as long as we're going down

Since this journal is primarily for fanfic, here's a nice, easy, alphabetical list of all the fics I've written.  (Note that anything written before August of '09 was originally posted on ff.net, where I used to go by the name Sztorm.  I have since cross-posted those fics, under their original publish dates.)

Fandoms included below are:

-Black Angel (1946)  (6)
-Catherine and the Pirate  (1)
-Darker Than Black  (1)
-Escaflowne  (14)
-Final Fantasy VII  (15)
-Final Fantasy X  (1)
-Frozen  (1)
-Her Friend, the Burglar  (1)
-Hetalia  (36)
-Love For the Asking  (1)
-Love Pawn, The  (11)
-Original Fic  (1)
-Star Trek: The Next Generation  (13)
-Stranger Things  (1)
-A Tale of Two Cities  (1)
-This Gun For Hire (1942)  (11)
-The Tick (2017)  (1)

Cross-overs:
-FFVII / The Sandman  (1)
-Trigun / The Sandman  (1)
-Hetalia / FFVII  (1)

Various ficbits (random scenes, drabbles, etc.) can be found here.  The few other fan-related things I've made (FSTs, fanart, etc.) can be found at the very bottom of this post.

( Fic Master List )

(Posted to my tumblr, but cross-posted here because it is the sort of meta discussion I’ve posted here before and also I want to have a reasonable chance of finding it again someday.)

Was Raven of This Gun For Hire a victim of rape in his reform school days?

It’s a question I’ve honestly asked myself in the course of my fic writing, because prison rape was and still is a thing, obviously, and if we’re to believe that Philip Raven the character physically resembles Alan Ladd the actor, then I have a hard time believing he wouldn’t have been the target of at least some sort of sexual harassment/assault. Ladd was, after all, boyishly handsome and famously small in stature. Most sources put his height at 5’6”, and while the film pulls off some cinematography tricks to make him appear a bit taller, the character is still by no means a large dude; I’d put Raven at 5’8”, tops. And again, if we assume the character followed the same growth trajectory as the actor, then he was probably similarly small as a boy. (And even if he wasn’t, there’s still the fact that he was only fourteen when he went in, and presumably would have been doing time with boys who were older and more physically developed. My research on early 20th century reform schools is sketchy at best, but the age of majority at the time was twenty-one, which leads me to believe he could/would have been interacting with dudes as old as twenty.)

So with all that in mind, we come back to the question at the top: Was Raven raped in reform school? The short answer is no, I don’t think he was—and this is not just wishful thinking on my part, but a genuine extrapolation of his character.

( Tl;dr: No, never raped, but probably felt up in some respect. The aggressor(s) would have gotten shanked before they could go any further. )

Title: Now You See It, Now You Don’t
Fandom: This Gun For Hire (1942)
Genre: Drama, general.
Characters: Ellen Graham, Philip Raven.
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 358
Summary: Could all hardened criminals act so strangely normal and borderline courteous? Or was it an attribute exclusive to him? (A tiny missing scene from when Ellen’s on the run with Raven.)

If you’d like to leave a comment, please do so on AO3!

( He scaled the wall with such ease, she couldn’t help but wonder how often he did things like this—how often he *had* to do things like this. )

Title: Each Cloud Contains
Fandom: This Gun For Hire (1942)
Genre: Drama, angst, general.
Characters: Philip Raven, Ellen Graham.
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 1,564
Summary: It was her. The girl from the train. The one who’d so frustratingly gotten away earlier that day. Just what in the hell was she doing there? (Or, Raven rescues Ellen from Gates’ mansion. Expanded scene/character study.)

If you’d like to leave a comment, please do so on AO3!

( He didn’t like being lied to. He liked being stiffed on his payment even less, and Willard Gates and his associates had now effectively done both. )

Title: Wherever You Are
Fandom: This Gun For Hire (1942)
Genre: AU, angst, romance.
Characters/pairings: Michael Crane/Ellen Graham, implied Philip Raven/Ellen Graham
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 1,430
Summary: In the days following Raven’s final escape, Ellen and Michael try to go back to normal. (Spoiler alert: They aren’t very good at it.)

Notes: Follows the same continuity as my other TGFH fics, which is to say: Raven somehow escaped at the end of the film.

If you’d like to leave a comment, please do so on AO3!

( It was at seventeen minutes after seven that the telephone in her hotel room finally rang. )

Title: In Every Prayer
Fandom: This Gun For Hire (1942)
Genre: AU, drama, romance.
Characters/pairings: Philip Raven/Ellen Graham
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 3,024
Summary: In hindsight, he supposed it was what some people might have called fate. (Or, in which the man formerly known as Philip Raven has a big ol’ crush on a gal, but isn’t capable of recognizing it as such. A prequel of sorts to There Are Dreams I Must Gather.)

Notes: Follows the same continuity as my other TGFH fics, which is to say: Raven somehow escaped at the end of the film, then changed his name and joined the army. Takes place post-war, in 1946.

If you’d like to leave a comment, please do so on AO3!

( He'd been in Chicago for a little over a month now, and might never have even gone down that particular street if his shoe hadn't dropped a heel, forcing him to seek out a cobbler. )

Title: Your Fortune's Fallin' All Over the Town
Fandom: This Gun For Hire (1942)
Genre: Drama, angst, general.
Characters: Ellen Graham, Philip Raven.
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 1,381
Summary: This was, Ellen realized, the most uncomfortable car ride of her life. (Or, Raven drives them from Gates' mansion to the Neptune Club. Missing scene/character study.)

If you'd like to leave a comment, please do so on AO3!

( The silence was too much. Against her better judgment, she swallowed and tremulously broke it. ''You were going to kill me this morning, weren't you?'' )