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footnotes to 'Recidivism'

I'm an absolute animal so I'm not done talking about my own fic. read it here if you'd like :-)

below the cut are my notes and side comments about different parts. mostly I wanted to write down all the little things I referenced and what was really going on in the background in others. it is way too many words over-explaining myself, but also this is MY tumblr account so I can be as autistic about making sure I'm fully understood as I WANT !

warning: this post is VERY long

intro:

this is the first scene I wrote, and I can really tell because holy shit the tenses are all over the place. but I still like it a lot so I kept it in.

also! a note for the fic overall: I believe firmly in the power of a name. in this fic zeke refers to william as "william," "will," "schenk," "kid," "rookie," and "rook." whichever name he chooses in the scene is important to see how he views william. schenk/kid/rookie/rook = zeke trying to be dismissive while reinforcing his power over the other. william = casual but not too close, or, fond irritation. will = very familiar, primarily used post-reveal, since william didn't show his full true self till after that

"27 to Zeke's 48" YES I made Zeke 48. I think 21yrs for their age gap is fun. people going with chris rock's actual age is fine, but also its disingenuous cause max minghella was in his mid-30's at the time of filming, sooooo if the narrative can switch up ages, then I can too god dammit

after (1): top zeke and the boxers

" “I never really wore boxer briefs before meeting you,” Will smiles" I am firm in my opinion that william only wore briefs till he started stealing zekes underwear. it feels like something he used to wear in childhood, and then he never really switched over to boxers. plus with the style at the time being tight ass pants, it makes more sense to me. and also he's a detective and a part-time serial killer, so he wouldn't want to deal with the boxers riding up his legs

"the dizzying thought that Will already has experience pulling skin back to rearrange meat and muscles and bone would have made him ready to go again." ahhh yes the inherent eroticism of body horror, vivisection, and butchery <3

before (1): zeke always drives the car

"when he told Zeke about his fully-paid-off used 2012 Nissan Altima" yes I'm a "william definitely has a car" truther. how the fuck else would he transport all his sketch shit around the city. he's still conscientious about getting a boring car at a good price tho

"(he really did love this car, getting it paid for by the force was the only time he’d ever used his connection to the former police chief for his own gain)" I really have no clue if the movie actually explained why zeke has a cool ass car instead of the boring squad car, but imo this explanation makes the most sense

"Will he ask now, Zeke thought, now that he thinks it’s about trust?" I am SO ADAMANT that zeke was thiiiiiiirsty for william's attention the whole movie. like. he's so aggressive and weird the whole time, having strange, one-sided conversations with william. imo, it feels attention-seeking

"He catches a few O’s, but the rest is meaningless. Zeke considers asking, but decides against it." this is the line that really inspired me to make this post, cause I think it would be cute if william was tapping out "I love you" in morse code, but also there's so many other interesting things he could be tapping out too...

after (2): william breaks into zeke's apt and drinks some water

"until Zeke was too weak to resist his warm gaze and his wiry arms wrapping tight around his waist." I am projecting so hard onto zeke here. max minghella has the most perfect big brown doe eyes

"mandated 40 hours bereavement" this is based on the company I work for's actual policy. this is my proof that I'm gainfully employed

"If Zeke hid the evidence of his violence, if Will forgave him, it didn’t happen." I don't think anyone has really focused on this aspect of their dynamic before, and I'd love to dig into it more... cause even though it is INSANELY REASONABLE for zeke to beat the living shit outta william for setting up the death of his father, I like picturing zeke getting reeeeeaaally in his own head about it all and reframing his justifiable rage as borderline domestic abuse

"no woman would be able to understand what he felt at the old factory that day." zeke is such a misogynist and it was surprisingly fun to write. bro really projects all his fears and insecurities onto hypothetical women. what a loserrrr

"“Who patched you up?” He doesn’t mean for it to sound accusatory (he does, he does)" JEALOUS/POSSESSIVE ZEKE!!! A ZEKE THAT NEVER WANTS WILLIAM TO LOOK AT ANOTHER MAN AGAIN!!!! I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!!!

"Zeke presses his forehead against the cool glass. “Yeah, well…” He struggles to find something to say, something to defend his actions, or lack thereof. “William Emmerson needs to focus on not ripping his stitches out like an idiot, first.”" this is the best final line of a scene I've written ever. no contest.

before (2): hangout at zeke's

"Zeke pushes down the urge to pinch his cheeks." once again I am projecting onto zeke. william is adorable

"He’d laugh and twist his wedding ring round and round, sweat from the stuffy bar staining his shirt at the small of his back." god I loved writing zeke's fearful imagining of what could happen at the cop bar. he denies himself the basic truth that he likes william, but he still acts like it's a totally Cool and Normal thing to stop him from socializing with other people. I also enjoyed bringing up william's wedding ring. I need to know where he got it. was it his dad's? is it a cheap gold-plated ring he got from a pawn shop? does he have a matching one hidden away somewhere? this is definitely something I want to write a one-shot about at some point...

"There’s no way he’s that starved of pussy that he’ll project his urges onto William, his very married work partner. He’s so much different from Lisa" I wasn't sure if I should've put a transition sentence in between these two, but I think the contrast of zeke being like, 'ugh, why would I be horny for some married guy? anyways, he's just like my wife-' is so comedic. how are you this dense, zeke

"If the rookie shows up to his place in an oversized hoodie and sweats, Zeke won’t be able to stop himself from recalculating" 'recalculating' here is 100% being used as an artless euphemism for zeke wanting to fuck william hardcore. it's basically zeke saying 'if I see that dickprint in the sweats, nothing can stop me'

"“Well, ah, I’ve been taking the bus to work recently"" is this the truth? a lie? a half-truth? I honestly don't know. cause it's implied from the rest of the scene that william already knows where zeke lives, so he doesn't need to do this, but I liked it. I feel like it made him seem so much clingier, having him hover right behind zeke on their drive to his apartment. william is an enigma to even me, sometimes

"William doesn’t even glance at the receptionist as they leave" the whole receptionist thing is actually something I got from the movie! there's at least one scene where william waves at and says hi to the receptionist. it's in a very normal workplace way, but I wanted zeke to be a huge asshole about it

"He thinks he hears the sound of a dresser drawer shut" in my head, william washed the last pair of used underwear and was putting them back in the drawer, and he grabbed some used ones from the hamper

""I have some cash, I can cover the tip.” Zeke hears William mumble something as he digs through his wallet, but doesn’t feel like asking for him to repeat it" I never came up with a firm thing that william says here, but I think it would be funny if he couldn't stop himself from making a dumb joke to himself like, 'you can cover MY tip'

“It just makes it sound like you’re jealous that your wife is the one getting fucked by random men and not you.” yes he DID time this perfectly for when zeke was drinking his beer. very audacious thing to say though, still. he just NEEDS to see zeke's reaction to potentially getting fucked by a man

“Did you ever try… guys? Before Lisa?” this line kept making me laugh. every time I read/reread it all I could think of were the try guys. fuckin keith habersberger's face popping up in my head as I edited this scene. too funny to change tho

"Lord knows you’d never be funny enough to be in a comedy with Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn." YES this is a reference to the 2013 comedy movie "the internship", in which max minghella plays the main antagonist. I've been working on a scenepack of his character in that movie for a bit, cause oh my GOD he is so cute in it. also the movie is surprisingly funny

"Will’s fingers rasped over the photo of the shattered VHS tape, a dark brown hair hiding just out of direct sight" I am once again making shit up to add drama. I don't think it's super believable that william NEVER made mistakes, especially in the beginning. it's more believable that if he did fuck up, he just stole the evidence and destroyed it. being in the police force as a criminal has it's perks, after all

After (3): soooo much porn

"No alarms went off in Zeke’s head when Will started cooking more healthy meals." I spent way too much time on researching what foods you should eat before bottoming, so even though I could have probably cut at least 500 words of this bit talking about food, I didn't wanna. sorry guys, we're ALL learning about bottoming-friendly desserts today

"He wanted to yell at Will, but it was true that Zeke himself had discussed wanting to change his drinking habits." I blatantly stole this idea from a spiralshipping fic by Meduseld called "When The Bones Are Good" where william has a little housewife fantasy that he acts out. GOD that fic is so good. please go read it

"Hell, Will liked sucking him off so much that this was probably more of a treat for him than the ice cream." oral fixation william save me !!! this is another thing I want to write about sososososo bad. dom william loves suckin zekes dick silly

"Something about Will’s eagerness to push past his poorly-constructed boundaries just made it hotter." this whole scene is like borderline dubcon, so much so that I considered adding it as a tag. but also I didn't think it was entirely warranted, since most of the dubious elements are just zeke being a brat. which, because this is a fic from the 3rd person limited POV, we know that he's being a brat specifically to goad william into fucking him harder and crazier

"Sex had never been mindless to Zeke, it always requires a certain amount of purpose and intention to do right" here I am once again projecting my own opinions onto zeke. the more life experience I get, the more I believe this. any essay i could write about the cultural role of sex can easily be summed up by that one vine. 'HOW DO YOU SUCK DICK ON ACCIDENT??'

"Zeke can picture the anatomical posters hidden in William’s storage boxes, lovingly stored away in cardboard tubes and wrapped in plastic bags. Can picture the diagrams from Angie’s autopsy report." this is another one of my favorite lines. comparing and contrasting well loved medical posters vs an actual woman that died because of that medical knowledge. it's so fucked up in the best way <3

“Answer me, Zeke. I’m the only one you trust to fuck you like this, right?[...] You’ve only given this to me?” ...I'm only now realizing how much this sounds like william has a virginity kink. not that he'd want to be a virgin for zeke, but that he wants to be zeke's best. if he could, he'd probably time travel so that he's zeke's only sexual experience

"He starts struggling for real in William’s hold, but that only makes Will hold him tighter. Zeke can feel the sweat prick at his upper lip and behind his knees" I get so sweaty when I get nervous/anxious/scared. so now zeke does too. sorry bro, I now curse you with 'constantly a little bit damp' disease

"his lips press against Zeke’s shoulder, a warm kiss landing between each word, “baby, honey, handsome, sweetheart, amore mio, tesoruccio…”" I was inspired by awellrespectedman's fics on AO3 ( @notsovisible here on tumblr, hey dude 👋) to include some italian. imo it feels like william is bringing zeke even more into his life by speaking to him in his father's tongue. also I love petnames so much

"William spent fifteen years figuring out a way to slot his life perfectly into Zeke’s own, but he must not have realized that Zeke needed him, Zeke needed Will to occupy that space." I really hope this whole section came off as codependent as I wanted it to... I'd like to write another oneshot or something about how broken zeke's mental state became after everything, cause in the movie he largely relies on cynicism and misogyny to deflect from his own feelings, but I think it would be fun if he does end up moving a lot of the burden of his own feelings onto will. and like, will is SO EXCITED for it, so ofc he's not gonna tell zeke that it's unhealthy

“William, are you fuckin’-- [...] fuckin’ spirals? Really?” GOD I'm the funniest person ever. will is so used to tracing spirals everywhere. of course hes gonna do the same thing during sex with zeke. he is such a stupidly funny guy

“You’ve protected me for so long, and now it’s my turn to protect you. To save you from anyone else that could do you harm. To keep you safe from the assholes who think they know you better than I do. Don’t worry, baby, our lives are intertwined now, you’ll never be alone again.” I tried cutting this quote down but I just can't do it... ohhh william you freaky freaky boy... it's so textbook unhealthy to be like 'no one will ever understand you like I do' and it's amazing cause zeke eats this shit up every time he says stuff like this. despite the age difference, william is the one pulling out all the manipulation stops, and zeke is so desperate to feel loved that he eats it uppppp

"God, he’s never seen Will look so young. Well, his traitorous brain intrudes, yes you have, actually." this line is vaguely inspired by the fic "Written Between the Lines in the Blood of our Enemies" by ChangeTheCircumstances on AO3. that fic is so fucked up and it permanently changed my brain chemistry for the better. like, for zeke in the canon timeline, it's not the worst thing ever if he fucks will. cause he had no idea who william was, till william told him. it's very strange from william's perspective, him chasing and courting a man twice his age for literally most of his life, but also that's just kinda william's charm. in changethecircumstances's fic, zeke goes to prison instead of pete, and throughout his prison sentence he keeps up a correspondence with william as he grows up. GOD it's such an interesting premise that's executed so well

"He knows he can’t get hard again for the next twelve hours at least, but good lord does his dick try its best at the thought of him coming inside Zeke again, and again, and again." GODDDD yet another line that I want to flesh out into like a 6k oneshot.....

after (4): the trap

"His hands shake. He feels nauseous. He feels blind. He feels dead. His animal hindbrain kicks in" this was a line I included just for ME, cause those videos that are like "this is how you can survive this trap, uhh, duh!!! these people in the traps are braindead idiots, how could they not figure this out!" piss me off hardcore. bro sometimes when I have to run an errand in a store I've never been in, I go into fight-or-flight mode and I feel like I can't see more than five feet in front of myself while my heart beats out of my chest. and you expect me to know what to do to beat THE VENUS FLY TRAP??!?!?!? nah I'm better off dying, thanks

"It is at this moment that Joe realizes he may have fucked up." I really want to write more horror short stories, cause hooooly shit how do you even get across the distinct kind of pants-shitting fear that someone would feel here?? I just kept thinking of amanda's face in saw (2004) during the flashback to her trap: when she finally gets free of her restraints, gets out of the chair, and then pulls the pin that starts the timer on the RBT... I really am going to work my whole life to be able to describe that specific kind of horrified fear shawnee smith showed in that scene

"“Hello Sheriff Falt,” the computer-generated voice states, “I would like to play a game.” " ok three things about this. 1, falt is of germanic origin, meaning 'falcon' or 'sharp eyed'. 2, it is very close in spelling to fault, which I enjoyed. 3, I was really considering how much time I wanted to invest in describing the spiral tape voiceover as computer generated, but different from the one in the movie. I HATE the voice in the movie. whoever decided that voice ANDDDD whoever did the final approval on it deserve to be fired. alas, it would have been too distracting to re-describe the voice :-(

"He’d put this degenerate in his favorite open-air shithole jail, maybe he’ll even wait until the end of summer to have his actual trial, so he gets to suffer alongside all the other pricks he’s locked up in the sweltering sun." this line specifically is in reference to shitstain former maricopa county sheriff joe arpaio in arizona, who LEGITIMATELY HAD OPEN-AIR JAILS IN DOWNTOWN PHOENIX. FOR OVER TWENTY YEARS (1993-2017)!!! he also did everything in his power to humiliate the people in these jails, from giving men only pink underwear and socks, to feeding them the lowest quality so-called "meal loaf" (nutraloaf, also called "lockup loaf" due to it being used primarily for misbehaving prisoners cause it tasted awful and was a generally unappealing mass of blended foods) and fucking re-creating chain gangs. YOU WILL NEVER GUESS WHO PARDONED HIM IN 2017. YOU'LL NEVER GUESS. JUST KIDDING YOU'LL ABSOLUTELY GUESS.

"A strange contraption rests on Joe’s side of the divider, metal pieces shaped like a cast of a hand laying horizontally underneath a larger metal block" this is directly inspired from the blackjack minigame from RE7! I don't know much about the resident evil series, but I was OBSESSEDDDD with watching playthroughs of RE7. I changed the design a little bit so that the metal box holding the spikes above the hand was a bit longer, but it is extremely similar. screenshot of RE7 below for reference

"A jaunty tune crackles to life" I don't know why, but I always imagined a wind-up music box version of "Panadero con el pan" here

“You little fucking smartass, you think you’re so smart, huh?” writing asshole characters that are also stupid is an absolute dream. I really am just putting this dude into horrible situations and watching him suffer, huh

“Dios te salve María, llena eres de gracia; el Señor es contigo[...]" I speak spanish but I have no idea what a young child would say if kidnapped, so I just went for a classic catholic prayer. it's the most likely thing that a kid would have memorized to calm themselves down, I think

“Hello Sheriff Falt, The child–” / “GO FUCK YOURSELF, PIGFACED CUNT!” / “–before you is the son of an immigrant family[...]" once again, I am very funny. this is some saw (2004) screenwriting type shit

"Of fucking course Joe is going to scan his finger prints, are you kidding? He feels smart now, refusing to cut off a body part for any of those criminals." this was the hardest part of trap building: how do I make this outcome the distinct binary I want it to be? the whole idea of the trap is surrounding recidivism, of the tendency to recommit crimes after having done crime previously. the fic is somewhat similar to Saw 6 where william easton sees his institutional, distanced form of violence turned incredibly personal. I thought this trap was a pretty good parallel to the institutional violence of policing, and how cops are predisposed to recommitting violence after being so thoroughly encouraged to do it in their jobs. I wanted the trap to have that zeke-like optimism till the very end, though; he had so many chances to prove himself, so many chances to sacrifice himself for others, and despite these opportunities, he denied each one. and through that thorough selfishness, he is doomed to die. also, yes! the other key would have freed him. or at the least, that is my intention. who knows if william would let a guy like this go, though.

"The sedatives I hid in their collars were fast-acting, but they won’t be out for a very long time." YEP each of the subjects in the trap were not ever actually going to die. I drew very shitty diagrams of what I think the collars would look like, and the most important thing is that they are bulky as hell to hide all the pig meat and blood hidden in there to trick the sheriff.

"Their work might just be worth it. " is it OOC to think zeke might find his own way of appreciating william's work? who knows

ANYWAYS IF YOU MADE IT TO THE END OF THIS POST, THANK YOU!!! please send me messages/asks about spiral.... i have so many thoughts and I love sharing them...

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