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destielshippingnews · 2 years ago

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Edvard's Supernatural Guide: 2x07 The Usual Suspects

This analysis is short because I have very little to say about this episode. It is not a bad one, but neither does it especially interest me nor give me much to talk about. It does nothing to advance the overall plot of the series and is not connected to the mythos in any way. My main take-away is wondering what a filler episode of The X-Files is doing in the middle of my Supernatural. I still do not care for a police presence or trouble-with-the-law storylines in my supernatural dramas (Charmed was terrible for that), and I honestly considered skipping this one because it simply does not do much for me. That said, I am glad I chose to watch it because there are some positive aspects to it.

To give a brief summary of the plot, Dean and Sam are arrested in Baltimore after Dean is found with a murdered woman while investigating her husband’s murder. The ghost of a dead woman keeps appearing to people who are soon murdered. One of the policemen leading the case is determined to pin the murder on Dean, while the policewoman has her doubts. Eventually, the policewoman and Sam find out that the real killer is the policeman who was involved with drug and murdered people to cover his tracks. Sam and the policewoman manage to save Dean from becoming the policeman’s scapegoat at the last minute, and the truth finally lets Dean go free.

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One of the things I liked most about this episode was the fact that Dean and Sam were both shown as intelligent and competent, and managed to work together as a team to get themselves out of a predicament even though they were separated and had extremely limited means of communication. Furthermore, there was no snarking, bitching, or poisonous behaviour from Sam, and Dean’s jokes about Sam being the ‘red-headed woman’ did not seem like the abused partner in the brotherhood lashing out (although I am not quite sure what the relevance of Scully being a red-haired woman is, but it was probably an American writer’s attempt at a lame ginger joke. By which I mean the joke was lame AND ginger jokes are lame).

If this were the first and only episode of the show I ever watched, I could easily buy into the idea that Dean and Sam are a reasonably healthy, functioning duo who care about each other equally and have each other’s back. Sam’s sole motivation in finding the truth was to exonerate his brother, and in spite of the opportunities given to him, point-blank refused to even consider the notion of betraying Dean to the police. I actually liked Sam in this episode, and I have decided that 2x07!Sam is the only valid Sam.

Add to that the fact that Dean is not once demeaned, embarrassed, or misunderstood by the writer, and I am happy with this episode’s portrayal of the brothers. It gets no complaints from me whatsoever. Little things which some might have missed are the fact that Dean and Sam apparently discuss their alibis together before breaking into buildings, if Diana’s comment that ‘both their stories match’ is to be believed. They also have codes for communicating which take others a while to get if at all, such as Dean’s note to Sam referring to The Great Escape as a cue to escape.

Well done on those counts, Cathryn Humphries. It is just a shame I do not think this episode belongs in Supernatural.

Something worth remembering is that Dean’s rights have been taken away from him through no fault of his own. He was innocent of the killings he was blamed for in 1x06 Skin, being made into the fall-guy partially through a combination of Sam’s stupidity, Sam’s privileged upper-middle class university friend, and of course the shapeshifter. ...whom the police found dead whilst morphed into Dean. How could ‘Dean’ have faked his death when the police had his body? Anyway, because of this, Dean is cut off from participation in normal society due to being held accountable for other people’s actions (which Sam smirked at, remember), and he is at the policeman’s mercy. He is ‘just another scumbag’, another victim rendered powerless to save himself at the end. Being the sacrifice for other people is always Dean’s role, but at least this once he was saved before things got bad, and there was no Bad Ass snark from Sam after rescuing Dean, either. Well done, writer. Well done.

Some of the less good aspects of the episode were a few plot conveniences which stretched my suspension of disbelief. One of these is that Inspector Shady would give the same necklace to the woman he murdered as he did to Diana, especially since the necklace was a rare custom make. It was also strange that Dean did not hear the police enter the house and catch him with the woman’s dead body. The house was silent and Dean is trained to keep his wits about him, so this felt a bit too convenient, especially considering how well he managed to keep himself calm and collected at the sight of the body. He had clearly been in that situation before, so what was different that time?

Also worth pondering is why Claire (the death omen) did not appear to Dean in the van before Inspector Shady tried to kill him. She appeared to everybody Shady killed in advance to try warning them, but not to Dean. Is this a plot hole? I am not sure. Is there any way Claire could have known Dean would not die, and so did not need to warn him? Or was there iron in the van which she could not get through? That did not stop the Woman in White in 1x01 Pilot and it will not stop Tricia Helfer in 2x16 Roadkill, so why would it stop Claire?

That almost finishes things for this analysis (my shortest to date), but before then, there were two moments in this episode which set ADHD bells ringing in my head. The first was Dean making silly noises whilst sitting waiting for Sam to do his research on the computer...

and the second was his attempts at conversation with Inspector Shady in the van at the end. The way the writer intended it was likely Dean trying to be cocky or snarky in the face of death, perhaps to cover up his fear, but the way Jensen delivered his lines did not portray that. I got the nervousness and fear, but no sense of cockiness.

His comment ‘Another pee-break? You might want to get your prostate examined’ sounded like a little ADHD boy (or an autistic boy) who has so many thoughts in his head and is trying to have a conversation with somebody who just is not listening and does not care. The lack of ‘natural’ intonation in his voice while saying it also sounds like a person with ADHD or autism trying to make a joke and failing spectacularly.

As for the confession tape, it was better than any profile I have ever seen on Tinder, Grindr, Gaydar, or Planet Romeo. To be honest, that is a low bar, but praise where praise is due.

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One final note before I finish: many have noted that Dean is frequently put in situations usually (or ‘traditionally’) reserved for female characters, i.e. helplessness, disarmed, and in need of being saved. Most of this is due to the fact that the show’s two leads are both male and one of them needs to be in danger sometimes for dramatic purposes, but it is Dean more frequently than Sam, e.g. being a sacrificial offering in 1x11 Scarecrow, being Max’s hostage in 1x14 Nightmare, being ‘bait’ for the vampires in 1x20 Dead Man’s Blood etc. Whilst I am sure more than one person has written several thousand words on ‘deconstructing concepts of masculinity’ or something else which talks about men as if we are animals to be observed in a zoo, I do not think it is much deeper than this: Sam has to be shown to be The HeroTM because he is The Protagonist, and the corollary is that Dean has to be the damsel.

Paula R. Stiles commented on this in her analysis of this same episode, and I quote:

We see again here the show’s tendency to place the macho, hypermasculine male lead in a role normally reserved for a female lead

The reason I raised this is because ‘hypermasculinity’ does not mean what some people seem to think it means, i.e. masculine. Hypermasculinity is an actual term used in sociology and psychology to refer to a certain set of traits in a certain kind of man. Think, for example, of gangsters. The Encyclopaedia Britannica gives the following definition:

hypermasculinity, sociological term denoting exaggerated forms of masculinity, virility, and physicality. Scholars have suggested that there are three distinct characteristics associated with the hypermasculine personality: (1) the view of violence as manly, (2) the perception of danger as exciting and sensational, and (3) callous behavior toward women and a regard toward emotional displays as feminine.

None of those criteria applies to Dean. Dean is not ‘hypermasculine’: he is adept at enacting violence, but he does not view it as ‘manly’; he does not find danger exciting, it is simply a necessary part of his life (except during his self-destructive episodes); he is not ‘callous’ towards women, and he does show emotions other than ‘anger’. ‘Hypermasculine’ is a bad descriptor of Dean: he is masculine. Using words which mean things to refer to things they do not mean. Hypermasculine is gangsters and thugs, it’s not a man acting like a masculine man. They are very different things and I wish people would stop conflating the two.

(For further discussion of Dean and masculinity, you can read my essay entitled Deancrits, don't @ me

Thus concludeth my analyis of 2x07 The Usual Suspects.

One final final thing:

#edvard's supernatural guide #spn meta #meta analysis #spn 2x07 #2x07 the usual suspects #s02e07 #supernatural #dean winchester #sam winchester #adhd!dean #Youtube

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imabee-oralizard · 3 years ago

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Okay random things I want to tell you or kinda have pined but I’m indecisive and want multiple stuff pined so here is this.

Minor

Also I have bad grammar, I know this is chaotic you don’t need to tell me.

I��m currently reading- looking for Alaska by John green

Currently watching- all marvel movies

Currently obsessed with song- taylor swift songs (everything has changed, mean)

Follow this page

@queerrambles

This shows I’m astorias @scandalous-chaos (I can’t make it’s actual mention since I’ve already done 50 mentions 😭)wife btw

I’m her wife,thank you

I have matching icons with @nevilleismywhore 2 times in a row now.

Proof here

Tori said I’m her bestie 🥰

I write poems but i might tag them. Idk. I probably won’t find them all.

I reblog a lot of things I want to read later then forget them see them again so I’ll reblog them so that’s why I reblog some things 5 times.

Love this - its political and the woman is talking about money but its 3 minutes as you should watch it

Oh also about me

I don’t want to state my age online :)

My name is Kylie but you can call me nicknames like love, or whatever you want honestly

Instagram- Kylie_200608

I don’t support jk Rowling, I don’t support homophobia, transphobia, sexualizing, rape, incest, cyber bullying, using people’s phobias against them.

I am also off of celebrity drama and true news a lot so most the time I’ll have no clue what is going on.

I don’t write fan fictions but you can request something for me to write for a poem. I’ve never done that but I’m willing to try. <3

Don’t sexualize me

Don’t be rude to me or my friends

I will block you

You can send me messages anon or not but please me nice

If you ever need to talk you can message me! Even if you don’t want me to talk back you can use me as a inbox to just rant to. I don’t know if I can always give advice but I will let you rant<3

Don’t forget you are loved, no matter gender, sexuality, family, thoughts, friends, where you live, your bank status, what you’ve said or done. You being you is awesome and actions can be fixed and forgiven<3

I like purple

I’m pansexual

My pronouns are she/her

I’m a hufflepuff

I’m a Leo

I like taylor swift, teen Wolf, reading, poetry, divergent, Harry Potter, astrology, marvel, dc, traveling, supernatural, vampire diaries, originals, hunger games, probably more

I am @incorrect-slytherin-quotes hufflepuff (their account if also @doctor-disc0) (they’re also the owner of @queerrambles they’re amazing)

Proof, it took me like 20 minutes to find this but it’s worth it

Some tags I use:

(I’ll add some when I start talking to people more)

I’m gonna try to start to use read later

I might start using Kylie’s random thoughts

My amazing wife Astoria

Astoria

These two are dedicated to @scandalous-chaos)

Nevilleismywhore

My best bestie on tumblr

Now using my amazing wife bay

These two are dedicated to @nevilleismywhore)

Wrathspoet

My amazing non silent silent friend

Those to are dedicated to @Wrathspoet

Poems

Some comfort characters-

Regulus black, draco Malfoy, Remus lupin, stiles stilinski, Derek hale, Lydia Martin, James potter, Harry Potter, Wanda maximoff, Bucky Barnes, pietro, Peter Parker (Tom and Andrew), void stiles, Theo reaken, dean winchester, Luna love good, Sirius black, Hermione granger, Loki

My poems

Are we the animals

Never shall I forget

Books

Words

My will to live

I am not a child

When does it end

Achilles heel - goes with Sarah’s song

Check out @sarahisslytherin music

Some people I talk to or visit their page often

@ameliora-j @ameliasbitvh @ama0310 @sarahisslytherin @scandalous-chaos @nevilleismywhore @dmalfoyswhore @mendesxruel @wrathspoet @hopelessbutterfly @hogwartshousefriends @fictionalcomforts @comfortscripts (also fictionalcomforts) @elysian-bxg @padf00ts-l0ver @dobrienwrites @cupids-crystals @cupids-archive @ilovemarvelanne1 @ilovemoviekidd826 @lavhoes @nevsluvr @dead-james-potter @drawlfoy @marcela6malfoy @skiller0dani @oliverwoodmarrymepls @littlemissnoname13 @chosenimagines @kiwijulia @mirclealignr @someoneiwasnt @mellifluousart @sereinegemini @sarahisstillslytherin @velvetcloxds @earlgreydream

(That is in no particular order)

Tumblr account started around October 1st 2021

First person I talked to was @mellifluousart <3(thankyou for making me feel welcome)(and thank you @sarahisslytherin for being the second person I really talked to on here)

Thank you @scandalous-chaos for always making me feel loved <3

Thank you @nevilleismywhore for being a amazing friend

Thank you @ameliora-j for making me feel like I can say anything to you and being there for so many people

Thank you @doctor-disc0 for being so welcoming and making me feel awesome when I first got on this app

Thank you @wrathspoet for just being plain awesome

Thank you @velvetcloxds for writing amazing fanfictions that just hit the spot all the time and being so nice

Thank you @marcela6malfoy, I haven’t talked to you a bunch but you’ve been a account that I’ve always cared about so much and just thank you so much

+more people but I really wanted to say thank you to the people. And thank you all content creators for writing and rebloging stuff. You guys are amazing and loved.

I currently have 42 followers- January 7th 2022

Updated on- January 7th 2022

If there is any grammar mistakes here please let me know. If there is on any of my poems please also let me know. Don’t feel afraid to message me and tell me.

#navigation #blog description #Kylie’s blog description #Kylie’s chaos #nevilleismywhore #new tag #my best bestie on tumblr #my amazing wife astoria #astoria #wrathspoet #my amazing non silent silent friend

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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 years ago

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Who owns the covid vaccines?

A key idea from sf is “all laws are local, and no law knows how local it is.” Prisoners of our own time and place, it’s hard not to feel like we’re living in the only possible world, is if everything around us is inevitable and natural — and any change is “unnatural.”

But anyone who’s ever dabbled in multi-agent modeling (sims where “individuals” each have their own goals and aversions) knows there are lots of stable configurations that a big, complex system can fall into, and re-rerunning the same sim produces wildly different outcomes.

14 months ago, we hit STOP on our big, complex system and now the US is about to hit START again. It will not be a return to “normalcy,” because the old normal wasn’t inevitable. There are lots of other ways we could get along. And frankly, the old normal sucked.

A key way in which Old Normal sucked was the way that monopolists were able to style themselves as heroic entrepreneurs whose great rewards were commensurate with their great risks — when in reality, the risks were always socialized and only the gains were privatized.

That’s an area where a new normal is long overdue, and that new normal is being born in the controversy over public access to covid vaccines.

Helping the poor world manufacture its own vaccines is the obvious right thing to do.

Not just because vaccine apartheid is slow genocide, but also because the longer billions of people are infected, the greater the chance that one of them will incubate a vaccine-resistant, even more deadly mutation.

MRNA vaccines are wild: compared to conventional vaccines, they can be manufactured with 99.7% less capital and 99.9% less physical plant, and mRNA production facilities can retool to make new vaccines 1,000% faster.

https://coronavirus.medium.com/manufacturing-mrna-vaccines-is-surprisingly-straightforward-despite-what-bill-gates-thinks-222cffb686ee

Moderna’s own assessment is that new mRNA facilities can be built in 3–4 months. There’s no good scientific or humanitarian reason to object to patent- and know-how transfer to the Global South, where vaccination is currently projected for 2023/4 (!).

https://apnews.com/article/drug-companies-called-share-vaccine-info-22d92afbc3ea9ed519be007f8887bcf6

We’ve just experienced the collapse of the racist lie — peddled by Big Pharma, Bill Gates, Howard Dean and other vaccine apartheid apologists — that poor brown people are too primitive to make vaccines.

The new talking point? “CHINA! CHINA! CHINA!”

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/15/how-to-rob-a-bank/#roll-the-dice

Whether it’s racist lies about the Global South or New Cold War hysteria, the underlying ideological story is the same: exclusive patent rights and the (spectacular) profits they yield are the foundation of lifesaving medical innovation.

That is, fate has placed among us a tiny cohort of collosi, endowed with the superpower of inventing the future. But for all their creative might, these saviors-in-potentia have the fragile temperaments of toddlers, and if they’re denied their due, they’ll abandon us to die.

“Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.” The true mRNA vaccines theft isn’t entrepreneur-inventors who face robbery by the public sector — rather, those “entrepreneurs” have enjoyed billions in public subsidies, and now insist they owe nothing in return.

So much public investment went into the covid vaccines that it’s hard to account for it all. The GAO thinks that Uncle Sam coughed up $18–23b in direct subsidies. BARDA pumped in $19.3b.

https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20210512.191448/full/

The USG picked up the tab for non-clinical studies of new covid vaccines ($900m), and also shelled out for Phase III trials ($2.7b).

Moderna got $53m for production capacity, part of $100m in direct capacity contracts to pharma, backed with $2.7b for contract manufacturers.

J&J got a $1b pre-order from the USG; Moderna got $4.95b, Pfizer (which touts its lack of public subsidy!) got a $5.97b guaranteed order.

That’s just the latest round of investment. BARDA has been backing mRNA vaccine research for years, pumping billions into the project.

Pharma’s claim that it doesn’t owe us anything in return makes no sense, even by the companies’ own logic. They say that markets produce wonders because they reward canny risk-taking with vast fortunes.

By that logic, the public — who assumed the majority of the risk in developing vaccines — are the angel investors in this high-tech unicorn, and the pharma companies are the VCs who came in with some late capital to help scale up a sure thing.

It’s neither good business — nor legal — for early minority investors get squeezed out by latecomers.

But, of course, the government isn’t a business. Our democratic institutions direct our national productive capacity to R&D in service to human thriving, not profit.

Public investment in R&D isn’t a business in the same way that having kids isn’t a retirement plan: we have kids because we love them and want them to thrive. If they care for us in our dotage, that’s great, but if you treat your kid as an ambulatory 401k, you’re a monster.

I first encountered these ideas when serving as an NGO rep at WIPO alongside Jamie Love and Knowledge Ecology International. Love helped create the Access to Medicines Treaty and has been fighting the pharma industry’s self-serving story of fragile genius for decades.

In an interview with Janine Jackson at FAIR, Love lays out the plain case for an IP-waiver to enable poor countries to make their own vaccines, like the undeniable truth that this would “definitely expand the production and supply of vaccines.”

https://fair.org/home/government-money-thats-gone-into-vaccine-development-is-being-privatized-by-a-handful-of-companies/

Love also recounts the kind of public subsidy that went into covid vaccine production (for example, Pfizer’s boasts of free enterprise entrepreneurship omits the €400m from Germany and €100m from the rest of the EU).

Pharma’s claims of philanthropic largesse are wildly overblown. Pfizer told its shareholders it expects $26b from covid vaccines in 2021; Moderna’s projecting $20b (Moderna’s CEO’s personal net worth just hit $5b).

All that before pharma companies jack up the prices for “their” vaccines, in the years to come when we all need annual boosters, when the price will go from $10 to $175/dose, for a vaccine that costs $0.10/dose to manufacture.

The case for public access to vaccines and the case against pharma as a necessary or even laudable force for good is so thin, it’s remarkable that it’s persisted this long.

But as Love points out, the ideology that knowledge-monopolies are moral has some powerful backers.

Bill Gates is a prime example. Gates has been committed to enclosing commonly created knowledge and turning it into a monopoly — in service to coaxing our toddler-genius-collosi into action — since he was a teenager, writing petulant letters to computer hobbyists.

Today, Gates — a convicted monopolist — directs one of the world’s great fortunes (“behind every great fortune…”), and he mobilizes his capital to prop up the story of necessary and benevolent profiteering.

The Gates Foundation, for example, donates millions to “independent” media outlets (as well as partnering with public media like the BBC), and as Love describes, this has a chilling effect on negative reporting on Gates, the Foundation, and its ideology.

Like the time Love got a Washington Monthly reporter interested in a critical story about how the Gates Foundation’s grants influence its media coverage — only to have the reporter’s editor kill the story because they’d just applied for one of those grants (!).

Gates is a true ideologue, a relentless campaigner against any public access to public goods, in every domain, not just software. He’s been at it a long time, leading the charge against Nelson Mandela’s demand that South Africa be allowed to manufacture its own AIDS drugs.

Love: “Gates is a smart guy; he’s not the only smart guy around or smart woman around. I think people need to listen to other views. And, actually, Gates has sort of a mental block about these issues, and so some of his arguments just don’t add up.”

But all laws are local, and multi-agent systems have many stable configurations. On Friday, the New York Times editorial board — long a voice for strong corporate power — published an editorial and accompanying package strongly endorsing vaccine waivers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/14/opinion/biden-covid-vaccines-world-india.html

The Times notes that the global economy is losing trillions due to lockdown, and that these loses will mount for so long as vaccines aren’t universally available.

But it also makes an ethical case, calling vaccine apartheid a “moral failure.”

It warns of political instability and the potential for states to topple if something isn’t done, pointing to the pitched battles in Colombia (in which death squads are now murdering leftists with impunity and posting snuff videos to social media as a boast — and a warning).

Beyond advocating for vaccine waivers, the Times backs Public Citizen’s plan to spend $25b ramping up domestic, publicly owned vaccine production facilities to make vaccines to be given away free or at cost to poor countries.

https://www.citizen.org/article/25-billion-to-vaccinate-the-world/

That effort will produce 8b vaccine doses, “enough to vaccinate half the planet.” And it will provide booster shots and new anti-variant vaccines into the future.

The future is coming. Lockdowns are lifting. The rich world is inching toward an emergence from emergency. But normalcy isn’t returning — thank goodness. The whole world deserves (and requires) so much better than normal.

Image: Quapan (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/hinkelstone/49920420853

CC BY https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

#pluralistic

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demonologist-in-denim · 4 years ago

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Ageism Among “The Boys”

There were a lot of things, inside and outside the show, which contributed to Crowley being killed off at the end of season 12 and Mark Sheppard being removed from the cast, but one that I’ve never seen discussed is ageism.

Beyond being a demon and having a complicated past with Team Free Will, Crowley and the actor who played him, Mark Sheppard, did not “fit the part” when it came to most people’s conception of “the boys.” Whenever the April 2020 Entertainment Weekly Team Free Will photo shoot come across my feed, I am reminded that Mark was older, shorter and not consistently as in-shape as his co-stars. He was the “odd man out” of the four in terms of what has been normalized to be leading-man-quality appearance in American television. That his character took on an increasing significant in the show came up against this real-world bias, on the part of the network and – let’s be honest – likely among some of the fans.

Whenever someone in the fandom refers to Crowley as the creepy “uncle” to the Winchesters, I wonder “why uncle?” Because he is presented as older, because the actor playing him is older than the ones playing the Winchesters. If Crowley had presented as the same age as the Winchesters – if he had been played by a younger actor – he might have been referred to as “that weird cousin” or in later seasons as “the black sheep” among the brothers. And before anyone says “but Crowley was centuries older than the Winchesters”, remember that Castiel was many millennial older than Sam and Dean. Despite this, Castiel was still considered, within and outside of the show, to be on par with the Winchesters in terms of age. And that is because of the age and the physique of the actor playing him.

This largely has to do with the beauty standards for male actors. While more lenient than the beauty standards for female actors, those imposed on male actors also revolve around cultural standards of peak sexual attractiveness. Twenty to forty years of age, broad-chested with some suggestion of muscle building, a height range of around 6 feet / 182cm, a strong chin line and a full head of hair – these are the male beauty standards in America, and doesn’t even take into account the media’s preference for certain features and bone structure over others.

Add to this the element of grouping as understood in visual anthropology – that is, the presentation of people together as a cohesive unit for one purpose or another. In instances where diversity is best, we see a cast like the one on The Good Place, or Community, or to a lesser extent Brooklyn Nine-Nine, where the cast represents the idea of people from disparate backgrounds coming together in a common cause or circumstance. In a show like SPN, where diversity is (at best) a secondary consideration, the make-up of the cast is meant to represent a unified front against an external force (humanity against demonkind and the supernatural), requiring similarity in the group. When a group, or in this case main cast, is composed of four people – all male and white, to begin with – to have one of them differ too much, and in a way that society already deems unappealing, is considered to be unbalanced.

What about Jack? It goes without saying that Alex Calvert is younger than his co-stars. And in the eyes of American culture and beauty standards, being young is always something be considered appealing. Introducing a younger main character might have even been a calculated choice on the part of the showrunners, beyond the arc of the story, to balance out against the increasing age of Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles. In the later seasons, had Crowley possessed a meatsuit that better suited the biased standards of attractiveness, specifically in regards to age, we might have seen more support for the character, in terms of storyline, shipping in the fandom, and overall inclusion as one of the boys. He would have better “fit the mold” on a network that highlights glossy youth and plays to a culture’s insecurities about growing older. But that would have been an admission on the part of the show that ageism plays a role in the development of their characters and in their branding and in their hopes for viewer demographic. Additionally, if the showrunners had simply replaced Mark Sheppard with a younger actor for Crowley, the backlash from the widening, increasingly-conscientious fandom would have been harsh – and just. Easier to write out the older member of the foursome and introduce a younger one in his place.

Quietly downplaying, dismissing as a potential love interest, or refusing to write characters played by older actors as main characters when the arc of the story naturally carries them in that direct is ageism in action. It is worth asking, if Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles had been willing to continue the series for another five years, seven years, ten years, and had a story worth telling, would the network have agreed? Or would the Winchester’s actors have come up against the same barrier? Because who wants to watch Sam and Dean “age out” of their own lives? Better for them to die young and attractive, than make the socially-unacceptable, embarrassing mistake of getting old, right?

#dispatches from the crossroads #crowley #mark sheppard #jensen ackles #jarden padaleki #alex calvert #dean winchester #sam winchester #jack kline #spn meta #spn #happy Sulphur Saturday

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dommexbritt · 4 years ago

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FONDUE FOR TWO // ELECTION WEEK ⤷ PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES RECAP

HELLO DEVERUEX! There is a lot going on this week on campus but if you have a moment, it’s time to zero in on the 2021 School Counsel elections. Now, you may or may not know this but for the first time this school has decided to allow students say on the board and that is a BIG deal. Another peg in the growing line of progressive moves for the school and I think I can speak for everyone when I say we are so excited for a change like that!

I’m Brittany, your stunning host and this is Fondue For Two Election Edition. There are three presidential candidates and the cheese is HOT. Let’s get stirring...

Please-- introduce yourselves and tell us why you chose to run for the position!!

- MATEO: Sure. I'm Mateo Weston, first year Dominant. I think education in d/s is beyond important if we're gonna be living together in this society. It's what's gonna make sure we're all safe and aware of possible risks we might encounter and how to deal with them. And I think being involved is also incredibly important, so this is a great opportunity for us to help shape this school. I'm running to make sure everyone's voice gets heard and that this is an environment for everybody to feel comfortable in.

QUINN: Thank you again for this opportunity, Brittany. I appreciate it. I'm Quinn Fabray and I stand for structure and equality. In recent times, we've all experienced what inequality feels like and that should not become a norm at this school. Structure and respect are important notions, but not at the sacrifice of human rights. So, as president, I hope to assure such situations don't arise again and that we can stand up against them together.

BRITT: Amazing. You hear that Devereux Academy? These candidates are here to have your back!

Unfortunately not all the candidates have shown up but their silence will be speaking for them... [a pause for cricket sound effect]

Now, that all sounds very serious but my role here on this show is to truly find and serve the good dish. The extra sides AND the dessert. So I have a few rapid fire questions for you all. Mateo, you’re up first...

Q&A W/ MATEO WESTON -

B: If elected how do you see your ties and affiliations with the people of grimace affecting your presidency? And do you see there being a clear cut line between church and state?

M: I... don't think it will affect it. While I certainly respect everyone's believes, I don't think religion's go much of anything to do with this school. I think everyone can make their own choices as far as that goes but the school is supposed to represent everybody, regardless of what they do or don't believe in. So I'd say in general, I don't see there being a lot of overlap between church and state unless it's something individuals choose.

B: Hypothetical: out of nowhere, picture this... it’s a foggy Sunday morning on a quiet campus when suddenly an alarm blares. First thoughts are hurricane warning but no school announcements quickly clarify that extra terrestrials have landed and are targeting finishing schools in an effort to learn our culture. As a leader, how would you respond?

M: Hypothetically? I would do my best to make sure everybody stays calm and doesn't add to the panic I'm sure would be happening already. I'd then make sure we can all collect somewhere safe, perhaps the cafeteria or somewhere along those lines. Once we're mostly safe and everybody is accounted for, a plan can be formulated. In this very hypothetical and admittedly unlikely scenario, I suppose wanting to learn our culture isn't the worst of intention so perhaps enough contact can be made to satisfy this purpose and encourage them to leave again.

B: And finally, have you ever been in official charge of anything before?

M: I have. There's the basics of sports teams and siblings and responsibilities at my jobs and internships. But I used to volunteer at a finishing school back in Texas for like.. five years and definitely got a lot of experience in being in charge of things as well as a glance into the behind the scenes stuff there. Most of the instances I've 'been in charge' have been with people -- I've had a lot of really close friends I've had mostly platonic d/s relationships with and I've always been very comforted and comfortable being able to take care of someone. In this case, I know it's a lot of someone’s but I'm confident I'll be able to handle that responsibility as well.

Q&A W/ QUINN FABRAY -

B: With almost little to no social media presence you were totally tricky to pin down Quinn, but I think the question that is burning in everyone’s mind is... what really goes on in celibacy club?

Q: You should really take a look at the Cheerleader's Instagram profile -- it's a gold mine if you ask me. But, it does what it says on the label. We come together to discuss our choice to refrain from sex until we're ready for a claim. There's a lot of different reasons for a choice like that and especially at this school, it's not always an easy one. So the club is a safe space for us to talk openly and free of judgement.

B: Speaking of the cheer team... say you get elected do you have plans in the works, with my help if you want, to overthrow the current HBIC Alexis St James for the Cheerio captaincy?

Q: ... Alexis is doing a great job. And besides, I think my presidency would have a few more pressing issues than Cheerio captaincy. But thank you for the confidence, Brittany. I appreciate that and in theory, would make a great captain.

B: If anything like the change up of administration or crack down in the rules were to occur again how do you feel you, as President, would respond? Furthermore, considering of course that this last time the deans we got were said to be hand chosen by YOUR father... would there be any future conflicts of interest should he involved again?

Q: I would hope that as student body president, I would have prior knowledge of such events so an extreme situation like last time can be avoided. I'm aware administration can not always stay the same and that different people may bring different views to the table, but none of those should restrict the freedom of students as strictly as they did last time. And I assure you, there will be no conflicts of interest. While I respect my father and his choices very much, I am my own woman and intend to make my own decisions.

FINAL QUESTIONS FOR EVERYONE -

BRITT: We've heard your main concerns about the campus, is there anything you'd like to add? And also, what is the first action you are planning to take if elected?

MATEO: I still stand by everything I've said before. Student involvement as well as structure to rely on are still two of my biggest focus points that I'm excited to develop further at this school. My first action would be to take stock of where everybody's head is at and see what the student body is currently most in need of and then work out a plan to accomplish that in a way that is suitable for everybody.

QUINN: I would like to say that voting Fabray means electing someone able to look at this school from both angles -- the perhaps more traditional one, as it is undoubtedly known that my family has a history with it as well as the modern one that we are currently pushing towards. I promise students from all aspects of the spectrum that no change will come without consultation and that we are not driving towards extremes in either direction. But we are ready for a mode current approach. As for my first action, I believe there should be a conversation between then elected team of president and vice president as well as administration to review the recent happenings and formulate a plan to deal with such occasions going forward.

BOOKER: [ cricket sounds ]

Well that’s that people!!. From master plans to alien invasion preparation, now you know! The fondue is still sizzling and thank goodness for that because we totally have our Vice President line up next!

Mark down the date now, election day is APRIL 22nd and one of these candidates are waiting for YOUR support!

You’re listening to Fondue For Two and the voice of one Brittany S Pierce! STAY TUNED!

#; Fondue For Two #fft: Mateo Weston #fft: Quinn Fabray #mateo weston #quinn fabray

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artxyra · 5 years ago

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In Her Darkest Moment - Part 2

Part 1 | 2 | 3

Note: The song inspiration came from Utada Hikaru & Skrillex Face My Fears. Yes, there will be a part 3. It just felt right to end the part where it was rather than continue it to be a completed two-shot story. Don’t know when the next part will be out but I did start it.

Marinette’s day started off okay. Her usual clients emailed her for some design commission, her lovers decided that today they would the day that they make breakfast for her, but the day comes to still when she sees an official letter in the mail.

You Are Invited to Lycée Fantômette Dupont Reunion!

Oh yes, an invitation to the worse years of her life. It still amazes her how she was able to graduate with all her absent days and constant visits to the dean’s office.

“Did you see the news?” Marinette turns to see Kagami, dress in a casual black and red jumpsuit.

Marinette sighs and places the letter down. She didn’t know how to answer this. There were already too many memories running through her brain to even think of a proper reply.

“You don’t have to say anything.” Kagami comforts placing a kiss on the conflicted woman’s cheek. “If it makes you feel any better, we don’t have to go.”

Marinette shakes her head, “No, we should go. I want to see whether or not they have changed enough to understand that her lies have consequences.”

Kagami takes a step back, a hand coving her heart. A smile sneaks it away onto the Japanese’s native woman. “Of course, you would. Should I tell Fe and Luka of your decision?”

Marinette nods, “That would be wise. Actually…I might have something better in mind.” The designer teases biting her bottom lip.

Kagami has known Marinette long enough to know that mischief is that woman’s best friend through thick and thin. Nodding, Kagami notices the time and rushes out of the room. Marinette lets out a small chuckle and returns to reading the letter.

There is never a bad time to face her past, and as much as she blocked out everything regarding her times in Lycée, there were still some good memories. It’s an odd feeling to have ten years’ worth of fear piling in her small body structure, but she didn’t want to linger on to that feeling any longer.

Burying herself in her commissions, Marinette barely heard the slamming of her office door late on that evening.

“This is ridiculous, utterly ridiculous!” A certain blonde shout to the heavens. Marinette stops her sowing and turns to see one of her closest friends, who’s chest is out and seething. Pushing the fabric aside, the bluenette gets up and lightly push against the blonde’s shoulder.

“What happened?” She asks looking at the blonde in the eyes.

Chloe huffs and folds her arms, “Our favorite liar decided that it would be useful to use your name once more for personal gain.”

Marinette’s bluebell eyes widen. She stands frozen against Chloe. Her breathing quickens as the once buried memories flood their way into her mind. Subconsciously, she touches her shoulder and rubs her forearm.

Chloe quickly notices the woman’s actions and guide her to the futon. Siting blue-haired woman down, Chloe immediately tries to get her to do some breathing exercises. Realizing that wasn’t working, Chloe pulls out her phone calls the others. Luka’s the first to answer.

“She’s having a panic attack,” Chloe immediately states, placing the call on the speaker.

Luka immediate sings a soft lullaby, as Chloe adds Félix and Kagami to the call.

“Netta, listen to us, you are safe, she can’t get to you now.” Félix states in the softest voice he could muster.

As the three lovers try to soothe their love, Chloe paces back and forth thinking of possible ways to get the panic woman out of her attack. She hates seeing Marinette like this, Lycée was hard on all of them and here was the past creeping its way back up to them.

They have created a life outside of lycée, away from their former classmates and tormentors. Marinette became a successful designer despite doing it under a pseudonym named Fortunate Red, Kagami being a fencing instructor and agent, Félix becoming a well-known lawyer, Luka taking off in his solo career as a rock star, and her being the best damn PR specialist for the group.

“I think she’s coming to.” Chloe acknowledges seeing the clouded look in Marinette’s eyes fade away. Immediately after saying that, the three on the phone simultaneously sighs in relief.

“That’s good to hear, Chloe,” Kagami states what they all were thinking. “Please keep an eye on her. We know how much she hates it, but I wouldn’t want to take the risk.” The others were quick to agree but not without promises of being home soon.

The call ends; Marinette shakes the daze away and looks around. “What happened?”

Chloe pinches the bridge of her nose and murmurs, “You don’t want to know. Anyways, as your PR, I advise you to stay away from social media, especially your old accounts.”

Marinette tilts her head sideways, why would Chloe mention her practically dead social media accounts? She hasn’t posted anything on there in ten years—perhaps it was longer than that.

“I won’t. I promise.” Marinette promise. “I think I need to take a walk—a break, maybe. I promise Madeline that I would meet her at the café.”

Chloe gives Marinette a reassuring smile.

“Maybe I should go with you, besides I miss Madeline.” Chloe offers.

“You don’t have to do that; besides, I will have Tikki and Plagg with me.”

“I thought Plagg was with Félix.”

“He didn’t want to listen to another long meeting without cheese being present.” Marinette giggles.

Chloe loves these moments. Moments when Marinette is herself, carefree, and the weight of her past behind her even if it’s for a moment.

“Fine, you can go but the moment Madeline calls us, we’re going in.” Chloe readjusts her purse, “Also tell her to call me, she missed our last dinner date because of the late-night rush at the restaurant.”

Marinette nods and calls for the two kwamis out of their miniature house. Due to Marinette becoming the guardian of Miraculous box once she was fully trained, she felt bad for the kwamis and decided to make them a little house—similar to a dollhouse—for them to live and have fun in. It works out as it gave something to come back to and give them all personal spaces.

“So, Marinette are you going to go to the reunion?” Tikki wonders flying next to her chosen.

Marinette didn’t answer. Her mind wanders off to the possibilities that could happen regarding the decision to go. They always did say the best way to be free is to face the fears that are holding you back.

~*~

Breaking News: Lila Agreste nee Rossi claims that her husband Adrien Agreste is having an affair with a former Lycée classmate!

“I caught them in our bed!” Rossi claims. “This wasn’t the first time, either!”

Headlines: Adrien Agreste remains silent at this acquisition.

Headlines: Are Rossi and Agreste getting a divorce?

Breaking News: Rossi claims that former classmate Marinette Dupain-Cheng is a homewrecker!

~*~

Marinette couldn’t help but feel an enormous amount of guilt. Chloe’s warning may have done her good on the social media part, but it didn’t stop her from seeing the newspaper and hearing the whispers behind her back as she continues with her daily routine.

“You shouldn’t be reading those, Netta. We don’t want you to have another relapse.” Luka states wrapping his arms around her shoulder.

“I-I-I can’t help it.” She stutters, her voice cracking. “I haven’t seen or spoken to any of them in a long time, so why put my name out there?” She ponders covering her face an attempt to hide from the world around her.

“You’re not obligated to attend the reunion.” Luka reminds her, but Marinette shakes her head.

“It won’t do me any good to stay away now. That will only make me look guilty to those that still believe her lies.”

She did have a point. Everyone in their graduating class received the invite and nearly everyone in Marinette’s class believed the lies especially after the photo incident.

Luka sighs and a quick text to Félix.

“I guess I’ll get the car prepared, then.”

Marinette goes to kiss Luka’s cheek, allowing herself to feel a little peace with this decision.

~*~

Lila couldn’t believe how easy it was to bring the Dupont’s everyday Ladybug name back into her crazy schemes for attention and power. All it took was a little bit of blackmailing on some well-known reporters and the waterworks.

No matter what, she will get her happy ending. Lila believed she thought her plan entirely through. Soon Juleka would be able to sway her rock star of a brother into her scheme allowing her to be his lover. Adrien was dead to her. She dried him the minute they got married, but her spot-light fantasy faded away when Gabriel Agreste had to file bankruptcy. It was then that Lila knew she needed someone better, richer, and handsome than the former model.

“I can’t believe that Marinette would do such a thing to you Lila.” Alya spats clearly angered at her former best friend for all the pain she causes the Italian woman.

Cue the waterworks, “It’s true, I caught them. She didn’t bat an eye when she rushed out of the house.”

Alya immediately goes to comfort the teary-eyed black widow.

“I would feel embarrassed for Marinette if she dared showed her face here tonight.” Lila couldn’t help but internally smirk at the damage she has caused.

“Oh look, there’s Rose, Juleka, and Alix over by the punch bowl.” Alya attempts to direct the conversation to something else.

Lila cheekily smiles and allows herself to be dragged over to the punch bowl. Alya immediately greets the small group of women.

“I heard about your divorce, Alya, how are you doing?” Alix cautiously asked despite the concerned look she’s giving to the reporter.

Alya sighs, “It was hard, but we manage to get an agreement for the kids.”

Alya wasn’t alright, she loved Nino with all her being, but when he asked for a divorce, it was out of the blue and she was going through a hard time finding a new journalism agency. Together they have twin boys that were as energetic as their mother when she was teen chasing after Ladybug.

“Oh my, I didn’t realize and here I am in tears about my marriage.” Lila gasps bringing the conversation back on her. Alya gives the Italian woman a soft smile and hands her a glass of punch. “So Juleka, is your brother joining us this evening?”

Juleka shrugs and pulls Rose into a side embrace. “He told me it was possible as his girlfriend is also a part of our graduating class.”

Lila nearly spits out her drink, “G-girlfriend.” She stutters cursing in the back of her mind that her plan was already going down like a sinking ship.

“Uh…yeah. I think he’s planning on proposing soon but we haven’t been in contact since the start of his tour.” Juleka adds cautiously seeing the slight change in Lila’s behavior.

Lila sends Juleka a sheepish smile and turns around to fold her arms against her chest.

“Well I do hope he shows up, it will be nice to see whom he’s dating.” Alya wonders, probably thinking of a new scoop for her blog.

~*~

Marinette is feeling a panic attack approaching, that or a nervous breakdown. Since the last time she saw the news, more information regarding the cheating scandal came to light. Reporters are going at each other throats about the lack of truth and trying to make as much sense as to why this story is just now coming out. Few of them tried to contact her, but she told them they had the wrong number.

“Deep breaths, Netta, we’re almost there.” Félix softly whispers into her ear holding the bluenette’s hand in his own.

Félix’s right, she does need to calm down.

The limo stops in front of the venue that the school provided for such an event. It was time for her to face her fears.

Exiting the limo, Marinette could only wish that she had taken up Tikki’s offer for her to accompany her, but she denied seeing as Félix, Kagami and Luka would be there with her. Even though their poly-relationship is hidden from the public they every much have a plan. Kagami’s dating Luka while she’s dating Félix. They only hope to marry one another one day but they’re happy with their dynamic.

“I’m ready.” Marinette murmurs, but her tense shoulders and quicken breathes would say otherwise.

“Baby steps, Netta, baby steps.” Kagami grabs hold of her black and blue-haired lover’s arm and walks towards the entrance.

Entering the banquet hall, Marinette could spot her other favorite blonde amid a conversation she clearly did not want to be in. Thankfully, Chloe caught sight of them and excuse herself from the conversation.

“Nette!” Chloe exclaims, but not before wishing that her voice was a little bit lowered.

Everyone has their eyes on the group of newcomers. Gossip spread throughout the adults and the majority of it was how Marinette showed her face to them after what she had done to Lila’s marriage.

“How are you doing?” Chloe asks her friend. “Don’t worry, my guys and I are working overtime to get this scandal handled. I’m sure Félix is putting together a case against Rossi and whoever’s involved with this.”

“That would be wrong of me to not help save my Netta’s reputation, Bourgeois,” Félix states wrapping his arms around Marinette’s small waist.

“Félix!” Marinette stares at him in shock. A small weight of negative emotions are lifted from her shoulders.

Félix gives her heartfelt smile and gently place a kiss on her temple.

Very audible gasps fill the ambient sounds.

Alya angerly charges towards the happy group with fire in her eyes. “How could you, Marinette! You show your disgraceful face here and have the audacity to kiss another man when you’re hoeing around with Adrien.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Cesaire. I haven’t seen Agreste in years.” Marinette states clinging to Félix’s blazer.

Alya screeches, her hand making a swing at Marinette. However, if it wasn’t for Félix grabbing her wrist mid-swing, Marinette would have been hurt.

“That is enough, Cesaire.” Félix growls, his cat-like instincts kicking in. “Marinette and I came here to have a good time and it would rude of you to act out at such a formal event.”

He then violently shoves her wrist away. Alya gawks at him.

“Your so-called girlfriend has been hooking up with another man behind your back and you’re acting like everything is okay.” Alya shrieks and if there wasn’t a crowd before, there was one now.

“I have not been hooking up with other men. I love Félix and I would never cheat on him.” Marinette sneers, her fears of the past coming at her was being boiled away by fury red anger. If Hawkmoth was still in action, this would have the perfect time to become Scarlet Moth. The amount of fury, confusion, and sadness ran high at the reunion.

Part 3

#fic: In Her Darkest Moments #miraculous ladybug #ml fanfic #miraculous ladybug fanfic #miraculous ladybug au #ml au #marinette dupain cheng #ml felix #kagami tsurugi #luka couffaine #more edits to come later #so did you guess the ship right

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lovestillaround · 4 years ago

Note

ohh do you have any drarry fic recs? 💗

Hello my dear anon, I know it’s been 84 years since I got this ask, but in case you’re still hanging around here, I can happily list some fics that are dear to my heart, but I’ll just say - I’m sorry if it’s mostly stuff you already know. (Most of these fics are pretty old.)

Recs will contain some elements of spoilers, but I’ll try to keep them to the minimum so as to not ruin the enjoyment of the stories.

ao3:

tissue of silver by fearlessdiva (M, 76k)

Oh my god, Draco in this fic. Absolutely phenomenal. The entire characterization in this fic is great, but Draco specifically. Okay, Snape is also really good. Look, just read it if you haven’t. You’ll fall in love with Draco (if you haven’t yet), or you’ll fall in love with Draco even more, and you’re going to have so much fun reading it. Honestly, there were countless moments when I would just laugh out loud because the dialogue is so funny and Draco is so witty. I realised that I still haven’t said what the story is about, so basically - someone’s trying to assasinate Draco, and Harry is an Auror trying to protect him/solve the case. But you’ll also get fabulous letters between Severus and Draco, chapters in forms of lists and reports, Draco looking like a greek god on the daily and Harry being absolutely swooned by his beauty. (And that one angsty scene that is so so good).

On One’s Knees by pir8fancier (E, 34k)

I love this fic. It’s quite angsty, but it’s more of a hurt/mild comfort kind of fic than something that will break your heart forever (but please don’t hold me accountable for my words, I might be desensitised after reading tonnes of angst). Draco leaves Azkaban and suffers from chronic knee pain/knee damage that interferes with his work as a night janitor. Harry is a Healer. Maybe I relate to it so much because I know what chronic knee pain means, but honestly, this fic is so good. You get to see a great psychological portrait of Draco and Harry, how people are products of their own choices but at the same time not really.

A Thousand Beautiful Things by geoviki (M, 104k)

More like one hundred thousand beautiful words! A story in two parts - the first happens at Hogwarts/during the war and the second after the war, and - to me at least - both parts are equally good (I think it’s quite an achievement!), and both are wildly different. The fic has absolutely delicious scenes including Veritaserum (not Harry/Draco scenes) that have my eyes glued to the screen every time I reread them. I don’t always enjoy when side characters take up too much space in fics (I’m impatient! and they can be distracting!), but in this story I totally did enjoy them. Especially Dean/Draco and Dean/Seamus friendships. It’s a story about sacrifice and forgiveness and knowing how to let go and move on, and it has bits of mystery, drama, hurt and humour. All the emotions the story gave me felt so relatable that I just can’t not love it.

Nobody’s Ever Died Of A Broken Heart by Frayach (E, 10k)

It’s a story about grief (yes, I’m talking about major character death). It is not happy, obviously, but it is hopeful, in a realistic way. It’s like a rain of emotion where pain mingles with love and regret and anger and nothingness. And the language of this fic is absolutely beautiful.

Once Spoken by RurouniHime (M, 3k)

I absolutely love fics like these - angsty, poetic, with characters who love each other but for some reason have to go through hell, desperately trying to comfort each other and afterwards trying to heal.

Lettered by pir8fancier (E, 8k)

It’s a fic in the form of letters between the boys, and the twist is that Harry doesn’t know who he’s talking to. It’s super entertaining, and it has two sequels!

Wall of Glass by waterbird (T, 13k)

In this fic Draco is sent to Azkaban after the war. This story is so atmospheric, and feels (to me) quite close to the canon. I think it’s less angsty than it sounds (but who am I to say? I love angst?). Definitely recommend it.

Unkissed Kisses and Songs Never Sung by femmequixotic (M, 13k)

I really, really love established relationship fics, and this one is brilliant. Draco is a Healer, Harry - an injured Auror. I read this fic for the first time years ago, and I’m sure I’ll never forget it. It’s just so full of love and tenderness, but it also has characters making stupid decisions and almost giving up. And it all feels so real. And the narration in this fic! Stunning.

Kiss A Boy In London Town (And Other Intimate Misadventures of A Society Whore) by femmequixotic (E, 36k)

Just… read the beginning. Read the first sentence, the first paragraph. If you don’t want to continue reading after that, I’m secretly judging you lol (jk). This fic has absolutely delicious narration, Draco as a single dad which is one of my favourite tropes (sorry, let me be biased!) and amazing smut scenes (wall sex!). It’s all just so good.

Giant Squid Is a Dirty Slasher by faithwood (E, 6k)

Yes, this is 6k of top quality tentacle porn. Warning for dubcon. I love this fic and the fact that now whenever the giant squid is mentioned anywhere, I have some... interesting images before my eyes.

fanfiction.net:

Eclipse by mijan (T, 309k)

It’s an epic story that has everything - angst interwoven with sweet, sweet moments, character development and self-discovery, arguments and fights and hurt/comfort. Draco kidnaps Harry from Hogwarts and delivers him to Voldemort but soon starts developing doubts about his own motives and actions… The slowburn is extra slow here, but that doesn’t mean that the story lacks plot or action! It’s a classic that I often come back to because it gives me all the emotions that I crave.

Must Love Quidditch by dracosoftie (M, 108k)

Harry is searching for a partner. He doesn’t want people to fall for his fame or wealth, so he opts for anonymous internet dating. There, he meets equally anonymous Draco. But it’s not the end! The fic has drama, secrets, magical sex gadgets, an old magical law, Draco and Harry being very passionate about food, and much more. Honestly, a treat!

Kiss Me With Fire by Lucilla Darkate (R, 4k)

Warning for heavy angst. There’s no ounce of happiness or comfort in this story, really. Maybe I read it when my angst tolerance was still not fully developed, but it’s one of the stories that I vividly remember even now, years later. It’s just so powerful.

The Benefits of Breakfast by wonky (T, 7k)

A humorous fic bordering on crack. Harry is obsessed with strawberry jam, and Draco likes it too. When strawberry jam disappears from Hogwarts, they take it upon themselves to bring it back.

other:

Nightingale by michi_thekiller (NC-17)

I honestly don’t even know how to describe it. Maybe the most heartbreaking thing about this story is that it isn’t just angst - the flashbacks are filled with so much anger and passion, and then you have the present that stays in such big contrast to that past. It’s a powerful story. Just read the warnings.

Freudian Slip by jennavere (M, 10k)

Comedy! What happens if Draco and Harry are really obsessed with each other but don’t want to admit that? Of course they start to admit it without even realising! Add in some talking furniture for even more fun. This fic is so funny, perfect for when one needs some cheering up.

#drarry #drarry fic #drarry fic rec #drarry fanfiction #ask #anon

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talltalesandbedtimestories · 4 years ago

Text

The Hunter Who Loved Me (Part 2)

Series Page

Characters/Pairing: Dean Winchester, Castiel, Jack Kline, Dean x OFC

Series Summary: Part Three of Some Sunny Day. Dean’s trying to balance his new relationship with Julie and his need to hunt. How long can he keep it from her? And can Julie keep her curiosity at bay?

Section Word Count: 8100

Section Content: language, fluff, angst, lots of dirty talk, role playing (a little of Dean taking orders and giving them), lots of smut, face riding

“So. Dean. This list. Enjoyment versus Duty.” Tricia lifted up a piece of paper. Dean squinted at his therapist on the screen. She’d printed out his hurried picture snap of the scribblings he’d texted over the other day. “First, I appreciate some of the venn diagramming going on here.”

Dean smiled, as proud as a little kid about to get their artwork slapped to the fridge. “Is there a ‘but’ coming?”

Tricia’s pixie cut spiked up her greys in the haphazard “I don’t give a fuck” style. It was 8am Tricia time, on a Wednesday morning. She sipped from a beer bottle. Salivating like Pavlov’s dog, Dean slid his tongue against the roof of his mouth. It seemed almost sacrilegious to watch her drink alone. But he’d been trying to wait until at least mid-afternoon before any alcohol passed his lips. “Second,” her small, bright blue eyes blinked away the question behind her glasses, “I was expecting you’d ask for more explanation or guidance on the task.” She placed the paper out of view on her desk and studied it for further inspection.

“You clearly don’t know me well enough, Doc.”

“Well, the arrogant part of me thinks I do. You take orders and fulfill them without question, when you agree with their importance and merit.” Her almost unnoticeable, grey eyebrows lifted over the top rim of her glasses. “I thought you’d think this was bullshit.”

Dean shrugged. “Maybe all this psychobabble crap is rubbing off on me.”

“You have your original masterpiece with you so we can reference it together?”

Dean tapped the paper on the coffee table. “Right here.”

“So. It looks like you’ve got the sheet broken down with enjoyment on the left and duty on the right. This first drawing. You have a ‘hunting life’ circle really big on the duty side, and a smaller one, labeled ‘being with family’, right inside it.”

“The whole enjoyment and duty thing going together that we talked about. Is that not right?”

“No right or wrong in this assignment, Dean. Just gives us things to discuss.” She leaned back in her chair a bit. “Hunting became everything for your family?”

“Hunting was my family. I know you know the stories, Doc. Hunter’s have the loosest lips on the planet, amongst themselves.”

“Humor me and pretend I didn’t hunt for decades and don’t know a damn thing.”

He sighed. “Before I was even born. Both parents. Both families. The Winchesters. The Campbells. I didn’t learn about the lineage, the legacy, the responsibility we all had in God’s master plan until much later.” Tricia took a swig from the bottle as she listened. His lips smacked together. Fuck it. It’s five o’clock somewhere. “I need a drink. Keep going. I’ll be right back.” He darted to the fridge.

“So.” Tricia’s voice rose. “Is it safe to say that the duty to your family, all that went along with that, ate away at the enjoyment of them?”

The fridge door swung shut and Dean popped the top off a cold one. He tipped his head back. The much needed liquid flowed down his throat. A large gulp filled his inner ear. “Ah.” There it was. The sweet, temporary relief. “Yeah! I’d say duty sat down at an all you can eat buffet, wearing a large ass fuckin’ bib, and went to town on enjoyment.” He yelled back at the laptop and placed the bottle on his breakfast bar. Flat palms leaned into the counter. He bent back, arms locked and stared at the vinyl kitchen flooring he kept meaning to replace.

“Any enjoyment at all, being with family?”

He sighed, rose up, swiped at the bottle and brought it back with him to the couch. “Yeah, of course.” My head hurts. Fucking finding feelings crap. “Taking care of Sammy’s that one circle in the middle of both columns with a line down the middle.”

“Taking care of him brought you enjoyment along with duty?”

He nodded at the screen with a ‘yeah, obviously, or I wouldn’t have written it down’ expression.

“I find it interesting that you had to title it ‘taking care of Sammy’ instead of say, being a big brother.” Dean leaned back, not knowing what to add to that little bit of insight from Tricia. “So. What filled both of those, enjoyment and duty, when you didn’t have to take care of him anymore? You said it’s been over two years since you and Sam have hunted together.”

“I don’t know. Bounty huntin’, this house, Cas and Jack, the occasional job.”

“But not really anything outside of that? No new territory explored or relationships that didn’t relate to those things? At least, prior to Julie?”

“No. Hung up my adventurous hat.”

“Scales tipped more on the enjoyment or duty end?”

“Before Julie? Duty filled up the days.”

“Explain the last drawing to me.”

Fuck. “Those diagrams. I don’t always see them as connecting, so much as pulling apart.”

“Explain.”

Dean sighed. “You know those magnified videos of cells dividing? Ones we’d have to watch in Sex Ed?”

Tricia nodded. “Cell division after fertilization.”

He focused on the drawing to which Tricia referred. “I’m enjoying her right now.” He looked down at the circle on the left. “But, it’s only a matter of time before hunting, that duty, pulls me away. Or she pulls away because of the hunting. Away from me.” The edges of the equally proportioned Julie and Dean circles barely touched each other between the dividing line.

“So. Can you put Julie in the duty column with you?”

Dean shook his head. “She doesn’t deserve that.”

“But, you do?”

“It’s all I know, Doc.” Dean mumbled.

“Back to Julie and sharing the duty. She might want that. Has nothing to do with deserving.” Tricia spoke, a little softer. The tone reminded him of Mary, when she had to reel in her impatience with her grown-ass sons acting like kids. “We all have duty in life, Dean. Those duties change, shift, evolve. And they can co-exist with enjoyment. You are a hunter. But, you aren’t just a hunter. Just like Julie isn’t just an accounting manager.”

“She goes all in with the duty and she’s in danger. All the time. Even now, being on the edge of it...” He sat up and chugged the beer. “There’s no way this is going to work, me riding this line between in and out. It’s me being selfish. Me wanting something with her is…”

“Human.” Tricia ended. “You won’t know what she can or can’t handle unless you're honest with her.”

“I tell her and it’s over.” He thumbed the opening of the bottle.

“Is that the worst thing that could happen?”

“No. The worst thing would be that she dies.” He nodded, resolute. “Because of me.”

Tricia’s thin lips pursed. The lids shut slowly over her blue eyes, then opened to stare at him. “Dean. I understand that over the past forty years you’ve been given a burden of unimaginable responsibility. Unfair, unwanted, unbelievable responsibility. Understand that simply your existence or being in close proximity to Julie does not make you responsible for every bad thing that could possibly happen to her.”

“I don’t buy that, Doc. That’s a fuckin’ cop out. My decisions make a difference. Actions have consequences.” He heard the resistance in his own voice.

Dean watched her hold in a sigh. “Of course they do. But, it’s the motive behind those actions that define your responsibility for the outcome.”

“I don’t know. Maybe I made a mistake, you know? Getting involved with a… civilian, for lack of a better word. It’s a lot to ask of someone. This life.”

“It is. But, there are lots of couples who are in similar situations. Military spouses, for example. Someone goes off to war, there’s no guarantee they come back. There’s a certain amount of independence and resilience necessary in both partners for those relationships to have any chance of success. Does Julie possess those qualities?”

Dean smiled. “Yeah, I think so.”

“What attracted you to her?”

“Besides her hot little nosey ass?”

Tricia shook her head and smirked. “I’ve got the initial attraction part down. I mean when you interacted. Her personality? Manner?”

Dean reminisced about the first day they met. When he mowed her lawn. When they shared dinner in the backyard. “She was real. Wasn’t putting on an act.”

“You’ve got radar for that stuff?”

“My bullshit meter is very sensitive and highly accurate.” Dean confirmed with an assured nod, then explained further. “She was careful, too. And, considerate.” He chuckled to himself. “She sent me home with some cobbler.”

“Dean?”

“Hm?”

“Would you like to be able to be real with Julie? And, not have to bullshit?”

Dean scoffed. “I’m not…”

Tricia tilted her head. “This dancing around the truth is only going to work for so long. It will exhaust you. Get you more on edge. Understand, I have no doubt you care for her and don’t want to hurt her. But, you can’t expect a strong relationship to be built on a foundation of half-truths. This will damage any chance of being with her long term if you aren’t honest about everything. Soon. So. Do you want to be real with her? Let her really see you? Hear your story? See if she wants you for who you are and can handle the job? Share the responsibility with you?”

The moments ticked by. “Let’s just say, hypothetically, I wanted all those things…” Dean’s gaze flitted over the keyboard. “How do I break it to her?”

The silence was deafening in Dean’s ears as he waited for an answer. “Well, if you want, during our next session, we can brainstorm, act out some scenarios.”

He nodded. “I’ll think about it.”

“Good. So. Will we be good for the same time next week?”

“Unless a job comes up.”

“Uh-huh. Well, if that does happen, I’m happy to reschedule and work around a job. Alright?”

She ain’t letting me out that easy. “Yeah, Tricia.”

Hot little librarian is home. Julie shut the driver’s side door of her compact and strolled out from the carport. Her fingers fiddled with her messenger bag strap. A serious look - what she would call her “resting bitch face” - appeared to inspect something on the path. The car beeped like a preschool toy.

Dean caught the moment Julie realized he sat under the enclosed patio in her backyard. A glance in his direction halted her, then produced a wide smile that he couldn’t help but match. She began the walk toward him. He licked his lips in appreciation at the tight pencil skirt and form fitting blazer in a matching purple. She even had a crisp white button up underneath. Damn. Heels replaced her usual flats. Hips swayed. Hair, twisted up in a tight bun, showed off the slope of her neck. When she got within ear shot, he rumbled, “I wouldn’t have let you leave the house if I’d seen that outfit this morning, sweetheart.”

Eyes narrowed behind her glasses. “Do I need your approval for what I wear?”

“Nope. I just wouldn’t have let you leave the house.” He wanted to say more but Wes and Samuel were in their backyard.

Julie got the hint and smiled over to the neighbors, offering a wave, before staring back at Dean. “Had that big presentation today.” She reminded him.

“Ah.” Something about projections and investments. Dean nodded. “How’d it go?”

“Eh.” She scratched the side of her neck. “It’s done. I’m home. And, you’re here.” She noticed the pizza box on the patio table. “A Margherita from Cosimo’s?”

He grinned at how her eyes lit up.

She pointed to her back door. “Why aren’t you inside?”

He shrugged. “Wanted to wait for you out here.” He inventoried her again. “Making me regret that decision. Inside would be much better for what I want to do right now.”

Julie dropped her messenger bag on the concrete and bent down to give him a kiss. There was firm intent behind the pressure of her lips on his. “Give me a slice of that first.” She smiled and slid into the chair beside him, snatching the bottle of iced tea he’d placed nearby.

Dean flipped the box lid open and presented the pie with a flourish.

“Hm.” Julie took in a whiff of the mozzarella, tomato sauce, and basil symphony. Her fingers danced above and over the selection like a conductor, eventually pulling out the slice Dean had eyed for himself. It had a singed bubble of dough and leaned a tad on the wrong side of crispy. She folded it in half and dangled the tip near his mouth. “Share?”

She read his mind in that way she always did when it came to food, satisfying his tummy and his heart. Damnit, Jules. He snatched at the offering with his teeth. Mozzarella threatened to fall off the dough. But he gobbled about a third of it up to prevent any spillage.

She giggled and took her own enjoyment with the half eaten piece, pushing a napkin out from under the box toward him. “Thank you for getting dinner.”

He finished munching before answering. “I had time. Work’s been slow and I was home.”

“I’ve noticed not much on the hunting end.” She smiled. “Wouldn’t be because I’ve been tiring you out this past week?” She licked the sauce off her lips.

He gnawed at his bottom lip, then grabbed another piece for himself. “Might be.” He tore into the slice with abandon. “I may be turning down jobs so I can be home every night.” A wiggle of his eyebrows accompanied his stare that stretched down to her crossed legs. “And, I’m so glad I stayed home tonight.”

Julie shook her head and sipped at her drink.

He cleared his throat. “I wanted to talk to you about something.” He knew the tone in his voice would shift her posture into cautious mode. She sat up straight in her seat. “I’ve been thinking…”

“Thinking’s good.” She took another bite.

He pursed his lips for emphasis before continuing. “Sam. Eileen. They’ve got about a month or so before she pops.”

“Yeah. I’m sure they’re super excited and nervous.” Julie nodded.

“Was thinking, maybe I should go to California and visit for a while.”

He thought he spotted a tinge of sadness as she processed the assumed details. She slumped a fraction. “I think that’s a great idea.” She picked at some cheese. “How long do you think you’ll be gone? With the drive back and forth, and all?”

He spoke, still chewing. “Might buy a plane ticket. You know, cut down on the time away.”

Her eyes widened. “Are you contemplating a cross country flight?”

He grinned and shrugged. “Got a reason or two to wanna come back to Delaware sooner rather than later.”

Julie smiled more to herself, a little pink painting her cheeks.

“Unless…” He inhaled sharp, then exhaled. Do you want to be real with her? “Would you…” He sighed under her stare. “Would you be able to take some time off from work? Go with me? In a couple weeks, maybe?”

Surprise washed over her face. “I’d have to check, submit a leave request right away.” She paused. “Where would we stay?”

“Sam’s always telling me they have a ton of space at their house.”

“Are you sure, Dean?”

He smiled. “Yes, sweetheart. If you want to, I want you along for the ride.” That made her beam back at him. He shook his head. “But, it ain’t gonna be pretty.”

Her mouth tilted, waiting for explanation.

“Me, on a plane.”

She laughed and reached for his hand. “But, it will be entertaining.”

He huffed. “Thanks.”

Her fingers threaded around his. There was a slight change in her expression. “So?”

It was his turn to wait, but he continued to eat. Grabbing another slice with his free hand.

“You like this outfit?” Her voice had lowered, mindful of the outdoor company, but obvious in an attempt to get a literal rise out of him.

He stopped in mid-chew. Swallowed. Almost choked at the laser focus Julie donned behind the lenses. She leaned forward. He wished she had a few more shirt buttons undone. “Yeah.” He squeaked out, not recognizing the voice that emerged from his throat. He tried again, lower. “Yeah.”

“Does it remind you of something in particular?” She smiled, watching him. Her eyes narrowed. “Are you blushing?” She whispered.

He straightened up, shaking his head. Another scoff. “No.” His cheeks were most definitely warming up.

She squeezed his hand. “Come on. Tell. What installment of the Casa Erotica series is playing in that head of yours?”

He thought back to a night, maybe a month back. It was Dean’s turn to pick a movie and he thought he’d be a smartass and pop in a porn flick. Julie had been up to the challenge. So much so that after about ten minutes in, they were having sex on the couch. The background soundtrack and noises from the television had turned it into an exceptionally fun experience. Julie did her damndest to outdo the moans; Dean, the cheesy dialogue. The memory made his lips pop out in a corkscrew grin. Aw, Jules. Would you be jealous of the fact that I’ve slept with Carmelita from Cabana Nights or jealous that you didn’t get the chance to yourself?

“Is it the one that had the CEO Boss Lady of DRILLER?” She leaned back in her seat and broke the grip, thinking hard. “Or the Professor at CUN Tech?”

“Those were all awesome. Certainly could apply.” He licked his lips. “But, no.”

“Not what immediately came to mind. Huh.” She tapped a finger to her cheek. Then, she snapped her fingers. “Librarian?”

Dean felt his eyes go wide.

“Dean.” She whispered. “I haven’t seen you read a book. When’s the last time you were in a library?”

He shrugged, then chuckled. “Couple years back. I’ve been in lots of libraries.”

“Really?” Her mind was working. It was sexy as hell. Dean’s arousal pressed against the now tight denim. A quick gaze to his lap had her eyes pop open. She cleared her throat, then snapped her eyes up to his. “Got any overdue books you need to return?”

Oh, it’s on. “A couple.”

“Well, I’m sure you’re aware, Mr. Winchester...” She adjusted her glasses and held his stare. “There’s a penalty when they’re brought back late.”

His eyebrows rose. “How big of a penalty are we talkin’?”

“Depends on the length.” She smirked. “Of time the books have been checked out.”

“Oh, wow.” He scratched the back of his neck and did his best ‘Aw Shucks’ expression. “I think I’ve had one for two years. It’s, ah, hard… cover.” He shrugged.

Julie stifled a giggle. “Two years? I don’t have any experience with a delinquency THAT LONG overdue.” She shook her head. “Really, Mr. Winchester.” She stood up and grabbed her messenger bag. “I’ll have to go check our files in the back and look up the fine for that.” Acting disappointed, she sighed. “You can meet me in the periodicals section on the second floor in about five minutes. Then we’ll get things squared away.”

He gazed up at her. “I guess I’ll get what’s coming to me.”

She nodded. “Actions have consequences.” The phrase he’d uttered to his therapist earlier that day slapped him in the face. It knocked him out of the daze of the sultry game for some seconds. “Don’t be late this time.” A curt nod punctuated her flirty command.

He watched her ass sway away, even more sass and bounce in those hips than usual. The view centered his focus on the task at hand. Hot damn. I guess we’re really doing this role playing thing. The sliding door closed. He contemplated waiting a minute before going inside. It made sense to stay on her good side, give her time for whatever her dirty little mind was thinking up. In case we can do this again. He closed the pizza box and packed up the other takeout items, cleaned up the space, and headed in to find his sexy librarian.

Dean dropped the food off in the kitchen and put everything where he knew Julie liked things. He checked his watch every ten seconds to give her the five minutes she had requested. Then, he took the stairs up two at a time. His heart sped up and his cock hardened with each step. He gripped the railing and stopped at the top, glancing around the landing. His chest heaved. The office door was closed. Never closed. The quick click to snap his jaw shut held back a moan of gratitude.

A shuffle over to the door, then his knuckles hovered as he contemplated the best knock. Tap, tap. Pause. Tap.

“Come in.”

Dean grinned. He was curious how long she’d be able to play along without cracking. A deep throat clearing on his part was mostly for her enjoyment. He pushed the latch and entered. She waited for him seated at her desk. A swivel of the office chair in his direction gave Dean a good look at her attire. He couldn’t suppress the groan at the slight alterations she’d made to her work outfit.

Julie had switched out her glasses. To the thick black rim glasses she wears at home. Legs crossed. The professional work heels from earlier were replaced with shiny black stilettos. The white shirt under the blazer had been unbuttoned so low that Dean got more than a peek at the white lace bra underneath. His mouth watered. A hunger filled up his belly having little to do with food. “Mr. Winchester. Have a seat, please.” She motioned to the sofa. Both her hands wrapped over one knee cap.

Dean played up the nerves with a hand to his neck. The room was bright from the ceiling fan light. He inhaled. She put on my favorite perfume. She’d pulled the roman shades all the way down. Whatever we’re about to get up to isn’t for the neighbors to see. He walked over and sat as instructed. Elbows rested on his knees. Legs splayed wide apart. He leaned forward. The springs in the sofa bed cushion creaked. “How much trouble am I in, Ma’am?” It took every ounce of his control to not return her slight smirk with a grin.

“Not good news, I’m afraid.” She shook her head. “Turns out that book was extremely valuable. I found a note from the head curator in the catalogue database with strict orders. We’ve been asked to release information to the police about the person that returns it.”

Shit. She’s doing a whole backstory and everything. My busty little bookworm. Dean raised his hands in slight defense. “Oh, woah, wait a minute. That’s a little extreme, isn’t it?”

A shoulder raised. She uncrossed her legs and swiped at the fabric over her thighs. “I’m afraid my hands are tied, Mr. Winchester.” She had to throw that out there. Hands tied. He didn’t know how much more his cock could take.

He did his best Sam impression. Wide, puppy dog eyes begged. “There has to be another way. Some other penalty or… punishment.” Her eyes lit up at that word. Dean swallowed. “Please, Ma’am. I’ll do anything.”

One of Julie’s eyebrows quirked up. “Excuse me for being so forward, Mr. Winchester. But, you don’t appear to adhere to the simplest of rules. It’s almost as if you like misbehaving.” She straightened in the seat and popped the two buttons of her blazer free. A slow strip peeled the jacket from her shoulders and arms. There was precision and care taken to rest it on the chair back. She turned back, focused on his reaction, her knees locked together. “Do you like being punished?”

Woah. This is definitely new. Dean licked his lips. “I-I guess.”

“Well, then… maybe we can find some way for you to atone for this egregious error.” Mischief lined her lips before she bit the bottom one. Her fingers went to work on the buttons of her blouse next.

His nostrils flared at the sight of her bare skin when she turned to place the shirt with the same care on the chair back. He wanted to run his fingers up the dip of her spine. The creamy lace caged those breasts he wanted to squeeze and lick. “I’ll do anything.” He repeated, groaning. The act was long gone.

“Will you?” He could see the sweet struggle on her face to stay in character. In control. Her hands fanned across the frilly fabric of the bra cups. Nails, coated in wine colored polish, scratched at the lace. The nipples, already pebbling and popping through the flimsy material, hardened further at her touch. Those big brown eyes closed and her chest arched forward.

“Damn, Jules.” He swallowed.

“Want to touch me?” Her eyes opened and returned to his gaze.

“You fucking have to ask?” He grumbled, burning with want.

“Hands and knees.” She smiled, sure and in charge now. She’d won the battle. Her eyes did not break from his. “Crawl for it.”

He smirked. “Want me begging for it, huh?”

The speed of her breath quickened and she gasped, continuing to play with her nipples. “Yes, Mr. Winchester.”

“Alright, Ma’am.” He slinked onto the area rug with a soft pounce, bent arms settling onto his palms. He contracted his fingers, getting a grip of the material, before his knees followed. The surprise and excitement on her face at his action was worth the theatrics. He surveyed and stalked her like a lion. The pace towards her was slow and steady. His gaze never left hers.

Dean angled his head to watch her reaction as he approached. Her hands were squeezing the bra cups now. She bit her bottom lip. Dean halted as her legs parted. The skirt rode up her creamy thighs. Her ass scooted towards the edge of the chair. He got an amazing view of what awaited him.

“No panties, sweetheart.” A low growl left his throat. He rocked back and rose up, sitting on the heels of his sneakers. His hand reached out to touch her thigh.

“No hands.” She whimpered. “Nothing but that mouth and tongue on me.”

He grinned. “That’s my punishment?”

She stilled. “You’re right. That would be too good for you.”

Dean wanted to slap himself. Should have kept my goddamn mouth shut.

Julie’s nails clawed at her thighs, slow and purposeful. Light pink trails skirted over the flesh. She shifted on the seat, pulled the skirt up past those hips to bunch at her waist. She straddled the edge of the seat with a wide stance, her legs bent at perfect ninety degrees.

“You’re fucking gorgeous, you know that right?” Dean shook his head.

“Flattery will get you nowhere.” She shot back. “But, thank you.” The palm of her right hand cupped her pussy. “Is this what you wanted?”

“Yes.” Dean nodded. She pulled her hand back, let him watch while one finger tested the waters between her folds. “Oh, I so want that.” He added.

“How do you want it?” Her middle finger dipped inside. “Nice and slow?” She slipped a second digit into the mix. “Fast and loose?”

“What do you want right now, Jules?” He shook his head, licked his lips, and clenched the denim covering his thighs. “Whatever you want, baby.”

The blush broke the act. There she is. A gasp left her mouth. “Really?”

Dean arched his brows. “Of course.”

Her lips rubbed together. “Lie on your back?” She stared at him, hard, then let the request escape her mouth. “I want to ride your face.”

Shit. How long has she been keeping that on reserve? He flopped onto his back, and onto the rug, like a dog playing dead. He tapped his chest. “I’ve died and gone to heaven. Get up here, sweetheart.”

His focus was on the ceiling fan above him, whirring as fast as his X-rated thoughts. Her giggle filled his ears. “Why do you have to be so addictive?”

He shrugged. “Could ask the same thing about you? But, I’m all about this mid-life sexcapade. I mean, any moment, you could go running for the hills.” Her frame was above him in a second, by his side. She was a disheveled, sexy, hot fucking mess. His tongue clicked. “May I suggest you take off the skirt?” His hand drifted up the back of her bare leg, from ankle to calf, resting on the back of a knee. “But keep the heels and bra on. Please.” Rug fibers rubbed into the back of his head as he tilted. “For now, at least.”

She nodded. The side zipper released. Fabric puddled and bunched atop his forearm, trapping her movement. He stared at all of her from his vantage. A deep breath steadied him. He slid his hand out from under the skirt. Both hands locked behind his head, cradling it.

“Whenever you’re ready, sweetheart.” He smiled.

She stepped out of the skirt and swished it away. Her soft tummy and hips jiggled. “I’ve never done this before.”

“I guaran-fucking-tee there’s no way you can disappoint me.” Dean chuckled. He sighed when she stepped over him, heels twisting into the rug. “Such a pretty view.”

The rush and embarrassment of being pantiless for Dean’s inspection from a very new angle flooded through Julie’s veins. Her whole body was on fire. He was relaxed now, leaning back onto the rug like it was a towel on a sandy beach. He was content now, staring up at her with brilliant bright green eyes. “Such a pretty view.”

“Pointers?” She shrugged.

“Well,” his palms unclasped from behind his head and latched onto the ankles caging him on either side. “You aren’t going to sit as much as hover. A throw pillow from the sofa will help get me into a better position.” He smirked. “And those pretty thighs need to get up by my head. Pronto.” A throat clearing followed. “You can face forward or do a reverse cowgirl up here.” His eyebrows wiggled.

Julie bit her lip.

“What are you thinking about it?” Dean asked. “Now’s not the time to be thinking.”

“It’s just… I want to, but…”

His bottom lip sucked back into his mouth. The tip of his tongue peeked out for an agonizing, tantalizing second. He was grazing over her figure from down below. “You know, I’m really enjoying this, Jules. How could I not? If that’s what you’re worried about. Don’t. And, you get to continue this little dominant dance you started. Fucking hot as hell. You’re in charge.”

She sighed.

“You’re good at it. Giving orders. It’s fun to switch roles every now and then. Come on.” His ass squirmed into the rug now and he smiled. “Break in this bronco.”

“I give orders everywhere else, Dean.” She pulled out of his cuffed palms and took a couple steps to grab a tiny pillow for his head. He ‘oofed’ and chuckled when she tossed it onto his face. “I know I’m good at it. But, I like it when you take the lead.” She melted onto the floor and sat by his head, leaning into the front of the sofa. The back of her high heels curled against bare ass cheeks.

He cocked his head around to stare up at her once he got comfy on the pillow. She teased at the strands of his hair. “I know you do, sweetheart.” His voice lowered further. “Honest? In this moment?”

Oh. He’s using it against me now.

“The thought of your business being all up in my face, with you on top… kind of makes you feel totally exposed, right?” He asked, reaching for her. The warmth of his hand caressed a thigh.

“Yeah.”

“You got to switch that thought process. It’s all up to you. I’m just a means to get you to an end.” A throaty groan slipped out of his perfect pout. “And, I fucking love that idea. With you especially, baby. I wanna give you that control. Let me let go of it. The need to be in charge for a while.” The final three words came out in a soft beg. His eyes narrowed. “Ride me, sweetheart.”

His voice made her core clench, like always. She was slick, ready. “Sounds like an order.” A massive grin threatened to emerge but she fought it back. “I’m surprised I can still walk after the week I’ve had with you. Now, I have to ride you.”

He didn’t hold back the cheesy, ear to ear grin. “Oh, yeah. It’s gonna tire you out. But, I promise, you’ll love it.” Julie lifted up onto her knees and shuffled closer. He stared back at her, upside down, arching his eyebrows. “Oh, so it’s reverse cowgirl, huh?” He hummed in satisfaction.

Julie frowned, realizing an important fact with this particular position. “I don’t get to watch that pretty face of yours.”

Forearms disappeared behind her. Those huge biceps flexed and stretched the fabric of his grey and white flannel. His palms patted the back of her thighs, trying to edge her forward. “Trust me, baby.” He tilted his chin up. “We can do it all sorts of ways. Next time.”

She nodded and held her breath, luxuriating in the fact that she knew there would be a next time. So many next times. The anxiousness crept in again. But, she situated herself above his face.

The groan of delight from him was one she had heard countless times. “Fuck.” He whispered. She clenched again. “Absolutely nothing to be blushing about from where I’m at.”

The bulge straining against his jeans became somewhat of a needed distraction and fortified her courage. God help me. This man is ruining me in the best way imaginable. Her knees wedged under the comfy material covering those hunky shoulders. The seam and soft give of the pillow rested against her calves. Her gaze dipped down, tracked his head tunnelling between her thighs. She lost sight of his eyes and nose and top lip.

His mouth dropped open to speak. “Get down here, sweetheart.” He urged. She quivered at the hot breath hitting her pussy. “You can lean on me. Remember, I’m here to be used. If you get a little carried away and I can’t breathe, I’ll tap out.” He chuckled and shot more heat up to her core. A few light kisses covered her inner thigh. “You do whatever feels good. No shame in your game.”

“Dean?”

“Yeah, baby?”

“Shut up.” Her palms splayed atop his shirt covering his pecs. Those perky little nipples pressed into her skin. His chest was strong and supportive; the view of his supine body was quite spectacular. Even if he had way too many layers on. One bow leg shifted as he planted a sneaker against the base of her filing cabinet to steady himself. Arms locked, she guided herself down and closed her eyes.

It was the scruff of his chin that connected first. A gasp left her mouth. He’d maneuvered a bit, could feel him searching with his lips. He glided all over her wet and swelling flesh. Fingers had sunk into the plush of her ass cheeks. He found her entrance with his mouth. Then, he moaned. It rumbled into her pussy. He played her body like an expert musician. The tip of his tongue circled her hole.

“Shit!” She pushed into his stiffening muscle as it swirled and offered itself. Her arms provided leverage to move up and down over that face. “You should be against the law, you know that?” She whimpered.

That arrogant chuckle emitted from his throat, vibrating inside. The sounds were glorious as she rode him. Hesitancy faded. Curiosity emboldened her. She rocked her hips back and forth. His tongue flattened and he stilled, static, so she could lead and swipe her most sensitive spots over him. He snuck in a suck here and there at her clit when her arching became more pronounced.

“Oh, God. Dean.” Moans toppled one after the other as he clamped down on her ass and spread her cheeks open. His strength held her in place. He worked her over with every part of his face. His chin, his lips, his mouth, his nose, his tongue. A fleeting thought entered her mind that even his cheekbones and eyebrows had found a way to fuck her senseless.

Dean gasped for air under her. “Please, baby.” He moaned.

She froze, every inch of her ached, but she worried she was actually hurting him. “Can you not breathe?”

“No. No. I’m good. You’re so fucking good.” He praised her. “I just, wanna…” His fingers had continued to massage her ass. One digit slid closer to her back hole.

Julie gasped. Her body hopped in shock at the realization of what he was requesting.

“Only if you wanna see how it feels.” He kissed her folds. “Can just circle it. Or use my mouth.”

She sighed at his words. “Maybe just your finger. Outside.”

He moaned. “Thank you, sweetheart.” He feasted on her pussy once he’d been given permission.

Julie’s eyes bolted open wide at the new sensations. The pad of his finger circled her rim, testing her give and resistance. She couldn’t help but buckle under the pressure and pleasure he was providing her everywhere.

“Dean…” she groaned. “I’m gonna cum.”

He nodded, not stopping any of it, humming into her pussy.

“Yes, Dean. Oh, God.” She cried out, her body tensing with the impending orgasm. A wave of light and levity crashed into all her senses. His moans, his touch, they all felt far away for the briefest of seconds. Then, it all slammed her back. Cells, every one of them, super sensitive, on edge, as he continued to lick and tease her when she came down from the high.

“Fuck.” An obscene slurp followed his exclamation, still under her slackening body. “I gotta be inside you, baby. Can you handle that?”

She sighed. “Of course I can.”

He chuckled and eased out from under her like he’d been working on Baby’s undercarriage. His whole face glistened with her, tinted red with exertion. “That’s my girl.” He heaved and took in a deep breath.

She fell back on her ass, her whole body a quivering mass. He groaned and sat up, stripped off his flannel, then his t-shirt. Her fingers reached out to touch his skin. “But can you take the lead this time?”

He grinned. “Of course I can.” His head cocked to the side. “But, I don’t want to be any kind of gentle.”

Holy shit. He’s looking at me like I’m dinner. Even more than before we started this whole damn game. “Okay.”

“You sure?” He rose up and pulled her along. Her feet wobbled in the heels. “I mean, it could get a little rough.” His fingers sunk into the base of her scalp and her hair. He pulled her head back with a jolt, tipping her chin up. Her breath hiccupped. “Like that.” He sucked at her bottom lip. “You okay with that?”

“Yes.” She was dazzled by the green and intensity of his eyes. She licked her lip and tasted herself. He was thick with the smell of the excitement and ecstasy he’d pulled out of her.

He turned and looked over his shoulder. He grabbed her by the waist and twirled her toward the desk. She clamped onto his forearms. The office chair rolled away, loud and careless, slamming into the closet door due to his forceful push. “Hope your shit’s insured.” He rotated her again in those massive arms, determined. His mouth latched onto her neck. His chest pressed into her back. She heard his belt unbuckling. The leather swished from the loops and thudded onto the rug. “Cause you’re getting good and fucked on this desk.” His voice thundered against her skin.

“Dean.” Her head fell back into the crook of his neck.

“Okay.” He sighed. His denim covered thigh wedged between her trembling ones and soaked pussy. He edged her to the corner of the desk where she’d normally sit. His hands shot out around her frame, grabbed at the computer monitor, and brought it back down to rest parallel to one of the walls. His hands returned to her thighs, raked up her skin and back. “Safety in the workplace, right?” The confinement of her bra released with the unclasping by his dexterous fingers. He slipped her out of the straps and cups, grasped her breasts. Fingers tugged at her nipples. Then he smashed her whole body back into him. His head bent to her ear, intoxicating with the sound of his voice and warmth from his mouth. “Let’s get to work. Bend over, sweetheart.”

“Jesus.”

He chuckled and used the firm grip on her breasts to bend her to his will. “Whatever feels better for you once I go to town, you do. Okay?”

She nodded and rested on her elbows, waiting. There was some shuffling again. His zipper. Out of the corner of her eye she noted he wasn’t even bothering to take his jeans completely off. The waistband of his denim and grey boxer briefs wrapped tight around his muscled thighs, spread wide.

“I already know how good and used up you're going to feel around my cock.” The tip brushed against her folds from behind. They moaned in unison. “And, still nice and wet for me.” A hand clamped onto one of her shoulders. She felt the pull back; groaned at the slide of him inside. He bottomed out. “Shit. This is gonna be hard and quick.” He inhaled and exhaled. “Sure you’re ready, baby?”

She knew what she was asking for when she gave him the flippant response. “Don’t I feel ready, hot stuff?”

His hands clamped onto her waist. “Alrighty, then.” A few “Ughs” and “Fucks” and “Shits” flew out of Dean’s mouth as he began to pound. He slid her back and forth over his cock, her ass smacking into his groin, balls rocking into her cheeks with his fast thrusts.

He used one hand to encourage her shoulders into the desk surface, her breasts flattening into the cool wood. She tilted her face and leaned her cheek on a hand for support, moaning at how the slight shift had arched her up into more pleasure. She was going to get a desk burn, if that was possible.

“Damn, Julie. You gotta wear these heels more often.” He grunted out the suggestion. “Gets you in just the right position.”

Everything on the desk was teetering and jostling with every one of his thrusts.

“So fucking lucky.” She caught the mumble fall out of his mouth. He swore again. “Aw, fuck. Yes. Close, baby.”

His admission made her pussy clench.

“Shit. Yeah.” She felt the tension in his body mount. He sped up into her. “Gotta, need to… feel so fucking good.” He pounded in all the way one more time and she felt him go rigid, his fingers sink into the flesh of her ass. Dean let out a soft gasp, connected into her like a jackhammer with one final thrust, and let go, spilling inside. He toppled over, sandwiching her between his body and the desk. His cheek rested on her back. Deep breaths matched hers. His heart beat pulsed against her skin. “Damn.” He finally spoke. A kiss planted along her spine. “Are you alright?”

She nodded into her hand. “So alright.” She smiled. “But, it’s official. I can no longer walk.”

He groaned and pulled out. “Shit. We made a mess of everything.” She could hear him slide his jeans back up.

Her body peeled off the desk surface, sticky with sweat. “Dean, I’m serious. I don’t think my legs work.” She giggled.

Without warning, his arms swooped her up and he carried her to the sofa. She wrapped her arms around his neck. He plopped onto a cushion and settled her on his lap, scooping every naked inch of her into his embrace. “Better?” His lips caressed her mouth.

Her forehead found his. “You make everything better.”

He pulled back. There was worry on his face. “I might not always be able to make everything better, Jules.”

How can he be so sure of himself one second and unwilling to take a compliment the next? “You’re right. Too much pressure.” She tried to ease the tension. “You make it better right now.”

That made him smile. His hand stroked her cheek. “You know, I’m going to have to go back to work. It’s not like I’m getting paid to be your sex slave.”

She frowned. “I feed you.”

He laughed. “I bought the pizza.”

She leaned on his shoulder. “I feed you most nights.”

“True.” He reclined back onto the sofa, taking her with him. “Will you be alright if I check in and see if I can grab a skip tomorrow? There was word of something in upstate PA. Might have me out of town for a day or two.”

“Honestly,” she giggled, “I could probably use the break.”

“Well, now, I’m just hurt.” He scoffed. “You could try and act a little upset.”

She snuggled. “Of course I’ll miss you.” She tapped his chest. “Don’t forget. Mom is having us over her house for lunch on Sunday. So, whatever you do, wrap it up before then.”

“See what I mean about how good you are at giving orders?” The sarcasm evident in his voice.

“Hm.” A forceful grab at his chin met his eyes to hers. “Kiss me.”

Dean grinned into the liplock. His words spilled into her mouth in between the tangle of their tongues. “Only a matter of time before I get on your nerves and you want nothing to do with me.”

“You get on my nerves now.” She smirked, tasting his salt and sweat and her sex again. “And, I still want everything to do with you. Glutton for punishment, I guess.”

“Guess we deserve each other, then.” He leaned back and ran a hand down her chest. “I’m hungry. Are you hungry?”

She nodded. “Starving.”

He hopped off the sofa and grabbed his flannel off the floor to toss it to her. “I’ll bring up the pizza box.”

She slipped into the warmth of his shirt, bringing her knees to her chest. “You’re bringing up that greasy thing?” Her eyes narrowed in half-jest.

Outstretched arms reminded her of the current condition of the room. “Might as well take advantage of the mess before we clean it up. Hey, I’m not taking it into the bedroom.” He put up a hand before she could protest again. “Remember, you don’t get to be all up in this for the next couple days.” He smirked and then did a flourish of his hand from head to toe.

She shook her head. “Hurry up before I change my mind.”

His bare chest flexed as he buttoned his jeans up. “So cute when you give orders.” He slapped the door sill and disappeared.

Julie situated her compacted frame in the corner of the sofa, buttoned up the oversized shirt. Her toes dug into the cushion. A pull of the shade cord gave her a view of the backyard. The sky was pink and darkening by the minute. How long have we been up here? So easy to lose track of everything else when I’m with him.

Her body was pulsing. Every part he’d touched, entered, hypersensitive. Thank God I’ve got my gyno visit tomorrow. She blushed at the thought of having to explain to her doctor that she and Dean had gotten a little carried away over the past week.

She had fallen into a rabbit hole of lust. How could I not? More worrisome? She was trusting him more and more. The safety with him was something she craved. What if I fuck it up? A pang in her gut. What if he fucks it up?

“Jules?” His voice drifted up the stairwell. “You win. I’ll bring up a few slices on a tray. Gonna heat ‘em up. Be up in ten. But, you’ve gotta clean up the office.”

She smiled and called back down. “Aren’t we bossy? Deal, Dean.”

Part 3

Series Page

#dean x ofc #spnfanficpond #dean winchester fluff #dean winchester angst #dean winchester smut #spn fanfics

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dovesdanceatdusk · 6 years ago

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Long post reply ahead:

@dreamsfrozenincandyland-blo-blog, I had to give your response some thought because I could be riding the high of 14x08 like I did in season thirteen and I don’t want to do that. What I mean is, I enjoy the episode on first watch/premiere airing, only to be confused and disappointed if and when I rewatch.

I was upset Jack and Sam didn’t hug. I could chalk it up to Sam being less tactile than Dean, but then I remember all the times Sam hugged friends and family members in his inner circle the past three seasons and I’m left coming up short on that theory.

He watched Jack, his kid, die when Castiel and Dean walked out of the room. As painful as that was, I was happy Sam didn’t leave. I normally see symbolism when it’s not there, so forgive a young bird of doing so, but Sam sitting by Jack’s side and not leaving tells me Sam cared for Jack more than the scene let on. Sam didn’t leave, abandon, or write off Jack in season thirteen. He didn’t leave Jack when Jack was about to die. He stayed by his side, even if it killed him inside.

To me, Jared’s acting was pretty good, not subdued. [Reasons why, I saw how Sam tried to keep it together, how Sam held back tears when Jack and he talked right before Jack died. How Sam left Castiel and Dean after Jack died after Dean talked about making a pyre, abrupt, determined, and hurting. When Sam tried to chop down a tree to make a pyre, only to strike hard enough to break the ax.

I saw Sam’s sorrow when he told Dean he couldn’t even build a proper pyre for Jack. His determination to help Jack by agreeing to Lily’s deal--and the desperation to try when Dean didn’t think the deal was a good idea. His outburst when Lily retracted her end of the deal (”He’s our kid!”). Holding Jack and telling him to read the spell to activate the angel magic and save his life.]

I saw all of that--Sam’s grief, his helplessness, desperation, determination, relief, and elation. I mean, I could have ridden the live-blog high, too caught up in the feelings to register that maybe what I saw was more muted than I realize (hence why I dread rewatching sometimes). But that’s what I got from it. The subtleties in Jared’s acting, as well as the overtness, led me to believe Sam’s actions, feelings, and behavior last night felt real.

But then those thoughts led me back to your response again, and I thought some more. I thought of Dean’s reactions to Jack, including that hug, and yeah, I wanted that for Sam.

I could see Sam laugh with tears spilling out of his eyes, holding Jack tight after the spell was complete and Jack was saved. I could see Sam hitting the tree after he broke the ax, pounding the side of his fist on it and crying until he didn’t have the strength anymore; and after he would walk over to the Impala and sit by her tires lost and hurting because his boy died and he couldn’t do a flying fig about it. I could see Sam rest his head against the table’s surface in the library after the failed attempt to get Anubis to help Lily. He takes a deep breath, then we hear that shuddering exhale--I could see that too. I could see him shoving Dean a little after Dean tells him the deal is too sketchy to try--then again I couldn’t, not after watching the later seasons. Would that make me happier? Would those theoretical examples fill up the drying pool of want and Sam wishes from this old horse of a show? I don’t know. I would be more satisfied, yes.

Which brought me to my response to your first reply last night. In comparison to what I saw in previous episodes this season, 14x08 gave me more Sam feels and Sam and Jack feels. That was why I was satisfied. Not, “I’m over the moon, stop the online presses,” joy, but I’m glad I saw Sam’s grief instead of him burying it down deep into the abyss for others. How I saw it, what Sam did to bring Jack back was because of his grief, his frustration he couldn’t do anything for him before (I chalked ‘before’ up to Jack’s terminal illness). Sam made calls, got Lily Sunder to help because he was desperate to help Jack, to do something. Sam chopping a tree for Jack’s pyre, only to break the ax, was his desperation, his grief, his loss bleeding through. I remember reblogging a post last night pointing out the reason why Jack is alive was Sam, Lily, and Castiel. It was Sam who got the ball rolling. Sam reached out; he found Lily and came together with a plan. From there, Castiel, 100% on board, agreed to carry out a key piece to the plan: go to heaven, find Jack, and send Jack’s soul back to his body. Sam went to lengths to get Jack back, without having to make a crossroads deal.

There’s not a lot of Sam and Jack moments in season fourteen. When I do get them, somehow it gets nuked and destroyed in the next episode like it never happened (Looking at you, Bucket of Lemmings, and maybe the Singer-Dabb duo of questionable decisions). In comparison, season thirteen was the opposite. There were a lot of Sam and Jack moments, enough to warm my theoretical house. Only a handful of last season’s episodes had Sam and Jack more distant with each other.

That’s the problem I’m facing with season fourteen in regards to Sam and Jack’s relationship. For Sam and Jack positive people, all of those moments we saw in season thirteen, those moments that warmed our hearts--at least my heart if yours melted or burned the good burn--is barely even noticeable this season. There’s an imbalance. If the writing team played their cards right, the Dean and Jack bonding moments wouldn’t be so glaring if they included some Sam and Jack bonding moments. Anyone out there who believe the Dean and Jack bonding moments were okay is another sliver of pie that must be accounted for as well. So, perhaps a slower bonding progression, easing into the Dean and Jack bond instead of, “BAM, they’re thick as thieves. Dean is Jack’s other father and the rest is shredded grass.”

The progression would be more organic, but Dean and Jack’s relationship needed to happen quickly in order for the writers’ plans to come together. Dean needed to have a closer relationship with Jack in order for his actions and reactions in 14x07 and 14x08 to play out the way it did. That’s what I’m getting from it. I don’t like it, but that’s what I’m reading. Add in the fact you have a writing team that needs to not only work together but needs to work with the showrunner’s (showrunners’) vision. That’s a tough cucumber if you were a writer rallying Sam and Jack’s relationship.

I also read a discussion a few days ago pointing out side characters’ relationships with the brothers.

Analysis: missjackil(.)tumblr(.)com/post/180864904367/captainsteelandsunshine

The last comment of the thread gives a different perspective on the matter. I found it to be an interesting read, but your mileage may vary on the topic. I’m putting this here to widen the net a bit on this topic. Take away the parentheses before using the link.

I hope my response makes sense. You’re not wrong, and not alone on your thoughts on 14x08. On my dash, I saw some Sam and Jack positive viewers just as disappointed. My attitude toward the episode might change if I can get myself to rewatch. The downside is I don’t think what the show is doing is going to change. I could be wrong.

(What will sting is if the deleted scenes of the season were Sam and Jack moments. Boo.)

Note to anyone pointing out Jack and Castiel scenes: I’m only addressing Sam and Jack and Dean and Jack in this post.

#14x08 #thoughts #long reply #sam and jack #sam and grief #sam and loss #all grammar mistakes are mine #dean and jack (mentioned)#spn analysis #long post #spn s.14

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schraubd · 6 years ago

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Vectors of Threat for Academic Freedom

The prospect that Temple Professor Marc Lamont Hill might be dismissed from his tenured university position -- the Chair of the Temple University's Board of Trustees said he would "look at what remedies we have", but suggested that many on the board and the administration would like to fire Hill -- has sparked a renewed round of the ever-popular "who's the real threat to academic freedom" game. For all the belly-aching conservatives have issued over liberal universities which can't tolerate opposing viewpoints, there sure are a lot of cases where conservatives have successfully censored progressive academics!

I doubt that Hill will end up being fired, and it's been good to say many conservative academics make clear that any such university sanction would be an egregious violation of academic freedom (see, e.g., Robert George, Jonathan Marks, and Keith Whittington -- FIRE, which sometimes is viewed as conservative though I don't think that reputation is deserved, also has come out swinging backing Hill's academic freedom rights).

But this case did help crystallize in my mind the different vectors of threats to academic freedom, which may help explain how both the left and the right think it's self-evident that the "other side" is the real danger (beyond the usual self-serving reasons I mean). To generalize:

When threats to academic freedom bubble "up" from below -- come from students or faculty -- they tend to come from the left;

When threats to academic freedom percolate "down" from above -- come from politicians or the Board of Trustees -- they tend to come from the right.

Front-line administrators (like Deans), who can encounter pressure from both sources, are "swing votes". No doubt there are exceptions. And I hasten to add that this typology only holds on a political axis -- along other axes of campus identity (e.g., racial, sexual, or religious lines), there are different stories to be told about who and what prevents certain groups from engaging as equals in campus discourse. But on the purely political side of things, and based on my admittedly non-scientific recollection of cases, this distinction seems to hold up pretty well. Start with the threats progressives face: It is the Temple Board of Trustees threatening Hill's job. Steven Salaita was "unhired" by the Univeristy of Illinois' Board, validating a decision by the Chancellor. It was UNC's board which voted to shut down centers and clinics which clashed with conservative political priorities, for nakedly political reasons. If you move over to cases of conservative academics being targeted, examples like Bret Weinstein at Evergreen State or Charles Murray at Middlebury are primarily cases of student behavior. Academic BDS campaigns almost exclusively emanate from students or faculty, while facing strong administrative resistance (see Pitzer or Michigan). And the more general claims that conservative views are "unwelcome" or that college is an "unsafe space" to be a conservative are typically directed at the conduct and outlook of students and faculty. No doubt this divergence is in large part attributable to the relative political make-up of college faculties and students versus governing boards or political overseers (in retrospect, it also explained the instincts behind my "Do Jews Need a Protest Politic" post, which posited that campus groups who protect their rights via administrative action rather than student protests will automatically code as conservative). But the differences between these threat-vectors has significant practical ramifications, that go far in explaining why both conservatives and liberals think they're the primary victims of academic freedom violations. On the one hand, it perhaps shouldn't surprise -- though many people were surprised -- that there have been more "political" firings of left-wing professors on campus than right-wing professors, and the gap has gotten bigger over the past few years. And if you think of who has the capacity to issue blunt, sweeping, heavy-handed assaults on academic freedom -- terminating employment, shuttering a program, passing a law -- then that figure makes sense. For the most part, students and faculty can't do that (or at least, not with much greater expenditures effort). So the liberals can justly point out to the conservatives that, if they're the political orientation threatened by the elements within academia that have the de jure authority to end a career or eliminate a program with the stroke of a pen, then they are the group more threatened by academic freedom violations -- period. But there's another way of viewing the problem. It's true that boards and politicians have greater blunt dominative authority which, when exercised, poses a greater threat to academic freedom than any power faculty or students hold. But it's also true that board and politicians "touch" the day-to-day operations of academia far more infrequently than faculty and students do. What the latter lack in bluntness, they make up for in terms of omnipresence -- the conservative complaint regarding the state of academic freedom tends to rely less on direct cases of censorship by administrators and more about an atmosphere or mood where certain views are shunned or difficult to air (see this profile of conservative women at UNC, or this account from NYU). It is not a single act of censorial pronouncement that silences conservatives on campus, but the constant prick and needle of dismissiveness, eye rolls, "jokes", and shunning that together creates a landscape where conservative views are effectively unable to be aired.

So the conservatives could reply by saying that a few stray bolts of administrative lightning might be flashy, but they hardly overwhelm the suffocating blanket of ubiquitous liberalism which they see as draped over their academic communities. It is nuts, they would argue, to suggest that in general academic squelches liberal ideas and facilitates conservative ones.

One reason that I suspect progressives would find this argument frustrating is that it adopts a view of power that conservatives tend not to find attractive in other contexts. When speaking of racism, for example, conservatives are not generally sympathetic to any understanding of the term other than deliberate de jure action by an official authority. The complaints about eye rolls and dismissals are -- dare I say it -- best characterized as "microaggressions", and we all know how conservatives feel about those.

This framework also has some difficulty distinguishing between bad de facto "censorship" and simple widespread negative reactions to ideas. After all, thinking "this idea is wrong" -- or even "this idea is racist" -- is not censorship, it's judgment. That one's speeches are met with protests, one's classroom contributions are met with snickers, and that nobody wants to date you after that column you wrote calling abortion murder -- none of these would be viewed as a form of oppression by conservatives but for the fact that conservatives are experiencing them.

Hence, the conservative appeal to this framework in the academic context reasonably comes off as opportunistic. It also opens the door to a more expansive liberal retort, identifying a still-further basic threat to, if not "academic freedom", then at least the diverse and pluralistic exchange of ideas. If academia is built for a particular type of student -- one who is, on average, wealthier and Whiter than America writ large, then it follows that certain types of views and arguments will most likely be systematically underrepresented and underconsidered. If, for example, campuses are poorly equipped to engage with and include undocumented immigrant students, that likely has an impact on the way campus debates about immigration will proceed. This argument relies on a similar (albeit not identical) understanding of power as does the conservative case; if they admit one, they really should have to admit the other.

Be that as it may, I do think that a focus on the vectors of threats to academic freedom -- the different ways in which those threats manifest when they stem from politicians and boards (right targeting left) versus when they stem from faculty and students (left targeting right) -- can help explain the sense of talking past each other that is so prevalent in these conversations.

Brazen acts of censorship, firings, or political interference are more likely to stem from the right. Day-to-day discomfort, including microaggressions, and an overall atmosphere of having to "walk on eggshells" are more likely to be the product of the left -- though any consistent theory of academic freedom then has to also admit that these same dynamics might also "censor" or "chill" other campus outgroups (such as racial, religious, or sexual minorities). The former is more nakedly wrong and more individually dangerous, but also rarer. The latter is more omnipresent, but also primarily an issue in aggregate and in any event more complicated at the case level.

And then even below those, there's a whole additional layer of ideas and perspectives which are not aired on campus because their proponents never make it to campus, because campus isn't built for them. Different vectors, all threatening the pluralistic exchange of ideas in different ways.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/2rikS9M

#academia #academic freedom #conservatives #Liberals

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nummero123 · 3 years ago

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YouTube SEO: How to Optimize Videos for Search on YouTube

Inbound marketing was a novel concept just a decade ago.

Marketers discovered that they couldn't simply publish a large amount of material.

It had to be of excellent quality and optimized in ways that made it as discoverable as possible via search engines.

Previously, that content was primarily limited to the written word.

That is no longer the case.

A comprehensive content strategy nowadays comprises textual content such as blogs and e-books.

As well as media such as podcasts, visual assets, and videos.

That last aspect, video, is still growing in popularity. According to the 2018 State of Inbound study.

45 percent of marketers plan to invest more on YouTube this year.

More than any other marketing channel accessible to them.

But how exactly does YouTube SEO work?

What actions must you take to improve your YouTube channel for search?

We've listed some of the most important advice and tools below.

1. Rename your video file using a target keyword.

YouTube SEO Tips

You'll utilize an SEO tool to first pick keywords you'd like your video to focus on, just as you would when optimizing written material.

When you've identified a keyword, the first place you should put it is in your video file.

Before you even upload it to YouTube.

Why?

YouTube cannot "see" your video to determine its relevance to your target keyword.

And, as you'll see in the tips below,

there are only so many places you can safely enter this keyword on your video's watching page once it's uploaded.

However, YouTube can read the file name of your film as well as all of the coding that comes with it.

With that in mind, replace the "business ad 003FINAL.mov" file name with your chosen keyword (don't be embarrassed.

We've all been there during post-production).

If your keyword is "house painting tips,".

For example, the file name of your video should be "house-painting-tips"

Followed by the video file format you like (MOV, MP4, and WMV are some of the most common that are compatible with YouTube).

2. Insert your keyword naturally in the video title.

When we look for videos, one of the first things that catch our attention is the title.

Because the title is frequently what determines whether or not a visitor will click to watch your video.

It should not only be engaging but also clear and simple.

Although your keyword is important in your video title.

It also helps if the title is closely related to what the viewer is looking for.

According to Back-linko research, videos with an exact keyword match in the title have only a marginal advantage over those that don't.

As a result, while "adding your target keyword in your title may help you rank for that term,"

Report author Brian Dean writes,

"the association between keyword-rich video titles and rankings" isn't always significant.

Nonetheless, optimizing your title for this keyword is a good idea as long as it fits naturally within a title that tells people exactly what they're about to see.

3. Optimize your video description.

First and foremost:

The official character restriction for YouTube video descriptions is 1,000 characters, according to Google.

While it is acceptable to use all of that space, keep in mind that your audience came here to watch a video, not to read an essay.

If you prefer to create a longer description.

Keep in mind that YouTube only displays the top two or three lines of text.

Which amounts to approximately 100 characters.

Following that, visitors must click "see more" to see the complete description.

As a result, we recommend starting the description with the most important information, such as CTAs or important links.

In terms of video optimization, it doesn't harm to provide a transcript of the video.

Especially for people who have to watch it without sound.

However, Backlinko's research discovered no correlation between optimized descriptions for a specific keyword and rankings for that term.

4. Tag your video with popular keywords that relate to your topic.

The official Creator Academy on YouTube recommends utilizing tags to let people know what your video is about.

But you're not only informing your audience; you're also informing YouTube.

Dean explains that tags are used by the platform to "understand the content and context of your video."

As a result, YouTube can figure out how to correlate your video with similar videos, thus broadening the exposure of your material.

However, choose your tags cautiously.

Use an irrelevant tag if you believe it would increase your views.

Google may penalize you for doing so.

Similar to your description, begin with the most significant keywords.

Containing a healthy mix of common and long-tail keywords.

5. Categorize your video.

After you've uploaded a video, you can categorize it in "Advanced settings."

Choosing a category is another approach to categorize your video.

With similar content on YouTube so that it ends up in different playlists and reaches more people who identify with your target audience.

It may not be as simple as it appears. Indeed, YouTube's Creator Academy.

Recommends that marketers go through a thorough procedure to decide which category their video fits in.

According to the book, it's useful to "think about what works well for each category" you're considering by answering questions like:

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Video or playlist cards that lead to more similar YouTube content.\

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YouTube SEO Tools

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When your viewers find you, make sure they have something high-quality and relevant to watch.

You can also contact Nummero, the best website development company in Bangalore.

#YouTube SEO #digital marketing agency

0 notes

eggselcier · 7 years ago

Text

Hartwin Fanfiction Recommendations - Kingsman

I love recommendation lists! The sheer amount of Hartwin on Ao3 is beautiful and overwhelming. I feel like many of the fics below have been received the attention they deserved. But also, many of them were ‘lost’ in the shuffle. These are also fics that have inspired me to to my own writing.

Please also keep in mind that these recommendations may include some constructive criticism. While I love them all, there are comments that I think need to be said in any recommendation. I’m not going to be adding warnings (those are in the links) but I want to give a larger picture of the piece besides fawning over how much I love it.

This list also does not include any tumblr ficlets. I love those too but they are more difficult to keep track of. If you follow me, I tend to reblog everything I love so you can find more that way. If you have any recommendations to send me, please do!

I apparently don’t have the tumblr accounts of any of these so if you would like to let the authors know, please go ahead and tag them! (sorry authors)

These are in no particular order.

If We Never Had This Chance by MissBecky

After a difficult mission, Eggsy makes a thoughtless remark that strains his and Harry's relationship. Before they can fully reconcile, though, an old enemy from Harry's past reappears with only one thing on her mind: vengeance. And now their chance for a happy ever after may be gone forever.

The composition of this fic really pulled in from the beginning. Its arranged a series of scenes that happen in the present, in the past and through the lens of Kingsman’s glasses. And its all brilliantly woven together with little hints of past or upcoming events tied into every scene.

Plus, the opening conflict between Harry and Eggsy is brutal and terrifying and so very human. Like they’re both teetering on this precipice of misunderstandings and lost chances. I was on the edge with them to see if their relationship was going to survive their silence.

Broken Crown by Damned_Writers

"Does the king do what he wants, or does he do what the people expect him to do?”

Another letter arrived for him that day. He had asked the king when the war would be over. Not so directly of course. He had merely hinted that the sooner it was all bloody over with, the sooner they could forget this pause in who they really were, this stutter in humanity’s heartbeat, and return to good old earth and summer days and the occasional – common – rains. But rain was good. Rain cleansed the earth and made the flowers grow and the dirt hard and wet... Besides, on the days when it had rained, they had stayed inside from morning until evening.

What a fantastic exploration of the brutal side of war and romance! Set during WWII, the reader needs to suspend some disbelief at the (somewhat) causal portrayal of homosexual relationships. But the look into Eggsy’s psych as a solider and the emotional repercussions of a relationship between two people who can say so little to each other. The letters between them are, in true epistolary form, romantic and beautiful.

Also, this story is so dynamic in that Eggsy’s character is ever changing and adapting (not always well) to new situations. He isn’t the same person when he meets Harry. And he certainly has warped after he returns from the war. (Daisy’s role at this point is so lovely as well).

I did find the introduction of the Kingsman aspect to be slightly strange given how emotionally driven the story had been up until that point. But I understand its importance in the plot.

Favorite Line: “I have been thinking about the things that we have done together. The good and the bad. Mostly the good. And there has been a lot of good, dearest. Far more than the bad, even with these years apart.

I do not know what will happen in the future, if we will make it or if something will irreparably part us. I don’t think so though. Even if I am only allowed to see you once more in my life, I will consider us as being together until the end. If you think differently, then I will at least have all the memories of all that we have done together. Mostly the good.”

That Sets the Heart Beating Faster by Ellipsical

Harry Hart is thoroughly enjoying being dead, thank you.

Retirement, at the age of 56, is another matter.

That is, until Eggsy shows up.

This is a fantastic exportation of aging and reflection. Harry in this story is torn between his own expectations of himself (in the past and for the future) but is too caught up in this ideas to see what hes missing. And its Eggsy. Their interactions are natural and completely in character. I love their push and pull against each other’s wants and needs.

This story isn’t finished. However, it ended on a solid enough note that I was satisfied. The author said themselves that there was more to explore (and I agree). But overall, it attacked some large ideas in a heartfelt - and sexy! - in a spellbinding way.

Favorite Line: Harry feels suspended. Caught somewhere between the sky and the land; at sea.His gentleman spy suit that no longer fits like the second skin it once had, nor yet the man who will inhabit the house fully. He had hoped his belongings from Kensington would help. Now he is not so sure.

Dulce Domum (sweetly at home) by concernedlily

"We've had an agent under deep cover in South America, this last six months. We thought he might have been killed, earlier this week, but I've been told he's made contact."

At its most basic, I love this story for its portrayal of the Kingsman organization. Little things about how missions work, what the agents are expected to do, etc. On a more emotional level, I love the exploration of Harry and Eggsy’s relationship. And, the exploration of their roles as ‘public’ Kingsman figures (Author and Galahad) and ‘private’ individuals. (And how these expectations of different roles play out: sex is fine at headquarters but conversations are only at home.)

Favorite Line: Now, now is their real reunion, in a lift between the hangar and the plush clinic suite where Eggsy will spend the next day or two, and oh, it's lovely. Galahad and Arthur greeted each other with a firm handshake; Eggsy and Harry meet each other in a fierce embrace as soon as the doors are closed, overcome, hugging tightly as if they could fit one inside the other, breaking for only enough distance for their mouths to meet.

Bang to Rights by concernedlily

Constable Unwin never met a tailor before, but he knows this bloke who keeps turning up at his crime scenes ain't one.

A great deviation from the Kingsman timeline where Eggsy becomes a cop instead of an agent! This story is both sexy, emotional and of-so believable. I particularity like that both Eggsy and Harry here almost seem normal. There’s no soul mates or ridiculous circumstances to thrust them together; just two people coming together and falling over themselves to be with one another.

I also love Eggsy point of view (almost as the narrator) in this - complete with all his slang and casual manner of speaking. Very fun to read! Every line is a gem. I couldn’t pick a favorite.

the way you turn the world around by AnnaofAza

After dropping out of the Marines, Eggsy meets someone. He knows his mum and soon-to-be little sibling need him, that he needs to find a job, that he needs to dodge Dean's suspicions and blows, but for now, he's got Harry Hart.

If only that were enough.

This fic breaks my heart over and over. I desperately want to the see a second chapter but its so satisfying on its own as well. Eggsy is so real in this; all this passions and anger and crippled potential. And even through there is some drama (missed meet-ups, miscommunication) I never felt like the story was melodramatic. Eggsy’s relationship with Harry is just one spoke of his life in this story. We get to see his relationships with his mum and Daisy and Dean and how they all coincide and conflict.

Favorite Line: "I'm sorry," Eggsy says, holding it out. "But I can't keep it. I love it," he quickly adds, "but...it's too nice. Tell Harry..." What? What can he say? I love you, but I can’t do this. "Tell him I'm sorry. And good-bye."

The man's still staring at him, analyzing him underneath his glasses, then slowly reaches out. When his hands close around the bundle and takes it, Eggsy tries not to feel the pressure in his chest. He feels as if he's giving part of himself away as well as what he's got of Harry.

As Time Moves On by AnnaofAza and LiProuvaire

They stand across from each other, and Michelle looks at him, really looks at him since that horrible day. He’s older, greyer in the temples, with a starburst scar across the left side of his forehead. Dark circles are underneath his eyes, eyes with crow’s feet at the edges, and that tan, ratty cardigan bunches around his hips. What Eggsy sees in him—she doesn’t know.

Michelle and Harry haven't met since eighteen years ago, but after V-Day, they're forced to come together when the one that they love is hurt.

One of my favorite aspects of Kingsman fics are when the emotional conflicts and the plot conflicts (i.e. missions) flow together seamlessly. While the opening chapter for this fic is from Michelle’s point of view, it continues on to be more personal to Eggsy and Harry. Its a tight, detailed story with a good amount of emotional upset.

I personally would have preferred to hear more from Michelle as she is the opening. In the times that we do see her, her character is very human and all her actions seem to be on-character as she negotiates the relationship between her son and an older man. And her relationship with herself as she overcomes her guilt about V-Day and her strained relationship with Daisy (and the girl’s learning set-backs).

all the riches you’ve surveyed by futuredescending

Henry DeVere is everything Eggsy wants: a generous and sophisticated gentleman who actually seems to like Eggsy for himself.

But Eggsy isn't stupid. Men like Henry don’t look for anything more from people like him.

I fell back and forth between being overwhelmingly happy and filled with utter sadness in this fic. The reader can all but feel Eggsy’s love and heartbreak and pain like it was their own. And while their are hints of a ‘plot’ behind the scenes of Harry and Eggsy’s relationship, its fleshed out just enough to be believable but not enough to overwhelm the real star here: their interactions with each other.

I enjoy Eggsy’s character in this. He isn’t quite brave, but he isn’t a coward either. He’s spanning the bridge between wanting to survive in his harsh environment but trying to reach out to grasp at something better. And unfortunately, he often feels that its just not possible for him. His lifetime of disappointments are clear throughout.

Favorite line: Henry starts to lay his hand over Eggsy’s, and Eggsy recoils like he’s been burned, trying to shift as far from Henry as possible in the little room he’s got left on the sofa.

“Don’t you dare fucking touch me.”

“I’m so sorry, Eggsy.” Henry even sounds like he actually is, voice heavy with regret and helplessness, and when Eggsy dares to meet his eyes, sees so much sadness within them. Eggsy supposes he ought to feel better that Henry’s such a fucking consummate actor even now, but instead it just makes him feel worse.

All those looks that spanned from warm to heated, all those fond smiles. Those soft touches against his skin in barely noticeable but rapturous ways: the hand to his hip as Henry brushed past him, the palm to the back of his neck when they kissed, the thumb drawn down his cheek when Henry rocked slowly inside him.

Those unshakeable words telling Eggsy he was good, he was worthy, he was beautiful. None of those moments were real.

Collision Course by FlareWarrior

Eggsy texts the wrong number. He's never the same.

So much fun, plot and characterization rolled up into one wonderful fic! Its such a fun read. :)

Favorite line: ‘Who says I didn’t mean to text you, gorgeous?’

Nothing. He frowned. May as well go back to the classics.

‘What are you wearing?’

Mech-Head by mitslits

The Unified Neurological Wire Integration Network (UNWIN, for short, but you can call it Eggsy) is a state-of-the-art android equipped with the latest in artificial intelligence. And Harry Hart is stuck being its babysitter.

Brutal. That’s the first word that comes to mind with this fic. We follow Harry on an emotional journey of friendship (and even love) only to have our souls crushed in reality. The humanity is overwhelming. Eggsy’s transformation is both beautiful and heart-wrenching to watch.

Favorite Line: He stops in front of Eggsy, gaze locking onto his and wonders how he ever thought those eyes could be soulless. His hand reaches up to cup Eggsy’s cheek, thumb brushing over his cheekbone lightly.

Eggsy leans into his touch, eyes looking back into his searchingly. His hand comes up to curl around Harry’s tie as the man hadn’t bothered to change into anything before passing out on the sofa. “Kiss me, Harry,” he breathes.

How Eggsy Met Harry, As Told Through A Series of Soul Marks by thayde

Eggsy stares at the Mark on his chest sometimes, and wonders if his soulmate would ever settle for street trash like him.

This story starts off slowly. At first I was hesitant because I like instant gratification. But its gets there - oh does it deliver. And while the premises itself is perhaps a little cliche, never does it feel like the soul marks are running the story. This is fully character driven with all the major players gunning for the best possible outcome for themselves.

Unfortunately, this story is unfinished. I can’t even begin to imagine what direction it might have taken.

The Black Prince by ColinFilth

"Harry Hart (1960-) is one of this century's most renowned painters. Hart is known by the country's elite and the public for his Royal portraits, as well as views and landscapes of London wherein his training in Florence and Camberwell shines through. Though his portraits have inspired comparison to the work of Sargent or Boldini, his landscapes are reminiscent of Martin or Pether. In this twenty-first century, Hart's work has the old-fashioned, well-loved, academic quality that lines museums even nowadays[...]"

Harry Hart is fifty-six, and bored.

And then a boy smashes into his life like the first smear of paint on a blank canvas.

Its pieces of literature like this that cement the fanfiction genre as being works of art all on their own. Not even considering the fluid plot, beautiful dialogue and references an underlying issues relating to infatuation and aging; it spins a romance. Harry and Eggsy seem to circle each other, never on the same page, until they can no longer see the end to their spiral. And is it even an emotional and overwhelming end. This is another that left me sobbing.

As of now, the story is incomplete but seems to be a WIP.

As Men to Fear the Dark by proxydialogue

After V-day, the world is a jigsaw in a tumble dryer. Nations across the world have collapsed. Kingsman itself is in shambles. Eggsy, Merlin, and Roxy are working desperately to piece everything back together, while in the shadows, mad and malicious men find footholds in the rubble, using the chaos to their advantage.

Harry Hart's name appears in the paper for the second time. And Eggsy, trying hard to fill the shoes of his mentor, is finding it impossible to let go of Harry's memory.

He feels haunted. Quite literally.

Spoiler Alert: Harry is still alive. But past that... in most stories where ‘Eggsy is the last to know,’ they ignore the issue and then eventually have some big blow up fight about it. In this story, Eggsy’s heartbreak is so real (and yet hidden) and his reaction to Harry being alive is more what I would feel if my SO came back from the dead.

The emotional plot is helped on my a classic mission. This one creepy and violent. A great read for those interested in the supernatural. And while it seems, in the beginning, at bit over the top, I enjoyed the originality and detail. Its seems like an appropriate religious upheaval in the wake of a global crisis.

Favorite Line: He feels the ghostly brushes of Harry’s hands on his face. Harry’s hands on his back when he can’t take it anymore and breaks down into tears. Harry’s hands lifting him back up on his feet, Harry’s voice at his shoulder reminding Eggsy that there’s still work to be done.

Patience and Sheer Determination by blacktofade

Harry goes undercover to infiltrate the circle of a corrupt overlord and is given Eggsy, a young prostitute, as a token of goodwill. Harry has to live with Eggsy and keep him safe, while maintaining his cover.

A classic prompt for Kingsman: Eggsy as a former/current rent boy. Love these. Love how brutal Harry is while he’s in character. Love how slowly everything takes to fall into place. Love Eggsy stubborn resolve and strength of character.

Favorite Line: Eggsy doesn’t even falter as he says, “Easier like this, isn’t it?”

“Easier?” Harry questions, because he’s not sure easier is what he’d call it.

“For you to fuck me.”

Harry feels as though he’s missed the last step of the staircase as his stomach drops.

your world tomorrow by DivineProjectZero

This is turning into one hell of a fairytale.

(or, the one in which Eggsy never dreamed of the Cinderella life and ends up living it anyway.)

This is a lovely fairy tale - short and sweet and satisfying. I loved the running homages to Disney princesses throughout.

Favorite Line: That’s how Eggsy knows Harry is lying when he says, “Of course.”

He wants to say something, wants to grab Harry by the shoulders and say you’re a terrible liar, I bet Pinocchio would be a better liar than you. And you call yourself a spy. He wants to tell Harry that he’s holding him to his word. He wants to kiss Harry and keep him, even if only for a night.

Instead, Eggsy wordlessly nods and shuts the cab door. He steps away, standing on the front steps of HQ while the cab drives away. A modern chariot taking a monarch in the making.

Kingmaker by manic_intent

“Eggsy, I really don’t think-“ Merlin began, and stopped, because at that very moment, Eggsy walked right into a lamp post.

Across the street, at a sidewalk corner cafe, reading a paper, sandwich part-eaten on a plate, sleek, long legs crossed neatly under the table, was Harry Hart.

Harry is brilliantly written in fic. While it runs on the classic ‘amnesia’ trope, nothing about the story is cliche of tired. We get to see Harry as someone who is an odd mix of the man he once was and the man he thinks he is. And his character arch ends is such a satisfying way when he discovers who he really is without the help of his memories.

And while the Hartwin aspect of this piece is very apparent in the first chapters, the overall story is one for Harry. But good lord did I love Harry’s internal commentary of Eggsy before they are more truthful with each other. All those ‘darlings’ and ‘young thing’ and ‘bright man’ gave me such happiness!

I do think the ‘plot’ aspects of the story could have been glossed over a bit more. Sometimes I lost the emotional aspect of the story within the action scenes. But I understand its necessity (especially in the scene where Harry re-discovers himself).

Favorite Line: Eggsy was dressed down today, in a chestnut brown, brushed wool checked blazer, worn over pressed charcoal flannel trousers, no tie, and a crisp, pale pink shirt, unbuttoned to show off the elegant line of his throat. Harry wondered if it was Emrys who dressed Eggsy up, who had fitted out this pretty young thing like a young dandy, and again, felt a touch envious.

#hartwin #fanfiction recommendations #kingsman #fanfiction

71 notes · View notes

elizabethrobertajones · 7 years ago

Note

It is I, plot twisty. I was wondering if you could link me to some stuff you have written about Castiel's trench coat (bc I'm 99% sure you have) I'm just so excited because I love the new one so much. Also, I happen to be the person asking about the Winchesters and plaid shirts in season 12. I loved the way you analyzed the clothes of the characters and your attention to detail, because that stuff mostly remains unseen by my humble eyes. (Also I think you have a tag for the clothes stuff?!?)

Aaah hi! Were you why I wrote a 1000 mile long post with a screen cap of every shirt Mary wore in season 12? You are most welcome back in my inbox, that was a ton of fun :D

I think my trenchcoat tag (the serious one not the “sam shoe saga” where all the fashion nonsense goes) has largely got other people’s meta in it because so much awesome stuff has been written before I ever got there so I mostly just summarise what everyone else has said when asked :P It’s like the Car Is Dean’s Soul thing: I’m 100% behind it but other people are way more into it so… :P I mean I will write the trenchcoat stuff and sob about it but @floatingaboveclouds really picked it up a while back (and sadly she’s been not around much lately) and at the moment @gneisscastiel is sobbing about it all the time.

Aah my “trenchcoat meta” tag isn’t even on my tag list… See, there’s always something :P

http://floatingaboveclouds.tumblr.com/post/100097338173/cas-trench-coat-meta

This is what I always think of as the Definitive Trenchcoat Meta just because I read it first, ages ago, and it really got me into it :P

https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/133234217428/excuse-me-while-i-need-a-moment

Some thoughts about VERY early Cas and coat stuff.

https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/96865417548/interruptingpanda-savingsammyhuntingdestiel

Me being sad about it in 7x17

https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/147044421392/dustydreamsanddirtyscars-8x07-a-little-slice

A season 8/9x01 look at it (I mean… written at LEAST after season 10 if I remember but from the POV of 8x07 about the early Carver era trenchcoat stuff we usually skip before going right to the new trenchcoat and all the nonsense they use it for :P)

https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/105554354818/today-is-one-of-those-days-i-find-myself-having-a

Oh and more on the original coat and Cas’s identity (circa 9x23 at least)

https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/117930210038/jimmys-clothing-meta-10x20-edition

Some overview on Cas up to 9x09 and Jimmy in general

https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/149775846930/castiel-knight-of-hell-i-know-we-all-miss

This is a like 1 line meta on the new coat in 9x10

https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/161446778708/littlehollyleaf-neven-ebrez-cas-jacket-is

Here’s a season 9 original - I think the first post really yelling about the discovery of the plaid under the collar!

https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/164795829481/mittensmorgul-littlehollyleaf-drsilverfish

This is a great one from 9x18 when it aired that I stumbled on recently but remember reading at the time so it was one of my Formative Meta Experiences (I just didn’t reblog a whole lot until the season 9-10 hiatus really started so all this great stuff is kind of lost to time to me unless I’m blog snooping and stumble on it >.> Thankfully I blog snoop a lot.)

I’m so frustrated because I can’t find my reblog (if I ever did) of the deleted scene gifs of Cas sewing the trenchcoat with commentary about him doing Human Things™… >.> My blog from before like… late season 10/the hiatus after… is really badly tagged so the good stuff is all a mystery :P

https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/130068247568/littlehollyleaf-4persephone-i-actually-find

(I found another!)

https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/97817693623/a-deep-shade-of-blue-is-always-there

Here’s a season 9-10 hiatus post from me where I talk about how the combination of coat and song got me to ship Destiel textually because it was all so intrinsically linked and the whole deeper symbolism of what the coat means to Cas and how the lyrics in that song used it.

https://justanotheridijiton.tumblr.com/post/98218136134

And the no need for words version… >.>

https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/163908715733/gneisscastiel-replied-to-your-post

This one I wrote myself recently about Metatron in 9x22 trying on the coat and what I thought it meant in this context (as you can see I am still basically in a season 9 mindset about it :P)

https://justanotheridijiton.tumblr.com/post/142607939029/the-plaid-trenchie

Mel has all the gratuitous plaid shots…

https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/101030511793/deathbyspookyopen-hallowedbecastiel-10x02

https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/100110462763/can-we-talk-about-how-as-soon-as-cas-went-through

This from 10x02 but the first doesn’t take into account that in the shot of Hannah putting the coat over Cas WE can see the plaid, I guess just from her perspective she misses it or doesn’t understand the symbolism (especially not that everyone leaped on the meta idea of “being draped in the flag of heaven” and what her actions were doing :P) - Floatingaboveclouds’s original Trenchcoat Meta is circa this episode and explains it best and it’s sort of the words in the back of my head about that scene all the time now.

https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/147389591616/cas-crowley-trench-coats-and-parallels

Something from 10x14 which makes perfect sense because the new trenchcoat was from 9x10 but I just skim read the post and I’m not 100% sure they really got into it like I would have…

https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/116643283603/cas-trench-coat-meta-10x18-edition

For 10x18 and Cas taking off his coat there :D

https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/131414819958/cas-trench-coat-meta-11x02-edition

https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/131982763978/cas-clothing-meta-11x03-edition-part-1

https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/131983260278/cas-clothing-meta-11x03-edition-part-2

Some early season 11 meta!

https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/138413634723/heey-i-rewatched-11x06-and-i-think-cas-is

Some thoughts about Cas in the start of season 11 and parallels to Casifer and how he was wearing Cas’s clothes…

https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/139716966318/why-is-casifer-shown-wearing-the-coat-in-the-next

11x15 and some more thoughts on Casifer

https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/158190035758/do-you-think-cas-would-change-into-another-outfit

This is from earlier this hiatus giving an overview but I think I should add now with hindsight, talking about a full wardrobe upheaval, because there’s obviously different meaning in Cas going right back to something nearly identical to his original get up, and I’d rather muse on what that means when I know HOW he ends up with his new costume for season 13, so that’s a meta I’ll only write after 13x06. No leather jacket yet. >.>

Here’s some interesting takes on it with a different perspective:

https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/163901981347/a-study-in-trench-coat

https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/163903036052/heya-hope-youre-having-a-good-day-onwards-with

https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/163786906919/gneisscastiel-as-season-13-approaches-i-have

All of this is informing my thoughts right now on it and I know there’s a bunch of meta I missed… I mean just scrolling these posts I’m sure there’s gaps in trenchcoat-related events that I or others have talked about and uuugh even when I try and collect all the meta I’ve tagged badly in the past or was too shy when I was new to fandom and missed a whole bunch of the most important posts at the end of season 9 which drastically shaped how I read the show… I’m always happy to talk MORE about it :P

I guess adding this all up the one thing I can say about the new trenchcoat for season 13 is that is it a trenchcoat and that means it carries all this baggage, just as the 2nd one carried the baggage of the first, but it’s in a different form. If Cas picked it for himself, it will be like 9x10 and 8x07, where he chooses to go back to the original look. If it’s picked for him it will be a different story - more like 7x17 or 9x18 or 11x06 - times when he put the coat on hesitantly or was given a strong push to go for a choice that wasn’t particularly a choice, or because someone else was shaping his image for him.

10x01-3 especially were LADEN with Cas identity stuff and included a lot of messing around with the trenchcoat, and it was also the first part of the show I enjoyed in fandom meta-ing with everyone else, so I have ideas about it very planted in my head :P I think I will always associate it with his angelic identity as the “flag of heaven” because of the 9x18/9x22/9x23 synergy about Cas, Metatron, and all the stuff going on between them. I think that whole chunk of the show with 9x14 as an outlier on one end and 10x18 on the other but mostly the end of season 9 and start of season 10 separated Cas out to tell a very specific story about who he was and what he wanted, and the trenchcoat played a huge part in that symbolism. And that starts with him picking a new one in 9x10 when re-asserting his angel identity (after joining in as a hunter in 9x09 in the same get up including the season 10-12 tie in an early appearance) and that act in itself was a sort of “be useful to the Winchesters or die human” scenario, and so I think like Dean on the phone in 9x09, I am very suspicious about Cas’s choice actually saying anything about what he WANTS when it comes to his identity, and the main block of episodes about this unpack it a lot more…

If Cas comes back in a new trenchcoat which is like the original flavour one, it might be like what it was used for in 8x07 - a “everything is okay” red flag that Cas put himself back together for appearances’ sake but of course he was being controlled by Naomi and it was the first scene Dean voices his immediate suspicions Cas did not come back naturally and there was something fishy about it - which of course he carries on worrying about until the Crypt Scene when it all becomes clear, and then Cas only stays in that outfit a handful more episodes until he becomes human and has to pick drinking water over maintaining the image and wearing his original battle armour.

There’s also the fact the trenchcoat IS the original battle armour to him and like in 9x18 or 11x06 the new one at very least feels like armour and we can see him using it as that emotionally… It’s not a bad thing for him to have a new old trenchcoat style to mimic how he used to be if it’s for his own strength and comfort… I just think that overall he’s headed in a different way than staying in the trenchcoat forever and a 3rd variation is going to be fascinating. I hope there’ll be a lot to comment on, like with the 2nd one when it was new there was like 2 seasons of heavy exploration of it as a meta subject before they sort of chilled out again and it became a more incidental feature. Or the times Cas had the original restored to him or like how it looked in Purgatory (see! even more incidents I couldn’t quickly find a post on :P)

And of course there’s the mystery about what Cas might wear while he’s dead, why he’s in a $2600 suit in the first scene of 13x06, and so on and so on. Season 13 has SO many more ways to fuck with us before we get to the new coat :P

#Asks #meta masterposts #trenchcoat meta #my stuff #caaas #cas analysis #wowzer i did not mean to go on as long as this #I am very passionate okay :P

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