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howtofightwrite · 2 years

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Do you have any thoughts on making characters like Kim Possible more realistic for stories aside from aging her up? While still keeping the spirit of her, that is.

You can't make Kim Possible realistic because the superspy genre runs on implausibility, the superspy aspect of her persona only works in the genre's unrealistic space. If you try to run a superspy in a realistic world, you either get a dissociative psychopath or Jason Bourne (from the books, not the films) who is still pretty close to being a psychopath rather than your regular spy. To write a “realistic” Kim Possible, you'd end up with your run of the mill, hyper competitive, adrenaline junkie cheerleader without any superpowers or supergadgets and a school board that's not particularly thrilled with her antics. We're talking Buffy levels of burn down the high school. (Buffy did burn down a high school.)

The imporant thing to understand about Kim Possible if you want to deconstruct her character and pul her out of the genre where she currently works is that Kim isn't a character aged up. She's a character aged down and reformatted for a tween to teen audience. If I aged Kim Possible up, I'd have Get Smart's Ninety-Nine or a member of the original Charlie's Angels (take your pick) or a non-powered variant of Shego. Her contemporaries are the girls from Totally Spies, which are also a Charlie's Angels riff, and arguably even more insane than Kim is. To fully grasp Kim Possible as a character you want to write rather than a piece of media you consume is you have to understand her archetype and where all the pieces of her character come from. Those pieces are derived by material that proceeded her in the superspy genre.

This is what author's call a Lit Review.

When you find a character you like and want to use, instead of trying to copy what you see you go deeper into deconstruction. Deconstruction is just a fancy word that means you break everything down to it's base components and take it apart to understand how it works and functions as a whole so you can rebuild it in your own image. In the case of Kim Possible, a simple deconstruction isn't enough because she isn't a character, she's genre loci. (It fun play on genius loci, it means she's a personification of the genre rather than a person or place. She is by nature a formalistic entity, which means she only exists as part of the formula. That's why you're having difficulty writing her as a “realistic” character. Formalistic entities do not function in the real world.)

To understand Kim Possible as a character, you have to understand Kim Possible as a formula. Worse, you have to study two different genres because she's fusion of two different formulas that are both equally unrealistic. Fortunately, the superspy and the superhero genre have enough cross-bleed that you only need one. You'll have to do a comprehensive review of both the superspy genre and the teen dramedy genre (Saved by the Bell, 90210, Boy Meets World, Sweet Valley High,you know, the John Waters version of high school. If you've been consuming mainly CW dramas like the current iteration of Riverdale you have the wrong era and will have to start all over.) For a comprehensive lit review, you have to go all the way back to the beginning with the original James Bond and watch them in sequence, then watch Get Smart (by the time you get here, you'll have the same degree of contempt for Bond as Mel Brooks so that works in your favor), pay special attention to Ninety-Nine the original avatar of the female superspy, and then watch Charlie's Angels, the original TV show not the movies. By this point, you'll understand all the pieces that went into Kim's creation and then you'll be able to independently pull them out keep what you want.

If that sounds like a lot of work, you're right. Picking one isn't enough because she has pieces of all of them, and they're all influenced by their predecessor. Ninety-Nine is a direct reaction to the treatment of women in James Bond, and Charlie's Angels are an adaptation of Ninety-Nine as James Bond. A lot of female superspies are direct references to James Bond (whether they want to be or not) and Kim Possible is no exception. The show is full of James Bond injokes and many of her villains are direct references to Bond villains. The old Sean Connery Bond villains. (Much as it's in the name, you don't need either the original Mission Impossible or the film remakes. If you want to watch the Peter Graves era for an even more comprehensive experience, go right ahead.)

You don't understand Bond? You don't understand Kim.

Teenagers don't make for good spies in a realistic world. They're not emotionally mature enough to do the job. That's not an insult. When you're a teenager, your brain is still maturing, you're halfway to being an adult, but you're still growing into yourself and a lot of what you're experiencing you're experiencing for the first time. Experiences that feel like the end of the world to a teenager, are just Tuesday to an adult. You don't feel emotions the same at sixteen and twenty-five, or sixteen and thirty-five, part of that is experience and part of it is the intensity of our emotions decays over time. Adults are also better at hiding what emotions they do feel. These are all reasons why adults seem so unfeeling to teenagers.

Worse, for the realistic Kim, she comes from a stable home environment. She's got loving parents, appreciative, supportive friends, and lives a happy, well-adjusted life even without saving the world. She doesn't have the cynicism, suspicious nature, mercurial adaptable behaviors, and survival instincts that broken homes and abusive environments train in young. In the real world, evil passes itself off as good. There's no colorful costumes or villainous laughs or soundtrack to point out who you can't trust. The friendliest, nicest people are often the first to stab you in the back. Appearances deceive and ingrained biases cloud perception. Spies are not well-adjusted people or emotionally healthy. It's a lot easier to talk someone off a cliff if you are also on a cliff. The point of a spy is that they're a bad person. The superspy genre is an escape from the realities of being a spy and it was originally written by a former spy.

The kid from the broken home learns early that people behave differently in different environments, and they need to be wary until they determine if the person they think they can trust is someone they can actually trust. Often the most well-intentioned people make bad situations worse trying to resolve conflicts they've chosen not to understand. At the same time, people wear masks and not all secrets are nefarious. To be able to determine the difference between someone acting supiciously (hiding a secret) and someone who is actually nefarious takes practice. This is even a common subplot in teen mystery dramas for teenagers (and adults) to be misled by their own prejudices and their inability to tell the difference between types of suspicious behavior. There's the secrets that don't matter and the ones that'll get you killed and they can be the same secrets. Understanding the faceted nature of people, fully analyzing their personalities so you can predict their moves without being a fully mature person with your own experiences to draw from? That's hard. It's a difficult ask for adults who are professionals.

You can't keep Kim's optomism and turn her into a traditional spy. The traditional spy needs to both be able to see the worst in someone and then use that dark nature against them. They collect secrets and vulnerabilities so they can turn the average person into an asset later. They can't do everything themselves, they need to be comfortable with using people and with the part where using those same people will get them killed. There's elements here that do mimick high school, but it's a much more dangerous game with much higher stakes and a lot less room for error. A teenager this manipulative this young is either a narcisscist or a sociopath, and even then they won't have refined their manipulation to the point they can carry it off like an adult. (If you hav e a difficult time comprehending this concept, you are stilll a child. Enjoy it while you can.)

You also can't really do Kim Possible in the CW mold while keeping her Kim Possible. The same problems as the spy to superspy genre apply. The Vampire Diaries approach to teenagers is antithetical to the John Waters high school. Someone's going to have to be the cynic, half the cast are lovable assholes, evil will prevail over good on a regular basis, and everyone in the CW's world will be varying shades of gray with dark secrets. CW teenage dramas are gritty (and not particularly realistic either, even if they are entertaining.) You can't put James Bond and Frank Miller's Sin City in the same place and play them both straight. Superman's ideals and morals don't function properly in The Boys universe. That optomistic view of humanity isn't supported. If you want optomism in your narrative, you need to fight for it.

An optomistic character can succeed in a cynical world and keep their optomism while making tragic mistakes, but they need to be supported by the author and story's structure. A careful balance has to be maintained between hope and darkness, and it is very easy to go past a character's point of no return. It's easy to become cynical, it's easy to embrace nihilism especially in the face of tragedy. Kim Possible is not a character designed around the idea of moral fortitude. She's not a character who has to fight for her beliefs in a dark world. She doesn't have articulated morals or a philosophical outlook, she just does what she thinks is right. A character doing what they think is right in a cynical story sets the stage for events to fall apart in a tragic ending.

The question is, do you want a realistic version of Kim Possible or do you want a version that you feel is going to be more serious, and literary, and will be accepted? As much as it's currently in vogue, cynicsm and nihilism aren't automatically better or more mature storytelling.

Kim Possible is accepted. Kim Possible being unrealistic is not a failure of the material. She's supposed to be a teenage comedy pastiche of the superspy genre. She works because she embraces both genres in all their corny cheesiness wholeheartedly and without irony. Even when Kim Possible is at its most tongue and cheek, Kim herself is never the joke. The mirror between Kim and Shego is intentional. It's good practice to have your villain be a jaded, cynical, dark version of your protagonist (with better comedic timing.) Shego is cynical so Kim can be optomistic.

Kim's ideals and morals are designed for a more hopeful world than the one we live in and that's fine. James Bond is one of the most iconic film heroes of all time. Get Smart and Charlie's Angels are both beloved to this day. Kim Possible and Totally Spies were successful media properties. A market exists for teenage superspies. While Harriet the Spy is probably the closest to a “realistic” Kim Possible you're going to get, I think you're looking for something else, something more adrenaline filled, something exciting, and that's okay.

You don't need realism. You need a world that feels plausible enough your audience will embrace it. That's just good worldbuilding and understanding your genre. You don't need to be the next Game of Thrones, you don't need to be (the new) Casino Royale. Don't be embarassed by the silliness, don't be worried if the story is serious enough, skip off into the sunset with your catchy theme song and naked mole rat. Tell the story you want, the story that you love.

And do your reading (and watching) because the more you understand, the better you write. If you can't take Kim Possible at her worst (Roger Moore) you don't deserve her at her best.

-Michi

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#Michi answers #writing advice #writing reference #writing tips #kim possible

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pacific-rimbaud · 2 months

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i was reading your thoughts on how fans felt about l&oha and while i concur it is a perfect piece of work in my head and have reread it 5x, i wonder if you think fans tend to be harsher/more critical of hermione and let draco slide? i see it a lot in fics where he's more of an alphahole type

Oh, man. Okay. The can is open, the worms are loose. Rant under the cut.

I'm actually going to set men aside entirely. Just. To the side with you. I desperately need more realistically complicated men, too, but that's a whole separate discussion. Right now: women.

There must be whole dissertations out there on the phenomenon of readers hating female characters with negative traits. I'm a fandom old, so I didn't grow up identifying with Hermione, and wouldn't have even if I'd been young enough to. I did that "which character are you" test just now and my top three matches were Janis Ian from Mean Girls, Jughead from Riverdale and April from Parks and Rec, which, massive grain of salt, etc. BUT gives you an idea. I am not a Hermione and never was, so she's never been a comfort character or self-insert for me. Some of my favorite fictional women are Sophie Hatter (mean, irrational, petty, old and mostly loving it), Harrowhark Nonagesimus (evil stick), Phryne Fisher (zero fucks to give). What I like about Hermione is how imperfect she is. I'm a "cleverest witch of your age I've ever met" truther (book!Lupin is absolutely saying "you're the canniest 14 year-old child I have personally met, saying this as a guy who doesn't get out much," not "you are a once-in-a-century genius"), and from my perspective, she's often wrong and often a dick, and not in a fun and fiesty burn-down-the-world BAMF way. Which. Good for her! Be human.

And that's the thing. I personally don't want Hermione to be perfect, I want her to be what I think she is, textually, which is intelligent, hardworking, loyal, competitive, compassionate, controlling, belittling, rude, petty, insecure, vindictive, volatile. She has the right to be that way, because she's human. The desire for perfected women (or unapologetically and unstoppably awful ones, another brand of female power fantasy) is not limited to Dramione fandom. I think it's amplified in DHr by many readers who DO identify as former gifted children, books-as-coping-mechanism kids and Strong Female Personalities who felt marginalized in childhood and want to see Hermione have it all: she's slim, she's tiny, she's fragile as a bird, she'll break your neck, she'll step on your throat, she'll tear down the system, she'll heal all wounds, she does not need help, she holds all the knowledge, she holds all the cards, she is forever wronged, she can do no wrong, her vagina is tight, her nipples are hard, her hair is on point, her waist is tiny, her tits are bouncing, her ass is in the style of Now. And like. This isn't at all unique to DHr and Hermione. It's pervasive in fiction written by and for women. Female power fantasies are obviously feeding a massive hunger. It's just not what I personally want. Personally, I find it alienating and uncomfortable, which I know equates to, "That is wrong and shouldn't exist" to a lot of people, but that's its own tale as old as time.

There's a disconnect that happens too often where a reader wants one (1) thing from their fiction, and receives something else, even when the contents are clearly labeled on the tin. In this case, wanting a female power fantasy and encountering a woman who's written with flaws makes people upset. And maybe if we could be more honest with ourselves about what we're looking for when we read, work to accept that not everyone wants the same experience, and learn to close a book when it's not working for us and say, "No shade, this isn't for me," it would be less upsetting when we encounter a character who isn't written to meet our personal expectations. I will open a book, realize the FMC is a female power fantasy archetype and close it, because that's not what I show up for. I like my women gritty and weird and foolish and vulnerable and liable to hurt people and feel terrible about it. Give me all the exhausting chatterers and evil sticks and jocks with swords and their hearts on their sleeves (their hearts ripped out), give me shy Anne Elliot and her suitcase full of regrets and the ugly fuckup who never has a glow up, give me dirtbag stoners and Fleabag and Alicent Hightower apologetics and every role Natasha Lyon has ever played. It's not a moral high ground, it's about a preference for seeing actual, demeritus flaws on the page and on the screen. Blame that woman. It's her fault. She has so many faults. Then show me how to forgive her so I can figure out how to forgive myself.

The thing is, I love women. I love women so fucking much. I want to be around them, to get to know them, to read about them, to watch them on TV and see them in films. And personally, I like them ugly. Physically. Spiritually. Morally. Give a woman a Bad Personality and watch her succeed in the most self-injurious way possible, fuck you. Give her a gaping chest wound and line it with teeth. Stick a piece of grit in that girl's tightly sealed shell so that a pearl is her only option. Make her love other women, make her fuck it up, make her have to earn them back.

Thankfully I do feel like we're getting more ugly women in fiction, especially BIPOC, queer and marginalized women who deserve gross, weird, nasty representation and not just didactic moralism, patronization and misguided sainthood. Some readers won't want that, and that's fine. Again, personally (it's all so personal, please, please remember that when you hit that comment button), I'm here for it. If you write about women like this, know that you have a thirsty reader here. I'm swallowing them up. I'm smacking my lips. I'm smashing my mug on the cafeteria floor and calling for another.

#you asked I answered #rant #long post

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rustedpipe · 5 months

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things that happened on degrassi but i make them about riverdale

they had cheryl say cuckoo bananas one time, zig novak was heraldo, and also vanessa morgan was mike dallas's baby mama so like clearly there's existing connections here. and just like riverdale and degrassi writers-- i love putting characters into situations. so. without further ado..... things that happen on degrassi (tng & next class) that should've happened on riverdale.

betty pelts dodgeballs at jughead during gym class after he is vague about going on a date or not

dolly zoom on archie's face as fred says "your mom is gay"

betty and gay kevin have a fight while filming a fake commercial for unisex cologne for class

^ this with gay kevin

reggie does elaborate business deals with locker trading so that veronica can have the best one

archie sending veronica flowers with a card that says ”you rock! xoxo archie”

jughead choking and needing the heimlich but refusing to let gay kevin give him the heimlich because it would mean gay kevin has to touch him.

betty getting into an actual violent physical fight with blood with a random girl at school

youtube

^ okay go watch this video right now you only need to watch like the first minute exactly. the rest is completely optional. i have several scenarios in mind here:

- idea one is gay kevin having issues with fangs for the billionth time and so when in doubt kiss archie? - idea two is something jarchie related either betty or veronica is the dylan here . - IDEA THREE IS DYLAN=JUGHEAD GAY MARCO=ARCHIE. SO WHEN IN DOUBT KISS REGGIE?! - but also. the very first episode of riverdale is veronica so when in doubt you kiss betty. okay like realistically the scene is not like that but i think they shouldve let betty say "so when in doubt you kiss betty." for me personally. she would not fucking say that but i want her to

veronica and jughead go to the college admissions fair while extremely high.

RAS plays a similar role to kevin smith and gives advice to cheryl about being gay

kangs toxic poker game. what more can i say

veronica: as you and jughead’s closest friends- jughead: oh actually i don’t really like you. veronica: SHH!

natasha bedingfield performs at prom. archie gets to dance his heart out and cry a little to unwritten. and pocket full of sunshine woah oh

toni gets so much into vampire books that she makes out with cheryl and thinks about vampires too hard and bites her on the neck (this would be a great reference to vanessa morgan's time on another canadian teen show my babysitter's a vampire and also i think we should let toni be a little crazy for fun)

lgbt mixer at la bonne nuit. nothing crazy happens on the degrassi episode but i just wish it had happened on riverdale. like maybe veronica and kevin sing same love or born this way. (again that did not happen on degrassi just using the fact they did an lgbt mixer at the teen speakeasy as a jumping off point.)

when jughead gets hired by tabitha at pops, he immediately burns down the restaurant. they then go to a casino in niagra falls and get vegas-style married

cheryl adopts a pig (that later destroys her house) instead of coping with being alone

reggie attends a meeting about homophobia brought on by locker room bullying and someone explains the definition of internalized homophobia and he says out loud "im a homophobe" and starts crying

jughead poisons bret with stuff that makes you throw up. this involves cups being switched and a reference to roman history (but in the riverdale version betty supports and enables it)

jughead writes a story about a girl getting stalked who has a protective boyfriend trying to stop it but he makes the ending be that the boyfriend realizes he can never protect her from the stalker so he kills her. and betty is like dude um what that is insane. and hes genuinely like what it's just a story. later jughead ends up still not being able to figure out an ending and burns the script on stage while having a breakdown

they have to build rube goldberg machines for class. it doesnt matter who i just want this to be something

fp and alice wedding where bughead break up and get back together like five times about it

core four smokes weed during 2x14 The Hills Have Eyes (degrassi had an episode where teens were unsupervised in a cabin. Just Like.)

gay kevin does a gay musical production of romeo and juliet.

some film guy that jughead adores comes and does a guest lecture and so in order to impress the guy he smokes weed with chic and makes a terrible insane short film to show said film guy

timeskip jughead does mdma at an artsy party where people are very high and painting with their bodies on the walls and floors. in order to avoid his problems.

gay kevin wears a beret at least once

^ bughead texts

veronica sings triangle tra la le la by patsy cline while in the midst of one of her 'reggie or archie' moments

betty gets really into axe throwing with lesbians (the pretty poisons) in the woods

unfortunately i cannot find a video uploaded of gay tristan performing it but. gay kevin voice riverdale you make drama look! so! good!

veronica trying to tank her father's mayoral campaign by being gay with betty and outing hiram as a homophobe

reggie: for the last time i'm not gay. or homophobic. just missing my best bro....

jughead won't shut up in class so cheryl cuts off some of her hair and then asks jughead to hold the scissors for a sec. and then she raises her hand and tells the teacher jughead cut her hair

beronica has a heartfelt moment about admitting feelings for each other and in the middle of it reggie walks up to them with saddest look on his face and says "am i hotter than archie? be honest. actually don't." and then walks away

veronica comes out to avoid political backlash and the word gets around to hermione who tries to comfort her by saying "no one's gonna believe you're gay. it happens to all powerful women. even hillary"

cheryl and veronica have a fake trial in class over twitter beef

cheryl auditions for a boy part in a play directed by gay kevin. gay kevin initially says no, but cheryl points out that it should be about relating to the pain of the character, not gender. gay kevin agrees and says that he is going to play the part himself because no one understands what he's going through better than him, right?

i'm constructing a reality where fangs is dating gay kevin when he is in the infamous bus crash but instead of dying he goes into a coma. and gay kevin is loyally by his bedside until he snaps like three months in and hooks up with moose. the night he does that, fangs wakes up from said coma.

veronica, speaking to reggie: even though we're a toxic couple, i really miss you and i want our break to be over.

betty has a terrible reaction to weed and someone finds her sadly eating slices of bread from a bag saying “i thought the bread would make me less high but it isnt working”

and finally, and crucially, they should've done a shark in the water style promo for at least one of the seasons. thanks for tuning in.

#IM SORRY FOR BEING INSANE #IM NORMAL. IM NORMAL.#m.txt #degrassi #riverdale

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batmanisagatewaydrug · 9 months

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Ask about Gotham (2014-2019): Was it worth it?

listen man I'm gonna be so real with you right now: I thought it would be really funny to write, like, a huge academic essay responding to this as a joke and then the punchline would be at the end I just say something like "in conclusion the producers of Gotham owe me money and can gargle my balls." and I do have a draft of that right now which, for the record, is 2600 words long and cites Susan Sontag's "Notes on Camp" pretty extensively as well as Glen Weldon's very neat book The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture. which IS funny, but I'm also not going to get around to finishing it for a while so here's a short answer

it's worth it for the sense of accomplishment, I guess, in the same way that you get to feel satisfied about being done with any grueling and unpleasant thing that's entirely self-inflicted. this is how marathon runners feel, probably, when they're gasping on the ground drenched in sweat with their lungs on fire and legs aching to be cut off.

but in the sense of whether or not Gotham was, like, worth it as a piece of art, I can't say it really was. as a prequel Gotham is grossly bloated and overlong; as a standalone story it's meandering and utterly lacking any original point of view to justify its existence as the 9000th Batman adaptation. things just happen in Gotham and all of it feels hollow because we the audience know how this is going to end; nothing good or bad will actually meaningfully change the status quo of Gotham City as we are seeing it because Gotham City needs to remain in stasis until Batman is old enough to legally buy a beer. it's just exhaustingly nihilistic, nothing matters because nothing is ALLOWED to matter yet and by the end that inherent meaninglessness makes the show an exhausting hollow shell of itself that sucks the life right out of you.

you can't even really call it camp because camp relies so much on sincerity, and by the latter seasons you can TELL the writers have given up and embraced being the silly goof goof weirdo show on purpose and are throwing everything they've got at it. riverdale before it was riverdale. genuinely I think the third episode of season one where the villain of the week is a man killing people by tying them to weather balloons and everyone takes it DEADLY SERIOUSLY is more high camp than anything that happens in the entire fifth season where all of the long-suffering actors are winking cheekily at the camera from beneath their party city wigs.

#gotham time

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ot3 · 1 year

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I can't tell if you're genuinely enjoying Riverdale or not. like you're enjoying it but not because it's enjoyable or good?

i'm having a blast with riverdale. it definitely is not 'good' but it's absolutely enjoyable. In this context by 'good' i mean the show doesn't have what i consider to be particularly thoughtful, complex, or emotionally impactful character and narrative writing. but this is also an instance where i don't think that stuff is really the point here. i'm not here because i genuinely care about the way these events are going to play out or their longterm effects on the characters lives, i'm here because there's something just absolutely fascinating about everything this show is doing and the fact that it exists at all.

it does have some genuine strong suits. i think all of the actors are fully committing to the shit that's happening here in a way that is absolutely pivotal to it working. the show honestly just Looks good a lot of the time too. i enjoy the weird anachronisms of the aesthetics and character styling, there's some really fun color grading, it's got some really nice shot comps from time to time.

but more than that it's just really different from everything else that's on TV, while simultaneously being almost entirely composed of individual elements that are overdone on their own. earlier i said its the most TV per minute of TV and that was a bit tongue in cheek but i do honestly think its true. it's like they've distilled a specific kind of media down to it's most concentrated form and dished it back out, without watering it down at all by trying to ground it.

i dont really watch edgy teen dramas or anything as a hobby because its so not my shit, but overall I feel riverdale manages to feel very campy and honestly somewhat avant garde when other shows before and since have just been eyeroll inducing and unbearable. and i think its because its got this weird negative space of self awareness. A lot of modern media that Knows it's kind of ridiculous likes to do a lot of wink-wink nudge-nudge about how silly and convoluted it all is, making sure the audience knows that the writers are in on the joke in a way that rips you out of the story more than the events themselves do. but riverdale so far (keep in mind i'm only a season and a half in) presents itself in a way that comes across as fully understanding exactly unserious it all is while stalwartly refusing to break character. like a mime pretending to be trapped in a box.

i could say more on the subject but i feel like i need to watch the rest of the show before i can really lock in my broadstrokes conclusions about the nature of this beast

#also cheryl is literally there.#i know i havent been talking about her much but always know that i love her with all my heart.#riverdalelb

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imreallyloveleee · 4 months

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2023 fic review

thank you for tagging me @onlyalittlebookworm! <3 <3 <3

What is your ao3 account?

loveleee

2. How many words did you write total in 2023?

32,717

3. How many fics did you publish in 2023? How many multichapters vs. oneshots?

3 oneshots, 1 new WIP, and updated 1 WIP. this was definitely one of my least "productive" years for fic-writing in quite a while (although i don't think i published much in 2022 either, looking back). for obvious reasons: i was traveling for more than half the year; and also Riverdale canon was so fucking awful to our ship specifically that i think it just killed off everyone's desire to read and write about them. thanks RAS! <3

4. What was your longest fic? Your shortest fic?

longest: i feel like i win when i lose, my bughead four weddings & a funeral-inspired fic. 16,379 words (and i need to finish the last chapter ahhhhhhhhhhhhh)

shortest: honeymoon phase, my (very first!!) jimmy/kim fic. 1,927 words.

5. What was your most popular fic? Your least popular?

even though it kind of feels like cheating, head underwater was most popular, because even though i started it years ago, i updated it in 2023!

for least popular, if we're going by kudos, it was three conversations about one thing, which was my desperate attempt to make some sense out of the penultimate episode of riverdale s7 lol

6. What fic didn't perform as well as you thought it would?

honestly, i try to keep my expectations low for everything i publish, to avoid disappointment. i guess the answer would be that last one, "three conversations." but like, the show's ending sucked? i'm not surprised people were not dying to run out and read fic about it 😂

7. What fic performed way better than you thought it would?

i really did not know what to expect from posting a Better Call Saul fic. the show ended over a year ago, and i don't really have much of a sense of how big/active the fandom around it is, or was at its peak. that said, i was EXTREMELY happy to discover that there are way more fics for Jimmy/Kim than there were for the last "prestige"-y show ship i wrote for (Peggy/Stan on Mad Men).

so, all that to say, i was really pleasantly surprised to get as much engagement as i did with that little story! and i'm working on another one now and really enjoying writing it. :)

8. What was your favourite fic you wrote in 2023?

i feel like i win when i lose!!!!!!! the first four chapters of that story just FLOWED out of me like they already existed. it was so much fun to write and i think it's a super fun story in general. i reeeeeeally want to finish it.

9. What was your favourite fic someone else wrote in 2023?

Beautiful Broken Things by teaandpinkfrosting: a well-written, well-plotted, sweet, emotional, in-character season 1 Bughead fic in the year of our lord 2023? WHAT DID WE DO TO DESERVE THIS?

Eighty-Six Years by jimmymcgools: a grounded, believable, heartwrenching, yet ultimately hopeful continuation of the most devastating finale i've ever watched in my life? again, WHAT DID WE DO TO DESERVE THIS? [ETA to be extra clear that the finale i'm referencing here is bcs NOT rvd lol]

10. Tag your friends to do this year end fic review as well!

@absnow @burberrycanary @andsmile if you're into it! <3

#my fic

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ooklet · 7 months

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I was thinking about how to articulate what I hate about the Barbie movie. Like, there are some fun moments (Ken stepping out of view to scream "SUBLIME!" has forever ingratiated itself in my lexicon) but by and large it left me with an increasing sense of frustration that ultimately culminated into a two-part hate.

The first is easy to cover, and it's Mattel's utter failure to put its money where its mouth is, in the form of the movie's portrayal of a fat Barbie vs. the proportions on the fattest actual Barbie that they sell*:

*For the pedants out there, this statement excludes specific, limited characters, like Disney licensed Ursulas. I'm talking about general Barbies for sale on a given day.

The second was harder. For a while I couldn't put it into words, just vague, angry hand gestures about how nothingburger the resolution was.

And then while I was reading A Glossary of Haunting by Eve Tuck and C. Ree, I saw this sentence:

"Listing terrors is not a form of social justice."

And it clicked not just what angered me about this movie, but about a lot of performative, faux woke (fauxke?) media these days. Acknowledgment alone is not the beginning and end of justice. Acknowledgment alone offers no solutions. Acknowledgement alone is how you get Riverdale's tonal whiplash of every second word out of Veronica's mouth ("Toxic masculinity!") vs. noted underage girl Betty Cooper's dead-eyed gang initiation striptease to Mad World.

(And yeah, I know Riverdale is a special case in that it exists in a mirror funhouse dimension of probably salvia-induced dumbassery, but my point stands.)

In the Barbie movie, Gloria lists terrors to the patriarchy-brainwashed Barbies, and that is all that it takes to restore them to their #feminist selves. But the thing is, we the audience already know that patriarchy sucks. This offers us, the people for whom this movie was made, nothing.

Related, second-and-a-half thing that I hated about this movie was the comparison between the Barbies having no defenses against patriarchal thinking and American Indians having no defenses against smallpox. Truly go fuck yourselves Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach. The genocide of my ancestors is not a punchline. (But don't even get me started on how often this sort of casual cruelty randomly pops up in media, or this is going to evolve into an essay on why Brendan Urie deserves to have his vocal cords repossessed for that "manifest destiny" line in High Hopes.)

Anyway, I guess my point is that there was never going to be a Barbie movie with anything of substance to say, because it exists to sell toys and facilitate Mattel's recovery from their Ever-After-High-Disney-License-Revoked-Monster-High-Destroyed-Revenue-Vacuum fiasco. And it did do that. That is, in fact, all that it did.

#barbie movie #dolls #ndn #fatphobia #racism #colonialism

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popentertainment-moviereviews · 7 months

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TOTALLY KILLER (2023)

Starring Kiernan Shipka, Olivia Holt, Julie Bowen, Randall Park, Lochlyn Munro, Charlie Gillespie, Liana Liberato, Kelcey Mawema, Stephi Chin-Salvo, Anna Diaz, Jeremy Monn-Djasgnar, Troy Leigh-Anne Johnson, Ella Choi, Nathaniel Appiah, Jonathan Potts, Kelcey Mawema, Stephi Chin-Salvo, Ella Choi, Jeremy Monn-Djasgnar and Nathaniel Appiah.

Screenplay by David Matalon & Sasha Perl-Raver and Jen D'Angelo.

Directed by Nahnatchka Khan.

Distributed by Amazon Studios. 106 minutes. Rated R.

It’s funny to imagine the pitch meeting for Totally Killer. “Well, it’s a slasher horror film about a masked killer targeting high school mean girls… And did we mention that it’s also a post-modern comedy? Oh, and also, it’s about time travel.”

Totally Killer has so many balls in the air at once that it is kind of shocking that it is as good it turns out to be.

With a relatively unknown young cast – lead Kiernan Shipka has a following for playing Sabrina the teenaged witch in The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and Riverdale and her mom is played by Modern Family’s Julie Bowen – Totally Killer is a near complete surprise. And it’s a good surprise.

Now to be completely honest, Totally Killer works better as a comedy than as a horror – the killer sections in fact tend to be the soft spots here – but it’s a smart and funny film. And, let’s face it, most horror films since the original Scream work comic beats into their scripts.

It is all smartly and snappily directed by television scribe Nahnatchka Khan – best known for creating the quirky TV series Don’t Trust the B---- in Apt. 23 and Fresh off the Boat. (Her Fresh off the Boat star Randall Park has a funny supporting part as an ineffectual sheriff.)

It’s a terribly high concept idea. Jamie (Shipka) is a teenager who is in complete revolt from her overprotective do-good mother Pam (Bowen). It seems that back in the 1980s when mom was 16 (Jamie’s age now…), three of her friends were stabbed to death by “The Sweet Sixteen Killer” – and Pam has been expecting him to return ever since.

The killer has become something of a local celebrity – inspiring “Sweet Sixteen Killer” tours and Halloween costumes – but he has not been heard of since the original killings 35 years earlier.

And of course when Pam’s daughter turns 16, the killer returns, with filled with violent intents. Naturally he targets Jamie. Jamie’s best friend has been trying unsuccessfully to build a time machine from an old photo booth for the local science fair, based upon her mother’s long-ago notes, because of course she is. As the killer tries to get Jamie, she hides in the time machine. As the killer stabs at her in the booth, his violent stabbing inadvertently causes the machine to work.

Jamie arrives in 1987, on the day that the killings are about to start. (This is not as random as that may sound, she and her friend programmed in the date while the time machine was not operational. Now Jamie has to find the victims and save them, to figure out who the killer was, and to figure out how to get back to her own time. That last part is particularly tricky, as the time machine runs on Wi-Fi, which does not exist in 1987.

Also, it turns out, she has to keep her teen parents – who are much wilder than their future selves would suggest – from hooking up yet, because they are not supposed to get together until after they finish college.

Of course she quickly finds that telling the truth to alert the police and the potential victims of the danger, is not going to work. Even she recognizes that comparing herself to Marty McFly in Back to the Future to try to explain what happened makes her sound nuts. So she decides to act like a new student – recently moved there from Prince Edwards Island, Canada, of all places – and befriend her mother and the victims, who turn to be the local mean girl clique called the Mollys. (They idolize Molly Ringwald and tend to dress in outfits that match her different film wardrobes.)

With many fits and starts and roadblocks, she finally befriends teen Pam (Olivia Holt) and goes about trying to save everyone. But the more she tries, the more she slightly changes history, and she fails at stopping the killings.

The fish out of water aspects of a modern teen in the 1980s never fails to connect. Shipka frustratedly scolding her 1980s counterpoints with things like “unwanted touch” or “you can’t call her that” make for comic gold. Dealing with things like keggers and dodgeball and nude hot tubbing make for some wonderfully awkward humor.

Totally Killer also gets bonus points for having a major sequence in one of my favorite forgotten carnival rides, the Gravitron (redubbed the Quantum Drop here). As Wikipedia explains: “The ride is completely enclosed, with 48 padded panels lining the inside wall. Riders lean against these panels, which are angled back. As the ride rotates, the rider experiences a centrifugal force pointing outward from the ride's center. This force, along with the slant in the walls, allows riders to be completely supported by the walls, without their feet touching the ground. The ride can rotate at a maximum frequency of 24 rpm. It reaches that frequency in less than 20 seconds…. At this point, the riders are experiencing centrifugal force equivalent to three times the force of gravity.”

If Totally Killer somehow becomes responsible for the resurrection of the Gravitron regaining popularity in carnivals, then it will not just be a terrifically fun film, but it will have done a great service for humanity.

Jay S. Jacobs

youtube

#Totally Killer #Kiernan Shipka #2023 #Movie Review #Jay S. Jacobs #Youtube

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mejomonster · 9 months

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Oh an FYI, for better or worse the Riverdale show is intensely inspired by Twin Peaks.

I feel like if you've ever seen twin peaks, this becomes immediately obvious within seconds of turning on Riverdale.

Like, on technicality, yes riverdale is "based on" Archie comics. And in a sense that's not totally wrong. It definitely plays with 50s aesthetics despite being set in 2000s (sort of like Twin Peaks lives in the "retro" even though it's technically not set in the past), and it uses the fact its based on a fun comic to really just have Fun going all out camp. It doesn't Care the bad guys name is Blossom like a fucking cartoon lol, it IS like one. It doesn't care the colors aren't about the realism like at all but about pretty colors, cartoons don't care if they're going for what pops. It doesn't care its calling stuff Jingle Jangle and the Serpents and the Black Hood and the Sugar Man, because hey that's exactly what a kids cartoon would do especially an older one having a fun time being ridiculous. So like yeah, in that way, you can see the comic vibe. And in a way I don't like really noticing at all and would rather ignore, it does in some ways try to keep some elements of those original core characters (which in some ways I Ah really wish Riverdale had nothing to do with an existing property because then I'd actually have no issues with it at all lol... but 1 we live in a time where almost everything is a remake adaptation prequel sequel and that's like the whole Industry top levels fault at the end of the day-.- and 2 for better and worse I think in some ways the show does actually care for the original material, which I did not expect and feel conflicted about and mostly want to avoid but it Is there if you look for it.)

Like. In a way Riverdale is if you made an Archie fanfiction Twin Peaks au. It's so Twin peaks. It screams Twin peaks for modern teenagers.

Like? Alice Cooper is the same actress that played the waitress with the abusive truck driver husband in Twin Peaks (they even use a Twin peaks image of her for the newspaper article of her younger self). Jughead's dad is one of the bad guys from Scream (and I feel like that on its own screams a LOT about horror and camp themes and references). So many shots in Riverdale (at least up to the season 2 I've watched) are direct shots from Twin Peaks. The color scheme reliance on red is Twin peaks, and the blue reliance is Riverdale playing with its own use of color the same way. The Riverdale town sign is a direct shot from Twin Peaks. Jughead and the biker gang in GENERAL and the Whyte Worm are like huge obvious parallels to the leather jacket wearing biker gang in Twin Peaks lol??? The weird dialogue, while not having the same effect at ALL of Twin peaks surreal shit, is likewise obviously trying to not be normal. Riverdale doesn't want to sound normal, it's happy to be weird as shit and whatever IT wants to be, and that's a very Twin Peaks attitude.

My dad said when Twin Peaks aired everyone thought it was so weird and interesting. And like. I'm not sure I can say I've got an opinion of Riverdale much yet, but I can say yeah... if you're used to media trying to be normal, like the other stuff, realistic, no surrealness in your media, then lmao of course Riverdale is weird. Yet if you've ever seen Twin Peaks or equally bizarre stuff, Riverdale is pretty tame and mundane and only in the shallow end of weird to be quite Frank (as of mid season 2 where I am). Like... I am DESPERATE for Riverdale to take off the training wheels for its "audience thats never seen Twin Peaks" and FINALLY go as weird as Twin Peaks! Or weirder! Give me weirder! It's still actually like... Twin Peaks episode 1 level weird, just with more camp. Riverdale hasn't even entered end of season 1 Twin Peak Bizarre levels yet.

Anyway back to my point. I think seeing it as a homage to Twin Peaks sort of makes obvious a lot of stuff that seemed... incomprehensible about Riverdale, tbh? Like... why have a biker gang, why act like you're in the past even though you're set in the present, why have a killer, why have an adult manipulating a student, why have fucked up rich people messing with the town, why have a weird bar that fights happen at, why have murders and a curfew no one listens to, why have random people hook up and have secret affairs and ties, why do people say weird shit, why are there sudden dance or singing scenes, why would a character show up doing a drug deal or hiding jewelry or trying to run away or... because Twin Peaks did. So MUCH of Riverdale is so clearly a homage to Twin Peaks.

I'm waiting for a log lady equivalent, a confusing dream sequence, a truly fucked up gambling club full of teen girls, a doppelganger, stuff Twin Peaks did that was bizarre that Riverdale hasn't even reached yet.

Tldr I just think like. It's neat. It's nice even. I like this aspect. I think a lot of early reactions I saw to Riverdale, a long long time ago back when they really were reacting to like "very ordinary plot" season 1? Was in part people reacting to a show doing some things like Twin Peaks, but they'd never seen a show do That before and so were just like wow WEIRD. And like. Fair. But also sometimes the weird feeling... is the point.

#riverdale #lb

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no-fate-but-what-we-make · 1 year

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Mistletoe Kiss | Reggie Mantle

[gif is not mine; all credit goes to the creator]

Pairing: Reggie Mantle x Fem!Reader

Description: It’s Christmas time in Riverdale, which means it’s the Lodge’s annual Christmas party, and a kiss under the mistletoe with Reggie yields surprising results.

Warnings: underage drinking, mentions of sex at a party

Word Count: 2K

A/N: Takes place mid-season 4, as that’s all I’ve seen of the show at the moment

- - -

The Vince Guaraldi Trio’s version of O Tannenbaum played softly throughout Apartment 330 at The Pembrooke, adding the finishing touch to the Christmas atmosphere both inside and outside.

You shrugged out of your warm faux-fur winter coat, taking care to brush the snowflakes out of your hair - beauty had its price, and that meant no hat or Snuggs to keep your feet warm. Beside you, Reggie handed his own jacket to Smithers who then retreated to hang them up.

“Champagne?” A cocktail waitress asked, seemingly appearing out of nowhere.

“Thank you.” You smiled, grabbing a flute off the tray and taking a demure sip. Reggie followed suit and the two of you started making the rounds at the party.

“I’m so glad you two could make it!” Veronica gushed, bringing both you and Reggie in for a hug, her own glass of champagne in her hand that you knew was far from her first.

“I made Reggie pick me up ‘cause there was no way in hell I was driving in all that snow.”

You could practically feel Reggie’s chest puff up at your compliment. “Bella and I are always down to save a damsel in distress.”

Both you and Veronica laughed, but you knew there was more history behind hers. While you and Reggie had always just been friends, you were well aware of the feelings between Reggie and Veronica. It was no secret that Reggie was still hung up on her even though Veronica and Archie were trying to make their relationship work for the umpteenth time. You had managed to convince Reggie to come to this party tonight, if only to try to help him move on, but even now you weren’t sure that was going to happen.

“Where’s everyone else?” You asked, hoping to break the awkward silence.

“Check over by the tree.” Veronica pointed with her champagne flute.

Reggie placed his hand on your lower back as the two of you made your way over to the elaborately-decorated Christmas tree, and you couldn’t help enjoying the contact. His touch was warm and solid, and it reminded you of just how single you were. You took a big gulp of your champagne, trying to relay to your brain that the hand on your back was that of your friend and nothing more.

“You’re here!” Betty hugged you tightly in greeting while Reggie dapped up Archie and Jughead. You gave Cheryl a small smile, both of you nodding at the other as your own form of hello.

“You’re all welcome - I had to promise to pick her up to even get her to consider coming to this,” Reggie joked, making you playfully swat at his arm when everyone laughed. “Am I wrong, though?”

“Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Jug just put snow tires on his motorcycle today.” Betty rested her head on her boyfriend’s shoulder. “Up ‘til this morning, I’d forgotten those even existed.”

You were about to open your mouth to say something when Moose and Kevin came out of the bathroom looking disheveled. Moose fixed the collar of his shirt while Kevin was busy rearranging his far-from-ugly Christmas sweater.

“Make sure to, uh, mind the mistletoe,” Kevin murmured, a blush tinging his cheeks as he and Moose shared a look but staunchly refused eye contact with anyone else.

“Where is it?” Jughead gave a look of his own to Betty and you didn’t even want to think about what the two of them were planning for later.

“Above the fireplace. Odd choice if you ask me, but I’m sure the Lodges don’t want people making out all over their property.”

“As someone who just got done doing a little more than making out on the Lodge’s property with you, I can’t say I blame them - even if it was fun as hell,” Moose teased, making Kevin blush an even darker shade of red.

Everyone laughed at that, and you could finally feel the champagne starting to kick in. You placed your empty glass onto a tray when the next waiter came by and picked up another along the way. Appetizers were all around but nothing was appealing to you yet, and you were happy to sip champagne with your friends.

- - -

“I have an idea,” you whispered to Reggie after you’d caught him staring at Archie and Veronica for the tenth time in five minutes. “It’s crazy, but just hear me out.”

“Oh, boy, I’m gonna regret this, aren’t I?” Reggie rolled his eyes, grabbing some pigs in a blanket for each of you.

“Probably.” You took a bite of the food, happy to finally have something in your stomach after two and a half glasses of champagne. “I think…you should kiss me under the mistletoe.”

Reggie’s eyes were wide when he turned to face you. “I’m already regretting this, but go on.”

“You want Veronica, but she’s with Archie, right? So, let’s make her jealous. If it doesn’t work, we can blame it on the alcohol or pretend it never happened. But if it does, we can show her that you’ve moved on and it could force her to face her feelings for you if she thinks she can’t string you along anymore.”

“Hmm.” Reggie thought about it as he chewed his food, looking over at Veronica and Archie again. Archie had just said something to make Veronica laugh, and you could see Reggie’s jaw clench as he watched her lean into her current boyfriend. “Meet me under the mistletoe in five minutes?”

Your stomach dipped at the question as you nodded. “Five minutes.”

It turned out to be reasonably easy to get yourself over to the fireplace. Your holly green sweater dress was warm but the v neck and three-quarter length sleeves coupled with strappy heels and without tights was enough to leave you shivering and with an excuse to warm up.

Some trays of cookies had been set out and you took it upon yourself to grab one of the red and green sprinkled sugar cookies, happy with the texture when you bit into it.

Just as you were about to pick up another cookie after polishing the first one off, you felt a hand on your shoulder spinning you around. You sucked in a breath as your palms landed on Reggie’s chest. “Is Veronica looking?”

“Guess we’ll find out.”

You didn’t have time to think after that, Reggie’s lips colliding with yours in a kiss that took your breath away. His hand splayed out across your lower back, making sure you were flush against him; his other hand cupped your face gently before possessively gripping the back of your neck. You clutched at his bicep, unsure where to put your hands without causing even more of a scene than you were sure you and Reggie were causing with such a public kiss.

The kiss ended much sooner than you wanted it to - a realization that surprised you. Reggie stared back at you in shock and you were sure the same expression had to be mirrored on your face.

“Hold on,” you murmured, reaching for his lips to wipe away your lipstick that had transferred. “There.” You cleared your throat, looking away and staunchly refusing to make eye contact.

“Thanks.” Reggie looked over in Veronica’s general direction and you did the same, noting how upset she looked before excusing herself to her bedroom.

“What are you waiting for?” You asked when Reggie seemed to hesitate. “Go talk to her.”

“Are you gonna be okay?”

Your stomach dipped at the caring tone in his voice and it took everything in you to nod your head. “Uh, yeah, of course.” You couldn’t help but stare longingly at Reggie’s retreating form as he chased after Veronica.

“Oh my god. What was that kiss?!” Betty whispered, sidling up to you and handing you a mug of boozy hot chocolate. “I didn’t know you and Reggie were together!”

“Thanks.” You took a sip, hoping the warmth would soothe your racing heartbeat. “We’re not. Uh, together, I mean.”

Betty gave you a look. “You don’t have to lie to me - I can keep a secret. You don’t kiss a friend like that. And besides, I’ve always suspected you and Reggie had feelings for each other; this just confirms it.” You must have given her a skeptic look because she continued, “You look at him the way I used to look at Archie before I figured out we weren’t compatible like that, but something tells me you and Reggie are the opposite of me and Archie.”

“Well, that kiss was just to see if Veronica still wanted him, so I don’t think your theory is correct.”

“Guess we’ll see about that.” Betty smirked as both of you watched Reggie stormed out of Veronica’s bedroom with her in tow.

A wave of guilt hit you as you realize that you probably just broke up Archie and Veronica while also letting Reggie get rejected by his ex.

“We’re leaving,” Reggie growled, taking you by the elbow and practically dragging you to the front door where Smithers magically had your coats ready to go. The valet had Bella waiting, too, and you started to get suspicious at the timing of all of it but the serious look on Reggie’s face silenced you.

The drive back to your house was quiet, not even Christmas music coming from the radio to drown out your racing thoughts. Reggie stared straight ahead, white-knuckling the steering wheel on the freshly snow-plowed roads.

Reggie shut off the engine in front of your house but neither of you made a move to get out.

“So,” you said into the silence, “how did your talk with Veronica go?”

The muscle in Reggie’s jaw clenched again and desire shot through you as you remembered what it felt like to kiss him under the mistletoe. “It was…eye-opening.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means she and I talked and she told me some things that I needed to hear.”

“Things like…?” You were even more confused, and now you were starting to shiver as the warm air began to dissipate with the engine off.

Reggie let out a sigh, leaning his head back on the headrest and closing his eyes for a moment. “Things like how she and Archie are focusing on their relationship and how she and I are over for good…and how apparently it’s obvious to everyone but you and me that we have feelings for each other.”

Now it was your turn to be too stunned to speak. Part of you wanted to laugh at the absurdity of the statement, but another part of you knew that laughing wasn’t the right call here. “And she was serious?!”

Reggie looked over at you and your eyes met his for the first time since you two had left the party. “It’s Veronica - of course she was serious.”

The look on his face was too intense for you but you didn’t look away this time, your fingers playing with the skirt of your dress as a distraction. “Reggie…”

“I know, I know. Veronica is wrong, the kiss was a mistake. I know.”

“I wasn’t going to say that.” You wanted to reach for him so badly, but stopped yourself. “I…felt something when we kissed. I didn’t think I was going to when I suggested it but I haven’t stopped thinking about it.”

Silence engulfed the car once again, and this time you couldn’t stand it. You reached for your bag and opened the door, shutting it behind you as you got out and made your way to the front door. You could hear Reggie shout your name, the sound of his own car door shutting as he chased after you in the snow.

You paused at the door to rummage through your bag for your keys and it was at that point that Reggie caught up to you. He was out of breath, his cheeks pink from the cold. “I can’t stop thinking about that kiss, either. Can we try again, just us?”

All you could do was nod as you stepped closer to him. “Kiss me again, Reggie,” you whispered, winding your arms around his neck as he leaned down to kiss you.

#reggie mantle x reader #reggie mantle x you #reggie mantle x fem!reader #reggie mantle fanfiction #reggie mantle fanfic #reggie mantle oneshot #reggie mantle one shot #riverdale fanfiction #riverdale fanfic #reggie mantle fluff #reggie mantle sexy

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forasecondtherewedwon · 2 months

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for the ask game! <333

🌻 ⇢ tag someone you appreciate but don't talk to on a regular basis

🐇 ⇢ do you prefer writing original characters, reader inserts, or a mix of both?

🧃 ⇢ share some personal lore you never posted about before

Thanks for these!!

🌻 ⇢ tag someone you appreciate but don't talk to on a regular basis

@panalegs27, you came to mind immediately! It's been a while and I hope you're doing well 🩷

🐇 ⇢ do you prefer writing original characters, reader inserts, or a mix of both?

Neither! I prefer playing with canon characters. However, when I wrote for the Riverdale fandom, I received requests for x-reader fics, which I did fill, and which still exist on this blog and on my AO3 account. You gotta try stuff to find out what you like!

🧃 ⇢ share some personal lore you never posted about before

What qualifies as "lore" status?!?

Our crescent's community mailbox was set into the side yard of my childhood home. In the summer, I would play with my Barbies while sitting on the warm concrete under the mailbox.

more truth & dare asks

#ask game #thank you!!#about me

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rythmicjea · 26 days

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Hobbyism is the best way to get through grief. ~Cole Sprouse

NEW FIC BACKSTORY

Okay... so... This is an odd one (and a long one). This is kind of representative of my current "chaos era". It's a bit of a story and I put most of it in the A/N. But this was not a story I was ever intending to write. In fact, I am not part of the fandom (scandalous I know), and better yet, I had no idea that the show even existed until this past November... But apparently it was big! My excuse is that I was not of the demographic for it age wise. I think if it's age appropriate, anyone can watch anything. Rock on, man.

The backstory of this goes, I found out that my baby boy (cat) Jayne, had advanced kidney disease. For a brief and shining moment, I thought that he would beat the odds. Unfortunately, he was gone within two weeks. I held him as he passed. I have a little altar to him on my desk because he will never be forgotten. But, in my grief, I knew I needed to find an outlet. While I can't journal write (I absolutely hate it lol) I can tell stories. And I wanted to write something very dark and nihilistic that basically combined Peaky Blinders with Riverdale (Chaos Era).

So while I was falling down the Jeronica rabbit hole, I was gathering playlists and mashup videos to aid in my inspiration. But, the story refuse to appear. Instead, YouTube kept suggesting clips from a show I had never heard of. And the clips were OLD. Like from over 10 years ago. Though I said I was uninterested the recs kept coming. So I did ONE google search. I read ONE synopsis. I saw a cast list and I saw a timeline of a relationship. I thought that was all I needed. My brain said NOPE!

The timeline of this relationship ended every entry with "and they hugged". I was very confused about why this couple was only hugging. Then when I saw that the last episode was graduation I got a little more incensed. I had two puzzle pieces that didn't connect without a third. So, I asked around. I have friends that were of the age demographic at the time this was on. And every one of them said that 1.) they loved the show and 2.) It was a very Disney show. Now, there were some sporadic kisses here and there but I remember being that age in high school and while I wasn't some "light BDSM scene on the second time I ever had sex" (Looking at you Bughead in Riverdale...) I definitely did more than just hug my high school boyfriend.

Even though I wasn't satisfied with the answer I thought that was the end of it. My brain had other ideas. My brain told me that if I didn't write this story then I would never write again. Well. That's death to a creative type like me. While I never wrote every day or even put out stories consistently, I was still crafting stories in my head. I needed to be able to write. I was in a desperate state. So I thought "fine, I'll write 3000 words, delete it, and then write what I want."

I wrote 10,000 words in one sitting.

I wrote 50,000 words in 18 days.

I didn't watch the show until I was like 80% done with the fic.

It currently stands over 100,000 words.

If you've made it this far you're going "WHAT IS THE STORY?!"

Okay, I'll tell you. It turns out I was being recommended the clips because of an actor. This actor is Cole Sprouse. I knew him mostly as Ben Geller from Friends. I didn't know he had an actual career before Riverdale. I just thought he did something as a kid, and then came back after college. I was so wrong... So so so so so wrong...

If you guessed The Suite Life of Zack and Cody and The Suite Life on Deck you would be correct.

This massive story started as a way to explain why Cody and Bailey "only hugged". Turned into a love story. I made Zack not straight and married to a man with identical twin girls. London is a pediatric surgeon (and I still stand by that decision knowing what I know now). And Cody and Bailey are probably the least likable characters in the entire thing but they are relatable. This is a story of trying to find love after you discover the amount of abuse you went through. Why running from things is not ideal. And maybe, even when you live an outlandish life, there's some normalcy to discover. It's kind of dark, but there's a lot of humor. If you're not familiar with the show, I would just think of it as an original work. (I know, I know... certain death for a fanfic writer lol)

If you enjoy it, please drop a kudos and my comments section is open and I welcome kind and constructive criticism and questions. Like, fuck me up with questions. Please.

#ao3 #ao3 fanfic #writing #writers #cole sprouse #dylan sprouse #Cody Martin #Zack Martin #the suite life of zack and cody #The suite life on deck #Bailey Pickett #London Tipton #debby ryan #Brenda Song #Zack is gheeyyyy #Cody is kind of a dick but in the BEST way #There might be some triggering things #This story may ruin your childhood...#and i don't care

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fredheads · 5 months

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I just think about Fred fp and gladys always hanging out together and being known as like the three musketeers at school and I think about all the gossip because of course fp and gladys can easily kiss and touch in public but everyone’s always had this watchful eye on Fred and fp because no one knew a friendship closer than theirs and sometimes it would get a little suspicious especially if Fred was doing his whole goofball “I can do gay things but comedically so no one will take it serious” thing

And I think about Gladys getting the brunt of a lot of shit too especially by the rich stuffy north siders who already looked down on her for being south side and looking so different from everyone else (leaning heavily into her punk era doing wild shit with her hair, gender fuckery, you know how it goes) but then she’s constantly seen with two boys, one of which at least is public she’s hooking up with, so of course everyone assumes she’s fucking Fred too which like… she is lmao but they make it so gross and seedy like “ooo bet she gets double teamed” and calling her all sorts of names and spreading nasty rumors and for as thick as Gladys’ skin is you can only hear so much negative shit about yourself before it starts getting to you on some level, fortunately for her she could get over it pretty quickly tho cuz she has zero interest in pleasing these people

And then of course there’s Fred who everyone’s confused by how he ended up in a southside sandwich (surely that must be a riverdale sex name…like the sticky maple or whatever it was lmfao) but he gets shit mainly from Artie about how he needs to be more picky about who he’s friends with but if the rumors ever got back to his parents…oh boy

But like even tho they were facing a lot they still had so much fun the three of them together and they were all so fiercely protective of each other it really was if you go after one you go after all three situation. And they’d have so many date nights just the three of them cruising around town hanging out at pops or the movies or the arcade or fps trailer or Fred’s basement in a cuddle pile Fred and Gladys trying to throw popcorn and candy into each others mouths while fps in the middle getting whacked in the cheek with debris or Fred and Gladys trying to get fp to dance to the jukebox at pops or them cramming into a photo booth to take pictures or them having a day by the lake and Fred carefully drawing fp and gladys while they sunbathe (well Gladys is working on her tan fps just passed out from exhaustion)

It was just a very nice time overall 🥰 despite the horrors lmao

SOUTHSIDE SANDWICH!!!!! GET OUT!!! but yeah 😂 everyone was so judgy about fp and gladys just existing but here comes freds happy little ass hanging around with them all the time and he's so popular and clean cut and wholesome and no one knows what that means!! So I'm sure the boys on the baseball team and whatnot were making snide remarks about fred for that but fred is not the kind of person to let anyone trash talk his friends so he would stand up for them 😤 but it was an uphill battle for sure. It meant a lot to fp to have fred in his corner tho cuz unfortunately he did sometimes care what kids at school thought of him or at least would believe and internalize the shit they said.... Gladys did not give a fuck but you're right just cuz they're calling her a dyke and a slut all the time and are technically right does NOT mean she wants to hear it from Ricky from second period 😡🔪 she could fight her own battles but one of the things she thought was so sweet about fred was how relentlessly he stood up for people 🥺

What was hardest for fred was standing up to his dad cuz u are right artie was not happy about what he was hearing about fred spending all his time w southsiders and being down in that part of town a lot... Cuz news travels fast in that town and rumours were flying among the adults too and artie was just opposed to the Southside in general but fred would try to argue that these are his friends and they can't help where they were born!! Artie thought fred was just in a rebellious phase and flaunting it but fred meant that shit with his heart, he can't be any other way....

Also only slightly related but recently I was thinking about gladys and mary being thrown together for seven minutes in heaven at a high school party and while they're making out in the closet Mary's asking gladys if she thinks fred is interested in her cuz she hates herself for it but she thinks he's kinda cute 💀 lmaoooo and gladys is like no i think you'd be cute together this does not pass the bechdel test fnfnngkdnfnf idk why this came to me but there you are

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