Live, and you can accomplish much more;

Title: Honest Men
Characters: Kaz/Zero, background BB/Kaz and BB/Zero
Rating: NSFW
Word Count: ~980
Summary: There is a fine line between sincerity and scheming, and sometimes it doesn't matter at all.
Notes: This is another one of those fics that write themselves in my head and all I have to do is transcribe them well. (Then it takes me about twice as long to proofread, of course.) Inspired by Pud's fantastic canvas from last night, just mostly skipping ahead from the scene in the pic. Can be read as a loose sequel/companion to this fic. (If you can count up their age difference you get a cookie - I mean, scone. Either way, enjoy the awkwardness.) It is now in my headcanon that Zero was at least a little fond of Kaz, though neither of them would have been very sentimental about it.
Disclaimer: MGS belongs to Hideo Kojima & Konami.

( They can't do everything on the telephone. )

*I am the king of tasteful subject lines. KING OF THEM. Also, the term "fraternization" cracks me up because it's so inappropriate for what it's often used to denote - why did I use it again? Oh, right, because it's ironic.

It's showtime! After all I've been through with this fic, I can finally say that I am pleased. I've been working on it on-and-off since February, finally declared it done and up for revisions last month, but even after that it's kept growing and basically having a life of its own. Now I'm feeling both accomplished and sad it's over.

It's yet another take on my Big Boss/Zero backstory because, yeah, I need several. This one doesn't go as far pre-canon as my previous take on it; it starts shortly before MGS3 and continues during its timeline, but it's still an established relationship from the start. Not sure why that's my default mode of writing them, though it might just be because it's how their interaction comes across in the game ("We go back a long ways, but I just realized I never asked you why you're called Zero..."). I also seem to have a fetish for writing fic where I can't call BB anything but Jack most of the time (I think "John" as an address is more Ocelot's thing, not Zero's), but at least I got to use Snake in this one eventually.

And I have a lot of feelings, so bear with me.

First off, this fic is a monster. When I came up with the scenario, I just wanted to have something dealing with the dubious morality of shagging a member of your super special team you're about to send on a mission he doesn't even know in detail yet by having him do the first ever HALO jump. Somehow, this tied in with the idea that Zero would like BB to be his complete equal, but the circumstances make that difficult in practice. I got caught up in the various meta aspects, got Zero talking in the back of my head demanding I let him have his point of view in the story too, used the various little scenarios I had lying around (including one that started as a request, incidentally), decided that I really had to troll the military because that's what MGS does, did some other things that show better from reading it, and whatever porn I might've planned became more like a frame of reference. Apparently context porn is where it's at for me. Context is hot. So is subtext. In a way, I went for slice-of-life realism with the two of them too, even if none of the POVs used is completely "objective" and let's not lie, it's about the characters more than anything.

In case that wasn't tl;dr enough, the unifying principle is that this is all backstory to a single conversation they have in the game, right after BB's nightmare. (It's here starting at 4:03.) It's perfect enough to inspire fics.

Let me tell you, LJ, I have such a thing for these characters. Zero in particular is fun to write because there's enough of him in canon for personality to shine through, but not enough to result in some static idea of what he's like, let alone what he's like behind the scenes. Or what cheesy music he might listen to, haha. That's not to say there shouldn't be a degree of consistency, but at the same time, the wiggle room is obviously nice. And I will shut up now. Enjoy, if you can.

Title: Mission Control
Pairing: Big Boss/Zero (for ease of naming in the summary as he's not BB here yet)
Rating: NSFW
Word Count: ~3,000
Summary: Days before the Virtuous Mission, time to enjoy small luxuries like intimacy is running short.
Warning(s): Brief references to injuries/torture once the time has run out.
Notes: Dude, haven't you rambled enough? I'd just like to thank cherrytruck and athenemiranda for repeatedly enduring my rants while I was writing this, as well as certain Pchat people for random pieces of encouragement. <3 On another note, the conversation partly quoted in the last section of the fic is directly lifted from MGS3 (check the video linked above for the whole thing).
Disclaimer/Credits: MGS belongs to Hideo Kojima & Konami; the song referenced is this 1930s version of "Dream a Little Dream of Me" and won't get me any profit either.

( It wasn't exhaustion that was ever remarkable, only the opportunity to indulge it. )

The grumpy meta goes out of the way first: you know what's irritating? That even though big fandom comms like fanficrants seem to have reached a consensus in that warning for slash is offensive, the practice is still so prevalent. More insidious still is when people who label themselves as fans of the gay start talking about how slash "corrupted" them because it's just so edgy, I mean, look at these guys not being 100% straight! Plain amazing, I say. /sarcasm

I'm venting because I'm well past my stretch of patience with the idea of slash (or femslash, same "logic" would apply) as some quirky little kink. I realize it's not my place to police why people like whatever they like, but nor do (general) you get to police what slash is, especially if you insist on billing it as some "corrupting influence". Fandom is huge, after all, and more diverse than the mainstream stereotype would suggest. Some of us write what's labelled as slash for the characters, and if we also write porn we see it as a nice bonus. Some of us write slash and other queer fic because we like the opportunity to portray characters as not all cis heterosexuals for once. Still others are into this slash thing for different reasons, and that's all well and good! We can get along, whatever our respective motives are.

But. Look here: the exoticizing attitude is problematic. It bothers me because I'm a genderqueer pansexual guy and I kind of care about this equal representation thing. I'm not in this for the lulz or whatever. Therefore, if (general) you alternate between objectifying and warning for people like me (or somewhat like me), I will judge you. And I won't feel even slightly sorry.

(This isn't to say that all straight people who like slash act that way, but that much should be obvious.)

*

Moving on! I've had some meta sitting around for a while, and unlike the above rant this is actually fun. It's my favourite part of this post, in fact, but I'll cut it because it's fandom-specific. Not to mention it got long. ( Yeah, it's BB/Zero because that's apparently all I write these days. There needs to be more Zero meta. BRB GENERATING SOME. )