#chilly-flame

A wintry DWP podfic of a story written by @chilly-flame.

Andy and Miranda take an ill-fated road trip.

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences Length: 19 minutes

Boo to plagiarism. Been there too, but it's been quite some time. I have feelings of white hot rage on your behalf, even if you don't. It felt like a betrayal to me, a totally ridiculous cheat. I hated that feeling and am sorry it happened to you. Boo, I say. Boo.

I put that in bold headline so you wouldn't just scroll by.

This is "A Dark Ocean" by @chilly-flame and it is literally perfect. I embedded a link in the headline text, and YOU SHOULD GO AND GET STARTED ON IT RIGHT NOW.

What is it about The Old Fics that makes them so much better? I can't quite put my finger on it, but... they just... Just Are. And this one is old enough that you might not know about it. I don't know how I found it tbh.

Anyway, like I said, it is literally perfect. This is a fic rec. Cannot recommend it highly enough.

Hi friends, followers, and folks who happen upon this post!

About five years ago, I unofficially left the Devil Wears Prada fandom with some degree of sadness, as well as a couple of unfinished drafts on my hard drive. Since then, I’ve picked up one of them quite a few times; it had been in process since the dark ages of 2009 (yes, 2009!) but I’d never been able to complete it.

A little over a month ago, I had a conversation with the famed @chainofclovers, who made a fabulously insightful suggestion that made finishing this sucker seem possible. With her help, and that of my trusty beta Xander (who has read every incarnation of this story for the past 8 years!!), I’ve completed this beast and am so happy to finally get it posted.

Since I recently read that tumblr hides linked posts within tag searches, please consider this an informational post only; very shortly I’ll be posting the link to the story on AO3, titled, “This Must be the Place.” You can find it at my AO3 page or linked from my own tumblr immediately following this post.

Thanks to my awesome team who stuck with me!

Thanks, chilly!

(And you messaged me to say it was meant to be 1 and 14, so I’m answering those.)

1. What made you start writing fanfic?

Miranda Priestly.

Er, to expand: when I watched The Devil Wears Prada, I reacted to it differently than I’d ever reacted to a piece of media before. I didn’t start writing fic about the movie until about two years after I’d seen it, but from the first day I watched it I remember mentally fighting back against the ending of the movie…but not in a frustrated or disappointed way, but with delight. 

As a media consumer, I’d never felt such a strong need to talk back to a movie or TV show before. I’d watch something and love it or hate it or feel lukewarm, but I accepted it for what it was. If I thought beyond what it was, I didn’t feel the need to write it down despite the fact I wrote constantly about everything. With DWP, I didn’t love the movie, yet I spent a bunch of time thinking about it and arguing with it and imagining different tunnels to send the characters through. It was the perfect environment in which I could finally become an active member of fandom instead of a passive reader.

I’d read some fanfic before, starting when I was a teenager, but back then I’d always read it because it was a place where I could access the queerness that was missing from my “real life.” Until I had that reaction to DWP, I didn’t need to participate.

My reaction to DWP doesn’t really resemble the reasons I’ve started writing fanfic for other fandoms, but it was absolutely the ideal jumping-off point all the same!

14. You’re applying for the fanfic writer of the year award. What five fanfics do you put in your portfolio?

Oh, jeez. This makes me feel a bit bashful…and instead of putting together a portfolio that’s in any way strategic, I’m just going to share the five fics I wrote that are currently my favorite, by some definition of favorite.

Come Disconnect the Dots | Grace and Frankie | Grace/Frankie | Rated E

The Ruins | Grace and Frankie | Grace/Frankie | Rated M

that their loss is no disaster | Killing Eve | Eve/Villanelle | Rated M

Starless | The Devil Wears Prada | Miranda/Andy | Rated E | Part 2 in a 3-part series

Omg are you new to Hitch? He was so f'ed up and so weird about women (in a seriously "your fave is problematic" way) but so many of his movies are amazing. How about Notorious? Rebecca? North by Northwest? Shadow of a Doubt (that one really grew on me)?

Yes! Despite having been alive quite a long time by this point, I am (mostly) new to him. I watched The Birds with my family when I was much younger, and although I didn’t find that movie particularly frightening I have this sense of myself as a person who Cannot Handle scary movies so I never watched any of his others until Rear Window a couple weekends ago! 

In soliciting some scary movie recommendations awhile back, I realized that I actually have seen some number of movies that could be considered horror, thriller, etc. and have been perfectly fine. Like, the creepy things that happen in Get Out were creepy, but the thing that’s really scary about that movie is the racism. And so, in this time of being home and my wife not having to travel for work, I have a goal of watching more “scary things” that I will probably survive watching. :D

it’s definitely the lack of mourning thing that’s getting to me—bcs like, obviously it’s not like no other relationship on this show has ever ended in tragedy, but at least in other cases ppl’s pain got to be recognized and acknowledged? and like the fact that the narrative kept really aggressively hammering that home—patsy doesn’t get medical info bcs they’re only giving it out to her “nearest and dearest,” delia’s mom only knows of her as the lady from scouts, like, again and again with this really intense focus on Patsy Is Going To Suffer Alone and it just felt… very gratuitous and cruel.

Yeah, that's what got to me too. When she's going ahead and cleaning up the apartment (when I was rewatching, when she kneeled and then rolled up her sleeves and started to pick up the previous night's mess, I just put my head in my hands and bawled...she'd have had such vivid memories of the day before, and so many hopes and promises for the future and now nothing) because, as Delia said, she's good with facades. She's hurting so much and she has no outlet at all.

trancer21 replied to your post: (Call the Midwife spoilers)[[MOR] I’m still so...

The weirdest thing is I’d expect this sort of crap from an American show but the friggin’ BBC!?!

Ah, but they gave us the death on Last Tango in Halifax too. And I did expect better from both these series, not because they were BBC but because they were ultimately heartwarming and positive dramas. For them to go the way they did in 2015 is pretty discouraging. All the advances and this is the absolute best we can get? And I dunno, I was sad but mostly really angry and in disbelief about LTiH. This, I'm just really sad about. It's such a reminder of what we are, drama fodder and maybe a way to show how progressive they are, but just props in the end. People have been quick to say that there have been other tragic endings on the show, but how many happy, hopeful m/f relationships have there been? On the show and off, really. This is like one of so few ongoing we were looking to, and they made it as absolutely sad and hopeless as they could. Even if Delia comes back, I don't really see the point in ending as they did.

chilly-flame replied to your post: post: (Call the Midwife spoilers)[[MOR] I’m still so...

I am so sorry. I have resisted this show, and I have to be honest, as great as it probably is, I am even less interested in diving in now. What’s it going to take to keep queer people alive on tv? PS writers, it’s not the 60s. It’s okay to mix it up.