X-Men First Class COMPLETE fic: Late Bloomer (33/33)
Phew. Done. This final chapter is almost certainly full of mistakes, absolutely definitely full of angst and may not make sense, but, you know, DONE. YAY.
I think the whole fic clocks in at around 80,000 words all told. Never again. Seriously. Not ever doing this again.
Chapters 1-28:
Late Bloomer on
( Read more... )
I think the whole fic clocks in at around 80,000 words all told. Never again. Seriously. Not ever doing this again.
Chapters 1-28:
Late Bloomer on
( Read more... )
Yes, I love Clint in all his incarnations, most of which I know nothing about. Huh. I have no idea how this happened.
*grin* Porn! definitely easy reading. Though I gotta say, I'm fine with lack of plot but I find there needs to be FEELINGS in porn for me to enjoy it. Angsty feelings are the bestest, obviously, but fuzzy feelings work to. Without them it's all just descriptions of grinding bodies and I only skim the dialogue.
I'm trying to scientifically describe what I read too... but failing. I read too much stuff these days, so basically if it's different and it doesn't make me want to cry I'm all for it. And if it reads like a romance novel, all the better.
Ah, deaf!Clint. There's too much stuff to fuck up in the world as a writer, seriously. I think the only thing with writing about a disability is that if you get it wrong it's insulting. Whereas if I get the logistics of a high school prom wrong nobody is going to care. I'm a firm believer in writing what you know, it takes SO MUCH LESS RESEARCH. Hence the love of comic book science and fantasy worlds. But if you wrote me deaf Clint I wouldn't know if you fucked it up and we could shamelessly enjoy our imagined version of reality in secret.
There must be some theory somewhere about the need to suspend your own disbelief as a writer. The handwavy 'I don't know how they got from point A to point B, LET'S JUST CUT THERE' that I guess most people do and most readers don't even blink at always manages to spoil things a bit for me when I'm writing. If I can't work out the details I can't quite believe it. So maybe deaf!Clint wouldn't be fun to write. Though he'd still be super-fun for me to read.
I have to believe it's getting better. Oh god, this world we live in. You can struggle to change things, but sometimes you just gotta sit back and hope.
I didn't get The Women as finished as I wanted to on holiday because I forgot to copy your last chapter onto my laptop, but it's nearly there. Just a few things to sort out! And Mary's beauty will not be the whole chapter, but it does crop up once or twice. Or three times.
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There definitely needs to be feelings in porn, definitely, definitely! Nothing is sexier. Even the tiniest touch is better than a full-on gangbang if there are ~~*feeeeelings*~~. Also, I admit I find dialogue really, really hard (heh) to deal with in a lot of written porn. Some people have the skill, but most of the time I'm just like *recoil* "guh! Captain America would never use such language!" Which is weird, because dirty-talk is definitely a turn on for me in real life. At this stage I'm pretty sure all the rules of human sexuality are just God fucking with us.
if it's different and it doesn't make me want to cry I'm all for it.
Same here, only the opposite with the cry part. BRING ON THE CRIES. Okay, I admit, I also totally love it when the author pulls a happy ending out of their butt.
I think the only thing with writing about a disability is that if you get it wrong it's insulting. Whereas if I get the logistics of a high school prom wrong nobody is going to care.
Super true. I think the problem is that as you say, it takes more research, and lots of people either don't realise that (like, when they treat disabilities/minorities as some kind of fantasy race like elves and they just make it up as they go along) or are simply too lazy to do the research. Also people want to link disabilities into themes for able-bodied people, like people in wheelchairs are just lessons for the rest of us about living your dream despite your limitations, or deaf people are just here show us the beauty of colours. Or whatever. Point is, THAT'S GROSS, DON'T DO THAT.
But I still want to write deaf!Clint. I remember a prompt on the kinkmeme a while back about Clint being the only one unaffected by an assailant attacking the Avengers with the paralysing sonic screwdriver from Iron Man. That sounds badass.
I think one thing I still haven't got the hang of as a writer is the kind of slight-of-hand where there's plot holes or fact gaps, but the audience doesn't even notice it. I respect that skill, because to some extent it's got to be necessary if you want to write anything shorter than the Lord of the Rings, right?
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And the costume. OH GOD, the EMH costume's pointy mask is a thing of beauty. And the miniskirt one in that picture? Just... what? I mean... what? I think my brain is stuck on a loop of baffled, delighted disbelief.
Aw, I love the idea of Steve not wanting to say dirty stuff. I can just imagine him blushing like crazy at some of the stuff coming out of Tony's mouth, and then finally stopping dead and saying "Tony, I don't mind you describing body parts but please don't blaspheme. How about saying 'Oh golly, yeah' instead?" And Tony would totally facepalm except that his hands are tied to the bedframe.
WHY DO PEOPLE WANT TO CRY?? A few people commented on DMDM and said it made them cry and I felt like, WHAT? NOOEEE, I'M SO SORRY! I DIDN'T MEAN TO MAKE YOU SAD! IT'S A HAPPY FLUFFY FIC! THERE ARE JOKES! IT'S MEANT TO MAKE YOU LAUGH. There are only a handful of fics that have honestly made me cry and while they make an impact they also make me REALLY MISERABLE for like, two days.
Oh god, the disability-as-a-life-lesson thing. No. NO.
The paralysing sonic screwdrivdr plot sounds awesome. And then hypothetical!author would just write totally unrelated fics in the same 'verse, since Clint's deafness was already established. And it would just be a fact. I think it would be a real test of an author, especially one who doesn't have personal experience of deafness, to consider how it might have shaped Clint's character and keep that in another story in the verse where it's never actually mentioned or overtly referred to. Challenge definitely not accepted for me, that shit is hard.
Hmm, sleight of hand? I only read it once because it was SAD, but there was a fic of yours written in interview transcripts and journal entries and stuff. I can't remember if there were plot holes or anything, but I feel that it was much more roughly sketched than most of your stories and it still worked really well. And it stretched across twenty years or something, but it was short. So... uh. You can definitely do it, is my basic point.
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Btw, just to illustrate how much I love the Hawkeye costume, here's my favourite screen shot from EMH (the ellipsis was added by me when I originally emailed it to Tessa). Either the artists love the hood too, or Hawkeye himself is channeling his spirit through their fingers.
"Tony, I don't mind you describing body parts but please don't blaspheme. How about saying 'Oh golly, yeah' instead?"
ARRRGGHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA*snorts*. Yeah. That's Steve. Definitely. And with his stamina, he never gets so worked up he doesn't still have the breath to scold Tony.
Aw man I'm sorry to hear that sad!fics made you miserable :( now I feel bad for writing "cry!" all through DMDM. I swear I meant it as a good thing! I'm sure those readers wouldn't have told you they cried unless they enjoyed a good cry. Stuff that makes me depressed for two days (like this movie I saw in the film festival last week, it was called Lore, omg don't watch it) never make me cry, they just make me dead inside. The stuff that makes me cry is cathartic, it's stuff where the emotions are uplifting even while they're distressing, where it's horrible because it suddenly makes clear how much has been lost and how wonderful the lost thing was (*cough*Boden's Mate*cough*). Wait, or am I just a masochist? Anyway, your readers were probably just crying with joy when Coulson came back.
Yeah, deaf!Clint would be such a hard thing to shape because you want to keep him in character (and changing him too much feels like it sends the wrong message, because you don't want to imply that being deaf turns someone into a totally different person). But I'd want to write him being deaf from childhood, because that seems much more interesting, and that obviously would have a huge effect on the person he became. So maybe it would be easier to have the deafness be as the result of an injury during SHIELD operations. But then how did he learn sign language at such a late age, and why would he bother if he has enough sensation left to use a hearing aid? Did Nat know sign language from her time as a spy, did she teach him?
Wait, I bet she did, I bet they stayed up every night after missions, and he took his hearing aid out so that he had to guess from her lips what her hands were saying. It was the first time he really interacted with someone without hearing them, since SHIELD had given him the uber-sweet aids right before he got out of the hospital. It made him realise how much people say with their faces and bodies, how little the spoken word really mattered to communication. CLINT AND NAT <3 BUDDIES FOREVER.
Heh heh, it was White Noise and writing it was like trying to convince a cat to have a bath. I'm glad it held together. Lol, I just went to check that it was called "White Noise" and I wasn't thinking of something else, and it was the fill where we had our first big conversation! ~~CUUUUUTE~~ ...ew, now past!me is self pimping. I'll stop reading there.
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Ahahaha, yes, Steve never gets out of breath during sex and he never shuts up either. Also he has learned that this is the only time he can get Tony to hold still long enough to have a serious conversation about Avengers matters, so half the time he's saying "Tony, please don't swear" and the other half it's "So Hawkeye was underused in that last battle, we need to review our strategy on that. Do you have any thoughts? No? Ok, I'll just wait while you think about it." And he refuses to do anything further until Tony has made a valid contribution.
Aw, I assumed CRY was a good thing... and I got all happy when you laughed at the jokes too, heeee, I write them and I snigger at them but I'm surprised when other people do too. IRL I can't tell a funny story to save my life, thank god for the written word.
The stuff that makes me cry is cathartic, it's stuff where the emotions are uplifting even while they're distressing, where it's horrible because it suddenly makes clear how much has been lost and how wonderful the lost thing was
Arrrrgh, I know exactly what you mean, that is incredibly powerful... but unfortunately my brain focuses on the IT'S LOST aspect rather than IT WAS WONDERFUL, so it's pretty much the thing I hate reading the most. Which is awful, because it's really good stuff. My emotions just can't take it, unless I actually want to cry and eat ice cream all day (which.. everyone needs to sometimes). Also I have serious problems consoling myself with but it's not actually real. Because it is, goddamnit.
Yeah, I read a deaf!Clint ficlet where he'd been deaf from childhood and he basically didn't talk, which kind of makes him - well, not Clint, anyway. I think it might be interesting to write him as deaf from before SHIELD, especially if it were the comic book style verse where he was taken under Natasha's wing quite early on. Possibly it happened when he was beaten and left for dead by the first bunch of circus folks. So he's coping with being deaf when he sets up his act as The Amazing Hawkeye, but it's not until he meets Nat that he learns sign language, and suddenly she's the person that it's easiest for him to communicate with. (And since he's a carnie and then basically a criminal it's hard for him to get his hands on a decent hearing aid.) Oh, if only I could click my fingers and have a fic magically appear from all of this. Why are they such hard work?
AND WHY MUST THERE BE CONFLICTING HEADCANONS? Because yes, she totally taught him after missions or when they were in safehouses, having made him take his aids out, and that's why he has superspy people-reading skills as well as marksmanship. And in exchange he made her throw playing cards and shoot rubber bands until she was almost as good as him. And now they sit next to each other in briefings so they can talk under the table.
AWWWWW, yeah, I remember that conversation - Alphas and Omegas, right? Hahaha, no, I don't want to go and reread myself trying desperately to have worthwhile opinions, but I am very glad both that fic and that conversation exist :-D When I read it I remember thinking... wow, I'll never be able to do that. So it was worth the pain, dude. AND OUCH, DEAR GOD, now I remember exactly how it ended, that one was a punch in the gut. But very, very good.
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I mean, what the hell kind of hawk is that supposed to be?
Well, out of interest I googled a few combinations of "bird" and "fuchsia" and I don't know about birds of prey, but the Purple Martin of North America looks like a sassy little fucker.
Hahaha omg Steve noooo, don't blueball Tony into aligning with your policy ideas. SLEEPING YOUR WAY INTO A POSITION OF POWER IS WRONG, STEVE. Oh, wait, now I'm imagining pre-serum!Steve being in the line up position for the serum, but they're going to pick one of the regular soldiers... until Steve seduces Colonel Phillips and Dr Erskine and sexes them into giving him the serum. And he looks so innocent in public! The little scamp!
CRY is definitely a good thing. It means "I HAVE FEELINGS U MAKE ME REMEMBER I AM HUMAN". But I'm not writing that every time.
Aw man :( I totally understand that you'd avoid that stuff, even though I gotta admit I love it. If it's really well written or tells a really new story or makes me love a pairing I hadn't considered before than I want my grubby fingers all over it. Also it totally is real. Okay, no, it's ultimately not, but it's like... almost all the ways we experience the world around us consist of stories in one way or another, whether it's on the news, or gossip in the office, or talking about the past with our friends, or even the way we put our own memories and experiences together in our minds. Fiction comes from the memories and experiences of other people, but we assimilate it into our selves the same way we incorporate most of the non-fiction world, so to us it might as well be as real. That's where the danger of culture lies (the inbuilt stories that contribute to things like racism) but it's also essentially the only way for us to learn and empathise with other people, so it's a tool that can be used for a lot of good, too.
Also for porn. It can be used for porn. Damn I'm wordy tonight :/ it's probably because I'm sick. My brain isn't inhibiting properly.
A Clint who doesn't talk (either vocally or with his hands)?? BUT WHERE WILL THE SASS COME FROM???
Oh yes, we need magical fic machines that create fic from our minds. Yesssss.
Aw yes he taught Nat to become the bestest sniper ever and she uses it to enhance her knowledge of physics and thus improve her hand-to-hand combat, and he's all, "Stop using my teachings to kick my arse ass on the sparring mats >:(". And ahaha Clint and Natasha talking under the table XD and Fury's like "Will you two shut up!" and everyone else is really confused because they hadn't noticed anything.
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the Purple Martin of North America looks like a sassy little fucker.
It really does! Oh man, there are a few Clint-gets-turned-into-a-hawk fics out there, but THIS. LOKI'D. Coulson is like *sigh* OK, fine, you're a bird, let's work out how to get you changed back. And Clint is all oooooooo, dude, I'm PURPLE! THIS IS AWESOME. And he escapes and flies around the tower for a few days and shits on Tony's head before Nat lures him into a box with a trail of donut holes and they cart him off to Asgard to be de-birded. And he's all ;_; until Phil feels sorry for him and lets him have a RIDICULOUS PURPLE FIELD SUIT WITH SPIKES ON THE MASK to make him feel better.
Ahahahah, oh god Steve. "A medical exam? Really doctor? Why yes, just pull that curtain closed..."
I find story tragedies so much more affecting than the real thing. If someone says "My cat died" in reality there's the whole Oh poor cat but, shit, what do I say? Is this a hug situation? Dammit, I wanted to go read porn and now I have to be comforting. Why am I obsessing about myself when this person's cat has just died, I AM A HORRIBLE PERSON, thing to go through. (At least, for about half the universe I'm sure that's the case. The other half actually are decent caring human beings. Bah, weirdos.) Whereas if it's a story my heart can break with impugnity. And it does. And it hurts. I am not sure if it's good or bad. But anyway, stories are very freeing in that regard. They let us be selfish.
Do special ops guys get taught sign language? Surely it'd be really handy to know.
I love the idea that Clint and Nat are sometimes really childish together. Like, they trust each other enough that they don't have to be badass. I bet Clint's the only person who gets to see Nat giggle. And she's the only one who gets to see him relaxing sprawled on the carpet on his back, rather than taking his breaks crouched somewhere up high. BROMANCE. EPIC BROMANCE.
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And yes, MCU Clint is definitely wearing a purple thong under his field suit. It's how his bum achieves such a perfect profile. No panty lines on this assassin. Heh heh. Assassin.
Phil feels sorry for him and lets him have a RIDICULOUS PURPLE FIELD SUIT WITH SPIKES ON THE MASK to make him feel better.
CANON. OR AT LEAST BETTER BE CANON IN THE NEXT MOVIE WHEN COULSON COMES BACK.
Oh gosh yes, that's a wonderful way to put it: Stories let us be selfish. And yes, it is really, really hard to know what to say in real life when someone's anything dies, cats and upwards. God forbid it's a human, then all you can do is pretend to have a bundt cake in the oven and run for the hills. I'm terrible with other people's grief and no nothing about expressing it myself.
It would be super useful to know sign language! I think maybe special ops guys might learn a small vocabulary of military signs? (I don't know, I'm just hoping it's true.) Have you read about Martha's Vinyard Sign Language? I came across it when I was helping a friend do research for her masters and I was like "Omg I wish everyone learned NZSL in school". So. Cool.
YES. They totally are childish together all the time, and spend half their time in each other's rooms in Stark tower. And without everyone else they're stone-cold badasses but with each other they're like, "Na-a-at I got a paper cut under my nail, oh my fucking God this hurts, help meeee," and "Cli-i-int if you love me you'll make me a cup of tea," etc, etc.
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Oh, the complexity of human interactions. I wonder now if there's anyone who isn't made uncomfortable by grief. I mean, it feels like being ok with it would mean... I don't know. Maybe that looking after a grieving person was somehow satisfying or enjoyable, which is insulting to the grief and the griever, even though I guess people like to be looked after so what's wrong with enjoying it?
That was a very convoluted paragraph, my apologies.
OH MAN, that sign language thing is amazing!
AAAND, I think that at this point I absolutely have to go to sleep. Mmmmmmmmmmmm, sleep. I's almost been worth this hellish week to have the bliss of falling asleep and being able to stay asleep until whenever the fuck. Goodnight!
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They might not go all the way to the EMH costume, but gingerhaze designed a pretty good compromise. He even has one sleeve missing! YUSSSS.
I mean, it feels like being ok with it would mean... I don't know. Maybe that looking after a grieving person was somehow satisfying or enjoyable, which is insulting to the grief and the griever, even though I guess people like to be looked after so what's wrong with enjoying it?
That's a really good point, I hadn't thought about it like that. I've always felt strongly against the idea that all actions are innately selfish, aka, that people are only altuistic because it makes them feel good. I think we need more people who feel good when they're being altruistic, not to solely glorify people who are only altruistic because they're guilted into it or they have some distant, rational justification for it (though y'know, it's still good that they're altruistic in those cases). But getting pleasure from, or being attracted towards, someone else's grief feels more dangerous somehow. OTOH, I guess if you only get pleasure when you help someone during their grief, maybe it's not so bad? Philosophy is hard.
I hope this week wasn't quite as hellish and you got some decent sleep over the weekend!
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Eeeee the mask. And I watched episode one of series 2 of EMH today, IT WAS AWESOME. CLINT YOU ARE SO DUMB, PANTHER YOU ARE SO SMART, REED YOU ARE A DICK, I LOVE YOU ALL. Also I think the character design for Clint-minus-his-mask has changed since the brief appearance last season, he looks less Captain America and more d'aaaawwww.
I want to marry Gingerhaze. And I'm really disturbed that I find that picture a tiny bit sexy. I mean, the pose. It's like with the spread-legs gif. He is so shameless.
I completely agree that there's honest-to-god altruism in the world. People have empathy. They have morals. That's why people who don't have morals are psychopaths.
Yeah, philosophy is hard. It feels like there shoulld be some obvious distinction about something done out of love and something done out of guilt or to get something, but it's blurred every day. Birthday presents. Listening to friends' romantic dramas. Calling my mother, FFS, and I really love her. DAMN YOU, WORLD, WHY YOU SO CONFUSING?
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I will polygamously marry Gingerhaze with you. She must have so many internet suitors, I don't know how we would compete.
I know, so much social obligation! And guilt! Was it like this when we lived in tribes and only met a hundred people in our lifetimes?
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Definitely sad that there are only 2 seasons. But they're replacing it with... something? Right? And have you watched any of the Principle Coulson cartoon (I believe Spider-Man may be in there somewhere too, but eh). I haven't and I won't unless you tell me I must, because I watch far too much crap anyway.
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OOOOOH I only found out very recently that Clark Gregg actually voices that character, so I thought about having a go at it, but I was keen to see the latest Spiderman first. If I get round it I will lit you know if it's OMGAMAZING and keep quiet if not. Also, I got put off because I saw a bad fanvid of EMH!Hawkeye/Principal Coulson and I was like "My God, this is the first time I have not shipped EMH Hawkeye with someone. I better check my temperature". But I didn't have a mind-altering fever, so I decided it didn't bode well for Principal Coulson's watchability.
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