#like it’s still probably one of if not the main Novel alongside lover boy + the secret prequel

[foxmulderautism]

felix and dorothy novel is so back, been writing little bits of it and also realised just now the one major backstory thing that i love so much but thought i’d have to cut because it came from the original backstory of them living in a physical gated cult (putting it that way because they still grew up in a cult it’s called christian fundamentalism LOL but we have moved on from the girls by emma cline inspo) can actually stay if i work it right OMFG. when i figure out a new title + find some good litfic about co-destructive co-dependent siblings even better if twins (still so annoyed the novel abt twins that promised to be that was not really that anyway) we are so back

[ghost-kitty]

Ok, this was VERY difficult, but here I go: Nsfw. Phone sex. Lawlu. AU 💕😍

Anything for you my love <3 I hope you like it!!! uwu

Something feels wrong, Law thinks as he wets his finger to turn the page of his novel – a cheesy romance story that he’s only reading because Shachi recommended it to him. The bastard. ‘You will absolutely love it,’ he said, ‘the main character is a doctor,’ he said. Yeah, only that he forgot to mention how fucking bad and cheesy it is. But he keeps reading it anyway because the medical inaccuracies are kind of cracking him up. Only internally of course. Maybe a slightly louder exhale through the nose here and there.

It’s entertaining if he’s being honest and yet he very much intends to give Shachi an earful later.

He’s cozy, sitting on his comfortable couch in his pajama pants and his favorite fluffy blanket with polar bears on it wrapped around him. A cup of freshly made coffee nearby to round it all up. A perfect way to spend his day off, really. But…

There’s something missing.

But what could it be? He has everything he needs to spend the entire day in perfect peace and quiet...

Ah. That’s it.

He loves to have some silence and time to himself to relax. It’s just that since Luffy moved in with him, he hardly ever gets it nowadays. And now that he finally has some time to himself without a shouting nuisance around it feels kind of… weird.

He really was looking forward to this week, with Luffy gone to visit his grandfather with his two brothers. But now that his energetic ball of sunshine isn’t around to get on his nerves he actually really misses it. Oh what can he say; Law just really loves his boyfriend despite him always nagging about Luffy’s loud nature.

As if on cue his phone starts buzzing. Law smiles softly when he reads Luffy’s name on the screen. The smile disappears soon though to make place for his jaw to drop to the floor.

He can’t believe what he’s seeing. He expected to see his adorable boyfriend to smile his bright grin at him when he saw that there is a picture attached. What he didn’t expect though was to open the file to not see a smile on his boyfriend’s face, but a small ‘o’ formed by his rosy lips instead. His big eyes are glazed and filled with lust, soft skin covered in a thin sheen of sweat and good lord – Law gulps – three fingers deep inside his asshole.

“Torao~  I miss u” reads the message but Law can’t even really piece the letters together to understand the sentence. His brain is reeling as he takes in the sight of his beautiful boyfriend, naked and probably breathing heavily. Fuck! His pajamas are already tenting, his cock now wide awake and interested.

The next message comes soon.

“Torao I’m so lonely… I miss your cock so much!”

Before Law even can make any sense of the situation his phone buzzes again. Another picture.

Law almost drops his phone to the floor as he opens the message, hands trembling from excitement.

Subconsciously he has started to palm himself through his pants and he licks his lips as he stares at the image.

Luffy has his legs spread wide open, the arm holding the camera probably hooked underneath his knee to get the right angle. Oh and what a heavenly angle it is!

His cute little cock is pressed flush against his abs, balls looking full and heavy and fuck… his hole is stretched wide open and gaping. The picture is slightly blurry probably due to Luffy’s hand shaking. He can see it in his mind perfectly, how Luffy is panting and trembling as he pleasures himself, soft moans escaping his lush lips.

Shit! He could cum right then and there just from remembering how hot and tight his hole is, how it clenches around his cock while he mercilessly pounds him into the mattress until he can only whine Law’s name in ecstasy.

He takes a few labored breaths, trying to calm down a bit before he finally answers.

“Fuck baby, are you that needy? Missing my cock that much already?”

His phone vibrates again, only this time it’s a call. Law answers it immediately and god is he glad that he did. Luffy should always greet him with such a sinful moan. “Law,” he mewls, his voice weak and hoarse. “I- ah… I miss your cock so much… please… Need to hear your v-voice!”

That’s it! Law can’t wait any longer. He pulls his throbbing cock out of his pants and starts to stroke himself in the same rhythm as Luffy’s ragged little huffs coming through the speaker. “Fuck baby,” he growls, “you’re such a naughty boy. Aren’t you worried about your family hearing your filthy little moans?”

“N-no… they are out of the h-hah house…”

Law speeds up his pace, jerking off ferociously. “Oh yeah? How comes, that they left you behind?”

“Law-!”

“Tell me!” he demands, getting a needy whine as a reward.

“I… I told them that I’m n-not feeling well…”

Law smirks. “Oh? You lied so you can send me all these lewd pictures to get me all hot and bothered? What a good boy you are.”

The teen lets out a loud moan, almost sending Law over the edge with how sensual it sounds. “What are you doing?” he then asks, stilling his hand for a moment to prevent himself from coming too soon. This is way too much fun to end it already.

“Fi-fingering my ass… god Law… I want your cock! Please, please I need it so bad!”

He decides to have mercy with his boyfriend. After all he has been a very good slut, begging so sweetly. Fumbling with his phone he finally manages to take a picture of his rock hard cock, tattooed hand gripping the girthy shaft, tip red and swollen and shiny with pre-cum.

The line is silent for a while after he sent the picture, the loud pants coming from Luffy the only sound to break the silence.

“La-ah!” Luffy suddenly moans - no screams - loud and unashamed. He knows that tone, the shaky voice. Luffy is close.

“Hey,” Law warns, “don’t cum just yet!”

“Love your cock… oh god Law I love your cock so much!”

He can see it before his eyes, how Luffy’s face is flushed in a nice pink color, his chin messy with drool and eyes rolling back into his skull. He’s seen it so many times but this time… this time Law got him there just from sending him a picture of his dick. It twitches in his hand at the thought, swelling even more alongside his ego.

“Of course you love my cock, baby. You’re a good little slut after all. Are you thinking about how good it feels to get fucked open by my fat cock, huh? How your tight little pussy has to stretch so much to take all of it?”

Luffy whimpers weakly, his ability to speak long gone.

Law grips his cock tighter, relishing in the feeling and the mental image of Luffy riding him into kingdom cum. “Fuck baby… I wish I could be there with you. I would fuck you so good. Would fuck your cute little hole open until you don’t even remember your own name.”

“Hah… Law…”

The noises coming from Luffy are so sinfully hot, Law almost loses control completely. He’s painfully close by now, dick almost hurting from holding back. He keeps stroking his length though, the pleasure way too intense. “Tell me what you want to do, baby,” he demands, knowing full well that it’s torture for Luffy to be ordered to speak. A smirk tugs at his lips when he hears the teen’s desperate moan.

“Want to…,” he croaks, “want you to fuck my mouth… hah…”

“Of course. Good little slut, you love to choke on my dick, don’t you?”

“Yes love it, love it! Please Law… I’m so… ah… close!”

“I would fuck your little throat so good baby. You’d like that, yeah? Love it when I shove my cock deep down your throat until it bruises.”

“Ye- ahhh!”

“Or do you want to get on all fours for me, hm? Lifting your perfect little ass up in the air for me to take.”

Luffy is blabbering unintelligibly; the only thing Law can make out is his name occasionally leaving his boyfriend’s lips between the other slurred nonsense.  

His own cock aches in his hand, begging for release as he strokes himself closer and closer to his orgasm.

“I would fuck you so hard; you would come from just my dick up your ass baby.”

“Please,” he begs softly, “Please Law… wanna cum…”

His voice sounds weak as he repeatedly begs Law to let him have his release. It’s easy to imagine the debauched look on his face. It’s one of Law’s favorite looks on him. Suits him so well... Even more so when his flustered cheeks are painted white with Law’s semen.

“Fuck baby, you’re such a good little whore for me. So perfect. Want to fill you up… want to shoot my whole load inside you and watch it dribble out of your gaping hole… Fuck! Baby cum for me!”

Finally getting Law’s permission is all it takes for Luffy to come undone. He whimpers loudly, chants his lover’s name again and again during his orgasm; the sound so sweet, it’s enough to push Law over the edge too. He comes in hot spurts all over his hand and dirtying his pants. Not that he cares about that in his state of total bliss.

They bask in their afterglow for a while; neither of them saying a word, too occupied with trying to get their breathing back under control anyway.

“Torao.” Luffy breaks the silence first, his voice hoarse. “I love you.”

Law smiles softly. “I love you too baby.”

“I miss you…”

God what he wouldn’t give to kiss his little sunshine now…

“It’s only a few days, baby. You’ll be back in no time. And until then you can enjoy the time together with you family.”

“…can we have lots of sex when I’m back?”

Law chuckles. As if he could ever say no to hot sex with the man he loves so much. “Yes of course,” he agrees easily.

“And lots of cuddles too?”

“Yes. Lots of cuddles too. Are you tired baby?”

“Yes, ‘m sleepy now,” he mumbles. So adorable.

“Okay baby, go to sleep. But don’t forget to clean up first.” He smiles at Luffy’s muttered ‘yeah’ and then adds: “And Luffy?”

“Hm?”

“Thank you for the nice surprise.”

He can feel Luffy’s smile through the phone and his heart starts to flutter uncontrollably. “I love you.”

“I love you too. Bye Torao…”

They end the call and Law sighs as he suddenly gets aware of the mess he made. He quickly cleans himself up and throws his ruined pajamas in the laundry.

After cleaning up and changing into a new pair of comfy pants he makes himself comfortable on the couch again, a satisfied smirk on his lips.

“This really is a perfect day off,” he thinks. “Now back to this shitty book.”

[yourfanvivitran]

It should come as no surprise that John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon were students in the same film class, that they created Dark Star together, and that they both had a great affinity for 1951’s The Thing From Another World. If you put Ridley Scott’s Alien, which O’Bannon wrote, next to Carpenter’s The Thing, the parallels cannot be contended. A group of people, bound together almost exclusively by their careers, are isolated and trapped in their own environment with a murderous monster. One by one, they are picked off by this alien beast and are forced to pull out all the stops just to survive. The tension in both movies is suffocating. The suspense stays well after the credits roll.

So, why did Alien excel and why did The Thing fail?

Alien was heralded as a science fiction-horror masterpiece, raking in over $200 million at the box office. The Thing, although now recognized as one of Carpenter’s best films to rival even the likes of Halloween, barely exceeded its $15 million budget by $4 million. What’s more is that critics panned The Thing almost unanimously after its 1982 release. And to what point?

When you compare the 2 movies, it objectively doesn’t make much sense. When you sit down and watch The Thing, without even thinking of its much more popular predecessor, it still doesn’t quite add up. There is not much I can say about The Thing that hasn’t already been said before. It’s well-known, now - the writing, the acting, the practical effects, the cinematography? Masterfully done. No arguments. So what went wrong?

The most popularly accepted explanation was that it just wasn’t the right year for it. In 1982, The Thing had to contend with the Summer of Spielberg, being critiqued alongside horror giant Poltergeist and science fiction treasure E.T. How could a stark and grim story of distrust and gore stand alongside such beloved classics?

But in tandem with these films and also calling back to the success of Alien, Carpenter cites reception from various focus groups: they hated the ending.

It should be assumed at this point that if you have not yet seen The Thing, you are sorely missing out. All the same, however, be wary of spoilers.

The end of The Thing is bitter, to put it lightly. Childs (Keith David) trudges through Antarctic snow, lit by the burning wreckage of Outpost 31, towards R.J. MacReady (Kurt Russel) who sits alone, already half buried. They observe their inevitable deaths, and drink to the supposed demise of their shapeshifting predator.

A lot is left out to die in the snow.

According to Carpenter, this ending was seen by test audiences as too dismal. And rightfully so, when you take into consideration the other popular releases of 1982. Carol Anne is ultimately saved, along with the rest of her family, at the end of Poltergeist. Elliot embraces E.T. before he finally returns home. And going further back, even Ripley is able to escape the xenomorph by the skin of her teeth and secure herself the title as one of the greatest “Final Girls” ever put to the silver screen.

And what of MacReady and Childs?

Well, that’s up to your imagination, Carpenter told a test audience member who asked who the final host was at the end of the movie.

“Oh, god. I hate that,” they responded.

As a writer, this loose ends style of concluding a story is almost expected from a lot of modern works. It’s written this way in order to haunt the reader, to linger and adhere itself to the real world in the most sardonic of ways. Think Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” or Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” This almost anticlimactic close of the curtain arrived in the literary world long before it found its place in film, but it’s a big point of contention in mainstream criticism.

Dark or incomplete conclusions have been met with the most scathing of responses. Beware the black cutaway of Sopranos fame. Or the near-universal outcry against the third Mass Effect game that grew so much, the developers created a morsel of DLC content that maybe kind of confirmed a more optimistic fate for our dear Shepard.

But even for the horror genre, The Thing seemed unprecedented. The only fate darker to fall upon a mainstream protagonist was Ben’s untimely death in Night of the Living Dead. The tragedy of both movies is palpable - all this trouble to survive against inhuman killers, all this trouble to outlive something gruesome and maybe even make the world a better place, and what was left to show for it?

In short, Carpenter’s science fiction terror was too much of a bummer.

I personally did not take much of a liking to horror until much later in life. My parents didn’t filter the media I consumed as much as they probably should have, and I was scarred early on by movies as cheesy and entertaining as The Lost Boys and Blade. It wasn’t until late adolescence and into college that I set out to catch up.

My roommate at the time of this resolution had been a fan of horror her whole life, her favorites being Halloween, Candyman, and The Thing. Having already known a good deal about the former two, I decided to strap in for The Thing for the first time ever.

These days, I always have several soap boxes on retainer, just waiting for the next unwitting recipient of my usually-beer-induced rants. Brian Jones was killed, Jaws single handedly endangered sharks, banning books is a stupid practice, representation in media is important, etc. Predictably, one of these soap boxes is the general lack of appreciation of The Thing, both at the time of its release and today (it does not even make the top 100 on Rotten Tomatoes’s highest rated horror movies).

And yet, at the same time, if The Thing had achieved the credit it deserved upon release, I may not like it as much as I do today.

I make a point to not read too much about movies I am feverishly anticipating, and revel in the feeling of going into a well-known movie knowing as little as possible. Most of the time, it makes for the best viewing experience, but I’m sure I don’t even have to point this out.

This was my experience seeing The Thing for the first time. I was on winter break, staying at my parents’ house for the holidays. Everyone else had gone to bed, and I stayed up late in the living room, curled up under layers of blankets, content in perfect darkness save for the television.

I had no idea what to expect, as I had not been spoiled by any TV show making any blatant references and had not done any prior reading into the film itself. And I was absolutely delighted from beginning to end.

What stays with me the most is the special effects. It’s true what they say - that practical effects hold up better than CGI alone. And the production team didn’t cut any corners in this department. Stan Winston and his team, who were later responsible for the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, helped construct one of the best animatronics in the movie. Rob Bottin, who brought this constantly-morphing creature to life from conception to every last slimy detail, went on to be hailed as a genius in his special effects career. And there is definitely something to be said for the work of cinematographer Dean Cundey whose masterful control of lighting and framing is best seen in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

The extent of my knowledge of the titular creature was that it was an alien. That it was an alien who could consume multiple life forms and take on their shapes was both exciting and terrifying. There’s creative genius in this premise that thrills the science fiction lover in me, and also fascinates the bookworm in me. I had been a fan of Agatha Christie novels as a teenager, and to see a new and outrageous take on the And Then There Were None structure was incredibly novel to me.

The appeal wasn’t just that there was something out there, lying in wait to torturously pick off it’s victims one-by-one. It was that it could have been anyone.

At its core, horror as we know it has deep roots in whodunnit style murder mystery. With the rise of the giallo and the sensation of the slasher, horror movies of this nature are far from uncommon and can be seen as late as 1996 with the Scream franchise. Carpenter himself spurned a new kind of fear with his breakout success with Halloween by refusing to give a bodily face to its main antagonist. Here, with The Thing, he takes the eponymous killer character to the next level by giving it the genetically inherent function of deceiving its prey. Not knowing the true face of your murderer has proven to be inherently bone-chilling.

Even now, hundreds of horror movies under my belt later and still constantly learning, I keep coming back to The Thing. I really cannot think of another movie in my wide array of favorites that I love more than The Thing, and I truly believe it has everything to do with me not knowing anything about it upon my first viewing. Every other movie I can name on my (similar to the subject) constantly changing top 10 list of most beloved horror flicks was, at some point, spoiled for me in some capacity.

Think of how often the twins in The Shining are referenced in cartoons, of all the head spinning jokes made in reference to The Exorcist. Anthony Hopkins’s portrayal of Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lambs has become so infamous, that I knew his dialogue (and Buffalo Bill’s) long before I ever saw the movie in full.

I don’t blame these references for ruining these movies. As a super fan, I understand that compulsion to pay tribute. It’s no one’s fault and to their credit that these films take lives of their own. But the repercussions don’t age well in terms of initial viewing experiences.

All that being said, I truly cherish how much I was not exposed to this movie. The unpredictability of the creature and the quiet, looming despair that comes with it create a horror unlike any other.

Although it was a box office flop, The Thing is now a welcome and praised name in both science fiction and horror. Even Quentin Tarantino made it known that The Hateful Eight was primarily inspired on several fronts by Carpenter’s underrated work. However, it has not pervaded pop culture like so many other horror classics have left their indelible mark on film vernacular. And to that end, I hope it remains in that slight shadow of anonymity for all future enthusiasts.