremely patient readers wouldn’t believe it.

“Oh, you should have seen it, Mary!” he exclaimed, “There I was, tied to the altar below the statue of Czernobog, and the priest was saying the chant and holding the rope over my head, when all at once the door burst open and-“

He paused, then, and said, “Oh, hell. What’s his name? The detective inspector? Amelia’s boss? Black, muscular, gay?”

“Ted Gregson.”

“Yes. Right. Him.”

He didn’t continue on, but flung himself into chair and stared into the fireplace. I prodded, “So then what happened?”

“I believe something’s gone wrong with my mind, Mary.”

I rolled my eyes at that. For someone who was always as healthy as a horse he was a terrible hypochondriac.

“You had a senior moment. Anyway you never used to remember Greg’s name either… you may have some sort of block for DIs.”

“No. This is something different. And it’s been going on for a while.”

Sherlock was right. He mostly was. Like a lot of intelligent people, he’d been able to compensate for the earliest stages, but he was right. After that, the progression seemed terribly fast. We spent several months in a haze of scans and therapy, and he accumulated enough prescription bottles to rival my own collection. Some of them were highly experimental and provided by his brother’s network of mysterious scientists. None of them really seemed to do much.

Amelia, being the dear that she is, volunteered to take us in when it all started getting too much for me to handle by myself. But she had three young children and a husband to look after, a hugely busy career with the Met, plus far too many stairs for me to manage every day. Therefore I sold the house at Baker Street for an obscene amount of money to a city stockbroker, and we moved out to the downs for what I knew would be the last time.

I’ve spent my life moving on and leaving things behind me. I’d dropped the original version of myself with no real regrets. I’d quit my first two careers, both of which I’d been proud of and enjoyed. I’d managed to get through the death of a husband who I had loved so much that even thirty years later it still hurt to think of him. So it’s silly how many tears I shed over that dingy Georgian money pit.

But the cash I got for the place was very helpful. Despite the continuing success of the Jim Winston novels and the fact that Sherlock had softened up on taking dull cases for money as he aged, we weren’t exactly rich. Then, too, we had new expenses. I had to hire a nice young woman to help me look after the house, and a large young man to keep an eye on Sherlock in the evenings, since he tended to want to wander after dark.

Then I had to hire another nice young woman because Sherlock had deduced that the original one was unfaithful to her husband, and had of course done it to her face. Then another large young man since Sherlock, who took a while to experience any of the physical debility that comes with Alzheimer’s, got confused and shoulder-threw the first one across the lounge one evening. At a certain point I arranged for a local hippie couple to come by and look after the bees in exchange for the honey.

We carried on for a few years. He had his good days and his bad ones. On his good days he’d still consult, by email, since he had a rock-hard certainty that England couldn’t get by without him. I published “The Mountain of Fear,” which sold as well as any of my books but as always was savaged by the critics for popularist dreck.

I started work on my next novel and got about a quarter of the way through it. Then one day I realized that it was likely that it would be the last one I ever had time to write, and that after it was done, there would be no more Jim Winston stories. I could face not writing it, but I couldn’t face a world where John, even a fictionalized and imaginary John, wasn’t around, and so I put the MS in a drawer in my desk and turned the key. “Caught in transition from imagination to life” was the best epitaph I could have written for him, with my limited abilities.

We had fewer and fewer good days.

On a brilliant indian summer day, I went to London to have a new and complicated type of bone scan that couldn’t be done locally. This was mostly uneventful, although we incidentally discovered that I had finally shrunk to the point where I was less than five feet tall. The nurse said the radiologist would look over the films and be in touch in the next few weeks. I took Amelia to lunch and we talked about the grandchildren, mostly, and she promised to bring them out for a visit at the weekend. Then I took the train back home- I still drove, but didn’t care to do it in the city any more.

When I got back from the station, there was a long black town car parked on the gravel drive in front of our house. The driver, a lovely young woman and obviously a Secret Service agent, was leaning on the hood smoking a cigarette. She nodded politely to me as I passed by. I therefore was not surprised to see Sherlock’s brother sitting in the kitchen, drinking tea. He shared the Holmes tendency for turning up where he wasn’t expected.

Or wanted.

Like his brother, he was well-preserved physically, though in the case of Mycroft the adjective “mummified” always seemed more appropriate. He had to be nearly ninety but his eyes were as bright and judgmental as they ever had been. He nodded to me as Vithnya, the second housekeeper, helped me out of my coat.

“Mycroft.”

“Mary.”

We weren’t ever particularly friendly. He’d never trusted me, and had verbally disapproved of my relationship with Sherlock until it was so well-established that it had become a pointless gesture on his part. For my part, I despised the constant needling that was his preferred method of interaction with his younger brother. To the best of my knowledge he and Sherlock hadn’t met in person for nearly three years.

Even with all that, it was oddly relaxing to talk to him. We were both such skilled and professional liars that we never bothered trying it out with one another.

“How’s he done since I was out?” I asked Vithnya.

“Pretty well. He had a nice chat with Mr. Holmes – with Mr. Mycroft Holmes, that is - and now he’s out with his bees. But he was a little agitated this morning. He kept walking around looking for someone called Angela.”

I could feel Mycroft’s eyes boring in to me over the rim of his teacup. I smiled at the girl and said, “He was looking for me. It’s an old joke we used to have.”

She giggled, and I realized abruptly that she was relieved, that she’d worried I’d be hurt that my husband, in his confusion, wanted to see another woman. This was a thought that was so ridiculous on so many levels that I could have giggled myself.

Vithnya grinned, white teeth in her red lips, and said, “I don’t know about that. This Angela sounds like a most desperate character!”

“I was quite the firecracker when I was younger, my girl. Can you keep an eye on him while I chat with Mycroft, please?”

She poured me a cup of tea of my own and went off to do just that.

Mycroft said, “You don’t seem at all nervous of discovery now that Sherlock has lost what - minimal filters - he ever had.”

“I’m not.”

“No statute of limitations on murder.”

I rolled my eyes at him. He was the one, after all, who had replaced my rather half-assed false identity with something that could stand up to any scrutiny.

“She won’t think about it for more than thirty seconds after leaving this room. I am a little old lady. In the mind of a twenty-two year old, not only am I obviously harmless now but it is inconceivable I ever would have been otherwise. You ought to consider hiring some of us on at MI-6. We’re practically invisible.”

“Perhaps I ought.”

I took a biscuit, damn my blood sugar, and dunked it into my tea.

“Did you and Sherlock have a nice chat?” I asked.

He didn’t answer right away.

“We did,” he said, eventually, “For seventy-eight minutes. Not once in that period did he recognize me. I could tell he was making his best deductions. Sometimes he thought I was John Watson. Sometimes Greg Lestrade, sometimes Victor Trevor. I didn’t realize-”

“Didn’t realize what?”

“That he had become so debilitated. That he was so far gone.”

I sighed.

“He’s dying, Mycroft. What did you think it would be like?”

He took another biscuit from the packet on the table and put it into his mouth. Chewed.

“I never thought that he would be the first to go. I always assumed that I wouldn’t be the one left standing. When he’s gone-”

He trailed off. But I could read his thoughts as clearly as if they’d been my own. When Sherlock was gone there would be no one left with the same sort of mind that Mycroft had… except the departure had already happened, and he’d missed it.

I had some sympathetic pangs – for Mycroft Holmes, of all people – and I said, “He generally perks up a bit in the evenings. I’m happy to put you up, if you’d like. Perhaps you could… try again?”

The British Government responded as I should have expected. He rose, brushed nonexistent crumbs off his lapels, and took up his hat and umbrella.

“I think that my presence is of no help to him any longer, Mary. I expect that I will see you again. At least once.”

He actually bowed to me on his way out.

I finished my tea, and looked out of the window. Vithnya was sitting in the grass, folding a basket of laundry. Sherlock was sitting on the bench that looked out over the garden. Both of them seemed contented, at least as far as one could tell from that distance. The sun was at a deep angle, and so I picked up a blanket and left for the outdoors.

I was glad I had done, as it was starting to get chilly outside and he was in shirtsleeves. Had I married any other man but this one I would have thought that his indifference to the elements was a sign of his decay, but frankly he’d done the exact same thing when he was forty. “Just transport,” is the motto he maintained, in far worse weather than this.

At some point in his life someone, presumably his mother, drilled some basic forms of politeness into Sherlock Holmes. He was terrifyingly, frankly rude in ordinary conversation but when you handed him a cup of tea or tucked a blanket around his body you would inevitably receive a gracious, “Ah, thank you.” It’d be in the tone of a king addressing his subjects, but you’d get it. I got just that as I settled the afghan around his knees, and sat down next to him to look over the hives.

“I’m expecting John and Mary to turn up. Have you seen them?” he asked me.

When he’d first become ill, he’d asked me to always correct him when he had his lapses. I’d agreed, but, again, I was such a natural liar that it didn’t much trouble me to say now that, “I believe they’ll be along shortly.” Awful, I know, but sometimes I just wanted not to see him upset.

“Ah,” he replied.

A drone, a late survivor of the autumnal purges, buzzed up and landed on the blanket over his knee. He gently nudged it onto his hand and raised it to eye level before setting it down on the ground.

“I’m a bit worried,” he said, conversationally.

“About what?” I asked.

“Occasionally John’s wife lets me shag her. And I’m not sure that’s right.”

I blinked. Occasionally? Thirty-odd years, and I’m not going to go into details about our sex life but it was really very acceptable, and occasionally is what he remembered? And that I ‘let him’? But all I said was, “I’m sure Mary wouldn’t do that if John objected. So it’s all right.”

“Ah, good. You know Mary, then?”

“I do, yes.”

He squinted at me, which, Gawd-help-us, was still terribly cute.

“You’re… one of her relatives,” he said, hesitantly.

I smiled. “I am,” I said, “How did you know that?”

He grinned at me. No matter what he’d ever said or how much he’d griped about the unobservant nature of most people, I knew that he loved to explain his deductions.

“It’s the ears,” he said, setting the pads of his fingers on my chin and turning my face to the side, “Not quite as uniquely identifying as a fingerprint but with a strong genetic component. The pendulosity of the lobes, the position of the pinnae… clearly you and Mary are closely connected. You’re too old to be the younger sister, and the mother is dead, but..”

He took hold of my hand and looked at my fingers. “There’s other things. You and Mary both have a minor congenital deformity of the smallest finger. It angles slightly outward. Not enough to disable either of you, but distinctive, and…”

He turned my hands in his. I have nearly perfectly matched scars on my palms… on my right hand, the souvenir of a Caracas knife fight when I was twenty-seven. On my left, the souvenir of reaching into a sink filled with dishwater and one broken glass when I was forty.

And then he stopped, still staring at my hands, and said, “Oh. Oh Mary. How could I have forgotten you? I had you off by heart.”

I lifted a hand and stroked his grizzled chin.

“It’s fine,” I said, “You have me back.”

He just tangled his fingers in mine and stared.

“That’s my mother’s ring,” he said. “Did I give that to you?”

I looked at the amethyst on my right ring finger and said, “Yes. When we got married.”

“I remember that. You were beautiful in your dress.”

I laughed, unwittingly. “That was my first wedding. You and I just went to a registry office at two in the afternoon on a Tuesday.”

“Really?”

“We did. There wasn’t much time to plan a wedding. The exact words of your proposal were, “If I have to be Sir Sherlock you can damn well be Lady Mary.” It was the day before you got your KCBE.”

“By God. What a rubbish proposal.”

I smiled.

“Unconventional, definitely. But I wouldn’t have had you any other way.”

#quarto's fics #Marylock #retirementlock #Major character death #it's john #and in this story it happened decades ago

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