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venusluvrr · 3 years

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The Psychological Horror Manhwa “Killing Stalking” is not a Romance, but an Emotional Series Depicting the Codependent Relationship Between Two Ill Individuals

Content Warning!!: contains mentions of sexual abuse (rape) and mental illness.

Killing Stalking is an immensely twisted webcomic series, mainly popular within the Yaoi community for its boy on boy focused plotline. The story follows characters Yoon Bum (Bum), a shy, scrawny young man with a haunting past filled with abuse, and Oh Sangwoo (Sangwoo), a younger man who also has a quite damaging upbringing but masks it perfectly with his vibrant, extroverted personality. After being saved from a rape attempt during his time serving in the military, Bum develops a crush on his saviour, Sangwoo, from which an unhealthy obsession starts to arise and he eventually finds himself locating and breaking into the man’s home one day when he’s out. When he does, he discovers a terribly injured woman being held captive in his basement, and with further evidence, soon comes to the realization that his crush is actually a serial killer -- hence the name “Killing Stalking,” as Sangwoo kills and Bum stalks. For a very specific reason though, Sangwoo decides not to kill the man that had been stalking him, and instead holds him hostage in his custody. From here, the story goes into exceeding depth of the abnormal, toxic, and manipulative relationship the two form during their time spent together. By just the mere description of it, it’s a bit concerning to know that a large portion of readers still support Sangwoo and Bum’s relationship. In other words, they believe they truly loved each other and that the story was not only horror fiction but a romance as well. One could easily come to this conclusion by basing their relationship on the few parts within the novel where they showed affection towards each other -- for example when Bum allows Sangwoo to hug him to sleep when he suffered through the night, or my personal favourite, when Sangwoo buys Bum a stuffed frog keychain after finding out that he had an affinity for such creatures. But we cannot simply dismiss the underlying factors of their relationship because of some cute things they did that made our heart melt -- Sangwoo still abused Bum at his leisure which makes those moments quite meaningless in the sense of it all. What Sangwoo and Yoonbum shared can’t be classified as “love,” because even with their peculiar bond and endearing moments, the psychological damage they both endured played a bigger part in the way they perceived each other.

Many toxic relationships start out lovely and glamorous until the couple have become comfortable enough to start revealing some bad habits, but in Sangwoo and Bum’s case, they were already off to a bad start, as the reason they remained with each other was solely for reasons pertaining to their poor mental health.

At the time Sangwoo saved Bum in the military, Bum still suffered from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) -- a disorder he inferrably developed due to the fact that he grew up being constantly physically and sexually abused by the people around him. People with this illness may easily develop an infatuation for a person who shows them even the least bit of care; It can reach the point where they begin to idolize them and see them almost as a perfect human being -- which is exactly how Bum viewed Sangwoo after he helped him to escape a rape attempt. The likely specific term for what Sangwoo was to Bum is a Favourite Person (FP). To an individual suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder, their FP is everything -- their self-worth, identity and emotional dependency all rely on this one person, making them the center of their lives. In contrast to this sincere fondness, the only reason Sangwoo kept Bum alive was because of the man’s resemblance to his late mother -- the one person in his life who he truly loved. While his father was abusive and negligent, his mother tried her best to care for her son even while her own mental stability wasn’t so great either. Even though it was implied that he was responsible for the murder of both his mother and father in high school -- getting away with it scotch-free because of how perfectly executed his plan was -- he still shared a special bond with the woman, allowing her existence follow and continue to torutue him mentally as he grew older. When he saw Yoonbum, he felt as if she had been somewhat resurrected, or at least he could pretend so by dressing him up in his mother’s clothes and making him cook and do the chores; He also played the husband role by abusing and assaulting Bum just as his father did to his mother -- mostly just out of his own nature. Sangwoo had his own issues, “mommy issues,” and he initially needed to keep Bum alive so he could fulfill his own longing desires. Knowing the man’s character though, things wouldn’t end there and instead headed down a very gruesome and frightful path.

The very reasons that the two were drawn to each other we’re even more evident the longer they lived under the same roof. While Yoonbum continued to recall the perfect image he had of Sangwoo in his head, Sangwoo continued to manipulate the man in order to satisfy his own needs. A healthy relationship cannot be based on deceit, because one person will end up victimized instead of loved.

Oh Sangwoo is a sadistic sociopath with a history of kidnapping, abusing, raping and torturing innocent people, and because of his illness, he shows feels and shows no remorse for his actions and even proceeds to kill off his victims as they pleaded in objection. What some people don’t understand is that when Sangwoo met Bum, the only reason he treated him differently was not because he thought of him as special, but because he had a personal agenda that included making Bum think that was the truth and that he was indeed the favoured victim among many. It’s no surprise with the man’s manipulative personality that he would enjoy planting a lie in Bum’s head to make him stay and continue to do as he says, and this is confirmed whenever he returned back to his old destructive habits even after showing the man acts of affection. Yes, Sangwoo spared Bum’s life, clothed him and fed him, but as their bond grew, his narcissistic attitude was still more apparent than ever.

Upon meeting Bum for the first time, Sangwoo didn’t hesitate to aggressively break his ankles to prevent his mobility, he left the man within the dark confinement of his basement for a certain period of time before letting him out only after he had gained his trust. He made him sit in a chair to wash dishes and make dinner because he could no longer stand. Sangwoo also constantly dragged Bum down with derogatory words and statements every chance he could get, this included calling him a “retard,” and referring to him as a “disgusting” and “filthy” human being. As confirmed by the author, Sangwoo is also heterosexual, which is further proved by the homophobic remarks he made towards a significantly older man who was sexually attracted to him while murdering him with Bum’s aid. This fact alone is another one that should justify a strong point that demonstrates the true hostility of their relationship -- Yoonbum never gave his consent to have sex with Sangwoo, nor did he allow it to happen because “he wanted it.” He specifically used phrases such as, “No,” “Stop,” and “It hurts,” implying that sometimes there was no mutual agreement when they had sex and Sangwoo had actually raped him several times.

People with Borderline Personality Disorder have been reported to have difficulties seeing the faults in their partner -- this explains why Bum still held on to him. He chose to stay when he had the chance to escape, and with tears rolling down his face from excruciating pain he still told Sangwoo he loved him. In a scene where Bum is left alone with the police as they investigate the suspicions they have surrounding him, he questions them saying, “Could you kiss somebody like me? Could you love somebody like me?” As he believes nobody but Sangwoo could answer yes to those two questions, convinced that Sangwoo really does have feelings for him. It’s saddening to know that the poor man had successfully been lured into a trap, and because of his mental health it would be much harder for him to realize it.

To the readers that think, “Sangwoo and Yoonbum needed each other,” -- You’re not completely wrong. They did need each other in the way that they found somewhat of a saneness from each other’s presence, each using one another to each other’s benefit. But being together at the same time built on their insanity, as the presence of Sangwoo’s mother seemed to grow even more prevalent with Bum, who resembled her, also in the picture, and Yoonbum growing so unhealthily attached to Sangwoo that he constantly feared of abandonment and turned the sociopath into the only source of his happiness. They needed each other, but not for the right reasons. They were attached to each other, but there was no love, otherwise it would reflect throughout the story. One of the most debate-worthy scenes that challenge this fact is when Sangwoo is reported by an old lady in the hospital, the one that had ended his life, that he was calling out Bum’s name throughout the night as he lay in his deathbed. Those were his final words, and Yoonbum’s final word was also Sangwoo’s name before he was very well implied to have been hit by a car while he chased an illusion of the man he “loved.” Even I almost felt that this was solid proof that even through the tough and terrible of their relationship, deep inside, the two really were in love but could not express it in the right way due to their mental health issues -- after all, what someone makes of their final moments before death is much more meaningful than most of what they've done in their life entirely. But I came to realize that the only way I could support this relationship would be if they had met in an alternate universe where they did not suffer from such dreadful childhood trauma that made them into the hurting individual they had become before meeting each other. As difficult as it is for me to picture the two with different partners, it would be best if the two had not met at all as they only fed into the severity of their conditions.

#killing stalking #sangwoo #yoonbum #yaoi #horror #manhwa

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microsuedemouse · 3 years

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hhhhhhhhhhhhhwoof I hate fandom/ship drama

anyway I’ve been thinking about how. there is nothing, inherently wrong,, with being interested in exploring ships (or even non-romantic/non-sexual character dynamics!) that are unhealthy in-universe.

here’s something: there is value in recognising that a ship is unhealthy or toxic or abusive or whichever other descriptor you feel fits best. (I am going to be using ‘unhealthy’ as my umbrella word in this post; obviously it’s an understatement to call an abusive relationship ‘unhealthy’ but it’s still accurate and it encompasses the variety of things I’m talking about.) there is value in taking that as fact and acknowledging such in whatever exploratory work you may choose to create or engage in.

I wanna take a second here to clarify part of what I mean: it is not inherently wrong to enjoy an unhealthy ship, and you are not required to defend a ship as healthy/‘not abusive’ in order to justify your interest in it. this is a very weird result, imo, of purity culture and virtue signalling. when you have a healthy understanding of the difference between fiction and reality, and a recognition of what’s acceptable in reality and what’s compelling in fiction, it’s actually very worth exploring what interests and engages you about Fictional Bad Things.

you know that phenomenon where people love villains? a lot of discourse around purity culture naturally leads to the conclusion: “it is wrong to like villains.” most of us are capable of recognising that this... doesn’t make sense. because obviously, we aren’t - or at least, the great majority of us aren’t - claiming that we would like and support this person in reality, or that we would be entirely comfortable with the deeds they commit if those deeds took place in reality. we’re saying that the character appeals to and compels us for some reason, within fiction. that’s a different thing - and it’s usually a sign of good writing! it’s very worth exploring that experience: what about this villain makes you like them so much? what about them makes them relatable to you, or sympathetic to you, or perhaps even cathartic to you? these kinds of questions can offer both entertainment value and, possibly, some new insights into yourself as a person. those insights might turn out to be interesting and meaningless, or they might provide you with new ways to express yourself, or they might even offer you a new avenue for growth.

(moral purity often also extends to the conclusion ‘you shouldn’t enjoy stories in which the main character suffers, because it’s wrong to enjoy someone’s pain.’ we all know this makes no sense, because that includes most stories. a major reason human beings tell stories is to share in the emotional journey of a protagonist ultimately overcoming great obstacles. but anyway, this is a whole other issue, really.)

what I’m getting at is - the same can apply to ships. there are a few approaches to unhealthy ships, and I wouldn’t go so far as to say they stand on equal moral ground, but there are a variety of ways you might be able to explore them without it making you an inherently evil person, or whatever. it’s also worth noting that while, obviously, I’m expressing here what aligns with my moral position and encouraging you to think similarly - but, I also encourage you to think critically about your own moral positions. decide what is comfortable for you, and what feels right to engage with. it’s fine and it’s normal to draw your own lines in the sand and say, this is where the range of acceptable ends for me. I won’t support or engage with what’s on the other side.

to give a quick overview of some approaches I’m not as comfortable with: sometimes you’ll find a writer/artist/other fan who likes to depict a ship as totally healthy in a way that can only be described as out-of-character. sometimes this seems to be a denial of the actuality of the ship; I don’t like that so much because it’s often a refusal to acknowledge that their canonical behaviour/dynamic is bad. other times this is depicted as a sort of AU; this doesn’t bother me quite as much personally (often depending on what the writer’s overall attitudes seem to be) but it’s also often less interesting to me. in my experience, this is usually very self-indulgent work and has a lot more to do with the writer’s own experiences than with canon itself. which is fair, honestly. sometimes that’s cathartic for the writer and that’s enough - I don’t have to be into it personally to respect it.

another thing that crops up that’s kind of worrisome, imo, is when a writer/artist/etc. depicts the ship as in-character but denies that it’s unhealthy. now, in fairness, if you’re simply reading a fic or looking at a piece of fanart or something, you cannot always tell exactly how the creator thinks the ship actually operates. not everyone is always going to include a disclaimer that says ‘hey I don’t think this is actually Good.’ so try not to immediately ascribe intent to the writer/etc. unless you’ve seen them state outright somewhere: this isn’t abuse, it’s just cute! (or whatever it is they’re seeing.) at that point it is worth being concerned about what this person thinks constitutes a healthy relationship, and if you don’t feel good about supporting their work that’s entirely fair.

HOWEVER. there are also other approaches. two in particular stand out to me that I think are worth discussing. one is simply exploring the possibilities of an unhealthy relationship, with total acknowledgement of its flaws. one unhealthy dynamic that I admittedly find really engaging a lot of the time? ‘these two characters are Very obsessed with each other, and it sure ain’t healthy psychologically, but it’s definitely mutual.’ I love that shit. gimme a couple of unhinged, incredibly codependent pieces of shit, and you have my full attention. particularly if they’re on equal footing - if they’re damaging one another, it’s reciprocal, or at very least they’re both getting exactly what they want out of the relationship. obviously this would not be a dynamic I could support in real life! that’s terrible and I don’t want anyone to go through it! but in fictional characters it can be fascinating to explore. and if the content is going to upset or trigger certain fans: that’s why we use tags and warnings. AO3, where many of us go for a huge amount of our fan content, literally has a whole system in place for precisely this purpose: so we can let each other know what’s inside, and make informed choices about what we want to consume.

the other common approach is the redemption arc. it’s always gonna be up to you which characters you consider redeemable and which ones you don’t - that’s okay. again, it’s your choice what content to engage and what to pass over. but as people we’re traditionally very fond of the redemption arc story, and as fans we love to create the redemption arcs our favourite characters don’t get to live out in canon. because we love something about the character and want to explore them further. like I said earlier, that in itself is worth giving some thought to. sometimes we’ll even end up writing partial redemptions: this character goes from totally reprehensible to kind of appealingly awful. the ship goes from abusive to a much more regular level of fucked up. that can definitely be an interesting story in itself, and it’s okay if you want to explore it.

the main thing is that you always exercise your ability to think critically about what you’re consuming and why you like it - which, honestly, you should be trying to do all of the time, anyway. be clear about what you do and don’t endorse, about what your actual values are, about where you draw the line. (as both an example and a disclaimer, since I know I still have followers from A Certain Fandom where this cropped up a lot before I mostly dipped: one line that I personally draw, and always will, is at ships involving an adult and a literal child. I am not comfortable with exploring this even in the hypothetical space of fan content. it is too objectionable to be compelling.)

go forth. explore your unhealthy ships and shitty favourite characters. experiment and learn why they compel you. write properly-labelled fanfic about them hurting each other and loving it. just remember that everyone has different boundaries, and that fiction and reality are very separate spaces. acknowledge that what you’re enjoying is not inherently right or acceptable in real life just because you enjoy it in a story, and it doesn’t have to be. if you’re a content creator, consider portraying these things in such a way that your audience is well aware of your position on the matter, in order to help them also understand what is and isn’t healthy. be a ruthless writer and a kind person, and you’ll do just fine.

#this got SO long jesus christ #anyway there's a reason I no longer go into ship tags or engage heavily with meta fandom #I like just throwing my fic over the fence and then scuttling away #long post #fandom #shipping

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thecloserkin · 4 years

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book review: Meg Rosoff, How I Live Now (2004)

Genre: Young Adult

Is it the main pairing: yes

Is it canon: yes

Is it explicit: no

Is it endgame: yes

Is it shippable: yes

Bottom line: It finally happened, I broke my own “no cousincest—in this house we turn the TABOO dial up to eleven” rule. In my defense this book is gobsmackingly good.

Lately I’ve been mulling on the difference between books about teenagers and books for teenagers. This one is the former, and a joy to reread as an adult. Our American heroine Daisy is sent across the pond to live with her British cousins; a war breaks out; details are scant but who cares about the war, she starts fucking one of the cousins. She describes it as “falling into sexual and emotional thrall” she said THRALL I am living for it. On a scale from “pure” to “problematic” this ship is almost all light and no darkness—what darkness menaces our protagonists emanates from outside the charmed circle of their big ol’ farmhouse and their sheepdogs and their goat:

The real truth is that the war didn’t have much to do with it except that it provided a perfect limbo in which two people who were too young and too related could start kissing without anything or anyone making us stop. There were no parents, no teachers, no schedules. There was no where to go and nothing to do that would remind us that this sort of thing didn’t happen in the Real World. There no longer was any Real World.

The notion of carving out an idyll where you & the object of your desire spend all day doing nothing but drink each other up? It’s attractive even for those of us conducting mundane relationships in the “real” world. Maybe especially for those of us in the real world, where we compartmentalize our relationships and no one person can fill every filament in our universe. Daisy’s cousins live a cloistered life in the countryside and within a week she’s saying stuff like “I felt like I’d belonged to this house for centuries.” Which is an awfully dramatic way of saying she never felt like she belonged in New York. She doesn’t just fall for Cousin Edmond; she falls for the whole telepathic dog-whispering cousinly clan and their big anarchist energy. When Daisy, an only child, says “I had about as much experience with sex and boyfriends as I did with brothers and sisters,” she is intentionally conflating romantic and familial relationships and I am 1000% here for it. Sure it’s technically cousincest but it feels claustrophobic and codependent and everything I want out of an incest ship.

Every step of Daisy’s obsessive infatuation is chronicled with agonizing tenderness:

I wondered if that’s the feeling you’re supposed to have when your cousin touches a totally innocent part of your anatomy that’s fully clothed.

that’s right it’s the thought and the intention and the pining behind the touch, not the bare fact of physical contact.

Things were so intense I was sure that other people could hear the hum coming off of us.

Imagine desire rising like mist from the surface of one’s skin. And the “other people” part of the equation is important, because it’s the sneaking around behind the other kids’ backs that gives urgency to their coupling:

we started sleeping most of the daylight hours so we could be awake at night when everyone else was in bed … Then we would sleep for a little while and eventually reappear and try to act normal

But what is “normal”? There are no adults and no rules; nothing is forbidden save that they themselves deem it so. What then explains Daisy’s conviction that this is “not a good idea”? Why shroud their affair in secrecy if the most powerful reaction they provoke from smol!cousin who learns about Daisy/Edmond is “Well I’m glad you love him because I do too”? That’s pretty anticlimactic given the lengths Daisy & Edmond have gone to be stealthy. It also emphasizes (in case we’ve forgotten that Daisy has both no siblings and no boyfriends) how romantic & familial attachments spring from a common source. I think what the text is getting at here is that it’s dangerous to put all your eggs in one basket the way Daisy puts all hers in Edmond. It’s dangerous and unhealthy to make one person your whole world, as we see later when Daisy comes to much grief. At no point, however, does she regret her decision.

we could try and try to get enough of each other but it was llike some witch’s curse where the more we tried to stop being hungry the more starving we got.

That’s a hard-hitting simile right there. The thing about curses in fairy tales is they don’t always do what they’re designed to do; frequently they accomplish different ends entirely. If we look at what Daisy’s insatiable hunger for Edmond is displacing we note that Daisy is no stranger to the feeling of constant, gnawing, unsatiated hunger because Daisy has an eating disorder. In her own words:

at first not wanting to get poisoned by my stepmother and how much it annoyed her and how after a while I discovered I liked the feeling of being hungry and the fact that it drove everyone stark raving mad and cost my father a fortune in shrinks and also it was something I was good at.

…which is just about the world’s most cogent account of eating disorders as quests for control & autonomy. By the end of the novel she no longer experiences hunger as “a punishment or a crime or a weapon or a mode of self-destruction” and that's something, anyway.

Y’all know I’m a big skimmer right? I mention this because I want you to take my full meaning when I say I read every single word of this (very short) novel. The syntax helped—most sentences are structured like so: “… and …. and … and then …” but it was engrossing af and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone use Ironic Capitalization to such devastating effect. The stylistic choice to use zero dialogue brackets means Daisy’s thoughts and Edmond’s thoughts (Edmond’s a telepath) and external action and internal commentary all run together. I didn’t find this confusing btw I just found it extremely effective.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Daisy and Edmond are separated at about the one-third mark and she spends the remainder of the book trying to get back to him, traversing a war-torn countryside with Edmond’s smol!sister and his dog in tow (since Daisy is a city girl who can’t even read a compass, maybe it’s more accurate to say smol!cousin + dog have Daisy in tow):

I guess the difference between Gin and me is that when Gin got shut in the barn she thought Edmond didn’t love her anymore but because I could feel Edmond out there somewhere always loving me I didn’t have to howl all night.

The parallel between Edmond’s girl and Edmond’s dog is not an idle one. There’s consistent strain of anticapitalist sentiment that runs through this book, that comes out most strongly in the relationships between Daisy’s cousins and their animals. Some military junta appropriates the farmhouse and displaces Daisy, her cousins, and the menagerie of animals that depend on them—that’s how Edmond and Daisy become separated, they’re “relocated.” The army is hierarchal and in wartime, the army is in charge. By contrast, Daisy’s cousins model a nonhierarchical kind of relationship with their animals, a relationship based on reciprocal obligations rather than dominating other people. “At times,” professes Daisy, “I thought I was more animal than human.” In other words, human beings live under an absolutely barbaric system, and it’s often more “humane” to behave like animals. It’s Edmond’s sheepdog who proves key to Daisy’s successful escape. City girl Daisy still can’t wrap her head around it:

one of the things I most dislike about nature, namely that the rules are not at all precise. Like when Piper says I’m pretty sure that mushrooms aren’t poisonous.

But nature’s strength lies precisely in the fuzziness of its rules! It encourages interdependence & reliance on others, rather than trying to go it alone as an atomized individual. So surviving on the run actually forces one to prioritize community (however you define it) over individual, which has salutary effects on Daisy, who reports “Somewhere along the way I’d lost the will not to eat.” She’s defeated her eating disorder, that’s good news. Unfortunately, Edmond and Daisy are not even reunited before she’s expelled from England and shipped back to America for Reasons. Dw she comes back! As soon as the borders reopen she comes back:

The soldier had stamped my passport FAMILY in heavy black capital letters and I checked it now for reassurance because I liked how fierce the word looked.

Very powerful passage but now for the ending. Let’s not talk about that ending. I don’t know why I called this a good book I am still incredulous we got THAT ending after everything we went through brb I’m suing Meg Rosoff for emotional damages

#book review #how i live now

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blurhawaii · 4 years

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Yuletide 2019

dear yuletide writer,

hello and happy yuletide! this is my fifth year taking part and my longest letter yet so i’m just going to jump right in. the suggestions are guidelines. if you’ve got a great idea, go for it. i only ask that you steer clear of my dislikes.

feel free to go through my tumblr for each of these fandoms. i should have tags for them, tho your mileage may vary. i might even have more stuff on my side blog: here. likes:

dysfunctional relationships eg. codependency, messed up father/son dynamics, enemies to lovers, power imbalances.

found family

big loyalty kink. love it when trust is earned and kept.

praise kink

vulnerability in men

open and honest communication between partners

i love ot3s. it’s the journey of them getting together and making it work that interests me the most. or how an established pair goes about bringing in a third person.

stories set in canon. or a divergence of canon.

dark/bleak fics. don’t be afraid to drag characters through the mud. happy endings are welcome but i like the struggle.

i’m fine with anything from gen to porn but would be happiest with something in the middle. i love first times.

canon typical violence is fine and to be expected from some of my choices of fandoms.

detective stories/film noir

magical realism/cosmic horror. weird hints of it in an otherwise normal universe

redemption arcs

characters and relationships are more important than plot for me

dislikes:

AUs that are completely disconnected from canon e.g. coffee shop AUs.

established relationships

crossovers

genderbending

feminisation of male characters

fics that are entirely fluff

A/B/O fics

PWP

mpreg

scat/watersports

first person fics (i have no problem with second person fics tho if you think that could work. they really wow me when done well.)

The Departed (2006) *Billy Costigan *Sean Dignam

one of my favourite films ever. i request it every year so you can't really go wrong with this as i am thirsty for anything. most of my love is for dignam and his tough love attitude towards his job and the undercovers he's responsible for. it's obvious he cares, i don't think you could do a job like that and not care, but those rare and few moments when he softens around billy --we need you, pal-- that's what i would like to see more of. i have written a couple of departed fics myself, centred around costigan/dignam, but in all honesty, i would be happy with anything involving them both. shipping is preferred but whatever you are comfortable with is fine. due to the nature of the film, i am perfectly comfortable with violence and the screwed up relationship they are bound to have. the friction born of the situation vs the fact that they need each other to get through this is what i am all about.

codependency, power imbalances and enemies to lovers tropes are abound here.

fics where billy lives are my usual go-to. the survivability of being shot in the head, that kind of stuff can be hand waved away in fic, and i'd love something that explores the angst of billy's ‘where the hell were you when i needed you’ reaction towards dignam following that ending.

or a canon divergence fic with their totally antagonistic relationship being front and centre. i just ask that there be an underlying level of affection, no matter how buried. when billy is undercover, there’s a special kind of relationship that comes with dignam and queenan being the only people he can talk to.

something i’ve never seen for this but would actually love: a time loop/groundhog day fic

Jurassic Park Original Trilogy (Movies)

*Sarah Harding *Ian Malcolm *Nick Van Owen

i originally wasn’t going to ask for this again this year (i was lucky enough to get treated with a fic a couple of years ago) but then someone other than myself nominated nick van owen which surprised and delighted me and i figured why the hell not.

my passion here is the ot3 potential. i view these three in the same way i view the trio in the first film, meaning i see them as three people who have bonded over a traumatic experience and come out of it forever linked in some way. they spend the entire film looking out for each other and keeping each other safe, and they all separately take care of ian’s daughter at one point and i am fascinated by this and how that could continue in the future. (in fact, i love stories where adults treat kids like adults, not talking down to them–see any shane black film.) i’m looking for an actual relationship between them but would be happy with anything that showcased a connection with every side of this triangle.

anything post-film with them dealing or not dealing with what happened would be amazing. there are quite a few fics based around this idea for the first film’s trio, i’d love to see something like that for these three. (i’ve always been kind of bitter about the way nick just disappears for the last act but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ that’s what fics are for, i guess.)

i don’t like the jurassic world films but i’m fine with fics that take that future into account. a lot of the trauma for these characters comes from the idea that the parks still exist and continue to fuck people up.

Godless (TV 2017)

*Roy Goode *Bill McNue *Alice Fletcher

i’m a massive fan of westerns. the harsh way of life, the violence, the isolation, drawn out revenge plots, the murkiness of good vs evil or sheriff vs anti-hero, the importance of honour and heroism and how that differs for men and women, especially in this universe with its town full of widows. having said all that, i’m still very much a sucker for cool cowboys in a shallow female way.

as you’ve probably already gathered my favourite thing is turning every love triangle into an ot3. so i’d love a fic post canon where roy comes back after realising found family is just as important as real family despite frank’s influence. i imagine bill would try to do the gentlemanly/self depreciating thing of bowing out and letting roy and alice be together but i’d love for alice to actually get a say in this where she wasn’t allowed in the show. however you jigsaw them together my main thing is that bill doesn’t get left out.

i feel the roy/bill aspect in particular could be explored a lot more. i love that they don’t hate each on sight. they learn mutual respect and then smoothly move around each other during the gunfight at the end. (bill’s deteriorating eyesight side plot also fascinates me, how it goes with his loss of purpose -”losing his shadow”- and comes back when teaming up with roy to defend the town. maybe there’s a fic possibility where it flares up again due to his insecurity of roy coming between him and alice. either way, the hints of magical realism here and with frank’s repeated insistence that he’s seen his death and this ain’t it are great and i wouldn’t mind seeing more of that.)

the usual ideas of western masculinity get all twisted around when roy and bill are in the presence of alice and they both seem kind of subby towards her, which yes please. the way alice kisses the scar she gave roy and the fact that he simply lets her is *chef kiss* because i also love the parallel that bill got shot in the hip trying to get revenge for alice. they all have scars that tie them together.

i’m actually very okay with letting them be soft with each other after all of their tragedy.

honest communication between partners could work wonders here.

Barry (TV 2018)

*Barry Berkman *Monroe Fuches

i expected to like this show. dark comedy, depressed hitman, henry winkler, it’s a perfect combination of things. i didn’t expect to get obsessed with barry’s obvious fucked up father-figure hangups. but hey ho, i was pleasantly surprised.

pretty much every one of barry’s relationships in this show has an element of fucked-upness but the barry/fuches one is by far the worst. it’s codependent, it’s manipulative, it’s a little abusive, the power is constantly flip-flopping and most importantly there’s the father/son dynamic that could so easily tip over into something sexual. it’s everything i love. any time fuches calls barry “his boy” it kills me. and i am fascinated by the way barry can go from needy and touch starved to a rampaging killer hunting fuches down by the end and still have that dynamic going strong.

the parallels between them and the barry/gene cousineau relationship, which is fucked up too just in a very different way, are great. love the jealousy it brings and i would even be into a fic set post the season 2 ending, if you could find a way to swing that. though, while i like a little darkness, i would still rather see them fall back into old unhealthy habits than kill each other.

any kind of prequel fic would be amazing too.

and just to be clear i’m more than okay with a sexual relationship between these two but if you don’t want to write it that’s fine. I’d just like all the other aspects of their shitty relationship delved into.

L.A. Confidential (1997)

*Bud White *Ed Exley

pretty much all of my bullet pointed likes come into play here. i’ve nominated two characters but i’d be happy with almost any combination of the characters available in the tagset as long as exley is involved in some way.

ships i like: bud/exley, exley/vincennes, bud/exley/lynn

but if we matched purely on both bud and exley then:

i love the opposites attract partnership bud and exley have and i like that they both seem angry at their attraction to each other. hate-sex with reluctant feelings? always good. i'd love anything that deals with their perceived difference in intellect and/or education. bud being turned-on by exley's smarts, exley realizing how much he's underestimated bud, them being mutually impressed by each other.

if you choose to go down the ot3 route then:

i love fics where exley shows up in arizona and they fall into weird domesticity. i love seeing how three people--especially three people who aren't used to the idea of poly relationships--work their way towards realizing and accepting what they want.

and while i’m not sure what you could do with this knowledge, i’d just like to add that i’ve read the book and i’m somewhat obsessed with the existence of dream-a-dreamland in general. if you could incorporate that in any way i’d be hugely impressed.

POKEMON Detective Pikachu (2019)

*Harry Goodman *Hide Yoshida

this is totally a last minute request that i’ve edited in but is by no means less wanted than the others. i watched this film back when it came out and was honestly surprised by how much i enjoyed it. i’m a massive pokemon fan and have been since i got my pokemon red when i was seven years old and, let me tell you, getting to see all those growlithes waddling about the real world was like a childhood dream come true.

i had a good time and i moved on.

a few days ago i stumbled on a piece of art : here : and it was like the little goblin that is my brain just sat up straight. the very concept of these characters together had never crossed my mind before that but then suddenly the desire for this just casually strolled through my entire headspace, turning on every light as it went.

i love detective stories, i love cop partnerships, i love hot single dads who happen to be cops with cute little pokemon cop partners. i love that harry is kind of a shitty father but he’s now trying his best. i love that hide had nothing but praise and respect for harry when he meets with tim and that he knew things like tim wanting to be a pokemon trainer when he was younger (meaning he and harry had talked about stuff like this.) i love that hide inexplicably has a spare key to harry’s apartment in his desk drawer. i love how absolutely certain hide was in saying harry loved his son more than anything in the world.

there’s history there is what i’m saying, and i’d love to know more about it.

anything set pre-film would be cool. loose cannon harry throwing his whole being into his job to deal with the loss of his wife and his fractured relationship with his son. hide the tired lieutenant trying to rein him in, quietly talking about tim together, keeping him grounded and safe. all up until he can’t, that is. (great angst potential with hide genuinely believing harry is dead.)

anything set post-film would be even better. harry struggling to find balance between being a father and a cop. probably doing a shitty job at it in the beginning. hide trying to help. would love for tim to be an actual presence (outsider POV could be amazing here.)

may sound strange but my favourite thing that used to happen in digimon a lot is when characters would interact with each other digimon partner. i would be massively into a fic about the two of them growing closer through each other’s pokemon partner.

thank you writer and best of luck.

#yuletide #yuletide 2019

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ryodan · 7 years

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Hey I don't ship sns so I don't really know what goes on but what do you mean by sns = sasuke exclusion and naruto wanking? Just a curious person over here 😅

I didn’t say SNS = Sasuke exclusion and Naruto wanking, I said it’s based off a lot of that. More so the shippers than the ship itself (But that’s really the case with sasuke in a lot of ships and that is why I don’t particularly associate with any shipping fandom..but sns takes the cake lol) . The fandom consists of mainly naruto uzumaki stans (and i love him!! I love the sunshine boy but no fav is perfect) with a blind sense of hero worship. They view Naruto as this untainted perfect guy who can do no wrong, that saved~ sasuke using the power of

Like sasukes entire existence revolves around him, like he begins and ends with him, like he is the only thing that matters to him, like he is obsessed with him

(no matter how unhealthy that sounds lol), like sasuke as an entity can only exist codependent to naruto. It’s hard to articulate what point i am trying to get across but some examples I can think of at the top of my head

-Something they bring up a lot ‘sasuke cared more about naruto than itachi in the reunion arc’ and it’s literally???? Sasuke, was of course worried to hear his best friend is target to a man who murdered his entire family but the entire volume (17) was filled with flashbacks of the time sasuke’s entire family was murdered. He headed towards itachi with his sharingan activated because of the sheer emotion caused by ‘that man’ being there. When he saw itachi it was blind rage and hurt because after all this itachi ignored him…and ofc we all know what happened next. It gets annoying seeing such a massive sasuke moment get turned into hE lOveS nAruTo sO mUCh. I don’t see Sasuke stans attempt to make Narutos rasengan scene about Sasuke?? Why is Sasuke getting mentally tortured turned into lOvE??

-They praise Naruto for the first fight and it’s like? How can you sleep on the fact that Naruto just told sasuke he would break every bone in his body to make him understand his feelings of wanting to bring him back…but it’s okay because he said he’s doing it beCauSe HE’s A fRiEnD.

-’Sasuke wanted to kill Naruto because he is his oNLY frIEND the ONE he CaRES ABOUT THE MOST’ Naruto is Sasukes best friend, given fact. But Sasuke never showed any discrimination in how much he cares about the members of team 7..he loves all of them..any of them would have awakened mangekyo for him as shown when he awoke kagatsuchi during his Bee fight and the fact that whenever he thinks about team 7 he always thinks about all them is further proof. It’s like they are forgetting Sasuke just intended to leave the village quietly but both Sakura and Naruto chased him and he initially told them the exact same thing. ‘dont mind me anymore’ when Naruto attacked him first, sasuke was like ‘i have no choice do i, naruto?’ and bitch punched him into the valley. The fight at first was just a petty sasuke goading his strength to Naruto bc of Itachi’s ignoring towards him..and then escalated to his manipulated past leading him to want to kill Naruto bc the way to awake mangekyo (as he knew at the time) was to ‘kill your best friend’..something he didn’t do because ‘i will not be your puppet’ ‘i didnt want to obtain power doing it the way he told me to’ but nO it’s because he LoVes nAruto MorE tHan AnyThInG THats WHY he ChidOriED hIM and AlmOSt RyukA JUTsud HiM. I do think some factor of it was at the end he couldn’t kill his best friend while he was helpless, but sasuke doesn’t really lie about his feelings- he is pretty straight forward usually.

-They also praise naruto for the land of iron arc but that is arguably his worst moment. Sasuke having just fought danzo made the source of his distress very clear: the massacre’s truth, the massacre being thrown at his beloved older brother, and the way the Uchihas were treated in Konoha prior to the massacre. The moment I knew how much pain it was giving him was when he was shouting ‘how many uchihas did you kill in order to get that right arm?’

and here is where the issue comes in. Naruto knows the truth, Obito told him. Yet, when he seeks out Sasuke he tries to make the issue of genocide #relatable. oh sasook ik about loneliness too, did i tell u about the time i was sO alone??? Haha i could have been like u, nvm that ik about the curse of hatred and watch me not mention the issue of the mass genocide!11! Youre just angry bc u LOVE ur family : )

And his ass gets praised for it??? it’s so confusing??? He just ignored a national crime on behalf of his village (as an institute) and he gets away with it bc yOu are My fRiend

These are a few examples but I could go on. Idk if they self insert into sasuke, or use him to blindly wank their fav but it’s annoying enough to make me step away from the fandom. Like, chill mate its not that deep. it’s just anime, you don’t have to lie to yourself and keep saying sasuke/naruto hate _ and only love each other!11!! it’s very transparent and almost pathetic. No one ever choked from swallowing their pride and facts are facts even if you turn a blind eye.

I still ship SNS by the way, it gets a pass because Naruto always tirelessly wanted to understand sasuke..he also wanted to end the cycle of hatred and stop history from repeating itself which is pretty noble. In terms of sasuke, growing up and seeing naruto trying to bond with people gave him hope and I think thats beautiful. The bond they share represents so many themes of the story, it’s kind of like they are a ‘it all leads to this’ type thing. Their dynamic is also hella cute and they had some cute ass moments as kids.The bond is also real deep, its like soul deep. The relationship itself is very unhealthy because theyre both insisting they are right and one of them tries to shove his opinion down the others throat and the other reacts violently to it. After it’s resolve its great tho so there we go it was worth it. I love sns despite how messy it is but the fandom has it’s hand far up it’s own ass and feeds itself its own bullshit. They claim they are ‘real’ fans and pretend they own this fictional ass guy yet use him to wank their fave..yet erase some of his most important bonds and character arcs to wank their fav. It’s ugly and i want no part of it.

#anti sasunarusasu fandom #sasuke uchiha #pro sasuke #naruto uzumaki critical #sinnamon roll #naruto

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