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saintsenara · 1 year ago

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your voldemort is 10/10 perfection. are there any characterizations, common interpretations, etc that you find implausible or just plain dislike? or that you really love and have drawn from? :)

thank you so much for this ask anon :)

i received a similar ask from @sarafina-sincerity, and so they are answered here together, as part of a flurry of asks about my main boy, lord voldemort, which form a neat triad.

this is part two of a three part meta on him:

1. what is interesting about voldemort's role in the series? [here] 2. how do i write voldemort in my own work, and why? 3. what does dumbledore get wrong about voldemort? [here]

so let's get into it...

how do i write voldemort, and why?

in we go under the cut:

influences on my voldemort

the author whose voldemort has had the greatest influence on mine is, without a doubt, eldritcher.

while i have no hope of replicating the majesty of their prose, i've never been able to shake their depiction of voldemort as someone profoundly lonely and deeply affected by grief - something most prominent in their transcendentally good almagest - and a reading of voldemort which i bring not only to my writing, but to my engagement with the canon text.

i'm also very struck by their depiction of voldemort as a creature of sensation - instead of the rather austere version we tend to find in fanfiction - particularly in their catullus 16 and their writing of tombraxas.

while i diverge from their portrayal of voldemort as lazy - i think he’s sustained by a current of nervous energy [and, indeed, that both he and harry have poorly-managed adhd, but that’s personal projection] - i find myself always writing voldemort as someone who likes being warm, loathes the outdoors, and is fond of expensive, sensory fabrics.

that voldemort is a creature of sensation also affects how i read many of his relationships. as i've pointed out in my prior writing about bellamort, he tolerates an enormous amount of physical closeness from bellatrix in canon, and i'm quite taken with the idea that he’s a surprisingly tactile person.

another influence i've found significant recently is @phantomato’s excellent series of meta on voldemort and gender identity, in particular because they have helped me work through a discomfort i've always had with this quote from half-blood prince:

He raised his glass as though toasting Voldemort, whose face remained expressionless. Nevertheless, Harry felt the atmosphere in the room change subtly: Dumbledore’s refusal to use Voldemort’s chosen name was a refusal to allow Voldemort to dictate the terms of the meeting, and Harry could tell that Voldemort took it as such.

voldemort and gender identity is something which i'd love to see explored more in the fandom. i'm as guilty as anyone of writing a cheerfully cisgender dark lord, and - in particular - of not engaging enough with the fact that the canonical voldemort considers tom his deadname. i find myself returning again and again to these meta each time i sit down to begin a new voldemort-centric wip, and i think that my own writing of voldemort has been nuanced considerably by them. certainly, voldemort’s gender plays a far bigger part in scylla and charybdis than in my previous long-fics

there are, of course, portrayals of voldemort which have influenced me to write in the opposite direction. i’m not going to mention, even obliquely, the names of these authors or their stories, but i am going to mention one version of voldemort which i loathe and which i never intend to replicate in my writing: the voldemort of the films.

as i said in the previous meta in this series, film!voldemort is the source of countless fanon which undermines the statement of the canonical seven-book series, above all the idea that voldemort is not terrifying, that he is completely deranged and incompetent, and that he doesn’t very nearly win.

character traits my voldemort always has

as i said in the previous meta in this series, i prefer a voldemort who isn’t a sociopath, largely because i think it’s quite lazy writing to have a villain whose evil is caused by just not getting human emotion [after all, there are plenty of people who find it difficult to parse other people’s emotions, and it doesn’t automatically make them bad]. it's considerably more challenging - as both a writer and a reader - to have to confront the idea that the villain has complicated and multifaceted motivations behind their actions, and that we're called as humans to accept that it’s possible to be simultaneously horrified by and sympathetic to people who cause harm. above all, i loathe the implication of the text that voldemort was born bad and was always irredeemable, not least because it completely undermines the series’ central thesis on the value of choice.

i accept, of course, that this isn't what the doylist text thinks. jkr has been very clear that she thinks voldemort is sociopathic and that he has no concept of humanity. fortunately, i take her opinion as infallible in very little [trans rights are human rights], and i much prefer a watsonian approach to the text which views dumbledore’s conviction of voldemort’s sociopathy as… just incorrect.

separate to this, i like a voldemort who is emotionally demonstrative. it seems to have become standard to write him as preternaturally controlled [maybe breaking down when under extreme pressure, but almost exclusively doing so in private], but the voldemort of canon is, and there’s no other word for it, feral. he's one of the male characters whose emotional range is described in the most detail, and he's also described as registering his emotions very obviously on his face. i’m always tickled by harry’s complaint in order of the phoenix that he picks up "lurches of annoyance or cheerfulness" via the scarcrux, and i love thinking about the little joys in voldemort’s day.

i also see him as someone who's often fretful and unmoored - indeed he basically says as much in goblet of fire:

"I will not pretend to you that I didn’t then fear that I might never regain my powers... Yes, that was perhaps my darkest hour... I could not hope that I would be sent another wizard to possess... and I had given up hope, now, that any of my Death Eaters cared what had become of me."

certainly, the canonical voldemort has a sense of purpose when focused on the wars which doesn’t seem to be a permanent presence in his everyday life, and he - like dumbledore - seems to spend a lot of time in stasis until pushed to change course, the clearest example of this being that he stays in customer service for ten years and would undoubtedly have continued at borgin and burkes if hepzibah smith had just kept her treasures in the safe...

this is not, of course, to say that voldemort is not ambitious - he absolutely is - but that, as with harry, that ambition is accompanied by a certain need for pressure. indeed, voldemort is one of the more adrenaline-chasing slytherins we meet in the series, and i'm convinced that this is the trigger for his often-expressed [and, let’s be real, pretty gryffindor-ish] view that courage and daring are valuable, seen most clearly in his simping for james potter dying "like a man, straight-backed and proud" and his determination to duel harry in the graveyard rather than just off him - as well as in his frequent statements that he loathes cowardice, his cruelty to minions [especially peter pettigrew and lucius malfoy] he regards as insufficiently daring, and his taunting of harry and dumbledore with the idea that they allow others to hide them or fight their battles for them.

that dumbledore fails to understand this about voldemort is addressed in the next meta in this series. so, too, is the fact that dumbledore fails to appreciate voldemort’s clearly quite profound sense of honour. this is seen most clearly in his relationship with pettigrew, whose inherent lack of honourable conduct - not only to him, but to the marauders - evidently disgusts him:

"Wormtail, I need somebody with brains, somebody whose loyalty has never wavered, and you, unfortunately, fulfill neither requirement."

"You returned to me, not out of loyalty, but out of fear of your old friends. You deserve this pain, Wormtail. You know that, don’t you?"

his canonical detestation of liars seems to be genuine - and he's actually very rarely shown lying in canon [although the implication that he lies frequently off-page is obvious].

i like the canonical description of voldemort as highly independent, self-motivated, and self-sufficient - although i think there's room for more nuance in whether he actually likes the death eaters than canon gives us.

i also like the fact that the canonical voldemort is incredibly pragmatic [even if this is undermined on several occasions by his flair for the dramatic] and i think that this aspect of his character is all too often overlooked by authors who want to make him inflexible and obsessive. voldemort openly admits to having changed his mind on several occasions in the books, or to have modified his approach on the basis of new information - that this information is often partial, or given to him falsely by snape, does not change this.

he seems - like ron and harry - to have good gut instincts, to be an excellent judge of character, and to be reasonably self-aware [although he uses this almost exclusively for nefarious ends]. i love the chameleon-like aspect of his charisma - the being-the-centre-of-attention at the slug club which morphs into him having negative charm in the hepzibah smith scene, as he sits offering her all the rope she needs to hang herself - and i love writing, especially in tomarry, the ways in which his customer service mask cracks.

now, the more controversial aspects of my characterisation of voldemort…

the canonical voldemort is very, very funny, and far too few fics engage with his [malicious] sense of humour. tomarry works as a ship entirely because they'd have a great time bickering with each other, and snapemort works because they're both comically petty and extremely dramatic.

i adore the magpieishness to voldemort’s character, not only in the idea that he likes shiny things, but also in that his love-language is gift-giving [he rewards his followers for acts of service, absolutely, but the language with which he describes this is always focused on the idea of gift-giving, and, especially, reciprocal gift-exchange]. i always write him as a collector not only of impressive magical objects but of things full stop, whether we’re doing the cheerful fluff of him filling grimmauld place with interestingly shaped rocks he finds on walks, or the more canon-compliant helping himself to trinkets he sees in his friends’ magnificent houses. i'm committed to the idea that he genuinely likes working in the antiques trade and i never write him going into teaching or politics - if i find myself in a situation where he has to get a job beyond being a terrorist, he stays at borgin and burkes.

i view voldemort as someone whose great longing is to be perceived and understood. both the child we meet in dumbledore’s memories and the adult who rises in the graveyard share a tendency to reveal far too much about themselves when they're given the opportunity, and i always write voldemort - especially the voldemort of one year in every ten - as never mastering a habit of letting things slip when he gets excited. tomarry again works because harry is happy to do this perceiving.

i also - and this is definitely the controversial one - view him as someone capable of great and stalwart faithfulness, whose ability to express this aspect of his character is constrained by the trust issues caused by his childhood trauma. he's extraordinarily devoted to both snape and bellatrix throughout the canon series - obviously, this is because he thinks his read on them as loyal servants is right, but i don’t think we necessarily have to see this as a negative, most of us trust and like people because we think their motivations are trustworthy and likeable, and most of us maintain at least some relationships which have a degree of transactionality to them, but are no less sincere for that.

whether he's someone who loves is another question. i vary it by story, although i always frame his rejection of love as a deliberate choice, rather than - as the text does - something innate.

my voldemort always has several much more frivolous traits which i like to put into stories entirely to amuse myself…

i notice a tendency for voldemort to be written as pretty culturally sophisticated, and i think this is generally correct. certainly, the way that class functions in britain is that toleration within a class which is not one’s own can be achieved through simply knowing the right references, and i absolutely believe that voldemort is someone who learned what books to say he’d read and which knife to use at dinner with dizzying speed when he arrived at hogwarts.

however, one thing i can never get on board with is the idea that he’s a good cook. i prefer my voldemort to have a touch of the ration book to him - and for his plebeian tastes in food to confuse and annoy the posher death eaters. i like him refusing to eat at fancy dinner parties, before sneaking into the kitchens for a stack of toast and margarine, and being a connoisseur of all the finest bits of british cuisine - a fry up, beans on toast, a good roast dinner, potatoes in any form, kippers and kedgeree, fish and chips, mysterious pies, and tea with everything. this is not to say, of course, that i think he’s into bland food [the only mischaracterisation of the brits i, as an irishwoman, am prepared to go into bat against]. this is a man who loves a curry, without a doubt, and i am incredibly fond of the idea that he develops a serious taste for many of the world’s most delicious cuisines on his travels.

i also always write him with an incredibly sweet tooth - he takes his tea with milk and six sugars, hermione is dismayed. i do this entirely because i think it’s funny.

[fans of the asenora cinematic universe will have noticed a repeated motif that voldemort loves marzipan. this is because i love marzipan, and everyone else i know thinks that this is a great moral failing equivalent to being a mass-murderer.]

i like a voldemort who has some muggle skills. i write him as being able to drive, use a telephone, fire a gun [another eldritcher influence], take the tube, and correctly handle muggle money - to the shock of many of the death eaters. i prefer him to be absolutely terrible at anything which could be termed muggle manual labour, though - the man cannot do diy, garden, lift heavy objects without magic, play any sport, or swim - although i imagine him as extremely fastidious and perfectly happy to be put to work on household chores. i have him keep a diary into adulthood.

i also like him to have some appreciation of muggle culture, very much despite himself. again, this is because i think the fact that he's exactly the right age for the fashions of his youth to have been distinctly un-voldemort-ish - think tiki cocktails, p.g. wodehouse, golden age detective fiction, film musicals, swing music, and the lindy hop - is hilarious. this manifests across my works in the idea that he's incredibly fond of fred astaire - the only muggle he's prepared to accept has some sort of residual magical talent. the only reason i write this is because my late grandfather, a man whose only personality trait otherwise was "fenian", was born in the same year as lord v and absolutely adored old fred, and i will get teary-eyed listening to cheek-to-cheek for the rest of my life as a result.

voldemort’s physical appearance

the narrative importance of the young voldemort’s appearance is often overlooked, i think.

it's a comment on his broader purpose within the series - he wants to be perceived as striking and special, and his unusual physical attractiveness as a young man and horrifying eldritch features as an adult contribute to that, while harry, the modest, everyman hero, is neither obviously beautiful nor obviously ugly [and the series, more generally, treats those who are very poorly].

voldemort’s attractiveness - as with snape’s ugliness - is also an inversion of one of the series-as-children’s-literature’s main characterisation choices: that good people are nice, kind, and good-looking, and bad people are ugly, rude, or unpleasant. i also always love the little nod to the picture of dorian gray in the way the sin voldemort inflicts upon his soul changes his face.

however, beyond being told that voldemort is hot-then-not, the text also gives us some hints at voldemort’s appearance and mannerisms which i would like to see more in fanfic, especially the fact that he's described in quite a few feminine-coded ways - his voice is high; he usually speaks softly; he moves in a way which suggests elegance [he’s always described as "gliding" in canon]; and, by his late twenties, he has hair long enough for harry to comment on it [particularly interesting, since this comment comes in the course of voldemort’s most feminine-coded action in the series - the murder, in a domestic context using poison, the classic "woman’s weapon", of hepzibah smith, and the framing of her servant, hokey, for the crime]; the text refers to him as "finely-carved", which can be read as meaning that he has quite delicate features; the repeated emphasis on how pale he is - even pre-horcruxes - makes us think of the consumptive, effeminate artist of victorian literature who never leaves the house; and the text’s constant highlighting of how thin he is - and, especially, his long, elegant fingers - again calls to mind effeminate stereotypes who lack proper male brawn. voldemort’s only uncomplicatedly masculine characteristic in canon is that he's very tall.

this is to say, i much prefer a voldemort - whether he looks as he does aged sixteen or aged sixty - who doesn’t look stereotypically masculine. the text refers to him as "handsome", of course, but i choose to believe that this is just harry’s own binary understanding of how men should talk about men, and that the more appropriate word for voldemort is "beautiful". i've discussed some references for how I picture him here.

even when writing him as cisgender, i always find myself leaning towards him being quite camp, and there being an effete edge to his otherwise sinister vibe. i go back and forth on whether i imagine him as vain - the tom riddle of bookbinding spends hours each morning on his elaborately-pomaded hair, the one of scylla and charybdis keeps wearing cologne even as his face his whittled away by dark magic, but the canonical voldemort of the second war clearly isn’t doing either of those things…

i'm also interested in the idea that voldemort is physically quite fragile. i write him as having been quite a sickly child, and i think this provides an interesting jumping-off point into thinking about why he's so obsessed with magic. i like the idea that he wasn’t top dog at all at the orphanage, because he was easy to physically subdue, until he learned to use his magic to protect himself, and i like to imagine that he always knows that, should dumbledore or harry decide to throw away their wands and just deck him, he is absolutely losing that fight.

of his individual physical features, i am completely wedded to the idea that voldemort has his mother’s eyes.

voldemort’s childhood

i love an au as much as the next girl, but only very rarely one which alters voldemort’s childhood and expects him to turn out largely unchanged.

indeed, i don’t think there’s any way to write a voldemort which nods to canon if he’s not an orphan, not raised in an institution, and not poor - he can have some similarities with his canon version [i’m always struck by the comment in goblet of fire that nobody likes the riddles, and i always write tom sr. as being the source of many of voldemort’s less pleasant traits and mannerisms] but voldemort’s purpose within the series depends on his relationship to his class-background, and especially:

that he's the most "aristocratic" wizard we meet in canon - he's the only person in the seven book series to be directly descended from one of hogwarts’ founders, and the only one [horcrux!harry doesn’t count] to possess a unique magical talent connected to his lineage - but is unable to reap the benefits of this in the wizarding world because he has a muggle name and a muggle face [it’s notable in canon that pureblood families all tend to look very alike within their family units - think the weasleys, the malfoys, the blacks, and the longbottoms - that voldemort doesn’t look like a gaunt confers him benefits in that he’s hot, but it undermines the "immediately being identifiable as one of slytherin’s descendants" vibe which he might otherwise have].

that he's the most aristocratic muggle we meet in canon - he's the only person in the seven book series to have a member of the landed gentry in his immediate family - but is unable to reap the benefits of this in the muggle world because his father doesn’t acknowledge his existence and he's raised as working-class.

that neither of these two halves of his class background can ever intersect, and he's a half-blood character whose sense of belonging in either world is tenuous [snape is another; harry - who has a pureblood name and resembles his pureblood father - is much less so]. voldemort’s dislike of the common and ordinary, the fact that he's absolutely shameless about money, the fact he takes a muggle title for his wizarding alias etc. can all be read as attempts to seek meaning in a world in which he's otherwise pretty liminal. whether he actually supports the class system is discussed below…

all of which is to say, i never write a voldemort whose childhood circumstances alter from canon.

and there are no two ways about it: voldemort’s childhood is spectacularly grim, and the trauma it causes [while different from the trauma fanon often ascribes to it - above all, and i’ll die on this hill, the fact that he doesn’t give a fuck about dumbledore setting his wardrobe on fire] drives far more of voldemort’s actions than the watsonian narrative seems aware of - it is, for example, clearly the trigger for his hoarding, for his lack of trust in authority [which is exactly the same as harry’s, but treated very differently by the books], for his obsession with being the best, and for his tendency to show off. the adult voldemort loathes reminders of childhood neglect - especially babies crying - and, while dumbledore mocks him for this, his ignorance of fairytales is a neat way of saying that he didn’t have a real or carefree childhood. i'm flexible on the headcanon of him suffering specific physical or sexual abuse in the orphanage [i always wonder if his canonical fear of doctors is meant to imply something along those lines], although frankly i think the childhood we see in canon is miserable enough.

the most significant bit of voldemort’s childhood trauma, though, is his grief over the death of his mother [and, it’s worth noting, his grief over the presumed death of his father - whom he doesn’t know for certain is alive until morfin tells him]. i’ll go into this - and especially dumbledore’s spectacular mishandling of it - in more detail in the third meta in this series, but i want to emphasise two important merope-related things which the narrative highlights: that voldemort murders both his father and hepzibah smith to avenge her, and that the locket is the only horcrux for which he constructs an elaborate defence in a place meaningful to him from childhood. i expand on this in my writing with the headcanon that voldemort believes he killed his mother and that, therefore, his destiny to be a killer was set from birth; that he doesn’t know her actual name; and that he believes he looks like her and is devastated to discover this isn’t the case. i'm certain that he gets his conviction that tom riddle sr. abandoned his mother due to magic from his father directly, and that his implication in goblet of fire that he thinks he was a wanted baby until his mother revealed her powers is a deliberate, self-comforting misinterpretation of tom sr. not being able to fully articulate what happened to him at merope’s hands beyond "she was a witch".

i have two worldbuilding headcanons when it comes to voldemort’s childhood. the implication of canon is that the orphanage is in vauxhall in south london, but i always locate it on dorset street in spitalfields - this is the site of one of jack the ripper’s most brutal murders, and i like the idea of the long shadow of that horror hanging around the place. naturally, i see him having a cockney accent he goes to great lengths to disguise as an adult.

i also always write the orphanage as a catholic institution and voldemort raised - although he has no genuine conviction [which doesn’t mean he escapes lots of catholic-y quirks] - in the church. this really can’t be justified by canon - the orphanage appears to be state run, which would mean it was church of england, if anything - but i do it because, as someone from ireland, the appalling history of the laundries is the first thing which comes to mind when thinking about poor pregnant merope staggering into an institution to give birth and promptly dying.

voldemort’s school years

as i’ve said above, i don’t think you can write a good voldemort if his childhood poverty isn’t acknowledged. however, where i might deviate from other authors is that i don’t think his isolation in the muggle world [clearly the rest of the orphans go out of their way to avoid spending any time with him] continued once he was at hogwarts.

it seems to have become standard fanon that voldemort was bullied in slytherin over his secondhand possessions and either the assumption that he was muggleborn or the knowledge that he was half-blood. i understand this - particularly because i’m a snapemort defender, and its parallel with snape’s canonical experience at school is nice - but i think that it fails to note two key things about voldemort’s character:

firstly, as said above, class in britain depends as much on performance as background. while snape clearly remains identifiably working-class into his late teens at least, voldemort is chameleon-like enough to ape his roommates’ accents, mannerisms, and references immediately, and to pass as someone from a wizarding background with comparative ease. the fact that he has shabby possessions wouldn’t count against his ability to claim that he was a pureblood or half-blood - after all, we see plenty of poor purebloods in canon, and it doesn’t stop their blood status from giving them a social cachet - if he was able to give the impression of passing as someone who wasn’t raised as a muggle.

secondly, voldemort is shameless, a show-off, and - crucially - has proof of his claim to be from, to borrow slughorn’s phrase, "good wizarding stock". i'm sure that dumbledore is inadvertently right when he speculates in half-blood prince that voldemort discovers slytherin was a parselmouth almost immediately, and uses this to establish among his fellows the fact that they’re related. voldemort implies in chamber of secrets that he learned of this connection early in his first year, since he claims to have spent five full years planning to open the chamber - although dumbledore’s implication in half-blood prince is that, initially at least, he believes his father is the descendant. all of which is to say, it is clear that voldemort could undercut any negative rumours about his heritage - and any bullying which might result - very easily and very quickly after arriving at hogwarts.

indeed, i always write voldemort as - while perhaps not being popular - having a group of "dedicated friends" [dumbledore’s term - voldemort himself refers to them as "intimate friends"] whose affection for him is genuine. i think it’s impossible to write the knights of walpurgis/the original death eaters as not really liking him - voldemort’s very charismatic, yes, but it takes more than charisma for people to agree to become terrorists under your command, and one of the things it takes is genuine sympathy and admiration for you and your aims - not least because the fact that voldemort’s shamelessness about money must mean that he happily freeloads off them would still require their assent at first [he might be able to squat at malfoy manor in the second war on the basis of nothing more than being terrifying, but that isn’t going to cut it at eleven].

more controversially, i am of the opinion that he genuinely likes them - as noted above, voldemort tends to tell the truth in his canon appearances, and while this is a narrative necessity [it often falls to him to provide exposition harry and the reader otherwise don’t have, especially because both dumbledore and snape need to keep information to themselves] i like the reading that his claim in the job interview scene in half-blood prince that dumbledore is "mistaken" to dispute that he considers the earliest death eaters friends is sincere.

and also i just like the idea of them having normal teenage fun while at school. as well as all the crime.

intellectually, while it’s clear that voldemort’s canonical favourite subject is defence against the dark arts, as a snapemort girly i always love writing him as an extremely good experimental potioneer - which he does imply of himself in goblet of fire. like everyone else, he hates history of magic, and he's definitely not someone who particularly enjoys subjects like herbology or care of magical creatures - all of which sound a bit too much like hard work in the outdoors. his least favourite part of being at hogwarts is, of course, quidditch, and i'm absolutely on board with the idea that he learns unaided flight because riding a broom is the one thing he’s not good at.

what do i think is going on with voldemort between 1945 and 1970?

as i’ve said, i think that working at borgin and burkes suits voldemort - and it’s my preferred non-dark-lord career for him. i love lots of fics which show him being a good teacher [especially this] or which examine how he trains his minions, but i just don’t see him doing well at the job within the confines of hogwarts. there’s a certain rejection of the ivory tower baked into voldemort’s character - not least in the fact that all the "pushing the boundaries of magic" stuff requires a rejection of academic gatekeeping around systems of knowledge - and i can’t imagine him happily settling into an existence for the hogwarts teachers which is pretty removed from the realities of everyday life.

[incidentally, if you’re writing a muggle au, an excellent basis for voldemort-at-university would be something like engleby - a working-class kid yeeted into an elite academic institution which hates him and which he hates in return. with deadly consequences.]

so he becomes a shop assistant and is, as dumbledore tells us, extremely good at his job. so good, in fact, that he stays at borgin and burkes for a decade and seems to commit only the most minor crimes while he’s there.

and this seems quite strange, for someone who - aged sixteen - tells harry that his plans for world domination were well established before he had even left school, particularly because most of the knights of walpurgis/death eaters must settle down into family life over the course of voldemort having a 9-5 [we don’t canonically know that abraxas malfoy is one, of course - although i consider it more feasible that he's given the diary than the explanation we get in canon - but lucius malfoy is born while voldemort is still in england; my belief is that the lestrange mentioned in half-blood prince is rodolphus and rabastan’s father, and so they’re also born in the late 1940s or 1950s]. it would undoubtedly have made more sense for him to have struck immediately after school, before his followers got tied up in the messy obligations of adult life.

i’ve seen some very fun explanations of what causes voldemort to stay in his job for so long [especially this], but - as i said above - i think the main reason is that he’s someone who gets held in stasis quite easily, until a push comes along which causes him to dramatically alter his course.

and that push is hepzibah smith, and the opportunity she gives him to avenge his mother, take back his birthright, and continue in his quest to conquer death [which is, of course, evidence - contrary to the spree-killing voldemort of the films - that he is methodical in his violence, more on which below].

after which he toddles off to the continent. the implication of canon seems to be that he spends most of this time in albania - and why that country seems to have such a chokehold on the magical world, i don’t know [i presume jkr just thought it sounded suitably far-flung] - looking for ravenclaw’s diadem and performing ever darker feats of magic, but i like to think that he also travels widely across eurasia.

that he seems to spend much of his travels in communist europe [he must, for example, meet karkaroff - and perhaps dolohov - in one of europe’s socialist republics] is something the series doesn’t address, since it’s irrelevant to the canonical narrative, but it’s something that i think is incredibly interesting to explore in fanfiction. my headcanon is that voldemort must be able to speak some level of russian, as well as albanian [and also that, like any teen edgelord in the 1940s, he has a certain appreciation for the aesthetics - and maybe the iron state control - of communism].

as an aside here, something else i see a lot in fics is the idea that voldemort is incredibly traumatised by the second world war - and this could very well be the case. however, i think it’s worth just being clear about the timeline of some events which are often taken to have triggered this trauma:

voldemort is at school during the blitz - and therefore never touched by it - and he's also at school during the main waves of evacuations. it's possible that he returns following his second year to find the orphanage has been emptied, but evacuations weren't permanent and children were often sent away only temporarily - it's equally feasible that the orphans are back in july and august 1940 and then evacuated again when the blitz begins in september.

he's similarly at school during other major bombing campaigns in 1942 and 1944. during the bombing campaigns of summer 1944, he may very well be in london - although dumbledore’s implication in half-blood prince is that he leaves the orphanage permanently in 1943, and he could be staying with a pureblood friend instead.

voldemort doesn’t have anyone in london he’s likely to be worried about, and i imagine that he watches the muggle war with professional disdain for how distinctly unmagical it all is.

i do, however, think he’s probably quite concerned by the atomic bomb - dropped on hiroshima and nagasaki when he’s 19 - and its potential to wipe out muggles and wizards alike unless muggles are brought under magical control. i think one political belief he can be easily written as holding is that wizards [stuck thinking of muggles as they were in the age of cannon and musket] underestimate the depths of, as he sees it, muggle stupidity, brutality, and covetousness and are unprepared for what might happen if these are turned against them.

by the time he returns to england - which appears to be in 1965 or 1966 - he has made at least four horcruxes [the diary, the ring, the cup, and the diadem - my reading of canon is that he turns the locket into a horcrux shortly before he places it in the cave, as dumbledore tells us in half-blood prince that he tends not to carry them around with him once he makes them, much as i love the image of him always wearing the ring, which would also be much more sensible…].

we are told in philosopher’s stone that the first war begins in earnest in 1970, so there are four or five years which need to be accounted for. the reason for this is almost certainly that jkr can’t count, but i am committed to the belief that voldemort’s request to come back to hogwarts in half-blood-prince is completely genuine and that he has factored a few years of teaching into his plans. dumbledore’s reaction to this is discussed in the next meta in this series.

his main reason for coming back, though, seems to be to begin the campaign of political infiltration he will dedicate his forces to for the next thirty years. according to jkr’s list of ministers, voldemort returns to britain during the tenure of the only muggleborn minister in history [prior to hermione, if you accept that idea], who is forced out of office two years later when abraxas malfoy poisons him and is then replaced by a minister who also supports social causes [above all the squibs' rights riots - one of jkr’s recent heavy-handed analogies for real civil rights movements across the world in the 1960s] which don't align with the pureblood population’s views. halfway through this minister’s tenure, voldemort moves to open terror.

the wizarding world is evidently not a democracy - no matter jkr’s insistence in the linked articles above that it is - but it's implied in canon that multiple candidates are considered for the position of minister, and that the wizengamot [which canonically isn't a council of aristocrats, although if an author wants to have it mirror the house of lords, with hereditary seats alongside appointed ones, i can deal with it] serves as a sort of council of electors. my preferred outline of events is that voldemort’s aim in the later sixties is to trigger the election of a puppet minister [maybe even himself, although i prefer to view him as someone without any genuine ambition for political office - he’s more of a constitutional monarch] who would bring in the programme of sweeping changes to the world he desires.

obviously, he doesn’t get that…

voldemort and the first war

working out how to write the first war is complicated - the form the war took, the death toll, who was targeted, and what the political justification was are hugely inconsistent in canon. fanon doesn’t stand a chance…

let’s try anyway.

if you follow this blog, you may have noticed that i keep using the term "sectarian terrorism" when describing voldemort's operation.

you may also have noticed that i have referred to myself as irish.

i am, to be more specific, northern irish - i come from derry, i’m from a catholic background, and i was born well before the signing of the good friday agreement. in other words, i grew up with the troubles right on my doorstep - i've experienced discrimination in the place i live for having an obviously irish and catholic name, i live in a community which could probably be described as segregated, and i still conceal my religious background in certain areas of my everyday life. i've met a number of people who spent the seventies and eighties as - by any reasonable definition - terrorists.

all of which is to say, when i first read the first six books of the series, and saw the description of voldemort and his organisation as having had a reign of terror in the 1970s, seeming to operate mainly in terms of highly-organised political assassinations with occasional attacks upon civilians, seeming to issue pre-warnings for atrocities [he tells fudge that he’s going to attack the bridge he brings down in the first chapter of half-blood prince in advance], not being allowed to use his real name on the airwaves, the fact that so many of the death eaters have not only anglo-norman but hiberno-norman names, and the fact that voldemort is clearly regarded by the wizarding world at large as "a bastard, but he’s our bastard"... well, i know who i thought he was supposed to be a pastiche of.

and i maintain this was intentional, even if jkr [who is an english protestant living in mainland britain, which would naturally have influenced her own perception of the troubles] later pivoted to drawing on the nazis to write the death eaters - a much better analogy if we’re thinking of them as unambiguous, genocidal villains, since the causes of the troubles are incredibly complex and multifaceted and the good old protestant-coded brits of the ministry and the order of the phoenix would absolutely not be seen as the uncritical heroes of the piece if she kept to the death-eaters-are-the-ira analogy.

[of course, she now claims the death eaters are like trans people - which is fucking abhorrent.]

the brutality of azkaban immediately brings to mind prisons like the maze and portlaoise; the death eater trials in the first war mirror operation demetrius; a year after the canonical quidditch world cup, there was a sectarian riot at an england-ireland football match; and - oh yeah - the fucking story ends with voldemort’s defeat in the same year as the gfa was signed. jkr does not have a light touch with historical analogy, after all.

which is to say, i think the voldemort of the first war is not a genocidaire dictator-in-waiting, but an anti-state terrorist whose goal is the weakening of the ministry and its institutions in pursuit of sectarian goals, specifically the removal of the muggle-aligned’s rights to intervene in the social and political affairs of the magic-aligned population, and their relegation to a secondary influence in public life. his views can probably be more accurately described as magic-supremacist rather than blood-supremacist - he’s not exactly a meritocrat, but he clearly does reject the patronage- and lineage-based structures which define wizarding society, and there's certainly a real suggestion in the way the teen snape is written that the death eaters provided one of the only avenues for talented people from non-pureblood backgrounds to escape the crush of the class system [as i’ve said elsewhere, i think this justifies snape’s evident belief that the death eaters would be interested in helping lily, which otherwise seems deranged].

voldemort clearly believes that a system of government which keeps itself in thrall to the statute of secrecy can’t achieve the full power of its magic [his views on non-human magical creatures - such as giants and werewolves - which often seem more progressive than the views expressed by the heroes of the series - come under this umbrella: he thinks that giants should have the chance to roam free and that it is anti-magic to constrain them].

he evidently believes that muggleborns can never fully appreciate this view and will always stand against it - although he's presumably willing to view as legitimately magical muggleborns who completely reject the world of their birth [snape cannot be the only muggle-raised death eater, and voldemort clearly likes him because of his commitment to leaving the muggle world behind him - and i'm sure that there are a couple of self-hating muggleborns somewhere in voldemort’s ranks] - and that a properly magic-supremacist order couldn’t exist until the muggle world [which he thinks inherently fears and hates magic, like his father, and will never let it achieve its true, free purpose] was subjugated and, therefore, couldn’t try to resist or appropriate magic for itself.

it is, of course, absolutely reasonable to not read the first war through this lens - i do so is because of the parallels to my own personal experience which stand out when reading the text. the first war can absolutely also be read as racist, or anti-semitic, or inspired by islamist and/or far-right terrorism. i just, as someone who has grown up under the shadow of sectarian discrimination and violence, see that as its best real-world parallel.

now, while it might be clear which way my sympathies lie in the real troubles... i'm certainly not saying that terrorism and discrimination is a good thing, nor that i think the canonical voldemort is a good or noble person, nor that i think the death eaters are right. i only bring this up because it's an explanation for why i think the war takes the form it takes in canon, and also because it introduces a complexity to voldemort’s motivations which is flattened by turning him into a one-dimensional villain bent on wiping out a minority group for fun.

which is to say, these are the things which appear most consistently in my writing of the first war:

voldemort’s operation seems to be divided into several distinct strands: ministry infiltration; the surveillance of other key figures [snape, for example, is clearly the detail assigned to dumbledore, even before he starts working at hogwarts; barty crouch jr. could be feasibly recruited as a teen to inform on his own father]; propaganda and recruitment both at home and abroad; political assassinations; and random attacks on civilians. presumably the death eaters are also conducting some sort of illicit business to finance themselves underneath this [in the second war, aberforth dumbledore complains about the trade in illegal potions going on in the hog’s head] and i tend to write voldemort as having a substantial money-laundering campaign going on in the background. i also tend to write him as having infiltrators within the muggle system - since the ministry has the same.

the vast majority of deaths associated with the war are clinical assassinations of political targets and/or their families or pro-ministry fighters killed in combat, the death eaters are tightly controlled and there are no dark revels [it’s worth emphasising that, canonically, voldemort isn't particularly impressed by the violence at the quidditch world cup, and i think it can be reasonably argued that quidditch hooliganism etc. was typically the result of groups of young death eaters getting drunk and going off message, rather than something which was ordered by the top brass]. when voldemort enters the fray himself he does so to attack high-profile figures connected to state institutions [in the first war, we hear of only one person murdered directly by voldemort before the potters - dorcas meadowes, who, despite her fanon persona, has never been stated to have been at school with the marauders, she may very well be a senior politician or auror targeted both for that and because she’s in the order. in the second war, prior to the outbreak of open combat after dumbledore’s death, the only person definitely assassinated by voldemort himself is amelia bones, who is killed because she's the head of the department of magical law enforcement].

there are, nonetheless, periodic attacks on both wizard and muggle civilians, which must have targeted pubs, shops, and other busy areas, and which are designed to keep the population afraid. voldemort is, nonetheless, clearly prepared to leave wizarding civilians - including muggleborns - who keep their heads down free from specific, targeted attacks.

the potters are targeted not only due to the prophecy, but because voldemort believes that their deaths - and the removal of harry as a potential figurehead for the resistance - will destroy the order’s morale to a sufficient extent that they and the ministry will come to the table. he acts similarly in canon, when he tries to use harry’s apparent death during the battle of hogwarts to force a surrender.

voldemort’s army of inferi are the apparent exception to this moderation in violence - although i think we can justify the idea that they're deaths he considers collateral [i.e. executed hostages, murdered family members of targets, deaths in attacks on civilians] rather than that he’s roaming the streets as a serial killer.

there is an escalation of violence against both civilian targets and political targets who are seen as sympathetic in the later 1970s - for example, in scylla and charybdis we find voldemort murdering the pre-teen daughter of a ministry official, to widespread outcry, when her father won’t do what he wants - and it is this which triggers the unease felt by people such as orion and walburga black about whether voldemort’s violence is justified.

i occasionally write the voldemort of the first war as a technocrat. whether the wizarding world is more advanced than the muggle one is a frequently debated point - obviously magic is infinitely more sophisticated than most technology, and the series clearly considers muggles to be behind wizards, but i think it’s interesting to explore the idea that the social advances of the muggle post-war era don’t touch the magical world. the population is so small, for example, that there's no wizarding baby boom, and there doesn’t seem to be any significant immigration in the magical world [so no wizarding windrush]. the changes in social mobility which muggles enjoyed in the 1950s onwards - such as the expansion of funded higher education places; changing attitudes to marriage, divorce, and family planning; changing attitudes to living apart from the family; the emergence of more spaces where young people living alone would interact; and the collapse of the domestic service industry and the emergence of affordable labour-saving devices - are clearly not part of the wizarding world. all of which is to say, magical society could be made even more advanced than the muggle, even as muggle technology improves, if only it had a leader willing to take the reins...

to reiterate, i'm not expecting the above to be an interpretation of the war and its causes which resonates with every reader and author, but it’s something which has spoken to me since childhood - and, indeed, was one of the things which really sucked me into being a harry potter fan as i walked home from school and got shouted at for being a taig. that it led me to having voldemort as my favourite character may not have been jkr’s intention, but there we are…

voldemort and the second war

after harry blasts him into non-existence [just because he tried to be nice to snape, smh] voldemort obviously slithers off to albania to live in a tree for fourteen years - with a little trip to britain on the back of quirrell’s head to break the monotony.

his return to his body in goblet of fire does several things - it completes the tonal shift of the books from children’s literature to something darker; it triggers the overtly folkloric narrative of the second half of the series and its focus on prophecies and horcruxes, through voldemort establishing a mystical connection between himself and harry through his use of harry’s blood in his resurrection ritual; and it begins the second war.

it also causes one of my least favourite bits of fanon - the idea that the post-resurrection voldemort is completely insane.

in my view this is mainly due to the films - ralph does a great job of running around that graveyard shrieking, i’ll give him that - and their omission of many of 90s!voldemort’s successes, which makes it look like all that happens in three years is the death eaters fucking up getting the prophecy, downing a bridge by swooping, and then - somehow - taking over the government. it's also, however, due to a fandom failure to pay attention to something dumbledore says in half-blood prince:

Without his Horcruxes, Voldemort will be a mortal man with a maimed and diminished soul. Never forget, though, that while his soul may be damaged beyond repair, his brain and his magical powers remain intact.

one of the common arguments in favour of insane!voldemort is that - seven horcruxes in - his mind has been totally destabilised by dark magic. but this misses the point of how the series understands the soul and, specifically, how it understands the soul as something which exists independently from the will. that is, the soul cannot influence the will - since, otherwise, nobody would do anything which damaged their souls, but wizards evidently have the free choice to do that - and, therefore, the status of one’s soul has nothing to do with one’s cognition.

the canonical voldemort of the second war is perfectly lucid in all his appearances, and behaviours which seem to have been triggered by his resurrection can be shown to just be personality traits he’s always possessed - for example, the pacing around monologuing he does after stepping out of the cauldron reflects a tendency shared by the eleven-year-old tom riddle to give away too much about himself when he’s excited [and you would be excited, if you’d just freed yourself of a year having to depend on wormtail]. he remains largely methodical in his use of violence, he doesn’t cackle wildly while planning his schemes [he laughs derisively when harry is literally about to kill him and that’s it], and he's emphasised by the text as being absolutely terrifying and having the upper hand throughout the period 1995-1998, with the order scrambling to keep up with him.

this is not to say that he comes back from the almost-dead unchanged...

it’s clear that the voldemort of the second war is more paranoid and secretive than before, that he's less willing to take advice [both bellatrix and yaxley’s resentment of the fact he listens to snape suggests that there was once an impression among the death eaters that voldemort was happy to solicit their opinions, which vanishes once he comes back], that he’s quicker to anger and treats the death eaters more poorly than before [indeed, i'm certain that the implication of canon is that the majority of the death eaters don’t have physical violence or public humiliation - like the malfoys experience - used regularly against them until the second war, and that this is what drives their obviously wavering loyalty to their leader], and that his obsessive focus on harry [and, in particular, on mystical phenomena which will help him kill harry] is met with some scepticism by the more revolutionarily-inclined of his followers.

he also seems to only attain his horrifying eldritch form after his resurrection, which must be a bit of a shock for the lads.

[the vision harry has in order of the phoenix of voldemort with augustus rookwood - in which rookwood is clearly thinking what the fuck is this the whole way through - is a particularly good illustration of this.]

in order of the phoenix and half-blood prince, nonetheless, the course of the second war follows that of the first - voldemort concentrates on espionage, ministry infiltration, politically-motivated assassinations, sporadic attacks on civilian targets, and a propaganda campaign [lucius malfoy is undoubtedly the source of the anti-harry and anti-dumbledore press of order of the phoenix; greyback spends half-blood prince recruiting werewolves].

things change in deathly hallows, after the death eaters execute one of history’s better coups - even lupin’s impressed - and take over the ministry.

at this point there’s no doubt about it: voldemort’s government is an analogy for the nazis, as jkr has widely stated. obviously we don’t have to take her word for it - the author is dead - but it cannot be ignored that voldemort’s ministry is nakedly racist and is perpetuating a genocide of muggleborns.

voldemort becomes, then, per jkr’s intention, an analogy for hitler - which requires the text to gloss over pretty inelegantly the fact that grindelwald [defeated by dumbledore in 1945, which any british child reading philospher’s stone, even in primary school, would know was the year the second world war ended in europe] was clearly the magical world’s hitler equivalent.

and, sure, the analogy functions perfectly well within the final book - voldemort is a transparently evil man, his views can certainly be read as mirroring racist and anti-semitic prejudice in our world, his ultimate aim can certainly be claimed as outright genocide even in the first war, and i think it's impossible to justify an argument that he doesn’t know what his death eaters are up to in the ministry [he’s a megalomaniac, everything happens at his command even if he isn’t sitting behind the minister’s desk].

but i think that it’s not inappropriate to suggest that this analogy requires quite a shift in voldemort’s canonical modus operandi from the previous six books. and, indeed, that this is why he spends much of deathly hallows being… kind of useless, wandering around central europe on his hunt for the elder wand, narratively removed from much of the horror being done in his name, reduced from the terrorist kingpin with a network of agents of the previous books to someone whose only concern is harry. i don’t think this is because jkr wished to spare him from the suggestion that he’s the person directing the genocide, i think she simply couldn’t fit the characterisation of him already established into that plotline, and so she just didn’t try.

which i have some sympathy with. i find writing the voldemort of deathly hallows the most difficult - and i generally don’t do it - for this reason. as i’ve said in the previous meta in this series, i find voldemort particularly interesting as a character for what he says about the wizarding world and its social structure - above all, how his existence and the ministry’s resistance to him demonstrates the genteel corruption of the wizarding world - and how that reflects corruption in british society and state institutions. the immediate familiarity to me as an irish [and, legally, british] reader of the way the previous books in the series reflect class and how institutions gatekeep and discriminate based on it, how poverty drives resentment and radicalisation, how one becomes othered in a sectarian conflict, and so on is less palpable in deathly hallows [which is not to say that experience is universal among readers, and i'm not claiming it is] and i find engaging sincerely with the fictional genocide of the last book less interesting than i find thinking about the way the text presents the first war [and, of course, less horrifying and confronting and worthy of my time than i find thinking about real genocides in our world].

how to square the circle of making the voldemort of deathly hallows feel more in character, while also not handwaving away the canonical events of the final book isn’t something i’ve managed to get a grip on yet. i suspect i’m not the only one.

and after?

what i am more confident of is saying that i hate the imagery of voldemort’s little baby soul in train station limbo - the only person in canon denied access to some sort of non-liminal afterlife [clearly heaven exists for wizards, but does hell?].

is it his own fault? absolutely [although i’m always raging at dumbledore stopping harry offering the soul-piece some comfort at king’s cross].

am i surprised that he doesn’t have a road to damascus moment in the final confrontation and collapse to the floor shaking and crying? not a bit.

do i think he could ever feel remorse for his actions? yes.

one of my least favourite fandom debates is whether x or y character is incapable of redemption [rip snape, it’s always you]. a principle i hold is that there is nobody on earth incapable of being redeemed - and i don’t mean redeemed in a religious sense or a heavenly context, i mean redeemed in their human actions and in their human form.

and redemption absolutely doesn’t mean getting away with it, and it doesn’t mean that remorse absolves you of having to experience punishment or work to undo the harm that you’ve done, and it doesn’t mean your victims being expected to forgive you. but it does have to be possible for all of us - even those who commit incomprehensible evil - because if not then it is possible for none.

so maybe voldemort sits in the nether zone and starts glueing his soul back together and eventually makes it to an afterlife where he can hang out with his mam. maybe he doesn’t, because remorse is a choice and we all have the option to keep being bad people.

but i’m a hopeless optimist.

[voldemort’s version of king’s cross is, of course, the orphanage.]

up next, what does dumbledore get wrong about voldemort?

#asks answered #asenora meta #tom riddle #lord voldemort

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bluejaysandblackbats · 2 months ago

Text

11.3k km

Fandom: DC Comics, Batfam

Summary: Willis gets a new job on one condition: he works the night shift for his first three months. With Catherine in rehab, Willis is forced to contact his ex-wife to take their five-year-old son into her custody for the summer. But there's a catch. Willis promised her every summer after in return for her help.

Chapters: 5/?

Characters: Willis Todd, Jason Todd, Catherine Todd, Sheila Haywood

Additional Tags: Split Custody AU, Canon Divergent AU, Fluff, Angst, Kid Jason Todd, Jason Todd Has Three Parents

Chapter Five: Letters and Envelopes

Willis met Catherine in the common room with a stack of envelopes. “I haven’t slept a wink since I got ‘em because I wanted to wait until I saw you. I wanna read mine when you read yours. Here, Sheila and Jason sent half of these to you. The other half are mine. Here you go,” Willis smiled. Catherine looked at the envelopes with Jason’s handwriting in heavy pencil, and she covered her mouth.

“He’s still calling me his mommy,” Catherine whispered. Willis chuckled as he opened one of Jason’s letters.

“Dear Daddy—. His spelling’s pretty good,” Willis whispered, “Open yours.”

Catherine carefully opened the envelope and started reading Jason’s letter. “Dear Mommy,” Catherine read, “I went camping in a lodge with Mommy Sheila. We saw baboons. They were not real baboons. They are called geladas. There were so many. And we got to eat with our hands. We did not climb the mountains. It was too tall. Maybe when I am a bigger boy. I love you Mommy. I miss you. I will write more letters. Please write me a letter too.” Tears streamed down Catherine’s cheeks. “Oh, Willis. What did he say to you?”

“Let’s see,” Willis smiled. “Dear Daddy… I went to the mall. It is not the same as home. I had spris. It is like a smoothie with avocado and mango. I had to eat it with a spoon. I am being good. Mommy Sheila says so. I miss you. There is not another Daddy here. I wonder if that makes Mommy feel lonely. She says no. She laughs. I still don’t know. I love you Daddy. Write me a letter too and take pictures.”

Catherine laughed. “It sounds like Jason’s having fun… I’m glad he misses us,” Catherine whispered, “Is that terrible?”

“No. I’m glad, too. Did we get the same pictures?” Willis asked. Catherine opened the thicker envelope, and she smiled when she saw Jason in a denim bucket hat pointing at geladas. Willis saw a picture of Jason in front of a museum. Pictures of Jason laughing and eating and hiking with Sheila. Catherine had pictures of Jason in the same places, but the pictures weren’t the same.

“Jason looks so cute in these little pictures. I can’t wait until the next three weeks are over. I feel like I’m holding my breath for him. I’m more excited to see Jason than I am to go home,” Catherine replied.

“You feel good about coming home?” Willis asked. Catherine smiled at him and nodded.

“I am, actually. I’m so excited. And two weeks before Jason gets home,” Catherine smiled. Willis’ eyes widened.

“Saying you got something in mind?” Willis asked. He raised an eyebrow.

Catherine smiled. “I’ve been away from you for one-hundred-and-twenty days. What do you think?” Catherine replied in a whisper.

“Oh, baby,” Willis whispered. Willis pushed his hair back and sighed heavily.

Willis and Catherine sat in Jason’s room when Catherine got home, wrapping presents. “I miss him,” Catherine frowned.

“Me too. How about I pop one of those kid meal thingies in the oven, and we have a romantic candlelight dinner over pizza, corn, gluey chocolate pudding, and… Chocolate milk?” Willis asked.

Catherine chuckled. “What do I get if I eat all my corn?” Catherine teased.

Willis laughed as he leaned close, touching foreheads with Catherine. Their hearts were heavy with the weight of Jason’s absence, but they tried to make the most of it. They tried to make the two weeks before Jason into a second chance at a honeymoon. It was fun at first, but they were so used to being three… Not two. It was the most time they’d ever spent alone together. They didn’t know what to do. Willis kissed her forehead and rushed to the kitchen to make dinner.

They sat at the table together waiting for dinner to be ready while they searched for something to talk about. “I love you,” Willis announced with a certain innocence in his voice. Catherine smiled.

“I love you too,” Catherine smiled. “How’s your new job? Do you like it?”

“It’s great. I thought I’d hate being an overnight prep cook, but it’s good. And you know what, they’re teaching me a lot about food and cooking,” Willis answered, “I didn’t know jack shit about cooking. You know me… But I’ve been chopping and dicing and rubbing and marinating… At the end of this month, they’re gonna start letting me take leftovers from the closing shift home.”

“You sound happy,” Catherine smiled. She touched Willis’ face.

“I am… I’ve got my wife back. Our kid is coming home in three days… So, yeah. I’m pretty happy,” Willis replied.

Catherine woke up in the middle of the night, sweating and shaking in the dark. Willis crept in from work, thinking she was asleep before they locked eyes. “What’s wrong?” Willis asked. He stood frozen in the dark doorway.

Catherine burst into tears and reached for him. He sat beside her, wrapping his arms around her. She held a hand over her mouth to quiet her sobs and stave off any nausea that happened to arise. “Listen, whatever it is… We—.”

“I have to get to a payphone,” Catherine whispered. Willis rubbed her back.

“What’s wrong?” Willis asked.

“I had a dream that something happened to Jason—.”

“Nothing happened to Jason. He’s with his—. Whatever the hell Jane Eyre was in that movie you forced me to watch,” Willis replied.

“A governess?” Catherine asked.

“Mhm. That… That is what she is. And it’s noon. He’s probably taking a nap or learning how to ask for a cookie in the language. Besides, Sheila is a doctor,” Willis reassured her. His eyes widened as he nodded. She nodded along with him. “You know what? You’re probably just nervous because he’s coming home soon. Go back to bed. I’ll be here in a minute to kiss you good morning. I need to shower. I smell like dirt and gruyére.”

“Turmeric?” Catherine asked. Willis squinted at her.

“How did you—? That’s a cool little thing you picked up. Wanna smell my armpit and tell me what I ate for lunch?” Willis teased. Catherine laughed.

“I’m going to bed,” Catherine replied. Willis brushed her chin with his knuckle. “Be quick… I want my good morning kiss.”

Willis backed out of the room with a smile on his face as he clicked his tongue. “You and me both, sweetheart,” Willis chuckled. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. Willis took his shower and took his place by her side.

“Hey, Catherine? You wanna know something?” Willis whispered.

“Hm?” Catherine replied, pretending to be half-asleep.

“We’re lost without him… Aren’t we? I mean, we haven’t said much… But, it’s like he’s been on the tip of our tongues this whole time. I think we’re both afraid to be the first one to bring him up. So much for a first chance at a real honeymoon. I feel a little empty without him,” Willis rambled.

“Two more days now… And—. Maybe he’ll ask to sleep in our room the first night,” Catherine whispered.

Willis chuckled. “And we’ll pretend to hesitate… But, we’ll let him sleep between us, and we’ll show him the photo album you put together. We’re gonna be a real family again,” Willis whispered, “I’ve wanted that my whole life.”

#fic #batfam #11.3k km fic #Willis Todd #Jason Todd #Catherine Todd #Sheila Haywood #Split Custody AU #Canon Divergent AU #Fluff #Angst #Kid Jason Todd #Jason Todd Has Three Parents

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whatever-you-can-give-me · 1 year ago

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i'm sure you've talked about this kinda thing before but what do you think about people saying, like, "stampede wolfwood characterization is bad and doesn't even feel like wolfwood"?

this feels like bait to get me to say something inflammatory, because my opinion on people dismissing stampede wolfwood out of hand is definitely something i've posted before, but i fucking love to talk about my opinions, so. [cracks knuckles]

basically. 1. he's a different version of the character in a different set of circumstances, of course he's going to be different. and 2. the thing most people imagine in their heads as wolfwood... is not the wolfwood that appears in any canon, lol.

i don't think that's even a notable observation. a lot of the trigun fandom is the "the vash and wolfwood collectively hallucinated out of a blend of all three canons, It's Free Real Estate" fandom now. it's a tale as old as time. fandom as we currently know it was built on slash and cherrypicking from canon.

i'm not going to be the fun police about it, or act like my way of engaging with trigun (keeping the individual canons separate and distinct in my head, analyzing small details, thinking really hard about the characters and the circumstances of creation) is the 'correct' or the only way to have fun in a fandom. like, i think i am engaging more with the canon, but some people just aren't interested in the actual specific details of canon as more than a jumping off point, and while i don't get it, i support making your own fun. go wild.

but, man, there sure is something. interesting. about how the platonic ideal of wolfwood that's been developed by the Vashwood Fandom completely diverges from wolfwood's actual personality in canon (it's happened to vash too, but that's an entirely different can of worms) and then people get irritated at the actual canons for wolfwood not being the guy in their head. stampede especially, because stampede wolfwood is a traumatized disaster, and that doesn't really work for the most common flavor of vashwood, where vash is the one who needs reassurance and comfort.

i just.... yall, wolfwood is so fucking awkward. he's always been awkward and messy and unsure of himself outside of the two specific situations he can manage (combat and dealing with children). stampede didn't invent the fact that he has no idea what he's doing and doesn't really know how to act around other adults because he's spent most of his life a deeply repressed assassin. i really have no idea where the idea of him as suave and romantic and self-assured came from...

anyway. i'm not going to tell anyone they shouldn't have the fun they're having. it's fandom. god knows there are more important things to worry about. but i have been noticing some patterns, is all.

tl;dr: anyone is welcome to dislike stampede wolfwood if they want, but wolfwood has always been most of the things i see people criticize about stampede wolfwood's characterization. stampede wolfwood is just harder to fit into the box fandom built for him.

#not getting into the skin tone thing because it's not my lane.#but i will say. seeing english speaking fandom huff and puff about colorism in anime (it's colorism. not whitewashing. different things.)#and then turn around and make wolfwood this spanish-speaking fellatio master completely unironically. it's funny to me.#i'm sorry yall. wolfwood was never canonically mexican catholic. that's someone's headcanon.#trigun meta

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love-kurdt · 1 year ago

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How to Write a Good Fanfiction: A 5 Step Manual

Hello! My name is @love_kurdt, also known as Eva, and I’m a Wattpad Veteran of the early 2010s, where the genres of Slash Fics, Y/N, and Imagines ran rampant. I spent years of my life as a kid scrolling through my iPod touch, weeding through Wattpad’s plethora of profiles, on a quest to find quality fanfictions. I found a handful, which I added to a specific reading list to come back to when I needed a break from screaming into my pillow because of the sheer audacity of thought-criminals who called themselves writers.

When I’d reached the point of reading the same five works over and over in a never ending cycle, I decided to make the life-altering decision to start publishing my fanfictions online. Granted, I was only thirteen at this point, so my writing wasn’t spectacular by any means, but I came to discover that over time, the mere acts of reading and writing can light a spark of inspiration that can carry you to creative success.

I’ve been writing my own works for over ten years now, and can confidently say that I have cracked the code to writing a good fanfiction that will have your readers captivated instead of cringing. Please don’t get me wrong– if you want to just write fanfic on the internet for fun, and not to write a novel, that’s great, too! That’s what the internet is for; exercising your free will. But this manual is tailored towards those who want to hone in on their craft and gain a substantial following as strictly fanfiction authors. So without further ado, let’s jump into it. Godspeed!

Step 1: Choose Your Fandom

What show, movie, or book has drawn you in and left you feeling like there should be more to the story? When one of those media comes to mind, you’ve chosen your fandom!

Step 2: Do Your Research

When writing fanfiction, it’s kind of an unspoken rule that you need to know the canon of the fandom you’re writing about. The canon is also known as the source material. For example, if someone were to write a Draco Malfoy x OC fanfiction (*cough* a 200+ page Draco Malfoy self insert fic written at 11 years old in a series of notebooks bound together with multiple layers of Gorilla tape *cough*), the canon would be the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. It’s, in essence, what “really” happened. It’s totally fine if you want to write a non-canon compliant fic, too! In fact, they’re extremely popular, specifically within the “fix-it” genre, which usually involves characters that died in the canon but the author kept alive in their fanfiction. Either way, you should have a general idea of how the canon functions within the context of the fandom, so you can make creative choices that diverge from or stick to the canon.

With the canon comes the fanon, which is basically a compilation of fan theories and headcanons that are often common themes in both canon and non-canon compliant fanfics. A pretty niche example of this is the Byler fandom (the ship between Stranger Things characters Will Byers and Mike Wheeler), where there’s an official list of theories on Tumblr that are used in many, if not most Byler fanfictions. There’s FlickerGate, where the flickering of the garage light in Season 1 is actually Will and Mike in the Upside Down in Season 5. There’s BirthdayGate, where the antagonist, Vecna, manipulates the minds of everyone in Hawkins to forget Will’s birthday, which is a central plot point in a lot of Byler fics since no one seems to remember it, not even his best friend. There’s also LetterGate, where Will confronts Mike in the canon about not sending any letters after he’d moved away, but the theory reveals that Mike wrote plenty of letters– he just never sent them because they ended up turning into love letters, which in turn resulted in internalized homophobia. You get the picture. Most theories reach far into the land of delusion, but it doesn’t stop writers from creating incredible work that could easily be mistaken for a script.

But Eva, what if I just think the characters are hot and I don’t give a shit about the cannonball? I can’t tell you what to do, my friend, but I highly suggest you at least consider the canon so you can avoid all the petty, obnoxious gatekeepers in some fandoms who can be unhinged enough to send death threats if you leave out a significant canonical detail. But you do you!

Step 3: Choose Your Platform

There are three popular platforms to choose from: Archive of Our Own (ao3), Tumblr, and Wattpad. There are also a few other lesser known or dead pages such as fanfiction.net, but I honestly wouldn’t bother with those, since they’re more infiltrated with anons and bots nowadays.

This is where you want to think about 1) where most of the members in the fandom you chose reside, and 2) the demographic of readers you want to reach. For example, I observed a higher number of Nirvana fans on Wattpad than the other two platforms, which is why I chose to post my full length Kurt Cobain fanfiction, “You Know You’re Right,” on there. It also helped that my favorite author of another Kurt Cobain fanfiction on Wattpad, @/ugh-nirvana, had hits in the hundreds of thousands, so I was confident that my book would do well on that specific platform. On the other hand, the Stranger Things fandom is in full swing on Tumblr and ao3, so I chose to post those fanfictions on there rather than on Wattpad. It all just depends on who’s where.

You also have to consider how active you want to be on your platform(s). Tumblr is more of a blog situation, while ao3 and Wattpad are solely for publishing the work. If you want to have a life beyond the realms of the world wide web, choose Wattpad or ao3, as inconsistent updates are a bit more accepted than on Tumblr. But if you want to throw yourself headfirst into a fandom and put your whole author-ussy into your fanfic, then Tumblr is the platform for you.

You should be aware, however, that Tumblr involves a lot of upkeep, as well as constant, strategic, and active participation within your fandom. Visual aesthetic is vital to any functional Tumblr blog. Most profiles have directories, with color coded links to each work’s homepage, which is linked to each individual chapter, which are then distinguished by a unique GIF to capture a prospective reader’s attention while they’re scrolling through copious amounts of content. And there are always new ideas and theories in development in certain fandoms, so it’s crucial to keep up with recent updates in order to stay relevant.

After all is said and done, you don’t have to get married to one platform for the rest of your life. You can choose to be exclusive to one or two platforms, or publish everything on all of them! The decision is ultimately yours!

Step 4: Obey the Writer’s Trifecta of Consistency

Yes, I came up with this term, and yes, it should be a real thing. Because in every piece of writing, whether it be fanfiction, a short story, an actual book, a screenplay, what have you, it is critical to be consistent in your People, your POV, and your Plot. Let me explain.

People

Your people, or your ensemble of characters, consists of three hierarchical levels: your protagonist/antagonist, your side characters, and other background characters. I should emphasize the importance of building character profiles for everyone, including your pre-existing characters from the fandom, but specifically for your original character(s) if you have them. That way, you know who serves as a major plot device, who serves as someone who just helps time move faster, and those who are mentioned by name but have very little significance to the events of the story. I’m going to reference Harry Potter again, since most of the world is familiar with the characters. Harry and Voldemort are the protagonist and antagonist; Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Professor Dumbledore, Hagrid and company are side characters; and Peeves, Seamus Finnigan, and Blaise Zabini are background characters. Keep this hierarchy in check; don’t let your main characters fade away, and don’t let your background characters shift to the forefront for no reason. If you do plan to move a character up or down the ladder, make sure to have clear motive as to why you’re bringing this character into or out of play.

2. POV

Your POV is the point of view in which you’re writing from. Assuming you’ve been in a typical middle school English class, you’ve heard of the first, second, and third person points of view. I cannot tell you how many times I have read fanfictions that jump from one POV to another, sometimes within the same sentence. I open the door and see Kurt Cobain standing in the corner of the room. She walked across the floor to meet him there. See what I did there? I jumped from first person present tense to third person past tense. Do not attempt this at home.

The least common of the three points of view is the second person, or what I like to call the Y/N point of view. In fanfiction, second person POV is often used in self-insert fics, where instead of a character’s name, it’s replaced with “you.” That’s why a lot of romantic character x reader fics are so popular. You should feel free to use this one, especially if that’s the kind of vibe you’re going for, but I’m going to elaborate a little bit more on first and third person, as they’re a bit more “literary.”

The first person POV confines the narration to the mind of one character. It can also be done with multiple characters, but be sure to do it so it’s painstakingly obvious to the reader whose POV you’re writing from. Also note that if you plan to write multiple first person POVs, try to keep that number on the lower side, as a large number of POVs can get really complicated really quickly. Third person narration can be done from two angles: limited or omniscient. Limited is more similar to first person, in which you’re confined to one person’s viewpoint, but they aren’t the narrator; you’re just seeing the story through their eyes. Omniscient is my favorite, because you can narrate from a bird’s eye view with the freedom to travel from mind to mind and read their thoughts.

Building character profiles can be really helpful when developing both first or third person POV; if you connect with a particular character more strongly than the rest, that should tell you whose POV you should write in. If you choose to switch POVs, be sure to do it either on an alternating/rotating basis, or if you repeat, it should be apparent as to why that particular character is the “voice” of that scene.

3. Plot

Dare I say that Plot is the most important step of them all, so do not skip this one, whatever you do! The biggest mistake most fanfiction writers make is having a concept but lacking a plot. It’s like biting into an apple just to discover it’s a lemon. Many writers are capable of starting off strong, but once their initial story begins to meander, traveling into uncharted territory, their brainchild can become a monstrosity.

In order to write a solid plot, it’s pretty common knowledge that you need to have a beginning, middle, and end in place. It doesn’t need to be overly specific or down to the last detail, you just need to figure out how your characters make it from point A to point Z (the larger scale), and how points B through Y factor into the plot (the smaller scale). There are a few routes that you can take in order to do this: you can write the entire thing ahead of time without any input, you can write the entire thing with the feedback of a beta reader or proofreader to help you work out any kinks or mistakes before you publish it for the entire platform to see, or you can publish it gradually and take feedback from your readers as you go. Should you go with the last option, though, you should be made aware that if you aren’t already an established author, it may feel like you’re talking to a wall, and you will likely feel discouraged from writing the story altogether.

I find it helpful to outline the whole thing. I have a closet door in my house dedicated to a Dave Grohl true crime fanfiction I’m working on. I’ve written the entire story from beginning to end on index cards, split into four different parts with each card representing a chapter. What’s good about outlining is that I can edit my story as I go along. If I decide to change something, I can add or remove an index card, then replace or rearrange the other index cards to work around the change I made, and that way, I don’t have to start over from scratch. It’s helpful to see everything laid out in front of me, so I’m not left at the end of a completely improvised plot with a slew of loose ends that I’ll need to go back and edit. It’s also better than publishing each part individually then having to redo everything after your readers have already seen it. And I don’t know about you, but I enjoy it when I’m able to save some time, energy, and lengthy explanations to random people online. That is, unless you enjoy constant feedback from readers, in which case you can change the plot on a chapter by chapter basis based on their feedback.

Consistency in all of these respects is key. I cannot emphasize this enough. Keeping all of these elements in check will help you create a sort of cohesiveness that will neatly wrap the story up with a little bow on top.

Step 5: Use Relevant Tags and Content Warnings

Repeat after me: tags matter! Again: tags matter! When you’re about to publish your fanfiction, you’re going to be given the option to add tags to your work. For my first few years spent on Wattpad, I had no idea what tags were, so I didn’t use them. Thankfully, the platform was still pretty small, so people still found my work pretty easily. Nowadays, though, it’s nearly impossible to find what you’re looking for without searching excessively specific tags and using a million filters. It’s unfortunate, but look at it this way: there are so many people contributing to so many fandoms that the content is seemingly endless!

What you’re going to want to do is add as many tags as you can but keep it as simple as possible. I know that sounds kind of oxymoronic, but I mean it in a way that all of your tags relate directly to your story, and not just to the fandom itself. A lot of readers feel misled when they’re scrolling through their filtered search page for, let’s just say, a Byler fanfic, and end up neck deep in a Mileven fanfic in disguise. That’s not a fun experience.

Lastly, please remember that you are publishing your work on the internet, and you don’t know who may encounter your work! Listen, we live in a world where everything needs to be overexplained, everything needs trigger warnings, and everything needs to be neutral or else someone is going to hate you. I get it. I’ve been writing fanfiction for a long time. It might be annoying to add content warnings, especially if one of those warnings spoils a major plotline, but if I’m being honest, I’d rather be safe and add the damn warning than not add the warning and be responsible for someone’s worsened emotional or mental state. Bottom line, it’s just fanfiction! Let’s do our due diligence to create a community full of love and understanding for everyone!

After that, you should be all set to publish! Let’s review one more time for the road:

Choose Your Fandom

Do Your Research

Choose Your Platform

Obey the Writer’s Trifecta of Consistency

Use Relevant Tags and Content Warnings

If you’ve stuck around for this long, thank you so much!

I hope this manual helps you along your fanfiction writing journey, wherever it takes you <3

#fanfic #ao3 fanfic #writers on tumblr #writerscommunity #female writers #fanfiction #wattpad #ao3 #stranger things fic #byler fic #creative writing #ao3 writer

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duckprintspress · 8 months ago

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Fandom Lexicon: C

The third installment in our posts about our Fandom Lexicon introduces the most terms yet: those beginning with the letter C!

Make sure you check out the main Fandom Lexicon page! We’ve posted letters A, B, and now C, and will be adding one or more letters each week until the entire lexicon is live and available for your perusal.

Spot a mistake we’ve made? Have we left something out? Let us know!

Lexicon Terms Beginning with C (read more)

C Drama: Abbreviation for “Chinese drama.” TV dramas from China

C Pop: Abbreviation for “Chinese pop.” Pop music from China.

C-Ent: Abbreviation for “Chinese entertainment.” Overarching term for the Chinese entertainment industry.

C&C: Abbreviation for “comments and criticism.” Typically used by a creator when indicating whether they do or do not want comments and/or criticism on their work. For example, an author’s note might read, “C&C Welcome.”

Camp NaNo: Shortened term referring to “Camp National Novel Writing Month.” A week-long writing event that occurs twice every year, in April and July. It is hosted by NaNoWriMo, but unlike the original NaNo, participants in Camp NaNo choose their own goals. See also NaNoWriMo (pending).

Canon: Facts about a narrative provided within the published context of the media being referred to. What does and does not count as canon is often up for speculation and scrutiny by fans with different interests/perspectives. Generally considered separate from “Word of God” explanations of the text – canon events must have happened “on the page” or “on the screen” or “in the recording” for the media in question, depending of course on the original format for the media. Read more about what canon means.

Canon Compliant: A fanwork that follow the rules/characterizations/plot of its source material, as interpreted by the creator of that work. Truly canon compliant works follow canon so closely that they could exist in canon without violating any known information about the world and characters, though that can be a moving target for canon compliant works created when canon is still ongoing. Read more about canon compliance.

Canon Divergent: A fanwork that begins at an established point in the source material’s canon, then takes off in its own direction. Read more about canon divergence.

Canon Insert: Most typically refers to when a writer’s original character is added to canon or replaces an existing canon character. Less typically, refers to a character from franchise A who is added to a canon or replaces an existing canon character in a fanwork about franchise B. Read more about character inserts.

Carrd: A service that hosts simple, easy-to-make websites for free, or more advanced ones for a fee, used by fans and other people to provide a central place for their contact details, interests, and personal information they want to share. Learn more on the Carrd website.

Casefic: A genre of fanwork in which the main characters are solving a case. Most common in fandoms where there are episodes or books that are each case-based, such as The X-Files, CSI, or Supernatural. Read more about casefic.

CBT: Abbreviation for “cock and ball torture” and for “cognitive behavioral therapy.” A classic example of just how important context can be for understanding what an abbreviation means!

CC: Abbreviation for the Creative Commons. A license that a user can assign to their own creation, giving permission to use the creation in their own projects provided they follow the terms of the chosen Creative Commons license. Read more about the types of Creative Commons licenses on the Creative Commons webpage.

Cheerleader: A person who reads a fanfic before it’s published and cheers the author on, so they keep up their motivation. The difference to alpha or beta reader is that the cheerleader usually does not offer any concrit nor do they do spelling and grammar (SPAG) editing.

Chibi: A type of art in which the characters are shown with unrealistic proportions, most often with unusually large heads and eyes. Also sometimes called “SD,” which stands for super-deformed. Read more about the term “chibi.”

Cishet: Shortened term for “cisgender heterosexual.” An individual whose assigned gender at birth matches their gender identity and who experiences sexual attraction to the opposite gender and only the opposite gender (excluding non-binary people and other genders outside the binary). While intended to be used to refer to people who are not queer, the term has often become a short-hand insult for aromantic and asexual people, and for bisexual people who are in relationships with person who are of the opposite in-the-binary gender. Read more about the term “cishet.”

Cisswap: See Genderbend (pending).

Citrus: See Citrus Scale.

Citrus Scale: A method for rating works from general to explicit without using lewd terminology. Read more about the citrus scale on Fanlore or in our blog post on the topic.

Claims: Typically refers to the point in a Bang of any size when artists are given an anonymized list of fic summaries, choose their favorites, and subsequently find out which authors they will be working with. In reverse bangs, it refers to when authors choose the artist they will be working with. For another usage, see Face Claim (pending).

CNTW: Abbreviation for “chose not to warn.” The creator chose not to use warning tags/labels. This abbreviation and usage is based on the AO3 Archive Warning “Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings.”

Coda: A fanwork that adds a scene that fans wish had been included in the source material. Often described by citing the season and episode that the fanwork is a coda to. For example, “coda to 5 x 2” would be a coda/new final scene created to follow the events of episode 2 of season 5. Sometimes referred to as an “episode tag.” Read more about codas.

Concrit: A shortened term for “constructive criticism.” 1. Critique of a creation that actively contributes to its improvement. In this definition, the criticism is usually intentionally solicited, and the critique is done by the editor or beta reader in collaboration with the writer, after discussion of what the author is trying to accomplish and what their goals are. 2. Unwelcome and unsolicited critique from commenters on fanworks, which givers often try to excuse by leaning on definition 1.

Conlang: A shortened term for “constructed language.” An artificially created language, for example Klingon in Star Trek and Elvish in the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. Read more about conlangs.

Consentacles: A portmanteau of “consent” and “tentacles.” Used to refer to tentacle sex enjoyed with enthusiastic consent. “Dubious consentacles” is also in use, indicating that the consent is more ambiguous.

Cosplay: Dressing up like a character from a given franchise. Ranges from exact replications to crossovers and/or creative reinterpretations of the source material. Read more about cosplay.

CP: Abbreviation for “couple,” except when it means “child pornography.” In East Asian fandoms, CP refers to the main couple in a work. In Western fandoms, CP most often stands for “child pornography.” This difference has caused many, many problems. Read more about the different uses of CP as an abbreviation.

Crack: A speculative concept that is unbelievably ridiculous. For example, “what if all the characters were chicken nuggets?” Read more about crack.

Crackship: A ship between that is unbelievably ridiculous, such as a character with an object, a location with a creature, or two people who would genuinely never in a thousand years ever work out in a relationship. Not the same thing as an unpopular ship or rare pair. Read more about crackships.

Creation Challenge: A fandom event in which the host(s) come up with a theme and/or a list of prompts, and participants are invited to create fanworks in response to that prompt. Examples of creation challenges include Big Bangs and Bingos.

Crossover: A term with many uses in different contexts; in fandom, it refers to when a fanwork combines multiple sources in some way. Mulder and Scully showing up in a Doctor Who fic, for example. Read more about crossovers.

Crucifix Nail Nipples: A well-known story told by Tumblr user thebibliosphere. Often referenced as an example of just how ridiculous erotica can be. Read the original post.

CSEM: Abbreviation for “child sexual exploitation material.” What it says on the tin – this is a legal/technical term for materials featuring actual children photographed or filmed in sexual situations. Creating or possessing these materials is illegal in most of the world. Read more about the usages and legal definitions of this term.

#duck prints press #fandom lexicon

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hopalongfairywren · 1 year ago

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for the violence ask game, 16 17 24 25?

you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc) Superhero AUs within the dsmp fandom. Seriously. Like especially the people who basically strip the characters of all but their names (and sometimes not even that) and who put them in a totally new setting without any connection to canon lore. It's not a big deal unless your searching on ao3 for a good fic of literally anyone besides Benchtrio and SBI (God help you if you want a canon fic) but it's weird to me as someone who is so interested in the canon dsmp storyline. And not even just the canon events! I mean canon divergent aus that split off from canon, canon to the left, just anything about actual dsmp lore. Idk I just don't get superhero fics why not make ocs at that point?

there should be more of this type of fic/art You already probably know I'm gonna say eggpire fan content, but let's go one step further. Red banquet content. fan ideas for what happened after the red banquet. eggpire healing fics. literally anything with puffy and hannah interacting. topic that brings up the most rancid discourse literally anything to do with the prison arc or exile arc. common fandom complaint that you're sick of hearing I was sick of hearing people complain about fans getting 'too much into the lore' just. Yeah that's the whole fucking point.

#thanks for the ask!#the wren calls #dream smp #dsmp #dsmp lore #dsmp lore discourse #dsmp fandom critical #c!hannah #c!puffy #egg arc #eggpire #egg lore #prison arc #exile arc #dsmp ask game

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quietwingsinthesky · 1 year ago

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8 and 16 for the choose violence ask

8. Common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about.

That Dean would return Cas’s love confession

Okay no actually you know what. I’m gonna talk about that. Maybe it’s just me being deep in Aro!Dean land, but I’m not seeing it. I’m not seeing at any point in the show where Dean loved Castiel. And I’ve been looking, I swear, but I’m. There’s no destiel on my screen. There is a lot more sastiel than I remember but there’s no destiel happening on my screen! There IS a lot of Castiel clearly having Problems and Issues and Angst about dean, and. Zero doubt here there that that angel wants to fuck him. But I honestly can’t imagine any happy ending for dean that revolves solely or even mostly around a romantic attachment. That man is hardwired for family being the most important thing to him, and I love that. Aro!Dean wins again.

Other notable things include: headcanoning Sam as not queer/trans because he’s too boring. Talked about that. Weird fucking opinion to have. That Gabriel is not exactly as fucked up as the other archangels, especially when presenting sabriel as the Good Sam Ship as opposed to samifer. My dudes, did we not watch mystery spot, do the reading. Also. Also. Not acknowledging the really clear character degradation of Lucifer in the later seasons/attributing later seasons stuff to how he acts in s5, just a personal gripe because whatever, people can read him however they want, but I really feel like on a meta level you gotta talk about how these are Two Different Characters who just happen to have been jammed into the same character. Okay. I think that’s it.

16. You can’t understand why people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc.)

I do not like coffee shops AUs. Actually, it’s more that im Extremely picky about AUs that aren’t canon divergence, and will drop them immediately the minute I feel like I’m no longer reading about the characters I like and am instead reading about Generic Guys who say funny quips and then kiss. Which is not a coffee shop au specific problem but the frequency with which that kind of au attracts that writing means I have kind of been turned off from ever reading them again.

if you are writing Sam into your coffee shop au and at some point he does not drop some insane backstory about the time he was kidnapped and forced to fight to the death with a bunch of other college kids, you have failed at writing this au and I am banishing you to the shadow realm /j

The other thing that I do not understand at all, and this extends into a problem with canon, I’m well aware, is how happily people will accept the idea that Castiel is rebellious/different from other angels because he was just Made Wrong. he’s too Broken to be like a real angel. that all the other angels are mindless drones and Castiel is the one good one who could learn about free will, usually justified with it being that “his love for dean is what makes him special”, but even outside of destiel circles, this kind of thing gets very annoying lmao.

And it’s just. That’s wrong. The show might have decided post-s8 that it believed this about Castiel but it’s False and Bad. I’m gesturing wildly at Uriel and Anna and Gabriel and Lucifer and Balthazar and Michael and shit what’s that one angel doing pinball I love them, them too, and Castiel is not special!!! He should not be special!!! All angels have the capacity for free will, they are living under a terrifying system of suppression that has stripped them of their ability to use it and has taught them that when an angel does something they disagree with, killing them is a mercy! (See: the implications of that one angel healer in s9 + Uriel and Cas being sent to kill Anna for falling in s4)

CASTIEL IS NOT SPECIAL. STOP SAYING HE IS SPECIAL. THE CRACK IN THE CHASSIS LINE IS BAD TO HOLD UP AS EVIDENCE OF HIM BEING UNIQUELY FLAWED.

ahem. sorry. i like the supernatural angels. i think making castiel into some separate special being who is the only one capable of rebelling and feeling love and etc does a massive disservice to the heaven storylines and angels as a whole. i think the show’s choice to never have another major angel character who wasn’t killed off quickly/made “too evil” to redeem was a bad decision and contributes to this view of cas as Different and The Good One.

#ask

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lodessa · 1 month ago

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For the ask game - 46, 55, 56 and 65 (the terrible-awful-delicious angst to come, I presume? 😘😂)

46. How would you describe your style? (Character/emotion/action-driven, etc)

Introspective, relationship-centric, smutty, rambling, confessional.

55. Of the characters you write for, which is your favorite? Has that choice been swayed at all by your followers/readers’ reactions to certain ones?

It is so hard for me to choose a favorite. I do think that I tend to have a special attachment to characters I don't feel that fandom as a whole (or the canon) appreciates enough. So like Weevil from Veronica Mars is a good example of that, or Martha Jones from Doctor Who. As opposed to, I love Kathryn Janeway, but I don't feel like I have to convince others to care about her like I do. That said, I definitely am more motivated to write for characters where I have at least a few people I can capslock with about them.

56. What’s something about your writing that you pride yourself on?

Writing fic that is specific to who the characters are and not just based on common fanon tropes, especially being able to do that in alternate universes/settings.

65. Tell us about what you’re most looking forward to writing – in your current project, or a future project

Well I am looking forward more angst and feelings (and yes, some smut because I am me) in the upcoming chapters of Trial and Temptation, and also getting to try my hand at Elendil's POV since my first fic was from Miriel's.

But I also am kind of looking forward to getting to the point where I move from missing-scene/canon-compliant-ish fic for our latest beloveds and getting to put them in an AU or canon divergence where they can have a happy or at least bittersweet ending.

#writing #ask games

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teashoptiramisu · 2 years ago

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Fluffy fanfic rec list

On one of my Discord servers people were talking about how people seem more likely to recommend angsty fic, so I decided to put together a fluff rec list, just for fun! This is gonna be a variety of fandoms, wordcount length, genres, etc. -- the common factor is I like ‘em and they turned up when I search “fluff” in my bookmarks. I’ll point out if any are nsfw

ATLA

see your son rising at last by aloneintherain -- ATLA -- 6.5k words -- Iroh & Zuko 5+1 things fic

North by ryfkah -- ATLA -- 300 words -- short & sweet Appa POV fic

definitely not suspicious at all in the least by presumenothing -- ATLA -- 1k words -- post-canon Gaang shenanigans

All The Gentle Creatures by Haicrescendo -- ATLA -- 10k words -- animals love Zuko, he’s basically a Disney Princess

Yuri!!! On Ice

see you next level by verity -- YoI -- 1.5k words -- Yuuri, Viktor & Phichit get drunk & watch TV, Yuuri & Viktor continue to be the most adorably sappy couple

Friendship!!! Is Magic by afrai -- YoI & OHSHC -- 10k words -- Yuuri & Haurhi meet at a conference and become friends. Viktor & Tamaki make fools of themselves (but what else is new)

Howl’s Moving Castle (mostly bookverse)

Second Time Lucky by labellementeuse -- HMC -- 5.5k words -- Howl & Sophie plan their wedding (lol i spelled that “weeding” on the first try... also accurate). As you might expect for these two it doesn’t go without some hiccups.

Could it be magic? by SpiritedYoungLady -- HMC -- 500 words -- Howls comes back from night with the rugby club, and Sophie is unamused

Fulllmetal Alchemist (mostly bhood/manga)

All That Describes a Joyful Heart by anthrop -- FMA -- 3k words -- Hohenheim & Trisha cook together during a winter storm & they are simply TOO ADORABLE. Features some Xerxian cultural headcanons inspired by Nowruz (Persian New Year) traditions!

And They Were ROOMMATES by Turbulent_Muse -- FMA -- 30k words -- Modern AU in which college student!Ling moves into a haunted house, but since the rent is too good to pass up, he decides to try and befriend the demon. Greedling friendship & adventure fic.

Science for People Who Hate Science by Tierfal -- FMA -- 66k words -- Royed Modern AU, but even if you dislike that ship you might want to give this one a chance; it’s really more of an origfic about two characters losely inspired by Roy & Ed. They run a goofy educational youtube channel and are two dorks in love. Al shows up to make fun of them sometimes. It’s a good time!

The Sleeping Horror of Whiskerford by Eltea -- FMA -- 3.5k words -- another modern AU, in which the gang (Ed, Al, Winry, Riza, Roy, Hughes) plays D&D. Worth it for Ed’s character sheet alone, but overall just a hilarious & fun time.

A Clowder of Cats by Batsutousai -- FMA -- 4k words -- post-canon (a more-or-less canon universe fic for once!), Al settles down and adopts a bunch of cats (AS HE DESERVES)

Teen Wolf

the butt is a gift by lazulisong -- Teen Wolf -- 1.5k words -- Stiles is pinned to the couch by cats. I think this is part of a larger AU but tbh I don’t care: Stiles, cats, relatable dilemmas, what more do I need?

When the Bough Breaks by The Feels Whale (miscellea) -- Teen Wolf -- 12k words -- A bit of a weird one, but sometimes I like my TW fic weird. post-canon-ish/canon-divergence with endgame Sterek; Stiles is on the outs with Derek’s pack until they learn that he’s adopted a baby, and then they’re suddenly all over to dote on her. I actually really mostly liked this for Stiles’ single parent struggles and (platonic) relationship with the baby’s birth mother, the werewolf stuff & romance was cute but mostly incidental.

Misc fandoms

it's a new craze by attheborder -- Good Omens -- 5k words -- Crowley & Aziraphale start an advice podcast

Hot Springs and New Beginnings by CorundumBleu -- Hollow Knight -- 3k words -- in a good ending universe, Quirrel, the Knight, and The Last Stag relax at a hot springs and discuss hopes for the future. I recommend looking through CorundumBleu’s other HK fics as well -- there’s a couple other good fluff fics in there and some most angsty but still amazing stories! (I’m biased: CB is my sister & I helped edit these, but still, I think they’re great!)

Sufficient by atheilen -- The Goblin Emperor -- 2k words -- deaged!Maia; in which everyone and particularly Beshelar shows how much they care for and cherish Maia.

Sick Day by avg (AnxiousEspada) -- The Murderbot Diaries -- 4k words -- Overse & Arada are sick; Ratthi and later Murderbot visit to help them out. “To everyone’s surprise, a feverish Overse is SecUnit approved humor-fuel.” (P.S. if you like this fic consider checking out my sequel to it!)

Thrilling Night! Romantic Adventure at the Video Rental Store! by Masu_Trout -- Undertale -- 2.5k words -- wonderful Outsider POV of an employee at a video rental store who gets the admittedly uncertain priviledge of helping Alphys and Undyne pick out a movie to rent for their date night. I’m still not over the movie they end up picking, OMG.

Gonna add a reblog with BNHA, Natsuyu, Gravity Falls, and maybe some HP recs tomorrow.

Also, if you like these fics and know of more like them, feel free to let me know! I’m always taking fic recs (I’m slow to get around to them but I WILL save your recs for later) :P

#not atla #but also atla #fic recs #fanfic #yoi #hmc #fma #teen wolf #good omens #the goblin emperor #the murderbot diaries #undertale

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sidleyparkhermit · 10 months ago

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fanfic director's cut: talk about what went into your characterization of Chilton in interrupted stitch because i'm still amazed that you managed to capture a version of him that feels in-character without making me want to dropkick him. also tell the people about interrupted stitch

Thank you for the lovely ask and always being such an encouraging reader. I'll try to fulfill both requests as best I can, in reverse order, without wandering off to complain too many times

So: Interrupted Stitch originated as NBC Hannibal hiatusfic, though early in the outlining the second season premiered and the story officially became a canon-divergent AU. It had many elements that might seem in retrospect to be dunking on seasons 2-3 of Hannibal but simply came from looking at the plot and characters of season 1 and thinking about things that would make sense to happen.

It involves... how do I explain this. It exists because one time Aaron Abrams tweeted about Raúl Esparza being cute. It was supposed to be a PWP. It quickly grew a plot, wherein some traumatized secondary characters eventually solve the Chesapeake Ripper murders with the powers of gay S&M and friendship. It's my first foray into what I would call genuine crime fiction. My joke logline for it is "PTSD, BDSM, and some FUBAR MDs." Also, Beverly lives, of course.

I worked hard on it for a long time, but it's only really been seen by @stellerssong, partly because of [real life redacted] and partly because, as longtime readers will know, I hate the Hannibal fandom.

As to the Chilton question!

So, I think the most important thing to begin with was to take him as he is (or was at that point in canon). He's annoying, he's arrogant, he's not qualified for his job -- those are just facts on the ground. They don't have to be explained away.

What else is he? Well, despite the fact that he clearly should not have been in his position at what my old friend gamesiplay dubbed CrazyJail™️, he advanced this far as such a relatively young age somehow. He and Zeller have in common the quality of being overachievers in high-stress and high-risk occupations. I figured right away that he would be continuing to work as much as he could after the Gideon kidnapping, not just to take his mind off things but because that's his personality.

What does he want? In some cases he wants what everyone else can see is the wrong thing; he cannot help trying to get back to the BSHCI despite all his disastrous mistakes. But since we're seeing him outside that frame as well, we also see the quite ordinary human things he wants that were taken away, in some cases permanently, by Gideon (and Lecter): to enjoy food and sex, to hang out with normal people, to have one goddamn night of good sleep. To drink a cup of coffee.

What Chilton endures in "Rôti" is so extreme, from the point of view of the real world, that I feel like simply exploring its effects is more than enough to make the reader sympathize. Because Chilton is annoying, but he's not evil, and he lives in a world deeply infected with true evil. Hannibal Lecter thinks being evil is superior to being annoying, and I guess Bryan Fuller does too, but they're both wrong.

So, I think part of the answer is vulnerability, and mainly just the vulnerabilities already opened up by the text. (I guess the text didn't inherently suggest the humanizing effect of discovering a character's embarrassing sexual fantasies, but I think I ripped off that trick from Terrence McNally [Love! Valor! Compassion!, 1995].)

I think Zeller's POV, and Zeller being himself someone who alternates between brilliant overachiever and human disaster, also helps kinda equalize them. Like, yeah, here's a dude that makes bad decisions, I too am making bad decisions, who the hell would even be making good decisions at a time like this.

They -- and the others in that story -- aren't normal people, obviously. But what they are is people with normal kinds of flaws. And when you are just regular messed up, when you may have thought you were ready for the worst because you're very clever and you've done so much research, how do you deal after your own life is changed by extreme evil? That was the kind of question that interested me.

#interrupted stitch #stellerssong #there I only interrupted myself to complain a couple times

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raayllum · 2 years ago

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Before s4 came out I didn't follow anyone here (didn't know you guys existed) so I was sitting there trying to point out parallels between Callum and Viren and how wild it would be if in a canon divergence au they would forced to work together and how horrified they would be as they slowly realized shit we are alike, and maybe even a good team and all of my friends were like????? Honey, sit down, maybe to watch something else, touch grass outside?

Which, fair. BUT NOW HOWEVER I know I'm not crazy 'cause your posts are in my dash to not only say yeah, those two nerds have their similarities but to point out so much other things I wouldn't have guessed like never, so all this rant to say thanks, now I can go back on my bullshit with your beautiful gifs as cientifical proof I'm in fact so right

Hello & first off, welcome to the fandom, I hope you're having a great time!! And thank you for sending this ask in because Viren-Callum parallels are literally one of my favourite things in the entire show!!

And have been for quite a while (as this post documents, from post-S2 onwards back in Feb 2019 I've been chugging that sweet foils juice and only getting continually more fed), I always figured S4 would majorly ramp it up (just like S2 did from S1) but I am still thrilled beyond my wildest dreams that the foil dynamic is becoming this richly layered / complex / overt, y'know?

I think in terms of personality presentation Viren and Rayla are very similar as well (which I still need to do a S4 update for them whoops) but in terms of narrative weight and arcs and Viren's personality beyond his independence/paranoia? It's Callum all the way down, 100%

Like, they were already tied together as mages with Claudia's loyalty to each of them pit directly against one another (with Viren unsurprisingly winning) as well as brothers to the king (Harrow, Ezran). As Callum lets go of titles and calls Harrow Dad, Harrow insists on Viren using his title formally (which Viren already often did so) and Viren forsakes him as a brother. The plume of Harrow's funeral pyre in 1x04 going into Callum's primal stone transition shot; Viren going to the butterflies to de-corrupt himself while Callum looks at the Star primal on the cube, etc.

I've always been fond of Callum having to work with Claudia or Viren if/when the two mages come back across the moral horizon line, purely because those dynamics are so complicated and tainted, and yet they are also two people who can uniquely understand Callum's headspace and attachment to magic (or perhaps not unique understanding, but like, mirroring, haha?) I've written Callum and Claudia doing so before but idk if I've written Viren and Callum (although I have written them being on friendlier terms in "looking for a way to break in," although it's a very small part of the fic). I may have to write a canon divergence at one point where Callum is taken on as an apprentice to Viren (or Viren's old mentor Kpp'Ar even) but we shall see

Because like, they're both smart and clever and research focused, and just pragmatic enough to not be completely opposed (if they had a common goal) but Callum would have some lines he isn't willing to cross to the same capacity, which would keep Viren in check, and Viren could bring in knowledge/experience Callum doesn't have by virtue of just being so much younger. As well as primal mage (and friend of Xadians) Callum having access and knowledge of things that may surprise Viren and teach him a thing or two in addition

I think what makes me the most excited though is a couple of things stacked on top of each other, tbh

Viren's speech in 4x04, regarding, "I have always been ready to do anything to protect my family, however dangerous, however vile. In the name of love, you may perform acts so unforgivable, you can never forgive yourself" just as Callum finds a new consequence for doing dark magic way back when

We see Callum in 4x07 is later horrified of the possession mostly because "I'm afraid he'll force me to do awful things. Or hurt people I care about" (as Callum has already done, if not vile, then dangerous things to protect his loved ones, notably Ezran and Rayla)

The fact that Viren doing something awful to save Soren as a kid is now working it's way in the show (also in 4x07) of "You would be dead without Dad's magic" to be explored further in S5

Callum also having to inevitably fail to free Aaravos, with all the symbolism behind the idea ("Accidents happen" "On purpose" / "I hope it was worth it to you, putting everyone's lives in danger" / "This doesn't end well for you" / "It's the key of Aaravos, no good will come of it") that he may have more of an active hand in purposefully freeing him under coercion, also possibly in S5

Like if Callum and Ezran start being tested in s5, and Callum saves Ez at any cost (thus leaping over how Viren and Harrow failed each other bc those sweet generational parallels? Gold). Or Viren wanting to save Claudia and not wanting Aaravos to be freed, with perhaps Callum freeing Aaravos in order to save someone like Rayla but

Just having parallels with Aaravos thus far hasn't been the main reason, it seems, to have such an intense foil relationship between Viren and Callum, but there's still gotta be a bigger reason, and it really feels to me like this aspect of Viren might be why he and Callum have been so contrasted with each other

Other posts u can show ur friends if you want to:

My general Viren-Callum foils tag

A pre-S4 breakdown of all the ways they parallel each other season by season

A post-S4 breakdown of how they parallel each other with some bonus foil stuff

#thanks for asking #it was just red #fandom history #anonymous #it's very aang & zuko y'know? the whole redirecting lightning bit #i respect u so much anon only touch grass if u want to

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mydisenchantedeulogy · 2 years ago

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Fragile Lines [Chapter One] Bad Blood [Ignacio “Nacho” Varga]

A/n: As I’ve been hinting around to for some time, here is the first chapter of my new story for the Better Call Saul fandom. One big thing to remember when going into this story is that the plot will be canon divergent; it does somewhat follow the plot, but along the journey it changes. Please enjoy.

Summary: Ariana is a down-to-earth ER doctor who lives a mildly stress-free life in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Or so she thinks. As the younger sister of Chuck and Jimmy McGill; two troublesome attorneys, she is always being pulled into their everyday drama, especially when it involves the other.

Unbeknownst to her, she is soon dragged into a cluster of absurdity following a suggestion she gives to Jimmy and puts herself in the sights of Nacho Varga. Her simple life is about to take a turn for the worse and lines are about to be broken.

Warning(s): mentions death and drugs, mild blood, family drama, and lies.

Breathe... Breathe...

Ria stared at her teary blue eyes in the mirror as she scrubbed at the blood stains on her coat. She knew there was no point in it; blood was hard to remove from light-colored clothes, but still, she tried. Her mind was a labyrinth. She knew as an ER Physician things would be hard. Hell, she had five years of residency to change her mind, but day after day she came back. It hurt every time something terrible happened. And today was no different.

A nineteen-year-old patient of hers passed on her. He was barely an adult. Rushed into the ER with multiple gunshot wounds to the right upper and right lower abdominal quadrants, he bled out on her table. She tried her best to resuscitate him but to no avail. His life was in her hands, and she failed him. Ria hid in the bathroom between patients and cried her eyes out. She couldn't help it; she was human. And the worst part wasn't even over. The patient's closest family had to be notified; no one even knew their son or brother was dead. An anonymous caller dialed 911, leaving him there on Central Avenue near the Crossroads Motel, a place mostly populated by junkies. She wasn't certain, but she assumed the young man had crossed the wrong person.

It was too common in Albuquerque for someone to wind up dead due to drugs or a deal gone wrong. And this poor soul Ria failed to save was the city's most recent victim, as far as she knew.

Staring down into the sink, she watched the water swirl down the drain along with the blood from the washcloth she had been using; her hand rested on the sink, fingers bouncing to the keys of 'Clair De Lune', an action she often did to soothe herself. No one even told her that she was walking around with red on her collar until the triage nurse noticed and urged her to clean up. The nineteen-year-old's death was fresh on her mind; it occurred only an hour ago, but it was something Ria could not yet let go of. She turned off the sink and removed her coat, clipping her nametag onto the front of her black scrubs before she folded the fabric, tossing it over her arm. The stain wasn't coming out and she seriously needed to return to her work. Fixing her disheveled appearance in the mirror; her vibrant coral lipstick had been smudged a bit in the corner, she quickly washed her hands and slipped out into the hallway.

"Ariana?!" She heard a familiar voice shout. The tirage nurse, a woman in her mid-twenties named Karina, rushed over to her. "Two patients were just brought in. Both were in a skateboarding accident and broke each of their legs."

Ria narrowed her eyes in disbelief.

"Both of them?"

Karina gave her a knowing look and hummed.

"I know right? But your brother Jimmy brought them in and he is claiming the same thing occurred."

Ria sighed in annoyance. She felt a headache coming on.

"Have Montoya check the skateboarders. I'll talk to Jimmy."

Remembering her soiled coat, she removed it from her arm and offered it to Karina, asking her to toss it into the laundry. Having to wear one when speaking to immediate family members, she forgot to remove it when the last patient was brought in. With a quiet thank you, she sauntered toward the waiting room.

This would probably be looked down on as unprofessional, but she needed to know what happened; Jimmy was keeping something from them, and she just knew it. Ria walked into the busy waiting area and found her brother sitting to himself with a clipboard in his hand. His thin brown hair was unkempt and his dark suit pants were stained brown at the knees.

"Good morning, Jimmy," She announced as she stood in front of him with her arms crossed over her chest. "I already know the answer, but what do I owe the pleasure."

"I didn't know you were working today," her older brother deflected. His blue eyes looked her over, noticing the red and puffy bags beneath her eyes. "The pollen count must be high. You'd better take some Benadryl."

Ria snorted. Her brother was damn good at avoiding questions, especially when she was the one asking them. Reaching down, she snatched the clipboard from his hand and gave it a look over.

"Laurentius and Calvin Lindholm; skateboarding accident, or so I was told."

"Frick and Frack; not as good as they thought apparently," Jimmy retorted.

Ria narrowed her eyes and tossed him back the clipboard.

"And you're their lawyer now? Just seems a little... planned to me."

Jimmy was known for his elaborate schemes. He had been conning people since he was a kid and though Ria wanted to believe that becoming a lawyer had changed him, this visit proved otherwise.

"Oh come on!" Jimmy exclaimed in annoyance. "I didn't plan this. Those two are just idiots. And besides, I wouldn't be paying their medical bills if this were a scam."

He had a point.

"I'm only saying it sounds planned because of the likelihood of their injuries," Ria stated.

She hated pointing fingers at him, but this entire mess had Jimmy's name written all over it. Though perhaps she was being hard on him because of his past. Wasn't it her job to support him? Love him no matter how terrible he used to be?

"What happened to them, Frick and Frack? The truth please."

"They were in a skateboarding accident, Aria. Lawyer confidentiality, remember?" Jimmy pointed out.

She reckoned there was no point in asking him; he was dead set on not telling her the truth. This was no more than a waste of time.

"I have to return to my job... but I want to know that you're OK. Promise me."

"I am. I'm fine," Jimmy claimed.

The strange, frightened look in his blue eyes made Ria uncertain, but she had no option but to believe him. Saying her goodbyes, she turned to walk away, but Jimmy called out her name, immediately stopping her. She looked at him over her shoulder and raised a brow in question.

"Can you visit Chuck later? He asked about you."

"My shift doesn't end until late," Ria retorted.

It wasn't a complete lie; she was in for a 12-hour shift today and Chuck would be in bed before she got off. But the main reason she didn't want to visit him was because of their strained relationship. Neither of them saw eye to eye when it came to Jimmy and Ria could not stand to argue with him regarding the middle sibling; he always started on her every time Jimmy was involved with something that closely resembled a scam.

"See, that works out. Go see him in the morning. You can pick up some ice and that newspaper he likes so much; you know the one," Jimmy stated.

Ria took an uneasy breath.

"He asked about me?"

"Yeah," Jimmy retorted with a shake of his head. "All the time."

Despite this information, she wasn't certain about going, but if it helped her relationship with her brother even a little then she was more than eager to visit him. It felt nice to know that Chuck had asked about her on more than one occasion.

"I'll go tomorrow afternoon before work."

Jimmy grinned.

"Have fun."

She should have said no.

Parking near the curb outside Chuck's house on San Cristobal Road, Ria got out of her Honda Civic and sauntered over to the mailbox. She took her cell phone from her back pocket and put it inside, remembering her brother's strict rules, no electricity, and no batteries. He claimed to suffer from electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS), an adverse physical reaction to electrical devices that sent him into a pained fit, often causing him to faint; one of the reasons she moved from Cicero to Albuquerque a year ago; to help care for him. Once she was done, she went back to her car and retrieved the items that her brother wanted; a 5-pound bag of ice and 'the Financial Times', a newspaper that focused on business and economic current affairs. Taking them to the front door, she grounded herself by touching a metal knob attached to the banister outside, knocking shortly after.

On the 3rd knock, she saw a shadow pass the peephole.

"Ariana?" Came Chuck's muffled voice. He almost sounded surprised to see her. "Did you ground yourself?"

"Like always. I have your newspaper and some ice," Ria retorted.

She raised the two items to emphasize her point and then waited for her older brother to open the door. As he did, backing up the stairs a bit as she walked in, Ria noticed the space blanket over his head and shoulders and frowned.

"Are you OK?"

Did he have an attack?

Chuck nodded, making her feel a little better.

"Jimmy crashed here drunk last night and forgot to ground himself."

She wasn't aware that he came by. Taking the ice into the kitchen, she tore a hole into the bag and dumped it into the cooler, having to arrange a few of the contents inside; bacon and a few bottles of water. As she stood, Ria took a quick look around and noticed that nothing much had changed since the last time she had visited Chuck. His house was an accident waiting to happen; lanterns were lying about, sitting on stacks of newspapers that he was too scared to take outside and put in the recycle bin. She frowned and turned to her brother.

"Was Jimmy OK? I just saw him yesterday and he seemed... dazed."

"Did you see him at the medical center?" Chuck asked, standing next to the counter. "Because he was there. He paid a bill for two young men who ridiculously happened to break both their legs in the same skateboard accident and that set him back in his funds."

So, he knew already. Ria took an uneasy breath. She wasn't aware that Jimmy had run out of funds, however. It seemed strange that he'd even tell Chuck about this issue. Regardless, he once again dragged her into another one of their squabbles.

"I talked to him when he brought them in."

"And?" Chuck asked.

He wasn't going to let this go it seemed.

"And I'm sure he told you the same thing he told me when I asked if it was a scam," Ria answered.

"You believed him, didn't you?" He asked with an astonished laugh. "Don't you see that he's conning for money again."

She was not in the mood for this.

"I didn't come over here to talk about Jimmy," Ria mentioned. "I came to see you."

"It's been two months since you've visited, Ariana. What reason did you come here? Did Jimmy ask you to?" Her brother asked, staring at her in pity.

Bouncing her fingers against her leg to the keys of 'Clair De Lune', she tried to fight back her tears. This was an ignorant idea, coming to see him. She honestly thought he would be happy to see her; all the excitement she had been feeling was gone, replaced with disappointment.

"I came here because you are my brother and I worry about you," Ria answered.

It wasn't a complete lie. Yes, Jimmy asked her to, but he also told her that Chuck wanted to see her too.

"Did you even ask about me during those two months?"

Chuck snorted in disbelief and shook his head. The space blanket crinkled in protest.

"Another fabricated lie from Jimmy. Don't you see that he hasn't changed? He does this all the time; pits you against me for some reason."

"You do that. You pit me against you," Ria argued as he pointed her finger at him. She was irate at this point. "Every time I come here all we do is argue about Jimmy. It's never 'how are you' or 'what have you been up to'. I've had enough of this, Chuck. You are both my brothers; I love each of you equally, but I am not going to let you slander him as you do."

This was an endless circle. Nothing ever changed. Ria didn't understand why there was so much bad blood between him and Jimmy, but the pointless fighting needed to stop. She just wanted them to get along; the three of them were supposed to be siblings.

"You should have never come here," Chuck uttered. "You should have stayed in Cicero; it was a mistake for you to unroot your life just for Jimmy."

Is that what he thought? Ria shook her head in disbelief.

"I moved here for you." She paused to angrily motion around. "And this... mess. Because you're sick."

"You moved here because Jimmy begged you to. And you gave up so much Ariana. Your career, your house, and Benjamin. I don't want you to give up more for him," Chuck mentioned.

He crossed a line. How could he blame everything on Jimmy? And why Benjamin? Why did he have to throw him in her face? Tears poured down her face as she stood there, staring at him in anger.

"You were right. It was a mistake to come here."

Tossing the newspaper onto the counter, Ria stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind her. As she sauntered over to the mailbox to collect her phone she considered kicking it over in a fit of rage but knew better than to steep so low. By the time she got into her car, she was wracked with sobs. Chuck was wrong. It wasn't Jimmy who ruined her two-year relationship with Benjamin, it was her. She didn't want to get married so soon; she wasn't ready to settle down just yet. And then Chuck got sick. It may have been Jimmy who asked her to move, but in the end, she decided to leave.

He didn't understand. He couldn't.

Her mother and father were dead. She lived 18 hours from her brothers. Ria didn't want to lose them either, especially considering how rare and unpredictable Chuck's condition was, so she moved. Yes, she tried to explain this to Benjamin but he didn't understand. He couldn't leave his life in Cicero for her. Perhaps she was being a brat; perhaps she should have never left. Often she considered calling Benjamin and asking to come home, but as far as she was concerned, that chapter in her life was over; he probably didn't think of her anymore. She tore it out and tossed it in the trash. And for what? A broken family with no plans to change.

"I'm a fucking mess," Ria uttered with a pained laugh.

She opened her phone and glanced at the time. Her drama would have to wait; it was time for work. As she drove toward Lovelace, she pondered calling her ex but decided against it. At least for now.

Not when I'm at my lowest.

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