#mostly they're just hot jerks who would hook up a lot

[girderednerve]

i've seen a post going around about ayn rand & it hurt my feelings

i'm MOSTLY KIDDING, i agree with the general thesis that atlas shrugged is a terrible book & we should all enjoy making fun of ayn rand, libertarianism is garbage, &c. &c. however i sort of think it's unfair to say that the prose is awful or unreadable or something; there are a lot of bad books in the world, so the bar isn't especially high, but atlas shrugged has some parts that are pretty compelling. that's why it works! it lands for a certain kind of person, and that kind of person is not just 'incomprehensible jerks' and 'people who didn't actually read it.' it also has several comically terrible parts (notorious thirty-page radio rant that saved the world???), the plot is incoherent nonsense, the pacing is terrible. but it has its moments! i spent a good month and a half or so when i was in perhaps the eighth grade enthralled, before i walked it off. here are the three that i remember:

1..dagny taggart (ayn's self-insert railroad heiress oc) taking the inaugural ride along the newly laid track made of rearden metal (for hank rearden, a man she is fucking who operates a vertically integrated steel outfit & invented some sick new alloy or whatever). it's a pretty good scene—it's full of speed & triumph, and also, this is key, train. you do have to ignore the parts where they're like 'stupid safety regulators, who wanted to assess my new metal track before letting me lay a bunch of it,' and where they're like 'stupid railroad workers, who refused to go on the untested track because they are sheeple,' that part is no fun at all, but there's a vivid description of the countryside going by & the sense of success & joy, the confidence in human ingenuity. it lands

2. a little paragraph of narration from hank rearden where he's standing in a party of other people (they are sheeple, of course) thinking about how without his labor they would be alone on the dark, windswept plains. it's an evocative image in context, i find it relatable to feel out of place in social gatherings, and it's also true that we all rely on labor. unfortunately, hank rearden performs none (filthy capitalist). but the prose is functional

3. dagny taggart (ayn's apparently super-hot self-insert oc) hooking up with hank rearden like on some railroad ties? it's very forceful in context, like one might speculate that ayn had kind of a CNC kink (not judging her for this but it is funny). also a scene where dagny taggart (ayn's unimaginably desirable self-insert oc) is hooking up with i think it was hank rearden but it might be a fling with francisco d'ancona, who runs a vertically integrated copper mining outfit, or the legendary john galt, who invented a magic engine that runs on ambient power or whatever, like i said the plot is stupid. anyway the scene is her wearing expensive jewels which were given to her by a man because he wants to see her in them, and she says something about feeling elevated by being an object he owns. i'm not saying this is good (one has concerns, naturally) but it was effective or interesting in some way; it fascinates me to see these kinds of pretty common female fantasies represented so directly & defensively, with the assertion that they are rational & reasonable, instead of embarrassing or diminishing. ayn's capitalism kink is actually very embarrassing, though, & obviously she was not a feminist at all.

i keep vaguely meaning to look for someone who's written thoughtfully about ayn rand's gender politics + the connection between the romantic/sexual fantasies in her major novels & her politics, but everyone just wants to dunk on her (she does deserve it) or fawn over her (gross) instead of writing me the literary analysis i badly wanted to read in eleventh grade (i specify 'major novels' because there's also a relevant scene in the fountainhead between howard roark, who is an architect but otherwise exactly the same as hank rearden, and dominique francon, ayn's sexy reporter/heiress self-insert oc; that woman had like one idea). anyway if you have thoughts on ayn rand or want to recommend me literary criticism please do

[explosionshark]

Hey! Big fan of your writing. :) For the writing prompts, could I request #3 for Chloe Price and Victoria Chase?

hi i’m so sorry it took me a month to do this! thank you for the prompt! i think this is my first chaseprice. originally this was going to be sad, but i didn’t feel like bumming anyone (including me) out tonight so instead it got, uhhh, vaguely smutty. 

3. “It’s three in the morning.”

“It’s August 17th. Grass is green. That sleeve is way more trailer trash than badass punk rocker.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, were we not just reciting a list of the obvious at each other?”

“Fuck, Victoria, just get in the car before I change my mind,” Chloe practically growls, leaning across the cab to throw the passenger side door open in invitation.

“Why would I do that?” Victoria asks, but doesn’t stop, forcing Chloe to keep creeping down the street in her truck with the door open, like some kind of stranger danger-ass creep.

“Because it’s three in the morning and you’re walking down the street alone at night by yourself, like an idiot,” Chloe barks. She’s trying to do the right thing, trying to be like… all conscientious and shit. It hardly feels worth it, when once again, Victoria Chase finds a way to make her feel like a totally useless idiot the moment she opens her mouth. “Why are you walking down the street alone at night by yourself like an idiot?”

“Why are you stalking me in your truck?” Victoria tosses back. “You know, you’re not doing much for all those awful stereotypes about predatory lesbians, Chloe. What’s next? Going to offer me some candy? What, are you a friend of my mom’s?”

“Your mom and I aren’t friends, she just eats me out when your dad’s not home,” Chloe says and the tension in her shoulders, the sharp sting of humiliation reddening the back of her neck eases when Victoria chokes out a laugh. “Now stop being a bitch and get in the fucking car. It’ll be faster. Put us both out of our misery.”

Victoria actually pauses this time, glancing around the street before eyeing Chloe’s truck with suspicion. 

“No one’s gonna see,” Chloe rolls her eyes and leans back into her seat. “Literally everyone smarter than you’s at home in bed right now. So, like, the whole town.”

With a huge sigh, Victoria hauls herself into the truck, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the whole cab. She smells like expensive perfume, peppermint schnapps and wood smoke. She kicks her towering heels off immediately, pulling her stockinged feet up onto the bench and tucking herself into the corner of the cab.

Stockings. She’s wearing stockings under that short skirt, riding up even shorter with the twist of her legs. Stockings, like some kind of sexy old-timey movie star fantasy run amok. Chloe wonders how Victoria Chase finds a way to be 18 and 81 at the same time. 

“Whose party?” Chloe asks once she drags her eyes away from Victoria’s legs, pretending she doesn’t see the smirk on Victoria’s face that means she absolutely noticed.

“The Vortex Club’s. Who else?” Victoria asks, running a hand through her hair. It’s shorter now than the last time Chloe saw her, a few months ago. It makes her look older, more mature. It leaves Chloe feeling even more like a stupid teenager, fumbling and uncouth, even though she’s technically older than Victoria.

“Yeah, stupid question,” Chloe mutters. It feels dangerous, just the two of them in Chloe’s truck like this. “Not like you hang out with anyone else.”

“It’s called having standards,” Victoria sniffs. “Maybe if you tried it sometime you wouldn’t be nearly twenty and still getting busted by the cops for smoking pot and blowing up GI Joes with firecrackers behind the Circle K.”

“You heard about that?” Chloe laughs. It’s a little embarrassing, and David had given her absolute hell over it once word got back to him from his little buddies in blue, but Christ, it had been funny. 

“About how somehow you’re an adult who has the life of a Toy Story villain and you’re, like, fine with it? Yeah, Chloe. I heard about it.”

“And you think my life would be, what, different? Better? If I just wanted it to be? If I had your standards?” Chloe asks, pulling into the darkest corner of the Blackwell student lot and killing the engine. The cab is dark but for the light streaming in through the back window from streetlamp a few rows over. The night is silent without the rattle of the truck’s old engine. Chloe slithers across the seat like she’s been wanting to do since Victoria got into the truck. Closer, she can read the expression Victoria’s face a bit better – a little expectant, a little disbelieving, like she always seems to be when they’re together like this.

Like she’s halfway between scared and excited and she likes it best right there, between the two.

“I think our lives are what we make them,” Victoria says, voice even and calm, despite the quickening of her breath. Her makeup’s gently faded from the night, except for the lipstick Chloe saw her touching up on the street before she pulled up alongside her. It’s bright red, applied just a little too thick, Victoria a little too drunk to make it perfect. “I think if you want to be successful and you work hard for it, it will happen.”

Chloe wants to lean in and mess it up. She wants to taste it herself, scrape it off Victoria’s bottom lip with her teeth, smear it messily down her chin, her cheek. She wants that lipstick staining the collar of her shirt tomorrow when she wakes up.

But she waits.

“So people who don’t succeed, it’s just their fault for not wanting it enough, huh? For not working hard enough,” Chloe says and it makes her mad, kind of. But it doesn’t make her want Victoria less. Victoria says nothing, just keeps watching Chloe from across the bench, leg still tucked up under her. “Pretty rich girl like you, you would think that. Mommy and Daddy sending you to a fancy private art school. You would think that.”

“I worked hard to be here,” Victoria says.

“Yeah,” Chloe nods. “You and your standards.”

She leans forward, one hand behind Victoria’s head flat on the glass of the window, the other grasping the inside of a thigh, just under her skirt, just over where the stockings end. She applies the gentlest pressure, feels Victoria turn for her, legs falling open for her, hears the breath catch in Victoria’s throat.

Chloe knows an invitation when she sees one. She slides her hand higher.

You wouldn’t know how she was being touched from that perfectly cool look on Victoria’s face. Smug, almost bored. Chloe kind of admires her for it, even though she wants nothing more than to ruin that poise. It’s the challenge, the vaguely adversarial nature of the sex that keeps these encounters, brief and few that though they’ve been, interesting. 

It doesn’t take long, really. Chloe’s good enough at this by now and Victoria’s drunk enough to not care that she’s being obvious. Within minutes she’s writhing against the door, shaking and swollen, dripping down Chloe’s wrist and begging to come.

So, of course Chloe pulls away.

Victoria keens, scrabbling desperately at Chloe’s retreating arm, panting and lipstick-smudged and nearly delirious. “Fuck. Fuck. Why’d you stop?”

“Well, I figured you wouldn’t want any handouts, right?” Chloe drawls, and reaches over her shoulder for a fistful of her tanktop. She yanks the shirt up and over her head, liking the sound her necklace makes when it falls against her bare skin. And yeah, technically, this is a tremendously bad idea because they’re in the Blackwell parking lot and there’s security wandering around out there somewhere but, well. Fuck it. Life’s a risk.

“Are you serious right now?” Victoria glares, looking very regal and pissed off for a girl with her skirt hiked up over her hips. All the incandescent rage in the world couldn’t disguise the way her eyes keep drifting down to Chloe’s exposed breasts, though, the way she has to fight to meet Chloe’s eyes when she speaks.

“Well, it wouldn’t have been very fair of me not to give you a chance to earn it,” Chloe shrugs. “But, y’know, most people don’t know this about me but I’ve actually got a pretty fuckin generous spirit and shit. So, like, if you were to ask me nicely, I’m sure I could…”

“Oh fuck this,” Victoria snarls and for a moment Chloe thinks she must have finally pushed too far, that Victoria’s going to fumble her way out of the cab and stalk back to her room.

But instead she launches herself across the cab, shoving Chloe up against the other door so hard and clumsy and fast her elbow bounces hard enough off the steering wheel to make her whole arm go numb. But before she has a chance to complain about that Victoria’s in her lap, grinding against Chloe’s bare stomach while her fingers tug insistently at the metal bars through Chloe’s nipples.

She’s rough and pissed off and neither of them is going to last like this but, well. Victoria’s kind of a perfectionist, control-freak weirdo, right? Chances are she’ll want a few more rounds, to make it perfect.

Chloe’s never been one to back down from a challenge.

dialogue prompts