The Fic Pushin' Podcast

Did I mention that I'm a Twific Pimp? We've been working hard on both our podcast and rec blog. I'm such a proud mama bear and want to highlight some of our product.

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http://www.twificpimps.com/

our new banner and background is thanks to Ms. Ambrosia

HOTNESS Hall of Fame: MUSIC in fic

I love music. I love music in fic. In every way that it pops up: sometimes referenced by the author in playlists/youtube links, having characters that incorporate music into their world, and especially, the use of music to heighten the hotness.

I'm gearing up to host the 4th episode of our Fic Pushin Podcast which will delve into the wonderful world of music in fanfic.

As I prepare, I feel it is necessary to revisit those moments in fanfic when the use of music took a scene from hotness to obscene fuckhotness. This week's HOTNESS Hall of Fame will pay tribute to the use of music for the purpose of fuckhot lemony trajectory. I think we should just jump right into the list...

Extracurricular: DeviantArt

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Goodbye, I love you
by ~rurouni-jedi
http://fav.me/d1qoxqn

One only soul
by *nami86

1949
by *nami86

I love myself
by *nami86
http://fav.me/d230k0u

Our Lives Unbound, by theladyingrey42

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6046442/1/

I have fallen in love with this fic. I wish it had a banner to draw people in but my enthusiasm alone will have to do.

Official Description: My mind is trapped in circles, my loneliness pressing in. Unable to speak, I reach for her spark. In her eyes, I find my partner. In her command, I find my freedom. Together, we open our lives to something more. AU/AH, D/s, male sub.

I just read the Chapter 8 update of Our Lives Unbound and it has become clear that this BDSM fic is different. I didn't even realize what has been missing from the BDSM that I've read. With this last lemon, theladyingrey42 nailed it with the real emotion and connection between Edward and Bella.

She gets into Edward's head and taps into his experience of his desire to be controlled. She takes you into the moment and Edward becomes this real person with real feelings of shame and confusion about what he's feeling. Throughout the story she has given us glimpses into his life where you can feel the loneliness that characterized his day-to-day before meeting Bella.

And Bella is a real person who doesn't just take on a dominant persona. She's playing but it seems to come from this place of deep concern and love. She seems to understand how deep his desires run and she wants to support him as he's letting himself go there. And she is even more realistic in her inexperience and self doubt. But she has this genuine desire to express this part of herself that she's been trying to repress in attempting to be normal. In my review for Chapter 8 it is clear how taken aback I was by this chapter. I believe the gist is:

holy. sh|t.
*standing ovation*
Seriously, my new favorite lemon and BY FAR the best BDSM lemon I've read in Twific.

. . . Looking back on July

Soundtrack for this post:


Blur. July went by in a haze. Blur... haze... Jimi.


Here's some of what I read  and loved in July:

Osa Bella, by Myg
Official Description: Bella is a school counselor, but Edward is posing as a student. Will Edward convince Bella to defy her head and follow her heart? Or will Bella conquer her desire and do what she believes is right?

• I wrote a review for Osa Bella on this blog, Althea Jams & Blogs
• I pimped the hell out of Osa Bella for the 60 Second Pimpdown on Episode 3 of Fic Pushin' Podcast, Ain't Nothin But a Reader Thang

Under the Apple Tree, by danieller123
Official Description: Love that hurts can sometimes heal. Ever wish you could go back and change something you did in life? Bella does. E x B, AH 

Wide Awake, by AngstGoddess003 (complete)

Official Description: Edward and Bella have dark pasts that leave them severely emotionally scarred, with nightmares that force them to stay awake. They meet and begin to form a bond during the night hours. AH, Highly OOC, Rated M for dark themes. No rape, no cutting. BxE

Ethan Church, by Dryler (complete)
Official Description: After receiving an invitation to write the biography of the severely reclusive author Ethan Church, Bella develops a reluctant obsession with his novels and by extension him. When she accepts his offer, the old, dying man she's presented with and the young, too perfect man she comes across on the nearly empty estate have her convinced she's missing some very important parts of the story.

Last Tango in Forks, by AwesomeSauce76
Official Description: Bella Swan has spent a lifetime putting everyone else's needs before her own. Could a chance encounter with a mysterious stranger begin to change all of that? AU/AH


Our Lives Unbound, by theladyingrey42
Official Description: My mind is trapped in circles, my loneliness pressing in. Unable to speak, I reach for her spark. In her eyes, I find my partner. In her command, I find my freedom. Together, we open our lives to something more. AU/AH, D/s, male sub.


Here's some of what I wrote in July:

I wrote a featured post "Are we just waiting to tear Rob apart?"
Here's the summary: We love to build up celebrities just to tear them down. It's a culture of meanness that seems to have trouble differentiating between snark, which is funny, and hate, which is lame. When hating on a celebrity for sport, "insert Rob here" and see if it's still funny. Cuz unfortunately, as it goes with celebrity, it's just a matter of time until it is Rob who's a punchline to that joke.

I wrote a Friday Fic Fit review of Surrendered by EvieKinz for the Twific Pimps blog.

Are you down with a bit of D/s in your fic? Me too. Read on...

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It's My Blog and I'll Cry if I Want To

Do any of you read Just Wait? Holy shit this is the most angst to ever rear its head in fic. I'm gonna try to ride out this angst the only way I know how... by writing about it. (see my review from the heartfail chapter of How to Save a Life) 


About this post: Read it. Don't read it. But it's my blog and I'll cry if I want to :P

oh. spoiler alert.

The angst in Just Wait is not like it is in How to Save a Life where it's situational angst: unfortunate accidents/events take place and the characters have to cope. HtSaL is pretty rough in its own right because throughout the course of the story, you just keep getting hit in the face with one angsty circumstance after another.

It's more of a cross between Wide Awake and Master of the Universe where the characters clearly exhibit abnormal & unhealthy behavior in the present as a result of past events. 

In Wide Awake both Bella and Edward had faced horrible circumstances (B going thru Phil's month long home invasion, the fire that killed Edward's dad and resulted in him being tossed out by his mom), which causes B & E to internalize that angst which then manifests as behavioral/psychological issues.

In Just Wait the story begins similarly with a broken Bella and a broken Edward. But they are very different stories. As JW progresses, we slowly unravel the mysteries of how they got to be the way they are. We watch their self-discovery in therapy and as they grow together, revealing themselves within their relationship. This has been what I love SO MUCH about this story. Though they do find great comfort in each other, their relationship is less of a codependent relationship than in Wide Awake. 

In Wide Awake they physically needed each other in order to maintain and work through to a sense of normalcy. It becomes this false sense of recovery that is really just the recovery of their relationship. A bandaid that makes them feel good but does nothing to heal the ways in which they are damaged individuals. I loved how AngstGoddess addresses this in the Epilogue where it becomes so clear that their love cannot keep Edward from unraveling.

In JW the whole story addresses this process of survival and growth. The characters are being pushed to confront the demons of the past, which they have clearly internalized and continue to echo through their unhealthy behavior in the present (this is what I focus on in my first Just Wait review). 

Edward and Bella find in each other a friend who lets them be themselves (despite how weird they might appear to others). As this relationship grows, they both want to know the other person as much as they secretly want to be known by the other person.

This requires them to reveal pieces of themselves that have been locked away. The shelter of their relationship becomes a safe haven where they are given the freedom to explore their issues without judgement, but rather the support of someone who knows where they are coming from. It's that trust and support that defines their relationship, not dependency. The normalcy of being dependent upon one another as boyfriend and girlfriend becomes an opportunity for growth, as opposed to the characters of Wide Awake who became stunted by one another. 

Another way in which it is different from Wide Awake comes from the nature of the past that traumatized them. Whereas Wide Awake's B&E are defined by traumatic events that they've then internalized, the Just Wait B&E suffer from long term twisted abuse at the hands of those who were supposed to be taking care of them and loving them. In that sense it's more like the Edward of MotU. 

MotU and JW are significantly different stories, but I suppose I was expecting the abusive situation in Just Wait to be treated much as it is in MotU. I couldn't imagine that Just Wait could delve into a situation that would be worse than the abuse suffered by Fifty Shades: his mother was a hooker whose pimp put cigarettes out on his body until he was found at the age of 4?? with his mother who had been dead for 4 days. I was very naive. 

These are some of the ways in which Just Wait is WAY MORE ANGSTY than MotU or any other fic I've read:

• In JW, we are brought into the head of Bella and Edward as they recall events from their terrible past.
• The abusers are developed as characters with names and storylines. (as opposed to nameless pimp badguy)
• The abuse was not just, dude got drunk and got violent. The abusers in JW are sick sick fucks who inflicted physical harm as an extension of their long term psychological torture. Bad parenting, if you will. 
• JW follows the characters as they attempt to understand what happened to them and thus touch on the big question behind a lot of angst premises: How the hell can a person perpertrate this kind of abuse on a little, helpless child? And as more and more of Bella's mother and Edward's family is revealed, we are witness to just how sick and twisted humans have the capacity to be. thanks, IKG! lol

I have been hooked on this story since Chapter 1. As it has unfolded I have become fascinated and invested in these amazing characters. Driving this story of healing is the mystery behind what could have happened to these people to make them so broken. The deeper I got into their stories, the more I realized how dark it was going to get. I was and still am in way too deep with this story to stop reading, but for the last 5-10 chapters I've been in a situation of wanting to find out but not wanting to know. This most recent chapter falls in line with where she has been taking the story, and I'm realizing now that somewhere I knew the reveal was going to be something like this, but I was not prepared for how disturbing and sad it was to read it. But I can deal and will continue reading. 

I can deal and will continue reading because I know the kind of shit I was signing on for when I started, IKG articulates it quite clearly in the form of a warning at the top of every chapter. 

I can deal and will continue reading because I LOVE these characters, their story and their unique relationship. And because I love IKG's writing and I trust her to pull me through the depths of this. 

I can deal and will continue to read. Especially because after going through that, I am damn well going to stick it through to my happy ending. lol or in the case with this fic, an ending that doesn't necessarily involve everyone being healed, but an ending that resolves with some sense of hope and happiness in the characters' futures. 

Ok, I'm feeling a tiny bit better. I have pinpointed what it is about this angst fic that has got me so worked up. But sorting all that out reminded me that there are so many ways in which this story is unique and fulfilling. I think I can push through this angst. See y'all at the next chapter. And thanks IKG for such an amazing, heartbreaking story.

Artwork by Hannah Dora