round 3 overflow post

[starkmodistries.livejournal.com]

Round 3 Overflow Post

This post is for Round 3 fills only. We ask that when a round hits 8500 comments, fillers begin moving their fills to this post.

Format:
SUBJECT LINE -- Round #, short description of fic (ex: "Alex/Hank, lab partners")
--- Link to the prompt
--- Text of the prompt

--- Link to the fill
OR
--- Entire text of the fill

EXAMPLE:
Prompt: http://xmen-firstkink.livejournal.com/6437.html?thread=1038472#t2038174

Charles/Erik -- Charles is a bakery owner whose most frequent customer is Erik.

Fill: http://xmen-firstkink.livejournal.com/6437.html?thread=0139482#t4502942

Charles started off the morning the same way he always did...

Comments

Re: FILL: Everyday Love in Stockholm 170/? TW: CHARACTER DEATH

[levitatethis.livejournal.com]

Jesus Christ.

It's one thing to know that at some point Raven would be killed off. It's quite another when the time actually comes. This is utterly devastating and I really like the way you've handled it -- there's this lead up (between Erik and Charles) where there's a bit of foreshadowing that something big could and might happen. The attack itself comes about amidst this myriad of emotions (nervousness, pride, confidence -- panic, confusion, destruction, retaliation) and when the dust momentarily settles it's just chaos.

Losing Raven is heartbreaking yet one of those things that, given the life they're all leading, was almost bound to happen. Their lives are too precarious, too unstable, there's too much riding on everything -- someone, anyone, everyone, was bound to be a casualty. What's fascinating is not only Erik's implosion and explosion (at what he's lost and then lashing out at any and everyone potentially responsible) but the way he jettisons from taking some responsibility to foisting it on others (all the while clinging to Charles -- wanting to protect him, save him, keep him nicely compartmentalized because god forbid he/they really deal with their situation and it's confusing hypocrisy, it's oh-so-human confliction of heart and mind).

And Erik does what he does best. What he did before Charles came to mean the world. He strikes out and hard. And I get it -- because falling in love with Charles changes parts of him but doesn't rewrite his DNA and I appreciate that you never sugarcoated that. Erik's a fighter. He's a survivalist. He will break walls and bones. He will unleash a fury the likes of which have never been seen...he lets his emotions get the better of him. It's what makes him both passionate and destructive. His lashing out so brutally isn't going to squash the human resistance. It's going to be embolden them. And the love between he and Charles is going to become another casualty. Deep down inside they know the point of no return is being crossed. Charles, in his grief, doesn't have it in him to argue. Erik sees it in his eyes, his body language, tries to shove it aside. Something's going to blow (surely connected to Charles' work that Hank now has).

You've done an impressive job dealing (albeit briefly) with the immediate aftermath of Raven's death. The way you describe Erik's emotions, his actions, the way you detail what he finds in the apartment, the brokenness of Charles, the two of them clinging to each other but also mindful of this wall still there, is beautifully tragic. I knew Raven's death would be a life changer for Charles -- she's his sister (blood relation be damned), his oldest friend, one of his trusted connections to the world outside and now she's gone. It hadn't even crossed my mind that her death would be Charles would lose Kurt too and that was like a punch to the gut. And now all he has is Erik who is consumed and overwhelmed.

And I could imagine Charles being resigned and inwardly furious and lamenting his situation because it's all now a reminder who fucked up everything is. Charles is absolutely isolated now. He is so cut off and this can't keep going on, not like this. This is the tipping point. Love is all fine and well but you can't live on it alone.

Whew!

On a slightly happier/more amusing note -- I generally don't give much thought to Erik's uniform -- cape and all that jazz. I tended to regard it as a costume. You made me look at it in a whole other light. The way you balance it's symbolic and practical value is tremendous. You turned it into a viable weapon! I have a whole other appreciation for Erik cataloging the metal here and there, the ways he can use it. It's so fucking cool :-)

So does the next part pick up four years later? Can't wait to see what's happened in that jump forward.

Re: FILL: Everyday Love in Stockholm 170/? TW: CHARACTER DEATH

[tahariel.livejournal.com]

This was a really big deal to write - it's all been leading up to this point, and I could see it getting closer, in that anticipating-but-scared way where you both want and don't want to get there. This is the pivot point on which everything else hangs. This one event shapes everything.

Erik's reaction here is really a mirrored version of his reaction in the original beach scene, and I wanted to use this to connect the two universes and show how they're both the same and different from one another, how the characters are the same underneath. In the film Erik reacts in just the same way - his initial reaction is to apologise, but then he blames Moira and cannot accept when Charles tells him it's his fault. He lashes out, unable to deal with what has happened, and reverts back to his most deeply ingrained response - the one Shaw trained into him - violence. It's his default setting, under all of his careful self-control and self-image. And it always gets him in deeper.

I'm really glad the grief section worked for you, because writing it put me into a two-day funk, so it needed to work! I'd like to pretend it's because I'm some kind of virtuoso, but the truth is that I've just lived in that place myself, and it still affects me even seven years on. My mother died very suddenly and unexpectedly in my late teens, and Erik's reaction - the emotional side of it - is pretty much what mine was. I'm drawing off experience here instead of creating it wholesale.

The next part will now pick up where Part One left off - we've completed the circle, so Part Five will follow on from that.