So I've just watched this episode of
Criminal Minds (while what I
should be doing is finishing edits on my
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secret_mutant assignment, goddamn it X/), BUT. Okay, it's season 3, the one where there was this genius comic book artist that had a psychotic breakdown and murdered the guys who attacked him and his girlfriend/fiancee six months ago? Anyway, it's not important (although it's a bloody brilliant episode) -- the important thing is the last few minutes, as the team flies back to HQ (people who watch the show will know what I'm on about), and one of them muses how the guy was just an ordinary man not long ago, before he was forced to turn into this cold-blooded killer by circumstances, and wonders whether we all have that potential in us.
And now I'm having these
thoughts, tangled up in
Metanoia-influenced musings, of cold-blooded killers that murder with a steady hand because their victims are bad, bad people who damn well deserve it; of heroes tangled up in villains,
The difference between a hero and a villain is one really bad day (I'll be damned if I know where that comes from; this particular version of events is Jesse's, I think --
zolac_no_miko, correct me if I'm wrong);
“The noir hero is a knight in blood caked armor. He's dirty and he does his best to deny the fact that he's a hero the whole time.” (that one is Frank Miller). And now I have an absolutely debilitating craving for fics like that -- utterly sane, smirking men with bloody hands and a moral compass that only points due justice, if society won't do it then he/she bloody well will; of a good guy that's trying desperately hard to remain on the right side of the law even as he senses the lure of the other side. Of that good-ish guy meeting that
other guy, the connection, the electric, magnetic spark between them (see Luther/Alice for example). Of someone so broken (Star), yet with the potential to be made slightly less so by the judicious application of a good man (Zan). UGH, IDK WHY I WANT IT SO FUCKING BAD,
BUT I DO.
Tropes for the win, I guess! :) But I can't, I just can't help but think, Cap and Bucky, where Bucky isn't quite Winter Soldier but is close, the other side of the coin, getting his hands dirty because someone has to and it can't be Steve, Steve who is everything that is good in the world that Bucky sees -- bleak, dark, uncompromising, no rose-tinted spectacles for me, pal; the perpetual push-and-pull of them, jahfdaljkghajkghjhg OH, GOD.
#why, brain, why? If anyone has any story recs for me, in any fandom, pass 'em here, please! <3 Because I really,
really fucking want it, bad enough to write an original story if that's what it takes. But come on, in all the world there's got to be someone as wonky as me that's already thought of something way better than anything I could come up with.
Also see:
The Administration, which is the
perfect example, and I'm going to pimp it out until everyone out there has read it, because Manna, man. Gal's a genius. You know I'm all about the fluff usually, but sometimes I need dark, blood-tinged fluff,
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved-fluff (also,
that poem, amirite? A perennial favourite, carved somewhere inside me). Because that's beautiful, too.
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foxxcub's College 'Verse. Uh. And Bucky MF Barnes' face. They're not particularly swanky, but hey, they kept me busy! :D
