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mourntheantagonist · 3 years

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Have it Your Way

HWOL Day 2 Prompt: Overstimulation

Rating: E

Word Count: 4.2k

warnings for referenced underage sex with adults and homophobic language

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Billy was always seeking out just a fast and easy release. A quick fuck in an alley outside or blowjobs in the bathroom stalls with whatever guy was eyeing him at the other side of the bar. Usually just two closet cases out for the night to earn the sweet release they were desperate for before they performed the same walk of shame back to their shitty lives in their heteronormative world, hitting on girls and becoming overcompensating womanizers.

At least that was the case for Billy Hargrove. Forgoing feelings and foreplay for the feeling of a cock in his ass as he’s fucked senselessly into a brick wall next to trash filled dumpsters, but only smelling the rich scent of cheap cologne and sweat. A much preferred alternative to the delicate fragrances and cleanliness he was supposed to enjoy. The perfume that always made the dissociation and imagination wear off when he was fucking girls at parties in the host’s parents bedroom, making sure partygoers heard the moans and groans to keep up appearances. Have a reputation like Billy’s and nobody would ever question his early departures. Nobody ever knew what he did for the after party.

California was easy. Getting his hands on a guy who just wanted to fuck was as simple as walking three miles to whatever run down gaybar that would let the pretty underaged boy in through the doors with just the flash of his devilish smile. He never walked home empty handed, just the signature limp of someone who took it a little too rough that night. Men twice his age were always buying him drinks and flirting with him at the bar, he could have anyone he damn well pleased. It was easy, simple, and honestly super fucking convenient. Free booze followed by a no strings attached hook-up with his pick of the litter. No names were exchanged, rarely even words at all. Just telling movements of the eyes and sounds of heavy breathing and moaning that echoed alongside others who found their way into the men’s room. Two, or even three pairs of feet seen underneath the gap of each stall. Panting and releasing expletives as the doors rattled from bodys that were slammed against locked doors.

California was easy.

Indiana was not.

Especially not Hawkins of all places. One bar in the entire town that was most certainly not his kind of bar. No clubs no anything. Release wasn’t three miles away anymore, it was a hundred miles away. But that was Neil’s plan all along wasn’t it? Drag his no good queer son across the country to the most conservative town he could find on the map, where if there even were gay people around they were so far deep into the closet they couldn’t even see daylight.

But there had to be somebody right? There had to be someone. Else Billy might completely explode. Already beginning his reputation building by fucking the first girl who showed interest in the backseat of the Camaro in the school parking lot. With no quickie in a back alley to follow it up, he was left keyed up and desperate and his hand and a mag could only do so much before he completely lost his mind.

Especially when people like Steve fucking Harrington existed. Back in California he never let himself look at another classmate like that. They were off limits. He had the means he needed there and didn’t need to steal looks in the showers or get a little too handsy during gym. But that’s all he’s got. All he had was the glorious feeling of his dick rubbing up against Steve’s ass in tight green shorts as he boxed him out, and the stolen glances of his soft dick as water cascaded down his body and dripped from the tip. Manifesting his entire will to keep his dick down and tamed while he burned the whole sight into his long term memory. Saving it for his sock later.

Billy was correct to assume Hawkins, Indiana wasn’t like California. It was quiet and quaint, but he was wrong to assume he’d entered the land of purity. Small town folks were just as freaky as the people living it up in the city, they were just more quiet about it. Playing the long game to pick up on certain traits and actions before making a move because house parties weren’t gay bars where everyone was already on the same page. It was a game of needle in a haystack. And Billy guesses he finally put out enough clues to be found.

By Steve fucking Harrington of all people.

What Billy didn’t yet realize when he was cornered into an empty bedroom at some random junior house party was that Steve may have found his needle in a haystack, but Billy, he had struck gold.

The door was slammed closed by the force of Billy’s weight as Steve gripped the collar of his shirt and pushed him back against it. Lips slamming into his with bruise inducing force that had Billy almost sinking to the floor. Breath caught in his throat and his only reaction was to pull Steve’s body in closer by the tug of his belt loops so he could feel the dick he so perfectly memorized pressed up against his own through multiple layers of clothing. His jeans were already growing tighter and it hadn’t even been a minute.

How was he already this damn hard?

And now Steve had felt it and it was his own damn fault that he did.

“Already huh?”

Instead of trying to hide it, he just pulls his hips even closer and jerks his pelvis forward against Steve’s. Snaking a hand around to grab at Steve’s ass through his jeans, imagining he was wearing those same little green shorts he wore during P.E.

“Are we gonna do this or not?” Billy asked, in a deep and husky voice, noses nearly touching, eyes half lidded.

“Oh we’re doing this, but we’re doing this my way.”

His way? Well count Billy as intrigued.

“I’m versatile if that’s what you want to know.”

Steve huffed out a laugh and twisted a finger into Billy’s curls.

“Oh I already know you can take, I wasn’t worried about that.” Billy eyed him, wondering exactly what vibe he gave off to make that something he was so sure of. Instead of questioning it for long, he let his hand snake back around to the front of Steve’s jeans and tug down at his belt buckle, leading Steve to grip him by the wrist and pull his hand away.

“Not so fast. My way.”

“Well fuck pretty boy, get on with it then.”

He expects Steve to pull him back away from the door, secure the lock, and toss him onto the strangers bed. All mean and rough just like what he was used to. Completely have his way with him, take his ability to walk and leave him there naked on the bed as he recovered. And he would be completely happy with that. Elated even. Just another hook-up like all the others.

What he doesn’t expect is for Steve to start kissing him again. A hand cradling his jaw as he slowly moves his lips against his, a striking change from his little introduction. This one was soft and gentle and completely unlike any kiss he’s ever had before. The closest comparisons that came to mind were the ones with girls and those were different in the fact that this one in particular was actually enjoyable. And he allowed himself to enjoy it. Allowed himself to take part in something he never had the chance to receive. A solid lead up, the full exposition and rising action instead of skipping straight to the climax. It was weird and foreign but not totally unpleasant.

He could honestly do this for hours if he wasn’t so painfully hard and so desperately impatient. Each effort made to pull away or snake a hand down Steve’s pants or even just touch himself was met with a quick slap on the wrist, until Steve finally got tired of that and pinned Billy’s hands above his head, thumbs digging into his wrists. Immobilizing him. Continuing working away at him with only the use of his lips. Tongue moving like it was on some kind of exploration. Mapping the geography that was Billy’s mouth.

Finally, after what seems like a goddamn eternity, Steve’s lips separate from his. Now they can get to the good stuff. The real reason they were here.

Except he goes back in, this time passing up his lips to instead begin sucking on his neck. Billy’s starting to get sick of these surprises.

Hickies. Something else he’s never received. Never had someone’s lips find their way to the most sensitive part of the area and suck harshly enough to leave a bruise. He couldn’t let that happen anyway. Couldn’t leave any physical evidence behind that Neil could grasp onto. But this situation was different. Neil might even see the hickey and be proud because Hawkins Indiana didn’t have any faggots like him. Must have been a girl right? But it wasn’t like anyone had really even tried to do that back in California. The guys he hooked up with didn’t do any of this. It was different but not necessarily a bad kind of different. Nobody had ever so much as kissed his neck, most certainly never taken skin between teeth and bit down. Not like Steve just fucking did.

Billy physically convulses and stifles a moan with the bite of his own lower lip. Feels as the sensation travels from where Steve’s teeth came in contact all the way down his spine making him almost whimper before Steve finally competes dragging his teeth and has let go.

“You like that huh?” Steve whispers into the crook of his neck. Breath hot against the dampness that coated his neck from the combination of Steve’s saliva and his own sweat. He’s almost positive that he’s leaking precome into his jeans right now because no interaction he’s ever had has lasted this long. He’s never kept his pants up for such a length of time and it’s starting to become too much. Not sure how much of that is Steve’s credit, and how much is the credit of months of jerking off in the shower and forcing his way through another just-for-show encounter with the latest girl who hit on him. It was all building up inside of him, waiting for this moment and Steve really had the audacity to withhold that from him.

“God would you just fucking screw me already?”

Steve just moves back into Billy lips. Chins touching but not kissing him. Speaking the words into his open mouth.

“If you’re not enjoying yourself I can leave.”

No. Anything but that.

“Fine. We’ll do things your fucking way.”

“I’m glad we’re finally on the same page.”

Billy still didn’t fully understand what “his way” entailed, but he figured out soon enough that it had something to do with going slow. Agonizingly slow to the point his dick was absolutely throbbing and he found himself fighting against Steve’s continued hold on his wrists because he just needed to touch. Failing against Steve’s strength and moving on to plan B which entailed extending his hips forward against his thighs, rubbing up and down against the muscle under the denim.

“You’re really fucking impatient, you know that?” Steve says in response and it just occurs to Billy that none of this is affecting Steve the way it is him. He can feel he’s hard in his jeans as well yet he’s not on the brink of collapse like Billy.

But finally Steve does something that at the very least scratches an itch. Releases his hold on one of his wrists and with his own hand palms Billy’s crotch through his jeans. He doesn’t rub or gently squeeze, just lets the palm rest there and ever so slightly push against it and Billy is left to do the remainder of the work. Moving his crotch against Steve’s hand with a heavy release of a sigh. It only does what he needs for just a few short seconds before it starts to get uncomfortable again. He needs Steve to move his hand, do something other than just let it sit there completely still. And now there’s no holding back the whimpering and he’s about ready to resort to desperate pleas.

Steve’s hand leaves where it was cupping his excruciating hard dick and Billy’s learned by this point not to get his hopes up for anything. The hand moves upward and presses against where he stopped buttoning his shirt leaving his chest halfway exposed, finally some fucking skin to skin contact. Billy takes the opportunity with his free hand to finally grab at himself, and he’s more than thankful when Steve doesn’t pin it back up against the door. Instead Steve uses his own free hand to travel up the length of his chest until it finds the spot he was searching for. The spot that would send Billy absolutely reeling. Gently, the tip of one of his fingers brushes over an erect nipple and just the brush of contact makes Billy shiver. Responding to the reaction Billy produces by taking the nub in between his two fingers and pinching them together. Suddenly receptors are firing off like fireworks and his dick is twitching and he’s this close to coming in his pants from the combination of Steve’s excruciating idea of foreplay and the friction against his own hand.

“Shit Harrington I’m fucking close.” He breathes out. Chest heaving as Steve only tightens his grip. Smiles at him, no, smirks at him with raised eyebrows and he ever so slowly lowers himself with the bend of his knees. Then doing the fucking unthinkable. With his right hand he continues rubbing and pinching Billy’s left nipple, while Steve takes the right into his fucking mouth. Dragging and flicking his tongue against the tip before catching it in between his teeth, suddenly an area far more sensitive than his neck. He’s nearly done for. It was a lot.

He thought his problem was that he hadn’t been getting enough.

The problem was he was getting too much.

“Fuck, Steve!”

Billy was never a talker during sex, but right now it was getting harder and harder to keep his mouth shut.

“I’m gonna— fuck, shit Harrington!”

A tight squeeze to his left nipple paired with a wet suction to his right and the frantic humping of his own hand has him finally reaching his limit. Spilling his load into his own underwear coupled with the humiliating noise that escapes his body like a ghost.

That was typically where the night ended. He was rarely ever the first to come and even when he did, the other guy followed shortly after. But Steve wasn’t even close. Erection still very prevalent in the outline of his jeans. Billy had no idea what tricks Steve had beneath his sleeve.

Despite Billy literally creaming his pants, Steve doesn��t stop playing with his nipples, only finally releasing his hold on Billy’s other wrist that had been pinned above his head for practically the entire duration. Steve is so into what he’s currently doing like he derives pleasure from making others feel good. Which is extraordinarily hot, and Billy quickly starts to feel the same cock that was fucking throbbing just moments ago begin to chub up again.

So this was his fucking plan.

He seems very pleased with himself when he’s had enough with the nipple play and rises back up to his regular height to kiss Billy again. Deeply this time, inhaling his smell and taste and relishing in it.

“Now let’s have some real fun.” He says once their lips come to part from each other. By now Billy just accepts that Steve is the one in charge and follows his lead without pushback. Letting Steve guide his hands to his belt, finally giving him the permission to do what he’s been fucking aching to do since he stepped, or more accurately was dragged, through the bedroom door. Chaotically undoing his belt and yanking down Steve’s jeans and boxers simultaneously while Steve pulled his own tee over his head. His dick bobbing free, catching a glimpse of it hard for the first time. So much bigger than he’d remembered. And it’s hard for him.

He starts working at his own belt while Steve undoes the two fastened buttons of his shirt, despite being able to just as easily pull it over his head. Billy drops his pants to the floor, his dick is coated in his own come from his previous orgasm and he’s already more than half hard, earning a grin out of Steve when he looks down to see it.

“Bed.” Steve says, gesturing toward the California King. How fucking fitting.

Billy takes his naked body and lies out onto the bed, letting himself get comfortable. Head resting on a surprisingly soft pillow. Steve checks the lock on the door and reaches down into his jeans to pull out a small bottle.

“You just carry lube around with you to parties?” Steve laughs as he makes his way over to the bed. Crawling on top to where he’s situated in between Billy’s spread out legs.

“Never know when you might need it.”

“Yeah. Well I usually take my dicking rough.”

Steve wrapped a hand around each of Billy’s shins and moved his feet up the bed so that his knees were bent and his hole was exposed.

“Well rough isn’t really my style.”

“Yeah, I fucking noticed.”

Billy propped himself up on his shoulders as he watched Steve. Waiting for the click sound of the lube bottle opening, not expecting to see Steve’s face midway through a movement angling down. Hands bracing themselves against his bare hips, fingernails gripping and digging into the skin leaving crescent shaped indentations as Steve’s lips begin to suck on his inner thigh. His hair falling forward and brushing over his dick that was already getting harder by the second without Steve’s head between his legs.

How the fuck did Billy not know about all these sensitive areas of his? Secondly, how the fuck did Steve know about them?

His legs are fucking wobbling and he can’t contain the movement at all. He’s already gripping the sheets and Steve hasn’t even put a finger inside of him.

Something about the whole thing felt odd, and he was struggling to put his finger on it until he let his head fall back against the soft pillow.

This was the first time he’s ever taken a man to bed. He’s fucked and been fucked by countless nameless and sometimes faceless men, yet he’s never done it in the comfort of a private area, let alone a comfortable bed. The ideal place for such an activity.

However, Billy doesn’t get to think too long and hard about that before cold hands quickly spread his cheeks and the tongue that was just leaving bruises on his thighs is suddenly licking over his hole.

He tenses due to surprise and has to actually bite the pillow to stop himself from loudly moaning when the underside of Steve’s tongue trails back down. His tongue soon darting inwards and swirling around inside of him making him gasp.

Billy thought experience was something he had, easily.

Turns out there were a lot of things that he hadn’t felt before.

And Steve Harrington decided to just check off the whole goddamn list in one go.

He was completely hard by now and beginning to leak pre once again. The head of cock red, and throbbing in his ears.

Steve’s tongue feels good. Really fucking good but he is absolutely desperate to have his back fucking broken by the dick that’s been permanently ingrained in his head for weeks now. He’s fit to scream at any moment.

The glorious sound of a cap clicking open is what pulls him off of the edge of absolute insanity. Two fingers adorning a cool gel find his hole and slowly one of the fingers slips in with a comfortable ease.

As previously mentioned, this wasn’t Billy’s first time around the block. And apparently not Steve’s either, which Billy expected to have some follow up questions once everything was all said and done.

Steve’s single finger was quickly followed by the institution of a second. His index and middle surging knuckles deep inside of him and beginning to scissor open and closed, spreading the walls apart and opening him up for more. Opening him up for Steve.

Soon the second finger turns into a third. And while everything is progressing along much quicker than it was while he was pressed up against that door, it’s still way too slow for Billy. He’s refraining from wrapping his hand around his own dick just out of sheer curiosity to see what Steve wants to do. Fights the extremely tempting urge, instead propping himself back up on his shoulders so that his hands were occupied elsewhere.

Billy’s not sure whether he regrets the decision to look at Steve or not. Because as Steve spreads his fingers within him, he looks fucking ethereal. Hair strands falling perfectly into his face, mouth hanging open with his tongue slightly hanging out past his lips. A look of sheer focus. Beads of sweat constellating his forehead alongside the constellation of moles that decorate his entire body. He’s going to lose it again if Steve doesn’t fucking get on with it already.

It’s actually beginning to hurt with how much desire he has coursing through his veins and pooling into the head of his cock.

Too much. It’s too much.

Steve can see the look on his face, the aggressive scrunching of his face as he waits for Steve to finally destroy him with what he’s aching for. What has been haunting his every dream and moment alone in the shower.

The rising action was nearing its end, it was time for the climax of this story to begin.

Steve removed his fingers from Billy and ripped open a new condom with his teeth. Rolling it onto his own dick that is finally looking to be at the same point Billy’s is. Absolutely rock hard.

He presses the tip of his dick firmly against Billy’s hole and it’s as if time stops just before Steve makes his slow and steady entrance, and Billy’s breath hitches.

Steve’s own eyes fall shut as he begins pumping in and out slowly trying to find his rhythm, while one hand situates itself onto Billy’s thigh, while the other that’s already coated in lube wraps around Billy’s shaft and begins pumping his hand at an identical rhythm. Pacing perfectly matched with Billy’s own breathing. Chest heaving up and down with every pump of Steve’s hand around his dick and every slam into his prostate.

“I’m close Steve. Fuck! I’m close.” Billy grunts out. Steve just picks up the pace. The first time he’s done that all damn night. Rhythm becoming erratic with Steve’s own breathing following suit. Panting heavy exhales that hit Billy’s stomach with their heat making him shiver and shake.

The muffled music and chatter that’s occurring on the other side of the wall behind him completely goes silent in his head and all he can hear is Steve. His breathing and groaning as he gets closer and closer to his own climax and Billy begins to view it as a competition on who can last the longest.

But it’s already clear who would win that battle, isn’t it?

Surely enough, Billy lasts about another measly forty-five seconds before he’s coming into Steve’s hands and dripping out over his stomach.

But like most of his hookups before, it isn't long before Steve is bottoming out and filling up the condom within Billy. Letting out his own hefty moan upon release. Letting his head toss backwards and his hair flip back out of his face and he could honestly get hard again if he wasn’t literally trying with all of his might to do anything else.

Steve eventually toppled over and fell onto the bed, lying on his back right beside Billy as they both looked up at the same ceiling fan and came down together.

“That was fucking something.” Billy said, finally catching onto his breath and reentering reality.

“Yeah, that was fun. I’m looking forward to next time.”

“Next time?” Billy turned his head so that he was looking at Steve.

“Yeah. You owe me an orgasm.”

Billy looked at him incredulously.

“You didn’t cum?”

“No, I did. But I didn’t cum twice.”

Billy playfully pushed his shoulder with three fingers. “That’s your own damn fault, you know that.”

“Are you turning the offer down?”

Billy smiles, takes advantage of the fact that he can kiss Steve and he does, rolling over on top of him and planting a short and wet one right onto his lips.

“No.”

Billy watches Steve walk out of that room approximately ten minutes later, leaving him naked and alone on the bed just like he expected, except this time, there’s hope for more.

#harringrove #billy hargrove #steve harrington #stranger things #mandi writes tresh #fanfic #harringroveweekoflove #harringrove week of love #weekofloveifao

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cadence-talle · 4 years

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Rain Against A Window (Chapter Four)

Pairing: Fitz Vacker/Dex Dizznee, Eventual Biana Vacker/Sophie Foster

Wordcount: 1,955

Summary: In which Juline Dizznee finds a child, our scam team gets closer to Paris, and the city of Petersburg lights up.

Other notes: This chapter was so much fun to write! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Taglist: @everyonehasthoughts, @clearlykeefitz, @loverofallthingssmart, @a-lonely-tatertot, @enbies-and-felonies, @molly-sencen, @lemontarto, @appalyneinstitute1, @ruewen-and-rising, @silver-snow, @linhamon-roll, @hyperlollypop, @never-ever-too-many-fandoms, @keeper-of-the-lost-queers, @impostertamsong, @vibing-in-the-void, @yeetersofthelostcities, @mistythegirlfluxmess

Read it on ao3 or under the cut!

St Petersburg, Russia. October 13, 1917.

Juline stumbles out of the collapsing stables, letting go of the horse she’s holding. It gallops off through the streets and she groans; it’s never going to come back.

Not that it matters, really. No one’s going to have any need for horses now.

She’s not sure how long it’s been since the first gunshots were fired. Six or seven hours, probably. Juline is just lucky she wasn’t caught in the crossfire and had enough time to get all the horses out.

A small wail echoes across the crumbling land, and Juline’s head snaps up. She knows that sound; she’s been listening to a kid cry for going on five years now.

Sure enough, there’s a girl sitting in the rubble, knees curled up to her chest and cheeks wet with tears. She looks about four or five; just a bit younger than Dex, if Juline is right. Her heart twists and she holds out a hand to the child.

“Hey,” Juline says softly. “What happened to you?”

“I- I don’t know,” the girl says, teal eyes filling with tears again. Juline looks her over and something heavy drops in her gut- this is most definitely Princess Bianca. “I hit my head, and I feel sick, but I don’t know why.” She looks up at Juline. “Why?”

“There was an accident,” Juline says, taking the girl’s tiny hand in hers. “You must have gotten hurt.”

“Oh. Are you my mom?”

Juline blinks. Then blinks again. She’s almost positive that Queen Della is dead; there’s no one still alive to take care of this girl.

Exhaling, she makes a decision.

“No, sweetie. But I’m gonna take care of you, okay?”

“Okay,” the girl says. “That sounds good.”

And so the Dizznees gain another child- Biana, she’s called. Juline worries sometimes that it’s too close to Bianca, but it was a name Bi herself chose and Juline isn’t cruel enough to take it away.

Besides, who would look for the last remaining member of the Vacker family in the poorest parts of St Petersburg? These streets are cesspits, filled with violence and alcohol and…

Sickness.

Juline isn’t dying, not yet. But she will be. She’s seen what this sickness can do, watched her own husband waste to nothing in front of her. And it’s only a matter of time- there’s no way they can afford the medicine.

Still, as she sits in her bed and forces herself to open her eyes again, she’s comforted. Because Biana is still out there, still free, still alive.

And no one can ever know.

-/-

St Petersburg, Russia. February 27, 1927.

“And then he just… let me go.” Fitz finishes. “I don’t know why. I was sure I was going to get arrested or something.”

“Huh.” Biana frowns, tapping the arm of her chair. “That’s weird. They’ve been cracking down on a lot of scam teams lately- throwing them in jail or worse. I’m glad you got out, but that’s weird.”

“What should we do?”

Biana shakes her head. “Nothing. Hiding somewhere else would be useless. We’re almost ready to leave. All Dex needs to do is forge our train passes and we’re good.” She turns behind her, to where Dex is furiously scribbling on a yellowed sheet of paper. “Speaking of which, are you heading down to the printer’s today?”

“Yeah.” Dex says, not looking up. Biana raises an eyebrow.

“Okay then. I’m gonna go to the market, see if there’s any food on sale. Fitz, why don’t you go with Dex?”

“Me? Why would I-” Fitz starts. He’s not sure why he’s so opposed to that idea; Dex hasn’t been so much as rude to him since that very first day. Still, there’s something clenching his gut that makes him want to run.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be alone. Not after yesterday.”

“Right,” Fitz nods. “Of course.”

Dex stands up, folding the letter he was writing into an envelope and putting a stamp in the corner. “Okay, let’s go. I want to mail this on the way there.”

“Have fun!” Biana calls as they step into the late-morning light.

-/-

Dear Mom,

How are you? How are the triplets? I hope it’s not too cold out there; I know Rex was trying to learn how to knit, but knowing him, that won’t go well.

Things are all right over here. Bi and I have food, and we think we found a way to make a lot of money. Maybe even enough to finally get you out of debt so we can all live together again.

Petersburg is… tense, right now. Like everything is holding its breath in anticipation. There’s a rumor that Prince Fitzroy and Princess Bianca survived, so all the officers have been on high alert. We’re okay, though.

And we made a friend! He’s nice- kind of confused, but nice. And he’s super pretty

(Please pretend I didn’t write that.)

I miss you. The city’s not the same without you here to fill up every small hideaway we get with laughter and music. Bi and I are trying, though. We’ll get through this.

See you soon.

Love, Dex.

-/-

“Okay,” Dex says as they exit the printer’s, a stack of paper clutched in one hand. The sky is beginning to darken, rays of pink and orange spreading across like paint on a canvas. Fitz is surprised it took so long; he’d always thought of printing as something fast and easy, but there are all these parts. And the travel passes aren’t even done- Dex still needs to forge the signatures on them. “We should get back. Biana will be-”

He trails off, looking at something over Fitz’s shoulder. Fitz spins around to see three uniformed men moving down the street toward them. He swallows and starts to back away.

“Hey! You!” One of the men calls. “It’s almost curfew! What are you doing out?”

“Uh.” Fitz says. Dex grabs his arm and pulls him into the alley to the side of the building, hurrying them both up a fire escape.

“Go, go, go,” he says through gritted teeth once they’re on the roof, running along the shingles with a grace Fitz is positive he can’t replicate. “What are you waiting for? Come on!”

They leap between houses and swing around water towers as the sun sets, lights in windows popping up like stars. Finally, Dex comes to a stop on top of a building on a particularly large hill.

“I think we lost them,” he says, looking back at Fitz. “What?”

“I’ve never seen it this high up before,” Fitz whispers. From where they stand, the whole city’s spread out underneath them like a glittering map. Each lamp in each home is a shining jewel, calling to him. “It’s beautiful.”

Dex snorts, sitting near the edge of the roof and staring at the lights below. “Trust me, it’s a lot less pretty when you grow up down there.”

“I didn’t say pretty. I said beautiful.”

“Okay, your majesty, what’s the difference, then?”

“Pretty is surface level. It’s looking at someone and thinking ‘oh, they’re attractive.’ Beautiful is… more than that. It’s watching someone live and listening to them talk and seeing all their faults but still loving them. If something’s beautiful, that doesn’t mean it’s perfect- it’s just messed up in a beautiful way.”

“Oh.” Dex is quiet for a moment, the two looking at the city lights. Fitz feels an overwhelming urge to take back his words.

“I don’t actually know the city very well,” he says. “I’ve lived here for a few years, but it’s mostly just… work, sleep, repeat. Nothing like-” he waves a hand at the scene in front of them- “nothing like this.”

Dex sighs, leaning back on his hands. “Petersburg is this odd mix of amazing and dangerous, and most things here walk that line very closely. So when you grow up on the streets…” he pauses, as if trying to find the right words. “It’s hard to make an honest living. And much, much easier to get drawn into things that aren’t exactly sanitary.”

“That’s why you’re so good at forging stuff,” Fitz responds. “Right? And why Biana is so persuasive. You guys do this a lot.”

“Yeah. Yeah, we do.” Dex sighs. “Our mom never wanted us to be scammers. She used to work in the palace stables, but when the tsar was killed…” he mimes an explosion. “That whole line of business kind of blew up. She and Dad did their best, and we managed to stay afloat for a while, but-” he bites his lip. “When Dad died, Bi and I knew we had to do something. We had more siblings by that point- the triplets, they’re thirteen now. And Mom’s few jobs weren’t enough to keep us fed.”

“So you turned to stealing.”

Dex shrugs, kicking his heel against the brick of the building. “Stealing, scamming, anything that could get us food or money. We ran into trouble a few times, but we managed to slip away. The streets of Petersburg aren’t too bad if you have someone by your side.”

“Oh,” Fitz says. The words I’m sorry seem too small for this, too small for someone who’s been through so much hurt. “I guess I can see why you don’t think the city is beautiful, then.”

“No, actually, I think it is.” Dex turns to face Fitz, eyes fixed on the roof beneath them. “You said that beautiful doesn’t mean perfect, and Petersburg isn’t perfect- it’s dirty and messy and terrifying. But I’ve lived here my whole life, and I’m willing to take the bad for the good that I’ve gotten. The city gave me Biana, and I wouldn’t trade her for the world.”

He looks up, straight into Fitz’s eyes. “And that’s love, isn’t it? Seeing all the cracks and loving it anyway. Understanding it anyway.”

Something about the way he’s talking makes it clear that he doesn’t just mean Petersburg. But Fitz doesn’t have time to think about that right now.

“Yeah. That’s love.”

More lights appear in windows below them, glittering into existence. It’s a sign of life, of the people who hide in the shadows and laugh with their families. A sign of home.

Unconsciously, Fitz pulls the music box out of his coat pocket.

“What’s that?” Dex asks. Fitz hands it to him, and Dex wrinkles his nose. “Is this a Vacker relic? Where did you-” he fiddles with something inside, some piece of machinery, and music starts to play. “Whoa.”

Tinkling music drifts over the rooftop, a memory tugging in the back of Fitz’s mind; he should know this. He should know this.

He does know this.

Slowly, quietly, he starts to hum along as a scene takes shape in his mind.

A smiling red-haired woman leaning over him, a tiny girl by his side. The very same music box in his lap, emitting a soft tune that Fitz knows by heart.

“Once upon a December,” he sings quietly as the song ends. Dex gapes at him wordlessly, closing the music box with a silent click.

“Fitz, what-”

Fitz meets his eyes. “We need to get to Paris.”

-/-

Dear Mom,

I’m sorry the letter’s short today- I don’t have much time to write.

We’re leaving the city soon, heading away. I won’t say where, for your safety and ours, but rest assured we’ll be as safe as possible.

If all goes well, I’ll be home soon. We’ll all be together.

I love you.

Dex.

P.S. I said, in my last letter, that my friend was pretty. That’s not true- or, it is, but he’s more than that. He’s beautiful.

#lynn rambles #my writing #kotlc #kotlc fanfiction #dex dizznee #fitz vacker #biana vacker #detz #fedex

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thetriggeredhappy · 4 years

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if ur still taking them... 28 pyroscout 🥺

pyro tf2 said trans rights and scout tf2 said disaster bi rights and the team said queer rights and that’s what’s up, sis. (warning for discussion of past transphobia and other queer issues)

#28: First kiss.

It wasn’t that Scout was all that surprised to have Pyro end up as basically his best friend. He’d secretly been hoping that he’d get to be friends with a few of his coworkers when he’d taken the job, and Pyro was pretty close to him in age and shared a few of the same interests as him so it wasn’t unreasonable to expect to get along. It was just…

Maybe it would be more accurate to say that it was a little bit of an honor.

They hung out in plenty of places—watching TV or playing card games in the common room, hopping into a car and heading into town to watch the latest movie once or twice (or like eight times if they both really liked it), sometimes out back to start a bonfire or something for the hell of it.

But Pyro’s room tended to be his favorite hangout location of theirs, because that was the only place where they were okay with taking off their mask and suit.

Pyro had tried very hard not to make a big deal out of it the first time they’d unmasked in front of Scout. He’d been confused about what they were doing unclasping the bottom of it, since they didn’t have any food with them or anything and that was the only reason they usually did that—to sneak bites of food beneath. But then they shucked the whole thing up and over their head, shaking their head to re-orient themselves, sending their hair—he’d never thought about what Pyro’s hair had to be like before, how had he never thought of that?—bouncing around their face loosely, half-flattened but clearly very naturally curly. Pyro had to take a moment to fish something else out of their mask, a cap of some kind, probably to hold their hair down, and they clearly were trying very hard to avoid eye contact, nervous.

Scout, for once, was at a loss for words, mouth flapping in a way that was probably pretty similar to a fish for something like thirty seconds straight.

“Hey,” he finally managed, pointing at his own face where assorted freckles dotted his cheeks. “We match.”

Pyro glanced up at him, a little startled, then barked a laugh, and it sounded so much better when it wasn’t muffled. They hesitated a few more moments before they pulled off their gloves as well and set all of the newly-shed pieces of uniform down on their cluttered desk, fidgeting severely. “I guess so,” Pyro confirmed, and Scout had never noticed before that they had a very slight accent, too light for him to pick out what it had to be. “I’d never, I couldn’t tell before. With the…”

They pantomimed something up near their eyes, words stalling on them. It took Scout a few seconds to get what they meant. “With the mask?” he asked for confirmation. They nodded. “Oh. Huh. So it’s kinda like your first time seeing me too, huh?”

Pyro laughed. “I guess so,” they repeated, scratching at their stubble self-consciously, or maybe just because they finally could, and then Scout made an effort to both just move on with the rest of what all they were planning on doing when they hung out and also with not staring too much.

The jump to stripping off their suit as far as the tank top and thick-but-tight sweatpants they wore underneath was done a few weeks later when Scout had demonstrated that he wasn’t planning on saying anything, and he was only a little surprised by the plethora of burn marks and scars dotting their skin. He’d noticed an awful lot of scars all over Pyro, and he figured it was probably from when Pyro had been working as a mercenary before Mann Co., something he was aware had happened but hadn’t been able to coax Pyro into talking about. But it was nothing heinous, nothing that he figured warranted a full-body suit to hide it.

He tried to work out how exactly to ask Pyro why they wore the suit without being weird or rude. Luckily, he didn’t have to.

“I appreciate it, you know,” Pyro said one day unprompted, breaking the silence that had fallen between them. They were sat a foot or so apart on Pyro’s bed and drawing, Scout sketching out a dramatic rendition of a particularly funny pose he’d seen the enemy Sniper land in when he died and Pyro apparently drawing yet another unrealistically bright technicolor landscape.

“What?” Scout asked, glancing over at them, more obviously than he’d been occasionally doing the whole time they’d been drawing together. They tended to do this really adorable thing where they stuck their tongue out a little bit when they were concentrating, and Scout had to bite the inside of his cheek to stop from smiling every time he saw it.

“That you don’t…” They hesitated. “…I dunno. That you don’t try and guess, now that you’ve seen me.”

Scout tilted his head. “Huh?”

Pyro’s gaze flickered to him and back down again almost too quickly to see. “You keep… not calling me anything,” they said. “Except for dude sometimes, but, you call everyone that anyways. That you still try and use “pal” or “buddy” instead of “man” or “lady” or whatever.”

Scout blinked.

Admittedly, there had been a good month or two right after he joined the team where he didn’t know how to refer to Pyro, and had just gone with using “he”, figuring it would be the less offensive assumption for someone in a mercenary career. Then at some point Engie finally sat him down and explained things to him, and after about a week of stumbling he finally got in the practice of using “they” and other words that weren’t particularly for a guy or girl. He couldn’t say that he really got it in a lot of ways, but he’d worked hard to learn the rules on how to be polite, because he figured he owed them that at the very minimum, if nothing else.

“What do you mean?” he asked after a second.

Pyro turned the marker in their hand over and over again. “Back before I started wearing the suit,” they started to explain, gesturing loosely at the suit in question, laid down on the chair at their desk like a deflated second Pyro (and admittedly sometimes scaring the shit out of Scout when he forgot it was there and noticed it in his periphery). “I would try and tell people I worked with that I wasn’t a guy or a girl, and they’d say sure, whatever, who cares, as long as you can kill people. But they’d look at me and start referring to me as a guy anyways. Sometimes a girl, but not usually. And only as… as neither, or both, or whatever, when I corrected them and maybe for a little while after.” They scratched at their stubble again. It was getting longer, and they’d probably shave pretty soon, if Scout knew them. “And it’s just… I always wondered what it was. I’d try and go clean-shaven all the time, wax, I wore makeup once or twice even to try and balance it out, but all that did was make them refer to me as a girl more, or look at me weird. I couldn’t seem to find the middle. So eventually I just put on the suit so nobody would… get hints anymore.”

Scout frowned, but didn’t know exactly what to say. “That’s the fuckin’ worst,” he decided on.

“I know, right?!” Pyro gushed, as if the dam had broken and they were finally allowed to feel mad about it. They sighed hard, pushing their hair out of their eyes, even if they just bounced right back into place a moment later. “They always respected me professionally, but what’s it take for a person to get called the right name, y’know!? Did they want me to wear a stupid t-shirt with instructions on it!?” Another sigh, then they looked up at Scout with those deep brown eyes of theirs, the ones that flooded Scout with an inexplicable sense of comfort. “And I guess I just wanted to say thanks. For not… I dunno. Being weird.”

Scout nodded, hesitated. “So I’ve been doin’ that right?” he asked suddenly, unable to stop himself.

Pyro smiled at him warmly. “You’ve been doing great, probably the best job anyone’s ever done,” they assured, and Scout knew his own smile was probably goofy and stupid looking, but he couldn’t bite it back.

“Thanks,” he said, having to look away, and Pyro laughed.

“And, I dunno. There was also this weird thing where I tried to date for a while and people kept not taking me seriously, then one day someone finally gave me a shot but got all weird and just straight up asked me what equipment I had on the second date and it was the worst.”

“I mean, none’a their fuckin’ business is what unless they’re asking if they should pack a condom,” Scout scoffed.

“Right!? It just sucked because most people would say “oh, I’m just into girls” or try and like, swing it as if I’m a guy and therefore it was totally cool, and only twice did I find someone who would go for whoever and one got weird about it and the other one is the person I took on two dates. Only person who ever gave me any real respect about it could only go on one date with me, and she was only cool because she kind of had some special circumstances going on too, then she had a contract abroad and we had to cut things off. And I just—I dunno. I wish people who went either way would… I dunno.”

“Hey, I fit that bill, and I’d totally date you,” Scout said, and then realized what he’d just said out loud.

Pyro was staring at him openly, mouth a little agape. They tried to start talking twice without success before finally managing it on the third attempt. “You’re bisexual?” they asked, a little surprised.

Scout immediately began backtracking. “I mean, I, I dunno,” he said quickly, looking away, face on fire, “I, it isn’t like I’ve ever really even gotten to date any, anyone but a couple girls and stuff, and, I, thinking and doing are kinda two different things, and y’know, labels and, and…”

They raised an eyebrow at him.

“Okay, yeah, I think I’m bi,” he finally admitted. “But you can’t fuckin’ tell anyone, got it? The guys already get all up in my grill about callin’ me gay all the time and, and Medic asking when the coming out party is and, and Sniper going all “what’s with the pride meeting?” and shit like that, I just, I don’t need any more of that fuckin’ nonsense, okay?”

“You know half of them do those jokes because they’re not straight either, right?” Pyro asked flatly.

Scout blinked. “The Doc and Snipes are gay?” he asked, surprised.

Pyro gave him a look.

“…Okay, I guess that’s, that tracks,” he admitted. “But—how many, who all’s…?”

“Far as I know, just Medic, Sniper, Heavy, and Spy, and those last two are also bi or something like that, and I think Demo doesn’t really swing any way,” Pyro said. “You really didn’t know? I thought they were pretty out about it.”

“Nobody tells me anything!” Scout said defensively.

“That’s fair. But… I dunno, I’m obviously not gonna go out and break out the news with confetti and streamers for you, but… I think they wouldn’t really care,” Pyro shrugged. “If anything they’d just try and wingman for you more.”

Scout thought about that for a while. “Man, what are the odds that we’d get a goddamn queer collective out in the middle of a fuckin’ desert?” he asked suddenly.

“Have you maybe considered that the people who’d go out into a desert away from civilization might be queer people trying to be more themselves where they can’t get as much backlash?” Pyro suggested.

“…Shit. That makes a lot of sense actually,” he admitted.

Quiet for a few seconds. “Let’s circle back around to that part where you said you’d totally go for someone like me,” Pyro said suddenly.

Scout pulled his hat down over his face, feeling it go red again. “Shut the fuck up, dude,” he protested, annoyed at how whiny it came out. “I didn’t mean to say it out loud.”

“Do you think about making out with me a lot?” Pyro asked, tone clearly teasing now, and Scout groaned.

“Oh my god, shut up,” he muttered. “I come out to you and you just start fuckin’ bullying me? That’s the play?”

“Duh,” Pyro laughed, and pinched his cheek, making him flush further as he batted their hand away.

“I’m just sayin’ that you’re good-looking and funny and anyone would be lucky to date you, okay?” Scout finally said, trying not to let more embarrassment flood through his voice.

That got Pyro to grin sheepishly, picking up their drawing again. “You’re sweet,” was all they managed to reply with, quieter now.

“The sweetest guy on the planet,” Scout agreed, picking up his own drawing as well, and Pyro elbowed him in the ribs, making him squawk.

He ended up coming out to Engie offhandedly during their lunch break about a week later, and he only even managed it because Pyro was sitting and eating next to him, their knee pressing into his own and bringing him enough comfort to broach the topic. Engie was immediately supportive, and ended the conversation with a pat on his shoulder and by saying he was proud of him for having to courage to say something.

That gave Scout a burst of confidence, and he ended up dragging Pyro around for the rest of the day as he came out to other teammates as well, first Demo and Soldier right after battle (Soldier needed an additional few moments of explanation but overall they were both glad to hear the news), then Medic and Heavy where they were sitting playing chess in the common room (once Heavy got past the language barrier, he offered Scout a solemn high-five in solidarity, which he accepted gratefully). Sniper was reserved for the next day, outside where he was setting up the grill to take his turn making the team dinner (he was a little awkward for a moment, clearly a bit confused and not having expected anyone to come talk to him, but once he caught on to what Scout was saying he offered one of his rare smiles and a few supportive words).

Oddly enough, Spy was the one that made him the most nervous for reasons he couldn’t pin down, maybe partially because he didn’t bring Pyro along, but he probably handled it the most easily, treating it as no big deal at all, simply pausing for a moment before giving a flippant “Alright. Was that all, mon ami?” and shooing him back out of his smoking room shortly after.

“Look at you,” Pyro said appraisingly when he showed up to hang out in their room, clapping him on the shoulder, clearly noticing the fact that he was practically glowing.

“Didn’t even get beat up or shoved in a locker,” he said cheerfully.

Pyro looked at him for another second or two before they finally just swept him up in a hug, squeezing him almost too-tight in their excitement. “I’m so proud of you!” they exclaimed softly, and he returned the hug, burying his face in their hair when he became sure that he wouldn’t get in trouble for it, surprised and delighted by how very nice it smelled. Vanilla-y and a little coconut-y, warm like everything else about them.

It was only through the combination of circumstances—riding the nervous high from being newly-out for the first time in his life, and being all wrapped up in a hug with his best friend, and his nose being greeted by the smell of the very appealing shampoo they apparently used—that he got the exact level of confidence to do what he did next. They pulled away from the hug finally to look up at him with that same proud smile, and he leaned down and kissed them square on the mouth.

It was three or four seconds before he pulled away again with a tiny, almost-inaudible little smeck. He smiled down at them, feeling the wildly spinning combination of euphoria and fear and excitement and apprehension and thrill and terror swirling around in his chest. Their lips were slightly parted, and they stared up at him with wonder. If he ever drew the moment, he would probably draw Pyro’s pupils in the shape of little hearts, the way they were looking at him just then.

“Oh,” they said breathlessly, and laughed a little. “So you were serious when you said you’d go for someone like me, then?”

Scout laughed, couldn’t stifle it, rising up through his chest alongside his heart. “Yeah, duh,” he said, voice tinted a little higher than usual.

“Well shit, then get back down here,” Pyro said, and tugged on his shirt, and he readily obliged.

#tf2 #team fortress 2 #pyroscout #flashfire #shut up me #my fanfiction #everybody talks #that's the last request in my inbox lads!! we've done it!!

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spooner-the-trinity · 4 years

Text

Telling a story through messy hair. A look at Marnie's quest in 1/0

Funding for Schaffrilas is provided by: Squarespace, the sponsor of today’s video. Stay tuned to the end to find out about how you can build an amazing website.

So, a lot of new subscribers poured in from my little dip into the sesspool of Infinity Train Productions so (Donkey: Let’s do that again!) And this time, we’re digging into the low-key stuff. Like the Collab between Pixar and Studio Ghibli about a dead grandma pulling a tweenaged clone of herself through a magic train to be her granddaughter’s best frie-(Lou Pickles: Cogflabbit)

1/0: When Marnie Was There is the epitome of Infinity Train’s talent of blending down to earth character pieces with over the top adventure and metanarratives. There are a lot of key features to this flick, from Tailstreak improvising the Infinity Train into being to Kazuhiko pretty much being an audience surrogate for what’s going on to the wayward madame’s motives slowly being pieced together the further along you get in the journey of main character Anna and our video’s main focus: Marnie. For brevity, we are going to dive deep into how the state of Marnie’s dress and hair point out how far she’s traveled and how much shit she’s been through.

Starting off with her at the Marsh House, Marnie is adorned with pretty dresses and finely brushed hair. This shows her how close to the chest she’s being kept by the staff, how dolled up she gets on a regular basis to the point of boarderline if not straight-up child abuse. Later on in the movie when the time shenanagans begin to get more apparent, the bitterness of her caretakers at the house makes a lot more sense. They’re mean to her because of when she’s dwelling here. Her side is around the time her home country was squatting on a recently-wrecked Japan after the party known as World War II. The Japs wouldn’t have allowed her obviously western family into this estate but they have no choice after they found themselves plowed for allying themselves with Hitler and his homies. Nan and the maids don’t dare take out their resentment of the “foreign invaders” on the parents but a young girl that’s all alone is fair game.

But when we see her side of the final separation at the very start of the movie, we cut to her on the landmass of Teddy Weddy in a blank void. There’s a big blotch of mud and dirt on her dress and the front of her hairdo has ended up a bit messed up complete with a few blades of grass in it. This symbolizes how she found herself thrust into a crazy adventure by an unseen force and the hair shows that she no longer has the comfort of the Marsh House to keep her in mint condition. Thus, she has no security than the security instilled into her by the days she spent with Anna for the adventure to come.

As she goes from setpiece to setpiece, her hair gets more messed up and her dress does get torn up quite a bit over the course of the film and in the midst of a sky pirate dogfight, she runs into Kazuhiko who was lured aboard by a nice old lady in a dark-blue shaw. I wonder who she could be? Whatevs, Kazu notes that his boyhood friend’s rocking that ‘I just saw the bill for the Justice League Snyder Cut‘ look and decides to do it up into a cute ponytail and we all know what happens to pigtails and ponytails in Ghibli films. Moving onto her dress, we find that one of her sleeves has been torn off and the other is rolled up, indicating that she has taken some much needed agency in her life. And of course, the natural mess has gotten much more widespread, her blouse is exposed with the topside being cut up to be used as a sail to get Teddy Weddy airborne. This displays an element of empathy and selflessness to her character, something we see when talking with Anna about their respective family issues.

All of this accumulates when Marnie returns to her hand-drawn real world she sorta calls home. But before we do that, we must back up to the pivotal moment where she confronts the old maid on why she’s seemingly stringing her along on this journey. As they argue, she learns about the maid’s story around the same time as Anna does from Hisako. But when the old maid makes a mistake echoed by Woody in Capitalism Story 4 ‘Why won’t you just listen, Emily?’ (Cat from Puss in Boots: Ooooohhh…) Yeah, she’s still haunted by the loss of her daughter and this just gives Marnie all the puzzle pieces she needs to figure out the who and why of this harpy. The very idea that she went on this crazy ass journey to fulfill the final wish of Anna’s dead ghost grandma to ensure that her lone grandchild knows that she is never alone, this just cements how much added resolve Marnie has to get to Anna and we see it in the final chase scene following her separation from the 1/0 guys.

After a mad dash reminiscent to the Cinematic Classic Ferris Beuller’s Day Off, (one that got mad cred from Richard Roper for referencing his favorite film) Marnie reaches and opens the door to Anna just as she receives a photo that once belonged to said ghost granny. (Anna: ‘my beloved home… Marnie.’) Yep, that Marnie. (Anna and the cloned Marnie: ‘That’s… who she was.’) (Joel Dawson from Bonus Stage: Welcome to the World of Cloning) Ignoring the whole clone thing as that’s another can of worms whose dough will rise another day, for now, let’s take that final glimpse at the state of Marnie’s design to see how banged up she’s gotten on the way to her destination. One look at the bottom of that dress and it’s clear that she’s had to prioritize mobility as the remnants can barely cover her knees but give enough legroom to make the mad dash to someone she now views as a sister that fanclods are more than happy to ship together to assert their queer agenda. And the hair, once flowing and elegant now cut to a shaggy bob cut adorned with plenty of leaves and grass blades to display the long journey she’s made to reach the sister she never knew she needed until the two crossed paths at the hands of a ghost granny. (Andrew from Bonus Stage: Does somebody need a rubber band, because oh, snap!)

The evolution of Marnie’s design doesn’t end there, her hair is naturally cleaned up after the long journey and by the bizzare summer in which Kingdom Hearts III takes place, her short mop of hair is refined to echo its original pristine form with a little green hairclip to indicate the connection she has with Anna and the memory of her journey. Her new dress has a set of shorts underneath for practicality, shorter sleeves for when she gets down and dirty and a ribbon to show the same feminine attributes she’s shown throughout her days in the Marsh House. The Marnie we will play as in Kingdom Hearts III is not the same Marnie that birthed Anna’s shit-headed mother, and that’s okay. Who knows what the game has in store for the two timey-wimey sisters, but one thing’s for certain, Anna’s probably made a fuckton of artwork in the years between that and this movie and is gonna need to design a website to proudly display it all to the world. If only I had a sponsor today that could aid in this ord-OH WAIT!

#schaffrillas productions #Infinity Train #when marnie was there #1/0 #submission

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timep3tals · 5 years

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HI HI :D do you think you can write a fic where Peter gets hurt in Gym Class and Dad Tony has to come pick him up?? but like Tony thinks that its something more serious because he gets an alert that Peter is bleeding and brings a suit?? THANK YOUUUU I LOVE YOU

HI YES OF COURSE HELLO I LOVE YOU TOO

Peter hated running days in gym, always had, and always will.

Pre-spiderbite, Peter had to worry about his asthma rearing its ugly head, and now post-spiderbite, Peter had to worry about not making his running look too effortless.

Ned running with him always made it easier to pace himself, but Ned was out sick today, so Peter was floundering a little bit on trying to find a reasonable place within the crowd of running students and remembering to occasional pause and “catch his breath”, even though his heart rate hadn’t gained more than a few beats a minute.

Needless to say, it was infuriating.

With an exaggerated huff, Peter jogged over to the edge of the track and bent over, hands on his knees. He remembered doing this a thousand times over, but it was hard to fake the wheezing, rattling in his lungs that used to accompany these little spells. Especially not without Ned here to block him from the passing kids who looked at his clear, not-sweaty face with something akin to disdain.

Peter really, really hated running days.

It was probably because he was so wrapped up in trying to pretend to be exhausted that he didn’t really notice his spider-sense until it was too late, and by then, Flash’s foot had already connected with the back of his knee.

Peter went down hard, swearing as his nose collided with the unforgiving track and his knees scrapped along the concrete with fire cracks of pain.

“Oh, sorry,” Flash crowed as he passed by at a light jog. “Didn’t see ya there, Penis!”

“Sure,” Peter muttered to himself, rolling over onto his side and sitting up from there. He could already feel his nose and knees starting to heal over, the skin tingling as it rapidly stitched itself back together, but there wasn’t much he could do about the blood pooling out of his nose.

Tipping his head back, he pinched his nose and blinked back the stray tears that had sprung up in his eyes. As he was sitting there, a blinking red light on his watch caught his attention. Brows furrowing, Peter switched hands and glanced his watch.

A small, Iron Man insignia flashed across the watch face, and horror shot through his body as though he’d been struck by lightning.

“Oh, no, no, no! Stop, stop!” Peter let go of his nose (which frustratingly started to bleed again) and tapped frantically at his watch, trying to get it to stop but when he heard the repulsors, he knew that he was doomed.

Kids shouted as the Iron Man suit came into view and landed with a resounding thunk three feet away from where Peter was sitting rather dejectedly with his still bleeding nose. Flash, from where Peter could see him across the track, looked horrified.

The suit folded away from Tony’s body two seconds after landing, and he knelt at Peter’s side, concerned eyes dancing across Peter’s rapidly bruising face. (Turns out, super-healing meant super-bruises, too.) Peter squirmed under the attention; even as used to as he is of Tony’s hyper-focus, it was still hard to be caught under so much scrutiny.

“What happened, kiddo?” Tony asked, gently tipping Peter’s head back again. Peter sighed and pinched his nose again. “Straight answer, no bullshit.”

“I was catching a breather,” Peter started, and Tony snorted. Peter shot him a small glare, before continuing, “and while I was crouched over, someone kicked me in the back of the leg and I fell.”

“Excuse me?” Tony demanded, voice clipped. “Someone kicked you in the back of the knee? Purposefully?”

“Yup. That’s generally how kicking someone works.”

Tony gently flicked Peter’s forehead, and Peter stuck his tongue out at his mentor.

“Cut the sass, you little monster. You just scared the hell out of me. I was in the middle of a peaceful afternoon with a glass of wine and some fantastic cheese cubes. Then I get a notification saying you broke your nose, and last I checked, Spider-baby bones don’t break that easily.”

“Don’t tell me you were also watching The Bachelor.”

“You don’t get to judge my afternoon habits.”

That startled a laugh out of Peter. Thinking of Tony watching the bachelor with wine and cheese cubes like a true too-rich-for-her-own-good, fifty year old mother felt so wrong on so many levels. Honestly, he would’ve thought that, if anything, Tony would’ve gone for a show more along the lines of Queer Eye, if he was really spending his afternoons in front of the television.

“Now, who the hell do I have to beat up?” Tony raised his eyebrows, and Peter’s lips pressed shut. “Peter. I’m serious. Who the hell did this to you?”

“You know,” Peter pointed out, “none of this would be happening if the stupid watch you gave me didn’t freak out over minor stuff.”

Tony’s lips thinned. “Kid, that’s not even funny. I want to know when stuff like this happens to you because I know you and I know you aren’t going to confront the issue because of some self-sacrificial reasoning you’ve taken way too close to heart. I don’t care if it’s a papercut, if you’re hurt, I want to know.”

Peter’s heart twisted. Tony always cared to much, always wanted to do more than was reasonable for loved ones. As someone who cares about Tony, though, it was hard to watch him give so much of himself to Peter. Peter just hopes he was giving just as much back to Tony, in whatever ways he can.

“Now, are you going to tell me who did this, or do I have to squeeze it out of you?”

“It was Flash,” someone replied, and Peter cast a betrayed glance at Betty. She shrugged, pitiless. That monster.

“Wait—” Peter tried, but Tony was already standing up. Peter tried to stand up, but Betty’s hand kept him down, and she was quick to point Tony in Flash’s direction. Peter watched, horrified, as Tony marched across the field to where Flash was standing.

“Eugene Thompson!” Peter could hear Tony shout, and Flash’s tiny oh god in response. “So glad to finally meet you!”

Peter did his level best to tune out of that conversation; whatever Tony said to Flash, he really did not want to know. It was already bad enough Tony knew Peter was getting bullied on some level, more or less that his nose got broken because of it. Whatever went down, Peter hoped Flash would come out alive.

A few minutes passed, and Tony finally returned to Peter, hefting him up with a gentle, insistent hand under his arm.

“Come on, buckaroo, let’s get you back to the compound,” Tony said. “Get that nose looked at.”

“What about checking me out of school?”

“Already handled.” Tony stepped back once Peter had his feet underneath him, and the suit walked up and folded back around Tony. “Climb aboard. Peter Parker Express leaves in T-Minus ten… nine…”

Peter groaned as he stepped up to the suit and let Tony pick him up much like one would carry a child. “You’re so humiliating.”

“Fivefourthreetwoone.”

Midtown Tech was left behind in a flash as Tony took off into the sky, the repulsors humming steadily as they soared through the clear sky. Despite his still throbbing nose and knee, Peter thought that maybe running day wasn’t really so bad after all.

#OOF THAT ENDING WAS A LITTLE AWKWARD #but oh well #this was fun #and wound up longer than I originally planned but whatever #tony stark #iron man #peter parker #spiderman #iron dad and spiderson #iron dad #spiderson #marvel #mcu #drabble #my writing

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dkettchen · 5 years

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BLACK MIRROR S5E1 “STRIKING VIPERS” E X P L A I N E D

-with the help of gender and game theory-

Y’all asked for it so here we go

Some things before we start: -If you were watching the episode looking for gay/trans shit, and got disappointed, I’m sorry but I can’t help you because that’s just not what the episode was about and that is ok. It explored some aspects of queer experience, and the limbo between queer and cis-straight experience, that isn’t usually addressed in such an honest and indepth way, which I think is just as important as trans or gay rep. -I will focus my analysis on the core theme of what certain academics writing about androgyny call the “moment of transgression” so in this case the question of ‘what is Karl/Roxette’s deal & what does that mean for Danny/Lance’s feelings toward and interactions with them?’. -CW: transphobia, homophobia, toxic masculinity, (rpg) uncanny valley stuff, you get it, you know what subjects we’ll be talking about here.

Now!

I’d like to start by pointing out the title “Striking Vipers” to get the phallus talk out of the way right off the bat x’D: It’s a very blatant penis metaphor, and Vipers specifically are venomous, so represent toxic masculinity. The image of them striking signals danger. The repetition of phallic symbols represents the threat of castration (see medusa turning them bois to stone & the heroic masculinity of the mirror shielded boi who managed to defeat her), which to phallocentric masculinity is the scawiest thing there is (losing the phallus = losing manhood = death?? I guess??). Striking Vipers means that toxic masculinity, by nature, is a threat to itself. (I could talk for hours about the exact warped logic of phallocentricity but Imma spare y’all cause I don’t think it’s relevant for this, I’d even go as far as saying this episode was anti-phallic (which I use here as a more inclusive word for “feminist”, as the episode’s core is about two guys, but still focused on them experiencing and embracing feminine power and freeing themselves from phallocentricity(/patriarchy)’s grasp, just like “what men want” was preoccupied with the toxic masculinity of its female protagonist)) That sets up the kind of horror the episode will be about, the male fear of castration, of loss of identity, of having to face the fact that traditional masculinity is toxic even to the people who conform to it. 10/10 title choice.

Next up: the core question of what label to put on Karl and Danny’s VR interactions (‘Fellas, is it gay to fuck ur best friend in a lady body in VR?’). Which leads to the first question which is: what gender is Karl when he’s playing as Roxette? An essentialist might say: ‘Well he’s a man irl so he’s still a man even if he plays with a female avatar. Danny’s attraction to him is either him being trapped or just plain old gay.’ But I don’t think that’s the case. It’s not a trap scenario (have some videos on traps and how they’re not real actually: (x.), (x.)), because both people involved know the exact parameters of the situation. Danny knows this is Karl in Roxette’s body, there’s nothing hidden, no misunderstanding to be had here. I also don’t think it’s gay because if it was this would’ve happened irl or with two male avatars, but it only happened once one of them was in a female avatar, that was the change that made it happen. It’s not a fetishising phallic/trans women scenario either, because it’s the opposite, it’s a man’s mind in a woman’s body. There’s no doubt about Karl being a man irl, a queer man sure, but definetely a man. He’s just too into -womanhood while playing her for me to say he’s still male when he’s in that form, like Karl as Roxette isn’t a trans guy as a man’s mind in a female body usually would be (like f.e. Ranma 1/2), I also don’t think Karl as Roxette is an androgyne/non-binary/third term either, because again, he’s embracing her womanhood and the role that comes with it, to the extreme that is hetero PiV sex, too much. I’d argue what we see is the closest to the liberation and euphoria described by other queer men when doing drag, she’s just a more extreme version of drag, of crossplaying, making the fantasy real, wearing not only the clothes of a woman but the body too. Roxette as Karl’s avatar is an alter ego, who is female, so -on the risk of sounding like the biggest performativist since Judith Butler- Karl as Roxette presents as female, so, for all intents and purposes, is female in that moment, regardless of his irl persona maintaining his male gender outside of that.

But that wasn’t what we wanted to know, was it. Because even if, in the moment that Karl plays Roxette, we can say that person is female, that doesn’t eliminate the fact that Karl, outside of that, isn’t and that he’s still the one playing her. It’s the notion of how the player/actor/performer and avatar/character/persona aren’t the same thing and can have different relationships with someone in real life vs in the game, and how that can be confusing to think about because there is no clear line between the two, something that is called “bleed” in ludology(/game studies, from lat. ludus: game or school; referring to the gladiator schools in like the colosseum), despite their relationships being fundamentally different (in this case friendship irl vs passionate love in game). Take TAZ as an example: The McElroys are related, but in playing a trpg, the DM, usually Griffin, takes up the mantle of all NPCs in the game world, including love interests. Griffin played Julia, Kravitz, and Danny (different Danny lol), but he’s talking to his brother, except he isn’t, is he, cause it’s not Griffin talking and it’s not his brother responding, it’s two characters interacting. A similar uncanny valley can be found in actor/character bleed: Take Ludi and Pom (the actors for Lance and Roxette) in this one: like 80% of their screentime was spent making out or having fake sex. These actors aren’t dating (as far as I’m aware lol), this is their job, to fake love each other on screen, imagine having to do that with a coworker you feel nothing for. It’s the characters that feel something and you have to play that feeling (which is so meta at that point, they’re playing characters that are avatars being played by characters in the show). Also, talking of role-playing, can we appreciate the scene of Danny & Theo at the bar where they’re role-playing and she’s like that was hot and he’s like mental note bae’s into role-playing, because DAMN that foreshadowing of the erotic potential of roleplay as a concept.

But it’s not role-playing really either with Danny and Karl, is it? They’re playing in avatars other than themselves but they’re not fully a different person. They still very much feel the same just in a different form. Their emotions are real even though they might only apply to part of their experience, the in-game part. Yet they obviously take them seriously and personal and get influenced by them outside the game. Maybe the question is what is and is not role-playing? Where does the bleed start and end, and do we even need to know the answer to those questions? They answer those questions for themselves in the end by testing out their feelings irl to see if they track or not, fully ready for both possibilities (which 10/10 character development love it). They want clarity. It’s about the emotional limbo fantasy brings with it. It’s the same question “Are traps gay” is about. (Not the “Is it ok to feel attracted to androgynous ppl” one necessarily, but) “Does feeling attracted to the fantasy mean you feel attracted to the “real” thing underneath?” Are the feelings for the fantasy alone or also for the reality? Are they only applicable to the latter and does that change something about what you thought you knew about yourself? It’s a question about the fringe edges of limited/monosexuality and the very fabric of reality.

Let’s return to Karl to look at his experience as Roxette. We’ve established that she is female, but what is Karl while playing her? In the spirit of queer drag as liberating, it’s almost like he’s taking a break from being Karl when playing as her. Drag, crossplay, or this extreme version of it, functions as a break from the toxicity and limitations of traditional gender roles (so in this case traditional masculinity). It is freeing, though what does it free? Some genderless spirit inhabiting each person? But then how do you explain the firm gender identity lots of people, including for all we know Karl, experience in everyday life? As a trans person I know that there is SOMETHING to gender on some level that can create gender dysphoria (social and/or physical) for people when put in a body they don’t identify with. As a drag performer, trpg enthousiast, and notorious crossplayer, I know that taking a break from that reality and being somebody else can be relieving, a break from your own problems. So what is that part of us that translates into fantasy? I feel like this goes into transhumanist territory which I don’t know enough about to even attempt to provide an answer. I think what it comes down to in terms of gender theory is, this is a situation at the height of where performativism is true and relevant. There is a relativity to the nature of reality and gender itself. Whatever base essence there is that causes gender dysphoria at a mismatch between outside and inside, doesn’t apply here. Both notions (of essential and performative gender) are real and have an impact on people but neither is always the case and neither is never the case. They’re not mutually exclusive.

So, seeing as it seems impossible to pinpoint what gender Karl/Roxette qualifies as (other than all and/or none), let’s look at the nature of Danny/Lance and Karl/Roxette’s interactions and feelings toward those interactions and each other to try and contextualise what label(s) they might fit under. The desire on Danny’s side when faced with Roxette’s form shows itself in a way he’d never feel toward Karl. That visual change, and the social changes it brings with it (in gender role), makes it so extreme, because it pairs the parts of his friend he appreciates and enjoys (personality and whatever deeper connection a close friendship brings with it), with a form that is attractive to him. That change translates to Karl too. In playing with this new form that has a different role and a different effect on someone he’s known for so long, he flows into that, melts into this new persona and lives it up! The way they interact in game isn’t gay. It is very much reflecting how straight attraction and female sexuality works. On one hand it’s based in undeniable difference (hetero = different), and on the other hand Karl/Roxette’s enjoyment thereof is based in being desirable, in having that power of seduction just by existing, that notion of feminine power and the freedom that comes with it. It’s not autogynephilia, that would imply he gets off on the idea of himself as a woman, which is not the case, he gets off on being desired as a woman, which is what female sexuality is about (source: ContraPoints’ Autogynephilia video (which I recommend, it’s very good))

Still whenever Karl tries to get Danny to keep having VR sex with him/Roxette, he talks about her in 3rd person, like a persona. In saying “it’s just like porn” he poses something that is very much a different activity (acting out the porn by -doin’ it-) as a homosocially (social as opposed to sexual/romantic) acceptable one (watching porn together which I’ve been told is a thing). He attempts to differentiate himself from his female persona and enjoyment there-of (by objectifying her, like a porn actress to be watched rather than identified with), himself and Danny from the queerness (in enjoying femininity and in Danny being down with basically fucking a drag-queen) and to retreat back into heteronormative traditional masculinity, away from the scawy unknown of exploring your sexuality. His internalised homo- and transphobia makes him suppose that Danny, as a supposed straight guy, will only respond to the safety of assured non-queerness, which, honestly, I don’t think is the case with him. Karl supposes his cancelling on him and not wanting to do it anymore is out of the fear for his sexual identity or whatever, but from what I can tell, while Danny also seems to be rather confused about what it all means, the reasons he cancels their nightly sessions, and rejects Karl/Roxette, are always about not wanting his marriage to fall apart. He quite clearly prefers hot VR sex to hanging out with his wife, and cancels out of duty to her rather than fear. Even the first time they kiss, Karl is the one to freak out first. Danny seems much calmer about the attraction part of the situation, to the point of in the end being the one to take initiative and make them try it out irl to put an end to the confusion.

The episode hits hard because it takes the way men play video games and brings it to its logical conclusion. Video games are mens safe-space, and they do play with that playful flirty banter. The show takes that and makes it real, including taking it to its extreme conclusion that is -doin’ it-. It infiltrates the male safe space by taking normalised behaviour, and taking it so far that it puts traditional masculinity and heteronormative attraction in question, the very thing the safe space was supposed to protect them from. That’s why it’s existentially horrifying for the main characters (and viewers that identify with them) and qualifies as a black mirror episode even without having a homo-/trans-/biphobic ending (like other media that put traditional masculinity in question usually do, not to mention all the horror based in queer-coding)

Hope y’all enjoyed this journey into a bit of mind-bending game and gender theory! Pls don’t expect me to do this like ever again bc I need to go work on my actual essay rip x’D

#long post #Black Mirror #BM: Striking Vipers #games studies #gender studies

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elizabethrobertajones · 5 years

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(part 1) this is random but something im curious about is do you think the next few years will see a radical shift in more lead lgbt couples in shows? i feel like when supernatural started it was all about subtext/queerbating between characters we would never see canon (maybe), the last few years have seen an update in more side lgbt characters/couples and while not a lot, more main lgbt characters then we had before. I don't know if tumblr/twitter fandom translates to general audience...

Yeah, I mean, the only way is up. I feel lucky that I managed to encounter a fair amount of queer content in my formative years, whether targeted programming on TV, or taking the route of not really differentiating the perceived cultural value of independent media like webcomics and webnovels etc from the mass media as I was young enough to naturally grow up on the internet as the internet itself was growing up and web 2.0 was pretty much taking off alongside my use of the internet. And that I had liberal parents who didn’t regulate our internet, and lived in a community where culturally I didn’t really fear being discovered casually accessing all this like in particularly this terrifying seeming evangelical christian community in America.

Which really makes me feel like A: everyone should feel that comfortable in themselves via the media as I did as a mass accessible thing or B: that the world at large should be soaked in as much representation and more that I encountered as a curious teen because at the very least it did me no harm and at best helped handhold me through an awful lot.

And then brings us to the problem that the world isn’t actually like that and for a lot of people their media is restricted one way or another, from everything such as the era of social media weirdly making us much LESS broadly travelled on the internet as I was back in the day (SO many bookmarks - I had like 100 that I would check either daily or on their weekly update schedule, with enough habit that I had pretty much memorised it all without using an RSS feed or just following everyone’s twitter and waiting for update announcements, never mind the vast pit of things which I occasionally checked to see if their sporadic but very worth it updates had occurred somewhere in the last month/year) to the vastly overwhelming amount of media accessible to us. It seems almost to flood the market and creates this panic about watching the worthiest shows and campaigning for them and raising awareness and the FOMO and how things slip by and zomg you have to watch this that and the other, when even just making this list on Netflix now contains more hours of TV than a human lifetime and also one liable to disappear from the service at some point or another without warning.

And then on top of that you have the absolute cultural monoliths that if you’re not going to have a cohesive culture - which now includes the entire population of the world because of our connectivity on the internet and mass-joining of services - based around smaller shows and stuff, then at the very least everyone is going to watch anything under the main Disney umbrella, other superhero flicks, animated things, and all the really big studio franchises and remakes, as well as a few TV monoliths which manage to get enough people talking to make it seem like “everyone” (again - these days it seems like that’s presumed to be the entire western world plus everywhere else these things air) are watching, like Game of Thrones or whatever… THESE properties are the inescapable ones and on that basis they’re the things we have to lean on the most for representation and then again barely get any, when it comes to gender and sexuality, due to them shooting for such worldwide markets that they can’t imply gay people exist to censors in places such as China. And it exposes the cultural awfulness inherent just in getting a white female character in the lead role of some things, or the absolute garbage fire lurking underneath that if you dare have a black stormtrooper or make one of your female ghostbusters black when you’re already ruining the childhoods of so many how dare…

In those respects, having side characters who aren’t even major well-known superheroes or jedis or ghostbusters or whatever also be gay (because even well-known lesbian Kate McKinnon didn’t manage to get her ghostbuster to be canonically gay even if we All Knew) would be absolutely groundbreaking, even if it was, like, a role that could be snipped out for the Chinese market or something. And that’s probably exactly what would happen, and cue ensuing riot from whichever fandom, along with everyone rightly pointing out that even for us who got to watch it it was still a tiny side character… I mean Disney is still at the stage of what they did with Beauty and the Beast’s ~canonical gay character~

So yeah… that’s thrown back to TV and smaller movies to lead the way and because the generations showing most likely the real global percentages but actually just the young western world stats on queerness in any form (like… 25% instead of 1% or whatever and that’s STILL probably too low) are still teens to young adults. The previous gayest generation above them are still just arriving in power and settling in, and the excellent changes we already have from the generation before that is what we are seeing now... But given THEIR cultural context, even their best can still seem to younger eyes, moderate and not generally placing queer characters in lead roles except in niche or indie or otherwise “acceptable” places to take those risks. I think change is always coming and culturally each generation being more open and accepting that the last is really making changes and so on, hopefully things WILL change rapidly and what was the common state of affairs in the sort of indie media I consumed as a teen will be the mainstream soon because a lot of those creators 10 years later are kicking off…

All that said, TV in the mainstream is still controlled by Mark Pedowitz types exercising their power over the Bobos who have their Wayward Sisters pitches with the clearly labelled main character for the main teen demographic being queer. The culture is very much that we’re now pretty open and can happily have queer characters, but the main characters are still largely held separate. A good example is Riverdale, which is on the CW, a newer show with writers such as Britta Lundin, who is young, queer, and wrote a novel blatantly based on being a Destiel shipper and fan interacting with the cast and crew in fandom spaces, and whose first solo episode of Riverdale featured a looooot of the gay stuff (yay).

But while she’s a story editor and writer for the show and can use it as a platform for writing stories for its audience using a whole range of canonically queer characters, the show still keeps all 4 of its mains at a strict remove from this. Cheryl can come out as a lesbian in the second season after a lil ho yay in the first but no clearly marked storyline about her identity, but even though Betty and Veronica kissed in the first episode it was blatant fan service (for Cheryl in-story, lol) and mostly just set the tone that they are the sort of seemingly straight girls kissing for attention while having strong romantic or physical attraction to guys. In the second season the kiss comes up again in joking that Jughead and Archie are the only ones of the main 4 who haven’t kissed, Archie gets one planted on him by a dude as a “judas kiss” moment of betrayal in season 3 and he and Jug are teased that they were expected to get together because they were close but in the same sort of homophobic undercurrent tones as early Destiel snarking from side characters, seemingly less about their relationship and more to unsettle them with implications… I mean it was a complicated moment but in the long run it didn’t seem entirely pleasant to me, especially given the overall emotional state they were in and later plot etc etc. (My mum is 1000% invested in Riverdale now as a former Archie Comics reader as a kid so this is now my life too as I was in the room when my brother callously exposed her to it, hi :P)

Anyway that’s just one case study but aside from SPN it’s probably the most mainstream teen demographic thing I watch… Other examples would be things like B99 which had Rosa come out as bi and that’s awesome, and made us all cry a lot, but Jake, the clear main character even in a very strong and well-treated ensemble, has a great deal of bi subtext, there’s no way given Andy Samberg’s apparent habit of ad-libbing MORE progressive jokes that he’d ever be intentionally harming people if that’s how his brain works (you know, like other people quick-fire offensive stuff from their mouth working faster than brain sense of humour :P). But at the same time for all Jake’s quipping about crushes and such and the fact the show clearly knows how to be sensitive to bisexuality with Stephanie Beatriz being a strong advocate, just because Jake’s the main character and adorably married to Amy. In NO WAY can that be threatened because they’re SO GOOD, so there’s STILL uncertainty that this will pay off in the same special episode “I love my wife but I am bi” kinda way that seems obvious that could just be said. We all carry on without it affecting anything because obviously Jake’s found his soulmate so we don’t mess with that but they should know it’s important to clarify it… Even with B99′s track record, I’m nervous solely because Jake’s the main character and main characters tend not to get self-exploratory arcs about latent queerness and ESPECIALLY not if they’re happily married. If ANY show was going to do it right and trailblaze in this exact era it would be them, but… gyah :P

Anyway I guess the conclusion right now is that the more mainstream you are the more uncertain it feels, but we are right at that cliff edge, especially with shows putting in SOME of the work. If B99 doesn’t get us there (or the Good Place where they’ll happily confirm Eleanor is bi in interviews but I believe she hasn’t said it outright on the show despite clearly showing attraction to female characters, again, the denials we know so well in SPN fandom reflect a wider audience view of dismissing this stuff as jokes and not reflective of character feeling and identification without a Special Episode dedicated to confirming it >.>) then we’re very clearly on the cusp of SOME mainstream or massively well-known show doing it at least once in a meaningful way that has an Ellen-style cultural impact on TV writing.

Let’s make it a goal for 2019 or 2020, and hope that a NEW show with a canonically queer main from the start is pitched and becomes a mainstream hit in the next 5… Still got a ways to go before Disney level mainstream but again there IS work going pushing the envelope, especially if we get a movie of a franchise such as idk Further Legends of Korra, or Steven Universe or something else that’s massively pushed the envelope with sexuality or gender for their main character on the small screen in the experimental petri dish they’ve had there for children’s TV. Something that would force Disney to blink about a lesbian princess or Star Wars to let Finn and Poe kiss or Marvel to let Steve and Bucky hold hands or something in order to remain relevant.

Once the Big Cultural Monoliths get in on it, I expect culture as a whole to first of all react quickly on the small screen, but honestly I’ve been waiting for them to snap pretty much my whole life since adolescence and they’re taking such wee tiny baby steps, and some factors are enormous geopolitical awfulness, that the story as a whole is unpredictable and we can only really hope that things don’t slow down.

(Where this affects SPN is just impossible to say right now, given its almost unique position in this mess due to longevity vs fandom vs almost entirely new generation of writers’ room)

#Asks

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thatsadorbsyo · 5 years

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Heads up: This post is me journaling some thoughts, not an attempt to start a Discourse-style conversation. I’m beyond disinterested in discoursing with roleplay tumblr about the nuanced subject of performing masculinity.

I saw the start of a conversation today about gay male characters “piloted by fujoshi girls who just want to fulfill a boylove fetish” and my soul sorta exited my body for a moment, but it also brought up some Stuff that’s been simmering under the surface for me ever since I made the return to playing male characters.

I put a lot of hard work into authenticity when it comes to writing my characters, whoever they happen to be, and it doesn’t always come easy for me. Masculinity is a particularly finnicky subject for me, when it comes to how I like to portray it, how I like to see it portrayed, and what makes me want to roleplay with a male character. Part of that is because, like a lot of people, I’ve been severely harmed by the real world consequences of how my culture frames masculinity. Part of that is because, as a nonbinary person, I struggle to reconcile the parts of me that I want to connect with masculinity, the ways I want to connect with it, and the harmful things about it that I’ve picked up through cultural osmosis.

Authenticity can mean a lot of things, and picking out what that means to me in a roleplaying context can be extremely ill-defined and arbitrary. I know a male character that “feels” authentic to me when I see one. Sometimes they’re written by people who aren’t men. Sometimes male characters written by men feel extremely inauthentic too, but that’s usually because they’re relying too heavily on tropes and aesthetic to drive their roleplay and less on making a character with real and dynamic motivations and behavior, but whatever, whatever.

I will say that a lot of people miss the mark for me, going both ways (women who write male characters, and men who write female characters), but so fucking what? Not everybody has to meet my arbitrary standards of what makes a believable character. Not everybody has to play by my rules of fun.

While it’s true that there’s a lot to be said about how gay men are fetishized by straight women and how gay women are fetishized by straight men, I find it hard to care too much when I see it happening in RP, because I’ve lived long enough and I’ve been roleplaying long enough to realize that a pretty large percentage of the people playing across gender are Figuring Out Some Gender Shit, whether they realize it yet or not. And while, yeah, there’s still gonna be a chunk of people who just wanna objectify something and get off to it, I wanna leave space for people to figure themselves out, whether I think they’re doing it well or not.

We can talk until we’re blue in the face about IC/OOC separation, but there’s a lot of me in all of my characters. Even if that separation veneer is necessary for me to enjoy the experience of RP, most of my characters still wear massive shards of me in them, my personality quirks, my fears, my desires, things that I struggle with, things that I want to be (or things that I specifically don’t want to be). I think that’s true for most of us. So how I construct masculinity in my characters is often pretty deeply tied to my own fucking hangups.

(This next part gets personal. If you’d rather not know the ways that my characters reflect me, the real puppeteer, skip it.)

It’s personally important to me to reflect a lot of real-world authenticity of how masculinity is constructed in my characters, but what it means to be “authentically” masculine, specifically queer masculine, is heavily informed by so many variables like social and political culture, geographic region, religion, sexuality, race, socioeconomic status, etc. etc. that it can feel impossible to know where to start. I have my own experiences with it. I draw on the experiences of queer guys that I’ve known, I draw on media created by queer male creators (movies, musicians, writers, poets). I try to draw less from stuff like TV shows because those tend to be written by an ensemble that may or may not contain anyone who knows what they’re doing and are almost definitely pandering to a lower common denominator than, say, a musician who is branding themselves and their personal experiences. I draw on what feels right in my heart, a pastiche of all of the above.

Most of the things I draw on are things that have specifically spoken to me, as a nonbinary person, as types of masculinity that I want to embody, or that I feel like I can relate to personally. Things I struggle with myself.

Makoto has a very specific idea of what a guy is supposed to be--an idea that is informed by his profession, his place in the world, the people who help shaped him as a person while growing up--and it’s sometimes at odds with how his gut wants to react to things. Makoto is comfortable with his sexuality as someone who is attracted to both men and women, but not always comfortable with how he wants to express it, or what his specific sexual desires are, because they go against some of the ways he thinks he’s supposed to act and carry himself. When he meets someone who doesn’t adhere to his idea of what a guy is supposed to be like, or when he feels a desire for something he thinks he isn’t supposed to want, that rocks him, and it’s evident. He’s working through some shit. A lot of it is conveniently shit that I, the player, need to work through myself.

The performance aspect of machismo is very front and center when I play him, because that’s what feels authentic to me. If machismo is a performance, what’s underneath? I think that’s the crux of why I find Makoto interesting to play. Makoto is a colossal fuckup who coasts on the performance he’s been taught, and what happens in private RP when that performance cracks has been the most compelling stuff about him that I’ve written.

As a person who often struggles with wanting to be seen as more masculine than they often are, these are things I think about a lot! The performance, how you come off to others as a signalling method vs what you actually feel and want. I work to carry myself differently in public, to make people question what they think they know about me. Does this actually make me a different person? Does it really matter? Fuck, dude, I don’t know! I don’t know!! Is it authentic? What’s that even mean? I’m sure there are a lot of more well-informed people who have talked about all of this shit ad nauseum but it would probably be inaccessible to me anyway, and this is my fucking blog so whatever.

Above everything else, I look for nuance. If I see a portrayal that has nuance, I’m likely to be drawn to that character and maybe also their player. It doesn’t matter what you’re playing, it doesn’t matter who you are in the ~real world~, if I think your character has shades of grey to how they perform their gender and what their gender means to them (consciously or not, not every character actually thinks about that stuff, but it can still come off in the portrayal), how it has shaped the way they navigate the world, if I can clearly see the thought that went into that, I don’t fucking care who you are or what you get off to.

Sorry about the word dump. I just needed to sort my thoughts on some of this stuff, and journaling is the most effective way for me to do that. I, uh, would prefer not to see reblogs of this? (See above re: not a Discourse) but if you want to talk to me about anything I’ve said, I’m open to it.

#personal post

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theythemsam · 5 years

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spn 1x03, liveblog, collected posts (all 16 of them) or as i like to call it: creepy children, picturesque shots of the impala, root cameo and dean is not an asshole in this one:

“guys don’t like buff girls”

thats cause they are cowards. the right guy (or girl for that matter) will love you no matter what your prefered state of buffness is

#as a lesbian... (supporter) i think buff girls are very attractive and trying to shame girls from achieving the body they want to have? #a load of barnacles #lazy green shit outfit dude i dont know her name but i dont like you

wow, those impala wide shots really look good, i forgot that asdfg, they look like they could come straight out of a commercial, i love it!

what the hell is sam wearing? like this dark green sweater with just a red stripe over the chest? asdfgh the colors are bad.

#sam needs to go to queer eye #like... he gets better later on but season 1 sam fashion is definitely not A Looker #(except the dog shirt... never forget the wonderful dog shirt) #(i would... wear that dog shirt) #(so you know my fashion sense isn't better. all the sweaters and stuff its the depression)

poixsupernatural crossover, where Root goes undercover as Andrea Barr and when Dean hits on her, she just one hit murders him, because she’s a perfect lesbian

Dean trying to (very) cringily flirt with every woman he comes across is so… painfully obvious that episode. Ufff.

#but i love how she calls him the fuck out #'must be hard with your sense of direction. not being able to find your way to a decent pickup line' asdfgh go off Andrea

I do like that we get to see Dean’s childish side in this episode and him getting to related to a traumatized kid that saw his parent die, i love that parallelism

also thats the first episode where dean is something else than “constantly flirting, macho, kill all the monsters, kind off dude” and idk i think that’s one of the reasons why this episode always stood out to me?

its good is all i’m saying.

asdfgh so like there’s three shots of Will, the brother, trying to get the sink plug.

in the first one when he puts his hand in, the line hangs straight down into the water.

then we get a side shot that they must have filmed after or something. Because, the plug is out of the water and resting on the table besides the fish he just cut.

but then in the next close up shot, we see him pull the plug out of the water and look confused. asdfgh i know thats just a little continuity error that can happen, but it’s still so funny, cause it’s just so obvious and then to go from the thing on the sink to him pulling it out of the water. nice.

#and then he puts the plug on the tray where it is in the second shot #so now im just thinking: what went wrong with the one shot they had of this #what did they do with it?

creepy sea ghost child time

#i love the way he throws the boat

asdgh sam’s perfect “green. the light’s green” like any person that sits shotgun ever

#me: haha i do that

the fact that the bathtub is already nearly all the way full and andrea just… doesn’t turn to water off gives me more anxiety than knowing that there’s an evil ghost out there trying to murder her

#i feel like that person in the majoras mask livestream where the streamer fell asleep #so they just went: the moon... its falling #except its me going: the water... its spilling #like... you have 0.5 seconds to shut that water off rn or it goes all over the sides and thats a mess noone wants to deal with #especially not after a nice long bath like it completely ruins the relaxation effect you get

poor lucas :/

i do like how well they filmed it though… just like… no boobs visible despite her being all the way nakey

#but its also weird like... ah yes we can show really gory scary things #but god forbid a 16 year old sees a nippel #although i know thats the american thing and its so weird to me

on the one hand… they just… dug a really tiny hole to bury that whole bike in, it’s like… just a couple of inches underneath the ground asdfgh. on the other it makes sense, they were twelve

#in like 40 something years not a person did anything in that garden which tbh is even funnier to me #like... its right in front of the house and just buried a couple of inches underground thats amazing i love i

oh wow, for the first time ever i realized that Lucas didn’t just… wander off towards the lake, but that the ghost child actually says “play with me”, nice

#ive seen that episode like... eh 5ish times now? #and i just now realized

they actually jump into that water real nicely. i would have probably made a beautiful splashy belly flop.

#im... envious #although im just not big of a swimmer so theres that but awww rude i wanna do that

I’m glad that lucas gets to do some healing, it’s what that adorable psychic child deserves

#hmmm.... why is he never included in any like... next gen stuff? i like that kid #but probably his psychic abilities disappeared after the ghost did

#spn 1x03 #collections #sam liveblogs

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veridium · 6 years

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Cass x Olivia: Insult to Injury

Author’s note: to cap off my sick day of endlessly producing queer stuff, here’s a scrap I had from one of their short fics that I never posted/included in the main romance arc. I think it’s hella cute even with the angst.

Summary: Olivia gets injured during a skirmish out in the Exalted Plains. Normally, such a thing would gain little fanfare. But, when your lover is the Seeker of the Inquisition, people find out quick that if anything happens to you, it is quite in fact a big deal.

Title: Insult to Injury

Word Count: ~1,800

It was as if everyone was trying to duck and cover out of an explosive’s direction when the Seeker came stomping down the line of tents in the northeastern Exalted Plains encampment. A curt report from the camp to their south told of a skirmish with neighboring bandits that got out of hand, causing several Scouts and one Mage to be injured in the process of fending off their encroaching violence. Once Cassandra had heard the last part, though, not even the Inquisitor could stop her from mounting a horse and heading off in the direction of the camp.

“Where is she?” she asked as she approached someone who looked to be a Healer, and their face became confused and intimidated to see the Seeker approaching her.

“My Lady, whom are your referring to?”

“The Mage – I mean, Olivia. Where is she being kept?”

“Oh!” the Healer grinned, “Olivia! She is resting in the tent over there, but you can feel free to check on her.”

Cassandra turned to look at the tent the Healer was referring to, before eyeing her once more. “Is she alright? What are her injuries?”

The Healer rested her hands on her hips, watching as several Inquisition personnel cautiously walked on by, seeming to be hesitant to exist around the Seeker’s presence. “She has a couple knife wounds, from a broad blade. But, we were able to cease the bleeding, and stitch her up quickly. She was a most stoic patient, you know.”

Cassandra exhaled sharply, rubbing the back of her head as she felt anxiety brooding in her body. “So, she will be alright?”

“Yes, quite right, actually. No fears except for possible infection, but that comes with the territory.”

“Good. Thank you,” Cassandra breathed, nodding to her in stern gratitude as she withdrew from the Healer’s company. She then hurried in her walking pace to the tent, her body less dexterous underneath her full Seeker’s armor. Coming to the closed tent drape, she wasted no time in opening it, careful not to lead the overbearing sun in too quickly so as to disturb her if she were sleeping.

When she peered inside, she saw Olivia’s body laying lightly on her back, legs curled to the right. She had her hair collected in a loose braid that rested across her pillow, one hand across her abdomen and one tucked up underneath her head. She had her breeches on, but not much else: the bandages wrapped around her torso and her left upper arm clued into where the knife wounds had struck her. Cassandra slipped in through the narrow opening she made for herself, letting the curtain fall back behind her.

Sensing the presence of someone, Olivia’s eyes opened, and a broad grin broke her cover for “sleeping.”

“I thought I heard you hammering nails with your words out there,” Olivia said, her voice hoarse from being through her ordeal.

Cassandra felt her stomach flip, self-conscious now about the way she had entered the camp. She couldn’t help it, though: hearing Olivia had been wounded in combat with her not there, even if it was not life-threatening, filled her with a protective dread. She remembered how the Inquisitor looked when she gave her the report: the face of smug knowing, and empathy. Theia would have ridden a horse across an frozen, endlessly deep lake in order to get to Josephine if the roles were reversed. She would hardly think to get in the way of her friend.

“I…I came as soon as I could. How are you feeling?” Cassandra said softly, coming to her side and crouching down to be level with her gaze.

Olivia didn’t move, her body was sore and she could still feel the resonating pain from the sutures. It wasn’t exactly a dream come true to have to endure cauterization and stitches in the same morning, but, she had proven her grit. The sweetness in her eyes and her grin made up for her lack of animation.

“I am fine. They have me on the good stuff,” she cleared her throat gently, adjusting how her cheek rested on her pillow. “It was a foolish ordeal, I can’t believe I ended up with all this.”

“What happened? The report said little about the actual conflict,” Cassandra lowered herself to sit down on the ground, and she leaned up against the cot alongside her, an arm moving up so she could place her hand on Olivia’s head, gently resting her hold on her head of golden hair.

Olivia took a breath, shallow so as to not disturb the sensitive nature of her stomach.

“Bandits were antagonizing our Scouts, so I went out with a small party to handle them. Everything was going according to plan, but, they had reinforcements we did not expect. Just as I was getting the hang of things, one rushed me. I had to do the most ridiculous flip in order to escape with only these wounds.”

Cassandra smirked, imagining Olivia’s flexible body dodging offensive maneuvers like they were child’s play. The humor was curbed, though, by her imagining that some of them struck home.

“I should not have left you here alone. The region is still overtly hostile,” Cassandra chided herself out loud.

“Cassandra, I am not a small child you must take care of. I am quite capable. You forget that I have sliced my way through half of a Chevalier’s contingent before,” Olivia swallowed a meager amount of spit, her dry mouth a symptom of the medicines she had been given. She took a mental note of it, so as to work on something to remedy the side effect once she was returned to Skyhold.

Cassandra checked herself, hearing Olivia’s words. Her protectiveness couldn’t overbear Olivia’s ability to fend for her own life, something she had proven in spades over the last several years of her life.

“Forgive me – I’m only regretting that you were injured. You know how I am,” Cassandra’s tone ached with adoration, something Olivia was weak to. She could easily forgive such a vice, caring too much for a lover who is in the thick of danger.

“Yes, I do know. Which is why when they asked if I wanted a sleep aid, I said not yet, because my love was most surely going to storm the countryside to see me look like a wounded animal,” Olivia’s self-deprecating humor hinted to her fatigue. Sleep aids weren’t necessary to her, she felt the temptation of rest more than enough. Though, she was stubborn in her anticipation of Cassandra’s arrival enough to hold off.

Cassandra blushed slightly, her hand stroking the side of Olivia’s head, feeling the resonating moisture of sweat in its strands.

“What do you need of me, then? You have my undivided attention for the next hour, surely.” Cassandra’s workload in the Plains was hefty, but it could wait a bit, if it meant ensuring Olivia’s security and comfort.

At that, Olivia smirked. “Even if I asked you to gather every ounce of elf root in the Plains?”

“Yes, though, I will admit it will be a bit arduous. The Inquisitor has an ego for such things; she swears it is she who has gathered the most elf root in all of Thedas.”

Olivia shook her head ever-so-slightly. “You two, always competing for the most arbitrary trophies.” She then tried to adjust her position, but winced when the muscles surrounding her abdominal wound sent a jerk of pain up her back. Her eyes closed as she moved her legs to lay straight. Meanwhile, Cassandra had halfway jumped into action, gesturing too slow for Olivia’s tastes.

“I’m okay, Cassandra, I won’t break,” Olivia huffed, finding a comfortable-enough resting position and quieting her body. This wouldn’t be a recovery from a sore muscle or pulled tendon, and it made her impatient already.

“I know that well enough. Nothing breaks you, that is why you are the only woman for me.”

Olivia tucked her chin against her shoulder, her eyes flickering open again as she gazed at her love. She grinned on one side of her lips, and reached a hand to gently take hold of Cassandra’s; her bare fingers and palm embracing her lover’s thick glove.

“Thank you for coming, my Love. I am honored to have the Seeker of the Inquisition be my recovery bed companion, at least for the time being. I need nothing else.”

Cassandra gave a soft smile, her hand intertwining her fingers with hers and gently squeezing with her grip. As long as Olivia was safe, and her wounds were cared for, that was all that mattered to her in this moment in time. The Inquisition could stand by, surely the affairs of a world-altering organization could carry on for the next hour or two without her.

“How bad did it hurt when they burned the wound?” Cassandra asked, speaking from experience with such unsavory things.

“Ugh, it was awful. I had to bite down on someone’s jacket, the poor thing. I’m sure I will need to send a token of gratitude, or perhaps a new jacket.”

Cassandra chuckled. “You would do well to not use people’s bodies as braces for pain. Try a block of wood next time, perhaps.”

“You seem to like it when I use you for one. Though, it’s when I’m enduring something far more pleasurable than a molten hot blade to my flesh.”

Cassandra scoffed. “Olivia, what medicine do they have you on?”

“Just pure love and wit, my Darling. Those concoctions can smooth over any injury,” Olivia bit down on her lip to prevent herself from laughter, which in any other case would be painless joy, but not now. She eyed Cassandra with a whimsical mischief in her eyes. Clearly, her prognosis was stellar.

“Fair enough,” Cassandra held the back of Olivia’s hand to her lips, kissing it lovingly as she gazed back at her. “You might wish to sleep now. It is good for recovery.”

“No,” Olivia sighed lightly, “I know I’ll be bitter when I wake up and you have gone. I can stay awake for a while longer and survive just fine.”

Cassandra blinked, and her smile reappeared. “My Love, it is alright. I will be here when you awake. I would not move from this spot, if you so demanded it.”

Olivia’s eyes flickered open and close, the sleepiness in her body making itself known. “But…how can you promise that?”

“Well, my Love, such advantages are known when you consider the Inquisitor a friend as much as a colleague. I am sure she will forgive such behavior.”

Olivia let her eyes shut gently, her dimpled smile relaxing. “Fine then, Seeker, but you mark my words: if I feel this hand be let go of, I will show you the wrath the man who did this to me had to endure before he died at my hands.”

Cassandra’s heart relaxed as she watched Olivia finally give into sleep.

“I would not dream of such a terror, my Love.”

#oc stuff #olivia sinclair #cassandra pentaghast #olivandra #olivia x cassandra #femslash #angsty fluff #fluff with a twist you could say

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theclaravoyant · 6 years

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Changing Stripes (bi!Fitz - Ch.6 - Now Complete!)

AN ~ a fic literally years in the posting (oops) has finally finished and bi!Fitz has finally cocooned through his journey and is ready to come out; and who better to hear it first than his long-time best friend, fellow queer, & potential partner, Jemma Simmons!

*note: I have left the endgame ship(s) of this fic deliberately ambiguous. I invite you to ship whoever you want; follow it through to its canon conclusion or keep FS platonic, I do not mind (hello, I love both options so much I couldn’t finish the fic for literal years!), but there’s been a lot of tagging/shipping discourse up in here lately and I’m not here for it, so: this fic doesn’t “belong” to any ship. It belongs to bi!Fitz, no matter who he ends up with <3

and now, without further ado: Rshps: platonic (or pre-rshp) FS with mentions of romantic FitzSimmons, FitzMack, FitzHunter, FitzSkye, Skimmons, and Simmorse. Rated: T for mild sexual references & innuendo. Fluff (with a few angsty moments, but I promise I make up for them :P)

for Anon prompt, and @meanderings0ul who I think might enjoy it, based on a recent prompt of theirs as well :)

bi!Fitz comes out to bi! (or pan) Jemma

Changing Stripes

“So what’s going on with you?”

“How d’you mean?”

Fitz looked over his shoulder, back at Jemma who was lying on the couch. She put a piece of popcorn into her mouth, shrugged, and repeated the question.

“You know. I was away for months, Fitz. It must have been awful, but I don’t expect you to have been thinking about me the entire time. You must have done something. Learnt something. Bought a shirt? Watched a movie? I don’t know. Something.”

“Yeah, nothing much,” Fitz replied with a shrug of his own. He reached for the bowl of popcorn, and Jemma slid it out of his reach with a firm glare.

“Leopold James Fitz,” she breathed. “First: I was stuck on a desert planet, mostly alone, and it was permanently night time. For six months. You don’t even know what doing nothing is. And second: please get dramatic about something? I need the gossip.”

I need to know you didn’t spend the entire six months thinking about nothing but me, was what she wanted to say, but their relationship still wasn’t quite what it had once been; still wasn’t quite sure exactly what it was. She had to be careful with it. But she also wanted to let her friend know – because that’s what he still was, no matter what else happened – that she cared about him. She missed him. That, at least, he seemed to get, as he gestured for her to sit up and came to sit up beside her, rather than in front of her on the floor.

“Something did happen, actually,” he confessed. There was a little sparkle in his eye, but a nervous energy to the way that he moved, the combination of which piqued Jemma’s curiosity. Seeing the words on the tip of his tongue, she held out the popcorn bowl, and he downed a handful as one might drink a shot before revealing big news. He took a deep breath.

“I came out,” he declared. “Well – I guess I didn’t, technically, come out ‘til just now. You’re the first person I’ve told. Joey knows, sort of, but-“

“As what?” Jemma interrupted.

“Hm?”

“Came out as what?” Her eyes glimmered with pride and excitement. She bit back her instinct to say I told you so, and grinned at him instead. “You never said.”

“Oh,” he said, and grinned, as the gears in his head stopped grinding; overthinking; qualifying. “I’m bi.”

Jemma squealed, jostling the popcorn dangerously close to falling out of the bowl.

“Tell me everything!” she begged. “How did you know? When did you know? Was it Mack? It was Mack wasn’t it. Or was it Hunter… He’s a little roguish, but he’s got that loner-with-a-heart-of-gold air working for him quite well, doesn’t he? I can see you falling for that.”

Fitz waved her off. “It was lots of things. Ever since the Academy. I just kept telling myself, it was nothing – you know, it was hormones or jealousy or whatever.”

“Life goals or wife goals,” Jemma added, nodding in understanding.

“- but every time I started to think about it, really think about it,” Fitz continued, “something would happen, and it would go away, or I’d spook myself and hide it. Joey saw through all that, and he sort of- he got me to reflect on all this stuff, the crushes and everything, and I realised that actually… I’ve known about this for a long time. I just wasn’t ready to accept it.”

Jemma nodded. Her own sexual awakening had come to her rather easily, but she knew a good number of people for whom it had not been so simple, or welcomed. Yet she couldn’t help but spare a moment of solemnity for the messy timing of all this. She found herself wanting to ask, so what does this mean for us?, but of course she already knew. The answer was probably, nothing. Just because Fitz now recognised another side to his romantic and sexual nature, it didn’t change his feelings for her, and it didn’t change the mess they were in. And it didn’t change the fact that he still trusted her enough to tell her first.

“How do you feel about it now?” she asked instead.

“Honestly, good,” Fitz replied, then qualified - “Most of the time. I still doubt myself sometimes, or I think, what would Mack say if he caught me staring, you know? Would it change things between us?”

Seeing that he was starting to fret, Jemma put an arm around Fitz’s shoulder and pulled him close. These were waters she knew well.

“That’s okay,” she promised. “These are all very normal feelings, and you don’t have to tell Mack – or anyone – if you don’t want to. But he’s a good man and he won’t hate you for it. And, you know, have you ever considered that it could change things in a good way? If you feel like you’re hiding something or lying to him now, coming out might help that. You’ll feel more secure. And… you might even get a date out of it. I don’t know Mack’s situation, of course, but if I were you I wouldn’t let those guns pass me by without letting him know I was on the table.”

“… That’s a very sexual image.”

“Yes it is.” Jemma bit her tongue. She was going to enjoy mocking Fitz relentlessly, he always got so flustered when it came to matters of the body, but she had to ease him into it first. “But it’s not just a matter of that, is it? You said you liked the way Mack treats you, with respect, with forwardness, with kindness. You enjoy doing things together. Same taste in cars, same taste in movies; that’s as good a place as any to start. It seems to me you two could build, if you’d pardon the pun, quite the life together – or at least show each other a good time.

“Or what about Hunter? Now, I know for a fact he likes people of the masculine persuasion. He’s got a nice beard, very rugged, and don’t think I haven’t seen you checking out that ass. From what I’ve heard, he’s also a great softie, underneath all that swagger. You two would get along quite well, I’d imagine. Although, the fights over football would be a problem. He barracks for a different team does he not?”

Fitz snorted, as if about to start on a rant at the very thought, but then something occurred to him and he smiled to himself. “We play together too, though. Football, I mean. He’s rather good at it.”

“See?” Jemma nudged him. Fitz laughed.

“Alright, so are you going to set me up with every guy in this place or what?” “Well, you don’t have many options left as regards the women,” Jemma pointed out. “Daisy’s somewhat taken, apparently; May, while gorgeous, is too old for you; and I’m sorry but Bobbi is just out of your league.”

“Oh, but right in yours is she?”

“What?” Now it was Jemma’s turn to blush.

“Don’t ‘what’ me,” Fitz scoffed, smugly taking another handful of popcorn. “You know full well what I’m talking about. You started at her legs when she walked into the lab the first time for a full minute. A full minute Jemma-“

“What about you!” Jemma retorted. “I saw you lick your lips when Mack walked out the other day with that tank top and the grease stain on his collarbone-“

“You started fake cursing like an old woman from the South the first time you saw Daisy without a top on-“

Verbal arguments failing her, Jemma shoved the bowl of popcorn at Fitz. He shoved it back, and she deflected it straight onto the floor, sending popcorn spilling out across the carpet. They paused for a moment in their bickering, and decided they’d best clean it up, so they slithered onto the floor together and crawled around on their hands and knees, dropping popcorn piece by piece back into the bowl. The fight was not over yet though, with Jemma taking this distraction as a chance to have the final word.

“It’s not like you can talk, Mr ‘let me show you my equipment,’” she mumbled.

“What was that?” Fitz beckoned, and flicked a piece of popcorn at her. It bounced off her shoulder. “Did you have something you’d like to share with the class, Ms ‘well formed and symmetrical’?”

“Ugh, Fitz!” Jemma groaned, and threw a handful of kernels at him.

“Shove off!” he yelped, trying to shield himself against the rain. He reached for the bowl, half-full of their recovered popcorn, and flicked handful after handful in retaliation. Jemma gathered her reserves from what remained on the floor, and the two of them engaged in a highly undignified food-fight until there was nothing left but abandoned corn like fallen snow, and two very giggly super geniuses, catching their breath from laughter for the first time in years.

#leo fitz #bi!fitz #leofitzfic #fitzsimmons #fitzhunter #fitzmack #aosfic #aos fic #fsfic #fitzmackfic #fitzhunterfic #clara's fic tag #prompt me stuff #bisexual headcanons #bi headcanons #aos headcanons #bisexual leo fitz #agents of shield

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alivingfire · 6 years

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Ohmygod I love podcasts!!! Can you rec me some? It's hard to find good ones sometimes.

YES! I CAN!

i’ve been knee deep in podcasts for about three months now, and i have, apparently, wide and varying interests, so i’ll put a little descriptor of each. also, i listen to podcasts on the Stitcher app, but i think all of these are on itunes if you prefer that, and i linked the websites if you want more info.

DARK STUFF

my favorite murder - this is 100% my favorite podcast now, but the first time i listened to it, i had to switch it off. start from the newest episodes, get a feel for it, and then you can go back and start at episode one, which is still interesting but before the hosts really find their footing. basically, karen and georgia are two friends who love true crime, so they talk about their favorite weird murders and mysteries. it’s dark, but it’s also really funny (they’re both comedians) and i think they learned to really strike a balance between jokes and the serious stuff. they’re also super feminist – their sign-off at the end of each episode is “stay sexy, don’t get murdered.”

someone knows something - canadian investigative journalist david ridgen tackles unsolved mysteries, one story per season. if you like documentaries, you’ll like how this podcast is set up. ridgen interviews witnesses, friends, families, police officers – basically everyone around the cases he’s looking into. it unfolds like a story and you really feel like you’re right in the middle of it. you don’t have to start at season one, but definitely start at episode one of whichever season you pick, because these are episodic and won’t make sense if you go backwards.

lore - this podcast is SO GOOD, and it’s actually just been turned into a short miniseries on amazon prime that is incredibly creepy and well done. lore is written by a horror author, aaron mahnke, who takes you through the scariest stories and legends, and how they came to be part of our world. the first episode is about vampires, and it legitimately has such a twist ending that i screamed. if you like spooky, mythology and legend and history-based stuff, this is the best.

LEARN STUFF

literature and history - think about your favorite dorky teacher who makes ridiculous jokes and is so. genuine about learning and teaching that you get interested in the subject because he’s so interested in the subject. now imagine that guy was a harvard professor who totally knows his shit and he starts a podcast. starting from the beginning of history, this guy takes you through the pieces of writing that have changed the world. he’s super soothing and i’ve already read a couple of books he recommended. definitely start at episode one for this one, chronology is important and he builds on each episode.

no such thing as a fish - if you like dry british humor and trivia, this is the one you’ll want. the writers of the super famous british panel show QI (the show stephen fry hosted) talk about their favorite random facts that they discovered and researched that week. super funny, and you’re still learning.

good night stories for rebel girls - if you are a strong woman or love strong women or want to someday be a strong woman, listen to this podcast. this is still relatively new, but the format is amazing: the writers and hosts turned the stories of real women throughout history into fairytales. incredibly inspiring, and you get to learn about awesome women you might have only vaguely heard of.

nancy - the best lgbtq podcast you could ask for. lgbtq people, stories, histories, pop culture, and interviews that will absolutely have you bawling. this is an NPR podcast, so it’s interview-heavy, but the subjects are handled well and there’s no queer tragedy here, it’s all very hopeful and realistic without being pessimistic.

ENTERTAINMENT STUFF

ID10T - this used to be called nerdist, and it’s hosted by chris hardwick, the guy who used to host @midnight on comedy central. basically, hardwick and either his cohosts or a famous person – as of this post, the last guest was antonio banderas – talk about ~~nerd things of the week: movies, comics, video games, tv shows, etc. etc. it’s basically just pop culture, at this point (because video games aren’t just for nerds anymore, kiddos), but what’s fun about it is that hardwick is incredibly unapologetic about absolutely loving the things he loves. it’s more fun to listen to this guy geek out about stuff than listening to other people find ways to criticize the things you love, i promise.

gilmore guys - pretty much what it says on the tin - two guys watch gilmore girls and talk about each episode. you’re probably wondering why you would want to listen to some random guys talking about a show you (presumably) love, but they’re really careful to stay away from anything mansplain-y or judgmental. one of the guys, kevin, is a huge gilmore girls fan, and the other host, demi, is watching for the first time, so it’s interesting to hear their discussions, especially regarding race, homophobia, and a lot of other issues that the the show writers tiptoe around. definitely don’t start at season one for this show – it’s super rough and there’s even a little minute-long intro on the very first episode that says so. start at about season three, there’s not a lot you’ll miss and they’ve got a rhythm down by that point.

STRAIGHT UP STORIES

welcome to night vale - if you’ve been anywhere near podcasts or, tbh, tumblr, for the last few years, you’re probably at least slightly aware of WTNV. in all honesty, it lives up to the hype. it’s not scary so much as unsettling, very southwest gothic and supernatural. WNTV is the story of a strange town in the middle of the desert, told to you by cecil, the town’s local radio broadcaster. cecil tells you all about what’s going on in night vale, from the shadowy city council who sends monsters after people they disagree with, to the radio station’s cat floating in the bathroom, to old woman josie’s angels that hang out in her house. it’s interesting because, underneath all the unsettling creepiness, it’s super feminist, super pro-lgbtq rights, and super anti-authority/anti-establishment. if nothing else, cecil’s voice is one of the most soothing of all the podcast voices, and the quality of the writing and acting is superb from episode one.

wooden overcoats - hands down one of the funniest dramedies i’ve ever seen or listened to. wooden overcoats is the story of a tiny british island, where brother and sister rudyard and antigone funn run the island’s only funeral home, at least until a guy named eric chapman moves his own funeral home in right across the street and ruins everything for them. everyone, from the mayor down to antigone herself, falls head over heels for chapman, and rudyard has to find a way to keep the family business running even though he’s not very good at his job and would prefer to do as little as possible. the voice acting is SUPERB, and i genuinely mean it’s hilarious, with lots of gallows humor and funny timing.

the penumbra podcast - the penumbra is a hotel in the middle of nowhere, and every person staying there has a story. some of the stories are one-offs, and some of them, like the story of juno steel, space private eye, are recurring. it’s very old-timey radio style, lots of noir monologues and humphrey bogart-esque one-liners. some of the early episodes are rough, but they’ve actually gone back and re-recorded the juno steel ones, so they’ll be the best to start with.

the bright sessions - do you like superheroes? do you like the dark side of superhero stories, where people with powers have to deal with being different and strange and emotional all while trying not to accidentally time travel or read someone else’s mind? this one’s for you. the bright sessions are therapy sessions between dr. bright and her patients, who are atypicals, or, basically, superheroes without the spandex. dr. bright helps her patients work on controlling their powers, all while a shady secret government organization watches overhead. you’ll want to start from episode one on this story, but you’ll probably immediately have a favorite patient.

the bridge - another not so creepy, but more unsettling podcast. set in a slightly-different alternate universe where there’s a hundreds-of-miles-long bridge that stretches across the atlantic ocean from the united states to europe, you join a bored traffic reporter as she tells stories from other watch towers and stations along the bridge, which, after decades of use, is mostly abandoned. all the while, creepy stuff starts happening on her watch, and she and the other bridge employees have to figure out if they’re really in danger, or if they’ve been at sea too long.

the truth - a lot like the penumbra podcast, the truth is a collection of short stories, acted out like actual movies. the first one caught and hooked me – what would’ve happened if apollo 11 didn’t land on the moon, and instead became the first space tragedy? the stories are (again, i have a pattern) dark but funny, and they’re incredibly creative.

PODCASTS I HAVEN’T STARTED, BUT THAT ARE ON MY LIST:

you must remember this - classic stories from the classic hollywood era, from marilyn monroe to charles manson and a lot more early stars we’ve completely forgotten about.

wolf 359 - stories set in a space station floating out in the middle of nowhere, the crew of wolf 359 search for alien life and try not to die lightyears away from home.

alice isn’t dead - made by the creators of welcome to night vale, so i’m sure this is good. alice is a truck driver who has to road trip around the country (and beyond) to find her missing wife.

the podcast history of our world - a lot like literature & history, this guy is just so excited to teach that he makes you excited to learn. he’s also really good about covering underrepresented people, which is more interesting than learning yet again about history from the side of colonizers.

EOS 10 - i have at least listed to the first episode of this, so i can confirm what everyone says: this is basically the show scrubs, set in space. a lot of doctors who think they know what they’re doing but are really on their own with no clue what to do.

heaven’s gate - more true crime! heaven’s gate was a cult that committed mass suicide in 1997. the host dives into the lives of the cult members to prove that anyone could’ve been caught up in the story.

if anyone has any recs, i’m happy to add to my list!

#anonymous #rachel talks #podcasts

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