20th Century Limited (podfic)

Written by: Speranza | @cesperanza​

Read by: quietnight | @5deadweasels

Rating: NC-17 | explicit

Content Note | Warning: telepathy, constructed reality, Grand Central to the Grand Canyon

Summary:

Written Work: 20th Century Limited

Podfic Post: [podfic] 20th Century Limited

Additional Comments: This podfic starts with the whistle of a train, and the sound accompanies Steve through the entirety of this fic. For the 20th Century Limited was a train, and yet the fic’s title refers to so much more than a once famous train that Steve and Bucky are taking to get to the Grand Canyon. It is a clever, a haunting play with words that describes large parts of their shared life in the 20th century. “20th Century Limited” is another Stucky classic, one of the most if not the most original fic I have ever read. If you don’t know the story, try not to get spoiled: it is amazing to discover what is happening with Steve and Bucky as the story unfolds. This is a complicated story, with non-linear time lines, cutting back and forth between past and present, reality and … another reality, between places as far apart as Times Square and a submarine off the coast of Cuba. It is a beautiful story, a love story defying (and eventually cherishing) the limitations of physical reality. Quietnight’s reading is brilliant, Steve’s voice heartfelt and powerful, her sense of timing impeccable. There are a few sounds effects used for maximum impact (the train whistle, the eery sound of beeping computers). This is a story suited so well for podficcing, for being told in the voice of a fannish story-reader. I’ve listened to it numerous times, again today before I wrote up this rec: at the end I, like quietnight, always find myself reluctant to leave the world of this story.

Son of the Arch Demon

By Amanda Meuwissen

Sometimes the high road leads straight to Hell.

It's announcement day, and that means I can finally tell you about my next project, a multi-author PNR collaboration centered around demons. 😈🍆😈

I am one of 15 authors, and boy, are we excited to bring you Possessive Love, starting cover reveals on July 24th, with mine coming at ya on August 3rd. You can preorder Son of the Arch Demon right now:

And please check out the other titles from my amazing fellow authors:

Stay tuned for our cover reveals, upcoming autumn releases, and what is sure to be a ton of devilish fun to come. I am so excited to finally share with you...

-----

😈SON OF THE ARCH DEMON😈

Sometimes the high road leads straight to Hell.

Avriel

Turning twenty-one is almost universally seen as the age of transformation, of coming into one's own, reaching adulthood, and sometimes even as a symbol of death and rebirth. I never knew how literal that last part could be until, on my twenty-first birthday, I died and was resurrected as a demon.

Well, half-demon and would have died if I wasn’t prophesized to become the Antichrist and take over the world. All I wanted was to survive graduation, achieve my dream of becoming an artist, and maybe have Marc, the hot new guy who I thought liked me for me, be anything other than a lust demon hoping to guide me on my path to the apocalypse.

Marchosias

Occasionally, ya gotta make yer own destiny, my lovies, so when I found a thin spot in the veil between Hell and earth, I leapt right through it. Sensing the soon-to-be successor to the throne of Hell, I insinuated myself on campus and into his life to await his awakening and fell to my knees in supplication once he did. Pity Avi is so set on denying his destiny.

But I can convince him. I will serve and aid and arouse my master in whatever manner necessary to get what I want. I’ve been an underling, a doormat, a lesser demon for far too long, and his path to glory is going to be mine.

Son of the Arch Demon is part of the MM paranormal romance collaboration Possessive Love.

Things fanfic is reputed for inserting into the source material:

Things fanfic actually inserts into the source material:

What fanfic often removes from the source material:

sometimes i say things on twitter and then make a little graph about it

I love that more and more people in the fandom are starting to realize that

Bottom!Snart >>>> Top!Snart

Someone needs to fuck this dude to calm down. And let it be Barry, thank you🙏💕

Proud member of the Barry needs to dick Snart down fan club since 2015:

AO3 Etiquette

It would seem a whole new kind of AO3 reader/writer is emerging and it is becoming clear not everyone quite understands how the website community works. Here is some basic guidance on how most people expect you to go about using AO3 to keep this a fun community archive that funtions correctly:

I KNOW there's plenty more I missed but I'm trying to cover most of the basics that people seem to be struggling with.

I invite anyone to add to this, but please explain, don't berate.

People are so entitled in the comments damn like no you writer don’t have to put up with you being rude they wrote you entertainment for free

To the people in the notes who are insisting that they have the right to leave negative feedback on AO3:

What you’re not understanding is that fandom is not a service, it’s a community. I saw someone compare leaving a comment on AO3 to reviewing a product on Amazon - if you didn’t like the product, you’re going to say so. But fanworks are not products and you didn’t pay money for them. They were shared with you.

Leaving un-asked-for criticism in AO3 comments isn’t like reviewing a product you were disappointed with. It’s like going to a friend’s house when they’ve cooked a meal and telling them all the things that are wrong with the food. Sure, you can do it, but it’s rude as hell and they are probably not going to invite you to dinner again.

("Can you leave crit in comments” has been a debate as long as I’ve been in fandom, but 20 years ago the argument was “I’m helping the writer improve!” and not “I am a consumer with a right to complain.” Fandom has gotten more creepily capitalistic over the decades but jerks are evergreen, I guess.)

When did you come home?

i came home because i thought i was too far away. i thought i was too far from my friends, from my culture, from my family, from job opportunities. i came home because it was practical. i spend a quarter of the price being at home than being at a private predominantly white liberal arts institution: the undergraduate population was 5000 people. at home, the undergraduate population is 35000 people. coming home was the smarter choice, but i no longer know if it was the best choice.

i thought it was the best choice – when i was away. i thought i would get to do so much more and have so much fun, but really, i'm just at home. i eat dinner past midnight, i fall asleep with my makeup on, i spend too much time in bed; i'm at home.

sometimes i wish i stayed away. my friends tell me i talk too much about my old school, about being away from home. it isn't my fault that it was a beautiful place with beautiful people and i had a beautiful time. coming home doesn't feel pretty like that, it feels like the tree in my backyard that hasn't actually grown in years.

What is needed to move forward?

A shovel - you've been digging a hole, digging a hole, digging a grave. Keep shoveling. Keep trying.

Find the other side, as if a grave is something to come back from. You visit your grandma down there, your best friend, your childhood dog. They take turns with the shovel.

They tell you a grave is something to come back from.

You've been digging a hole.

below

Lucy thinks she might die right here, right now, at the start of her freshman orientation.

She has given birth before. She has walked around a Catholic high school in her third trimester of pregnancy when people didn’t even bother whispering about her condition anymore. She has missed her senior prom and crashed another one just to say she did something. But this is the hardest thing she’s ever endured. This is the most humiliating.

It started off so normal. Lucy was proud to be at the University of Michigan, and she thought the University of Michigan was proud to welcome her. After all, they know where she could have been if she hadn’t gotten pregnant. They should feel honored. She knows how arrogant she sounds, but for a brief moment, it felt very real. Very true.

She walked up to the check-in desk where some young women in blue asked for her name. They asked if she was still interested in majoring in English. Lucy answered both of their questions with a smile on her red lips and her chin high in the air. But when they handed her a packet, she began to feel a lot like a beach ball. Unflattering. Annoying. Slowly deflating.

It’s been an hour, and she still feels like that beach ball.

The packet is a list of all the classes she tested into. A few months earlier, after she committed to attending Michigan, they brought her in for a few placement tests. Math, composition, stuff like that. She knew she blew the math section. Math was never her strong suit (a fact she’ll die embarrassed of), and getting pregnant made it worse. It’s hard to comprehend complex trigonometry when you’re worried you might have an accident during the pop quiz.

But, of course, Lucy was pretty sure she nailed the written. She’s always been a writer. Good with words. A lovely turn of phrase. She wrote about the Orwellian state of modernity, and she pulled a few quotes from 1984 out of her memory. Maybe it doesn’t help that the current year is 1985, but she thought the sentiment still stood.

As it turns out, she thought wrong.

Because when Lucy looks at that placement packet, it says the worst thing it could possibly say.

She has to take the lower section of English composition when school starts in the fall.

The notes in the packet say that Lucy Callaghan has below average writing skills.

And, OK, they don’t actually say that. But they might as well. Lucy was going into this orientation – this postsecondary career – believing she already knew what she was doing. But apparently, none of those sophisticated analyses of Christ-like figures in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest were good enough. Of course they weren’t good enough.

Sadie says it’s not that big of a deal or even a big deal at all. She also placed into the lower section of composition, and now, maybe they’ll be guaranteed a class together if they can swing it that way. And Lucy tries to smile through it … tries not to feel like a fool and a fraud.

But she’s Lucy. And every ounce of her confidence is shellacked in the fear that everyone’s going to find out about her.

They might be onto her now.

(part of @nosebleedclub september challenge -- day xvi!)

September Prompts

1. everything matters 2. house key 3. bread 4. college football season (again) 5. school bag 6. willow street 7. disappointed father 8. seaward 9. relapse 10. ruination 11. trilogy 12. asters & goldenrod 13. lamprey 14. final rites 15. trespassing 16. below 17. not a lover 18. study group 19. vantage 20. rosary 21. questions to ask your mother 22. observer 23. cool nights 24. ultimatum 25. lonely boy 26. burning field 27. glancing blow 28. harvest moon 29. the empty homes 30. warm colors

Tell me a soft memory

we would find out later i had burned off my entire cornea - about 65% of my eye. my doctor told me it is the organ with the highest concentration of nerve endings - i was in an amount of pain that can't be spoken.

and i was blind. for the first time in my life, i was totally blind. i kept thinking about reading, about writing. weirdly, just once, about driving. we had no idea if i would ever see again. just like that - my entire life was different.

it is a strange place to reference for a soft memory, to begin here.

my siblings were taking excellent care of me, but there was a moment in the hospital where, just through bad luck and timing - both of them had to step away for a moment. i was crying at that point; not emotionally. for 3 days after this i would still be crying, my tears, like a mermaid's, a frothy pink with blood.

my brother worried about leaving me. he had another, just-as-bad emergency.

"i got her," someone said. "don't worry."

a soft hand held mine, and then she started talking.

her name was jess. she has a wife named clyde. they live a few blocks up the street. clyde fell down, but the x-rays seem to be coming back better than expected. jess says she's got long dark hair and "more wrinkles than an elephant". jess describes every chair in the room and every person. she talks about her two kids and her cats and her favorite memories from college.

a doctor came. i had to switch to a different waiting room. i tried to stand up to follow the voice - i found jess's hand, following me. she didn't let go. she kept talking the whole way: lamp to your left, just a few more steps, okay to your right is the ugliest painting, good, now a little more walking straight, you got it baby

in the new silence of the next room she sat me down and called my brother for me, telling him where we'd gone to. and she stayed there for a bit, just chatting, her voice echoing in the eerie quiet. gently describing the room to me. and then someone was rude. from the sound of the voice, a kid, i think.

"why is she crying?"

"she just lost her vision," jess said. "she can't see."

"oh." said the kid. "that's scary."

the kid tells me he is here because he has peas stuck up his nose. that makes me laugh, his mom (?) groans. she tells me about the kid (he's 6, he likes paw patrol and eating cheese), about herself, about moving from cali.

jess says she's sorry, but she has to leave now, she's gotta go check on her wife.

"don't worry," says the mom. "i got her." and then i felt her hand press into mine.

for hours like that: i am taken care of by strangers. each person just talking with whatever comes to their head - not for any reward or celebrity or real reason, i guess. just because i am scared and alone and in the hospital and blinded and need to be distracted. not everyone even got told the story - they would just pick up in the silence with - oh by the way the television is playing HGTV - do you like that kind of a thing? yeah, me too, but could never quite get into those open-floor plans, i'll tell you -

by the time my brother is able to come back, the room is buzzing. we talk to each other like old friends, laughing, cracking jokes about if you don't like hospital food wait until you get on an airplane and can't believe i'm up past two in the morning what a party animal i'm becoming. i am holding the hands of someone named drew, who likes my crow tattoo and making crochet snails.

there are many dark moments full of pain in this world. this - in the low of absolute-dark, absolute-pain: people find a way to paint in it anyway. the color splash of their voices: this triumphant, radiating kindness of - let's be here together, let me help you, let's keep going.

i never saw their faces. i can't remember many of their names. but i think about them often, and the way we all took a deep breath - and did something gentle amongst the pain.

PONYO 崖の上のポニョ

You always got strange looks whenever you fed the neighborhood ravens. “I give them food, they give me company,” you’d say. One day, a raven excitedly comes up to you and whispers, “A neighbor plots against you, my lord.”

its them. the literal superbat

i let my guard down, and then you pulled the rug i was getting kinda used to being someone you loved