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#sometimes I see shit in this fandom that enraged me so bad
kierancaz · 2 years
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After having a disastrous experience searching for dadbastian content on my own just now,
Is there anyone out there that has some good fics? Just like wholesome Ciel and Seb acting like his dad. Or some hurt comfort fics. A long fic perhaps that it nothing weird and just Seb being fatherly to Ciel without anything creepy.
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aromantic-enjolras · 3 months
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20 questions for 20 writers!
Thank you @pumpkinspice-prouvaire for the tag! Let me see what I can do with this...
1. How many works do you have on AO3?
Holy fu- Fourty-four??? When did that happen????
2. What’s your total AO3 word count?
122,025. One third of yours, pumpkin!
3. What fandoms do you write for?
Currently Les Mis and Jesus Christ Superstar. I used to write for Cats a few years ago, and I wrote Sherlock and Harry Potter once upon a time. I also wrote Stranger Things once, but that was a gift for @p-trichor and I don't think I will again (writing about characters from a show you've never watched is stressful!)
4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?
Rumour Has It (Les Mis, ExR Prof AU). Good Enough To Eat (Stranger Things, vampire Steddie). Merlin (TV) according to Ao3 (Merlin, not technically a fic). Ne m'aime pas (Les Mis, aro!Enjolras). Sleepy Love (Harry Potter, Wolfstar). my beloathed, so happy it's almost out of the top 5
5. Do you respond to comments?
I try to!! I love getting comments, so I do like getting back to people. Though sometimes someone leaves a comment so elaborate and so kind I freeze at how to make a good enough response and I never do. So... @buffintruder I promise I cherish every single one of your comments please don't be hurt if I don't answer!!!
6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?
Uuuuuh.... I guess depends on your definition. If we're going for implications, it would be "A Kiss With a Betrayal (Is Better Than None)". Nothing that bad happens, but it's the setup of Judas' betrayal of Jesus, and shit gets daaark after that. If you go with actual sad ending, "I Wanna Ruin Our Friendship" would have to take it. Enjolras cries so much in that one.
7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?
"Curiosity Trapped the Cat", probably. It's just so cute!
8. Do you get hate on fics?
Not anymore, thankfully! When I was a fandom youngster I got a very angry comment on a Jily (Harry Potter) fic from someone who was enraged Lily didn't end up with Snape, and someone who ripped me a new one for using a word that turned out to be perfectly neutral in my native language and a slur in English.
9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?
I do! Not often, but I have a PWP on Ao3, actually. For some reason I only do it as a collaborative effort, though: the Courfjolras PWP on Ao3 is a joint fic with @pumpkinspice-prouvaire and I have two Courfjoltaire WIPs with @shamedumpster (called "In the Middle (While you two get along)" and "Skip the awkward (come undone)" ^^).
10. Do you write crossovers?
Same as pumpkin here. I don't do crossovers, but I do love myself a good AU!
11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?
Not that I know of!
12. Have you ever had a fic translated?
Does it count if I was the one doing it? My first fic, the Jily one I was saying, I wrote in my native language and then translated to English. The two versions are on ff.net!
13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?
Yep! Apart from the aforementioned Courfjolras PWP, I wrote a cute fluffy ExR with @pumpkinspice-prouvaire for the Ace!Enjolras series. Also depending on how you see it the Jesus Christ Superstar is a joint effort with @shamedumpster, even if we are writing separately each bit.
14. What’s your all-time favorite ship?
Why don't you ask me to choose a favourite child? Might be easier!
15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?
A rockstar AU where Courf is an aromantic Bowie stand-in and Marius is his main guitarist and fuckbuddy who gets too invested. I love it, but it's a longfic and I'm not good at sticking to those. (And also it's a Sad Ending rarepair fic. Who is going to read it?)
16. What are your writing strengths?
I think I'm good at keeping people in their POVs and not slipping into omniscient narrators. Descriptions, too.
17. What are your writing weaknesses?
I get stuck on logistics. Sometimes you just have to handwave shit, you know? People don't need to know when they put the cup down or the position of every guard.
18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?
As someone who is always reading in a language that isn't mine, if I can read an entire fic in English, you can read two sentences in another language and their translation if it works for the character. My caveat to that is in Les Mis fics: do not suddenly have characters say five words in French if they're already all French. It just breaks the illusion that they were speaking French the whole time.
19. First fandom you wrote for?
And posted? Harry Potter. In general? Percival Christopher Wren's "Beau Geste". I hated the ending so much I wrote an entire Fix-It ending.
20. Favorite fic you’ve written?
"Still Crazy After All These Years", a Courferre second chance romance fic I wrote last year. It's a little more involved than I usually do, with a non-linear narrative and a non-linear writing process, and I think it turned out really well. I feel like the nuance of the situation was pretty well done, too.
Tagging @buffintruder, @quillsand, @shamedumpster and @enjolraspermettendo!
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forcebookish · 1 year
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I saw someone say that “Boston has done nothing wrong!”
And I’m like. He sexually harassed/assaulted Top MULTIPLE times??? It could not be more black and white. Top said. I do not want to have sex with you. I am not interested. LIKE YOU CANT GET CLEARER THAN THAT.
But Boston continued. Even though he KNEW Top was dating someone else and not interested in him. Which ended in him coercing Top, under false pretenses, to have sex with him. Boston knew he was lying about Ray and Mew sleeping together. There’s no way he didn’t know Mew has never been into Ray.
Oh does it not count because you don’t find Top likable? Sorry. I wasn’t aware that assault doesn’t count if the person isn’t nice enough.
And that’s not even getting into how he knowingly played with Nick’s feelings and led him on even though he had no intention of seriously dating him. Like that is text in the show. Boston says. Maybe in the future we’ll date. Even though, at that point he doesn’t intend to date Nick. He just likes hooking up with him.
Like. None of this makes the terrible things that have happened to Boston okay. But like. Those terrible things also don’t excuse what he has done. Like. It’s unacceptable that he was recorded without his consent while having sex. And then it was shown to so many people. That’s horrific. And that is a crime. But it doesn’t mean that anything he’s done before or after is absolved.
Like it absolutely enrages me that even if you think the car sex was completely consensual. Boston still groped and harassed Top multiple times. Like. That is sexual assault. That is sexual harassment.
Boston is certainly and interesting character. And Neo is really showing his range as an actor in making me sometimes feel sorry for a character who has done horrible things. Like he’s shown that Boston has many layers.
But he still hasn’t even had to apologize for what he did to Top. And the fact that I see people act like Boston is somehow completely innocent in all this makes my blood boil. I’m sorry for ranting but my god.
don't apologize, you're completely right, anon! the other day i got in an argument with someone who kept bringing up stuff that they just... disliked about top? and when i told them that was all irrelevant, that all that matters is that boston was told to stop and didn't, they called me a jerk!!! it's fucking unreal the lengths this fandom will go to justify sexual assault.
this is kind of the thing with this fandom, they don't really understand what it means to be "morally gray" or even morality in general. they think that what is "immoral" about boston is his promiscuity (something that, if you don't subscribe to an abrahamic religion/puritanical society, is in fact morally neutral - if we go by the "sex is immoral" doctrine taught in those contexts then gay sex is never moral - which, you know, based on how homophobic BL fandom can be, AND PARTICULARLY THIS FANDOM I SEE YOU TIKTOKERS ACCUSING TOPCHEUM OF FUCKING I SEE YOU, it wouldn't surprise me if that's a part of it), when it's the ASSAULT, it's the NOT TAKING NO FOR AN ANSWER.
boston is a bad person, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have, like you said, layers. not everything about someone has to be bad for them to be a bad person - and you can still feel sorry for them when undeserved shit happens to them. but this fandom can't seem to wrap their heads around that. for some reason, despite this show being "messy," when someone actually messes up they're evil and when someone does something deliberately hurtful to another human being it's either ERASED FROM THEIR MEMORIES or justified in a way that makes them completely blameless or even something good (and not story-good like how i feel about sand LOSING HIS SHIT and destroying his phone to steal the audio and fuck with ray's head/ruin top's life; i mean, people thinking that ray exposed top AT MEW'S BIRTHDAY PARTY out of the goodness of his heart lmao).
it's sooooooo frustrating, anon >:(
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naughtyneganjdm · 3 years
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Trapped
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Summary: After Negan and Maggie become trapped in a home from The Reapers' attack on the group, they are forced to be together to talk about the tension going on between them.
Characters: Negan & Maggie
AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33529606
Warnings: Swearing, smut, mild dubious consent, rough sex, hate sex, etc.
Notes: This was a request. At first, I thought it was a joke, but when the person wrote me very kindly to ask me for this, I agreed. I know Negan and Maggie as a couple would enrage a big part of the fandom. If that's you, just don't read the story. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, but I hope the person who asked me for it enjoys it. Warning, this does have some spoilers from the end of episode 2, in case you haven't seen the episode yet.
“Come on,” Negan called out, waving his hand on when he made it to the broken-down home that he had found with Maggie while running away from the attack that The Reapers brought down on their group.
Clinging desperately to the door at his side, Negan waited for Maggie to catch up and the moment she made it into the home, he slammed the door shut behind her. Immediately locking up the door, he reached for the nearest china cabinet that was right beside the door to block off the doorway. Testing the weight of the cabinet, Negan made sure it would definitely be hard for someone to open the door. There was no way someone could open that door without struggling to do so.
The windows were already boarded up and Negan moved over toward one of them to look through the gaps that were there to see if they had been followed. Thank God, it seemed like they had snuck away without being spotted. Then again, these people were good. They could be out there and they would have never even known it until one of them got hit again. Fuck. How did he get stuck in a situation like this? He knew that he should have said no when they asked him to come on this trip. For some reason, he just felt forced into trying to continue to prove his worth in the community. Then again, if he would have said no to begin with, he was certain they would have forced him anyways. There was no way that Maggie would have let him stay back in Alexandria. There was a reason he was here and he knew that by now.
After standing there for a few minutes to make sure there was no movement in the distance, it seemed like they were safe and Negan took a moment to finally catch his breath. “I think we are safe. For now.”
When he turned on his heel, he let out a grunt when he saw that Maggie had her gun raised once more at him. It was pointed directly at his face and Negan held his hands up in the air defensively. “What now?”
“You made me leave them,” Maggie scowled, her face scrunched up in rage making Negan theatrically bob his head before lowering his hands at his sides. An irritated smirk pressed in over his exhausted features and he shrugged his shoulders. Here they were again. He did something right and that led him to having a gun pointed at his face. This seemed like it was going to be a never-ending cycle between them. “I could have saved Agatha. We could have helped her.”
“If you didn’t leave and I didn’t save you, you would be walker food right now too,” Negan snapped, his eyes narrowing while he stared out at Maggie. There was tension in the air. It wasn’t the first time she had that gun pointed at him today and he knew it wouldn’t be the last. “Instead of letting you die, I saved you. Your friends…all of em’, they are dead. There was nothing you could do to save them. You would have lost your life if you would have tried.”
“Those people were like my family. It should have been you out there instead of them!” she declared making Negan mutter something under his breath and roll his eyes when she said that. Somehow, he managed to save her life and he was still the bad guy. If he did something wrong, he was the bad guy. If he did something right, he was still the bad guy. There was no escaping this tiresome cycle. “They were some of the best fighters I knew.”
“Well clearly it doesn’t matter how good of a fighter you are when it comes to these people. You are dealing with master tacticians here Maggie. If you would have stayed and I didn’t do what I did, we wouldn’t be having this little stand off right now. You would be dead if I didn’t do what I did,” Negan pointed out, wiggling his fingers between the two of them, his eyes big with annoyance. “I made sure that your little boy just might have a chance that his mother might return to him after all of this.”
There was a deafening silence that fell over the both of them and Maggie’s eyes narrowed. A moment later her gun lowered. At this point, he was just getting sick of constantly being threatened with death even when he was doing something morally right. Negan wobbled over to the stairs to see that the upstairs area was blocked off. Checking the rest of the house, Negan confirmed that they would be safe in the small living room that they were locked up in. Everything else in the house appeared to be locked up very well.
A pained wince fell from his throat when an ache flooded down his right leg. Looking down toward his leg that had gotten injured in the attack, Negan could see the blood that was seeping through his pants. After the injury, he had wrapped the bandana around his leg to stop the bleeding, but who knew if it was actually fucking working. It burned like hell.
“This is your moment to relax. Gather yourself. In case they find us again. ‘Cause we are either going to have to run like hell or fight back,” Negan instructed, nodding over toward one of the chairs that was in the corner of the room. Instead of listening to him, she simply glared at him and Negan threw his hands up in the air. If she wasn’t going to take the time to do it, he was. “Or just ignore me. It’s not like I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about or anything.”
Moving over toward the corner of the living room, he dropped down in the corner to rest himself. Clutching tightly to the tire iron in his hands, Negan surveyed the dark room around them. The lights from the cracks in the boarded-up windows is what filled the house with light and he grumbled to himself. The house looked like it had seen better days. The green walls had dirt caked on them and there was a smell of mildew that lingered in the air. A floral chair was sitting upright in the corner and Negan found himself surprised that even though this place was a mess, that it still looked somewhat livable. Setting the tire iron aside, Negan tried to give himself a moment to let the tension from his body leave him. If he continued to be anxious, he knew it would make him fuck up. In order to get through this alive, he knew that his mind needed to be clear.
Loud, uneven breaths fell from Negan’s throat. Dropping his head back against the wall, Negan bit down firmly on his bottom lip and groaned when he felt the pain radiating from his leg. Clearing his mind and thinking of a plan was hard to do with the immense ache. Lazily, his eyes opened and he could see that Maggie was looking him over from where she was standing by the window. Her eyes locked onto his leg and the expression over her face was cold.
“I hope it hurts,” Maggie slurred after finally moving over toward one of the seats at the other end of the room and it made Negan crack a smile after she said that. Nodding, he looked down toward his leg and let out a grumble.
“It does. You’re in luck,” Negan sneered back knowing that things had been tense since the subway station between the two of them. Well, hell…they were always tense. Just not trying to save Maggie when she slipped undoubtedly made everything worse. It felt like only a minute had passed before Maggie was getting up from where she was seated to pace through the living room. She was looking from window to window as if trying to come up with a plan. “You’re going to wear a hole in the damn floor with the pacing if you keep that shit up.”
“Do you ever shut up?” she jeered and it made Negan snicker. Part of him wanted to be a smart ass and give her the answer he often would others, but instead he stayed quiet. “I’m trying to think of a way to go back. Maybe one of them…”
“None of them made it out Maggie. They are gone. You saw it. I saw it. Pretending that you can somehow save them is only going to get you killed. We need to move forward,” Negan instructed, swallowing down hard. Visibly she hated the answer, but so did he. The more numbers they had, the better chance they had against The Reapers. It was just the two of them and they had no chance of making this work. “Before we keeping moving, we first need to take a few minutes to gather our strength. If we run on empty, we’re just going to be easy targets for these people. You saw how easily they killed everyone. We have no chance just the two of us.”
Instead of listening to him, she continued to stare outside the cracks in the window. With a frustrated grunt, Negan reached to pinch at the bridge of his nose and shook his head, “You know, just because you hate me doesn’t mean you have to be stupid. Sometimes I know what the hell I’m doing and saying. I could be helping you here.”
“You don’t care about helping,” she yelled at him from where she was standing by the windows and Negan dramatically threw his hands up in the air before rolling his eyes. “I don’t want to hear your bullshit.”
“You’re right. I don’t give a shit. If I didn’t give a shit, I would have left you to die! I didn’t!” Negan maintained, his eyes getting dark with anger when he rose his voice back at her. “I am so sick of you people telling me how I feel and what I’m doing when my actions are going against what you are actually saying. You’re right, I left you there at the subway train, but let’s be honest you would have pushed me off the fucking thing if roles were reversed and you fucking know it.”
There was a silence and her face twisted with an emotion he couldn’t quite read. Lifting his finger, he spun it in the air and pointed at her, “Exactly! You would have and you know it! But I just saved you a few minutes ago. I could have just left you to die and then I would have been fine. You would have been out of my life and I would have been so much safer. Yet here we are after I just saved your ass!”
Maggie’s face twitched in irritation after he said that and a defeated breath fell from her lungs. She moved over to the opposite side of the living room and dropped down in the corner facing straight at him. Her bright eyes glared out at him and pierced through him making an uncomfortable sigh escape his throat.
“Listen,” Negan panted, still trying to catch his breath. His heart was hammering inside of his chest and he reached up to wipe at his face with the back of his hand. “I’m sorry that your friends died out there. I know that…”
“Don’t,” she held her hand up in the air to cut him off, to keep him from saying anything else. “You’re not someone who is sorry. You may have saved my ass. Okay. But you’re not someone that is sorry. If you were sorry, you would have already apologized a long time ago. You’re a cold, dark piece of shit. Where your heart should be is a blackhole of emptiness. So don’t sell me that you are sorry.”
“Are you talking about Glenn?” Negan inquired, his thick eyebrows arching up when her head tilted to the side. Yeah, he fucked up knowing that she hated even the sound of Glenn’s name falling from his lips. “What would apologizing for what I did to Glenn do for you?”
“Shut up,” she demanded and Negan shook his head, his loud breathing filling the air around them. “Don’t say his name.”
“Are you telling me that saying I’m sorry for what I did to Glenn would make you feel better?” Negan pushed the subject harder and his voice filled with just a little bit more venom. Her body locked up upon hearing his words. Shaking his head, he bit at his bottom lip and threw his hands up again. “Me apologizing would do absolutely nothing for you Maggie! It won’t bring Glenn back. It won’t make up for the pain and the agony I caused you. It won’t bring your little boy’s father back…”
Almost immediately Maggie stood up from the ground and stomped over toward the corner where Negan was to whip the gun against the side of Negan’s face again. This time it connected hard enough for him to get a bloody nose. The taste of his blood over his lips was enough for him to prove that. Instead of moving, Negan watched as Maggie brough the gun up to point at him again.  
“I don’t know what you want me to say Maggie. Do I regret what I did? Every fucking day of my life. I didn’t know you were pregnant, but at the time I didn’t give a shit. I saw a group that killed my people and I was out to get revenge. I thought back then the man I became was the man I was supposed to be. I was wrong. I didn’t think about the awful, horrible things I was doing, but me apologizing is not going to make up for the things that I did,” Negan insisted with a sadness in his tone, his hazel eyes almost tearing over as he spoke. “I still did those things. Yeah, I’m the not man I used to be anymore. I hate what I did to people. I hate the man I became. I hate the person that I was. I wish I could go back, but I can’t. But what good would apologizing do? I can’t change what happened. I took the person you loved away from you. I can’t make up for that. I never will, no matter how hard I tried.”
There was rage in the way that Maggie was breathing, her finger was over the trigger and Negan’s bottom lip was trembling while he stared up at her, “So am I sorry Maggie? Yeah. I’m sorry. But does it change the way you feel about things?”
Maggie’s whole body shook while she kept the gun raised up and when she lowered the gun to look away from Negan, he cleared his throat. Pushing the blood away from his nose, Negan knew that it hurt like hell, but there were other things on his mind. Inside of his chest, he could feel his heart pounding away, but he knew that he needed to get it off his chest, “If you find peace in killing me, then do it Maggie. Do it now. Get it over with. I’m accepting of it. This cat and mouse game of constantly threatening me is helping neither of us. I’m trying to be a better man and if the threat of death is over my head all the time, then what’s the fucking point? I know you hate me. If killing me…”  
“Shut up,” she lowered down on her knees and he heard her shuddering breaths filling the air. Uncertainty filled his body at how to handle this whole situation. Getting up from the corner of the room, he moved across the room and knelt in behind her. Placing his hand over her shoulder, Negan for some unknown reason even to himself was attempting to comfort her. “Don’t…”
“Listen, I know you’ve lost a lot,” Negan began and he felt the power of her turning toward him knocking him over onto the floor.
Scrambling backwards toward the corner of the living room where he was originally, Negan knew that he wanted to let her have her space. God, that was a stupid idea. The stare she was giving him made him cuss to himself when she took her time walking over toward where he was seated. Looking up at her with his big eyes, a grunt escaped his lips when she smacked him firmly across the side of the face.
“Do you ever shut up?” Maggie repeated an earlier question, hitting at Negan’s face over and over again. Lifting his hands up, Negan tried to block his face, but her hits lowered to his chest and instead of fighting those, he let her do it. The face he wanted to keep safe so he could still think with his head when the time came, but if beating on him helped her release whatever was going on…he could handle a few bruises. “Do something!”
“No,” Negan shook his head with a grimace when she hit him determinedly in the center of the chest. There was confusion that flooded her face. A loud grunt fell from Negan’s throat when she reached out to slam her hand into the center of Negan’s throat making his head slam back against the wall. A pained sound fell from his throat that was replaced with shock when he felt her lips over his. The kiss was rough, but Negan didn’t react to it because he didn’t know what was happening. Frozen, Negan was utterly confused with her actions while she kissed at his lips with quite some strength.
When Maggie pulled away, Negan’s eyes narrowed out at her and he cleared his throat uneasily. Staring in Maggie’s vibrant green eyes, Negan knew that she was still furious with him. So, what the hell was happening here? Did he just picture that whole fucked up scenario in his mind? “What’s going on here?”
“Just, shut up Negan,” she demanded, her hand still sturdily placed over the center of his throat and Negan hummed when her mouth covered his again.
Part of him was fucking terrified still. How couldn’t he be? It just had been so long since he had the soft caress of another pair of lips over his. Because of that, his better judgement was slipping away. Gradually, he started to kiss Maggie back. The adrenaline was flooding through his body while she kissed him. There was a need to want to reach out and touch her, but he kept his hands firmly at his sides. Just now, he wasn’t holding back in returning the gesture with his lips against hers.  
“Fuck,” Negan growled out when she bit at his bottom lip and tugged on it with her teeth. Wincing when she looked him over with her big eyes, Negan didn’t know how to respond. Was that her angry at him for kissing her back? Was that her way of being rough? Pretty much right now Negan was staying still because he didn’t want to make the wrong move. His breathing had gotten louder and he watched her shift over him. When her hands reached out for his belt, he finally lifted his hands to grab a hold of hers. “You don’t want this. You don’t.”
“For all you know the two of us could be dead in the next few minutes Negan,” she reminded him and his eyebrows arched in curiosity when she said that. Sure, that would usually make someone look at sex differently, but sex with Maggie made him think he would certainly be dying within the next few minutes. It felt like some kind of trick from her end. “Now do us both a favor and shut the hell up.”
Against his sense of logic, Negan lowered his hands and watched her pull apart the belt in his pants. Truthfully, his breaths were panicked ones. Biting down on his bottom lip, Negan adjusted his hips when she struggled to get the material of his pants apart. When she got the zipper down, Negan felt her hand pushing beneath his pants to grab a hold of his manhood to pull it out into the cool air surrounding them.
Looking down, he watched her hand pumping over his length clearly working to get him hard. Licking at his bottom lip, Negan didn’t know if he should be asking her what was on her mind. Was she going to get him hard just to cut it off? At this point, that’s what he thought she was doing. So yeah, he probably sounded like a scared little bitch, but he was. With his dick out and his enemy being the one in control of it, that wasn’t exactly something he was comfortable with.
A deep rumble of a moan fell from his throat when his body reacted to the firm grasp her palm had wrapped around him. Even frightened he was getting hard and he cussed to himself wishing like hell he wasn’t having this reaction. Involuntarily, Negan’s hips arched up toward her closed fist that was pumping over his length. Damn, he wished this didn’t feel as good as it did. The moment was horrible. They had people after them. They needed to be quiet, yet here Maggie was giving him a hand job. That in itself was confusing enough.  
“Fuck,” Negan grumbled, his throat flexing while watching the determination in her eyes. Even though he tried to force himself to be quiet, muted moans fell from his throat. Dropping his head back, short jolts of pleasure filled his entire body and he didn’t know how to react. When he was completely solid in her grasp, he let out a wince and bit harshly at his bottom lip. “What’s happening here Maggie?”
Silence. Nothing in return to his question. Looking down toward his lap, Negan gulped loudly. There were a lot of thoughts running through Maggie’s mind. She wasn’t saying anything, but he could tell that there were so many things she was thinking about. The look in her eyes told him that. Maggie bit at her bottom lip before getting up. Pulling her jacket from her body, Negan watched it drop to the ground and his throat went dry. When she reached for her pants, Negan felt a warmth flood throughout his cock making him grunt. There was no lying that his body was excited at the idea of sex with the incredibly beautiful woman before him. Just, he kind of wished he knew what the hell the outcome of this was going to be.  
His thick eyebrows bounced up in surprise and a panicked exhale escaped his throat. Maggie was swiftly tugging at the material of her pants after she kicked out of her boots. When she kicked the material aside, Negan felt his mouth go dry. Licking his lips, he let out a shuddering breath when she moved in over him.
“Maggie?” Negan tried to get her to look at him to find some kind of reason as to why this was all happening. Reaching out, Negan tried to grab her face in his palms and she slammed his hands back down at his sides. Obeying, Negan kept his hands down with tension in his body. When she crawled in over him, Negan let out a sigh. Reaching down, Maggie pushed the material of her panties aside and Negan couldn’t help but steal a glance. Noticing that she was getting more comfortable over him, he couldn’t keep the idea that this was fucked up out of his mind. “Wait, are you sure about this?”
“What? You don’t want this?” Maggie reached up with her right hand to grab a tight hold of Negan’s throat again, putting a tiny amount of pressure on the soft spot at the center of it. Negan’s Adam’s apple bounced in his throat and his teeth gritted together. “That’s a shame. I thought you might be the kind of guy that likes to be dominated by a woman.”
“Well, yeah…” Negan stammered, his body quivering when he felt her warmth hovering just over him. In another world, yeah, he would have jumped right into this. No questions asked. Maggie was fucking beautiful. But knowing their past, knowing what happened…he was having a hard time having this all make sense. “I’m very interested, but I just…”
“Then sit back, shut up and enjoy it,” she ordered and Negan’s jaw flexed when she reached down between them with her free hand to caress over Negan’s solid form. Lifting her hips up, Negan kept his eyes hooked with hers. When the tip of his cock traced through her folds, a moan fell from his throat and his eyes got heavy with lust. “For the first time I think you’re speechless Negan.”
A grunt fell from Negan’s parted lips when Maggie lowered her body down his length. The sound of Maggie’s gasp filled the air and he felt her fingers clinging tightly to his shoulders when she attempted to brace herself. Damn, Negan wanted to touch her. To put his hands on her hips, but this was all Maggie.
Attempting to look down at her body lowering down over his length, Negan felt her bang his head back against the wall again making him hiss when she did it. Tugging her fingers through his hair, she demanded his eyes to be hooked on hers. The warmth of her surrounding him was almost too much to take. Watching her lips part and her eyes come to a tight close, Negan felt his heart pound harder inside of his chest. God, he was looking at Maggie in a new light and he had no idea where this would leave them afterwards.
By the time she lowered over him completely, Negan lifted his right hand and slid it in over her side. Grasping loosely to her body, he was surprised that she didn’t force it back or yell at him. Maggie adjusted herself over Negan, trying to find the right positioning to keep herself comfortable before her hips started to raise over his length before lowering again.
There was a fire flooding Negan’s veins while he watched her face scrunch up. She was taking her time getting used to his body and it was causing chills to run through his whole body. Grunting, Negan felt Maggie’s nails biting into his shoulders from where her hands were grasping firmly at his shoulders to help her movements over him.
Each roll of her hips over him had started to become more confident. The rocking of her hips up and down had become steadier, fluid movements. They had to be quiet, he knew that, but he couldn’t help the occasional moans that fell from his throat while Maggie had absolute control of his body. This was something he could never even imagine in his dreams. Even in his dreams he would have known better, so whatever was happening now was a mystery to even him.
“Maggie,” Negan spoke her name and she hushed him, lifting one of her hands to place it over his mouth. Each thrust down over him started to get more powerful and his eyebrows clenched. Pulling his head away, he wondered if she was thinking of someone else. With her eyes closed, he didn’t know what was going through her mind. Leaning forward, he claimed her lips in a kiss and it seemed to shock her when he did it. Negan was unsure of himself at first, but the more she seemed to get into it, the more he did as well. Brushing his tongue between her lips, he flicked it faintly against hers before growling out when he felt her dominant movements over him. “Fucking hell…”
Maggie was rough. She was using him the way she wanted and there was no fooling anybody. This wasn’t out to be romantic. This wasn’t out to be a gentle moment between the two of them to fix what had been happening. This was a hard fuck and she was using his body the way she damn well pleased.
Hissing out, he felt her biting into his bottom lip again and undoubtedly this time she broke the skin. Curling his fingers around the back of her neck, Negan let his thumb drag over her throat and down her jawline. There was a darkness in Maggie’s eyes that he hadn’t quite seen before. He hated to admit it, but he liked it.
Going to speak up, Negan felt the firm smack of Maggie’s hand against the side of his face and he made an angry sound. Instead of saying a word, Negan powerfully wrapped his arm around her waist to pull her in firmly to him. Using his strength, he helped her bounce her hips over him. Their breaths became more frantic when they started to work together. Another firm smack filled the air after she hit him again, but Negan took it. This was hate sex. That’s what she wanted, so what the hell? Negan was going to give it to her.
Starting to thrust his hips up from underneath her, Negan was matching her movements over him. Each time he would buck upwards toward her, a whimper of sorts would escape from her throat. Kissing her again, Negan knew that they were attempting to be quiet. The last thing they needed was walkers hearing them and drawing them to the house. Then it would certainly lead The Reapers to them.
The sounds of their bodies smacking together were loud. Maggie was grasping to him tightly, trying to take control of the moment, but Negan kept bucking his hips up toward her. Maggie’s body froze over him and he could feel her nails digging into the cotton of his shirt. Keeping up with the movements of his body beneath her, he watched her eyes slam shut. Her palms dropped to press in over his abdomen as if to try to stop his movements. Maybe she didn’t want to have an orgasm because of him, but Negan picked up on the want of her body and continued to use his power to thrust up toward her repeatedly.
With a cry from Maggie, Negan pulled her to him. He felt her body start to tremor and shake over him. His mouth covered hers and he felt her forcefully pushing into his abdomen to get him to stop when she reached that orgasm he had worked so hard to build up inside of her. With shaking, tremoring thighs and her body flushed, Negan took his time to admire the woman he knew fucking hated him over him. If things were different, he could easily find himself getting attached to a strong woman like this, but their pasts would make it impossible. The natural glow she had after having an orgasm made her look stunning to him. The hate still lingered in her eyes, but the pleasure laced into her expression turned him on so much. Visibly, it seemed like she was not exactly happy with herself that Negan had been able to make her climax, but her body certainly enjoyed it.
By the time she finally shook the feeling, her eyes lifted to his and she looked angry. With a firm shove, Negan’s back hit the wall again. Her right hand pressed in over Negan’s mouth and her left reached back to brace herself over him. It was the hurt leg she grasped to and Negan immediately let out a pained sound against her hand that was covering his mouth. Using the stability she had in the moment, she sturdily brought her hips over his again and again. It was hard to focus on what he was feeling most in the moment. The pain from the injury she was digging her fingers into or the incredible amounts of pleasure she was drawing out from inside of him while she had her way with him.  
Growling against her hand, Negan’s eyes slammed shut. There was a fire burning in the pit of his stomach and he felt the muscles in his abdominal area start to flex. Desperate moans began falling from Negan’s throat when he could feel his orgasm approaching with her forceful movements over him. A frustrated, mumbled sound pressed against Maggie’s hand when she lifted her hips from Negan before he could cum. Her fingertips wrapped around the tip of his penis where the head met the shaft forcing him to hold back on his orgasm. A pained yelp fell deep from his throat when his body was absolutely ready to fall apart.  
God, she was fucking torturing him with this. When he was denied his orgasm, she crawled back in over him and with ease her body slid back down over his. Shakily, Negan reached for her hips and tried to help move her over him so he could work his body back up to that pleasure point. Almost immediately though, she reached for his hands and forced them back against the wall over his head. Holding tightly to his wrists, Maggie continued to control the movement over him and Negan cried out into her mouth when she began to kiss him again.
“Please…” Negan begged noticing that her movements were rough until she felt him tensing up beneath her. Whenever he was close to coming, she would stop all movements and it had him a shuddering mess. Negan wasn’t one for begging, but his body was tingling. Everything was eager for a release of some kind, but she wasn’t allowing it from him. “Maggie, please.”
“It hurts to want something so bad, doesn’t it?” she hovered her lips over his and Negan’s eyelids were heavy with lust. There was a want in his eyes and she knew that she had him in the palm of her hand. “To be controlled in every way possible.”
Negan didn’t say anything, he just desperately tried to move his hips, but she had the power and the strength over him right there. Maggie’s eyes were locked on his. The grasp she had around his wrists was getting tighter and Negan’s lips parted. He was panting, his chest rising and falling repeatedly.
“I asked you a question, does it hurt?” she repeated what she had said and Negan’s head fell back. His eyelashes fluttered and he felt her adjusting his wrists so she had them hooked together with one of her hands over his head. Using her free hand, she smacked at the side of his face again making him grunt before she grabbed a tight hold of his chiseled jaw. “Speak when you are spoken to Negan.”
“Yes,” Negan finally gave in and gave her the answer that she wanted to hear. She was using his own words against him and he was picking up on all of the hints. “Yes, it hurts. It hurts a lot.”
“Good,” she nodded her head, keeping her hips still over his while he remained inside of her. “Now beg me. Tell me you want to cum.”
“Please Maggie,” Negan felt her smack him again and he winced when she did it. The side of his face was starting to burn, but the sensitivity of his body was increased from it. Her beating the hell out of him surprisingly turned him on more than he expected when her hips started to unhurriedly move again. “Maggie, I’m begging you…”
“Do it better,” she demanded with another smack and Negan felt her hips starting to bounce powerfully over his extremely aching body. He was ready to explode and he knew that. It wouldn’t take much more. His body was shaking beneath her. His thighs were tremoring and his thick jaw flexed.
“Please, I’m begging you with everything that I am, let me cum,” Negan whimpered and after a few more steady movements over him, Negan threw back his head and let out a roar of a moan. His jaw dropped, his body shaking when his orgasm started. His hips eagerly bounced up toward hers and he was surprised how good his release actually felt. When she stopped moving over him, she dropped his wrists down and firmly shoved his head back again. Pulling her hips away from Negan, he cussed out a slew of incoherent words while she shakily pulled herself back and away from him. “Fuck me.”
Licking his lips, Negan looked down at his aching body and felt butterflies in his stomach. No one had ever taken control of him like that before and he found himself in awe of Maggie. When his eyes connected with hers again, Negan could see that she was fixing her panties and reaching for her pants. While she was still sitting on the ground, she was tugging her pants back up her body.
It took Negan a while before he could even gain the strength to pull his pants back together. Pushing himself back beneath the material, Negan started buckling them back together and his throat went dry. Doing that had Negan looking at Maggie in a new light and he was surprised how just having sex with her could affect him so much.
Almost immediately, Maggie had herself put back together and she was looking out the window again. On wobbly legs, Negan managed to pull himself up and finish putting his pants back together. Taking the time to gather himself again, Negan moved across the living room and reached out to try to touch Maggie’s shoulder.
“Maggie…” he wanted to find out what that was. Yet, he felt her pulling away from him.
“I still fucking hate you Negan,” she informed him, looking over her shoulder at him and Negan’s jaw flexed upon hearing her say that. “I want you dead and it’s still taking everything inside of me not to kill you. It was just hate sex. That’s all it was. It’s changed absolutely nothing.”
“Okay,” Negan simply responded knowing that sadly, it changed some things for him. It wasn’t like he was in love with the woman before him, but he definitely was starting to see her in a different light. While he wanted to talk about what just happened, he knew better than to do that. She was done with it. She didn’t want to talk about it, so it was best for him to forget it. That was probably half the torture in itself. It was something he wanted to think about. It was something that felt so good, yet she didn’t want to acknowledge what happened. That was torture in itself. “So, what’s the plan boss?”
Maybe it was for the best for Negan to forget this all happened in general. Hell, he knew he wouldn’t be able to do that, but this changed nothing for Maggie. And no matter how much he wanted there to be something more to this, he knew there wasn’t. It simply was what it was and nothing more.
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crossdressingdeath · 3 years
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"Boys will be boys" logic is interesting since WWX himself basically uses that exact excuse in the book when he tells LWJ not to take JC's homophobic rant/assault seriously in the ancestral hall bc that's just how JC is, as if WWX himself wasn't furious when JC targeted LWJ in that scene. A lot of WWX's famed unreliable narration is rationalizing the crazy shit JC does but sometimes people tend to take it at face value.
Yes, exactly! That is such a huge thing. WWX spends so much time telling himself (and through himself the audience) that oh, it can’t be helped when JC mistreats him, JC is just like that, it’s totally fine, he doesn’t mind, and we see how that viewpoint was encouraged and strengthened by the people around him, especially JYL (sorry Shijie but it’s true). Hell, you could argue that this particular aspect of his character was entirely her doing, given YZY just thinks he should be subordinate to JC in all things and JFM mostly ignores JC’s behaviour; it’s just JYL going for the “oh boys will be boys, you’re strong and always smiling, you can take it” angle.
...Actually, let’s go into that a bit more because it very much gets buried under the “best sister” shit; I am prepared to argue that JYL consistently taking JC’s side did serious damage to WWX. Like, she was the only Jiang who consistently showed him affection and support and he convinced himself that it was unconditional! But the “unconditional” aspect was an illusion entirely based on his ability to consistently and convincingly pretend that JC wasn’t hurting him. WWX isn’t stupid, I don’t doubt for a second that he knew JYL would take JC’s side if it came down to it. She always takes JC’s side from day one. Literally; she hears WWX say he’ll take the blame for JC chasing him out of Lotus Pier and getting WWX’s leg broken while all JC did was come out looking for WWX personally (instead of doing the smart and more helpful thing and getting adults to help) because he was scared he’d get in trouble and he got a little scrape because he was running through the woods like an idiot because, again, he was too scared of getting in trouble to GET ACTUAL HELP THAT WASN’T A CHILD and she’s like “Yeah, that sounds reasonable and fair and not like a really, really bad precedent to set with a kid whose safety relies on my family liking him”. ...There’s also an aspect of “Sure, it can’t hurt to let the kid my mother very clearly hates take responsibility for something that he could be punished for by someone with a motive to take everything possible as a wrongdoing on WWX’s part”, but to be fair at this point she doesn’t know YZY will whip WWX for literally anything she can even slightly suggest is any sort of wrongdoing on WWX’s part. And let’s not pretend WWX wasn’t punished for JC getting hurt; come on, it’s YZY, she punishes him for sunbathing.
This is a running thing going forward in their dynamic, too! JC does something horrible, JYL immediately starts in on the “Oh, boys will be boys, A-Cheng might get upset if you call him out on his shit” shtick if WWX shows the slightest trace of dissatisfaction with being treated like garbage, WWX smiles and forgives JC for whatever he did without question, there’s a period of calm, the cycle repeats. JYL very much teaches WWX that he cannot EVER show any unhappiness with JC’s threats and insults. If he ever shows so much as a shred of anger or sadness or generally being upset at the way JC mistreats him JYL takes JC’s side. At most she’ll tell JC that maybe he should back off a little while basically telling WWX to grin and bear it because JC might be slightly upset if anyone ever calls him out on being horrible to literally everyone. And don’t even get me started on the whole “Oh you’re always smiling” bullshit, talk about teaching a mistreated orphan that he has literally no right to look sad about anything ever. Like, let me put it this way: WWX doesn’t even feel he can go to JYL about JC TRYING TO KILL HIM. That’s a lot? It’s a lot? And it never really gets discussed in any way? WWX doesn’t feel like he can tell his supposed sister who supposedly loves him unconditionally that her brother tried to murder him like three times and when the third time comes up JYL takes JC’s side because JC’s arm got broken in the process of the staged fight where JC stabbed WWX in the gut and that’s fine and healthy apparently. Stan WQ, the actual best sister (god I love WQ).
Anyway, now that I’m done enraging the fandom with my tangent about how much JYL sucks as a sister to WWX... Yeah, WWX insists that JC’s attitude can’t be helped because JC’s just like that even when he very clearly doesn’t buy that? He’s obviously pissed when JC goes after LWJ to the point of genuinely going after JC for it... but when they get away from JC he goes into the “Oh, he can’t help it, don’t get mad at him”. And in this particular case part of it is him panicking because JC’s homophobic ranting (and LWJ’s clear anger at it) left him questioning his and LWJ’s feelings and the mutuality thereof, but it also... really does throw every other time he insists JC’s behaviour is fine into question. Like, we know he’s not buying his own line in this scene! He was furious at JC! He’s still furious and upset! But he feels the need to cover for JC. Even after he’s realized that JC’s behaviour wasn’t okay, he still feels like he has to protect him from anyone else getting angry at him. WWX knows JC’s behaviour isn’t okay and that it’s not fair that JC treats him the way he does and I’d argue (especially at this point in the story) that he deserves better than JC’s treatment... but he still insists that JC is just like that and it’s fine.
That throws every single time WWX smiles through JC’s mistreatment into question, I’d say; we know he’ll react this way even when he knows that JC’s behaviour isn’t okay, so who’s to say he ever isn’t aware that JC’s behaviour isn’t okay? In CQL XZ does an excellent job of showing that at least in that continuity he is extremely done with JC’s shit even from when they’re fifteen; the novel is as far as I remember a little less clear, but it’s still pretty obvious that he’s not enjoying the way JC treats him. He knows that the way JC treats him is hurtful and upsetting and sometimes even frightening (think of the times JC threatens him with dogs and he’s clearly scared, which is a whole other thing because either he’s so scared of dogs that even the threat terrifies him or he has zero doubt that JC for sure would set dogs on him, which is a big thing either way and also I’m still not over how CQL JYL laughs when JC threatens WWX with dogs even though WWX is clearly scared and she totally would’ve laughed if that happened in the novel too but showing it so blatantly and then never actually getting into how messed up it is is just unnecessary), but he feels like he has to smile through it and cover for JC, just like when they were nine.
Anyway yeah, for a fandom so obsessed with WWX being an unreliable narrator the MDZS/CQL fandom sure does miss a lot of times where WWX is actually being unreliable, huh.
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sunjaesol · 4 years
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JATP Fanworks Appreciation Week
TRIVIA TUESDAY Creators: give a “behind the scenes” look at your works
Below the cut are some anecdotes about the stories I’ve written for the fandom!
The Infamous Tale of Luke and Julie's Grand Trip Across America I felt bad about the way I’ll never fully be able to write perfect English and how messy my sentences looked, but then I realised that I could hone that and just write these sprawling paragraphs and see where it goes. Jack Kerouac calls it ‘spontaneous prose’ and his book “On The Road” helped me with certain parts.   The roadtrip fic was something that spawned from my desire for something other than angst + a Gilbert-centric story I wrote back in 2018 for Anne With An E. In the end, it was still kind of angsty, but I’m proud of myself for inserting lots of humour and quirky moments. I have zero clue how I came up with the recurring soda gag. Oddly enough, I listened to a very emotional, slower song when Luke realises his feelings for her. “Sun” by Sleeping At Last - as opposed to the uptempo song that’s playing diegetically.  The scene where they sleep in Raoul’s inventory was the first scene I wrote! Most scenes I wrote on my long commutes.  Raoul’s family is based on my own! I’m not black, but we have a close connection to Congo. The dish they eat, moambe, was my comfort food (before I became vegan lol) and I wanted Luke to feel that same sense of comfort and safety.  The bittersweet ending was always meant to be that way.
at long last, love has arrived I listened to this playlist ONCE and I went fully feral. I daydreamed the entire story while smiling like a fool and very much frightened my window neighbour. It was outlined in ten minutes and written in six days. I didn’t sleep and barely did any school work but it was so fucking worth it.  It was supposed to be even longer, but I got agitated and just wanted to finish it. Here are the removed story beats:  - A more in depth study on the fact that queen Madeleine is fit to rule, but is only temporarily doing so, until prince Nicholas his coronation. - The entire inquisition scene and consequently, the boys and Julie breaking Luke out of jail. - A glance at the future where Jules and Luke are now a travelling singing duo. - Julie asking Luke how Caleb knew who she was. He just described her that well. - She has Luke’s pen with her when they flee and mould it into rings. It’s not real gold, but that’s okay. - More Reggie!
i’ve got this crazy feeling this isn’t our first time around I was writing a high school!Juke story that was so meandering and I just got frustrated with how bad it was, that I decided to let shit hit the fan and write something absolutely insane - hence, this story. The first chapter was written in about two hours and I began outlining afterwards.   Through the comments, I let the worldbuilding keep growing. A lot of people asked insightful questions that challenged me and made me want to think and write bigger. It was the first time that really happened and it was a great experience.  The colour symbolism in earlier chapters were subconscious foreshadowing for MYSELF about how the story would evolve. I just fucking love colour lmao. Now people talk about purple as if it’s truly a deity.  Their final moments together were revised about seven times and it’s still not perfect, but I really needed each second to count.  
your heart is open (i see what’s inside) I was knees deep in theatre history and exams stress and that mixture created this short, yet somehow, well-received story. I just wanted to create a scene that could easily be seen onstage, some Samuel Beckett-type play.
such a cruel love (loving you) Once again, annoyed by my own writing and needing to revert back to my bread and butter: angst. I was rereading my first break-up fic that’s essentially the same story, but over an extended period of time. Though one of my favourites, I found there was a lack of maturity and wanted to delve deeper in what it means to love someone, if loving is enough, how much you can excuse bad behaviour, if memories hold any value, et cetera. Because of that deep dive, it became a very condensed story over a short period of time and I love that.      I let them stay together in the end for the sake of catharsis, but I really struggled with that. It was three am and I was buzzing on five coffees and I was ready to just let them stay broken up. I genuinely wanted to end angst with MORE angst. (And then I remembered how certain people would be so fucking mad with me if I did lmao.) In real life, that’s likely what would’ve happened though.     
you’re the calm in the storm If you follow me, you sometimes see random enraged posts with zero context. I’m angry a lot, which made me wonder what it would be like if it truly hindered someone. I got sucked into research and naturally, I decide to write a story. Aka: Julie dealing with IED and her romantic feelings towards Luke. More colour symbolism, but developed! They aren’t ‘opposites’ or entirely the same, nor did I want to romanticise ‘fixing your partner with love’, so I made them complementary. They compliment each other. I think that’s a nice way of seeing it.  Carrie was supposed to have the pseudonym of ‘Candy’, to protect her famous father from being revealed as a douchebag! It was eventually inconsequential to plot and I kept her name as normal. It was supposed to be this little thing in the end where Julie and Luke spot a magazine stand and the headline is Carrie’s face saying she’s emancipated.   This is the story I was most frightened to post - ever. I’m not neurodivergent and I was petrified to offend an entire community with unintended ignorance. Literally sweating, heart palpitating, the works.     
If you have any more questions about these stories (or the others!), then don’t be afraid to ask! 
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chayacat · 4 years
Text
Devil’s Sweet Star (12)
Fandom: Dead by Daylight
Ghostface x Female Reader  
Rated M for Violence, Language and Smut  
WARNING: This chapter include a rather disturbing scene that is an organ exit, specifically, the intestines and...Other things. If you are a sensitive potato, I apologize for the potential disgust or potential nightmare following this passage. But if you are one of those who has already seen much worse with the saga Saw or Leatherface ... I don't know what to say.  ('-') Well then... Have a good read!
***
Do you like to go out at night, when the starry sky honors you with its presence? It's always a fascinating show and it's even more so when a shooting star or an aurora borealis appear. For some, it's the perfect view, the perfect time to show your feelings to the person you love. For others, it’s the spirits of those who have left us who, from heaven, look at us and protect us. And for the Nordics, the aurora borealis is the bridge that connects Midgard and Asgard.
But tonight, it was just a starry sky. A beautiful and mesmerizing starry sky that Danny was looking, leaning against his van. If he had a cigarette on him, he would have smoked it while watching the sky. But Danny wasn't a big fan of cigarettes, in fact he didn't like it at all. He didn't understand why people were ruining their health with such a poison. And the same was true for alcohol. He had no more than two drinks. He had already had the bitter experience of both too many times with his parents.
Hmph. His "parents." Danny calls them his tormentors instead. He remembers his “life” with his parents, his HELL’S life. Since he was young, Danny’s parents treated him like a dog, beating him and insulting him every time for nothing. He did everything to have the attention and love that a child must have. But he received nothing but hatred and disgust from them. His father was an alcoholic and a huge smoker. His mother smoked very little but was obsessed with religion.
For them, Danny was just a mistake, an unwanted child that they had to treat as such. And that's what they did. And if he thought he would find solace in making friends... he was wrong. His classmates made fun of him, and he found himself alone... always alone. He always avoided problems, but when he had to defend himself from the bullies of his school... He did. And if his parents played the comedy in front of the teachers, once at home, Danny was beaten to the point of losing consciousness once.
His years of college and high school were no better... but no worse either. In high school, he had managed to make friends, with whom he often made the wall to go and have fun at night. At that time, he no longer feared the wrath of his parents, especially his "father". He was a cute little boy when he was a child, and as a teenager he was a handsome boy, who attracted a lot of attention. His current appearance, apart from size, has not changed since.
How many girls wanted to go out with him? hundreds. How much did he have been in a relationship? Just two. And one of those two relationships ended badly. Yet he remembered an evening at the fair where he and his friends consulted a fortune teller. He didn't believe in this stuff but it was always a good time to have fun.
“Your life has been nothing but sadness and suffering my boy. But soon, a new life will be offered to you and one day you will finally find the one that is linked to you. The chosen one of your heart, is not here young man, but elsewhere.” she said. He remembers smiling, holding a laugh so as not to offend the old woman. But later, one of his visions proved correct.
“Where do you think you're going like that, you dirty little jerk?! You're not going anywhere! you hear me??” His Dad shout, beating him again.  
But this time... It had to stop. He had struck him in return, with a force he did not know himself. Her mother squeaked when she saw her husband on the ground, slightly frightened but still angry.
“I've done everything. Absolutely EVERYTHING to have even a little love! AND WHAT DID I GET?! ONLY BEATINGS AND INSULTS! ... But it's over. I get out of here and believe me that you will have NOTHING of me. You can both go to hell. I hope you die in the worst way there is in this f****ng world.”
And since that day, he has never felt so free and so alive. But what this fortune teller told him always kept him in mind. And if that person with whom he was related... the chosen one of his heart... was simply... You?
Since you both met, you are the only person who has been so pleasant, innocent and... kind to him. Of course, you’re acting like this because he was acting as Jed. But if Jed had never existed, if he had only been himself... Would it have been the same thing?  
Maybe... that you'd be in a relationship. He would love you as much as you would love him. He'd protect you, do anything to make you happy. Of course, he would never tell you about his... second "job." But what if you get sick? To the point of ending up in the hospital and dying just like...
“Danny...” He shakes his head. He doesn’t want to remember that. NEVER again.  
“Come on Danny. Stay focused. You can’t screw all you've made until now.” He whispers to himself before he puts his Ghostface’s mask on.  
He faced Mike's house. Certainly, Mckellan had to die first on the list but... the desire to eviscerate Mike was stronger, more enticing, more... Exciting. Danny licked his lips, thinking about how he was going to take care of his next victim. He had prepared everything, orchestrated and imagined the faces of the unfortunates who would find his corpse.
He's going to pay. Oh yes, he's going to pay SO MUCH for all the humiliation that Danny has endured since he started working at Roseville's Gazette. He's going to regret every fucking word he's said about him. Every fucking blow he's given her. And his attempt to strangle him... in front of everyone... will be the fatal blow that Danny will return to him.
Danny took a gift package and sneaked up to Mike's house. Even if he knows that at this time, everyone is asleep in this neighbourhood, it is better to be careful of a potential walker. He had parked in the same place as last time; he knew that no one ever went there.
He reached the kitchen window and saw it slightly open, so he took advantage of this opportunity to enter the interior without making any noise. He immediately walked to the basement, which was right in front of the kitchen, and went downstairs, realizing to the sound of the water that Mike was in his bathroom, taking a shower. Just perfect.
He rediscovered Mike's "playroom", the one in which he practiced his... disgusting and twisted fantasies. And he's the one we call f****ng psycho? Hmph, Danny found the champion in this category. He admits to being a little crooked sometimes, but really far from doing that kind of crap.  
He placed his "gift" on the table before taking an object heavy enough to knock Mike out. As well as a rope to be able to tie him. On the practical side, he didn't need to take anything. Everything was provided to him on the spot, for once.
"How nice you are Mickey... make it easier for me at this point, I would have almost taken you as an assistant ... if you weren’t a fucking pedophile and a drug addict. What a waste. Well, time to call.” Danny said taking out another disposable phone. He hid in a corner of the room, so that Mike would not see him and composed his number. Hoping he got out of the bathroom.
“Hello? Who the f**k is there?” said Mike on the other line. His voice was hoarse and tired. Looks like he smoked more than he should.  
“Hello Mickey...Miss me? I hope so.” respond Danny sneering about this situation.
“You little...motherf***er! I don’t know who the f**k you are but you gonna regret everything you do to me, you little shit!”  
“What a lovely language...Look since you didn't like my previous gift, I brought you another one... He's in the basement. Why don't you open it? I'm sure you'll like this one!”
“Go f**k yourself with your gift! You trapped me once! and it's already too much for me to leave you alive!” Said Mike enraged.  
“You could make an effort Mickey... I bend over backwards to find you a gift to make me forgive and you don't even want to go and see what it is. You're breaking my heart. Too bad... I guess I can send your photos to the authorities... they'll be happy to put you in jail.” Replied Danny getting ready to hang up.
“Rrrrr...Okay Okay ! I'm going to open your gift! You psycho...”  
He heard Mike heading towards the stairs before descending to the basement. the excitement caused Danny to tremble, he was waiting for only one thing: for Mike to open his "gift" and see his reaction before knocking him out. And once attached... the party can begin.
He went deeper into the darkness when he saw Mike advancing towards the table where the gift package was. Danny's hands trembled with excitement as Mike trembled with fear. After a moment of hesitation, Mike finally opened the package and backed away, swearing and holding back from vomiting.  
Remember when I said a "head was going to fall"? Well, a head actually fell. A man's head now stood on this table, and for Mike it was not unknown to him because he was one of his drug dealers, the one who offered him the best drugs.
The head was cut with sharpness and precision worthy of a surgeon. the face was marked by the drug that this man was consuming and dark circles almost as black as coal were plummeting before his eyes. Teeth had been torn off and tongue cut off.
Mike recoiled a few more metres before feeling a hand on his shoulder, when he turned, he had no time to react and received a blow, strong enough to knock him out. Danny looked at his unconscious body, a diabolical smile on his face. He took the rope and a chair, then lifted Mike's heavy body to attach it to it. He weighed his weight the animal!
“Look at this... What a beautiful sight. Ah Mickey... I will make you my most beautiful bloody work the world has ever seen... I'm going to make myself a huge pleasure to cut you pieces into pieces... make you suffer until your last breath.” Said Danny before laughing, thinking about all this.
Mike awoke after 30 minutes and, quickly noticing that he was tied to the chair, he tried to untie the ties. Unfortunately for him, Danny had tightened them up to the max. The latter came up to him, sneering, passing his gloved finger over the blade of his knife.
“Sleep well? I was starting to worry I thought I'd killed you too fast... it would have been a shame after everything I've planned for you... Don't you think so?” He said taking Mike's face with his hand.
“You’re f***ing twisted! You’re a crazy psycho! Let me go! Said Mike giggling in his chair.
“Oh... Not right now. We've just met face to face... I'm not going to shorten this moment so quickly.” replied Danny approaching his knife to Mike’s cheek. “So, do you like my gift? I must admit It wasn’t easy to find him because...He’s like a rat running everywhere in the house to steal some food. But he was so cooperative after I ripped off his tooth and cut off his tongue.
“P-P-Please...Don’t do this! Take everything you want!”
“Everything?” Said Danny before exploding with laughter. “But everything I want is your SCREAMS and you DEATH. After all you did, this is all you deserved. Fair enough don’t you think? But you know what? Since you're going to die... you’ll see your executioner's face.” He replied before taking off his mask.
“Ol...Olsen...”
“Oh, it’s true. My name is NOT Jed Olsen.” He said cutting off each of his hands with a blow, which made Mike scream a lot. “I’m Danny Johnson...The Ghostface. And I'm gonna take a real pleasure to slaughter you for everything you've done to me... You're not going to be a loss anyway. Because unlike you... I don't spend my fantasies on children."
He put on his mask on and thrust his knife deep into Mike's stomach, killing him like a pig. he pulled out the intestines that hung like ropes. he stabbed him many times, piercing his eyes, cutting his virility and his tongue before finishing him off with a sharp blow to the throat. Blood squirted everywhere, and in this show, Danny's crazy laugh was heard, he had nothing to fear, Mike had soundproofed the room for his... Fantasies. No one outside could hear it... and no one was going to come to Mike's house at this hour.
But it wasn't over oh no... He has to finish his work. He took Mike's intestines and cut them into fine pieces before throwing them all over his corpse like confetti that’s thrown at a party. After all, it's a party, isn't it? He took the drug dealer's decapitated head and carefully placed it in Mike's arms with a little message on it: "I, Mike Harris, killed this man without any remorse." And he placed Mike’s d**k on his mouth instead of his tongue which layed on the ground.
“I don't like being robbed of the star Mickey... but I confess that making you look like a murderer on this one makes me laugh a lot... We'll keep you the worst image of your existence, pedophile, drug addict and murderer. Jackpot. Now...Say Cheese!” Said Danny before taking a picture. “One down. There's one left. Sooner or later McKellan...you’ll meet the devil himself. And then... I could focus a little more on my sweet angel.”  
As with every murder, he erased all traces of his passage, and after making sure of it, he left as discreetly as he had arrived. Then he took the road to go home. But before sinking into the arms of Morpheus... A small visit is necessary.
The window of your bedroom was barely open, but that's more than enough for Danny to pass his knife and open the window just enough to pass. You were sleeping peacefully, the blanket almost covering your head but he could still see your face, your little and adorable angel face... He stood frozen in front of you for a few seconds, a smile on his face. Then he took a picture, an umpteenth trophy, an umpteenth memory.
“Don’t worry... Soon, all your problems will disappear... and I'd be the ONLY one to obstruct your thoughts. In a good way. Sleep well, my little sweet star...And never forget...” He said, kissing your forehead. “You’re mine. And only MINE.”
And then he vanished. As if no one had ever entered this intimate place... But little by little... The devil tightens his grip on you. Even if he will continue to scare you... He will do anything to be the only object of your obsessions.
And he won't let anyone near you.
***
(And it’s done! Phew thinking about Mike’s death wasn’t easy but I've made it! Again, I hope you’ll enjoy it like the other ones and if you got some questions or you just want to talk you can! For now, the French potato girl I am will get some rest! have a good week end everyone! See ya!)
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immortalcoelacanth · 4 years
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PTA: Science Team (HLVRAI Fic 1/3)
*pulls dusty story out of garage and drops it into Tumblr*
I have been trying to finish the first chapter for AGES, and I finally got it done! I crave PTA AU content due to the wholesomeness and angst, and I just had to work on one short fic for this fandom. So, welcome to the first chapter out of three!
Word count: 1788
Summary: PTA meetings are a sham and no one hates them more than Gordon, but upon being forced to miss a “mandatory” meeting because of work, Benrey comes up with a brilliant idea to deal with this problem.
Chapter 1: Hostile Arrangements Require Equally Hostile Solutions
“Fuck! Shit! Okay-okay, I’ll just-motherfucker she did what?!”
Cursing was in Gordon’s nature. He often used it as a way to express his angry, dismay, shock, and all sorts of other negative emotions. As such it was not unusual to see pacing about and spitting insults left and right. 
What was unusual, however, was the fact that he was cursing in his own home. He had a strict swearing free zone in effect as a way to stop Joshua from picking up on any foul language, including a swear jar that tended to fill up whenever Bubby visited. It was quite fortunate that Joshua was currently being distracted by Benrey as the pair had been playing video games together for the past hour or so. 
Or they had been until, in a surprising display of stealth, Benrey crept out of the young boy’s room and slowly approached the frustrated Gordon. 
Gordon, who was currently continuing to quietly yell into his cell phone. 
“Are you kidding me?! I was scheduled for a meeting on the weekend! I have work tonight! How in the FUCK did she-”
“psssst, hey, hey feetman. you might wanna chill out there and, uh, stuff. turn down the volume.” Benrey cut in while pointing the tv remote at Gordon and clicking the volume button. “don’t wanna be a bad boy and teach joshie any naughty words.” 
“Shut the fuck up.” Gordon sighed, no real anger in his voice before redirecting his attention back to the phone call. “No, not you Natasha, it was just Benrey-”
“tell tasha her cookies are baller.”
“Wha-baller? Who the fuck says baller anymore?!” 
“c’moooooooon man, be a bro.”
“Natasha I am so sorry-tell her that yourself!”
“i can’t feeman, you know i don’t have a phone.”
“YOU WERE THE ONE WHO STUCK IT IN THE MICROWAVE!”
“i-i was just chagrin’ the battery with those radio waves, man. ads… they never lie.”
Laughter could be heard coming from the phone in response to the conversation going on between the two men. It was enough to snap Gordon out of his somewhat enraged state and refocus on whatever it was that Natasha was telling him. He gestured for Benrey to leave and only succeeded in shooing the ex-guard to the kitchen so he could have some peace. 
Not that the peace lasted long based on the muttered cursing and general sounds of Gordon stomping around. 
About ten minutes later, the frustrated physicist joined him in the kitchen, quickly making himself a cup of coffee and grumbling under his breath. Welp, looked like this was the perfect moment for some interrogation. 
“soooooo, wha was that about?” Benrey asked as he took another bite of the block of cheese he had been digging into. If you asked him, he’d say it tasted pretty gouda.
Damn, he needed to torment Gordon with more puns again. 
“Fucking-” Gordon exhaled sharply and ran a hand through his messy hair, too angry to noticed how Benrey reached out and gently pulled at some of the locks, watching them bounce and resume their previously curly shape. “Linda.”
Well, there went his good mood. 
Benrey’s eyes immediately narrowed, becoming nothing more than glowing slits in his shadowy face, as a disgruntled frown replaced his previous smile. Even the cheese in his hand seemed to start burning, smoke wafting off it as it began to melt in response to the sheer anger that name invoked in him. 
Linda Smith, the scourge of the neighborhood and one of the most uptight, pieces of shit that Benrey had ever encountered. A narcissist with a massive superiority complex, she constantly put down everyone around her who she thought of as being inferior.
Which was just a cover for how much of a racist shitwad she was, plus there were the various comments she made about fags invading the neighborhood.
An obvious insult aimed at not just Gordon and Benrey, but the other “not normal” couples that lived here and there. Poor Joshua had overheard some of the insults on multiple occasions, and she had called the kid a mutt to his face-
“Benrey? You wanna calm down before you poke holes in the ceiling again?”
Fortunately, Gordon’s exasperated voice snapped Benrey out of his enraged state before he accidentally inflicted more damage to the kitchen. A place that had seen many, many small explosions and fires. At this point, he towered over the other man as sharpened, boney spikes poked out of his back and scrapped the ceiling. Plaster fell and dusted the countertop. 
“oops, s-sorry dude.” Benrey awkwardly shrugged, flesh dripping from his arms and face in a rather gruesome display, not that Gordon was bothered by this. He was used to how… horrific his partner could become. 
Especially when someone mentioned Joshua being hurt or insulted in any way. It was actually quite wholesome thinking about how much Benrey cared about the young boy and how much their friendship had bloomed since they first met. 
“I get it.” Gordon sighed. “She’s such a bitch she’d make anyone Hulk out.”
“ten points for the ref there, feetman.”
The physicist somewhat seriously flipped Benrey off, making him laugh, before continuing to rant about the purpose of the now finished phone call. 
“I still can’t believe that stupid school listened to her, and I’m not the only one getting fucked over here!” He spat. “I can’t just drop out-”
It was at this moment that the source of Gordon’s rage dawned on Benrey, and the ex-guard spoke up. “wait, the school thingy?”
“You mean meeting?”
“ya.”
Gordon groaned and hid his face in his hands. “The MEETING! Linda fucked up my schedule! I don’t know what she said to the administrator, but they canceled the weekend meeting I was booked for and rescheduled me for tonight. When I have WORK!”
Benrey winced in sympathy and reached out to pat Gordon’s shoulder with his not cheese coated hand. “damn, th-that’s a real cringe move. can’t you get, uh, joshie’s mom to take care of it? s...shea?”
“I can’t,” Gordon muttered, face muffled by his hands. “Shea’s been on a business trip for some conference and she gets back in five days.”
“oooooh, that’s why you’ve had little josh bro for so long?”
Rather than respond, the physicist just continued to groan and hide his face in his hands as he tried to figure out how to fix the mess he had been caught up in. 
Joshua’s school had a very… specific structure to how it was run. Standard funding and where it would be directed was determined by the staff, however, sometimes the school would receive donations or raise large amounts of money through fairs and other events. 
And it was how this extra funding would be spent that the local community had the chance to weigh in on. Determining if it should be used to get more sports supplies, help fund after school programs, or be used to help make the school more accessible. 
The ramp that had been added two years ago was one such example of the potential good that these extra funds had, however there was one problem with this process. 
All parents were required to attend a meeting and voice their thoughts. This was a rather new development that had been added after a small group of disgruntled parents, ones who had objected to using the extra funds to improve the school and arguing that it should go towards planning fun trips instead, had tried to sue the school board. 
Of course, the case had immediately been thrown out and dismissed, but it had set a dangerous precedent. A precedent that now made it mandatory for all parents to attend one meeting to determine their opinions on where the funding should be used and write it down so they could not claim their voices had not been heard. 
Honestly, it was such a stupid arrangement in Gordon’s opinion. Why not just send out an email? Or forms that kids could take home to their parents. It was so… disruptive and annoying, especially for single parents who had to work long hours. 
Like him. 
His hands tensed, nails nearly dug into his skin before Benrey carefully moved them, holding them. As Gordon looked up, the ex-guard sent him an awkward yet warm smile. An attempt at reassuring him that things would turn out alright. 
“hey... you-you gotta chillax feetman, things’ll be okay-”
“How the hell am I supposed to chillax in this situation?!” Gordon barked as he removed his hands from Benrey’s, shoved himself out of his seat, and began pacing around, furiously staring at the floor. 
“I’ve been fucked over by some racist bitch! Joshua needs someone there and it has to be someone who has some kind of guardianship over him for that stupid funding bullshit!”
As his partner raged on about the unfairness and overall stupidity of the situation, Benrey decided that it was time to think. To think, and plot, and come up with something that would hopefully calm Gordon down while solving the problem that Linda had caused. 
Simply put, Joshua needed someone who had designated guardianship over him to be present during the meeting to act in his best interests. Not surprisingly, Benrey did not have this title due as both he and Gordon had agreed that it would not be the best idea due to both his inhumane nature and the potential destruction he might cause. 
But, that did not mean that only Shea and Gordon were listed as the young boy’s guardians. There was one other who had been granted the title in case of an emergency, although his presence had never been needed up until this point, which was probably why Gordon had forgotten about him in his stressed out state. 
Dr. Coomer, one of Joshua’s “grandpas”. 
And, of course, if one member of the Science Team went somewhere, then the rest had to follow. The Science Team stuck together through thick and thin, no matter the strife or struggle and always left chaos in their wake. 
Hostile arrangements required equally hostile solutions, after all. 
“this is gonna be baller.” Benrey chuckled, his eyes flashing brightly at the brilliance of his plan. Now all he had to do was get Gordon to agree to it.
“pssst, yo, xen to gaydon.”
There was something about the tone that Benrey’s voice took on that snapped Gordon out of his ranting. How calm and collected he sounded, the coherency and confidence in his words. Somewhat concerned, the physicist turned around and saw the scheming look in the ex-guard’s glowing eyes as his fingers drummed on the table. 
“feetman, i got a plan.”
                                             xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I would like to make it clear that no offense is intended towards anyone named Linda, aside from the one racist Linda I know that she was named after who will never, ever read this so my sins will forever remain unknown :>
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spicy-ryls · 5 years
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Ranty TROS stuff below. I wrote this on and off days so it might sound disconnected but yeah. Sorry it’s kinda long and my spelling and grammar might not be the best but I just wanted to let my feelings out.
I’m still trying to accept this movie. I watched it on the night of 19 December, the premier date for Malaysia, and I still remember my visceral feeling towards this movie. I remember feeling so empty, baffled, sad and shocked, almost like I just lost a relative or one of my cats, and I’ve experienced that multiple times in my life and it sucks.
Sometimes I think, how could I be so attached to this trilogy? I’ve literally spent so much energy defending TLJ and the ST from the backlash in the local fandom to the point where I couldn’t stand it anymore and I removed myself from the local fanbase as much as I could. But I’ve never felt so betrayed and almost embarassed that I was so invested into it.
I never grew up with Star Wars. Instead, I started watching TFA while I was in that age period between 19-20. I was a little shit and I was still adjsuting to adulthood, so it pretty much was almost like in the process of being born again as an adult. At the time I was making a series of webcomics under the title ‘Gods Among Men’ and I was pretty much drawing almost exclusively Hades/Persephone stuff and I was drawing Hades as this typical tall, dark & handsome guy. At some point, my friends and I just joked at how much I loved that trope that’s it’s like my type in fictional guys, and yes I still love it.
So my friends just said to me “hey, watch the new Star Wars, you’ll love it!”
And I was HOOKED.
I got so into it. I watched all of the other movies, even the Christmas Special. And I loved the character of Kylo Ren so much. Initially I wasn’t instantly into Reylo. But after some fanart or fanfic or two I fell down the rabbit hole of this ship that I loved so much and the two characters of Rey and Kylo/Ben whom I had such a strong connection to.
Q4 of 2017 was the best year for me as a fan of this franchise. I was so excited for TLJ. I was super involved in a lot of local Star Wars related stuff and at that point people just knew me as “That Rey (cosplayer) who liked Reylo and Kylo Ren a lot”. I had made many friends and acquaintances over the year. And then TLJ came.
And the community was divided.
A lot of male fans I knew were so enraged by the movie. “TLJ ruined my childhood!!” they shouted on their facebook wall. “RJ and KK ruined Star Wars” they yelled. It just cemented the Star Wars Fanboy trope so badly that it was laughable that grown men 3 times my age with family AND KIDS were yelling about it for TWO WHOLE YEARS and because I was the one publicly championing the ST, all they talked about to me was about how much they hated it, and it’s still brought on in passing conversation to this day. I hated having to meet these people at events because my encounters are always unpleasant.
Time passed. The Reylo community was prosperous and it really was a golden age of content. We were excited to see how the ending of a saga was going to be, with a definitive Ben Solo redemption and Reylo being canon. And then came the announcement of JJ returning to direct Episode IX. I instantly had a gut feeling that it was not gonna be good, but I will hold my trust to him since he directed TFA. BOY I WAS WRONG.
The TROS panel at SWCC ended in a somewhat hopeful note. Later in the year, interviews were being published, and in the beginning it was all fine and dandy. I can’t remember when the news of reshoots started popping out, but even then I gave them the benefit of the doubt that because this movie was going to tie in all of the other 8 movies and surely they had to do something right about it. Then came in a lot of red flags in merchandising, marketing, cast interviews, etc. Daisy’s and John’s infamous interview felt so OOC for me that I couldn’t believe what I was reading. And at this point, my hopes were very low. I felt something was very off in everything and I was almost inactive of soc med or any TROS news because I wanted to watch the movie with no outside influences. I didn’t even read any leaks and only heard about it in passing.
Then came the week of the premier. I was putting my expectations super low. I just thought of all the bad things that could happen like Rey Palpatine or Kylo/Ben dying and I went into it with that thought. Before the movie, I had to sort of minggle with the crowd of a private screening event as Rey. But I just had so much anxiety before I could even get in costume to the point where I did cry. And it didn’t help that some of the other cosplayers and minders had already seen the movie the previous day and were having borderline spoilery conversations, which did upset me further. Eventually I calmed down enough, but I was still feeling a little down. It sort of helped that the attendees who are usually normal people are usually the kind to take pictures with the more masked or sith-looking guys or my friend who was masked Kylo so I could usually be left alone.
And finally, it was time to watch the movie and I can still remember how dumb I was for thinking this movie was going to be smart. There was just too much going on and I was so in shock of how poorly written, edited and directed it was. There was hardly any cheer or gasps in my cinema throughout the whole thing, although there were one or two who tried to whoop at the Lucasfilm logo but they kept quiet for the rest of it too. It was such a different experience from the one I had of my first TLJ screening. 80% of the time I just had a blank expression on my face and the only time I sort of got excited for were the Rey and Kylo/Ben scenes, except that ending. I really did not like this movie. I did not feel hopeful at all and the ending the just felt so off. I was relieved to see that I was not the only one who thought of it that way.
This movie effected me so much that I had trouble sleeping, loss of apetite, loss of focus and random bouts of crying in my car for how hollow I felt for about a week+. There was a huge convention on the same weekend and everyone who knew me pretty much came up to me and ask how I was and what I thought about the movie, and a simple glance and head shake was enough to convey how much I felt, and I just did not want to talk about it on a busy con day. But after a busy con weekend, I went in full force on venting it out on Twitter and finding myself in discord support groups and I’m glad I was not alone.
Now it’s been 11 days since I’ve watched TROS and I’ve sort of clamed down from being mad about it. But I don’t think I could accept an ending to a saga for how botched it was which stemmed from fan pandering and corporate greed. But I have never been so proud to be in the Reylo community, who are tirelessly finding concrete evidence on how badly edited it was and just how messy things were behind the scenes. I’m glad to have met all of you and even befriend some thanks to this ship and our love for Rey and Ben Solo and every character in the saga. I am very saddened at how badly treated every character was from Rey to Leia and everyone in between, but it’s not going to stop us from creating good fan content and what we’ve had so far is incredible.
Stay strong and save what we love. ❤
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wiredandrewired · 5 years
Text
Was trying to actually work on something but my brain is stuck on loop.  So instead I’m gonna make a post of the Voltron stuff sitting unposted in my writing WIP folder to help me organize my thoughts.
I guess since I’m posting this, if you have anything you wanna say/ask about any of these feel free.  I respond well to outside interest.
1. Project ReVolt is without a doubt the project I’ve posted about the most here.  And talked about in random tags.  And tangents.  Originally it was just the name the project had in my internal brain filing cabinet but it’s kind of spread and stuck to where my wife and I just refer to it as that when we talk about it.
ReVolt is basically going to be a VLD series rewrite more along the lines of how my wife and I would have done it or at least liked to see it done.  In some places it will probably stick pretty damn close to the events of the series canon, but in others go completely off the deep end.  We’re each going to be doing one, so a lot of the headcanon and worldbuilding and such that we’ve worked out together in various other stories and RPs will be consistent between the two stories, but it will also give us a place to veer out and do things without the others’ input (as we’re not gonna let each other see our fics until they post, tee hee).  I’ve done a SHITPOT of rules and infrastructure work using actual alchemy tracts to try and make sense of the series’ largely Powers As The Plot Demands system,  and am pretty convinced I’m going to A)fall hard into my very common Esoterica Ranting Mode pitfall and B)enrage literally everyone who reads it with my character and plot choices.  Most conservative estimate says this will be six ‘books’ long as again, we’re doing literally the entire series.  Current status: at the ‘ridiculously large amount of notes and setting up actual arcs and outlines’ stage, and waiting for the wife to finish ‘Happier HOPEless’.
2. There Are No Monsters Here is a fic I really want to do but cannot seem to get off the ground, set to take place entirely in the ‘last universe’ from season 8--the one native-Honerva died in and crazed-death-god-Honerva picked out as her ideal and tried to wedge herself into.  I guess the basic idea was that, like the ‘main’ universe, it got rebuilt pretty much as it was prior to Nightmare Mom Ruining Everything, and I have it with no one fully remembering the events of season 8 that took place there, but characters really closely tied to those events having some itching feeling that something happened, and all the Altean alchemists agreeing that some kind of massive quantum Event certainly occurred even if they don’t know what.  
Mostly the story exists as  a place for me to have a canon-compliant AU that still lets me explore stuff like Altean history, the racial and cultural tensions of the Coalition, dink around with Oldadins that DON’T die in one fell swoop, a living Daibazaal and Altea, Lotor growing up with a decent-but-not-without-strains relationship with his dad, teen Allura and tiny Lotor being absolute shits to each other while also coming to terms as they grow up with who and what they MUST be both on a political and quantum scale, and generally prove that even a perfect universe isn’t, all in one place.  The title is entirely facetious, and anyone who’s read any of my alien culture headcanons for this series knows that.  Lol.  Current status: lots of bits and pieces, but no good beginning or connective tissue.   I have a lot of notes, some arc outlines, and a few scattered scenes and bits of dialogue from later in the story, but my god, I CANNOT get it off the ground.
3. Someone Must Get Hurt (But It Won’t Be Me) is supposed to be a pretty wholly Honerva-centric fic that starts...sometime in her youth?...and carries forward to an as-yet-undetermined point.  Probably her death.  I mean the first one.  I’m not sure.  Another chance to dig my fingers into Altean culture and Alchemy, this time leading up to All The Bad Shit That Happened, with the added bonus of being done from a focal point of a character I have a lot of really strong feelings about both positive and negative that’s resulted in me somehow being EVEN MORE wrapped up in her than I was before I added abject knee-jerk trauma hatred to the mix.  In no way meant to make Honerva more sympathetic, I think I just want to write her even more like my mother so I’ll feel EVEN BETTER about killing her?  Idk man my feelings about her are so complicated.  Also an excuse to write a shitpot of her and Zarkon because listen, I’m really glad they’re married because I ship them so fuckin hard.   Current Status: SO many notes.  SO much infrastructure.  Like three pages of an opening I’m almost definitely throwing away because I can’t decide where, when, or how to open but feel like this isn’t it.  One short but very telling scene of Honey and Zarkon from late in the story.  I’m obsessed with it but I can’t get anywhere. 
4. Currently Untitled Demon Hunter AU started because my wife talks to me about Happier HOPEless a LOT and I just got an itch in my bones to work on one myself.  In spite of the entire Demon Hunter AU thing getting started by a prompt on a Shance blog, neither Shiro nor Lance are set to appear for at least a chapter?  And I am not confident in my ability to not veer off into utter non-shipping anyway because man, am I bad at it.  Or like...just an entirely different ship for either or both of them.  Current Status: A lot of vague notes, a POWERFUL urge to structure the chapters and overall arc after Ripley’s Gates even though that limits my chapter count and means I will DEFINITELY have 20k+ word chapters, and about seven pages of the first chapter so I guess I’m committed now?
5. Currently Untitled Post Series Fic basically exists for me to vent my frustrations about two main things: The Universe is Fucking Huge And There Are Dangers Other Than Galra, and The Galra Empire Was Huge and Is Not Going To All Fall In Line Behind Voltron Coalition and Especially Behind Keith Who Just Arbitrarily Fucking Decided To Tell Them They Couldn't Pick A New Leader According To Their Own Traditions And Need To Do What They’re Told Now What The Fuck.  Also there was a lot of stuff in the series that got left hanging, and while ReVolt is an IN-series fix-it fic, I wanted something that patched up loose ends in a way that was satisfactory to me but also kind of canon-compliant.  Current Status: A lot of notes and screaming.  No one has seen my progress on this and they might never.
6. Dog Runs And Death Dreams is a warmup file turned deeply self-indulgent series of scenes in which I choose to assume that Shiro’s rare neuromuscular disorder was left so ambiguous so I could plug the symptoms of mine into it.  It’s genuinely not any deeper than that.  The whole thing is set pre-Kerberos, and includes copious Shiro x Adam content because of it, but also not the kind that makes me feel good about writing because that means it includes the ‘slow fizzle’ that leads up to their breakup before the mission.  Ugh.  Working on it does make me feel better when I've been having symptoms, though, and I’ve been letting myself write it, unchastised, in a really loose rambly way that I usually deride myself for.  It’s just cathartic.  Current Status: no notes, no plan, just strain-writing between seizures, but somehow it feels like it has some kind of structure and just keeps growing?  Possibly too close to the bone for me to ever post.
7. Birth and Rebirth was born out of two things: the fact that Zarkon is shown to have two ENTIRELY DIFFERENT reactions to first being presented with his baby son in different flashbacks and different seasons, and the fact that in spite of the flashbacks we get at the end of the series, earlier on, the impression I got of Lotor and Zarkon’s relationship wasn’t of a young man who had never had affection from his father, but who had instead lost it.  Well, three things: I have a lot of underlying issues at work, at play, and at large when it comes to the Galra Imperial Family.  Also, anyone notice the monitor blips in the first baby Lotor flashbacks indicate a heart murmur?  Anyway, it was supposed to be a thoroughly self-indulgent and thoroughly self-hurtful examination of Lotor’s early life and the death by degrees of what was left of his father in the husk Rift Adventures left behind, but I got stuck on it a little way in.   Current Progress: ten pages, a lot of notes, and some wistfulness.  I keep hoping I’ll get inspired to pick it back up again.  Contemplating rewriting some of the beginning, maybe it’ll help?
Bonus entry that is not actually in any form of progress soever:
50/50 Voltron Trashfire Edition is spawned from the ‘50/50′ challenge on an old TF board I used to haunt.  It’s a fifty-prompt smut challenge using the list of ‘50 reasons to have sex’ from some tv show, and the idea is to write a different ship for every prompt (hence the name).  My wife is blazing through it and has several (like twelve?) up on her AO3, but I’ll be utterly blunt: I haven’t written fifty porn fics in my LIFE.  Over ALL my fandoms.  Current Status: Literally all I have done is assign a ship to each prompt, and I might actually have some prompts with just question marks beside them still.  I have one aborted start to one entry.  That’s it.  It’s not happening.  But the empty file is technically in the folder, SO.
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leta-the-strange · 5 years
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My troubled relationship with the FB community.
Okay, here goes. As ridiculous as it sounds (because in reality, it is ridiculous) I have taken a rather lengthy break from my writing – both here, on A03 and Fanfiction.net for my health. I have a few significant health problems and for as long as I can remember, writing is one of the few escapes I have – one of my true joys. Now, I’m by no means one of the ‘greats’ in any of the fandoms I’ve written in. I’m always in awe of the talent of some of the writers that I have been lucky enough to read and although I’m not at their level, I’ve been so excited to have the opportunity to have these platforms to share the stories I’ve poured my heart into and so mindblown and grateful to have people not only read them but take the time to leave feedback or thanks.
My love for Leta Lestrange began way back in the very first film when we knew very little about her. But I was starry-eyed from the get-go. A woman of colour main character? She quickly turned into my new inspiration and I was lucky enough to be one of the first Leta Lestrange-centred writers and blogs and meet some other great creatives and like-minded fans in the then tiny Leta loving community. I started developing my first multi-chapter story and (as daunting as it was considering the incredible talent in the stories I had read) started uploading the first chapters to share. A few people started reading my stories and left encouragement, advice and comments that absolutely made my day and I would feel so driven and inspired to keeping going and looked forward to spending my evenings putting together new chapters. My heart would skip each time I got an email saying that someone had left a comment, a review, kudos or notes.  
I was quite naïve in not knowing much about ‘ship’ and ‘fandom wars’ and when I found out that was a…thing, I did my best to stick to safe, neutral content, staying out of the confrontational tags, not engaging in the fandom too much – only to share things I created or liked (what all this is supposed to be about). Unfortunately, no matter how well I did that foreign, poisonous part of the fandom I was naïve enough to believe I could easily avoid by minding my business found its way into my life and quickly consumed something I loved.
PLEASE understand that this post isn’t about the characters. This is about real people. As a young girl of colour, yes there have absolutely been moments where I feel sick at some of the racist undertones in a large majority of the fandom’s depiction of Leta – I am happy to put my feelings on this in a more eloquent fashion in a separate post but again, the purpose of my first post back is about real people.
There are people in this fandom, quite a lot of people actually who all belong to one particular community, who not only are lucky enough to have the free time to create and share the things they love on the internet but also apparently have enough spare time to actively go seeking out posts, stories, works, etc that are centred on fictional characters and relationships that they don’t like (to put it lightly) for the sole purpose of abusing, bullying and degrading the creators to the delight of their followers that have little more than mic-drop gifs, ‘oh snap’s, and ‘#preach’ to contribute. 
This behaviour is disgusting, appalling, unacceptable and harmful.
And of course, not ALL people from this particular, I don’t know the word…’shipping group’ do this (so many are kind, talented and supportive) but enough have that I feel like even if I eventually came to like this pairing, I would never, ever feel safe engaging in that community myself.
I have characters I like, characters I love, ones that I am impartial to and ones I don’t like much. That’s the great thing about fictional characters. However, I have never felt the urge (or had the time or energy) to obsessively track the tags of ships and characters that I don’t like to leave hateful comments designed to make the creators feel unsafe and unwanted in a community in which they are just as entitled to be involved in than anyone else.
This obsessive, abusive behaviour destroyed my love for writing. One of the few things that drew me out of depression when I was unable to physically do much else activity-wise gave me intense anxiety and as much as I still received beautiful comments, I panicked when I received notification that someone had messaged me. 
My story has been called disgusting, dumb, awful, gross etc. I have been called deluded (apparently for not following a canon ship), a crazy dumb bitch, illiterate – just off the top of my head. I found a thread last year that encouraged people to upload new Fantastic Beasts content to A03 asap to get my story off the first page when I would upload a new chapter.  I was torn to shreds on both fanfiction websites after the second film came out and told that I hadn’t seen the movies (I had started my story well before the second film so I had to fill in the gaps which were quite a few). It seemed so pathetic and laughable at the start, I would just make sure I could monitor my reviews and would delete or not answer the abuse I received. 
Eventually though, it become too overwhelming and I found it too difficult to continue – my inspiration was gone and I was emotionally drained. A few times I actually became pale, shaky and vomited from the relentlessness of it. I tried to claw back the thrill and love writing gave me by practicing getting back on the saddle by doing prompts on Tumblr while I was in hospital battling one of my illnesses. I thought it might be nice to take requests from people – a gentle re-entry into my beloved hobby and reconnecting with other fans. I did a piece on Theseus and Leta that I had overwhelming support for. I actually cried when more than a couple people left beautiful messages in regard to my Theseus dying/Leta surviving prompt. A few people left me Newt/Leta related prompts. I got around to completing a first kiss request that earned me an anon informing me that my writing was trash, made them gag in their mouth and I should seriously reconsider inflicting my unwanted pieces on a fandom that doesn’t want them and to keep my shit out of the tag. 
I have seen blogs disappear from it and stories, posts and artwork removed. I was scrolling through Instagram and someone (quite notorious for this behaviour across all platforms) simply comment ‘ew #newtinaforever’ on a beautiful Leta fanvid that would have taken such a long time to put together. Surprisingly, the comments I got that were simply ‘ew’, ‘gross’, etc were more hurtful than the torrents of abuse sometimes. 
Just a few days ago, someone posted something absolutely non-confrontational and innocent about them personally liking Newt/Leta because they found it cute which of course opened the floodgates for abuse and I read a comment relating to people who don’t personally ship the ‘canon’ ship (this sounds so ridiculous now that I’m typing it) as deluded and needed to check into a mental ward. This is quite personal but I am someone who has an illness that is accompanied by psychotic symptoms and I have spent periods of time in a psychiatric hospital (and will likely need to during my lifetime) for my own wellbeing. I felt physically nauseous by this. I feel anxious now disclosing this as I know this will give more ammunition to the people who have not yet been blocked by me and enjoy taunting me but I want people to understand the weight of their childish, uneducated, ignorant outbursts.  
Because of my experience, PLEASE understand that when I say ‘unhinged’ I am not meaning it as a slur, it is coming from a place of serious concern. I think there are people in this fandom that are becoming quite dangerously confused between reality and fantasy. These characters ARE NOT REAL. If I can get through years of one my favourite characters being constantly hated on, written by fans as an abuser, rapist, you name it while far more ‘bad/problematic’ (white) females are adored and shipped with various characters quite harmoniously, and not resort to commenting, abusing or harassing people than you can get through your fave not being someone else’s fave. If your favourite pairing is canon, why are you so insecure about people liking other pairings? In Harry Potter, the most popular fan-favourite ships are non-canon and don’t cause any harm.
If someone writes on THEIR OWN BLOG that they personally don’t follow a certain ship, or they find a character bland or boring, or don’t agree with a casting, or don’t see chemistry between certain actors or like a pairing that differs from your own, JUST KEEP SCROLLING (and certainly don’t go on a witch-hunt by tracking down posts, blogs and stories you know you won’t like).
These are not real people. There is absolutely 0 reasons to be offended by someone saying that they find a certain character or pairing bland (which I haven’t done before). Of course you can disagree but if you are enraged, or offended, or feel inclined to personally attack or threaten A REAL PERSON over their preferences in something make-believe, than please, I implore you for your own mental wellbeing, to seriously assess if this level of emotional attachment to made-up characters is healthy.
I am planning on getting back into my story in time. I would love to get through the prompts and (nice) messages in my inbox now that I’m feeling a little more secure mentally and physically. I do thank all the beautiful people who have taken the time to request things, leave notes and such – I’m only back for them and feel confident that I can work through the toxicity and superiority complexes in this fandom with their support. I will do my best from now on to call out and check people when I see them mistreating others and to have more respect for myself and my work and not tolerate this any longer. I may respond and share some of the less pleasant messages I’ve received if I believe my responses can be helpful to others but there are some that require no response or audience.
I feel very content in the knowledge that I can see a story, visual, video, etc, involving a fandom, character or pairing that I don’t necessarily like and still appreciate the time and effort the person put in and find enjoyment in it too. If you still feel incapable of controlling yourself around people who are not a carbon copy of yourself, please just save yourself the distress by just blocking me instead of wasting valuable time and energy finding new ways to abuse me. I am not a harmful person, I am not an abusive person. I encourage you in your journey to hopefully become the same and if you need to remove yourself from temptation than I applaud that decision no matter how much I cannot personally relate. 
To anyone who has read my stories or sent me prompts, thank your for your patience and encouragement. I look forward to being able to get back into a community I have found such joy in.
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My problematic ship dynamic 1: Snarry
Okay I was thinking the last days, when I saw a post going around on my dash about your personal favorite problematic ships. I started to think about reblogging it and wanted to come up with categories for what the ships are problematic and stuff. But now I think, I just want to write a series of posts about the problematic ships I have, why I have them, what dynamics I love about them, ect. The tag will be ‘my problematic ships’.
If you are a pro shipper: I hope you will enjoy reading a bit about it. And if you want to discuss about the ships, I would be happy to engage.
If you are a anti shipper / fandom policer I would advise you to stay away from it, but since I know that 99% of you won’t I hope you will read every fucking line of it and hyperventilate about how much I love my problematic ships and for what reasons. And I hope you will be enraged when you can’t change my stance on it, that I continue to love these ships no matter what you accuse me of or how much you insult me.
That being said: Good day to you, who reads this.
We start with Snarry (Severus Snape x Harry Potter)
[This post contains spoilers about Harry Potter]
How and when did I start to ship them? : I think I started shipping them around 2003-2004 (I was 14-15 at that time) when I read the fifth book, so Harry was pretty much my own age in the books during that time. Snape was already my favorite character since The prisoner of Azkaban and even more after I saw Alan Rickman portraying him in the movies. I can’t remember well what exactly made me think, I want to ship them, but I guess it has something to do the with Occlumency lessons. I guess it had also something to do that I personally had a crush on my math teacher in 2001 who could have been a real life Snape with his appearance and choice of clothes.
Do I like one character significantly more than the other? : YES! YES! And YES! When I started reading Harry Potter around 2000, I rooted for Harry and it was easy to like him for me. He knew how it was, when you where bullied, when you are the weirdo, ect. But my perception shifted with the third book. I realized that Harry had jumped at every chance to accuse Snape of anything bad so far. But my overall interest also shifted from the younger characters to the generation of Harrys parents. So I ended up loving Snape, Lupin and Black. But through the next books and the whole story I also liked Harry less and less. I found the pattern that every time he would accuse Snape, that Snape was doing the opposite and had in fact helped him. It’s funny how I still love Snarry as a ship when I love one character endlessly and pretty much dislike the other one. But I guess when I see myself in Harry’s shoes, whenever I read or write about them, it doesn’t bother me that much + in fanfiction we have room to make him into a character I like more.
Why is the ship problematic and do I love it for it or despite it? : Snarry can be problematic for several reasons.
1. Adult/Minor - Mostly despite it but also for it
The characters interact the most in canon when Harry is still a minor considered by wizard law (17 is the line) and always a minor when 18 is the line. Although I admit that like 95% of the plots I imagined included aging Harry up. I mentioned earlier that I was his age when I started shipping them, so it would appear unnecessary for me to feel better if I make him older. In fact I felt bad for the Character of Severus. In my mind I didn’t want him to commit a crime. Although I also had some plots where Harry definitely tried to push him, when he was still younger than 17. I also had some few stories about their life like 10 years later after the war and how Harry was now mature enough to see beyond his own bias, ect. I also had one when Harry went back in time in some “Back to the future” fashion and fell in love with a same age Severus.
2. Student/Teacher - Absolutely FOR IT
Very similar to the minor/adult theme but also it makes the ship a bit more problematic, because of the increased power imbalance. But I’m a total sucker for that dynamic. I had 3 crushes on my teachers, 2 while I was a teen and 1 when I was an adult and even if the canon material has nothing to do with student/teacher or mentor dynamic, I always love some AU with that shit.
3. Love-Hate - For it
They despise each other so much and yet I always think there is also a spark of other tension between them. This way or the other, strong feelings connect them. I’m not sure if you also say it in English like that, but in my language we say: Love and hate lie closer to each other than ignorance. Cause when you ignore someone you don’t waste your time, energy and thoughts on that person, but when you hate someone with a passion, you invest as much resources to think about them as when you love them.
4. Snape loved Harrys mother - Mostly despite it
The funny thing is here, I read that dynamic in a lot of fanfictions before the last book came out. It was a trope the shippers loved and used for both Lily or James and I was okay with it. It was a bit creepy, but tolerable. Until JK made it canon and it kind of destroyed Snarry a bit for me. Suddenly I felt less okay with that aspect. There is still a flair to the whole ‘I protected him because of her’ but my passion for Snarry dropped significantly after that revelation, since most of the newer fictions all included it. It feels like making that trope canon stole the diversity of how people ship them. That and of course Snape’s death.
5. Harry is also the son of Snapes biggest bully - For it
I think it’s some kind of irony when a character gets together with a relative of their biggest enemy. There is potential for struggle because he will be reminded of James but I love when someone writes it that Snape is finally able to see Harry as himself, as a distinct person and not just the son of James. Harry gets so often compared with his parents that I want him to grow out of it and others to see his growth.
6. Snape is one of main reasons for Harrys suffering - For it
The Slytherin potions master is not only bullying Harry openly during classes, he also seems to have a sixth sense for whenever Harry breaks the rules. He actively makes his life miserable although he rescues his ass many times. This would normally go into the love-hate relationship, but Snape is also the reason why Voldemort attacked the Potters in the first place. If he hadn’t overheard the prophecy and told the Dark Lord about it, Lily and James wouldn’t have died like that and Harry would never have been the boy who lived. We don’t know if both of them would have survived the war or not, but alone the possibility that Harry would have not grown up as a orphan who was taken in by the horrible family of his aunt. There lies an underneath guilt between Harry and Severus, something that can never be made up again. So I’m also a sucker for redemption arks and I love to read when the characters can acknowledge what damage was done, but can overcome it. In a way both of them are damaged mentally by their life and I want to imagine it all, the pain, the suffering, the dark thoughts that will be chased away by love and acceptance and the forgiveness. I want them both to slowly heal...
Finally I have to say that I now ship them for roughly 15 years and although my interest has died down (and sometimes flared up again for some time) it’s still one of my most loved ships I have. It helped me through one of my roughest times in life and it will always hold a place in my heart.
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Why TV Shows Make Decisions That Drive You Nuts
Hello all!
I’m Gillian, and I write alot. I storytell roleplaying games, both tabletop and LARP. I also write screenplays, do special effects, and work on film sets.
In this pseudo-rant, I’m going to try to explain why your favorite TV show’s writers do things that make you want to scream, tear out your hair, or rage-quit a series.
First, you need to understand a few things involved in writing screenplays, more specifically episodic television screenwriting.
It’s VERY different than writing a novel. A novel is under your COMPLETE control. You can write whatever you want that’s in your head. The characters will never do anything you don’t want them to do, they’re your little dancing puppets. You have however long you want to write, and you can have as many chapters as you want. You have no obligations, you’re not getting paid. Usually.
A TV script is a group effort. You are only partially in control, with a group of other writers, with input from the Producer, often the actors/actresses, network execs, and financial-dudes. You may not like the final decisions, but you grit your teeth and do your damned best because it’s your job and you want more work while simultaneously wanting to keep your work to a certain standard that you yourself can be proud of. A scene from your script will never be exactly what you pictured. This is because YOU are not the Director. They are the one in charge of bringing your vision to life in whatever way THEY choose. You have (in many networks) 23 episodes in which to tell 45-60 (roughly) page complete mini-stories, stringing together in a cohesive whole for a full story arc.
THIS IS FRIGGING DIFFICULT.
Books and fic can be for yourself as much as they can be for others.
TV episodes are for the audience. Execs want their shows to appeal to as many age and gender brackets as possible because then a show brings in more $$$$ through merchandising, licensing, commercial time, etc. This isn’t to say that Execs don’t love their shows, just that it’s as much a business as it is an art, and they frequently have to answer to shareholders, investors, etc (some of whom don’t have a creative bone in their body, some of whom are amazingly creative).
When writing an episodic series, you want the audience engaged, interested, invested in the characters, because then they’ll come back for more. Sometimes like masochists.
This is why they throw curve balls or do things to the characters that seems weird or enraging. Because we want a reaction. We want to kick you in the feels. We want you coming back to be angry at us. We want you coming back to love us. We want you coming back to wonder what the hell we were thinking.
But Gillian, you say, why would you want people to be pissed at you?
I could say it’s because haters make you famous, but the real answer is because it shows that you CARE about these characters, about that show. You don’t get pissed at something you don’t care about. The fact that a fandom can flip their crackers over something that happens on a TV show and spew millions of terabytes worth of internet rants about it means they are INVESTED in the show.
You still love the characters, you still love the show, though you may hate what they do, or you may hate the storylines. Some of you may hate it so much you rage-quit. That’s sad, but fine. Writers and showrunners have that delicate balance of keeping their base audience engaged (note- engaged doesn’t always mean happy), and try to attract new viewers.
It’s not easy. At all. I was once told the sign of a successful negotiation is that everyone leaves unhappy. I feel that applies to the balance of storytelling as well. You’re never going to please everyone. Ever.
AND THAT’S OKAY.
My tastes and yours are not the same. You hate Supergirl because it’s feminist overtones are too strong? That’s fine. I love it. I’ve dealt with that shit my whole life, as have many other women. It’s not like you’re obligated to watch it. You hate Olicity in Arrow? Well, I feel sorry for your terrible taste, but that’s okay, too.
As @stopandfangirl3 retweeted “"There’s a sense of: “I’m right, you’re wrong” rather than accepting the fact that people are coming from different places.“ @LynniePurcell”
Spew your hate, your adoration, your anger. Argue and rant and profess your love. A good writer will bathe in your rage and tears and giddy laughter and ask for more.
Why?
Because our goal is to entertain, to engage, to invoke emotion. Screenwriters livelihoods depend on it.
Now, keeping all that in mind, I still hate it at times. ;-)
However, my lessons from years as a tabletop and LARP game master/storyteller have made something VERY clear. The players do not see everything. They are not omniscient. They cannot predict what will happen, why it will happen, or when it will happen. And when they perceive something as being terrible, they will bitch a blue streak about how it’s unfair or bad without having any idea of what other plotlines are going on, the reasons behind the storyline, or even the fact that another player might be screwing them.
I feel the same is true for fandom audiences. We do not see everything. We do not know how these plotlines will end. We see something we don’t like and bitch til our lungs give out.
Specifically in regards to Arrow, I’m a diehard Olicity fan. Do I like what they’re doing here in the end of season 4 and beginning of season 5? Definitely not, but I haven’t seen the end of  the line yet, so making a decision now seems premature. Gotta keep on my big girl pants and be patient.
Anyway, the real question is, do I think the runners and writers are stupid enough to ignore completely the fact that their show and ‘ship is SO LOVED that they won the MTV Ship of the Year award for two of the three years the awards been running?
Nope. I think they’re sadists, not stupid. Happy happy sadists.
:-D
EDIT: I realized the above post may not clearly say how excited I am about season 5 of Arrow. I am, I totally am, and will happily continue to watch it as it stabs me in my feels, no matter how soap opera it gets! ;-)
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afigureofspeech · 7 years
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You were never in any danger: a Kastle rec post
Hey y’all. If you follow me already, you may not have realized that I’ve gained some fandoms recently since I’ve been too busy to do something as time-consuming as reblogging all the stuff I scroll past but yeah, I’ve currently got two other rec posts sitting patiently in my drafts, just waiting for me not to be destroyed by grad school. As you all may know though, The Punisher comes out today, so I really just couldn’t help myself.
I didn’t expect to be here. I get the sense that most people on this ship didn’t either? Cool, we’re all in this together. I haven’t even been here that long; I happened to see someone freaking out on my dash a few weeks ago about that part in the trailer where they’re on the floor and Frank touches Karen’s hair – you know the one – and, well, somehow I wound up rewatching all the Kastle scenes over and over and over… I was even planning on waiting until next week to binge the whole season, when I’m on break and recovering from minor surgery and all, but I’m way too hyped to wait so I’ll probably get to it this weekend instead.
In any case, this isn’t a full rec post cuz the series dropped and I just wanted to get it out. Please forgive the general messy and incompleteness, I’ll do an update later when I have the time. Now a full rec post! Tried to fit in as much as I could think of. Also, if anyone out there has some fics (or anything else) you want to rec, please do! Like I said I am new here and I haven’t had the chance to go through the whole AO3 tag (yet lol).
My other rec posts can be found here.
Hope you enjoy~
* = new
Update 12/19/17: So apparently there is a limit on how many links I can have in a post. In the interest of being able to add more fic, I have removed the extra sections for fanart, fanvids, etc. If you go to some of the kastle blogs I link to at the bottom though I am sure you can find plenty. Sorry about that!
→ FANFIC
alamorn
AKA Under Investigation AO3 Their first meeting after she told him he was dead to her doesn’t go exactly how he thought it would.
glove upon hand AO3 Frank Castle, metaphorically standing in his half dug grave, takes a literal hand to get out.  [Post-Punisher s1]
trouble in mind AO3 Frank didn’t like to ask for things. That wasn’t a surprise — she knew that about him before she knew almost anything else. That Frank Castle, he’s a monster, he’s a machine, he doesn’t know how to ask for help. It’s lucky for him that Karen has never waited to be asked. [Warning: explicit sexual content, femdom, pegging]
alchemistc 
after AO3 | Tumblr He presses his lips into her hair and breathes deep, chest expanding against her side, arm curled around her, and Karen thinks - Do we deserve this? [Punisher speculation]
can’t no preacher man AO3 | Tumblr She breathes a sigh of relief when she catches sight of the shape of her late night visitor, and then stifles a snort at herself. Only Karen Page would find the sight of Frank Castle relieving.  [Part 2 of the devil’s backbone series] 
hangman’s knot and three mouths to feed AO3 | Tumblr “Was in the neighborhood. Thought I’d drop in. ”She kinda wants to punch him in his stupid face, but she knows it wouldn’t help. It wouldn’t even land, unless he wanted it to. Besides, it’s not like she could make the bruises littering his skin any worse than they already are. Frank Castle, Walking Bruise. Somehow, it just doesn’t have the same ring to it as The Punisher. [Part 1 of the devil’s backbone series]
walk together with our hands up in the sky AO3 | Tumblr Frank and Karen in the aftermath.  [Post-Punisher s1]
you bear the scars AO3 | Tumblr “Men.” “Tell me about it,” Trish says, her voice somehow managing to convey both too-chipper energy and exasperation of the highest level. “I don’t know how much I can, actually.” Trish grins, tipping the plastic bottle in Karen’s direction. “The Punisher has taken you on as a pet project, you spend your days building up more enemies than even Jessica can manage on a bad day, and you’re totally attracted to a vigilante who prowls the streets at night killing people. Does that pretty much cover it?” “How did you - I am not - there is nothing going on between me and Frank!” [Part 3 of the devil’s backbone series] 
angel_deux
AKA Puzzle Pieces AO3 Jessica Jones is not an easy friend to have. And Karen’s not even really sure if she can call her a friend. But Jessica is a good person to have in your corner in a crisis, which is good, because one of Frank’s enemies makes a sudden reappearance.  [Part 2 of The Sinner and the Saint series] 
Between the Sinners and the Saints AO3 A new villain with killer aim nearly takes Frank out, and he makes the call to go to Karen for help. Karen, who hasn’t seen him in months, who has been wishing she could take back those words she said to him in the woods. She never thought she’d get the chance to repair what they both broke that night, so once he’s back in her life, she’s not going to let him disappear again so easily.  [Part 1 of The Sinner and the Saint series]
Tough Girl is What I Had to Be AO3 Lisa Castle survives the incident in Central Park, and Karen Page wants to take care of her. Set in an AU where Lisa survived but Frank had no knowledge of it until after the events of Season 2.  [Lisa lives AU; you didn’t know you wanted this but I’m here to tell you that you absolutely do]
carrythesky 
i started all the wars AO3 | Tumblr  (Turns out fighting’s easy, once you start. The problem is that he’s never learned how to stop.)  [Punisher speculation, all the angst]
It’s still heavy Tumblr  [Karen Page grows up pretending. She escapes to the broom closet downstairs, curls into the dark space and when she closes her eyes she’s an astronaut, a deep-sea explorer, a knight scaling tall towers to rescue damsels in distress.]
things you said in the dark Tumblr  [Sometimes, late at night when her eyes itch with exhaustion and the words on her screen become a jumbled blur, sometimes, she thinks of home. The most recent memories are transparent as glass but her childhood is a series of fragments, fuzzy at the edges - rain on the breeze, gingersnap crumbs, Kevin laughing over his shoulder and running ahead, always just ahead - And this, plucked from the haze: Penelope Page hunched over the kitchen table in the middle of the night, crying.]
untitled Tumblr  [q: what scares you? a: you have your good arm around her torso, barrel shoved up under her chin and the magazine is an arm’s length away but you’re still careful, careful. she is steel beneath you and that’s when it hits, that’s when you picture your twitchy finger slipping and a bullet going straight through her skull, in and out before you can blink. the elevator door slides shut and you can’t pull away fast enough. (you are the most dangerous thing her hands have touched.)] [How to pack a punch in 500 words or less holy sHIT]
edourado 
Bodies make it perfect AO3 | Tumblr Drunk Karen is a test to Frank's will power  [Companion piece/sequel to Second Night; warning: explicit sexual content]
Boss AO3 | Tumblr Tumblr prompt: "I need you to scream for me. You're Karen Page he's the Punisher, he will come for you." in which Karen hurt and taken by a villain and Frank is enraged."  [Established relationship; warning: explicit sexual content]
But you’re the truth AO3 | Tumblr Tumblr prompt: Frank patches Karen up after she's hurt because of a job and goes after the people who harmed her. Romantic-ish Special appearence: Max, the Pitbull [Companion piece/prequel to For I can’t help falling]
For I can’t help falling AO3 | Tumblr Tumblr prompt: After Frank leaves his hesitation aside, he gets skin hungy   [Companion piece/sequel to But you’re the truth] 
Have you seen my best friend? AO3 | Tumblr Karen finds a dinosaur toy in the subway.  [Everybody lives AU, feat. an adorable Lisa; warning: explicit sexual content]
Hungry AO3 | Tumblr She fought it. With everything she had, she fought it. Karen can only fight for so long.  [Companion piece/sequel to Never Had; warning: explicit sexual content]
Karen AO3 | Tumblr Prompt: someone hurts Karen and Frank hunts them down. As he is at it, he realizes his feelings for her  [Warning: off-screen attempted rape]
Never Had AO3 | Tumblr How can you mourn the loss of something - someone - that was never truly yours?  [Angsty Matt POV, one-sided Karedevil; companion piece/prequel to Hungry]
Not Pete AO3 | Tumblr * She doesn't like the new name  [Post-Punisher s1; warning: sexual content]
Ordinary People AO3 | Tumblr (Part 1, Part 2, Deleted Scenes) Prompt: Best friends who are the Old Married Couple but fail to notice they're falling in love until is too late.  [AU]
Pour AO3 | Tumblr * She pulled his boots off him before they finished the first glass. They now sat under the couch, forgotten.  [Warning: sexual content]
Second Night AO3 | Tumblr Tumblr prompt: Frank shows up drunk at Karen's door, and she's on edge, because she has dated a few unpleasant-when-drunk men.  [Companion piece/prequel to Bodies make it perfect]
What do you want AO3 | Tumblr Tumblr promt: Karen accidentaly discovers Frank has a hair pulling kink. She sees an opportunity, she seizes it.  [Established relationship; warning: explicit sexual content]
Ejunkiet 
dilaudid AO3 This isn’t the first time Frank has shown up on her doorstep in the early hours of the morning, but this is the first time that he’d been extended an invitation. 
feel it still AO3 | Tumblr (Part 1, Part 2) w/ evil bunny wolf (evil_bunny_king)  Karen’s legs are unsteady as she makes her way to the bathroom to knock on the door, fingers curling against the wood as she hears the water stop, before Frank’s voice croaks through the door. “What is it?” She has to swallow twice before she can get the words out. “Someone knows you’re here.” [Post-Defenders; WIP]
(in our bedroom) after the war AO3 When Karen had received the invitation from WNEX station to speak on Trish Talk, the most popular radio talk show in the city, her first instinct had been to say no. – “With all due respect ma’am, that’s bullshit. Most people, see, wouldn’t be so easy to let the other things” – murder and brutality, bodies littering the floor of the diner and blood on her hands and face – "go. They don’t seek to understand them. They get one good look, and get the hell away.”
meet me in the woods AO3 * Frank doesn’t wait for them to break the lock – he kicks the door open and slams into the first body he makes contact with behind it, lashing out in a blur of kicks and punches. The intruder falls back, face bloody, and then Frank’s gone, and Karen is left alone, crouched beneath her bed like a five year old hiding from the monsters in her closet, except that she’s no longer a child, and now she has a gun. -- Frank turns up on her doorstep on a Tuesday night and stays until Friday. [Part 1 of the corvidae & whiskey series]
elizma_c*
Flight from the City AO3 | Tumblr What are you doing, Karen? she thinks. He might not even be here. Would he even want to see her? What if – The door beside her suddenly swings open. Of course he senses her right away, even as she’s sort of hidden behind the door. He actually puts a hand to his lower back, and she realizes he’s carrying. Of course. “Jesus Christ,” he mumbles, but there’s surprise in his tone. “Karen.” Even with the questionably overloaded vital signs her body is displaying, she gets the sickest sense of pleasure that she’s gotten the jump on Frank Castle.
What You Know AO3 | Tumblr “When reality feels like its slipping away, hold on to those things that you know are true. You have to focus on what you know.” What did Karen know? Karen knows that she likes to read on the subway. She likes wearing heels that click on the sidewalk. Karen hates exercising but is apparently not a fan of therapy, so she goes running on Saturday mornings. She keeps a .380 in her purse and a pot of dying roses in her window. She has a track record for falling in love with the wrong people. She is fine. She repeats the list in her head each morning when she wakes up, until her hands stop shaking and the knots in her stomach go away.
evil bunny wolf (evil_bunny_king) / devilbunnyking
author our own disasters AO3 | Tumblr Frank Castle’s flesh is a litany to disaster. – Karen and Frank meet again for the first time since that final showdown on the rooftop. It doesn’t go as planned. [Part 2 of the you make me feel so criminal series] 
feel it still AO3 | Tumblr (Part 1, Part 2) w/ Ejunkiet  Karen’s legs are unsteady as she makes her way to the bathroom to knock on the door, fingers curling against the wood as she hears the water stop, before Frank’s voice croaks through the door. "What is it?” She has to swallow twice before she can get the words out. “Someone knows you’re here.” [Post-Defenders; WIP]
Graves AO3 Frank Castle - had cared. He’d broken himself caring; he’d loved with a heart she’d only glimpsed beneath his darkness, broken and bleeding as it was. She refused to believe that that man could be gone. [Part 1 of the you make me feel so criminal series]
Pacific Swells AO3 | Tumblr It’s not morbid curiosity. She’d be easier to scare away, if it were – he could play the part, flog away another shred of his humanity to dangle before her and ask ‘is this what you wanted? This what you wanted to see?’  [WIP; part 3 of the you make me feel so criminal series]
Perihelion AO3 | Tumblr (Part 1) “I’ve had, I’ve had a hell of a week, but that, I think, might’ve been part of the worst of it.” She clears her throat, and then again, drawing her knees in. Her eyes shine a little in the lamplight. “Yeah. I was scared too. For you.” -- Frank visits Karen, after. [Post-Punisher s1]
Touch AO3 | Tumblr  “Why are you here?” he settles on, instead. Her hand moves to the marks on his neck, thumb grazing his adam’s apple. “Because I made a choice. And now I’m making another.” [Part 4 of the you make me feel so criminal series] 
The Twist AO3 | Tumblr Frank finds Karen trussed up in the back of a van in Queens.  [Kidnapping, protective!Frank]
glycerineclown* 
glutton for punishment AO3 | Tumblr If she wants it, it's not a punishment.  [Warning: explicit sexual content] 
Operation Spot AO3 | Tumblr (Part 1, Part 2) A stocky grey pit bull peeks out from the mouth of the first alley that Karen passes. It's Frank, but she doesn't know it yet. [Shapeshifter AU]
Ordinary Citizens AO3 | Tumblr Rawlins’ fist had really done a number on Frank, and he has to get some teeth pulled a few days later. Karen takes him home, after, for rest and mothering. He stays longer than he has to—long enough to figure a few things out.  [Warning: explicit sexual content]
idekman / hipsterfrankcastle
around the world my body will roam (my soul’s in new york) AO3 | Tumblr She gets two blankets, one for each of them, and sits out there with him until the sun rises. Frank moves into Karen’s apartment. She dreams. [Punisher speculation]
my girl is tall with hard long eyes AO3 | Tumblr  He returns the book the next day. She’s asleep, curled up on her sofa, the window shut. She looks so small like this, fragile and vulnerable and not at all like the electric force of nature she is in waking. 
this is all I ever was AO3 | Tumblr  'I always thought you liked tulips.' Karen takes the pot of roses from him, places it gingerly back on the windowsill. He listens to her fiddle with it, twist it this way and that – finding the best spot for it in the sun, he realises. 'Maybe. Before.' - prompt: kastle through matt's eyes  [Post-Punisher s1]
jazzonia 
come upstairs but not to talk AO3 Frank comes to her straight from the firefight.  [Warning: explicit sexual content; part 1 of the we’re always alright series]
don’t care about your intentions AO3 Karen’s world is upended when Matt reveals his identity to her. Frank helps her right it again.  [Warning: explicit sexual content; part 2 of the we’re always alright series]
LaMorenaReina 
Ascendancy AO3  Karen Page's relationship with control becomes all the more tenuous as she explores a singular and inconclusive friendship with Frank Castle, wages her own war against Wilson Fisk, and has to start answering some unwanted questions about her past that lead to new conclusions about her identity. 
Re-Entry AO3 Frank shows up again and causes trouble because he’s Frank. Karen goes along with it because, well, she’s Karen. They have adult conversations because, honestly, they should.  [Punisher speculation]  
PurpleLex / shipsabound
bloodsport AO3 | Tumblr (Part 1, Part 2) two-part tumblr prompt: "A baddie is threatening/hurting Karen in front of a tied up Frank. And he’s raging?” [Protective!Frank, h/c; warning: mature content, description of torture/violence]
during the dark and storming nights AO3 | Tumblr Frank POV retelling of “the space between dreams and reality”  The concrete columns echo again with the second gunshot and he stands there for a minute on shaky feet, disgust and satisfaction twisting and warring against each other within his gut. The satisfaction doesn’t last long, yanked from him harshly when he climbs back into his truck and hears the radio abuzz over a shooting at the tenement building on 47th. Two women sustain injuries — one Sophia Rossum, and one Karen Page. He forgets to breathe for a long minute. [Part 3 of the Dreams & Lasts series] 
fourteen weeks AO3 | Tumblr tumblr prompt: “something where Frank has a dog and because said dog has pretty much adopted Karen as his second owner, Karen often times takes care of the dog when he’s away/busier than usual. And it doesn’t take long for someone to start putting two and two together about who the dogs main owner is." 
leaving is my last option AO3 | Tumblr Kastle Week Prompt: Lasts Frank rakes his gaze over her entire form, like he’s trying to decipher her. She shifts. He has a way of making her feel like every inch of her soul is being seen, and it’s as much something she longs for as something she’s insecure about. “Sooner or later, you’re going to burn out,” he says, tone flat. “How are you going to take care of yourself then? Defend yourself?” A bitter smile curves her lips. “I could say the same thing about you.” [Part 2 of the Dreams & Lasts series] 
meet me in the woods AO3 | Tumblr tumblr prompt: "I would DIE if you wrote a couple of scenes where Karen army trains with Frank. I could TOTALLY see Frank being like, "You can’t get involved in the extra dangerous stuff unless you at least let me train you.” Imagine them running in the mornings??? Karen getting into crazy shape and the tension between them intensifying???“ 
shine a light through the distance AO3 | Tumblr “You sure about that?” He asks, incredulous, but she doesn’t give an inch. “You help me, you’ll only get blood on your hands.” “I already have blood on my hands.” She almost had his on hers half a year ago by force of a bullet. He put his blood on her hands just a month ago by force of a plea. “Doesn’t mean you need any more,” is all he says before opening the door. [Part 4 of the Dreams & Lasts series] 
the space between dreams and reality AO3 | Tumblr Kastle Week Prompt: Dreams He stands in her apartment, by the door, but it is closed this time, and no bullets are coming through her windows. Her gun is in her hand, though, gripped loose from where it hangs at her side. “Why?” She asks. It’s a whisper of a loaded question. He doesn’t respond, just stares at her, gaze too unreadable. Karen wakes with a frustrated sigh. [Part 1 of the Dreams & Lasts series]
untitled Tumblr  [Can you do a prompt where Micro yells at Karen and Frank gets the in his face. I literally be for protective!Frank 😂💕] [Punisher speculation]
PunkyNemo / thevampirecat
As days go by, the night’s on fire AO3 | Tumblr She’s lost him, she’s found him and she’s lost him again. And now he’s standing on her fire escape, holding out his hand and looking at her like she’s the only thing on Earth worth seeing.  [Canon-divergent AU; part 2 of the Ballads for a dead man series]
Be my saviour and I’ll be your downfall AO3 | Tumblr (Part 1) Once upon a time she derided herself for imagining they were a done deal on a collision course straight to her bedroom. But that’s all over now and he’s gone, hasn’t been back since he walked off her roof and disappeared into the night air. It’s not all bad though. She has friends, she has work and tonight she even has cause to celebrate. It is, after all, her birthday and there’s a chance the universe will be kind. It’s just a chance though. And not a very good one.  [Canon-divergent AU; warning: explicit sexual content; part 3 of the Ballads for a dead man series; WIP]
The bullet you never saw coming AO3 | FFN | Tumblr (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) There are days that he wonders if he’s the worst man on Earth. And then there are the days that he doesn’t need to wonder. But, worst man or not, she’s here, sitting on his couch and crying like the world is ending. And he has no idea how to feel about that. Except he does. He really does. [Canon-divergent AU; warning: explicit sexual content]
Can you wait while the world circles the sun? AO3  It’s hard when you can’t take her out - when you’re The Punisher and the world can’t know she’s your girl. But he can make it up to her, make it right … even if he’s not really sure what it is that he’s wanting.  [Warning: implied sexual content]
Could you crawl out of your perfect skin and climb into mine? AO3 | Tumblr * It's just a hug, so why does it feel like it's so much more?  [Frank POV, The Hug]
Love me back to life AO3 | FFN | Tumblr (Part 1, Part 2) He can keep her safe. It’s the one thing he knows how to do, the only thing he can truly give her. So why does it feel like it’s not enough?
You’re a ghost town (and maybe I’m a ghost) AO3 | FFN | Tumblr Safe up in the mountains with Frank following a bloody showdown in Hell’s Kitchen, Karen wonders just how much more complicated things between them can get. She’s about to find out.  [Canon-divergent AU; part 1 of the Ballads for a dead man series; I cry about this series in the best way, it’s long and plotty and UST-y and so so great]
queensofthekastle / StellarRequiem & homesickblues 
For Whom There are No Words AO3 | Tumblr (Part 1) Originally inspired by the prompt “Frank protecting Karen after Fisk finds out she killed Wesley.” A dialogue-driven slow burn exploring their relationship through conversation, spaghetti dates, two incidents involving vodka, and a whole lot of back and forth between who Frank is, and what Frank does.  [Canon-divergent AU; protective!Frank, slow-burn]
Nowhere to Go but Everywhere AO3 * Karen has some emotional recovery to do, Frank is still working on "after," and all along the east-west interstate, someone has been abducting children and wiping all record of the disappearances. ** The roadtrip fic has arrived [Roadtrip AU; fake married, sharing a bed]
untitled Tumblr [based on the new trailer (which shook us to the core tbh)] [Punisher speculation]
untitled Tumblr [Kastle+forced to share a bed (best trope ever)]
untitled Tumblr [kastle prompt fill: “matt and frank having a conversation about karen”] [Canon-divergent AU]
untitled Tumblr [OOOH! What about holding their unconscious body WHILST sobbing into their shoulder/chest ] [Punisher speculation]
samssalvation / jonbernhthal 
one day Tumblr prompt: between the explosion and the elevator 
weak knees AO3 | Tumblr  prompt: karen tripping and falling into frank's arms
SecondFromTheRight 
All We Do Is Hide Away AO3  But when she opened the door to him that night with a “Frank”, her lip trembling as she stared at him – her eyes were already red from crying and she looked tired – he wondered how much that mattered. He knew what Karen Page looked like crying and breathing – or yelling – his name, he knew what she looked like with blood on her, but he didn’t know who Ben Urich was to her. He kind of hated himself for that. And for a man used to self-contempt, this dose noticeably burned.  [Post-Punisher s1]
The Sounds She Makes AO3 * Now, now that he’s had her, had this. Something good and something he feels part of it. Now that he’s remembered life and something he’s terrified could be love - he can go out with Karen on his lips, in his lungs, with her saying his name in his ear. He can go out swaying in this elevator with her, her forehead against his. The elevator scene goes a little differently (they have sex) [Warning: explicit sexual content]
watermelonp00fs 
shooting stars in a jar AO3 * Frank doesn’t visit Karen, after. Not really. But the flowers are there by her window — everyday, for weeks, months — until one day they aren’t. She’s stopped going to the river for a while now, too. Not that he blames her for it. Cut the threads loose, toss the baggage she’s carried all this time into the goddamn ocean — He’s alright with it, all of it. Then, one evening she goes home with a man he’s never laid eyes on, carefree laughs and cheeky smiles — and Frank should be, must be alright with this because God knows she deserves happiness that he cannot interfere with — Except he isn’t.
the world on its axis AO3  Inhale. Exhale. “I’m scared, Karen.” Rough. Guttural. He hated how weak he sounded. “I’m gonna forget her voice.” His shoulders sagged from the weight of his guilt. Frank Castle — the man who took a woman to bed and cried to that woman about his dead wife. What a joke. What a fucking joke. A low hum sounded in the back of Karen’s throat as she stroked the line of his back, gentle and understanding and oh he did not deserve her — “I know,” she murmured and kissed his shoulder. “I know.” Inhale. Exhale. [Part 2 of the like diamonds in the sky series]
Wynn / astreetcarnamedwynn
One Worth Knowing AO3 | FFN | Tumblr The message arrives in an innocuous envelope, a plain white one marked only with her name and the address of The Bulletin, the two scrawled on the front in thick black ink. Karen doesn’t even have to open it to know it’s from him, from Frank, though almost eight months have passed since she last saw him.  [UST; warning: adult content; part 1 of the One Worth series]
One Worth Trusting AO3 | Tumblr  Frank presses the first speed dial and, a couple seconds later, her phone rings in her purse. Karen doesn’t bother asking how he knew her number. She just stares at him instead, caught between irritation at his actions and understanding for the impulse behind them. And if that didn’t sum up her feelings for Frank Castle, the man a murderer but one she understood. The man in question watches her, his brow furrowed but his jaw set, Frank willing to throw down over this, his efforts to keep her safe.Sighing again, Karen points to the kitchenette behind him. “If you’re so willing to do things for me, why don’t you pour me a drink? I’m going to get changed.”His face softens, nearly into a smile. “Yes, ma’am.” A continuation of "One Worth Knowing." Frank accepts Karen's invitation to come by her apartment for a drink. All goes well until it doesn't, until truths are revealed and revelations made. [UST, kisses, & angst; part 2 of the One Worth series]
Yggdra / favrielle
Bluest Skies Of Mourning Light AO3 It’s Karen’s birthday. The Punisher is caught unaware by his own legacy.  [Fluff]
On Hallowed Ground I Stay AO3 He never says "I love you”, but whispers every word of it in all the spaces Karen Page leaves for him in her life.  [Fluff]
Paint Your Demons Red AO3 | Tumblr Frank Castle tries to keep Karen Page at arm’s length and out of danger. (Really, he does.) She has other ideas about what safety means. [Post-Defenders]
She Who Believeth In Me AO3 Her brightness touches everything he lays eyes on. And he can’t shake her no matter how hard he tries. [Part 1 of the all the devils series]
untitled Tumblr  [kastle prompt: after the explosion scene, frank takes karen back to his and micro’s hideout. possibly a shower scene (doesn’t have to be sexual) where frank is comforting karen because she took another life while looking out for frank as they were making their escape.] [Punisher speculation]
untitled Tumblr  [plllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllssssssssssss write a fic where Karen and Frank go back to his hideout to patch each other up after the explosion scenes 😙] [Punisher speculation]
Misc.
Been with the Devil in the Devil’s Resting Place AO3 by Amazing_E_ko  The development of Karen and Frank’s relationship from Matt’s perspective, as his own life goes slowly downhill.  [POV Matt, not exactly kind to him but in a fun, vindictive sort of way if you’re into that lol]
Heaven Sent the Saints Down (Hell Sent Them Up) AO3 | Tumblr (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4) by Ambrosia  But no, yes, the Punisher. In her apartment. Staring at her with an unfazed expression on his face. Even from the doorway, she can see the white skull painted on his chest-piece. And this is somehow so normal for her, at this stage of her life, that she honestly takes one look at Frank, at the bruises on his face, at all his gear spread around her apartment, and says, “Okay. It’s 11:07. I haven’t eaten yet. I’m going to order some dim sum from the corner and you are not going to get any of that gun oil on my bed.”
It is So Quite New a Thing AO3 by an_ardent_rain  He realizes, as he is about to order, that there is one other thing he has besides his grief and his anger and his never-ending war. That there is something that helps him remember, that reminds him who he used to be. He orders a second cup to go and writes “Page” in blocky letters on the side.  [WIP]
don’t fade away AO3 by consultingpathologist* As she unlatches the window to bring the flowers inside, she realizes the yellow is from a piece of paper wedged in between the stems.  [Episode tag]
When you drown, I'll drown AO3 by ebethjanna* His voice is gruff, "Not gonna point a loaded gun at you, Karen." (Two missing moments from 1x10.)
Better Natures AO3 by etirabys “Work with me here, Frank,” Karen snapped. “Make some sense here. Talk to me. We can’t figure out what our next move is until you explain why you’re so disgusted at the thought of my being attracted to you — an attraction which, by the way, I’ve never let interfere with our work or our friendship —“ “I’m not disgusted,” Frank said in a strained, calm voice. “You have ghastly taste, but I’m not disgusted. No. It’s just the feeling of having carried a torch for miles and miles in the dark and… having the sun come up.” [Zombie AU with a side of Fake Married feat. HellaBadass!Karen; warning: explicit sexual content of the dom/sub variety; this fic is everything to me READ IT]
loss like the sharp edges of a knife Tumblr (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5) by fandammit* [The stillness of after is suffocating.] [Frank POV, post-Punisher; one of my current favorite fics]
moth and flame AO3 | Tumblr by freedomatsea  Liquid courage and exhaustion lead Frank to reach out to Karen after months of keeping away from her. Set post-finale about 6-8 months. Frank’s POV.  [Warning: explicit sexual content]
The Fall AO3 by ghoulsngunz  “I need a favor.” A favor? Karen crossed her arms over her chest. She had to be dreaming. There was no way that after three months of silence the Punisher would be standing in her kitchen asking for a favor. “What kind of favor?” Frank rubbed his temples. “I need you to help me find my dog.” [WIP]
Elevator Songs AO3 | Tumblr by Inaccessible Rail (strangetales)  A series of drabbles or shorter works that I've posted on Tumblr about my two trauma buds in probable love.  [WIP]
But I Wish It Was True AO3 by Ideal_Flower* The first time it happened, he was hit with white hot shame. But there was no bullet, no gunshot, no shattering of golden hair and spray of brain and blood and guilt on the wall, on the side of his face. Just her mouth on him, his hand on her, his fingers tangled through the cornsilk strands at the nape of her neck.  [Warning: explicit sexual content]
United We Purge AO3 | Tumblr by Jenye "Just remember all the good the purge does.” – Evil runs Hell’s Kitchen, but one night out of the year that evil is legal.  [Purge AU]
Come For You AO3 by larkingstock* Pretty much what the tags say. (I'm so sorry. I wanted it, I wrote it, and if I can figure out the rest I'm probably going to write that too.) (Also so so sorry for the title.) [Sex pollen fic; warning: explicit sexual content, WIP; honestly I am enjoying this fic so fucking much]
You Carry My Heart On Your Sleeve AO3 by Morrigan2345  The first thought that comes to mind when her door opens and she’s standing in front of him in what could only be the tightest black dress he’s ever seen is that she looks good. Really good. The second thought is that he shouldn’t have thought that. The third thought is that he couldn’t give less of a shit. [Warning: explicit sexual content]
the root of the root and the bud of the bud AO3 by nagia* There's a new drug in town, a warehouse full of dead shitbags (and newly empty of a strange, tropical-looking flower), and Karen Page has the kind of connections that might help him figure out what this shit is.  [Sex pollen fic; warning: explicit sexual content]
ain’t nothing but a monster AO3 by nighimpossible “Is this okay?” she asks, the question just a murmur in the dark.  “You’re already close enough to hurt me,” Frank says finally, after chewing on the thought for a long moment. “So hurt me.” [Warning: mature content]
hail, holy queen AO3 by peppermintcas  He kisses her and it’s like setting a building on fire: he knows it’s a bad idea, intellectually, but everything in him is pushing him to do it.  [Warning: explicit sexual content]
Strays AO3 by Ruby_Wren* Frank finds out what happened to his dog. 
The End of the Line AO3 by ruebellab  They say there’s a ghost - that he’s a dead man, but Miss Karen’s seen enough to know one thing. Dead men don’t feel, they don’t hurt, they don’t care - so if there’s a man out there, she knows he ain’t a ghost, he’s broken maybe but he’s not dead. [Western AU; WIP]
Fall On Your Knees AO3 by saltandbyrne* She keeps the flowers in her window for three days.  [Warning: explicit sexual content]
windowsill AO3 by shuofthewind  Eight weeks, three days. She's going to punch him in his fucking nose. The fic that fixes the lack of Karen at the end of The Punisher. [Post-Punisher s1; UST]
Of Gods and Monsters AO3 | Tumblr by silbecoo Frank is the God of the Underworld, quietly ushering honorable souls to the Elysian Fields while ensuring the evil ones start their time in Tartarus as soon as possible. He doesn’t want or need anyone to care about, until one day the beautiful Daughter of Demeter needs him. He can’t ignore his fate, and neither can she.  [Yup it’s the Hades&Persephone AU you were waiting for; WIP]
A Hard Rain AO3 by smolhombre* When he starts over this time, Frank tries to mean it. An after; for people who don't believe in them. [Warning: explicit sexual content; WIP]
the floodgates need repair AO3 by stainofmylove* Karen struggles to put the pieces back together again. Post “I’m already dead,” basically. 
moving on AO3 by thecoolestfreak* “I’m going to break the truth over Fisk’s head, sure. But I need the backup to do it. Capable parties.” She said it as she’d rehearsed it in her head, and she winced at how unsympathetic it sounded out loud. “Y’need canon fodder, that it?” he said, and she almost spit out the wine she’d nervously poured in her mouth. “God, no! Frank, that’s not— I’m—" He laughed, a small chuckle, but a laugh, and if he were here she would punch him in the arm.“I’ll do it, Karen. Where and when do you need me?” post the punisher s1 & the defenders s1 - the gang fights fisk, but its basically a kastle fic
elevator AO3 by thefudge 1x10. The elevator scene, but with a much needed addition. 
but shrapnel is shrapnel AO3 by theworthofhollin  It starts like this: Karen gets a dog.  [WIP]
to arm your fears like soldiers and slay them AO3 | FFN | Tumblr by viansian  Karen had gotten over the whole “soulmates” hype when she was thirteen years old, and she didn’t plan on getting swept up in that shitstorm again anytime soon. aka the soulmate fic you knew was coming. [Soulmates AU]
Sentimentality AO3 by writesometimes* She stood in front of the windows and scanned the darkening New York skyline. The dark concrete, steel and glass of tall buildings blending with the inky indigo sky. There was no way she'd spot him if he was out there somewhere, but Karen knew. Frank was alive. 
Ain’t about what I like AO3 | Tumblr by zombieboyband Before the diner, after the gunfire. City nights, late drives, looking for coffee with Frank. Karen is too tired for easy questions. “Pardon, ma'am?” He sounds so goddamn polite it’s incredible. “The meat hooks. The part where you killed people and put them on meat hooks.” [Missing scene]
→OTHER  
On tumblr: kastlelibrary, kastlenetwork, kastlesource, queensofthekastle, thecrimescenejunkie
People with good Kastle tags: afigureofspeech, carry-the-sky, frankcastle, hipsterfrankcastle, likcoln, mazikeene, shipsabound, theworthofhollin
On AO3: the Frank Castle/Karen Page tag
Updated 12/19/17
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broomballkraken · 4 years
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Title: Far From the Tree
Fandom: Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Pairing(s): Sylvain/Lorenz
Word count: 2852
Warnings: N/A
Summary: Lorenz knew that semi-frequent Roundtable meetings were necessary to make sure things were running smoothly in Fódlan, but he sometimes wished that they were a little less...dull. Well, thanks to the antics of his most mischievous child, this meeting in particular would definitely be one to remember.Written for Lorenz Week 2020 Day 2, Prompt: Iris
Lorenz had been fully prepared to take up the mantle of governing the County of Gloucester after his father retired, and it flourished impressively under his rule. Luckily, he did not have to carry the full weight of governance himself, as his husband had been raised to someday inherit a noble house as well and knew the ins and outs of politics. Sylvain had been the best life partner that Lorenz could have ever asked for, both as a joint ruler of Gloucester territory and as a parent to their many adopted children.
Roundtable meetings were currently taking place at the Gloucester-Gautier estate, and Sylvain was off in talks with the former Kingdom lords. Lorenz, meanwhile, was discussing the various issues in southern Fódlan with the heads of the noble families of the former Alliance. It was turning out to be rather uneventful, and Lorenz couldn’t help but wish that these meetings would be a little less...dull at times.
“Well, I for one do not see how this will benefit my territory at all.”
Lorenz bit his tongue to stifle a groan as the most aggravating man he had ever met spoke up from across the table. Acheron was causing discourse...surprise, surprise. Lorenz stole a glance to his left, where Holst was not hiding his displeasure at all, judging from the glower that he was sending Acheron’s way. Next to him sat Marianne, who had a pleasant smile on her face, but Lorenz noticed that she was biting her lower lip slightly, telling him that she also was also getting tired of Acheron’s shit.
“Please, do say your piece, Acheron...quickly,” Holst said, muttering the last word under his breath, and Lorenz cleared his throat to prevent himself from chuckling. Acheron let out an arrogant huff as he stood from his chair, and made to move behind it.
“Well, I must say that-ack!” Acheron yelped as he suddenly fell face-first to the floor, and Lorenz’s eyes widened with shock.
“W-What is the meaning of this?” Acheron said from his spot on the floor, but from his seated position, Lorenz couldn’t see what he meant by that. Holst burst out laughing beside him and shook his head.
“What’s wrong, Acheron? Your poor arguments have you stumbling before you can even vocalize them?” Lorenz would have chuckled at Holst’s jab, but the high-pitched shriek that suddenly came from under the table made his blood run cold with panic, and he made a desperate effort to get to the other side of the table as quickly as possible.
Acheron growled as he reached under the table and pulled out a familiar face at the Roundtable meetings: Iris, the troublemaker of the Gloucester-Gautier children. He had a vice-grip on her arm, and she struggled violently against his hold.
“Let go!” she yelled, and promptly bit down on his hand, causing Acheron to let out another yelp as he jerked his arm away. Iris was knocked to the floor in the process, and Acheron loomed over her as he seethed with anger.
“You little brat! How dare you humiliate me! Someone ought to teach you some manners,” Acheron hissed, and he brought a hand up over the wide-eyed child, prompting Holst and Marianne to shoot up from their seats.
However, they missed their chance to intervene, because before Acheron could bring his hand down, Lorenz had moved in front of Iris, pulling her behind him as he intercepted Acheron’s wrist. Acheron scowled at the girl before turning his gaze to Lorenz, and the absolutely venomous glare that he was met with caused the lesser noble’s face to go deathly pale.
Lorenz continued to stare icily at Acheron, his vehement anger threatening to boil over as he started shaking slightly. “If you lay even one finger on her, or any of my other children,” Lorenz finally managed to say, his voice dropping low as he tightened his grip on Acheron’s wrist, “I will send you out of this estate in so many pieces that no one will be able to identify who they belong to.”
“Are you threatening me, Lorenz?” Acheron sneered. His eyes widened with shock when Lorenz let go of his wrist and grabbed his collar instead, yanking Acheron close so that Lorenz’s piercing, enraged gaze bore deep into his eyes.
“Yes, you degenerate, contemptible bastard.”
“How dare you-”
“Hey, cool it!” Holst suddenly appeared behind Acheron and dragged him back by his arms. Marianne had moved to stand in front of Lorenz, and she had to place her hands on his shoulders to keep him from pursuing the target of his unbridled rage.
“Lorenz,” she said, her eyes flicking from his down to Iris, who was clinging to her father’s leg and sticking her tongue out at Acheron, “Let it go, please.” Lorenz closed his eyes and took in a deep breath, letting it out slowly.
“Very well,” he said, glaring at Acheron one last time before bending over to gather Iris into his arms.
“Er, why don’t we take a break? We can resume in an hour or two, yeah?” Holst suggested. A murmur of agreement passed through the room, and everyone slowly emptied out, with a still-seething Acheron storming out the door first.
Lorenz sighed as he looked at Iris, who was blowing raspberries at Acheron’s back as he left the room. “Iris...stop that.”
“But Father, he-”
“Thank you Marianne, Holst.” Lorenz interrupted Iris, who huffed in annoyance, but kept quiet. Marianne smiled and Holst barked out a laugh.
“Oh, it was nothing! It’s about time something exciting actually happened in these boring-ass meetings,” Holst said, as he headed for the door, ruffling Iris’ hair as he passed, “See you later. We’ll go keep an eye on Acheron for you.”
“I appreciate it.” Lorenz watched as Marianne followed Holst out the door, before he set Iris down and turned his disapproving gaze to her.
“Iris…”
“Wow, Father! You were so cool!” Iris giggled and a toothy grin crossed her face. “You really told him off!”
“I am glad that you think I am cool, but,” Lorenz’s gaze bore into Iris, and she frowned, glancing down at her feet as she smoothed out the nonexistent wrinkles in her dress, “I have told you countless times not to sneak into the Roundtable meetings.”
Countless was almost an understatement. Ever since he and Sylvain had adopted Iris off of the streets - after she had been caught trying to pick-pocket Sylvain - Lorenz had caught her snooping in on every single Roundtable meeting that had been held at the Gloucester-Gautier estate. Sometimes she dragged her poor brother Yarrow with her - bless his timid, easily-persuaded soul - but it was mostly a solo operation. Lorenz was still perplexed as to why she did this, as he had never gotten a clear answer out of her.
“But…”
“And,” Lorenz raised his voice slightly and Iris’ mouth snapped shut. “Why on earth did you tie Acheron’s feet together?” She had certainly never done anything like that before, and even though Lorenz held nothing but contempt for the bastard, he would have thought that he had taught his children how to conduct themselves properly.
Lorenz watched as Iris’ lips pursed and her eyes narrowed into an angry glare. “Father, he’s an awful man!” Her hands clenched into fists at her sides, and to Lorenz’s surprise, she started trembling. “You and Daddy always say that lying is bad, and Acheron was lying about you!”
“Me?” Lorenz blinked in confusion, and Iris continued on, her voice rising in volume to almost a yell as her eyes took on a watery sheen.
“Yes! He-He said that you were a bad count, and that you would run Gloucester territory into the ground, and that you are a-a dis...um...disgrace to the nobility!” Iris’ ranting halted, as she had started crying and could not talk through her sobs. Lorenz watched her with wide eyes, before a soft smile crossed his face. Ah, so that’s what it was. How very like her to jump right in to defend someone else without stopping to think.
“Darling,” Lorenz said, kneeling down and wrapping his arms around Iris, who let out a frustrated huff as she rubbed at her tear stained cheeks, “you should not let those kinds of things affect you so much. Such slander from a man like him means nothing to me.” Iris sniffled as her anger-induced crying slowed, and she lifted her head from Lorenz’s chest.
“How...how can you say that?” Iris said as she grit her teeth, “You and Daddy are so wonderful and nice and amazing. You...you gave so many kids a home...even a bad kid like me, who tried to steal from you…” Lorenz’s heart clenched as he watched her start crying again, and he held her, rubbing her back gently.
“Deep breaths, dear. Easy,” Lorenz whispered soothingly, cradling the back of her head as she took a few quick breaths. Eventually, her breathing evened out, and after a few more quiet sobs escaped, she managed to compose herself.
Pulling out a handkerchief, Lorenz dabbed Iris’ eyes and cheeks dry, and she muttered a quiet thank you. Chuckling softly, he placed his hands on her shoulders, prompting her to turn her gaze to his and look him in the eyes.
“Iris, please do not put yourself down like that, my darling,” Lorenz started, and she sniffed, but managed to keep herself from bursting into tears again, “Your dad and I love you very, very much. You are a smart and kind girl, and we are both very proud of you.”
“Father…” Iris choked out, rubbing her eyes as a few more tears managed to leak out.
“You and your siblings are our greatest treasures, and I do truly appreciate your attempt at defending me, but please refrain from doing so again. I do not want you getting hurt,” Lorenz continued. The wave of terror that had coursed through him when Acheron raised his hand to Iris was something that he hadn’t quite felt before, and could go without feeling ever again.
Iris swallowed thickly as she nodded. “O-Okay...I’m sorry…”
“It is quite alright. This would not be a problem if you just stayed out of the Roundtable meetings.” Lorenz sighed and shook his head. “Why do you insist on sneaking into them?” He did not expect an actual answer, but to his surprise, Iris looked up at him with a curious glint in her eyes.
“I just...They’re interesting,” Iris said, “I don’t understand too much of what you talk about with the other nobles, but, um, it always seems important and sometimes you all get kinda loud and it gets kinda exciting. I guess I just have fun watching you talk about important noble stuff.”
Lorenz blinked at her a few times, stunned. “You...Really? You are interested in what I do?”
“Yeah! I wanna be just like you when I grow up!” Iris exclaimed, and Lorenz laughed as he ruffled her hair.
“Well, when you are older - and if you refrain from sneaking into any more Roundtable meetings - I could let you sit in on some with me.”
“Really?!?” Iris’ eyes went wide as she bounced on her feet excitedly. “Yay! You’re the best, Father!”
“Yes, yes. Now, run along and join your siblings outside.” Lorenz didn’t have to ask twice, and after she hugged him, she rushed to the door.
“And remember, no more sneaking into-” Before Lorenz could finish speaking, Iris had already escaped the room, and he sighed as he shook his head; he would have to make a mental note to check under the table before every Roundtable meeting from now on.
As he now had some time to kill before his meeting resumed, Lorenz left the room to seek out some tea. Some time later he was walking down the hall, feeling much better with a cup of warm Bergamot in him.
“Hey, babe! You’re done early.”
Lorenz smiled as he turned to find Sylvain smirking at him as he leaned against the wall. His own meeting with the nobles from the former Kingdom territories must have adjourned early as well, or they were also on a break.
Pushing away from the wall, Sylvain closed the distance between them, pressing his lips against his husband’s. Lorenz sighed as he embraced Sylvain; it was always a comfort, kissing him after a long meeting, especially one as exciting as this one had been. Speaking of that…
“Sylvain, darling,” Lorenz said when he pulled away, “My meeting is only half over, because there was a...disruption.” Sylvain sighed as he ran his hand through his hair.
“Iris again?”
“Yes, but this time she was not only listening in on the meeting, but she tied Acheron’s feet together and caused quite the ruckus.” Lorenz barely got through the sentence before Sylvain doubled over laughing.
“Oh my gods, she did not!” Lorenz crossed his arms over his chest as he waited impatiently for Sylvain to compose himself, and the serious look in his eyes caused the smile to fall from Sylvain’s face.
“Yes, she did, and Acheron almost hit her for it.”
“He what?” Sylvain’s demeanor completely changed from amused to absolutely furious in the span of two seconds. He snarled as he pushed up his sleeves and took a step down the hall, “Where’s the cowardly fucker? I’ll knock his fucking teeth out-”
“Sylvain, please.” Lorenz placed a hand on his angry husband’s arm, and Sylvain’s narrowed eyes moved to lock with his. “I already threatened to dismember the bastard, so I believe he will think twice before trying anything so heinous again.” Sylvain stared at Lorenz for a moment, before a huge grin slowly spread across his face.
“You threatened him? Prim and proper Lorenz Hellman Gloucester-Gautier actually threatened someone with bodily harm during a political meeting?” Lorenz felt his face grow hot as he huffed with annoyance and turned away.
“Yes, and?” Lorenz grumbled, and Sylvain chuckled as he took his hands and pulled Lorenz close.
“I dunno, just thinking of you going all angry papa bear on Acheron is...kinda hot,” Sylvain said, waggling his eyebrows suggestively. Lorenz groaned and rolled his eyes so hard that he was shocked that they didn’t pop right out of his head.
“You are insufferable.”
Sylvain laughed and pulled Lorenz into a tight hug, and Lorenz’s annoyance melted away as he smiled and embraced his husband in return.
“Seriously though, thank you Lorenz,” Sylvain whispered into his ear, “for protecting our daughter. You’re the best husband and father to our children that I could have ever asked for.” Lorenz pulled away from Sylvain, and he chuckled as he pressed their foreheads together.
“I couldn’t do it without you, darling,” Lorenz whispered, giving Sylvain another quick kiss, “I love you.”
“Love you too.”
They gazed at each other for a moment, before Lorenz remembered something and his eyes widened.
“Ah, that’s right.” Sylvain raised an eyebrow at Lorenz as the latter crossed his arms over his chest. “Iris finally told me why she is always sneaking into the Roundtable meetings.”
“Huh, really?” A look of genuine shock crossed Sylvain’s face, and he waited for Lorenz to elaborate.
“Yes. She told me...that they interest her, and that she wants to...be just like me when she grows up,” Lorenz said, and the beaming smile that Sylvain shot him caused Lorenz to blush.
“Iris always was a clever and sneaky one, a perfect combination for a politician.” Sylvain said, and Lorenz gave him a playful swat on the arm, “But you know what they say: ‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.’ I think Iris might seriously take after you someday, Lorenz.”
“Hmm, perhaps.” Lorenz scratched thoughtfully at his chin. “We shall see if she is still interested in a few years.”
“Sounds like a plan.” A mischievous grin suddenly crossed Sylvain’s face, and he bit his lower lip as he snaked his arms around Lorenz’s neck.
“Hey, babe,” he said, his voice dropping low and causing Lorenz’s face to heat up, “When do you have to be back for your meeting?”
“Hmm, in about an hour and a half, I believe.”
“Ah, great, same here.”
“Why?” Lorenz raised a suspicious eyebrow, and Sylvain chuckled as he moved his lips to Lorenz’s ear.
“Because,” he whispered, and Lorenz shivered as Sylvain’s warm breath hit his ear, “I meant what I said, about you threatening Acheron.” Sylvain pressed himself flush against Lorenz, and he immediately felt what Sylvain was talking about.
“Really? In the middle of Roundtable negotiations?”
‘Hehe, yep. There’s a perfectly good closet right here.” Sylvain moved his hand to the small door behind him and turned the knob. “No one will even know.”
“Ugh, you really are an insatiable degenerate.”
“But I’m your insatiable degenerate!”
Lorenz rolled his eyes, but he could not deny the heat that was building within him, so he smirked as he grabbed Sylvain by his shirt, yanked him into the closet, and slammed the door shut.
“You’re godsdamn right.”
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ts1989fanatic · 7 years
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How Taylor Swift Inspired A Movie About Battle Rap
Bodied is the new film from Joseph Kahn, a music video director who's become almost as famous for his outspoken Twitter presence as for his work. But there's plenty of thought behind all his online button-pushing.
Last week, Joseph Kahn summoned the wrath of the Beyhive down upon himself — and not just once but repeatedly. For the average person online, drawing the enraged attention of one of the internet's most devoted and formidable fandoms is something to be feared and avoided at all costs. But the 44-year-old Korean-American filmmaker didn't just goad Beyoncé stans into attack with taunts about their inability to do real damage and quips to the press destined to immediately be taken out of context, he greeted the influx of bee emojis and tweeted insults like Lieutenant Dan howling defiance at a hurricane.
Or maybe just like a director with a new movie to promote. "To be honest, I did it on purpose," Kahn admitted over coffee in Toronto, referring to his campaign of strategic hive-poking and the resulting media coverage. And, he pointed out, it worked. "Everyone knows Bodied now. You can make a good film, but if you throw it out into a vacuum, the air does not get in there. The only thing people care about these days is celebrity. My movie has no stars. So all you have to do is know how to rattle the internet cage."
Bodied, which was the opening night pick of the Toronto International Film Festival's beloved Midnight Madness program, is Kahn's first film in six years, one he wrote with battle rapper Alex Larsen, aka Kid Twist. Altogether, Kahn's made three films, including 2004's self-aware Fast and the Furious-but-with-motorcycles riff Torque, and the 2011 teen-comedy-slasher genre mashup Detention, which, like Bodied, he funded himself. But the reason he's so well-acquainted with the world of dedicated pop fandoms is because it's the entity in which he spends most of his time. He's best known as a prominent, prolific, perpetually outspoken music video director who, since launching his career in the early ’90s, has worked with everyone from Muse to Destiny's Child, Britney Spears to Dr. Dre. And, of course, with Taylor Swift.
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Since 2015, Swift has been the music artist with whom Kahn's career has been most closely linked. It's a connection boosted, in part, by Kahn's willingness to wade into the online fray in defense of the seemingly eternally embattled pop star (it's in talking about Swift that Kahn is most careful with his words, describing her as an "excellent target"). Kahn has directed five music videos for Swift, including the monster that is "Blank Space" (2.16 billion views and counting) and late August's internet-breaker "Look What You Made Me Do." He was still slugging it out on behalf of the latter, an intensely parsed and much-discussed video in which Swift contends with her past personas, in the days leading up to the Bodied premiere.
Kahn obviously isn't afraid of controversy or a fight. At a time when people working in Hollywood have gotten increasingly cautious about their online presences, he's maintained one of most markedly salty, trolly Twitter feeds of any filmmaker working today. (Illustrative sample: "I just gotta remind everyone that my twitter has only one message. Fuck you.") These facts are even more crystal clear when watching Bodied, which stars former Disney Channel actor Calum Worthy and actual battle rappers like Dumbfoundead and Dizaster, and is a button-pushing comedy that uses the underground hip-hop scene as a way to tackle language wars, cultural appropriation, and freedom of speech.
But if that pitch sounds like the ramp-up to the kind of potential nightmare 4chan apologia you'd want to run away from, screaming, the reality of Bodied is a lot more conflicted, considered, overstuffed with ideas, and yes, sometimes, even sensitive. It’s a film that argues on behalf of the right to say anything while simultaneously emphasizing how much words can wound. "This film has a lot of issues in it, and I'm not dismissing any of them," Kahn said. "In fact, one of the things we're trying to figure out is, in the world of absolute free speech, is there a limit? Is there a consequence to going too far? I wanted to explore the furthest reach of that."
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Bodied was produced by Eminem, another artist Kahn's directed videos for, and a man who famously got his start in the freestyle rap battle scene. But while Eight Mile gets name-checked in Bodied, the film primarily owes its existence to a Swift controversy. More specifically, it was born out of the one kicked up by the video Kahn did for "Wildest Dreams," shot in part in the Serengeti and meant to evoke a location shoot for an old Hollywood production à la The African Queen, with Swift and Scott Eastwood playing actors whose onscreen romance bleeds into real life.
Kahn was aware there were, to use his word, "complexities" to this concept from the start — plenty of shit in which to step. These included concerns as to whether the video would accidentally make it look like Swift was out to shoot lions instead of a film, and whether she'd be accused of "whitewashing history and ignoring segregation" if Kahn cast a black actor to play the director of the fictional feature, as was his original impulse. These considerations failed to dampen the firestorm of arguments the video set off about whether Swift was romanticizing colonization and erasing Africans from the African setting. Kahn wasn't having it.
"I started making jokes about it. I had one joke where I said, 'Asians can't be racists. Black or white, all dogs taste the same to us.' Paper magazine wrote an entire hit piece on me talking about how I don't do videos for minorities, which is absurd, because I've done 30 years of music videos and half of them are hip-hop." Eventually, he said, the furor became an inspiration. "I thought, this is insane — no matter what I write or what I say, they just want to be social media bullies. And the nature of even talking about race is so constricted behind the accusation, and not over the analysis, and I thought, Wow, there's a movie."
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Which is where battle rap came in. "There's an anger in me, and it only seemed to be expressed by a world where a white guy and a black guy could make completely racist jokes against each other, worse than anything I've ever written, and then they go get a beer together," Kahn explained. But in addition to its particular hip-hop scene, Bodied also keeps one foot on campus, where woker-than-thou characters are shown trying to one-up each other in circular conversations about race, gender, class, and privilege. One of the most provocative ideas the film floats is that the vocabulary of social justice has been co-opted for verbal one-upmanship just as competitive as battle rap.
"I feel sometimes like when people who can't outsmart me online, they'll just go back to my old tweets and say, 'Look, he's racist, don't listen to him.' It's dirty play," Kahn says. "They don't know me. They're just taking jokes, and saying that all stereotyped jokes are racist, which I genuinely do not believe. A joke is a contradiction you agree with. Just because the contradiction is dangerous doesn't mean you don't agree with it." Kahn sees Bodied as embracing that sense of danger, while acknowledging that the intersection he's been occupying between an incendiary indie movie and young music fandom can be "messy and ugly."
But also, maybe, advantageous? Bodied, which was well-received at TIFF, has yet to cement a distributor, but Kahn's been tweeting about getting multiple offers. And certainly, for Kahn, all the attention didn't hurt in getting to this place, even if so much of it was angry. "I don't think it really means much," he said of the online uproar. "I think, on one level, it's just blowing up the pop stan world," which then becomes a conduit to draw more promotion of his film work, especially when it comes to his already infamous LA Times interview in which he joked, "Beyoncé copied 'Bad Blood.'" "How many indie films get linked hundreds of times in an interview with a filmmaker talking about race?" he pointed out. Then, not one to resist, he added, "Thank you, Beyhive."
ts1989fanatic love this description of Joseph Kahn’s Twitter Feed:
Kahn obviously isn't afraid of controversy or a fight. At a time when people working in Hollywood have gotten increasingly cautious about their online presences, he's maintained one of most markedly salty, trolly Twitter feeds of any filmmaker working today. (Illustrative sample: "I just gotta remind everyone that my twitter has only one message. Fuck you.")
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