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dastardlydandelion · 3 years

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So...what kind of horror movie would you write featuring the Hargrove/ Mayfield family? (That you haven't written already lol)

oh boy, u may regret asking me this bc i am indecisive af and i can’t pick just one!

two that i'm actually writing are max as (g is for) ghostface killer in the abcs of neil’s death and also the max + tory nichols werewolf movie fic outlined here. also some more misc gorror junk bc i’m a demon and esp horny for susan wearing blood splatter. but more ideas commence below:

horror movie #1: another creature feature! awhile back @lucdarling sent me an ask abt max + billy hiding smth from susan and her like, playing along, pretending she doesn't know, and one of the scenarios that popped in my head was them keeping a baby bat as a pet. max finds it and she’s only like six or seven, and she thinks it’s going to turn into a vampire. so here is that scenario except horror edition: baby bat is actually a vampire type creature. not rly a vampire like, what’s prolly popping into ur head, like an undead human like dracula or smth, but like a bat monster that sucks blood.

billy being a lil older doesn’t actually think the bat is going to turn into a vampire. he makes fun of max for believing this, but he helps her take care of it anyway bc he thinks it’s cool. susan, like in the non-horror version, knows abt the bat but plays dumb bc she’s feeling a lot of guilt abt max’s difficulty adjusting to the blended fam (as of rn tho, neil has yet to reveal his abusive nature. the red flags are not yet red, more of a brownish maroon, and he is on his best behavior almost all the time, showering susan + max with affection and keeping the swears out of his mouth when he scolds billy in front of them) and knows the lil furry baby makes her happy. she tacitly cleans up after the bat whenever the kids miss a spot (bats poop a lot, dude) and distracts neil, deterring him from discovering it whenever he gets close.

baby bat gets rly big rly fast. and the older it gets, the more it starts to look monstrous. it still has bat features but it’s just like, different. its fangs grow suspiciously long, its hooks grow suspiciously long. its feet are elongated. a dorsal ridge emerges from its spine, spikes at first just flesh but soft fur rather like peach fuzz eventually sprouting. billy catches on that smth is strange abt this animal when it's as long as his forearm after two wks and still growing. he nearly shits a brick when the bat is clinging to his sweater one day and he steps in front of a mirror and only his reflection looks back at him— no bat.

max laughs at him all like, “stupid brother, ofc there’s no reflection. nosferatu is a vampire, vampires don’t have reflections.” 😂

susan catches a glimpse of the thing when nosferatu crawls out of the home max built it in her closet the same wk billy realizes it doesn’t have a reflection, and also almost shits a brick. she doesn’t know what it is, but it’s NOT a fucking bat. not a normal one, anyway! cue a comedy scene where she’s chasing it around the house with a butterfly net and it’s always one flap *ba dum tss* ahead of her, flying just out of reach. she suddenly regrets not getting rid of it sooner, scolding herself for ever allowing her daughter to keep a wild animal.

she can’t catch it. max comes home, susan tells her she needs to get rid of it. max cries, flips her the bird, refuses. billy tho…billy has mixed feelings. he loves nosferatu but he’s worried it’s going to get dangerous. he loves his dad and his dad is dangerous too. he’s stressed out enough, always on edge, knowing that one way or the other, neil is going to hurt him again. he’s already waiting for his dad to hurt him, he doesn’t need the added stress of waiting for nosferatu to hurt him too. and while max is 100% nosferatu’s favorite, it likes billy too. billy’s been handling it since it could fit in the palm of his hand, it trusts him much more than it trusts susan and doesn’t know any different when billy takes it out of the closet when max isn’t around.

billy frees nosferatu at an abandoned farm. there are always bats flying out of the old silo adjacent to the dilapidated barn. while he knows nosferatu isn’t a *normal* bat, it’s still bat like enough that he thinks it might make friends and be happy here…

yeah, that doesn’t stick. before long, nosferatu is feasting on that colony. leeches the blood out of a couple bats nightly. the number of bats increases with nosferatu’s size. meanwhile, max mourns her missing friend. she’s sullen af and won’t speak to susan at all. she thinks susan is the one who got rid of nosferatu. billy never fesses up and susan doesn’t contradict max’s assumption bc she wants the step-siblings to get along.

neil, meanwhile, is getting more comfortable. those maroon flags are slowly but surely brightening to scarlet. he starts sabotaging susan’s plans with her friends, trying to keep her around the house more and more, quietly but steadily eroding her relationships with other people. he’s getting more visibly aggressive when he disciplines billy. he curses him out with a virulent venom that dunks susan’s stomach in ice water and scares max so badly, she runs to susan and hides behind her even though she’s still so mad that susan got rid of her beloved baby vampire.

nosferatu’s appetite surpasses what the bat colony can offer. it’s like the size of a ten yr old human child now. fucker’s big. it doesn’t just have fangs on top, but tusks on bottom. it can’t go out in the sunlight anymore, the sun sears its flesh. it misses max a lot and before, it wasn’t strong enough to fly back to her house. but now it is. it’s extremely strong, actually.

so bc it's hungry, nosferatu grabs a snack along the way. some nameless rando, it swoops down and sucks dry. nourished and much happier, nosferatu makes its way back home. patiently waits outside of max’s bedroom in the moonlight, tapping its hook against the window until she wakes up. initially max is a lil startled— nosferatu looks so different, there’s a beat before she recognizes it— him?? yk, ig it’s male, the og nosferatu was a guy. sure, why not, nosferatu is a boy now.

once she realizes who it is, she is so! happy! max opens the window and embraces her friend. she isn’t freaked out by the blood on its fangs. she’s always known nosferatu is a vampire, albeit, she was thinking he’d look more like dracula than this bat-monster-thingy.

nosferatu moves back into max’s closet. it hangs upside-down from her rod by its weird, elongated feet. we get more shots of nosferatu sucking rando ppl dry at night, tho he remains gentle with max. when max drags billy in to show her he came back, nosferatu is less friendly with him. he’s not aggressive with billy, but he is standoffish. nosferatu’s thought process is somewhere between human and animal. he doesn’t quite cognitively understand that billy took him to the farm with the intent of getting rid of him, but he does understand that the last time he clung to billy, billy left him alone and never came back. max puts two and two together, and realizes it was billy who “stole” her friend. she yells at him a lot, he yells back, she then ices him out.

billy acts out bc he’s upset. runs away, thinks he’s going to find his mom…the cops find him first and call neil. neil is rly embarrassed and pissed abt the whole thing. he breaks down and beats billy in front of the mayfields for the first time. nosferatu smells the blood and it’s time for the main event! we love dead!neil, yes, we do.

nosferatu flies out the closet and right into the living room where billy’s bleeding and teary but biting his lip so they don’t actually fall. susan’s covering max’s eyes but so shocked and tbh, FRIGHTENED, she doesn’t move a muscle beyond that. neil’s got the belt raised, preparing to bring it down again, and nosferatu smashes right into him. neil stumbles, turns back to see this freaky monster looking thing. proceeds to whip the belt at nosferatu. tries to fight him off with the belt and it doesn’t accomplish much beyond pissing him off more— nosferatu, like most classic vampire types, has a healing factor!

max rips her mom’s hands off her face in time to see her pet sink its fangs into her stepdad’s throat. nosferatu sucks neil dry. billy’s a little dazed, not quite frightened. susan is just dead ass frozen, too scared to scream, even. nosferatu crawls over to billy and nudges at him, making sure he’s in once piece and forgiving him in the same go. max darts over and that snaps susan out of her stupor, but she isn’t as fast as our blood-sucking bat monster.

nosferatu stretches his wings out and with a truly impressive wingspan, hugs both of the kids. <3

horror movie #2: a haunting! this one opens with a bang. it’s a tragic horror, beware. we’re in hawkins post s3. billy died at starcourt mall. neil’s obvi had a longstanding abusive mindset and abusive behavior, but he rly takes his grief out on susan and max. mostly susan. she does her best to protect max however she can, whether that means shielding her w her body, sending her out of the house, getting neil’s goat to inspire his ire in max’s place, etc. but sue simply isn’t around all the time and when she isn’t, but max is, well. yk.

one day neil comes home early (bc he lost his job for a violent outburst, tbh) and discovers susan packing a suitcase.

sue fights hard. she rly does. but neil is bigger, heavier, crueler, and to boot, he caught her completely unawares. he kills her. and no, no it’s not some accidental thing where neil makes one bad move rage-blind. he strangles her with his belt. she’s clawing at his arms and making these horrible choked, trapped animal noises. thrashes and twists her body with everything she has trying to get him off but he’s so strong, his grip is unrelenting, and she's growing weaker, lightheaded with the lack of oxygen. strangulation can induce incontinence and when susan blacks out, her piss streams to the hardwood— neil hears that as much as he felt the clawing and heard the noises, even now he could stop, but he doesn’t. he just. doesn’t think his wife has the right to leave him, esp not after his son just did.

neil burns the body and the suitcase in the woods while max is at school. max has been spending as much time as she can (and often with sue’s prompting) outside of the house, so it actually takes her about two days to realize her mother isn’t around. neil tells a pretty convincing story about how susan abandoned them, voice saturated with apology and sorrow. he takes her out for a fancy dinner and promises he’s going to be a better father-- that being a better father is the least he can do now that her mother abandoned her and they are alone in their grief.

max doesn’t know what to think. she’s been preoccupied with her own grief and pain. she finds it hard to believe her mother would just leave her to neil’s wrath. she has a lot of hangups with susan and anger toward her for marrying neil and not getting them out sooner, but she’s also old enough to realize there would be risks involved with that. it’s hard to reconcile the memory of her mother just last wk pinning max to the wall to protect her from neil’s blows with her own bod just abruptly taking off without a word in the middle of the night. but hey, maybe that’s why susan left. maybe she got sick of protecting her, maybe the pain got to be too much and she turned tail.

but also…it’s early october now, abt three months after billy’s death but still fairly warm outside. yet neil is wearing long sleeves. neil never used to button his collared shirts all the way up, and yet. every collar is buttoned. also, mom’s car is still here. why would mom leave without her car?

that ceramic pelican she loved so much is still here too, on the mantle in the living room. it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing she would leave behind, she's had it since max was a baby.

max almost wants to believe neil because she’d rather her mother abandoned her than be dead somewhere, rotting in a storage locker or a hole in the ground. under the earth with the worms, just like billy. max has the worst feeling low in the pit of her gut. she thinks she knows the truth. she thinks abt going to hopper and hesitates bc she’s not sure she could handle it if he actually found smth. or what would happen to her if he did, where she would be sent, who she would end up with.

this movie would be more on the ambiguous end of things. an arthouse horror, if u will.

the days turn into wks and neil is crawling in his skin. the viewer isn’t sure if the shadows he’s seeing, always, always susan-shaped shadows, are of a ghostly nature or if he’s just hallucinating out of guilt. but the signs gradually point to the former— that smth paranormal is indeed going on. bc those scratches and bite marks susan left in his skin?

they do not heal. they do not get infected. they do not become necrotic. but they do not heal, either. days turn into wks and the wounds still look fresh, like she just left them moments ago. neil can’t wear light colors anymore because his wounds weep red into the fabric. he isn’t just seeing susan’s shadows either, he’s smelling her.

he washes his sheets and pillowcases a dozen times and the scent of her shampoo, her lotion, it’s like it’s woven into the fibers. he walks into the hallway and chokes on the aroma of susan’s perfume. he wonders if max is screwing with him, if max figured it out and she’s trying to torture him into a confession. one day he stomps off to max's bedroom, furious, adamant on confronting her. he grabs her doorknob, prepared to yank it open and then lets out a yelp, jerking his hand back with a sudden sharp pain.

it feels like a bee sting (which would be esp bad for this fucker in anything i write, bc i headcanon him as being allergic). but there’s no stinger. no injury. nothing. neil is freaked out enough that he backs down.

max, on the other hand, is getting gentler signs. when she turns the radio dial in the camaro, it’s somehow always her mom’s favorite songs that come thru the speakers. when she goes to pull clothes out of her drawers in the morning, she discovers that the things she’d just shoved inside in wrinkled balls are perfectly folded, neat as a pin, exactly like how susan always folded. susan was always fond of cardinals and suddenly max is seeing cardinals, pretty red cardinals, in just abt erry tree and shrub.

neil wakes up one night to his wife’s voice whispering “boo” right in his ear. he throws the covers off and discovers ashes in the bed. he doesn’t smell susan’s shampoo or lotion anymore, he smells the kerosine he’d poured all over her body.

his wounds still won’t heal. whenever he looks in the mirror, he catches a glimpse of susan walking past behind him, peering at him from her peripheral. he whips around, heart hammering, but there’s never any tangible person there.

max is almost certain her mother is dead at this point. neil’s been so bizarrely nice to her lately. she never believed in ghosts but her experiences with the upside-down broadened her perception of reality. she doesn’t know how else to explain the songs, the cardinals, the folded clothes. the way that these days, whenever she does feel fear toward neil, it just fades away. her fear melts like popsicles in the sun, immediately replaced by the sensation of a warm, maternal hug, as if arms she can’t see are trying to reassure her she truly doesn’t need to be afraid of him anymore.

in fact, max feels so unafraid of neil and brave, that one night she calls him out on it. he’s grizzled and unshaven in his recliner, beer in hand. she steps in front of the television he’s vacantly fixated on and folds her arms across her chest.

“you killed my mom, didn’t you?”

quick as a flash, neil leaps to his feet. he brings his arm back like he’s going to strike her and susan’s ceramic pelican on the mantle explodes into shards. the lights flicker, the television program cuts to snow with a static roar. every other knickknack on the mantle rattles and framed photos tumble off the wall.

neil very wisely lowers his hand. he slumps, boneless. he doesn’t say a word. max sees the answer in his eyes. it’s the dead of night and she snatches the camaro keys off the hook, marching out of the house, slamming the door behind her. it’s the dead of night and she doesn’t care. she’s going to blow past every stop sign and pound on the chief’s door until he opens up. and fuck, i just realized if this is post s3 he’s supposed to be in russia. shit. i don’t watch this show, but i know abt russia bc i DID watch the clips of that demogorgon that i rly hope isn’t stuck in captivity!! okay, but let’s pretend that didn’t happen?

it’s an au?? i mean, errything i write is always technically an au anyway, bc when i write stuff susan has an actual personality and billy isn’t *completely* abhorrent. okay, so it’s an au and mr. hopper didn’t blow up and un-blow up in russia. he’s still here. so max drives to his house.

she pounds on the door so hard this guy snaps outta bed, thinking someone’s trying to bust it down. she tells him neil confessed to killing her mom. it isn’t true, exactly, but he didn’t have to. so it’s a helluva grim drive back to cherry lane, this time in the cop car.

but when they go inside, chief prepared to arrest neil, no need. neil’s hanging from the belt he strangled susan with, shirtless for the first time since that night, erry seemingly fresh furrow and bite mark on full display. below his dangling feet is a map, the area he burned susan’s corpse in circled in red marker. did he kill himself or did the ghost do it?

up to u, we soundlessly cut to credits without a concrete answer to that question.

horror movie #3: crossover special! stranger things meets the chilling adventures of sabrina. sequel to that fic i wrote where susan makes out with lilith, queen of hell, and lilith kills neil for her. sue officially joins the church of lilith. bc in this ‘verse the church of lilith actually happens after caos s2 instead of the nonsense that was s3 and the inconceivably godawful migraine-inducing shit-fest that was s4.

killing neil was lilith’s only freebee. susan isn’t a witch, she’s a mortal, so in order to reap the other rewards of worshipping the one and only mother of demons, she has to fornicate with the witches and participate in the sacrifices!!!

this is, uh, well. it’s p much a porno, dude, sorry. 😅

this is just an excuse for susan to have sex with lilith, zelda, marie, hilda, big witch orgies + susan. witches bathing in the blood of their sacrifices, susan so nervous and timid but unable to deny her desire. the witch’s dressing her in their gothic garb.

how does the rest of the fam get it on this?

max joins the church too. she has more age-appropriate conduct with sabrina and the weird sisters, and what have you. just smooches and over-the-clothes groping, and whatnot, even tho the weird sisters, at least, would be interested in going further if given the opportunity.

billy dies in starcourt again, so he gets revived in the cain pit! hilda is the one who goes to him after bc she’s been in the cain pit many a time (i am still BIG side-eyeing zelda for repeatedly murdering her sister since childhood). hilda understands how jarring it can be to come back. suddenly alive!billy is freaking tf out but she brings him inside the mortuary, wraps him up in a big blanket burrito and they have a talk. hilda explains that he’s going to be okay and rubs his back while he tentatively sips the hot chocolate she made.

after billy’s calmed down, she brings max and susan in. max and susan can’t do as much magic as the caos witches— they’re mortals, after all, it’s not in their nature —but they’ve gained some abilities thru being in the church, following the rituals, and being carnally involved with the immortal witches. max happily shows him some of her new magic tricks.

horror movie #4: another crossover with caos. heavily inspired by creepshow episode s2e1, model kid (which i already v blatantly referenced in the last axe snafu update and i’m not ashamed, bc it’s a good series i love v much).

billy picks max up from the byers’ place rly late one night. it’s dark and the weather is bad and okay, yeh, he might be a little high. and a little concussed. he pissed neil off pretty bad the other day and okay, actually he’s defo concussed bc he doesn’t even remember what he did wrong!

needless to say, they take a wrong turn somewhere. they end up in greendale. at first max is pissed. she yells at him a lot! yells so loud hilda can hear them thru the walls of dr. cerberus’s comic shop/diner. she goes outside to see what all the fuss is abt, hilda never rly ignores youth in need. we love hilda, she deserved so much better…i’m getting distracted, okay, back to the story.

hilda ushers them inside. max is like, “ooh, comics? horror junk and comics? nvm, i’m not mad anymore.” she pats billy’s arm and wanders away to go check stuff out! hilda makes billy sit down. caos canon established that she’s psychic, at least when she wants to be. she smells the weed but she also sees his life, his trauma. billy doesn’t remember what he did to piss neil off or the abuse that followed, but hilda sees it clear as day.

he’s rude and cranky w her when she probes a little too much for his liking. hilda gently but firmly reprimands him and gets him a milkshake on this house. then she goes to check on max. she steers max to a v particular section of the shop, the one that sells model kits. now, max isn’t *huge* into model kits BUT they are p neat and she enjoys them well enough. more so when the weather is nasty and she can’t go outside. or when she needs smth to do with her hands (a trait she shares w susan) to distract herself and ease some of the anxiety when she hears her brother being beaten or her mother being shouted at.

max is actually rly impressed by the array of models. vintage ones and newer ones. monsters, slashers, final girls, tiny accessories like knives and bloodied heads. but when she gets to the paint-your-own shelf, her jaw drops to the floor.

there’s one that looks just like neil. unpainted, plain gray vinyl, but undoubtedly her stepdad. the expression on the five inch figurine is one frozen in fear.

“i think that one’s calling to you,” hilda prompts her, with the softest smile.

max blinks away her bewilderment altho she still can’t speak. she turns to hilda and turns her empty pockets inside out. hilda just waves her hand. she tells her it’s on the house. that it wouldn’t be fair if she gave billy smth on the house, but not max.

speaking of billy, when he finishes his milkshake, he’s suddenly totally sober and healed!! no more high buzzing in his blood. no more pounding headache or concussion fogging his mind. he doesn’t feel his bruises anymore, rolls his sleeve up, and realizes they simply aren’t there anymore. like they dissolved off his skin.

albeit it’s muttered under his breath, but billy does thank hilda. then he and max are on their way. max shows him the suspiciously familiar figurine in the box. this night cannot get weirder.

max knows what to do with the model kit. she does. she isn’t sure how she knows, but she does. she grapples with it for a long time. neil’s the closest thing she has to a dad these days. and things aren’t bad all the time, ofc.

sometimes neil gives max a ride when mom and billy aren’t available. sometimes he brings her ice cream entirely unprompted. neil’s the one who picks max up off the sidewalk when she wipes out super bad on her skateboard, carries her inside and then later to the car when her cut doesn’t stop bleeding and she ends up needing stitches.

but most of the time he sucks. she can’t rly be herself around him. he's indifferent to her interest at best, scornful at worst. he would hate all her friends. he scares the shit out of her when he’s angry. he doesn’t have a problem belittling her mother in front of her, tearing susan to shreds and making her out like she’s lower than dirt, the most worthless person on the planet. doesn’t have a problem beating billy in front of her or glaring at her with the promise that she’ll be next if she dares to voice her dissent.

max doesn’t always want to do what she knows she’s meant to do with the model. bc she's kind at heart and bc on the good days, she genuinely does have mixed feelings toward neil. never enough to hope he'll be better, he's proven he won't...but maybe enough to hope he won't get worse, either.

then comes the night neil breaks ribs. bad, like we’re talking, a-sharp-spear-of-broken-rib-punctures-billy’s-lung-and-he’s-coughing-up-blood-bad. that’s a trip to the emergency room. in the days that follow, at her next dnd meeting w the party, max places the fully and attentively painted model of her stepdad on the table. normally her pals would protest her derailing the intended game, but they can sense it, yk, that smth is different.

max takes over as dungeon master to the protest of no one, all other mouths sealed as if bewitched and spellbound. she narrators a scene where the demogorgon devours neil and uses the demogorgon piece and the model for demonstration.

when max returns home, neil is strewn across the house in gory chunks and torn wallpaper curls around massive claw marks.

#writerwhowritesao3 #susan hargrove #max mayfield #billy hargrove #neil hargrove #crossover #hilda spellman #my scenario tag #i may have gotten carried away #my bad #it's october!#i'm in big horror mode

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kurtty-drabbles · 4 years

Text

The Omen au (part 8)

N/A: A small idea to use show more of Thor´s situation as for Mike´s power...he´s out of the attic but he can´t blast everything in a whim, no, he needs control and the X-men are great in teaching how to control and use your powers.

@djinmer4 @dannybagpipesarecalling @bamfoftheundead

Thor supposes that if he´s truly in need of Amora´s assistance instead of the Avengers that should tell something about himself or the Avengers and right now, the man has no time to reflect about his team as right now Amora may be the only one who can help him and...that little girl.

Amora lives on a magical island that few know and even fewer can leave unharmed. Thor is the exception as he knows, deep down, Amora has a kind heart underneath her thick skin.

"Amora" Thor speaks once opening the doors to reveal the Enchantress in her throne looking down on everyone and anything as this island belongs to her and no one should forget that(Thor concedes that so far, Amora is doing a great job as a leader) and notices one curious sight next to her. "Loki?"

The man is gagged and wrapped by vines with a green substance dropping in his exposed skin who seems to brother him...a little. Thor really has no time to ask about Loki.

"The God of Thunder in my realms...where is Sif, your beloved?" she asked with contempt in her voice and Thor could tell her the time where Sif leave him to be with Horse! Thor but that´s not important right now.

"I´m not here to speak about the past...I came here to ask your help" and he kneels before the Enchantress showing respect for the ruler and for her magic prowess and this courtesy pleases her very much.

"Tell me, son of Odin, what you need from me" her tone is polished and she holds no illusion that the man she still holds feeling is here to confess his love, but, what Thor could ever want from Enchantress? Better listen first and think carefully.

Thor is not dumb enough to ask me to be on Avengers...but maybe he needs some help in the magic department, Scarlet Witch is good, I´ll give her that, but, she´s still young while I saw everything one can imagine.

"Hela made me her prisoner" is a hard statement to make but Thor is no liar. "And bound me and a little girl to do her bidding. I want a way out of this"

Amora arch one eyebrow. "You´re Thor, the God of Thunder, not even Hela could bound you forever and the seals she puts on your body and soul, yes, I can see and even sense them...aren´t enough to stop you nor control you"

"You´re correct, is not and she knows this...that´s why she´s using that little girl to make me do her bidding for her" Thor explains hoping his expression alone is enough to transmit the message of how and what this little girl is.

Amora is a woman and she saw everything and she can see the hidden message here. "Very well, how hidden is this child?"

"She puts Veella in her dimension ...near monstrous, right now she´s with Hela" he trails off as his eyes are glowing with the thunder and it confirms what Amora initially thought.

Poor girl.

"Ok, I may take her out from there...but I´ll need Hela to be distracted for at least 5 minutes" and before Thor says anything self-sacrificing Amora turns and looks at Loki. "So, you little liar and thief, wanna pay your debt?" and she smiles in a way that proves once again why she´s the ruler of this island.

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Michael is not surprised that Prof X found them even if the so-called professor does not want to admit(how convenient the X-men are sent for this unknown area where only Kitty and Michael are the only mutants here) but Michael can play along.

He´s the first to admit all his contact with people is with his family and TV channels and while he still loves Hanna Montana with all his heart and soul Michael can admit that is very unlike that any real person acts the way those characters did.

Scott Summers aka Cyclops introduced themselves and explained the situation to a confused Kitty and for equally confused Michael (who is acting perfectly here) and while he´s on his azzure form...no one seems to connect the dots he's related to Raven.

(To be fair, there are many blue mutants that aren´t related to each other, he saw on TV so there´s that)

"We´re the X-men...we were looking for someone" Scott then receives a telepathic signal from Jean making him look at her. Michael can hear the conversation once he closes his eyes ("Don´t be too formal, honey" "I won´t, promise" "And one more thing....hey, are you listen to us?" and Jean turns to Michael who is an excellent actor and looks so confused and frighten that makes Jean smiles in sympathy.

"We´re the X-men and we help any mutant is in need and I think ...maybe we are supposed to meet you two"

Kitty is a bit hesitated but remembers Mystique and decides to accept the offer.

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Raven Darkholme is not taking well the situation and the students, the ones who are still present can see Raven going nuts (Marrow whisper this with her fellow friends) as Sabertooth is called and Raven is proving again to be unstable as Sabertooth is not a person you can unless you want to kill someone.

(There´s one rumour saying he eat one student and the thing is...Sabertooth never hides his cannibalistic tendencies...)

"You call me, love?" Sabertooth asked ready to grab Raven and make love with her in front of everyone and Rogue is ready to beat this man out of this school now. Yet, Raven seems to have calmed down seeing Victor Creed.

"That horrible girl...she stole my child, my innocent baby" she puts her hands on her face and keeps having flashes of the dangers of the world "please, bring my son back, please"

"Raven, I´d anything for you...and the girl...should I bring her back too?"

"Eat her for all I care...I want my son back"

__________________________________________________________________________

Teresa Pryde was having a nice morning when a woman named Clea Water ("It used to be Strange but now I´ve changed to Waters" "What? What´s going on?") appears with a mission for Teresa Pryde of sorts.

"I need your help...you´re a perfect and reasonable human being and I really need a human, especially a woman, insight on this matter," Clea said once proving she can do magic and she´s not even from Earth.

"Why me? Why now?"

"As I said, you´re a sensible person, plus, you have a daughter who is a good girl...we witch don´t have such luck in the mom department" Clea states and Teresa crosses her arms for a moment.

"Can I trust you to return to my home safely and at the right time? Not from 5 years from here on now?"

Clea cut her hand and the blood formed a seal on her hand. "I swear to return you home once the mission is complete and no, you shall not be taken by any plot twist of the planet of the ape"

As soon Teresa said yes, a mercenary group starts attacking the house and Clea is the one protecting the location. For now. "We have to go now," Clea said and a portal opens and Teresa (taking what she could jump in)

She left a message for Kitty on her cellphone.

#the omen au #yandere!michael #kitty pryde #jott implied #Prof X is shady but not too much #evo au #Clea saved Terry

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reconditarmonia · 6 years

Text

Dear Yuletide Author

Edit 3:10pm Eastern Time 10/23/18: All prompts added now, thank you for your patience.

Hello, lovely writer!

I’m reconditarmonia here and on AO3 (and have been since LJ days, but my LJ is locked down and I only have a DW to see locked things). I have anon messaging off, but mods should be able to contact me if you have any questions.

Far From the Madding Crowd | Harlots | Monstrous Regiment | Simoun | Spinning Silver

General likes:

– Relationships that aren’t built on romance or attraction. They can be romantic or sexual as well, but my favorite ships are all ones where it would still be interesting or compelling if the romantic component never materialized.

– Loyalty kink, whether commander-subordinate or comrades-in-arms, and the trust associated with it. Sometimes-but-not-always relatedly, idealism. I guess the two combined might be, in general, the idea of nobility of character and what that means.

– Heists, or other stories where there’s a lot of planning and then we see how the plan goes.

– Femslash, complicated or intense relationships between women, and female-centric gen. Women doing “male” stuff.

– Stories whose emotional climax or resolution isn’t the sex scene, if there is one.

– Uniforms/costumes/clothing.

– Stories, history, and performance. What gets told and how, what doesn’t get told or written down, behavior in a society where everyone’s consuming media and aware of its tropes, how people create their personas and script their own lines.

– Eucatastrophe.

General DNW: rape/dubcon, torture, other creative gore; unrequested AUs, including “same setting, different rules” AUs such as soulmates/soulbonds; PWP; food sex; focus on pregnancy; Christmas/Christian themes.

—

Fandom: Far From the Madding Crowd

Character(s): Bathsheba Everdene

One thing that always sticks in my mind about this novel is the way Hardy calls Bathsheba “the young farmer” just as he refers to the men as farmers - which, just saying, is more than most people writing about this story can do - and so, that being the case, what I’m most interested in is something about Bathsheba as farmer. One day in the life or four seasons in the life or five plantings/harvests in the life, or pseudo-academic fic about a case study of a woman farmer in the Victorian era, or a conflict between the farm and nature that Bathsheba has to decide how to solve.

Feel free to bring in other characters if it suits what you’re trying to do, but what I’m really looking for is a focus on Bathsheba’s work, determination, and process of learning. Other ideas: something like a merchant ship AU (as the first alternate setting that came to mind where it would be not exactly the done thing for her to captain her inherited ship and make commercial decisions herself - although I do have to point out that contrary to popular belief, there were a lot of women on shipboard in the age of sail, may this be useful - but also where nature and luck/fate are as influential as they are in the original setting); something in which the land, superstition, and ritual are more overtly magical; or interactive fiction!

—

Fandom: Harlots

Character(s): Margaret Wells

So Harlots almost immediately became one of my favorite shows of all time, for its strong and complex female characters, all major plots/conflicts being between women, and the feminist ethos informing both the filming (with this premise there could have been a LOT of actress nudity and titillating rape, in other hands) and the writing - I find the scene in s2 where Margaret leads the crowd in turning their backs on Nancy’s whipping very moving, because it’s one moment that emphasizes that the show’s feminism isn’t just “look, horrible things happening to women, whatcha gonna do” but instead thinks about the next step of women supporting each other against the system. (Kitty’s thoughts about a collective are another one.) I wasn’t sure at first what I wanted to request here, but starting to explain for you why I like the show made me think wherever you take the idea of writing about Margaret, I’d want to see her in the context of other women. This could be pre-canon (I’m not particularly interested in very young Margaret, but Margaret beginning to establish her own house, hiring her own girls for the first time, and contending with Lydia Quigley as a rival, I’d love to see; or deciding to move to Greek Street?) or post-canon (who does she meet? what does she do???) She’s such a powerful character but also so morally ambivalent - what kinds of positions can you put her in where she has to choose how or whether to protect those under her authority, or further her own ambition and that of the people she chooses? What is loyalty, anyway? (I'd be up for post-canon fic with her and Charlotte, but I don’t think I would want to read an expansion of her selling Charlotte in the canon backstory.) Throw in anyone you like if that helps you tell the story - it’s such a good ensemble show.

If you, like me, ship Margaret with Nancy and were psyched when they got to kiss and Nancy told Charlotte she loved Margaret, I have some prompts for the ship in a previous letter. TL;DR: I’m especially interested in Margaret/Nancy as partners-as-family and what that means to them, and in how Margaret fits into Nancy’s relationship to intimacy.

If you’d prefer to write this instead of writing about Margaret, I would also be 100% just as happy with fic about the whole fucked-up relationship between Charlotte and Lydia in season 2 (I LOVE “ultra-loyal and beloved henchman secretly plotting revenge” plots, their scenes together are so good! I was sorry that that plot didn’t carry on for longer - honestly, you could write a canon divergence AU where the secret isn’t revealed so soon and Charlotte becomes more and more compromised and I would be delighted), something focusing on either of those two individually (pre-canon Lydia setting up her house? choosing her aesthetic? post-canon Lydia manipulating her way out of Bedlam?), or something about Nancy (her lifestyle is so unconventional but it works for her and people around her mostly roll with it). Again, preferably with reference to other women, rather than men.

Something that I really like about the show, which would be neat to see in fic somehow, is that it feels real and lived-in. So many costume dramas feel costumed, but at least to me, the sets and costumes of Harlots feel like houses people live and work in and clothes people wear; we occasionally see a shift under the dress, women put on a fichu over a dress or deal with their corsets, they move like they’re used to wearing this. I love daily-life type history, and people being people in history, so those sorts of details would make me really happy. (I have tags “documents” and “history” for stuff that might interest you if you also like that sort of thing.) I also really like the moments of theatricality and ritual like Mary Cooper and Kitty Carter’s funeral processions.

Fandom-Specific Exception to DNW: I recognize that rape and dubcon are endemic to the canon and I don’t expect you to avoid all reference to them, but would prefer not to have them described in detail, or to dwell on specific instances.

—

Fandom: Monstrous Regiment

Character(s): Any (Polly “Ozzer” Perks, Maladict, Jackrum, Mildred Froc)

I’m not going to lie, Polly is one of my all-time faves. I like that this could have been a generic coming-of-age or women-in-war story, where the protagonist learns that she’s brave or worthwhile and then the crisis is past, but instead Polly learns that she’s a cunning bastard and a hell of a sergeant, and being a one-off hero in a country that’s at peace and making slow social progress isn’t good enough for her. That said, just because I’m better able to articulate what I like about Polly doesn’t mean I’d be less excited for fic about anyone else! Honestly, one of the things I like best about the story as a whole is the varying degrees of competence porn - people learning what they’re good at and doing it - and that’s something that could apply to any character here. What are they good at? What lets them fulfill their potential? What do they want when their hand isn’t being forced? So, say, how’d Jackrum go from enlisting for Reasons to being the career sergeant of canon? Any other adventures worth recounting? What are Polly or Mal’s long-term plans, since their original goals seemed so short-term - or, what led Froc to enlist and stay? What can Mal do with the intimidating coolness and/or the potential berserker rage?

There’s a lot of potential for romantic and/or platonic loyalty kink with this character set, and I’d love something that went there. Characters rescuing each other from peril, risking themselves (their safety, reputation, position, ethics, secrets, goals, honor) to defend each other (ditto ditto), accomplishing the impossible or sacrificing things without even thinking twice because one trusts the other’s orders or judgment. Or A not going off the leash or into danger to defend B because B said not to (the "call off your dog" thing), to protect A’s conscience or life or reputation. Polly sends Mal on a dangerous mission; Mal goes off-leash rescuing Polly; something about the post-canon rank difference on top of the class difference (Mal is wealthy and cultured and typical commission material and yet is a corporal under Sergeant Perks’s command); Polly protects Jackrum’s secret/s from someone who could reveal them; an expansion of Jackrum and Froc’s backstory; anything about Froc’s whole relationship to the Duchess over the years as one of the few left who met her in person... Or for Polly/Mal in particular, I’d be into high sexual tension and/or mutual pining whether from near (if they continue serving in the same regiment, essentially together all the time and unable to act on it) or from far (what if the job separated them - LDR, epistolary?).

This is a perennial request for me and I have previous letters in the “dear author letters” tag if you’d like more info.

Fandom-Specific DNW: gender headcanons (I'm sorry, I can't figure out the right way to phrase this, but I'm happy to provide clarification via mod question or whatever); vampire romance tropes (such as turning or immortality) as focus.

—

Fandom: Simoun

Character(s): Any (Aeru, Amuria, Dominuura, Halconf, Limone, Mamiina, Neviril, Onasia, Paraietta, Plumbish Priestesses, Rodoreamon, Yun)

Simoun is another one of my perennial requests. I love how, in the mold of all my favorite epic yuri/shoujo animes, Everything Is Beautiful And Then Shit Gets Real, and that's not just an out-of-universe fact of the show but something that the characters themselves, who are "supposed" to be priestesses and not an air force, have to deal with. (Neviril's scene in the hearing is one of my favorites.) I enjoy that everyone comes in for different reasons - religious, patriotic, ambitious, interpersonal, gender-related - and has different ways of solving problems, their very deep flaws but also very deep nobility, and how everyone gets character development in the sense of growing and changing.

I'd love to see something that worked with that military aspect of the canon and the in-story tension of it - if you focus on more than one character, the way that the superior-subordinate dynamics or comrades-in-arms dynamics, and the different ways they behave under pressure (cheerful Aeru when she encounters the downed enemy pilot), sit alongside other dynamics (like Mamiina and Rodoreamon's childhood backstory/class thing) and don't always develop at the same pace, but single-character fic about the choices they have to make and how they think about them, as their situation changes, would be great too. What about more of Yun's backstory, for example? Hell, what's going on in Halconf's life and mind as someone who used to be a sibylla but now has quite a different role in the war as the sibylla position has changed? Or, what about in the post-canon where war is brewing again but Paraietta and Rodoreamon can't fly the Simoun anymore, and Neviril and Aeru might be able to but Neviril has no one to lead, unless it's a whole new crop of maidens? What do they want to do, and what skills are they still able to use? (Feel free to re-unite characters that are separated by canon - resurrect Mamiina, bring characters back from other worlds - if that's what you want to do with the story, although I think I'd prefer for that to be something that's acknowledged in-story as due to magic or alternate worlds rather than tacitly retconned.)

As with some of the other fandoms I've requested, I'm interested in the different permutations of loyalty - loyalty to a position or an ideal over loyalty to a side, such as the Plumbish priestesses'; something fleshing out the chorus's devoted loyalty to and trust in Neviril in a high-stakes situation where she's able to return it; interpersonal loyalty and how that interacts with love, requited or articulated or not (Mamiina and the braid, Paraietta's everything); loyalty that develops before liking or friendship does. Femslash is great, gen is great. This is a fandom where sexual first times would tie into the canon's themes in a lot of ways, if you're interested in writing that. Other things that would be cool: time loops or other timespace play, to go with the magic and timespace warping in the show? Interactive fiction? Have our leads learn more about Argentum and Plumbum and meet people from there?

Fandom-Specific DNW/Exception: I don't need you to retcon the attempted assault(s), but please don't dwell on them. No Dominuura/Limone, please.

—

Fandom: Spinning Silver

Character(s): Miryem Mandelstam

So there's definitely a common theme in a lot of my prompts and it's that I like hard-headed, practical, ambitious women who get into adventures because of, rather than in spite of, those qualities. I really like Miryem's good sense, pride, and rules-lawyering, and the way her power in the world becomes magic power in the Staryk world. In general, I also really like the way the book integrates various fairytales with one another and with the situation of Jews in Eastern Europe. What happens when Miryem is back in the human world, post-canon? I never got the impression that she'd be happy just avoiding the whole question of the town's contempt for her by finding power elsewhere - what's it like if she comes back a queen? (Can she use the mirror from Irina to do an end run around the whole Persephone setup and travel back and forth whenever she wants, and if so, what sorts of plot would make that fun to play with? If not, that's still fine.) Or, what are some adventures in the Staryk world where she could use her Accounting Powers, other than the post-war rebuilding the book talks about? Or tell me more about Miryem practicing Judaism in the Staryk world, and the application of Judaism to that world and those customs that we get some hints of (that's a hell of a diaspora - what would the rabbis think of it?)

I would be delighted by Miryem/Irina. Two queens with very different kinds of power, and different ideas of where their commitment lies - Miryem's to "her people" whether that's her family/other Jews/the Staryk who have bound themselves to her, Irina's to "Lithvas" - and what's consistent with their own ethics to fulfill those commitments. Widow them both and have the ultimate human world-Staryk world power marriage? A more serious rivalshippy thing where you make Miryem and Irina deal with the fact that they're respectively a Jewish queen of a super-powerful magic country and the queen of a largely anti-Semitic country who's not totally free from those beliefs herself? (I should mention that I am explicitly okay with the story touching on anti-Semitism or having anti-Semitism as a central issue.) What about different court traditions, when they visit each other? I would be delighted by Miryem/Wanda. I liked the early development of their relationship and wished we'd had more of that later in the story. How would Wanda's gratitude to Miryem and the Mandelstams play in a land that views gratitude so differently from the human world? Might Wanda's real-world "magic", like the reading and writing Miryem gave her, manifest differently in the Staryk world too? Do you want to go full Tam Lin and have Wanda rescue Miryem from the Staryk world? Would Wanda ever consider converting to Judaism? What if she's less settling into comfortable forest retirement and more becoming a magical gatekeeper of Miryem's land in her own way? I would be delighted by Miryem/f!Staryk Lord! What changes if the otherworldly monarch who claims Miryem's hand, bringing her into a new world of customs unfamiliar to her and power she hasn't known before, is also a woman?

Feel free to include Wanda or Irina even if it's not a femslash story, Tsop or Flek, or anyone else you need. (Rule 63 Mirnatius could also be really interesting, although I know that's potentially a lot to just throw into the background of a story about Miryem, so male Mirnatius or male Staryk Lord are fine too, if they're not the focus of the story.) Or, ignore all the characters, including Miryem, and tell me another fairytale, or combination of fairytales, about the Staryk and the Jews.

Fandom-Specific DNW: I don't need you to retcon Miryem/Staryk or Irina/Mirnatius if you'd rather not (including if you're writing any of the femslash options - plenty of historical royalty had lovers), but I'm not interested in those ships unless genderswapped to f/f, and would not like fic About them.

#dear author letters #yuletide #far from the madding crowd #harlots #simoun #monstrous regiment #spinning silver

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elizadoolittlethings · 6 years

Text

https://www.room207press.com/2018/01/we-dont-go-back-76-league-of-gentlemen.html

Friday, 19 January 2018

We Don't Go Back #76: The League of Gentlemen (1999-2017)

When

The League of Gentlemen

was first broadcast, I didn't own a TV, and by the time I owned one, I was living with my Beloved, who didn't have any interest in seeing it. Nonetheless, I could tell you a not insignificant amount about the major characters, and reel off catchphrases. I could tell you what it was like. People cared about it. Partly this was because several of my friends adored it, and it entered the referential lexicon of our conversation. But partly it seemed to be present, part of the furniture of our pop culture.

For example, I remember that at the time the university LGB society (the T or the Q were not yet added, which is related to a point I'll pick up later) used pictures of prominent gay and lesbian people on posters for an anti-homophobia campaign and one of them was Mark Gatiss, and I recognised him as the chap from

The League of Gentlemen

. It's fair to say that

The League of Gentlemen

fell firmly into the category of things I'd never seen but which I could take part in a conversation about without getting completely lost.

I never got round to watching

The League of Gentlemen

But now this project is Serious Business, there are some things I can't really get away with leaving out. So I committed myself to watching it. A good friend expressed concern that it might be too late for me to do that. I sort of half understood what he was getting at, but only really got what he was about having worked through it.

The usual caveats about how writing about comedy are the antithesis of funny apply here, by the way (I still think my funniest article was the one about

Planet of the Apes

, but I digress).

Honest town signs.

The League of Gentlemen

are Reese Shearsmith, Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Jeremy Dyson. All four of them write; Gatiss, Pemberton and Shearsmith appear in front of the camera and divide the vast majority of characters, men and women, between them.

It's set in and around the fictional village of Royston Vasey ("You'll never leave!"), in the North of England, where everyone is a grotesque. It's sort of but not entirely sketch comedy.

Some characters appear in most of the episodes: Pauline (Pemberton), who runs a job start course, loves pens and despises the unemployed; Mike (Pemberton), Barry (Gatiss) and their spectacularly messed up mate Geoff (Shearsmith); disappointed musician Les McQueen (Gatiss); Mr Chinnery the vet (Gatiss again), who kills every animal he touches; Hilary Briss the butcher (also Gatiss) who puts something terrible and evil in his delicious sausages; and perhaps the most iconic characters in the show, Edward and Tubbs (Shearsmith and Pemberton), a pair of debased, depraved yokels who run a Local Shop for Local People and who visit unspeakable fates on anyone who comes who isn't Local.

What's all this SHOUTING?

But unlike many sketch shows, the recurring characters' stories progress from episode to episode. So for example, the fate of innocent Benjamin (Shearsmith) at the hands of his finicky aunt Val (Gatiss) and monstrous uncle Harvey (Pemberton) develops and escalates as he realises he might never be able to leave, and begins to formulate a plan of escape. Pauline finds her nemesis in one of her course attendees. Mr Briss's Special Stuff creates an epidemic of nosebleeds.

Many characters appear in no more than a handful of episodes at most, and become the focus of the episodes they're in. The Legz Akimbo theatre company (slogan: "put yourself in a child!") come to visit the local school but their internal tensions destroy the group. A guide leads a party of tourists through the Royston Vasey caves, while replaying a terrible tragedy for which he blames himself. A farmer keeps a man who slept with his wife as a scarecrow in his field. Kenny Harris (Gatiss), owner of the Dog Cinema, engages in a cutthroat business struggle with a rival who's more into cat films.

And then there's Papa Lazarou.

HELLO, DAVE!

Papa Lazarou (Shearsmith) is the single most nightmarish creation of the League of Gentlemen, and along with Tubbs and Edward, is most representative of the show's folk horror elements. He's the owner of the Pandemonium Carnival, which comes to town early in series 2. Papa Lazarou is a nightmare in human form, his scabrous face caked in black-and-white minstrel makeup. He forces his way into people's houses, insisting on calling them "Dave", and intimidating them through an almost supernatural power of domination into giving him their wedding ring, wherein he spirits them away as his slaves, with the phrase, "You're my wife now."

He is genuinely terrifying, and I wonder how that first episode he's in would play if it didn't have a laugh track (only the first two seasons have laugh tracks). And of course he's one of the two places where people most take offence at

The League of Gentlemen.

The most usual objection to Papa Lazarou is that he's in minstrel blackface. But while minstrel makeup is a blot on our culture, it is, it's obvious from the way that Papa Lazarou is framed is that he's supposed to be horrific because he's precisely the sort of person who wears blackface and always wears it.

In his second appearance (the final episode of series 3) there's an insane visual gag revolving around him disguising himself as relatively normal by painting a pale skin tone

over

his blackface makeup, which I found hilarious. But it's also a bit of a problem for a lot of viewers, evidently, because I've read at least two pieces online that interpret the scene as meaning that he's naturally minstrel-toned, which is... Well, I don't know. I'm starting to doubt my own reading a bit, but part of Papa Lazarou's grotesquerie is that you can see how the black and white paint is caked on his face in closeup, and I'm sort of inclined to go with my original reading, partly because it's much less hard to swallow, and mostly because it's a lot funnier.

The League of Gentlemen

is part of a tradition of British comedy and horror alike that deals with grotesque figres: in a show with Geoff, Mr Briss, Pauline, Harvey and, oh God, Edward and Tubbs, Papa Lazarou is just one more of a parade of freaks and monsters. And he is scary, really scary. The episode where Papa Lazarou and his Pandemonium Carnival comes to town (season 2, episode 1) is the point where I moved from a state of "that bit was pretty good" ambivalence to understanding why people consider

The League of Gentlemen

to be an undisputed classic of British TV comedy. Whatever the framing of Papa Lazarou and his freakshow (and notwithstanding the arguments about whether anyone should be making gags about blackface at all, the politics of freakshows is a subject I am simply not equipped to get into), that whole episode is a delirious comic horror and I have seen little to match it.

I can't go to Dorothy Perkins.

The other point where

The League of Gentlemen

gets some flak is in the figure of Babs the transgender cabbie. And the joke with Babs is partly that she's butch and hairy, so that she looks like a bloke in drag (specifically that she resembles the other women characters on the show, only more so), and partly that she's excessively forthcoming about the mechanical details of her transition with her clients. It's complicated by the fact that most of the people of Royston Vasey like her and are supportive of her. No one on the show is ever an open bigot about Babs. She's never deadnamed, for instance. And she's essentially one of the most sympathetic characters in the show. But nonetheless she embodies most of the most enduring transphobic stereotypes, simply by being so grotesque (so much so that we never see her face).

And back in 1999, as I mentioned in passing, we still talked about LGB issues and a lot of us hadn't added the T yet. And it's not as if trans people hadn't been there all along, but trans rights are in the general sphere of discourse now in a way that in the UK they weren't in the 90s. And this doesn't mean that a character like Babs isn't a problem, it means that many of the people who might be aware of the problem now weren't then because it hadn't been pointed out to them. And that isn't an excuse either. It's like all the history that comes back, unresolved, to haunt us.

You could tell that it haunted

The League of Gentlemen

: in the special episodes that aired over the 2017 Christmas season, she's back. She has to be, really: in a lot of ways, Babs acts like a Greek chorus for the unfolding story. So here she is, opening proceedings as ever. Barbara has transitioned successfully now, and she even says that trans people should not be "a source of cheap laughs" just for being who they are, and given that Barbara is a character who has always been framed as having her heart in the right place, as someone you're supposed to sympathise with, it's pretty clear that this is what Dyson, Gatiss, Pemberton and Shearsmith actually think.

But for her to even appear, and it's more or less obligatory that she does, she still has to supply a joke. So now, no longer an Ugly Trans Person, Barbara is an Excessively Touchy Trans Person who seizes on innocuous statements and takes offence to comic effect.

I wonder if Papa Lazarou and Barbara are problems like this because of the way

The League of Gentlemen

engages with its inspirations.

The League of Gentlemen

owes a great deal to classic British TV and cinema of the 60s and 70s, but crucially it engages with that source material in a way that enriches the show. It's instructive here to compare it with

Dr Terrible's House of Horrible

, which is roughly contemporary and which, unlike

The League of Gentlemen

, has not entered the annals of classic comedy. They both get their inspiration from similar places, in fact in several cases the same places – I mentioned

The League of Gentlemen

's odd relationship with sketch comedy, and it's sort of fair to say that it's sketch comedy in the way that an Amicus anthology horror is sketch horror. But where

Dr Horrible

depended on your being familiar with the source material, at least to some extent, to get the gag,

The League of Gentlemen

tells a collection of stories that don't depend on any foreknowledge at all. It's not a parody, and it's not entirely an homage either, although it has parodic elements and homage is threaded through the whole thing.

Rather, it's a comedy that focusses on the absurdity of evil and the equal absurdity of despair and that uses the grammar of classic British horror to tell those stories.

A Beast.

For example, a narrative thread in the fourth episode has workers on a proposed road digging up an inexplicable creature. Mr Chinnery comes to examine it, and proves as incompetent as ever. And while the scene carries a bunch of signifiers that come from Nigel Kneale, echoing

Quatermass

and

Beasts

in particular, and multiplied by the simple fact that Mr Chinnery looks and acts like Tristan Farnham (Peter Davison's character in

All Creatures Great and Small

), the joke doesn't depend on that. It depends on a moment of uncanny horror punctured when the vet's incompetence is revealed once more.

For the joke to land, you don't have to have seen

Baby

Quatermass and the Pit

, and while the whole scene is richer if you imagine Tristan Farnham in a Nigel Kneale script, that's not the joke. No, for the joke to land, you just need to have seen Mr Chinnery in action enough for you to be waiting for the moment when he fails catastrophically.

And throughout

The League of Gentlemen

, this texture is present. Royston Vasey is a vaguely comical, Northern-sounding name. But it is also the real name of legendarily foul-mouthed comedian Roy "Chubby" Brown, who himself appears later in the series as the town's mayor. And the joke with the mayor is that he's got a swearing problem, and that's a simple enough joke that you don't need to know who Roy "Chubby" Brown is, or that he's guesting as mayor of a town named after him to get it. That other stuff helps, but it isn't essential.

But the problem with the way that

The League of Gentlemen

mines classic horror and comedy is that sometimes it homages the things that perhaps should be left behind, so you get characters like Babs and Papa Lazarou, who are both beautifully played and well-written comic characters, but who reference stuff that is difficult to justify beyond nostalgia.

The League of Gentlemen

is important as the first sign of the folk horror renaissance that we've had in the last few years. Rather than saying "look at all these ropey old films! Aren't they terrible?"

The League of Gentlemen

embraces them, but crucially makes new things. It's a comedy, but it's also a horror: Edward and Tubbs reference any number of pagan village conspiracies. "We didn't burn him!" blurts Tubbs to the Scottish policeman who comes looking for poor missing Martin, but not before Edward tells Tubbs that she "did it beautifully." You don't have to know that they're quoting

The Wicker Man

to think they're funny and scary.

There's nothing for

you

here.

The members of

The League of Gentlemen

have taken active part in the rise of folk horror as a recognised genre. Jeremy Dyson scripted the recent film

Ghost Stories.

Shearsmith of course starred in

A Field in England

, and with Pemberton continues to make

Inside No. 9

, an anthology show that combines comedy and drama, and which has had at least a couple of folk horror episodes. The most notable of these is

The Trial of Elizabeth Gadge

, where Pemberton and Shearsmith play 17th century witch hunters. Just like

The League of Gentlemen

The Trial of Elizabeth Gadge

isn't a spoof or a parody, it's a black comedy that stands on its own merits, even while it draws inspiration from other sources.

And Reese Shearsmith took part in Folk Horror Revival's 2016 event at the British Museum, hearing about which is how I realised that there was a name for the things I liked.

Mark Gatiss is the man who might be credited for extending the name "folk horror" to a genre (Piers Haggard being the first to apply it consciously to his own film). In his 2010 series

History of Horror

, Gatiss popularised the idea of the Unholy Trinity, and talked at length about

Blood on Satan's Claw

, which probably did more to bring about the critical reassessment of that film than anything else. Gatiss also wrote

Crooked House

, which aired on the BBC in 2008, and the 2013 adaptation of

The Tractate Middoth.

Together with Shearsmith, Gatiss has remade

Blood on Satan's Claw

as an audio drama (released January 2018).

You could argue pretty persuasively that without

The League of Gentlemen

, there might not have been a rebirth of interest in folk horror at all. Without them, it would still be an accidental genre. A local genre, for local people.

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supporters got to see this last week! To support my work and read early, please consider donating. No donation too small.

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Howard Ingham

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#Mark Gatiss #league of gentlemen

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intheemyart · 3 years

Text

Declaring The Defeat

The media uproar regarding the divorce of the most beloved couple of the year brought so many problems to Alverstoke. The advertisers terminated their contracts, the drama and movie productions on hold, and the agency suffered from stock issues.

Alverstoke couldn’t even leave his house today as the media were getting scarier than that day in November when they caught him proposing to Frederica in a restaurant back in Singapore. What people thought to be the cutest and sweetest couple they ever saw in the entertainment industry now turned upside down. What people believed as the greatest family in the industry now faced their downfall.

Just at the beginning of last July, they appeared for a month in a four special episodes of the well-known parenting show, The Return of Superman. Together with the twins they showed their love and affection towards each other. How Alverstoke treated her as a queen, preparing her needs and breakfast in the morning. Giving her a kiss before going to work. Not a faint of marital problem seen.

Perhaps that’s the reason on why Frederica should be an actress instead of a conservator, she acted gracefully and beautifully more than her husband. She could act like nothing happened in the relationship that once struggled after an infidelity and an abuse. Frederica— the woman that he loves a lot, must’ve been struggling with so many things right now. He out her in an unfavorable situation. Not only her, but her family and the twins too.

Alverstoke couldn’t help but to be engulfed by the guilt he gained from all of his ego and deeds. Things that he could’ve just avoided in the past. He made up his mind and discussed the matter carefully with Daehan, the CEO to his agency’s company. It’s not an easy decision but he felt like he needs to do it for the sake of everyone. To pay his sins and mistakes towards his family that he cherished the most.

Sins that God would never even forgive him. Sins that left permanent scars to everyone around him, especially the twins and also Frederica herself. “Are you ready, Al? Are you really okay with this? This is a huge decision that you’ll make in your entire life,” asked Daehan. Alverstoke nodded without hesitation. He’s so sure with his decision that he doesn’t want to gave another thought into it. Daehan could only smile at this moment. The faintest smile he could ever gave to him. The man let Alverstoke walked in front him, into the hall full of reporters and media across the country, even the world. Flashes of cameras. Intimidating gaze towards him.

It’s a press conference. A press conference that Alverstoke requested to clarify everything for Frederica and everyone. A press conference to announce something important to everyone in the room, to the public, to everyone.

No more lies. No more secrets. He’s going to say everything and apologize to the people whom he hurt throughout the marriage and the on-going process of getting divorce. There’s no smile on his face— he looked gloomy. Not because of his acting, but what he truly felt right now. What he felt inside his heart. Not only Frederica, he has been suffering from his feelings and guilts too.

Being far away from her and the twins, not being able to meet them directly, it drove him crazy. Those nine months that he spent with her was the greatest time in his lifetime. Now, those times are gone and all alone, he was left all alone in the darkness. In all the feelings that he caused himself in. He stood up on the stage before he sat on the chair provided. Some documents were on the table, just to help him with what he’s going to say.

“First of all, I would like to clarify the rumors that happened to be circulating around my marriage. Yes, it is true that Frederica has filed for a divorce days ago. She was the one ask for it. The reason was because of my monstrous behaviors that one can never forgive. I abused her three times and also involved in an infidelity with someone else during her pregnancy. This is purely my fault and not on her side. An act that no one should follow.

I’ve caused so much suffering for her and my children that it drove me crazy. The guilts will never be erased from my heart and my mind. I have failed myself as a father and a husband. I’ve hurt her and the children deeply that I shouldn’t even ask for a chance. I will forever live in silence after this and learn to be a better person, thought this shouldn’t be forgiven. I will live my life quietly Again, I’m so sorry for causing the issue, permanent scars, pain, and tears to those around me, especially for Frederica. I will also announce my retirement from the industry today. After the current movie production finished and released, I will retire fully from the industry to repent of my unforgivable sins. There will be no actor Alverstoke Destler-Lee again. I will repay for the damages that I’ve done to those around me.” Alverstoke then bowed deeply while crying so hard. Not only to explain his mistakes, but also to apologize indirectly to Frederica who must’ve been watching from Singapore. For a minute and even more, he bowed in deep regret. Of the sorrow, pain, guilt, and regrets that he felt inside his heart. A raging fire of wanting to blame himself again and again.

Alverstoke stood up just to bowed to everyone. Flashes of the cameras taking his pictures here and there might blinded his eyes but at this moment, he couldn’t even see a thing from his own tears. He wanted to bow again and again and let Frederica know from the other side of the world that he’s very very very guilty towards everything that he had done to her. He finally sat after Daehan begged him to do so through the earpiece monitor.

“How about the custody?”

“Frederica will be responsible with the custody. She will be the one to receive full custody of the twins and for their sake, I’ve agreed on her request to not visit or come closer for the time being.”

“How much for the alimony?”

“As per the pre-marital agreement we’ve agreed on in the past, I will give all of my wealth including money and properties to her. $45.000.000 for the properties and $450.000.000 cash. I only keep an apartment, car, and some amount of money that would support me to live peacefully and quietly for the rest of my life.”

“Don’t you regret your decision regarding all the wealth?”

“No, I don’t. In fact, until today and always, I will still love her as I was in the past. I will forever love her and the kids. It all happens because of me and those would never be able to repay those damages and heartbreaks that I’ve caused to her and her family. Also, the twins.”

“Is it true that you cheated with a fellow actress during Frederica’s pregnancy?”

“Yes, I did. That’s unforgivable and should never be forgiven. I’ve cheated behind her three weeks after the wedding party in Langkawi.”

“How’s she doing right now?”

“She’s with the twins I believe. We’re still in a good term for the twin’s sake. We’ve agreed on co-parenting the kids together and later, until she’s assured, she would let me visit the twins on the weekends.”

“Do you have plans on remarrying?”

“No. I won’t remarry. For me, Frederica will always be my first and last love. I won’t ask for more. Though we’ve separated and chose our own path, I will always stay true to my heart.”

“What if Frederica remarry?”

“I will let her. For I believe there are so many better man that could treat her and the twins better than I am. I won’t stop her from what she believe is good for her and the twins. I’m no one but the father to the kids now.”

Questions by questions, he answered the question honestly without hiding anything else. Some question felt so painful; such as remarrying and the custody. But it is what it is.

“Who is the actress you cheated with during the marriage?”

Alverstoke sighed. He doesn’t want to drag anyone into the mess but he knew that he and that woman should pay for their sins. “Yeo Soyeon.”

Gasps were heard in the room. He couldn’t look at any camera because he felt so horrible. Because he felt like a trash. A trash for letting go the most expensive gem one could ever have in life. Who would’ve guessed? That actress that always showed her innocent side was his mistress. The mistress that cause their marriage to sunk into the deepest hole of regrets and failure.

After those questions were asked, Alverstoke stood up once again and asked for everyone’s attention. “I beg everyone to let her live her life in peace as she’s a non-celebrity with professional job too. Please let her live her life comfortably and respect her privacy, the twin’s privacy, colleagues, and her family’s. Please. Please. Please. Please help me to stop the frenzy, false rumors as well as comments towards her and her family. She’s a nice woman whom I cherish so much in life. I don’t want to cause any kind of pain and hard times for her,” he added. Alverstoke then looked at a camera that aired this press conference live. He bowed deeply again while crying again and again. “I apologize sincerely to everyone, to you and the twins, Fre.”

Today, he apologized to her publicly. He asked for their help. He explained all of his monstrous acts. He retired from his work. ㅤㅤ Today, it’s his downfall.

End of Declaring The Defeat.

0 notes

ragehappysecretsanta · 6 years

Text

Author: http://nescamonster.tumblr.com/

Recipient: http://madprincevagabond.tumblr.com

Summary: Ryan loves to kill, but he's also... really bored...Then along comes someone who for once is a little original and asks him about his day. Jeremy has accidentally stirred the interest of a serial killer...

Warnings: Gore, background killings, supernatural themes

WordCount: 3441

They say your heart beats faster when you meet the one you’re destined to be with.

In Ryan’s case, his heart never beats. Frozen, stuck in this timeless place with disposable faceless prey, all there to be given to the Entity that had gifted Ryan his immortality. It was a fun life, living agelessly, hunting down scared sobbing sacrifices, their blood warm when it splashed onto his skin. It could also be very lonely.

Jeremy’s heart beat faster when he caught his first sight of the mad man bearing down on him, Jeremy trapped between a wall and a wardrobe. He was terrifying in the way that he looked so pleasantly normal, shirt and dad jeans, a backwards cap but covered in fresh and old blood, a dripping machete in one hand and a bear trap in the other. His eyes glowed blue with a red ring around the iris casting red light wherever he looked and his teeth were slightly pointed in a fanged grin.

Ryan barely registered this newest sacrifice. They blurred together in his mind, one very much like the other, never changing, never interesting.

“Hey how’s it going? If you could not slice me that would be great!” Jeremy called rapidly, lifting his hands to futilely ward off the slice of the machete. The blow never came however, Jeremy opening his eyes after a few moments to see the killer looking at him head tilted.

“Ah-” Jeremy stuttered than flinched when a deep voice came that horrible mouth.

“I’m doing ok I guess.” Ryan said truthfully, it had been so long since anyone had asked him anything but ‘don’t kill me!’ that it was nice to stop and think about it, “I mean, i’m having fun but it can be monotonous at times…”

Jeremy blinked hard, wondering if he had finally snapped. Was the Killer,

talking

to him? He sounded tired, his machete falling to his side as he gestured with his other bloodied hand, the nails dark with filthy dried blood.

“Always the screaming and the running. Oh and the begging! I tell you I’ve heard it all! No one is original anymore.” Ryan sighed his problems out to the first being who had bothered to question, “How am I meant to improve my technique with no feed back you know?”

“M-m-must be, ah, fru-frustrating huh?” Jeremy stammered confusion starting to rise up from under the terror as the Killer nodded his head, gesturing a little violently at him with his free hand.

“Yes! Thank you! Frustrating doesn’t begin it! On and on and when is there time for me, you know? When is there time for

Ryan?

” The killer had backed up a step now and Jeremy saw an opening he could take. Dart past, throw down those crates, leap through the following window and he stood a good chance of losing the Killer in the fog.

“Your name is Ryan?” Jeremy asked instead, curiosity getting the better of him. How many monstrous murders do you get to be on first name basis with after all, “Mine’s Jeremy, Jeremy Dooley.”

Jeremy flinched back hard enough to crack his head on the wall when Ryan extended his hand towards him. That made the Murderer chuckle and wiggle his fingers, “Is a handshake not still appropriate?”

“Ah-yeah. Yeah, no, a handshake is cool.” Jeremy extended his own hand back, shivering at the slightly sticky blood coating the palm of the man, now stuck to his skin. Ryan gave a firm handshake, very formal as he looked down at Jeremy.

“Ryan Haywood, how do you do?”

Jeremy almost snorted aloud at that but instead controlled himself saying instead, “I do very well thanks, when I’m not helplessly slaughtered in a junkyard.”

Oh dear god, did Ryan just

blush

Ryan felt guilty and let Jeremy's hand go, remembering he was meant to kill him along with the other three running around fixing the generators. Well, two… one had already been taken above, Ryan wiping his freshly bloodied hand on his already ruined jeans as he averted his face shamefully.

“Well, you could always escape.” he encouraged lamely, Jeremy rightfully shrinking back and giving a nervous grin.

“You could always let me go?”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that.” Ryan said sounding almost sad about it, but he tilted his head again, “Your question on how I was doing was surprising but unfortunately it's just not in the rules for me to be able to let you go… However…”

Jeremy stood a little straighter, hope flaring as much as he fought it, watching Ryan reach up and stroke blood through his already bloodied scruff as he thought.

“Hmm… That is an idea…” He muttered to himself than focused on Jeremy giving his sharklike grin, all pointed teeth and malice, “I like you Jeremy Dooley, so I shall give you a twenty second head start. If you are able to escape, I shall see you again.”

And before Jeremy could ask, Ryan melted back into the fog, leaving him alone once again. Alone except for a dark voice that echoed softly.

“

One...two...three...four…

”

Jeremy ran.

Ryan watched with curiosity the one who called himself Jeremy. In three days, they had managed to figure out to fix another generator, and though Ryan had found where they were living in this endless maze, he didn’t disturb their sleep.

He watched it.

Jeremy helped the others, scrounging for food, stockpiling nuts and bolts to help fix more generators. He tried to make them laugh, and in the fog, Ryan chuckled at some of the unappreciated jokes the man would tell. He was funny, that short sacrifice.

Quick too; Ryan had grabbed one of the others one night, dragging them to the hook and stringing them up for the beloved entity to gather in their embrace. The satisfaction of sliding a body onto the hook had washed over him than a flash of blinding light had filled his vision.

Ryan had reeled back, roaring his displeasure as Jeremy called out to the sacrifice on the hook, darting in and pulling them off it into safety. There his luck ran out, as the one wielding the torch, and the injured escaped, Ryan's vision returned, reaching out and slicing Jeremy's back open from shoulder blade, across his back and to his opposite side.

Ryan blinked the last of the light away and saw which sacrifice he had downed. He breathed in sharply, the call in his head to pick up the wiggling moaning man to give to his beloved entity. But this was the interesting Jeremy, the funny and unique one who dared brave shaking his hand.

Jeremy’s back was afire, throbbing and warm with his own wet blood. He was breathing in gasps, trying to fix in his mind that Gavin had gotten away. It was worth it if Gavin and Michael escape. He fisted the ground weakly, a grunt spilling from his lips as he tried to pull himself away.

It was hopeless; he felt the strength in the arm that wrapped around him, lifting him up onto shoulder. A fresh wave of hot blood flooded down his back, dripping over his sides and onto the killer that carried him. Jeremy’s world was pain as he started to struggle, every instinct to get away.

His heart doubled up with fear when he saw that he was being carried into the old house that stood on these grounds. Underneath which was the basement where everyone knew the killer slept. Hardly anyone was ever rescued once they’d been carried down those steps. His struggles intensified and Ryan gave an irritated grunt when Jeremy kicked his way off his shoulder.

“No wait! I’ll help you!” Ryan rumbled as the victim started to scramble up the stairs. The words sunk in and Jeremy paused, looking back down at the killer, his left side going numb even as he hesitated but memory of their last talk in his mind.

“H-help?” he stammered, “You want to, help… me?”

Ryan nodded, his blonde bangs getting stuck in the fresh blood on his forehead, making Jeremy's stomach turn. But he had little choice, he was rapidly losing consciousness with the blood loss and so he jerked his chin in a nod.

“Help me…” he asked Ryan then slumped onto the stairs, eyes rolling up. He slipped into the darkness for a short time only to come back as to find himself shirtless on his stomach on a cot. His back was completely numb and he wasn’t sure if he was happy about that or not.

Thankfully he could still move his head and he moved it to look off the bed to see a clean Ryan sitting just off the cot against the wall by the head of it. His hair was more sandy than Jeremy originally thought with the blood washed out of it, his eyes blue without the glowing ring of red. He was disarmingly normal, back pressed to the wall, one leg up with his hand resting on his knee, holding a book up to read, his lips moving along with the words.

“Ryan?” Jeremy rasped, mouth parched and the book hit the ground as Ryan leapt up.

“You’re awake, ah, here! I got water…” Ryan grabbed a glass of water ready to the side, moving it to Jeremy's lips. He let a little wet the lads mouth before he drew it back and cautioned Jeremy to drink slow. After a few more sips, it was placed aside so Ryan could kneel at Jeremy's head level.

“How do you feel?”

“Like a prime piece of meat.” Jeremy answered the dumb question, to his surprise he chuckled when Ryan colored, “because you sliced me up Ryan. I’m meat cause you cut me up.”

Ryan ducked his eyes at the clarification, “I’m sorry about that. The instinct kicks in during the hunt, I didn’t realise it was you before you were already on the ground…”

“Why?” Jeremy asked soft and filled with pain.

“Because they command it to be so,” Ryan said simply, no misunderstanding this time, looking back at Jeremy's face, “The great entity, needs their sacrifices. I deliver them to the loving grasp of my benefactor.”

Jeremy couldn’t believe his ears, unable to form words to express all the wrong in that sentence. Ryan gave him no chance, standing up and shifting away, revealing they were in a small room with just the cot, a few books and a sink. Their was a door but Ryan ignored it for what seemed to be a solid wall. Resting against it was his machete and he picked it up, speaking without looking at Jeremy, “Rest. I will return.”

He placed a hand on the wall and pushed so it swung open, showing just beyond it the basement with its blood dripping hooks. Jeremy made a noise about to ask Ryan to wait but the wall swung closed and it was too late. He’d left to hunt.

Ryan moved through the night back to his secret home. Tonight he managed to injure one and strung up the other only for him to wiggle off and be gone. It had been long night, blood and sweat dripping into his eyes making them sting. But he walked with a happy step, for once not going home to a lonely bed and silence.

“I’m back.” Ryan said happily, opening the secret door to smile at the bedridden Jeremy. His face fell to take in the empty bed. His supplies had been raided and his books pawed through. No Jeremy to be seen. His heart, frozen as it was, sunk as he felt a crushing weight settle on his shoulders. Jeremy was the same as everyone else, all afraid of him, all looking to get him punished by the entity.

“Ryan? Little help? Please?” Jeremy's voice came from the only other door, the one to his shower and toilet, and sure enough when Ryan opened it he found Jeremy had collapsed onto the ground, looking clean except for the fresh blood from his broken scabs.

“I used your toilet than tried to shower but my legs kinda had enough, “Jeremy laughed at himself, embarrassed, “I ah, need help?”

Ryan was so happy Jeremy hadn’t run that he got down on his knees and hugged the prone lad hard. Jeremy yelped and Ryan shifted back, “Right! Sorry! Here, up you get.” And with his entity given strength, he lifted Jeremy easily, moving him back to the bed.

Blood had smeared from the killer to his ward, so Ryan went to wash up and bring back a bowl and a rag to clean jeremy up as well. As he did so, Jeremy started talking.

“So Ryan Haywood-”

Ryan froze, fixing jeremy with a deadly stare and a frown, “How did you know that name?” He asked in a mad whisper.

“It was written inside the cover of your books.” Jeremy pointed out, grinning slightly, “and you can drop the serial killer thing. I am not threatened by a man who highlights his favourite Shakespeare quotes.”

Ryan was confused by Jeremy's true lack of fear, coming closer to start wiping blood from Jeremy's face as the lad continued, “So, I was thinking. You should come with me.”

“Come with you?”

“When I escape.”

Ryans frozen heart gave a stutter. Jeremy's eyes seemed to see it, a soft smile playing on it as he gently took Ryan's hand, washrag and all. He wanted ryan to leave with him. He wanted Ryan's company. Ryan didn’t have to be alone, in this hovel any longer, he could leave and-

Blinding pain racked him, falling to the side convulsing and roaring in agony. Jeremy shifted as best he could with his injury, trying to help the man still, shouting out his questions, wanting to know what was wrong. Every nerve end was on fire, ever part of him in terrible pain.

You cannot leave! Your heart is mine! You stay here and obey!!

A million voices in Ryan's head, forming the great voice of the entity.

“Yes! Yes! I’ll stay! I’ll Stay!” Ryan moaned desperately, “My life is yours! My blood! My soul!”

“Ryan!? Ryan please! What is it? What’s happening to you?!” Jeremy begged, somehow he’d managed to gather Ryan’s head onto his lap, stroking his curls trying to help him.

Kill him! Kill them all! You are no one but my puppet! Sacrifice them!

“Jeremy! Jeremy run!” Ryan managed to force out, pain impossibly doubling as his voice deepened, “It hates you’ve tempted me! Get OUT!!!!!” he roared, back arching as the entity punished him, ripping his mind apart to form into the mindless killer it needed.

Jeremy pressed a kiss to Ryan's forehead, a brief pleasure amongst the waves of fire, then he was gone.

“You guys don’t get it! He’s not a killer.” Jeremy pleaded with the lads as they worked on the generator together. Gavin and Michael had been happy to get him back, patching him up, but refused to believe his story.

“Jeremy, you lost a lot of blood, and you had been on your own for like two nights…”

“Michael what are you trying to say?”

“He’s saying you're bonkers lil’J. ‘He’s not a killer’... are you even listening to yourself? He axed you, smacked me, and put Michael up just like he had that other guy we found. Didn’t even get a chance to tell us his name before he was spiderbait!” Gavin snapped and Michael cursed them both out as Gavin's lack of concentration triggered a bang in the generator.

“We got to go before Jeremy’s boyfriend-”

“He’s not my boyfriend!”

“Comes to check this shit out.” Michael grabbed them both and they walked into the night, searching for another generator together. Jeremy wouldn’t let the subject drop however.

“I thought he was a big psyco too. But he’s not. He’s more than that. He’s a man underneath it all.” Jeremy spoke passionately, “He’s not a killer stalking us survivors, he’s a prisoner just like us.”

“If he’s a prisoner, than why the fuck isn’t he trying to get out like we are?” Michael spat, stopping them to round on jeremy, “I’ve had enough of this shit Jeremy, he’s a fucking psycho, asshole,

fuck

and he’s not going to stop until we are all fucked by the spider dick in the sky!”

“But the spiders got him under control too Michael- Wait! Don’t walk off!” But they’d heard enough, Gavin and Michael leaving Jeremy behind in the fog, leaving the choice up to him to follow. Jeremy's mouth thinned and his eyebrows furrowed determinedly. He’d show them if they wouldn’t listen.

Jeremy made his way back to the blown generator, sitting down and once again messing with the mechanics, trying to start it up one bolt at a time. He knew ryan would be by soon to see if he could catch someone at work, and Jeremy intended it to be him. Sure enough, he saw the glow of Ryan's red eyes than the man himself walked into the light.

He wore a mask now, a hideous wooden thing that hid his features from sight. But Jeremy knew those sandy locks anywhere and stood up to greet him. Ryan tisked then laughed deep and cruel.

“You should have ran.”

“I waited for you.” Jeremy said, crossing his arms, the killer tilting his head at him, “I wanted to talk with you.”

“I got punished for our last ‘talk’. I must kill you Jeremy, as much as it grieves me.” Ryan said in his deep rasping voice, taking another step and undermining the confidence Jeremy had been feeling. Jeremy swallowed hard but stood his ground.

“You don’t want to kill me though do you?” he clarified, Ryan shaking his head not as soothing when he took another step forward, “Then don’t. We can escape together.”

“There is no escape for me.” Ryan’s voice was sad, “I am frozen, frozen in this place. Even if you were to get the doors open, I cannot pass through them.”

Jeremy’s arms dropped, and he finally took a step back as Ryan loomed closer. He hadn’t realised that. He thought it was a matter of convincing to make Ryan leave. But this but a different spin on it.

“You can’t leave?” He repeated dumbly, disbelieving.

“Never leave, never age, never sick, never die.” Ryan intoned carefully, “I pay in blood for the immortality afforded me here. If I do not obey, then another will take my place and I will turn to dust.” He stepped closer, now in slashing distance but Jeremy didn’t move again.

“Others can be made into what you are?” he asked thoughtfully, seeing Ryan reluctantly raise his weapon. He did the only thing he could think of. He stepped into Ryan, wrapping an arm around his waist and with the other hand reaching up and pulling away the mask.

Ryans face was mangled, beaten and sliced. Jeremy didn’t care, leaning up on tiptoe to press a soft kiss to his lips, “Make me one of you then.” he asked for it softly, giving in to the draw and smiling to himself, “Guess I want to be your boyfriend.”

Ryans machete dropped and his arms came around the soft survivor, “You wish to join me? Frozen in this place? Hunting others for all eternity?”

“Why not? Sounds interesting. And hunting must be way more fun than being hunted.”

Ryan looked up, communing with his entity, presenting the idea to them. A long moment passed.

Very well. So be it. But I expect more sacrifices in more timely manner with two of you.

Ryan smiled, the touch of creatures magic on his face, clearing away his injuries so he could look down on jeremy with a smooth face once more.

“I am very glad, you asked me how I was doing.” Ryan said softly, bending his head to capture Jeremy's in a kiss, swallowing his scream of pain as the curse passed from Ryan into Jeremy. Ice froze in his heart, his limbs burnt with evil flame, altering and reinforcing muscle so Jeremy could walk faster, stay up longer, survive on less food and see in the dark. His eyes shone red and the pain faded.

He met Ryan's fanged grin with his own.

‘Shall we hunt?”

“Let’s hunt.”

The two went hand in hand, Ryan retrieving his machete and they went into the night. To hunt together, live together and never again be scared or lonely. Not when they had each other.

THE END

#Ragehappy #Jeremwood #nescamonster #madprincevagabond #rhss17

15 notes · View notes

malecsecretsanta · 6 years

Text

Merry Christmas, @lucyxshadow!

Here’s a short fic for you! With a bit of something from my neck of the woods ;)

I hope you have a very happy Christmas, and wishing you and your family lots of joy and warmth this holiday season.

Read on AO3

*****

We'll Remake The World in Our Own Image

Other than a few bad memories that will be etched into his memory for as long as he lives, Magnus remembers very little from his boyhood in Batavia.

He knows he was born in December, during the monsoon season - endless rain that swept through the trees and pitter-pattered throughout the night in the kind of intensity one only ever gets in the tropics, while the geckos or chik-chak chittered from hidden places in the eaves. When he was a little older, he would sneak into the servants' quarters, and they would share deep-fried laron with him - flying termites, driven out of their underground nests by the flooding rain and drawn into the house by the candlelight. (Then his human father found out, and was so disgusted that they were feeding his son insects that he beat the servants black-and-blue, and that was the end of that, and the end of his tentative friendship with the servants.)

He remembers playing among the tall walnut and tamarind trees in the well-curated gardens of Bovenstad, the elite Dutch residential area in Batavia where he lived with his mother and human father. He remembers his mother telling him Javanese folktales at bedtime, her favourite being that of Timun Mas, whose mother had so longed for a child that she made a deal with an ogre. (This strikes Magnus as ironic later in life, because his mother, too, had longed and prayed for a child, and had her prayers answered by something monstrous.) He remembers that his mother called him sayang - beloved.

December is a complicated month for Magnus, emotionally. He doesn't celebrate his birthday, not anymore. They celebrated Christmas as a child in deference to his father's wishes, so Magnus doesn't celebrate that anymore either. (Although any excuse to buy presents for the few people he holds dear to his heart is as good an excuse as any to go shopping, so Magnus has no problems with the gift-giving part of Christmas.) The month of December holds, at once, too much meaning and very little meaning for Magnus.

Thankfully, Alec seems just as disinterested in the holiday festivities that have taken over every shop window and planted carollers on what feels like every street corner in New York City. Magnus supposes shadowhunters aren't generally very big on holidays since demons don't have the basic courtesy to give everybody a break during the holiday season. Previously, with some of the other people he's dated, Christmas time came with expectations - of romance and presents and cuddling in front of a fire while the snow falls outside, none of which Magnus is in the mood for because of his convoluted personal history. Honestly, Magnus is a little bit relieved that Alec isn't going to expect a big production out of this, their first Christmas together.

When he comes home one day to find Alec busy in the kitchen with several takeout bags on the counter, the dining table set with the good silver and candles, a bottle of champagne sitting in a bucket of ice, Magnus feels his stomach dropping sickeningly, his heartbeat speeding up, and not with the excitement that usually comes from finding his boyfriend home unexpectedly early. It's over two weeks before Christmas, and worse, it happens to be... There's no way Alec found out, he knows this information is not in the Institute's database, and not even Catarina knows-

"What's all this about?" Magnus asks lightly, with a cheerfulness he does not really feel.

Alec startles, and Magnus is amused despite his current turmoil of emotions - it's not easy to sneak up on his shadowhunter. Alec must really have been concentrating on whatever he was doing.

Alec flashes him a smile and walks over to press a gentle kiss to Magnus' lips. "Hey. I didn't expect you to be home so early."

"Well, if you wanted to surprise me, consider me still pleasantly surprised," Magnus tells him.

Alec smiles shyly and goes back to unpacking the eclectic mix of stuff he has bought - bacon burgers from that place in East Village that Alec likes, a spread of appetisers from Cocoron, a Japanese restaurant in lower Manhattan they'd visited once together, and takeout bags Magnus recognises as coming from that place that makes trdelnik almost as well as the best street vendors in Prague.

"It's been three months since our first date. We've been together for exactly three months today, if we include the couple of days when we were... fighting," Alec says, face turned away and hands busy, and Magnus realises that Alec is nervous. "I just thought... we could have a little celebration."

Magnus blinks. Three months? Three months is not much for someone centuries-old, and even for mortals Magnus is pretty sure three months is like a mere blip in the average lifetime. But Alec thinks that being together for three months warrants breaking out the champagne? Magnus can't help but feel charmed.

Granted, it certainly feels a lot longer than three months. And when the two people in a relationship are also the High Warlock of Brooklyn and the Head of the New York Institute, their relationship problems have included impending war, mass genocide by a xenophobic psychopath, too many demons to count, and the raising of the Angel Raziel. They have been through a lot together, in a very short span of time.

As an immortal, time is a nebulous thing for Magnus. Days and weeks can go by in the blink of an eye. There are stretches of years where Magnus can't for the life of him remember anything that happened during that period. But when he is with Alec, Magnus' whole life seems to fall in sync with the shadowhunter - every second, every heartbeat. He has never felt so keenly the idea of now, never been so firmly present in the idea of here.

Magnus watches Alec clumsily attempting to plate the food he's bought in some sort of artistic arrangement, and he feels even more charmed.

"Sorry," Alec says after surveying his own handiwork, laughing a little at himself.

"I think it's perfect," Magnus tells him softly, and he thinks it was worth going through every heartbreak and every sorrow to find himself finally here, watching Alec's face light up.

They have dinner, finishing off with champagne, trdelnik and good vanilla ice cream. They tell each other about their day, share a few laughs over some mischief Max got into. They watch something on the television together, something horribly twee and Christmasy that makes Alec roll his eyes at least four times, and then they go to sleep with their arms wrapped around each other. It's the best birthday Magnus has had in centuries.

Perhaps, Magnus thinks, every day can be remade into something different, now that Alexander is here to make new memories with him.

#lucyxshadow #malecsanta17 #*fic17 #*gifts17

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