#wow I'm re-reading 'Control' and realizing that I was *deeply* hurting when I wrote the majority of what's there

[fantastic-nonsense]

Bits and Pieces of Various WIPs

So I decided to get up off my butt and actually be productive for once. Unfortunately, this means working on my thesis and two research papers and not all of my sad, neglected WIPs, but as a treat, I’ll share some bits and pieces from  a couple of them will all of y’all:

So…from my ‘East of the Sun and West of the Moon’ Miraclous Ladybug AU:

“Are you afraid?” He asks her, his green eyes solidly staring at her. He searches her frame for any reservation, for a hint of discomfort or fear.

She was not.

She smiles gently and laughs. “I am not afraid. Not of you,” she says.

It is enough for now.

……

Her powers always stack the cards in her favor. She works in a permanent best-case scenario, and tonight she had found out that even in the best-case scenario, she still would have lost her cat. And that is a devastating concept.

My Post-Prince Caspian ‘Problem of Susan’ fic (mostly movieverse, heavily dabbing in bookverse):

Susan observes. Many think Edmund as the observant one (and he is), but she is the one who truly watches. She watches from the shadows as girls laugh and flirt and dance, as they create a persona for themselves cloaked in crimson lipstick and too-short skirts that somehow makes them looking alluring and wanted. At first she scorns them, remembering very well that it was her beauty that was famed, her grace and gentleness that was revered in seven lands and all the islands. She sticks her nose up at these desperate girls playing pretend, at their pitiful attempts to be grown up and to impress boys who aren’t yet men.

She does not realize then that she will soon join their ranks.

Susan watches quietly as girls become women in the eyes of society by stepping into this world, this world of make-up and flirtations and materialness. She resents them. She remembers how it feels to be an adult, a true adult, and she sits here and watches as these girls and their overwhelming fakeness are treated as adults and she is treated as a child. She resents that they can so easily step into their assigned roles and play them to perfection where she is stuck straddling two worlds. She resents the fact that throwing on a bit of makeup and parading around like a doll is all girls need to do in this world to be considered women.

She suddenly decides one day that she is tired of it. She’s tired of being cast aside and treated like a child. She’s tired of people not recognizing her for the Queen she is. She wants to be recognized. She wants to command attention like she once did, to be admired from afar and talked of incessantly. She wants the people around her to see her.

……

But that is in the past, and Susan is so firmly entrenched in the here and now that she refuses to think about the past, for Narnia is Before and England is her Now and After. She needs to learn to live here and not dwell on what can no longer be. No…she would be beautiful here, respected here, not beautiful in some imaginary land that she could no longer rule.

My ‘Teen Titans ‘Apprentice arc’ as it might have happened in Young Justice+Bonus Batfamily’ fic:

“What’re you doing, Jay?” Wally asked, watching him call up a screen on his own holographic computer. 

“Calling for backup.” 

“You mean…” 

“Yeah.” 

“Whoa, whoa. Hold up,” Artemis said, cutting in front of Wally to look at the screen. “Who’re you calling? Batman’s off-planet.” 

“I’m not calling Batman.” Her next question was interrupted by a cheerful voice. 

“Red Robin to Blue Jay. What’s going on, Jay?” 

……..

“Shiva’s a liar,” Jason muttered, glaring at nothing.

“Wait, back up!” Wally shouted. “Shiva? As in ‘Lady Shiva’, one of the most deadly assassins on earth?”

“Do you know any other Shivas?” Jason shot back, frustrated. He didn’t have time to deal with this right now, not when his brother was on the line.

LOK “Control”: “Asami struggles to reassert control over her life. Sometimes she is successful; other times, she is less so. Or: Asami makes choices, has choices made for her, and has no choice at all, in the end. A story in ten parts.” Otherwise known as my ‘Justice for Asami Sato’ fic that I started working on in 2014 and haven't touched since:

She is not jealous. She is not.

……

She doesn’t allow herself to think that she had stayed with Mako because he represented stability and dependability. She doesn’t allow herself to think that she had not loved him as much as she thought she had. She doesn’t allow herself to forgive Korra (yet) for stealing her boyfriend away—and with him, the one stable thing she was allowed to keep after her father’s betrayal.

She shakes her head and sits quietly against the wall in her bedroom, the tears drifting softly down her cheeks. It isn’t fair, she thinks. The only thing she has ever wanted, and it is something money cannot buy. Money cannot buy her stability or happiness. It can alleviate many of the other problems she faces, but all the yuans in the world cannot buy back a life with a father who loved her and hadn’t tried to kill her, a life where her life was dependable and she was gloriously in control of her own destiny.

…….

She feels presumptuous and out-of-line, asking Katara (the Katara) to teach her how to heal, but Asami is tired of staying while her friends go where she can’t follow and sitting by the sidelines.  Asami may not be able to bend, but she can create and she can mend, and that is enough (for now). 

…….

Asami is not happy with her form. She realizes this the day that she brings down two assassins that managed to corner her in the stairwell at Future Industries but nearly dies in the process. She understands she can defend herself better than the vast majority of the nonbenders in the city, but she shakes with frustration, thinking that it is not enough. It will never be enough. Her years of self-defense training are useful and helpful, but are not what she actually needs. She cannot have the control she so desperately desires if she continues fighting like a non-bender. She needs to think like a bender.

“Teach me to fight,” she demands of Korra one afternoon. Korra blinks and tilts her head, but seems to recognize something about the way Asami is pleading and simply nods. “Okay.”

Asami’s afternoons become filled with combat sessions that feel more like dance lessons, Korra teaching her to spar the way her father once taught her how to spin and sway across the marble floors. She learns how to flow like water and stay firm like the earth, taking her new knowledge and adapting it to mix with her already present skills. It is hard, grueling work, but it is worth every second Asami spends drenched in sweat or lying on the ground, bruises coloring her body. She will not become her mother, lying lifelessly on the floor in a tattered dress.

.............

She doesn’t know what hurts the most: the fact that the boy she used to love no longer loves her, the fact that the girl she currently loves is oblivious to her affections, or the fact that they both seem too tangled up in each other to notice her existence. 

#miraculous ladybug #lok #asami sato #narnia #young justice #personal #my writing #also known as 'fics i'll probably never finish but desperately want to someday' #wow I'm re-reading 'Control' and realizing that I was *deeply* hurting when I wrote the majority of what's there #I mean in theory I knew that I wrote it in the depths of the finale fallout drama and that I was spending an unhealthy amount of time #fighting idiots on the internet #but like...wow