Illegitimi non carborundum

A few weeks ago, when I was checking the Goes Wrong Show tag on AO3, a fic caught my eye: a fic about Trevor, tagged with 'noncon' and 'transphobia'. I didn't open it, but it stuck in my mind because it was the first Goes Wrong fic to use the noncon warning. I was glad to see some darkfic in the tag; it's good for the ecosystem!

A few hours later, I checked the tag again and found that the fic had disappeared.

I'd noticed the author, and I knew how to contact him; we didn't really know each other, but we'd interacted in passing just by virtue of both being active in this relatively small fandom. I sent him a message just to check he was okay; I said that I'd noticed his disappearing darkfic, and that I hoped no one had given him a hard time for the themes. He explained that he'd just got nervous, thanked me for reaching out and said he might post it again some day.

Yesterday, he got in touch and said he'd found the courage to repost his Goes Wrong darkfic. I was thrilled! I promptly read it and left an enthusiastic comment. (The fic in question is Corrective by Kestrel_Wylde. Be aware that it's very dark; it's explicit noncon in which transmasc Trevor suffers at the hands of an OC, featuring drugging and misgendering.)

And then I kept thinking about it. How would the Cornley Drama Society, who barely have a teaspoon of emotional intelligence between them, deal with something terrible happening to one of their own?

And then, with the author's permission, I wrote a follow-up.

This fic is less dark than the original on account of being about the assault's aftermath rather than the assault itself, but obviously it includes a lot of the same dark themes. It should be understandable even if you haven't read Kestrel_Wylde's fic; I wanted to make sure it would be accessible to people who want to read about Trevor's recovery without wanting to read the explicit noncon that precedes it.


Title: Kintsugi
Fandom: The Goes Wrong Show
Rating: 16
Pairing: Chris/Trevor
Wordcount: 3,400
Summary: In the aftermath of being assaulted, Trevor tries to piece himself back together with the help of the drama society.
Warnings: Past noncon, mentions of misgendering.
Notes: A follow-up to Corrective by Kestrel_Wylde (mind the tags), written with permission. Trevor is transmasc.

( Kintsugi )

Yesterday, I was on the bus. It was almost empty; I was one of five passengers on the top floor, all of us travelling alone and scattered throughout the seating.

I was a little nervous when one of the other passengers - a man - left his seat at the front and walked back, past all the empty seats and the two men sitting between us, to sit next to me, the sole woman on the upper deck.

This story ends well.


( Being hassled, and then being rescued. )


Anyway! This whole thing really got me thinking about kindness and humanity and brief connections with strangers. I don't know the name of the man who helped me out, and it's very unlikely that I'll ever see him again. But I'm glad he was there, and I hope good things happen for him.

And, if you have your own tales of a stranger doing something kind for you, I'd love to hear them!

My thought process over the course of the fic I'm currently working on:

- I'll just write a simple PWP for smut practice.
- I've been sort of wanting to write Robert/female Chris Goes Wrong fanfiction, given that Chris is occasionally a woman in unofficial Play That Goes Wrong productions; let's go with that as the premise. Just get them into bed, and...
- ...
- But it'd be interesting to explore how Robert and Chris's relationship is different when Chris is a woman, isn't it?
- Actually, what's most interesting is all the ways their relationship isn't different, and it's hard to demonstrate that when male Chris isn't there.
- So if I summon male Chris from a parallel universe—
- In which case I suppose it makes sense to make this a sequel to my fic in which Robert summons himself from a parallel universe—
- But I need this to stand alone, because 'M/M/M Robert/Chris/Robert selfcest threesome' and 'M/F Robert/Chris AU' probably appeal to different people, so I'll need to incorporate enough setup for this to make sense if people aren't interested in the preceding fic—
- oh, God, I'm never going to get to the sex, am I

I can't just write smut! I don't know how! I thought the issue here would just be my inability to write sex, but apparently I also have to jump the hurdle of making the characters have sex in the first place. Somehow I find myself unable to write them in bed without first going 'but how did they get into the bed?', and the bed just keeps moving further and further away.

If you have any tales of your own silly struggles with writing, I'd love to hear them!

Dream roundup time! I've been remembering a lot of my dreams lately, maybe because it's been so warm.


( Dreams from May. )


We're down to a more acceptable temperature now! We can have the curtains open during the day again! Very exciting. (I'm still hoping to fulfil the fic requests I took during the hot weather; I'm just struggling with writer's block at the moment.)