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Dr. Strange by Tom Fowler

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I'm gonna add that, as a nearly-fanatical reader of Rucka's run on the Punisher (nuanced, understated, utterly mesmerizing -- both the characters and the plot, I mean come on how are you not reading this, ladies), this thing made my indeterminate-amount-of-time, as well.  That's what an amazing run on a character like Frank Castle will do.  It turns Frank into your favorite Marvel character, hands-down, and then gets you so immensely excited to be a fan.

I know I'm going to see more of this sort of gorgeous fanstuff in the future.  The calibre of Rucka's run on the Punisher will see to it.  MARK MY WORDS

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I'm writing Bradbury-centric fic (Ex Machina) while waiting for the advent of Punisher #15 and X-Factor...... I never liked writing (finishing is an ace feeling, but I've always been competitive.... with... myself..........), but it's such a compulsion. I ought to give in and try to become halfway-decent at it again.

If I didn't have eleven-hour days where I shuffle home feeling like unprocessed cotton, collapsed from the act of inexorably giving myself out and away, demeanor over interior, I would finally type out the pages' worth of the Frank/Matt Prison Industrial Complex/truly very sacrilegious fic I have toeing its way onto every page of my notebook, and I would arrange words in order, and edit it, and put it up here. 

But I'm just so tired. I'm tired enough to forsake my I-do-not-talk-about-personal-mundanities-and-sundry rule and post about it here, and I will regret this, but it's, horribly, a little vindicating to think that maybe someone will know my secret exhaustion and my -- longing.  Maybe someone will remember me.  Maybe in all this space and cosmos and this great black pit of hypotheticals, someone will pin me and place me, and there I will be.

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I think I might've witnessed something very close to this, one dark time on the Upper West Side.

It's those New York moments, you know.

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YESSIR

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MCIU - the infamous GQ issue by ~alexiel-neesan

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Okay, here's the thing: Henry and Frank's relationship is more than a relationship of convenience.  We know this.

But for realsies: they get domesticity and comfort from each other.  Look at this!  Right here!  Whether either of them will ever own up to it or not, these two were singular to each other in what they gained emotionally (yes, emotionally; I've had to defend Frank's human aspects repeatedly in the past: robot he ain't, cold-blooded killer he ain't [entirely]) from living and working together.

Remender has stated that Frank took to seeing Henry as a son. To categorize Frank Castle's feelings so decisively, in this easy little soundbite, seems like a faux pas to me just because the character will never allow himself to reach/accept that conclusion, ever.  While Frank is not devoid of emotion, I also don't think he can afford to sort through his emotions to that extent.  I'm not saying that paternal love for Henry is not what Frank feels deep down, but I think that Frank evades and disowns luxuries like labeling emotions and adhering to the conventional behavior prescribed to whatever-emotion, to such a degree that we should not jump to say 'he did this because Henry is like a son to him!!'  Humans, even humans like Frank Castle, are far more elusive to even themselves than that.  The furthest I feel Frank Castle could go is, Here is someone I have tried to protect and will continue to try to protect.  And that, in itself, is profound for him.

Henry, on the other hand.  I can tell you one thing: he does not see Frank as a father.  Here's the thing: he goes on at length about how Frank was his hero for sending Jigsaw into fits of rage.  He talks about the agony spent as a child with Jigsaw as a father; he saw his mother suffer at the hands of this man who had the authority of 'father' and wanted, from a young age, to be free of this father.

Henry doesn't need or want another father.  He is not a boy lost and hopeless and desiring a traditional family to make it right.  That assumption is insulting to his story.  Frank smashed through patriarchy that Henry had experienced as toxic; he asked, in In the Blood, for Frank to completely sever that bond with patriarchy by killing Jigsaw.  Henry doesn't need a replacement: he sees Frank as a hero for giving him the opportunity to leave the need for a father.  And he thrives, as we see at the end of In the Blood, without it: he is a feminist, a hard-working idealist with enough resolve to keep his recovering mother and himself afloat morally and financially.  

He never asked Frank to be a part of that.  He took care of it on his own, as he knew he could, without a father figure.

He just... wants to be close to Frank.  And that's all.

So yeah I think Henry is in love with Frank and Frank doesn't know how to word up enough to arrive at any significant conclusion.

THE END

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Frank is a motivator. It's a gift.

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YES. I am ready for this.

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And those who do understand will weep for all the beauty. Amazing(!!!!).

a joke that most people won’t understand