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bbnibini · 4 years ago

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Hi! I really love your works but it gotten me curious if you also read fanfics? Do you have any fanfic recommendations?

Thank you, anon! That's really kind of you. 🥺💕 I do read fanfics, but not as much anymore. I'm assuming this ask is for Obey Me fics? But if not, I will include some of my absolute favourites in a future post. Fair warning: I gushed. A LOT hahaha. Please support the authors and their works! I included the fics in the hyperlinks~

NSFW fics are marked appropriately, so please click the links at your own discretion (some of them are in my public bookmarks in AO3).

Elle's Obey Me Fic Recommendations

🌸Your Coal by Angrish(LettuceBean)

Truth be told, I belong to the "forgive but don't forget camp" in lieu of what happened in Chapter 16; reading Angrish's YC and how their MC coped with the aftermath(+ how others coped along with them) felt really powerful, raw and so so emotional. It made me think and really think about how I processed the whole thing that happened. While it didn't really change my outlook on how I have forgiven Belphie for what he had done, Angrish shedding light to the unanswered questions and lingering doubts the main story have left most of its readers was done in such a thoughtful and poetic way that I found myself binge reading the whole thing.

Given that I read this whole coping with a lot of stuff as well (and may have contributed with sympathising a lot more to the vindictiveness of the MC), reading what Angrish had written was really cathartic. Their writing style is also beautiful--the way the words string together, simple, elegant, yet impactful really made MC's emotions a lot...tangible, real and sometimes, frustrating (in a good way, mind you). I also liked how they had fleshed out the other characters, especially Belphegor, Satan and the Purgatory Hall members.

🌸You'll Have to Ask Your Dad by DefenestrationProtestration

I remembered clicking on this fic because of the author's punny name, stayed for the pretty writing and reread a few several times for the characterisation and THE WRITING. I'm pretty sure I left a litany of praises and incomprehensible gushing on the comments section because of how much I've devoured this piece of art.

Even as I'm typing this review, I can't seem to organise my thoughts haha. You can tell by the writing style that the author had a lot of fun writing their prose; it permeates through the screeen...my "screen" of imagination at least. I am not joking--the writing is so pretty and vivid that I literally saw it as a movie in my head lol. I chatted with them a bit on the comments and they said the prose is more of something they had written subconsciously; it reminded me of James Joyce and how he had masterfully perfected the same technique. Of course, their writing styles differ a lot from each other, but I can see what they meant.

...as I'm typing this, I didn't realise how I haven't talked about the plot of the fic at all soz. This piece is the author's character study of Lucifer. It talks about how he was before, during and after the fall. He is a bit of an unreliable narrator, which I'm not sure if the author intended, but he has all these presumptions that miss the mark so so much, particularly at how his brothers, Lord Diavolo and the others perceive him--but reading the whole thing would make you understand why he had gotten to that kind of self-perception in the first place. And honestly? It really, really hurt to read. But was it bad? The total opposite of that, in fact! I loved how they had written the angst in this piece. So many things in the fic are "show, rather than tell" and I really really appreciate that.

Most of my brainrot about this fic is better to be explored on your own. Overall, 10/10: a definite, recommended read.

🌸Fairy Tales for the Fallen by indiavolowetrust

I haven't fully devoured all of the stories in the collection yet, but the ones I've read (Her Name Was Thousand Eyes is my favourite) was such a really good spin on dark fairy tales (Obey Me style!). It reminded me of my childhood Little Mermaid picture book for some reason. Probably the writing style(the author's writing reads a lot like a storybook) The one I had was Hans Christian Andersen's (aka the OG) version and the ending was rather...dark for a 5 year old lol. It was a big part of my life though and was probably the precursor for my affinity with sad stories haha.

🌸TieGuanYin by Taciturn

Like tea on a tiring day, Taciturn's writing style feels very homey, cozy and familiar. I love rereading this oneshot when I'm having a shitty day and imagining myself having tea with Barbatos haha. Ever had pieces of art or literature that just...relaxes you when you consume it? This one is one of my, as the youngsters say, "comfort fic" haha.

🌸glass half empty; glass half full by unagis

I love unagis' fics.♡ I also love her Childe fics. The concepts she comes up with, as well as how she delivers it is *chef kiss*. Admittedly, I read this one when I was still a Satan stan, with all the suspicions and doubts about Solomon's intentions still rampant within me. Reading him blush and become flustered is CUTE and aaaaa this whole fic is just really cute.🥺♡

🌸The Eternal Storm by @sondepoch

Sondepoch's Satan oneshot was the very first fic I read in the OM fandom so it has a special place in my heart~ I remembered how awkward it was to skim through the Satan filters, looking for a gen fic/SFW fic because around that time, most OM fics are smut (no shade on smut ofc, I'm just super uncomfortable reading them unless the writing is really pretty or there's something else going on in the story). Finding GEN AND A WELL-WRITTEN CHARACTER STUDY about my (former) favourite OM character was like I hit the jackpot. I remembered that feeling really well haha. My bias with one of my favourite forms of fic (char. study) aside, Sondepoch's writing is easy on the eyes and is definitely a great entry for anyone who wants to be in the OM fandom.

🌸Read Me by GENE515

One of my more recent reads and definitely worth a mention!♡ Read Me was a beautifully written, heartfelt two-shot about Lucifer's love, which he tried his best to express in penned words. Probably because of my own love letter-themed OM series, this one really stuck to me haha. The author is also really sweet. :3

🌸Schrodinger by fickleminder

I read this one around Halloween and it definitely fit the occasion. Schrodinger was such a great thriller/horror fic with how it set its unsettling atmosphere from the very beginning--the way fickleminder's writing just sucks you in and makes you bystand the whole ordeal between Belphegor and MC was just...so suspenseful? Nail biting? Creepy (in a good way ofc)? I won't spoil the ending, but the process and way they tackled it was a lot scarier than what I was initially bracing myself for.

🌸Siberia by @polandspringz

Seeing another Obey Me mystery in AO3 really hyped me up! Polandspringz did a spectacular job in writing this series and I can relate so much with their experiences in writing for mystery. Their writing style is easy on the eyes--I also really liked how they characterised the OM characters I have read on their series so far. There's still quite a lot of stuff left in speculation (from my most recent reading at least), and I really look forward to see how everything unfolds!

🌸Tetris Syndrome by apocketfulofposies (NSFW)

I am very very uncomfortable with smut content, so the smut I've read can be counted on one hand. ;; That is to say, TS is one of the few smut that I really, really enjoyed. First of all, Levi's characterisation is on point. It was really really interesting to get in his head and read about his thought process. What is envy? And how much does the sin of envy really define him?

I really enjoyed Levi's internalisations, as well as the author's writing style. If you want smut with a brooding, jealous otaku boy, I really recommend this one!

#obey me #obey me fic #fic recommendation

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meikuree · 4 years ago

Text

if i can be sentimental here for a minute, i’m feeling pretty emotional about finally putting up the fic i linked in my previous post, for a couple of reasons. the process of slowly editing it and plucking up the courage to do so over the past couple weeks is one that’s been intertwined with some of my lowest points in my writing enterprise, and the fact that i finally felt like i was in a decent enough place to share it publicly is a bit of an event to me. It’s also one that’s coincided with me finally reaching a relatively stable place with self-confidence, and I want to talk a bit about how I got to that place.

musings put under a readmore because they’re rather long.

some background: for various reasons, that particular fic was meant to be one of those wips I would never publish, and simply abandon to private obscurity. i wrote it three months ago at a time when i was feeling very self-conscious and Very Bad about my usual/natural writing style (which features lots of long sentences dense with not-always-straightforward implication, a tendency to opt for an introspective, stream-of-consciousness style, and liberal/indulgent use of descriptors and metaphors). my insecurity wasn’t the fault of any specific person/event-- it was something that stemmed from my perception that my writing differed (too) highly from fandom conventions i had observed surrounding style, tone, and content, and some personal weirdness around that. but the end result, regardless, was that when i finished the first draft of that fic i quickly looked back and came to the kneejerk verdict that it was terrible, unfixable, unworthy, etc. etc.

nobody had told me it was terrible; i was simply on a self-critical bender, and did the work of convincing myself that it was so. but it was a blow because it was a piece i’d spent a good bit of time writing, and poured lots of emotional/mental energy into, and to sit there and feel as if it was abysmal and thus had to be abandoned didn’t do any favours for my writing esteem. that was also the time i stopped writing, aside from one other piece, because i believed there was something fundamentally lacking about my writing.

about a month ago i revisited the abandoned wip with fresh eyes, having forgotten most of what i’d written. and — to my complete surprise— i found that it wasn’t at all as bad. it was decent, even, and there were some lyrical turns of phrases/paragraphs i was proud of, and i enjoyed reading it. I basically wept as i read it, because suddenly I wasn’t sure why I’d convinced myself it was irredeemably bad, all those months ago, or why I’d been so harsh to myself.

(around the same time, my partner also told me something that stuck with me— “your writing is good. full stop”— which was a revelation because I’d always thought of my writing more along the lines of “it’ll only hit that mark labeled Good if you do XYZ”. my self-opinion on my writing was essentially contingent upon many arbitrary and constantly changing conditions, which was exhausting. so that was liberating. i realised that if I could just be slightly more confident and go in knowing I was good at some things, already, it would make my writing process a lot more enjoyable and smooth because I’d waste less energy fretting about whether I was hitting those arbitrary standards of Goodness.)

I was convinced my writing was Inherently Bad based on a few arbitrary conclusions (my style differs from what i usually see in X fandom space; therefore it is automatically bad), when more objectively my style was a mix of good and bad. i.e. i do some things well, and some things not as well. which is ultimately natural and common, and nothing to be ashamed of. put very simply, the issue was also that i was giving one too many fucks about mainstream validation. the issue wasn’t necessarily that I wasn’t getting any feedback/response either—I’d gotten a good amount of positive feedback in the past. it was something more endemic, and had to do with how I was so convinced internally of my writing’s low worth that there wasn’t much that external praise could do until I addressed it at the root.

i tried to approach this piece differently, with these issues in mind. I focused on polishing it until I was reasonably happy with it, not until it’d hit some mythic and unattainable standard of perfection. I realized I didn’t care how much quantified reception I got any more (bookmarks, kudos, etc.) because I was simply more excited about Getting It Out There and finally finishing something. I also knew that while it wouldn't necessarily be universally Extremely Amazing, it was decent, and that was good enough for me— and besides, as I was trying to internalize from what my partner had been emphasizing to me, my writing was good regardless of all those external factors (!!). it also felt much, much better to get heartfelt, in-depth feedback from a tiny group of fellow fans whose opinions I valued than to have mainstream approval. my fics (and this one fic I just published) will never be the sort that get 100+ kudos, because I write primarily for f/f rarepairs, but I did send that fic to a few very kind people who offered to read it and their feedback was infinitely more heartening and uplifting than a static kudo.

that leaves me where I am now in terms of my relationship with the fanfic economy and writing. these days, I’m mostly channeling Fiona Apple levels of “I no longer give a shit about reviews”, because attaching myself too firmly to the headwinds of ao3 approval briefly destroyed me. I give significantly less of a damn about mass reception now— even if, or especially because my tastes seem to differ from the fandom’s in terms of writing style and content. i’m more intent on having fun and doing whatever i want. if you’re someone who wants to aim for mass appeal and quantifiable metrics, that’s totally fine— none of this is meant to be a slight against how you approach writing. I simply think it’s a losing game if you’re in as insecure a place as I was previously, and that it was tremendously unhealthy for me.

I’m also moving these days towards cultivating greater community/communality in my fandom endeavours. it takes work and active participation but makes for a far more rewarding fandom experience, I’ve found. what’s more crucial to me-- over asynchronous, one-way and ultimately slightly superficial validation in the form of kudos/likes-- is reciprocity and communal conversation with other fans. and i’m very lucky that in the past few weeks, i’ve gotten a lot closer to a bunch of like-minded fans, with whom i can exchange detailed feedback and enter into meaning conversations about canon/our favourite characters. I write these days less to appeal to some imaginary, amorphous public and more for the enjoyment of friends/other kindred acquaintances whose minds i respect and admire far more. if you only ever receive one-way echoes, that’s extremely lonely-- but if you get to hear that echo turn back, get to hear some other input building upon what you said and not simply replicating it, that becomes something generative. and life-giving.

TLDR: the real fandom was the friendships, community and stable self-worth we forged along the way, not the superficial metrics of glancing validation.

TLDR 2: i’m learning that there are many acceptable valences between the extremes of “this writing fucking sucks” and “this is my magnum opus which i’ve sweat a blood transfusion for”, that are okay for one’s writing to occupy.

#meikuree talks #personal

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storytellingape · 6 years ago

Text

i've been waiting for you to come around and tell me the truth

WIP mcsackler fic about adam sackler and how he falls in and out of love with one thomas mcgregor. adam grows up, wises up, and eventually gets over himself and thomas, the new tenant who just moved into his building with whom he develops feelings. too bad that's when thomas decides to catch feelings though at that point in the story adam has no love left to give. or does he? dun dun dun... this was a fun story to write, i wish i got around to finishing it. maybe i will. who knows. (6.5k words, rated M)

INTERLUDE

Adam has a key to Thomas’ apartment. It’s nothing special; he’s only allowed to use it during emergencies. Sometimes when Thomas is out on week-long trips, he has Adam come by to water Phyllis, his house plant. Thomas’ apartment is quaint and simple, with neatly-matching furniture and spectacular views that aren’t just brick and concrete. It’s the total opposite of Adam’s living space which is precisely why Adam likes it.

Thomas doesn’t have errant socks lying everywhere or bits of accumulated junk stuffed into every nook and cranny. He puts thought into organizing his belongings, using his own complicated system Adam can make neither heads or tails of. But everything has a place for certain: all his books and his clothing, his motley collection of vintage brooches.

When Adam is bored and he knows Thomas won’t be at home for a while, he hangs around Thomas’ apartment and looks at all the nice things he keeps in his drawers. He has a pair of reading glasses that he stores in a leather case in his bedside drawer that Adam has only seen him wear once when he was squinting at something on the back of cereal box. A prescription bottle of sleeping pills lives inside the medicine cabinet while a hardbound copy of A Very British Scandal sits primly on the windowsill bookmarked to page fifty-six with the corner smudged in what appears to be soy sauce. But Adam digresses. It’s probably a misprint: a blot of ink.

This is Thomas after all and he never leaves messes.

JANUARY

Neither of them really talk about that night but Adam remembers it with startling accuracy. Ever since he stopped drinking, his memory has been sharper though his sleep pattern is still shit: that was all the alcohol was good for in the end. Drink enough and he can feel less dead inside. Drink some more and his sleep will be dreamless.

Adam doesn’t do bars but there’s one he likes to frequent on account of how Hannah and her friends will never be caught dead there. It’s a place near Barclay’s Center and though he can’t drink anymore, he still allows himself the occasional pilgrimage. Sometimes he goes for the free peanuts; other times because he needs a place to stew. He doesn’t have a lot of friends because Hannah pretty much took his when their relationship fell apart as they were hers first and only his through osmosis.

That’s where he sees Thomas for the first time, scanning the crowd of people and looking for an empty booth. Their eyes meet briefly and Thomas elbows his way through a sea of people to ask Adam whether the seat across from him is taken.

It takes one, maybe two minutes for Adam to realize that he’s seen Thomas before. Something about him that’s so familiar then it all comes together: the accent, the hair, the dress shirt and slacks. He’s met Thomas a few times; he lives in the same building.

So this is the elusive Thomas, Adam thinks, relaxing his posture to something less hostile and more open. He’s the new tenant the doorman kept mumbling about, the one who complained about the structural integrity of the fire escape. Adam nods to the empty seat in front of him. Thomas shoots him a grateful look before taking the proffered seat and sipping from a complicated-looking cocktail. It has bits of pineapple in it. A colorful striped umbrella dangles cheerfully from the rim of the glass.

“I know you,” Adam begins, watching Thomas glance at the dance floor with some degree of trepidation. “I think we might be neighbors.”

Thomas blinks. He’s cute, in an uptight, fussy sort of way. The accent does elevate his charm somewhat as does the reds threading his brown hair. Thomas offers his hand to shake. His nails are buffed to a shine, well-manicured. Adam can already tell how loud he will be in bed which is very loud indeed.

“I thought I recognized you,” Thomas says, sounding abashed. “I’m rather good with faces.”

“Are you?” Adam takes his hand and they exchange requisite introductions. It’s brief and rote. Then Adam points to Thomas’ drink. “What are you drinking tonight?”

Thomas makes a face. “Oh, this and that, I’m not quite sure what this is but I asked the bartender for the most outrageous drink on the menu and this is it apparently. It tastes like breath mints and feet.”

“Which, as everyone knows, is a great combination,” Adam adds.

“Exactly,” Thomas agrees. His grin is fleeting. Almost just as quickly, he goes back to fiddling with a corner of a paper napkin.”So, er, do you come here often?”

Adam laughs. “Are you trying to pick me up?”

“What? What, no, I am not, I beg your pardon. I was just making conversation—“

“I do,” Adam cuts him off, to spare him the misery. “They always give me free peanuts here. I think the bartender on Tuesdays has a crush on me.”

“I’d like free peanuts too,” Thomas mutters.

“Then get ready to suck some cock.”

“What?”

“I was joking,” Adam informs him, cracking a peanut shell open and dropping one into his mouth. “Relax. You seem a little tense.”

“I’m relaxed,” Thomas lies, though his posture seems to be bely that statement, a little stiff and awkward. His shirt is buttoned up all the way. He keeps rubbing the side of his neck self-consciously, throwing glances at the table, his drink, the bar, anywhere but Adam. “I’ve just — I’ve never been to bars like this before. We don’t have a lot of them in Windermere, and the few places I’ve been to in London typically don’t have bartenders exposing their midsection for tips.”

“It is something of an acquired taste,” Adam settles on, barely managing to reign in a smirk. This is true: the place is a bit kitschy, those Yelp reviews can go fuck themselves, but the men are easy and he’s almost always guaranteed someone to take home. When insomnia hits the hardest, he’d rather be somewhere else with people than marinate in his own thoughts. He’s working on being comfortable with his own company but it’s an uphill battle when he doesn’t quite like himself and prone to breaking things when left on his own for too long.

They talk all night: Thomas is a chatterbox, loosened by alcohol, and he tells Adam he’s just moved here from the UK. When Adam presses, why America, why New York, Thomas tells him it’s because he wanted a fresh start, and the biggest city he could think of was New York. He didn’t like Paris; his French was terrible and he thought Parisians were snobs. He came here to escape. Adam envied him a little. He wishes he could escape too. He may live in a different neighborhood now but his fuckups still haunt him like vengeful old ghosts, the kind that can only be put to rest if he were brave enough to confront them.

Watching Thomas talk rapid-fire, listening to the soothing cadence of his voice, Adam wondered how long before he could take him home. He knows it’s a terrible idea; the potential for fallout and subsequent awkwardness are high mainly because they happen to live in the same apartment building, but the more Thomas said, the more Adam wanted to fuck him and shut him up preferably with his cock. He’s never been with a British person before.

“Hey,” Adam interrupts, already reaching for his jacket folded across the back of the booth. “It’s getting pretty late. Do you wanna maybe head home?”

Thomas’ face falls and then brightens again when understanding dawns. “Oh! You want to — yes, of course! I still have work tomorrow. We can share a taxi, split the cost…” he trails off.

Adam helps him into his double-breasted burgundy coat. He lets his hands linger on Thomas’ shoulders, brushing off invisible lint. Thomas lets him.

MARCH

Adam gets the call at two in the morning at which point he has two options: one, let it go to voicemail so he can sink blissfully into sleep after a fourteen hour day, or two, take it like he’s always been — for the last six months. Either option will leave him feeling guilty so he just takes the call anyway, mostly because he has zero self=preservation skills and somewhat of a masochistic streak.

When he swipes the screen to answer, Thomas’ voice fills his ear almost immediately, warped by white noise and static.

He needs a ride home.

Adam doesn’t consider Thomas a friend, at least not in the strictest sense. Thomas invites him over periodically for lasagna and drinks, just like normal friends do, but Adam can’t remember ever being seen in public with him in broad daylight even though they live in the same apartment building and there’d been plenty of opportunities for Thomas to ask him to accompany him to various daytime excursions. Not that Adam is big on daytime excursions, he wouldn’t even know what those entailed, but it would have been nice. It’s the principle of the thing.

Anyway: what does it matter when Adam’s fuzzy on the notion of normal friendship. He either tries to sleep with his friends or the friends of friends, or else they’re driven away by his general demeanor and lack of tact. Hannah had been a friend to him, someone he was actually invested in because her misery mirrored his, until their lives took them both different directions and he saw her for what she was: a receptacle for all the hang-ups he shouldn’t probably have lied about to his therapist. He still sees her from time to time; it’s a small neighborhood after all.

But Thomas. Well. This thing with him is different, by virtue of the fact that Adam has never had it with anyone else before. He just sometimes wishes Thomas stopped calling him in the middle of the night to pull him out of every fucking gay club in Brooklyn whenever things get a bit too much for him to handle. It’s been a year since Thomas moved to New York to escape the trappings of his old life and at this point you’d think he’d learned how to call an UBER for himself, but apparently he still needs Adam to act like his big scary boyfriend whenever he’s hit on by strange characters.

Adam shows up at the club half an hour later after dragging himself out of bed and pulling on the same clothes he’s worn the day before. It’s one of those clubs that’s deep in the basement of some building with a staircase that’s level with the sidewalk and an erratically flickering neon sign hovering above the entrance. The packed heat hits Adam like a wall of plastic sheeting, coating every exposed inch of his body. He hates it immediately; he hates clubs and crowds. What’s more: he hates crowds in enclosed rooms as people in large groups tend to do stupid things and this is doubly true if they happen to be under the influence of alcohol and other dubious substances.

It’s just as well that Adam locates Thomas quickly, standing awkwardly at the bar and getting chatted up. Adam watches him for a few minutes: how he laughs and touches his left elbow self-consciously, how he knocks back his drink in one smooth swallow before pulling out his phone from his back pocket and texting furiously. Adam’s phone pings in his right hand but he ignores it. The man next to Thomas isn’t even all that intimidating, not like the last one had been, truth be told; in fact, he maybe even Thomas’ type: well-dressed, neat, though he looks like he’s had some work done on his teeth. His clothes look expensive.

Adam approaches them, first with his hands jammed inside his pockets then out of them. The guy glances up at him in surprise before giving him a once over, lingering on his shirt which is tight, but also on backwards because Adam threw it on in the dark. The tag curls out of his collar like a lazy tongue.

“Adam!” Thomas looks relieved to see him, as if he hadn’t been the one to summon Adam and send him half a dozen panicked text messages every ten minutes.

“You ready to go?” Adam asks, offering his arm out to him.

Thomas glances back at his — date? prospective fuck? — companion before taking Adam’s proffered arm. “It was nice to meeting you, Lucas but I’m afraid I have to go.”

“Sure,” Lucas says, quirking his mouth in don’t treat me like I’m not an idiot way.

They leave without fanfare.

This is the part where things get a little hazy: their UBER arrives, they take the stairs up to Thomas’ floor, and Thomas invites Adam in because that’s what he usually does. Thomas is tipsy, which accounts for his loose mood. He’s not caustic, or hypertense, or kicking Adam out prematurely, but shutting the door behind himself before leaning his head against it with his eyes closed. “That was a close call,” he says. Adam simply grunts in answer.

Thomas has had a number of these so-called “close calls” and Adam is not sure it means what Thomas thinks it means. He thought the whole point of going to gay clubs was for Thomas to experiment, let loose, and explore a side of himself that he has kept locked up for fear of judgment and scrutiny by his peers. But maybe he isn’t ready for that anytime soon. Because he may have left his old life behind in another continent, but he still carries his hangups around like precious luggage.

Thomas’ apartment is just two floors above Adam’s. The building is an old walk-up with creaky banisters and the original wainscoting still in tact. Thomas had the interior remodeled entirely; the windows are new, all the furniture is modern, there are no pale shapes on the walls where old photographs once hung. In the open kitchen, Thomas pours himself a glass of water which he gulps down thirstily. He forgets to offer Adam anything. Adam doesn’t mind.

When Thomas stumbles his way to the bedroom without another word, Adam takes it a s his cue to follow. The bed, like everything else in the apartment, is new and it dips under their combined weight when they lay on it, Adam flat on his back, staring at the ceiling, Thomas with his back to him. Then Thomas rolls towards him, once, then again, until his right elbow is resting against Adam’s chest and he’s peering up at him from an angle, his head tilted towards him. Neither of them budge for a while resulting in a weighty silence that simply goes on and on. But Adam has been here before; he knows what comes next.

Adam has Thomas reverse-straddling him in no time, naked from the waist down, panting up at the wall. Adam’s jeans are pushed halfway down his hips and every movement scrapes his thighs with the most pleasant burn. Thomas’ shirt is matted to his back with sweat. Meanwhile, he’s shaking, and Adam thinks he probably has the most beautiful back he has ever seen. He has no objections to fucking him like this, mostly because he has a great view of Thomas’ tight clenching hole and he likes being able to grab handfuls of Thomas’ ass each time Thomas squirms down his dick. He’s so keyed up with lust it’s almost funny; his cock drips sticky dots of precome on the bed sheets and it fills Adam with perverse glee knowing it’s gonna be hell to clean up later.

Adam grunts, kneeling up behind Thomas to splay him onto all fours. Thomas catches his weight on his elbows, his cute little ass pointing upwards. Adam has fucked his way through all five boroughs, and he’s never met anyone whose ass he could ever call cute. Until Thomas. It’s springy, and almost all of it fits in one hand. And it’s always seems to be fresh as a daisy at least whenever Thomas lets him anywhere near it.

“Yeah,” Adam groans, bumping his cock against Thomas’ rim when he pulls out all the way. “You like that, huh? Riding my big fat cock?”

Thomas moans, cock leaking harder. He used to blush furiously at Adam’s dirty talk which Adam learned by watching filthy porn throughout his teens and occasionally up to present. But now Thomas takes it just as well as he takes Adam’s cock, that is to say with as much dignity as he can muster, with his face buried in the sheets. Adam reaches up inside Thomas’ shirt to cup a hand over his stomach: the skin there is soft and the small roll of belly quivers with every breath. Adam ignores Thomas’ straining dick and slides both hands around Thomas’ hips for traction, so he can fuck him in long hard strokes that leave him gasping like a swimmer running out of air.

“You’re never gonna get dick this good,” Adam says, and he doesn’t know whether that’s a taunt or a promise, but Thomas seems to eat it all up anyway: the cake and the whole damn plate, nodding his head frantically like he agrees, screwing himself down the length of Adam’s dick. He can act coy all he wants but they both know he loves cock; he went without for his entire adult life, and now can’t seem to get enough of it. It’s like giving sugar to a starving man.

Adam gives his ass a playful swat, then another and Thomas goes crazy, his whole body convulsing as he comes hard, streaking the sheets.

Adam follows not long after, shooting his load across Thomas’ back while Thomas is still slumped on his belly and catching his breath. They say nothing again for a little while, but Adam is used to these kinds of silences as they happen so often around Thomas.

Thomas glances up at him then, and something about his expression, or maybe the light from outside softening the angles of his face, makes him seem young and vulnerable. Tricks of the environment but it lasts just a moment, and then Thomas is yawning and bumping his ass against Adam in a subtle gesture to get him to move. Adam rolls onto his back next to him, flinging an arm over his overheated face. Sex with Thomas is like getting a full body work out, both often leave him vacillating between exhausted and then energized. He should leave, he knows, as it’s late enough already and he has to be in Queens by ten o’clock for an audition. It’s probably 4 am now. Adam tells himself he’ll go in a minute, maybe five, but when he opens his eyes again, a few hours have already passed. It’s morning: sun is slicing bright and hot through the slats between the curtains. Next to him, the bed is empty, cold. Fuck, Adam thinks, palming his face awake. There’s the smell of something cooking permeating the air. Bacon, he thinks, as he slips into his t-shirt from the night before, then his jeans. He can’t find his shoes for some reason but those are negligible because Thomas will end up finding them anyway and returning them the very next day. Adam has left a few of his belongings in his apartment before: a watch, his favourite leather jacket, a bottle of lubricant which they used a good portion of the first time Thomas asked to be fucked in the ass. Thomas returned each item in a discreet paper bag, including the very large fleshy dildo Adam had left on purpose as a kind of welcome gift into the world of anal fun. Adam thought it meant the end of their arrangement; apparently Thomas had simply been under the impression that the toy was on loan.

Adam finds him in the kitchen, wearing a silk robe with his initials monogrammed on the breast pocket, which is just par for the course. He looks freshly showered though his hair is free of any kind of product, soft and fluffy-looking though combed into submission. He’s made breakfast. Adam catches him laying out matching cutlery on the table. His plates all have gold trim on the edges, matching his saucer and cups.

“Tea?” he offers when Adam looms into view, halting by the doorway.

Adam blinks himself out of his stupor: no reason to be taken aback by a sight he knows all too well so shakes himself out of it. “I don’t drink tea,” he says, still not moving from his spot by the door. He curls his toes into the carpet. Thomas doesn’t look at him.

“I forget sometimes you’re American,” Thomas says, before pouring Adam a fresh cup of coffee from one of those expensive espresso machines which he happens to have just sitting in a corner. Adam ambles over to accept it, swiping the mug neatly from his grip before their hands can touch. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if that does happen: probably something stupid like lean over and kiss Thomas. Or say: thanks, babe, appreciate it. So instead he drinks his coffee in silence while Thomas smears jam and cream over his toast and reads the morning paper which he folds and unfolds in one hand.

To anyone else, they must look like the picture of perfect domesticity with the sun filtering in through the windows and catching the threads of the curtains, highlighting the reds of Thomas’ hair.

Adam beats a hasty exit before he starts feeling comfortable. He has somewhere to be after all. Thomas doesn’t even ask him about his shoes.

MAY

Because they live in the same apartment building, it’s only inevitable that they’ll run into each other at some point in time. On Thursday, just as Adam is returning from another failed audition, he spots Thomas walking up a flight of stairs, carrying a can of paint in each hand. Adam runs up to catch up to him, palm slapping dully against the banister over and over. Before he can think about it, he calls out a “hey!” in greeting.

Thomas squints at him in surprise, then mild suspicion.

Adam wonders whether Thomas realizes that his face is so easy to read. He can usually tell what Thomas is feeling though mostly in relation to him. It’s often a combination of ambivalence and horror when Adam tries something new in bed or eats something off the floor. Some of the time, when he’s softened by an orgasm and dumb with pleasure, he looks at Adam with something resembling fondness though of course that’s completely up to interpretation; it’s easy to evoke tenderness after giving someone a phenomenal blowjob complete with a finger up their ass.

“Need help?” Adam asks, taking the can labeled eggshell white from Thomas. It’s rather hefty, which makes him look Thomas up and down with newfound admiration. “Doing some redecorating?”

“I’m expecting a guest next weekend and I thought I’d repaint the walls.” Thomas shrugs. “They’ve been looking rather dull lately.I thought I should repaint them.”

Adam snorts. Of course Thomas “Neat-freak” McGregor will think that even if his apartment is completely spotless. “Aren’t your walls already white though?” he asks, just to be difficult.

“Well,” Thomas huffs, clearly affronted. “They can still be improved.”

“By making them even whiter?” Adam deadpans.

Thomas doesn’t deign this with a response, instead maneuvering the can around so he can reach into his back pocket and fish out the key to his apartment. He has a number of keys adorning a gold plated ring which has a Harrods charm dangling from it as well, just one of the many things from the store that he’d brought home entirely by accident. He worked at Harrods for ten years before moving to the countryside and he has an accumulation of various knick knacks to show for it: pens and t-shirts and castoffs from the gift shop plus a ton of other decorative odds and ends. He even has a black and white photo of the storefront sitting on his bedside table which Adam has never asked about though there’s probably a good story behind it.

Adam hands Thomas the other can once Thomas manages to wrestle the door open. Standing in Thomas’ living room always makes him feel strange because it puts him in the mood for sex though he and Thomas never fucked anywhere but in the bedroom before 10PM.

“You could make yourself useful you know,” Thomas says conversationally, beginning to put the can on the floor. Adam turns to him so abruptly that he makes himself dizzy, until he realizes that Thomas isn’t making a pass at him; he’s being straightforward, has an earnest, almost hopeful expression on his face. This isn’t code for sucking cock. “If you’ve got nothing better to do this afternoon, you could help me paint the walls.” Thomas gestures vaguely to the entirety of the living room. There’s plastic tarp over the sofa and coffee table, and the shelves have been moved aside in preparation for the paint job.

Adam raises both his eyebrows. “I won’t help you even if you paid me fifty bucks.”

“There’s a free dinner in there for you,” Thomas says, “And I promise it won’t be bagel bites and tomato sauce.”

Adam should really say no. He’s learning how to, is making progress, but today he backslides.

“You do know a way to a man’s heart,” he says, before making a quick detour to his apartment to change into baggy shorts and an old musty shirt he won’t mind getting paint on. The sleeves have been completely sawed off with a box cutter two summers ago during a heatwave, exposing the line bisecting his upper arms into two distinct shades. When Adam comes back fifteen minutes later, Thomas is already wearing an apron, a checkered bandana over his hair and a pair of clear plastic goggles which swallow half his face.

How he can look criminally attractive while looking like that Adam will never know, but stranger things have happened.

Thomas hands him a paint roller without fanfare, stepping back from the wall before adjusting his goggles. Adam tilts his head to look at him curiously, suddenly overcome with the intense desire to slot an errant curl of hair back into place. He manages to reign in the impulse and instead gestures to the wide expanse of Nordic white wall. There’s a lot of wall to cover; Thomas’ apartment is bigger than Adam’s with the added feature of a second bedroom so his rent is a little more expensive. Old newspapers have been set out on every square inch of carpet in case there are any stray drops of paint though Thomas may have gone a little overboard by covering the entire living room floor in newspaper. It’s a quirk of his: he likes to be prepared. Adam has flashbacks of their first hookup: the only time he can recall Thomas ever doing something brazen without thinking about the consequences. It had been messy and quick, dirty just the way Adam liked his sexual encounters: getting each other off with handjobs while the two of them were still mostly clothed, then fucking off after. The next morning they bumped into each other at Trader Joe’s and Thomas gave him a tight-lipped smile, a thanks but no thanks type of expression Adam is used to seeing by now.

Adam had chalked up the entire experience as a one-off, a fever dream brought about by a solid year without alcohol, but two weeks later, he ran into Thomas again, this time at a bar in Bushwick and they ended up sharing a cab home. There is a definite upside to being neighbors with Thomas but Adam had not accounted for his situation to escalate. It is in many ways like his relationship with alcohol: one minute he has a bottle of beer in hand, and years later he can’t ever remember a time he went to bed without one. Sex with Thomas has its own addictive qualities and Adam has always had a hard time fighting off his impulses especially when they make him feel good.

“Do I get goggles and an apron too?” he asks Thomas.

“I only have one pair of each,” Thomas says defensively. “I didn’t account for you helping me.”

“Right,” Adam mutters. “You’ve done this before though, haven’t you?”

“I read a book about it once,” Thomas coughs, “It should be easy, I suppose. I mean how difficult can it be, it’s just paint.”

The answer is: very, though this is largely due to the fact neither of them have ever painted a room before. Eventually, Thomas caves and they watch a video on Youtube which instruct them to pour the rest of the paint into a large bucket and invest in a bucket screen and $20 roller sleeves. Between the two of them, they manage to repaint the whole living room an even shade of white all the while getting the least amount of paint on themselves and the floor, a feat in and of itself.

Thomas pushes all the windows open to keep them from choking on paint exhaust but the result is a barrage of noise filtering in from the street outside. It doesn’t bother Adam in the least; he’s used to the holler of traffic and industry. He’s lived in New York most of his life and the mark of a true New Yorker is managing to sleep through sirens, earthquakes, and pretty much anything. Thomas, however, wrinkles his nose at the noise and shuts the windows immediately. He’s moved here early last year from London but Adam still doesn’t know what he does for a living. All he knows is that Thomas dresses impeccably and takes good care of himself; that he had a fiancé once, and has an allergy to blueberries.

Thomas is too tired to cook dinner so they order green curry from that famous place on Myrtle Ave with the best pineapple rice. They eat standing in the kitchen, crowding the counter, Adam straight from the box, hunched and leaning on one elbow, Thomas with proper cutlery. It’s peaceful, and for once Adam doesn’t mind the silence because it’s not laden with meaning and is just is. Then he finds his thoughts veering off into dangerous territory and he’s immediately uncomfortable, compelled to break the spell mostly by asking brazenly whether he could fuck Thomas after he finishes dinner.

It was a stupid thing to say; Adam regrets opening his mouth to say it. Thomas’ eyes nearly bug out of their sockets as he drops his fork in shock. He’s never fucked Adam without some amount of alcohol in him. “I don’t, I don’t smell so good,” he says and clutches the front of his shirt like he’s suddenly the heroine of a romance novel.

“I could fuck you in the shower,” Adam offers.

“What?”

Adam shrugs. “It’s sexy,” he tries.

“But one of us could slip!”

“Hey, I like to live dangerously—”

“Or break a hip,” Thomas continues, ignoring what Adam’s just said.

Adam wisely drops it as he recognizes it for what it is: a lost cause. Too much hemming and hawing from Thomas doesn’t make it seem worthwhile anyhow. He balls his paper napkin and tosses it onto the counter. “Forget it. I was just teasing you anyway.”

“Right,” Thomas scoffs quietly, regarding him with suspicious eyes. “Sometimes I never know with you.”

“Yeah, well, I like to keep you on your toes,” Adam says breezily. “Someone around here has to.”

JUNE

Probably Adam’s biggest flaw is that he acts first and asks questions later. Which is why when he sees Thomas leaving the apartment building accompanied by a pretty brunette, he throws caution to the wind and ditches his own plans for the evening to follow them all the way to the restaurant. If he were a better person, and more well-adjusted, he probably would have left them alone. But being none of those things, he has no compunction tailing them to their destination.

It’s a nice place, a little cramped, but what part of the city isn’t. Adam has lived in spaces smaller than the one he occupies currently, in one bed-room apartments with dead leaves on the windowsill and pill-bugs for company. He seats himself in a booth across Thomas, hiding his face behind the menu card which he clutches with a white-knuckled grip. Thomas’ back is facing him; it’s an ideal position for eavesdropping.

There’s a curl of hair at the base of Thomas’ neck that Adam suddenly wants to lick just to scandalize his present company, but he’s not that person anymore, he’s seeing a therapist, so he settles in and orders a ginger ale with nothing much better to do with his time. His stomach pinches up when it becomes perfectly clear that it’s a date. He should have known, he should have fucking known, but he didn’t want to jump to any conclusions.

And she’s pretty. Her name is Bea and she’s known Thomas a while judging from their conversation. She reaches out and covers Thomas’ hand in hers on the table and Thomas smiles at her and squeezes back. She asks him how he’s doing, and Thomas launches into an overlong story about his job in a store on Fifth Avenue, how it’s just like working his old job at Harrods but not quite the same. Bea laughs appreciatively at all the right pauses and they keep their hands linked the entire time. It occurs to Adam that he’s never seen Thomas like this before, laughing full of unbridled glee, his eyes shining with happiness. He’s patient with her; he waits before speaking. This is the Thomas that Adam rarely gets to see: who doesn’t have his guard up and makes ridiculous jokes.This is him, living, breathing, outside of his apartment where their entire relationship lives. They aren’t friends; Adam realizes this now with a kind of bitter resignation that sits heavily in his stomach.

It takes a while for Adam to realize he’s still staring at the back of Thomas’ head, lost in his train of thought. He finishes off his drink and orders himself another. After topping it off, he finally fucks off home. He walks all the way there. It’s only a few blocks and the night air helps clear his head. Back in his apartment, he strips down to his boxers and throws himself onto the bed. There’s a hot flash of jealousy creeping up his chest but he tamps it down before it can boil over. His eyes hurt. He digs his knuckles into them before slamming the heel of his hand over his forehead repeatedly.

He’s not angry. It’s nothing to get worked up over. Thomas is good at compartmentalizing different slices of his life which is probably why Adam has never seen or heard about this woman before. And why, Adam thinks, he and Thomas never interact much outside of bed. Adam is great at fucking; that’s all really Thomas wants from him.

Which is fine. Absolutely fine.

Adam doesn’t sleep that night. He takes two painkillers for his headache which he drowns with a glass of water, and takes his script with him out to the fire escape where he smokes a cigarette in a crouching position and watches a man walk his dog down the street. It’s a residential neighborhood: quieter than anywhere he’s lived in the last ten years though he can still hear the muted hum of traffic from not so far away.

Thomas’ light is on. Adam glares at his window as if he’s personally offended and then wonders what Thomas is still doing up at this hour. He doesn’t check the time on his phone until he’s jumping into a pair of jeans. Some hours before 3AM. Maybe Thomas can’t sleep either. He wouldn’t be the only one. Adam takes the stairs three at a time, leaping onto the landing before pivoting straight onto Thomas’ doorstep. He hesitates for a second before rapping on the door with his knuckles. It doesn’t take long before Thomas is answering the door and Adam glances up and he looks —

He’s wearing pyjamas and a wrinkled t-shirt, his hair is slightly askew. He squints at Adam accusingly. “It’s 4 in the morning, Adam,” he says by way of greeting.

Adam realizes that. He feels only half-awake, like he’s wading through water in a space suit. Probably the painkillers.“Couldn’t sleep. Wanted to see what you were up to,” he mumbles pathetically. He eyes the tumbler of whiskey in Thomas’ hand. “Wanna fuck?”

Thomas glances around the hallway before glaring at Adam. “Can you keep it down please?” he hisses, “Someone might hear you.”

“Sure,” Adam snorts, and is surprised when Thomas lets him in anyway. Once the door is shut behind him, he relaxes visibly. “Honestly, you have no tact whatsoever…”

“How long have you been seeing her?” Adam blurts out.

“What?” Thomas blinks at him, then he rolls his eyes and shakes his head. “Oh you mean Bea? How did you—”

“Saw you guys together,” is all Adam lets on, shrugging, stuffing his hands in his pockets. He probably should have worn a shirt, but he wasn’t thinking when he left his apartment five minutes ago, and wasn’t thinking then when he asked Thomas about his date. “She seems nice. How long have you two known each other?”

“Two years, eighteen months? I don’t know,” Thomas says, a frown tugging at his lips. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

“It is when I’ve been fucking you,” Adam tells him.

“Are you jealous?” Thomas’ entire face changes but it’s an expression Adam can’t quite read clearly. He turns his back to Adam and starts pouring himself another drink. “I took a lovely girl to dinner, Adam. She was visiting. That was all there is.”

“Does she know you like men too?”

“What?”

“Does she know you like men,” Adam says, slowly this time, as he stalks behind Thomas and pins him against the counter. Thomas elbows him in the ribs but there’s no real effort in it and he’s more annoyed than reluctant. “You’re an arsehole.”

“Didn’t stop you from wanting to sleep with me.”

“You think this is charming, don’t you?” Thomas scoffs, turning in Adam’s arms and shoving at his chest. “Look, whatever you’re trying to do, it’s not doing to work. ”

And how could it, Adam thinks angrily. Nothing he ever says or does changes anything. He wants to scream, to put up a fight, curl his hands into his fists and beat himself bloody, too dumb to keep making the same old mistakes, and wanting people who won’t ever give him the time of day. He’s weak, and nothing will ever change that.

#mcsackler #kylux adjacent #kylux

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preserving-ferretbrain · 6 years ago

Text

Garth Ennis Is A Hack

by Rude Cyrus

Friday, 10 April 2009

Rude Cyrus is deservedly rude about The Boys.~

Once upon a time, superheroes were seen as protectors of the innocent, bringers of justice, and saviors of mankind. When I was a kid, there was no greater thrill than watching Superman pummel giant robots or stop a plane from crashing into a city. As time went on, the public began to tire of flawless beings that could do no wrong, so creators began to make the heroes more “realistic”, at least in terms of character. Antiheroes like Wolverine and The Punisher became popular while concepts like vigilantism would be explored in comics like Watchmen.

Unfortunately, the pendulum swung a little too far during the ‘90s, a decade where you couldn’t swing a dead badger without hitting some DARK and GRITTY antihero. This is the same decade that gave birth to Image Comics, a publisher that needs to make an acquaintance with an H-Bomb. All you need to know about Image Comics is that it took over the canceled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtlesfranchise and turned Donatello into a cyborg. That says it all.

This brings me to the present and The Boys, a comic series written by Garth Ennis and illustrated by Darick Robertson (which I keep pronouncing as “da’ Rick”).

Let me just say that I hate this series. I don’t hate it because it’s ultra-violent and ultra-sexualized. I don’t hate it because it makes superheroes (or “supes” as they’re called here) turn out to be a bunch of amoral douchebags. I don’t hate it because I think Garth Ennis is an overrated hack who’s convinced everyone he’s a genius. No, I hate it because I can’t stand the characters.

Everybody, with few exceptions, is thoroughly repugnant. Just look at the main characters:

Billy Butcher is a sociopath with a neck the size of a ham and a perpetual smirk plastered on his face. He owns a bulldog named Terror that can fuck things on command; seemingly hates supes because one raped his wife, who ended up dying because the fetus ripped through her stomach. Butcher ended up beating said fetus to death with a lamp.

Wee Hughie joined The Boys after his girlfriend was accidentally killed by a supe named A-Train. Much of the series is focused on following Hughie’s thoughts and actions, which is unfortunate because he’s a wet blanket with exactly three facial expressions: anger, incredulity, and shit-eating grin. He’s also a dead ringer for Simon Pegg – I suspect Ennis was sitting around, smoking pot, and said to himself, “Dude, wouldn’t it be cool if Simon Pegg had superpowers?”

Mother’s Milk is a somewhat decent guy, which means he gets shoved into the background more often than not. He seems to derive his powers from an entity he calls “Momma” in a process that makes him vomit. Why does he have to do this? Who cares, let’s watch a midget use a massive vibrator!

The Frenchman and The Female are psychotic killers with the ability to rip people apart with their bare hands. Defining characteristics: one is French, the other lacks a penis. Garth Ennis doesn’t give a shit about them, so why should I?

And what would a team of morally dubious antiheroes be without a team of superheroes to oppose them? Enter the Seven, an analogue of the Justice League, filled with characters that make The Boys look like The Boy Scouts. The only good member of the group is Starlight, and she’s constantly degraded by the other members, whether it’s forced into wearing a more revealing outfit, giving fellatio to the male members of the group as a “test”, or nearly being raped by the aforementioned A-Train. It’s also strongly hinted that Homelander (leader of the Seven and Superman analogue) was the one who raped Butcher’s wife.

What a charming bunch. Thankfully, it’s not all bad, as Starlight later becomes Hughie’s girlfriend. It’s a match made in heaven, as they’re both outstandingly bland.

Other notable characters include a CIA analyst with a fetish for female paraplegic athletes, a CIA director that frequently has humiliating sex with Butcher, and recurring cameos by Stan Lee – okay, he’s called the Legend, but it’s supposed to be Stan Lee. Perhaps “Exposition Man” would be a better name, because all he does is talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk…

Speaking of stereotypes, there are quite a few on display here. For example, there’s the two fat, hairy, greasy, comic book store-owning Italian brothers who are constantly using variations of “fuck” and threatening their customers with graphic violence; the enormous bearded Russian who talks about communism and the Motherland all the time; the “East Coast vs. West Coast” superhero teams that are always fighting each other, throwing up gang signs and using the n-word. I kept wondering why Garth Ennis was doing this, and I settled on “because he thinks it’s funny.” See, Ennis is pointing out how absurd these stereotypes are, so it’s not really racist, right? Right?

Despite all of this, I forced myself to read all 29 issues, which, at times, felt like I was cutting off my legs with a rusty hacksaw – oh, look, the Russian guy is called “Love Sausage” because he has a fifteen-inch cock! Oh look, Hughie has menstrual blood on his face from oral sex because Starlight was on her period! Oh look, one of the superheroes can vomit acid! Isn’t that a knee-slapper? Worse still was the heavy-handed social and political commentary that Ennis shoehorned in, ranging from how St. Patrick’s Day sucks, to how the military-industrial complex has the United States in a chokehold, to American politics (the President and Vice President being analogues for Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, respectively), to how superheroes are evil. He even uses 9/11 to make his point, for fuck’s sake. Basically, one of the hijacked planes crashed into the Brooklyn Bridge (the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were spared) because the Seven tried to save the day but bungled it due to incompetence and selfishness. Do you see? SUPERHEROES ARE EVIL!

No, that wasn’t what made me stop reading this comic. What made me stop was the latest story arc, called “We Gotta Go Now”. The Boys have to investigate the public suicide of Silver Kincaid, a member of the G-Men (no prizes for guessing who they’re supposed to be an analogue of), for reasons I can’t be bothered to look up. Hughie has to go undercover and infiltrate one of the younger G-teams (as “Bagpipe”, because he’s Scottish, get it?) called G-Wiz. See the subtle pun there?

It’s immediately apparent that something is off with G-Wiz – sure, they might seem to be your average fraternity (i.e. boorish drunks obsessed with bodily functions), but they’re a little too comfortable with each other, if you catch my drift. Couple this with the revelation that G-Men’s leader, John Godolkin (analogue of Charles Xavier – apologies for all the analogues) actually abducted almost all of the G-Men when they were kids and turned them into superheroes, the fact that he refers to the G-Men as his “children”, and all of the dark mutterings of “what we had to deal with” and things start becoming clear.

At this point I thought, “No way. There’s no way Ennis would be so cheap and unoriginal. There has to be more to this.” I read issue 29, and, lo and behold, one of the characters confirmed my worst fears:

John Godolkin is a child molester.

That was the last straw. It wasn’t because one of the villains was a pedophile; rather, it was because Garth Ennis had resorted to such tacky exploitation in order to wring an emotion from his audience. Instead of taking the time to craft something novel, Ennis, out of sheer laziness, decided to go for the biggest heartstring and yank. Why have a complex villain when you can just say, “He’s an evil kid-toucher! BOOGA BOOGA!”

I’m sure Ennis pats himself on the back every day for what he thinks is scathing criticism on the superhero genre and insightful commentary on numerous aspects of life. He isn’t clever, creative, or even likable. He’s just a lazy hack. My smoldering ire also extends to the fans that keep buying this dreck and give it good reviews. What the hell is wrong with these people? My guess is that, in their minds, they equate DARK, GRITTY, and SERIOUS with being good. In my mind, it’s just BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, and more BULLSHIT.

Themes:

Damage Report

Sci-fi / Fantasy

Comics

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~Comments (

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Wardog

at 17:17 on 2009-04-10I don't know what to say ... I am completely flabbergasted by the awfulness of this. Why on earth is it garnering praise?

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Arthur B

at 17:26 on 2009-04-10Once upon a time the publishers of

2000 AD

thought it would be great to hand over all the writing duties for the comic for a few months to Garth Ennis, Grant Morrison, and various hangers-on. Why they thought this was a good idea was a mystery because Garth had already proven he shouldn't be trusted with other people's properties when in

Strontium Dogs

(the sequel series to

Strontium Dog

) he pulled a blatant retcon out of his capacious arse to turn the sweet, gentle comic relief character The Gronk into a psychotic gun-toting protagonist. Nonetheless, the magazine went ahead with the Summer Offensive, as it called the promotion (because, you see, it's Garth Ennis and he likes being offensive, and it happened in the summer), and the general tone of the comic went from "12A bordering on 15" (in movie age rating terms) to "18 certificate and a big argument about violence in the media on the side", which prompted the parents of certain younger subscribers, such as myself, to cancel the magazine.

And that's how Garth Ennis ruined

2000 AD

for an 11 year old Arthur.

Seriously, the man is awful. I think the only thing he's done that I've actually liked was

Hellblazer: Dangerous Habits

. Frustratingly, that was brilliant. He's capable of not being an idiot if he tries, he just

doesn't try

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Rude Cyrus

at 19:49 on 2009-04-10This was actually nominated for an Eisner Award for "Best Continuing Series" in 2008. And comic bok fans wonder why so many people don't take comics seriously.

Thanks for the image, by the way.

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Wardog

at 20:35 on 2009-04-10For a moment there I was wondering if you meant the image of an 11 year old Arthur but then I realised you meant the literal image that illustrates this article. I hope it's okay - I chose the cover that most annoyed me :)

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Sonia Mitchell

at 23:23 on 2009-04-10This series sounds horrific. Thank you for the warning.

(I badly want to google cyborg Donatello. I'd like to think it can't be as disastrous as I'm imaginging, but that would probably be naive. I'm therefore restraining myself...)

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Arthur B

at 00:46 on 2009-04-11

Oh hey look what else Image have published.

On the other hand, they also put out

The Walking Dead

, which

I really like

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Guy

at 03:59 on 2009-04-11Speaking of Image, this is one of the most funny/disturbing things I've ever read: Rob Liefeld's 40 worst drawings: http://progressiveboink.com/archive/robliefeld.html

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Arthur B

at 15:04 on 2009-04-11I'm amazed they were able to find 40 drawings worse than

the infamous Captain America one

Actually, I'm not amazed, Liefeld is terrible. Oh God, the feet...

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http://webcomcon.blogspot.com/

at 06:31 on 2010-07-11Thread necromancy: After reading this article from the random button, I'm reading

The Boys

out of morbid curiosity. I've gotten through the first couple of storylines, issues one through ten. It's about as disgusting as Rude Cyrus has said, with everything as juvenile and pointlessly violent and so forth.

One of the annoying things is that there are occasionally glimmers of interest that make me think "You know, if Garth Ennis actually gave a shit, and stopped dropping tons of stupid violence and stupid sex and stupid ham-fisted 'haha the gay activist is violently afraid of actual homosexuals' shit, he might actually be able to make some points about 'how do we make superheroes accountable?'" One advantage of

The Boys

is that, unlike

Civil War

, it's just one author, so there aren't a bazillion different axes being ground. And it doesn't seem like it's constrained by being a DC Comics Continuity Event, the way

Civil War

was a Marvel Comics Continuity Event. And every once in a while, it seems like Ennis might have something to say on the matter.

But it inevitably degenerates into "hurr hurr supes are pervs, butcher punches them." Fuck you, Ennis, for being wasted potential.

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http://webcomcon.blogspot.com/

at 06:32 on 2010-07-11Aack, unclosed HTML tags. Sorry! (I'm used to a forum that won't let me post if I have unmatched tags, and didn't check.)

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Rami

at 05:43 on 2010-07-12@webcomcon: Fixed it for you. I'm afraid FerretBrain doesn't really do warnings -- but we do suggest using the Preview button!

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http://blackgeep.livejournal.com/

at 18:20 on 2010-07-13Continuing thread necromancy!

I am a comic book artist. I detest

The Boys

with a deep, abiding disgust. My employer thinks it's brilliant. He is also a big fan of Liefeld (needs more pouches!), so go figure. While

The Boys

is bad, try having your only income being working on the dream project of someone who likes

The Boys

, and feel your artistic integrity shrivel.

I actually considered sending in issue one of

Polis

(what I'm paid to draw) to Ferretbrain for a review; I may yet do that alongside

Polis

issue two and my own side project for what the great minds here could find a fun comparison. "The world is corrupt and drug-addled, corporations are evil, and our main hero is an amoral Cape [superhero] with few redeeming qualities." versus "A space princess and space pirates act terribly toward one another, but all in good fun." I asked my employer, and he thinks any publicity is good.

Speaking of "Cape" and "Supe", what is this allergic reaction to the word superhero? Yes, superhero is a long word, but so is computer. From my perspective, it would seem more likely that superhero would get shortened to just hero. Then advert campaigns about "The

real

heroes of X city: our policemen and firefighters" would take on a whole new weight. Plus, I haven't met many people who say 'puter, and compy only caught on after Strongbad popularised it.

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Dan H

at 19:11 on 2010-07-13I think the thing about abbreviating "superhero" to something like "cape" or "supe" (did Watchmen use "mask" or am I making that up) is that it highlights the fact that this is an EDGY SERIOUS WORK OF FICTION about EDGY DARK CHARACTERS not some KIDDY THING about SUPERHEROES.

Because as we all know, nothing screams "maturity" like going to great lengths to appear mature.

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http://blackgeep.livejournal.com/

at 21:32 on 2010-07-13The thing which screams maturity the best is to have everyone swear all the time, and put blood and torture on every page. The ability to engage in traditionally adult themes while employing transgressive story elements such as bodily fluids, misogyny, and rape is the hallmark of an individual whose mind has progressed past puerile adolescent fascination. As you said, superheroes are so childish. We aren't writing stories about superheroes under a different name. These are adult stories about well rounded characters employing serious themes. Just like Terry Goodkind is definitely not a *pfft*

fantasy author.

Sarcasm over, I honestly don't remember if

Watchmen

used "mask." I guess I've just lost some comix-cred.

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https://me.yahoo.com/a/O9dPXbw3peUAacFQM4aervEXf232TbhO0FE-#dcc46

at 13:13 on 2011-10-28Hey guys. I'm aware this is a few years old but just discovered the site and enjoying it, even when I disagree.

But this is the only one I think I needed to comment on.

Firstly, Garth Ennis is demonstrably not a hack. That's just incredibly lazy.

Secondly, this review seems to have totally failed to come to terms with the text.

OK. I'm not going to argue against certain points here. There's gross out humor, there's swearing, there's a hamster well-up in a zombie's bum. There's puke and disgusting, disgusting periods that no man should ever have to read about (cos girls, right! ew. The writer of this article agrees!) and there's even some blood and guts and a superhero orgy and someone strangles Scarlet Witch with a belt!

But.

The scene where poor old Annie, Starlight, has to service six members of the Seven to get in? It's awful. And a considerable part of the text is concerned not only with her coming to terms with the assault but (and how often to you see this?) actually come to terms with and starting to heal from the assault.

The two black teams who scream the N word at each other? There's no discussion of the young black man who is going to be forced into one of the teams who sees nothing he recognises of his experiences in tired mainstream hip hop lingo and posing. A man who has begun to understand that to become a superstar, he has to enter into a well-dodgy narrative.

No discussion of the good people warped into being celebrities and what that costs them, which is the central metaphor of the book.

Or the actual honesty when Hughie, who's never met a gay man but has to hang out in a gay club and suddenly finds his liberal sensibilities a bit overwhelmed. A scene that's never, ever played for cheap gay joke laughs.

The point of Hughie going down on a girl with a period is not that it's gross and his mates laugh at him. It's that he refuses to let something as dumb as that get in the way of his relationship with Annie. He cops some jokes and some pisstaking but then will not let the deathly embarrassed girl freak out over what turns out to be ... nothing at all.

In recent years, we've also seen a cheap man-on-man 'Dark Knight Returns' rape joke actually turns out to actually be a proper discussion on the reasons why a chap might not be able to discuss it with his friends. And what that cost him.

St Patrick's Day sucks? Surely an repatriated Northern Irishman who grew up in the Troubles has nothing to say about the immigrant experience to the United States. What a hack!

As for scoring political points off 9/11.... mate. Welcome to the world. I fail to even see an argument here.

I'm not going to say everyone should love The Boys. And sometimes I get a bit weary of schoolboys bleeding out of their arses and all the rest. And I think Ennis has made his point about religion by now. I do. (Spoiler alert: Preacher)

I like the comic but I don't expect everyone to be able to laugh like I do when the mentally ill Batman analogue has sex with a meteor.

So don't like it. That's cool. It's not like I'll gnash teeth if you don't like what I like. But this review has really failed to come to grips with and has actively misrepresented the text.

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Arthur B

at 13:32 on 2011-10-28Hi dcc46, welcome to Ferretbrain!

I've not read

The Boys

but I have read enough Ennis to at least address this point:

Firstly, Garth Ennis is demonstrably not a hack. That's just incredibly lazy.

You know what else is incredibly lazy? Basing your writing career so heavily on cheap shock tactics which come across like a 13 year old trying to be edgy. I couldn't get past the first volume of

Preacher

because Ennis' obsession with gore, fucking, and other scatological subjects just became intensely monotonous. His contributions to 2000 AD were much the same. His

Hellblazer

run started out brilliantly - I think

Dangerous Habits

is both the best thing he's written and the best

Hellblazer

story that

anyone

has written - but I couldn't abide the rest of it precisely because he kept falling back into bad habits.

When a man makes a career out of indulging his puerile instincts to an extent where consistently and repeatedly his material degenerates into lame attempts to be shocking for the sake of it, that's pretty hackish.

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https://me.yahoo.com/a/O9dPXbw3peUAacFQM4aervEXf232TbhO0FE-#dcc46

at 13:51 on 2011-10-28Well, if that's all you've read of Hellblazer, that's cool. When he was, what, 21, he wrote that. There was a bit of a fall off in quality before he'd come back with stories of Kit and Ric the Vic and end up telling stories of the devil contrasted with the nasty realities of racial politics in early 90s London.

If you passed on Preacher, that's cool. That second story arc is uninspired. But you missed out on a a meditation of faith, friendship, watching a man try to navigate between his old-fashioned 'chivalry' and a woman who refused to be patronised or left behind.

So I honestly don't see shocking for shocking's sake. I see bad taste. But I've never felt there's a kind of splatter punk aesthetic at work.

That's sort of my point.

I see humour that may or may not work for you. But I'm suggesting to you that if you can get past the guts and jizz all over the shop. And if that's really a sticking point for you, then you won't ever get into it.

But I think your wrong if puerility is all you get out of the work.

I know you had issues with his early 2000AD run. I never got that. I'm Australian and 2000AD seemed to ship... on a madman's calendar. So I can't comment on that.

So I tell you what. Try something like his PG Hitman. His war stories, where he reigns himself in. His Punisher MAX, which is humorless as a Derek Raymond novel.

But I'll split you the difference: Jennifer Blood is fucking awful.

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https://me.yahoo.com/a/O9dPXbw3peUAacFQM4aervEXf232TbhO0FE-#dcc46

at 14:05 on 2011-10-28Anyways, I'm off.

But, a hack writer is a bad writer. Matt Reiley is a hack writer. He's bad at the English language, his plots are hackneyed, his haircut is stupid.

If you don't like Ennis' work, that's cool. But just because you think he wraps things up in grossness doesn't make him a bad writer -at all-. He's an accomplished writer with themes and metaphors and all that writery stuff.

Nevertheless, good site. Talk later.

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valse de la lune

at 16:00 on 2011-10-28

So don't like it. That's cool. It's not like I'll gnash teeth if you don't like what I like. But this review has really failed to come to grips with and has actively misrepresented the text.

How quaint; you appear to be gnashing your teeth exactly because Cyrus didn't like the thing. I also agree with Arthur's assessment of Ennis: overrated hack pandering to things teenage boys--usually teenage white boys at that, what with the n-word thing--find oh so edgy and clever.

Preacher

is absolutely fucking unreadable and I spit in its general direction.

And, while you can certainly use the word "hack" to denote a poor writer--which I'd argue Ennis

, at that--his general attitude and output are pretty hacky too, in the lowest-common-denominator sense.

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Rude Cyrus

at 20:31 on 2011-10-29Here's the thing: whatever good points or ideas Ennis may have are ruined by the juvenile shock tactics he wraps them in -- it's one thing to use violence and sex occasionally and for great effect, it's another to use them

all the time.

For example, I can agree with Ennis that St. Patrick's Day is an excuse for every American with a drop of Irish blood to wear green and get sick on beer, but when he ends this commentary on a close-up on a hat filled with puke, it makes me roll my eyes.

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