#'a03 has no algorithm' WELL ACTUALLY

[otterwithaknife]

so upset by the divide in common usage of "agorithm" (weighs stuff by popularity/similarity to what you've engaged with before) vs the actual definition of "algorithm" (a sequence of precise instructions to achieve a result)

[reflections-in-a-critical-eye]

https://x.com/tatashaped/status/1923742732427661643?t=1_W7fboAbY0uLQBRm3dPVQ&s=19

Just looking the quotes. BTS really gathered a lot of shippers didn't they?

Nothing wrong with shipping, but if that's all most people are here for then that sucks, doesn't it? At the end of the day, BTS are musicians/artists and they'd like to be charting on music charts than on a03.

Yes, there's nothing inherently wrong with shipping idols. It's up there, in the blueprint. It happened before with plenty of groups, it will happen in the future. And it's the same in many other fandoms from all sorts of areas of entertainment.

In army's case, when the algorithm on all major platforms leads them immediately down a specific rabbit hole, they usually end up attending and graduating from the taekook_lies thought machine. And if they're extra stupid, they'll even pay to read more "detailed analysis".

All army is made of shippers in one way or another. They might ship their bias with another bandmate, with other girl group members or they ship themselves (to various degrees where the sexual attraction is either evident from the beginning, or they take on a more maternal role).

They might be serious shippers. They might take it as a joke, hence what is visible in the quotes of the post you mentioned. When I say army is the equivalent of taekookers, I mean that even in the case of people with different biases or even those who have a more relaxed approach to fandom life, it is a given that taekook is the BTS ship and then come other ships and lastly, the one that must not be named because "bros". It is in this fandom's own blueprint and narratives run so deep that they become facts.

A lot of them like to say that shipping is disgusting. You'll always find this cognitive dissonance that becomes visible after just 10 minutes of scrolling through their tweets. They like to say that the music is more important, but it's all empty words if we look at the numbers.

Only two people in BTS have, apart from shippers as well, the support in their music side of the business too. And when I say support, I mean that in the sense that the fandom accountants love to brag about, aka in sales, streams, views, etc. But those two have also have that IT factor that has led to their popularity. It's work, charisma and talent. Others will remain with either a poorer charting performance (which is the number one goal for army) or they'll have their ao3 charts because they know shipping is truly the actual priority of their fans so they must deliver.

[alister312]

Yo, Tips for reach on A03?

Well, the thing about ao3 is that it doesn’t have an algorithm so there’s no such thing as “increasing reach” directly on there. However, here’s some things you can keep in mind to help draw more people into your fic!

ao3 automatically sorts fics by “most recently updated (/uploaded)” in whatever category a reader is browsing. This means, if you want people to see your fic, it’s a good idea to update often (to keep it at/near the top) and maybe try to upload during times when you think a lot of people might be opening ao3 to browse. Maybe this means on the weekends, when people have free time. Maybe it means at night, since lots of people like to read fics as bedtime stories. You can figure out what works best for you.

Here are the other things ao3 sorts by. I don’t have any data to back this up, but I feel safe in assuming that the main things people choose besides Date Updated are Hits, Kudos, and Comments. Maybe also Bookmarks. After all, those are all indicators that other people have read (and probably enjoyed) a fic, which means it’s worth checking out.

Hits are just how many people have clicked on and opened the fic. It doesn’t count how many people have actually read it, or how many times one person (or more accurately, one IP address) has read it. If you want to increase hits, plug your fic on outside sources often. Put the link out there as just fic advertisement, draw art or commission art for it and include the link with the post, share it around in discord servers— whatever level of shameless self promo you feel comfortable with. It’s wonderful if you have friends who believe in you and can also share and promote your fic, but you can always guarantee that YOU will be your own biggest advocate so use that to your advantage.

Kudos are similar to a Like button. IMO if you read a fic or a chapter of a fic and reach the end without clicking out, you should leave a kudos, but I also know people who are very selective about their kudos so to each their own. But basically, they are something a reader can leave once. They can click it a second time and it doesn’t unkudos but it doesn’t add another either. There’s not really a way to increase them aside from kudos-ing your own fic and/or asking people you know to please leave one. This one’s on the readers! The same basically goes for Bookmarks. There’s slightly more effort involved (instead of clicking one button, people have to click a whole TWO buttons) so it’ll probably happen less often than kudos.

Comments are, well, comments. Pretty self explanatory. Since people usually don’t leave comments unless they have something to say about the fic, you mostly just have to hope people have something to say! A “Comments are always appreciated :)” in your author’s notes never hurts too. You could also take the time to reply to every comment you get if you don’t feel overwhelmed about replying to all of them! This will increase comments obviously but more importantly, it lets the commenter know they were heard and appreciated. Everyone likes knowing that, and it’ll hopefully create a positive feedback loop where they will comment again so you can reply again and so on and so forth.

If you’re in it purely for the numbers game, you can also check out your statistics page often and play to those strengths. Putting that below the cut since this is already pretty long!

As you can see, the statistics tab lets you compare your fics in a bunch of different ways. That way, if you’re trying to get better at one specific thing, you can see what fics do better in that sense and figure out why they might’ve done better.

For example, my #1 in terms of Hits is Just Business, a multichap fic. This makes a lot of sense to me, since multiple chapters meant multiple updates, pushing it to the top of most recently updated more often where people could click it. I also advertised the fic on tumblr any time it updated, so that was even more opportunity for people to literally just click through. Plus, I published new chapters weekly, specifically on Wednesdays while a new season of the show was airing so I knew it was more likely that a lot of people would be browsing the South Park tag. However—

Just Business is nowhere near the top in terms of kudos. Even though a lot of people clicked on it, they didn’t leave a kudos. This is probably because the main pair featured in it, Gregstophe, is a rarepair. I make this assumption because my #1 fic for kudos is Sweet, Dude, which is a Style fic and Style is one of the most popular South Park ships.

Then for comments (or comment threads, which means it doesn’t count back and forth replies, just new comments), once again Just Business is at the top with my other multichap fic What Makes Cloves Grow right behind it. This is because returning readers will often leave a new comment every time you update. It’s also interesting to see that my two fics that feature Dip as a pairing are in the top 5, so that means Dip fans are probably more likely to leave a comment!

Now based off of all this, if I wanted to publish fic purely to get ahead, I know it would be smart to publish a multichap fic on a consistent schedule so I can advertise it often. Maybe it’d be good to publish alongside new episodes airing, or right around the time of a new special or game so hype is at the highest and the tag has the most eyes on it. The main pair should be Style, Cryle, Creek, and/or Dip, as those have all demonstrated the most engagement from readers. There’s other stuff to factor in too (such as the fact that many of my top fics have Fluff or Domestic themes so that means the fandom these days probably likes to read Fluff and Domestic stuff) but that’s the gist of it!

[kvetchinglyneurotic]

For your fan fic writer list!

12 and 21 please! They can absolutely be from your original fiction if you want, I'm excited to hear about anything!!! ❤️

Thanks for the ask!

12: Do you have a playlist for your current WIP(s)?

Kind of. I don't create playlists for my WIPs, partly because I'm lazy and partly because my ad block doesn't work on Spotify and I refuse to pay for premium (it's not even about the money at this point; it's a battle of wills and I am going to Win. somehow.) so I mostly listen to algorithmically-generated YouTube playlists, which I've been doing for long enough that they reflect my taste pretty well. These come in three flavours: 1) stereotypical tumblr taste (The Mountain Goats, The Crane Wives, Autoheart, Dodie, a bit of Sufjan Stevens); 2) stuff I found as a teenager and still like (Yellowcard, Bowling for Soup, The Killers); and 3) inherited music taste from my parents (the Eagles, Tom Petty, the Weakerthans)

21: Have you ever deleted an entire scene after spending hours on it? If so, why?

I don't think I've done that with a scene, but I have done it with an entire story. My original fiction project, currently titled All Our Yesteryears, has existed in two previous iterations: I wrote version 1 when I was 17 or 18 (I recently turned 23, for context). It's a bit over 88,000 words in length and was actually posted on a03 for a while before I decided to rework it. Version 2 is a series of short stories from earlier in the timeline, is a bit over 86,000 words, and was also posted on a03 for a while. Version 3 is the one I'm working on now and I have made a pact with myself that whatever comes out of it is going to be the final version. (You can read part 1 on ao3)

The reason this keeps happening is that AOY takes place over the course of 20+ years and has 9 POV characters whose plotlines intersect but who mostly operate independently from each other, so I've gone through a number of different ideas on how to structure it — V1 had flashbacks at the beginning of each chapter, V2 was going to cover the whole timeline chronologically, and V3 is a hybrid between a rashomon and an anthology.

[secondjulia]

Hi, that lab is my brain & despite a complete lack of funding I've already spent way too long on this research (aka getting lost in the Thoughts.)

Ao3 is a beautiful relic of Old Internet(1), by which I mean it is a somewhat isolated refuge and also that the focus is on the stuff rather than on the people — which isn't to say there isn't community on Ao3 and that your experience can't be shaped (positively or negatively) by who you follow/follows you; and that's also not to say that Old Internet didn't have Personalities, you know what I mean, the Big Forum People who had to chime in on every fucking post (and the count under their avatar read like 20,000 which was A Lot back in the day) and would get into flame wars with Other Big Forum People and you had to have, like, a Side.

But it was not like This Internet where it is all about followers and following and Personality, which is sometimes called authenticity, but— [stop: unhelpful tangent] —and people have to be able to Find You (i.e. you have to be everywhere, not just, like, the little herb gardening sub-forum of the larger gardening forum that still only has like 20,000 users, i.e. only the 20,000 people in the world who really, really like gardening have found their way there.)

Anyway, Ao3 is the quiet little harbor you can just kind of be no one and post your work and — because the default sorting is date posted and because of their super specific/adaptable tagging system — people can still see it. (And also you as a reader can find the super specific random obscure thing you're looking for even if you don't know if anyone is writing it yet.) You can have 0 followers, post in the micro-est micro fandom and someone can sill find your work. I have posted in fandoms that literally did not exist on A03 before because I felt like writing something for it, and lo and behold people found it because Ao3 is built around the work not the people. I've also been the person reading fics in fandoms with works in the single digits. They were not hard to find because, again, Ao3 is built so you can find Tiny Random Niche Stuff very easily.

You can do stuff like that on New Internet/Social Media, too, of course, because you can do wtf you want. But because it is built more around personalities than material — and fucking algorithms — I personally find it is much harder both as a creator and fan.

Tumblr is the bridge between the isolated little harbors of Old Internet and the more connected New Internet. It has many aspects of modern social media with news feeds and potentially more of a personality-focused imprint if you want to use it like that. But it can also be used chronologically (people like to say Tumblr is non-algorithmic, but that isn't really true; it's just that you can have more control of/turn off those features and use it like Ye Old Chronological Newsfeeds) and anonymity is more the norm here than elsewhere (source: absolutely anecdotal. I know people use other stuff anonymously, too & some people use real names on tumblr. But it was still a massive culture shift to go from the norm of SuperNicheInterestUserNames to OhWe'reUsingOurRealNamesOnTheInternetNow(2)?!) So it retains some of the comfort and utility of the old ways while letting you make more connections without drowning in the sea of how we're doing things now.

I don't actually think one way of doing things is overall better because Old Internet had a lot of problems and New Internet definitely has its uses.

But I do think a halfway place like Tumblr is specifically helpful for the people who have found refuge in a removed, niche space like Ao3 and who maybe don't want to deal with the hyperconnected/public mess of the current internet.

(I think it's also interesting that Ao3 & Tumblr appeal to both young people who never knew the Old Internet as well as to us olds who used to live there, but that is another tangent.)

___

Notes:

(1) despite not being that old. It's like Ao3 is RP-ing 1999 but taking it Extremely Seriously. They are the person who puts designs on the inside of Theoden's armor or wears accurate undergarments to the Renn Faire because these things are important.

(2) I personally came to the horrifying realization of We're Using Our Real Names Now in the early 2000s when I showed up to Skype job interviews with my standard OldEnglishFairyName handle and realized everyone else was just RealName. Awkward and devastating. RIP old ways.

the symbiotic relationship between tumblr and AO3 should be studied in a lab

[luxshine]

I really need people to start tagging both Separate Bodies so that the A03 algorithm catches it when adding it to additional tags to exclude, and Violent!Jake (I would claim it should be OOC! Jake but given that I am trying not to police what people write, I will accept Violent!Jake as a compromise)

Seriously, of the four fics I tried to start reading today? THREE were untagged separate bodies -and all of them with both the implication that it was "necessary" even if not actually WANTED by the boys. And all the Jake fics I've found in the wild have him being incredibly violent and even borderline evil.

I am not asking for a evil!Khonshu tag since, well, poor Khonshu has been very maligned as a manipulator both in the TV series and the comics, so I would love to find a nice!Khonshu or protective!Khonshu tag.

AGain, I want people to write whatever the hell they want. I am a FIRM believer in YKINMKATOK, the old kink tomato. Which shows how OLD I am in fandom, and now I am getting Ray-wars flashbacks. I think worrying about what OTHER people write? Especially for free? Is a stupid way to waste your time.

BUT I also want to be able to read what I WANT to read without nasty surprises.

I can't control that much in the comics when I choose to subject myself to things like the Bendis run, or the 2006 ::spits:: run. But In fics, I should be able to trust the tag system.

Separate bodies, people. It's just 15 letters, counting the space. Not that hard.

And you can write to your heart's content, and people who WANT to read that will find your fic, and be very happy!

I can also suggest "Temporary Separate Bodies" if the guys are going to get back together into one body at the end, or "Eventual Separate Bodies" if that's your end game.

But... no offense to those who like it? I want to read about the System AS a System. Not as a three guys who just happen to look exactly the same.

[scariusaquarius]

I’ve also decided to just mostly post my written content on A03 since posting a fanfic on Tumblr hasn’t quite worked out for me either.

If you're a new writer, sometimes it can be very hard to get traction. The biggest thing is exposure, which is why it's super important for writers to also support other writers, which also plays a big part on feedback as well.

"Big" blogs that are considered popular or "tumblr famous" that reblog other writers works (and not just friends but actually looking for new fics/writers) are an insane help to those just starting out which is why i try to reblog what I read (i haven't had lots of motivation nor time since i just started my new job this week).

It can be discouraging when you first start out or haven't really found your comfort/confidence zone in terms of posting online, and sometimes that comfort level and confidence can fluctuate as time goes on. I can attest that my first few months were hard, but once the tagging system and algorithm were something to actually be proud of, traction wasn't an issue. (I'm talkin 2013 tumblr btw)

I think it's harder for new writers on tumblr nowadays because of the mindless consumption mindset people, both reader and writer, have has an increasingly negative uprise. People of this generation are incredibly used to the like/scroll functions most apps have nowadays compared to us old school folks where we grew up on a Tumblr that thrived with reblogs and fandom content.

It's honestly no surprise that fandom content has taken a swandive as of recent, besides the fact that Tumblrs qualityas a whole has nosedived as well.

Artists are finding it harder to get art reblogged (because of a very prevalent reposting issue), writers are having a hard time feeling confident in their writing (because of lack of feedback and reblogs), gif creators are experiencing a surge of stolen content, and the list goes on.

There's a huge lack of respect for content creators because of how NORMALIZED content that is created is in our regular society.

Just food for thought.

[tisfan]

Suburban Warfare

Square: S1 - mutual appreciation society ( @tisfan ) Square: S3 - Day in the Life ( @monobuu ) Warning: unadulterated fluff, suburban life, Home Owners Association Pairing: Tony/Bruce Summary: When the HOA makes his neighbor take down his adorable little garden gnomes, Tony sets out a plan of revenge, involving flying… robotic… flamingoes. Who said suburban living was boring? Word Count: 2,215 Link: A03 for @tonystarkbingo

Tony Stark hadn’t actually seen his neighbor for the first six months or so after moving into Lighthouse Crossings.

Tony’s house was the one on the end, so he only shared the one wall with his neighbor -- Mr. Banner, according to the package that Tony had once gotten by accident. He’d dropped it off at Banner’s porch and rang the bell, but got no answer. So, Tony had left the box there and hoped that the stories about being able to leave your front door unlocked were true.

Rhodey kept saying that living out in the middle of nowhere was going to be good for Tony, but Tony wasn’t so sure. However, with steady access to Amazon Prime and a really nicely remodeled shop in what had once been a double garage, Tony was managing. Mostly.

He hadn’t seen his neighbor, that much was true, although sometimes Tony could hear him moving around in his own house. He drove an enormous, bright green Jeep that was usually parked in the drive, same as Tony’s Audi.

Tony wondered what Banner was keeping in his garage, since it wasn’t his car. It wasn’t that unusual, though. He’d noticed of his up and down the street neighbors, that only about ten percent of them used the garage for actual car storage.

So, he’d never actually seen his neighbor.

But what he had seen was his neighbor’s lawn ornaments.

(more below the cut)

It started as just one; a little garden gnome wearing a pointy hat, and -- Tony actually had to walk up Banner’s driveway to peer at it more closely -- a Star Trek uniform.

“Beam me up, Scotty,” Tony said, patting his neighbor’s wall. “You are my new best friend, if I ever meet you.”

A few weeks later, the Star Trek redshirt gnome was joined by two science officers.

A week after that, Tony noticed that there were now four gnomes, and they’d been redistributed so that Red Shirt Gnome was dead, there was a science officer inspecting the dead gnome, and a yellow shirted gnome screaming at the skies.

“Khaaaaan!” Tony muttered.

A week after that, a communications officer gnome sat on the front porch, delicate little porcelain legs crossed as she talked into a device attached to her head.

A month or so and Tony found a shop in town (he walked by it all the time on the way to the hardware store, but this time he’d actually stopped in and looked.) that sold lawn ornaments. He looked over the stock and picked out a good sized lawn crocodile, which he added to his own lawn, only inches away from Banner’s lawn.

Two days later, he was delighted to go out in the morning and discover that the entire Gnome-Away team was gathered on the edge of Banner’s yard, inspecting the croc.

A day after that, the croc “ate” one of the Away Team.

It progressed like that.

Tony still hadn’t met the neighbor. But he was nursing just a little bit of a lawn decoration crush.

Dear Mr. Stark,

It has come to our attention that you are in violation of Community Guideline 102.a.ii, specifically:

It is the duty of all members of the community to keep their lawns neat and tidy, so as not to lower curb appeal for the neighborhood.

The board is giving you ten (10) business days to comply without our requests, or the board will have the lawn tidied, and bill you for any corrections.

Further non-compliance will be met with a $25-per-day fee after the specified ten (10) business days are up to be collected with your monthly Home Owners Association Fees.

If you would like to appeal this decision, the board will hear your complaints on the second Tuesday of the month, at our bi-monthly meeting.

Sincerely

Whitney Frost

The first time Tony met his neighbor, a man with an unbelievable amount of fluffy hair, a square jaw, and a hideous purple shirt was dumping two garden gnomes (communications officer and the original Red Shirt) into his trash can, and then stood there, staring at the plastic container like it was a open grave.

Tony shoved his feet into a pair of slippers and hurried out the door, still in his pyjama pants (with flamingos on them, because Tony loved him some ridiculous pyjamas), coffee mug in one hand. “No, no, no, wait, what, what are you doing?”

The man reached into his pocket and pulled out a rumpled copy of the same letter Tony had received and promptly ignored. His yard was neat and tidy. There wasn’t trash in it, he had his lawn cut regularly by the Parker kid down the street. The flower beds had actual flowers in them. He was fine.

“HOA says my gnomes are tacky,” Banner said. “They’re going to fine me.”

“There’s nothing in the HOA rules about lawn gnomes,” Tony said. “I checked. You’re fine. I like your lawn gnomes.”

“Well, someone doesn’t, because Whit said there were a number of complaints,” Banner said.

“Zero is a number,” Tony muttered. “Look, I’m on your side here-- my name’s Tony, by the way, nice to meet you--”

“Bruce.”

“--so let’s just go to the HOA meeting and appeal.”

Bruce gave him a little half-tipped up smile. “You think so?”

“I know so--” Tony reached into the trash and pulled out the two gnomes. Nothing seemed to be broken. A little paint on Red Shirt’s hat, good as new. “I like these guys-- I’ve… my lawn croc-- you know. It’s been fun.”

Bruce was smiling, a little shy, ducking his chin. But he was also nodding along. “Yeah, I-- it’s nice to meet you, Tony.”

“Bruce, Bruce, check it out,” Tony said. He waved the remote at his neighbor, noting again, for the record, that Bruce was absolutely adorable in an absent minded professor sort of way. Even if he insisted on wearing purple cardigans. He was, in fact, both absent-minded and a professor, so it was just professional courtesy that Tony was noticing, and the fact that he wanted to see if Bruce’s mouth was as kissable as it looked, that was just bonus, right?

Besides, no one had to know that he was crushing on his neighbor.

“What are you--” Bruce ducked as one of the flamingoes got a little close to his head.

“Flying lawn decorations,” Tony said. “They’re not against the rules, I checked.”

Bruce spun around in a slow circle. There were an even dozen of the things, zooming around in patterns above Tony’s lawn. “This is amazing, did you make these?”

“Well, yeah,” Tony sad. “I mean, they don’t even sell this sort of thing in skymall.”

“How?”

“Well, I started with some roombas, and then hacked their algorithms,” Tony said. “Built the core around them, and utilized some of Stark Industries old flying car tech. We never could get approval for the repulser technology, and Dad gave it up as a bad idea. The lift just wasn’t there for a passenger compartment. But these guys, they weigh less than ten pounds each, so it’s pretty easy. They’re confined to the yard, and when they need to recharge, they go right to their stations behind the house.”

“That’s cool,” Bruce said, tipping his head up to watch.

“Perfectly safe. Perfectly within the rules,” Tony said. After the emergency session in which the HOA had decided that lawn statuary of any sort was against the rules, and both Tony and Bruce had been hit with enormous fines (Tony had offered to cover Bruce’s fines, but Bruce had just blown him off) Tony had been trying, deliberately, to get on Frost’s nerves. “They’re not statues. And when they’re charging, they’re out of sight, and so not lowering the curb appeal.”

Bruce hummed thoughtfully, still watching one particular flamingo making patrols around Tony’s yard. “I think you underestimate Whitney Frost.”

“We shall see,” Tony said. He felt pretty good about it. Besides, the flamingos were pretty cool, no matter what.

“Hey, hey, Tony-- Tony will you wait up?” Bruce came shuffling down the sidewalk from the Clubhouse, after the Homeowners Association meeting.

“Yeah, what? Oh, oh, sorry, Bruce, that just makes me so angry, there was nothing specific in the bylaws about lawn ornaments, Frost just has a boner for making people do what she wants. She doesn’t want residents, she wants fucking clones.” Tony hitched in a breath, getting ready to go full on rant, but the look on Bruce’s face pulled him up short. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I just have to work on not getting angry,” Bruce said. “I have poor impulse control when I’m angry, and after so many years, I’ve finally learned that toxic anger doesn’t help anyone.”

“Yeah, sorry,” Tony said. “Look, you want to go out and get a burger and a beer or something? I just-- did you see that, she just--”

“Railroaded the board into doing what she wants, I know. She’s done it before. There’s only three of them, and Parker Robbins does whatever she says, so-- no one wants to be on her bad side,” Bruce told him. “I could have told you that.”

Which was Bruce’s way of saying he had told Tony that. And that Tony hadn’t listened. Usually, Tony had discovered that a firm, no nonsense attitude, a big smile, and a reasonable argument worked.

Frost had, when confronted with the idea that lawn gnomes weren’t specifically forbidden by the bylaws, had gotten the other board members to change the damn bylaws at the fucking meeting.

Bylaws took only a quorum vote of the board members to change, and didn’t have to have any sort of discussion or study before hand.

“If Frost wanted us to all have to grow orange crabgrass in our yards, she could just decide that?” Tony demanded of the air. “How is that-- that is too much power for someone to have. These are our homes.”

“You can only turn over a board decision with at least fifty percent of the owners showing up for a vote. No one can do that. Even when she decides to raise the homeowners’ dues, we can only get about thirty heads of household to show up to the damn meeting,” Bruce said. “A beer and burger date sounds great.” He slanted his eyes at Tony.

“Is it a date? I mean, not that I have a problem-- I mean, I haven’t… did you--” Tony stammered.

“You’re adorable when you get all muddled up,” Bruce said. He was a big guy, but soft, somehow. Like a teddy bear. He put an arm around Tony’s shoulders and Tony just wanted to kick back, curl up, and stay safe there. “I’m saying, if you want it to be a date, I’m not adverse to the idea of dating.”

“It’s a date,” Tony said, firmly. “Absolutely.”

“What are you doing?”

“Finding a loophole,” Tony said. The home owners association documents were a huge, over 200 page, held together with a binder clip piece of bullshit that Tony had signed before getting the mortgage for his home.

He’d read through them, because he always read everything that he signed, no matter how tedious. But the addendum to the HOAdocs had not been included.

Which showed a gradual increase in the amount of power that had consolidated into the board.

“Is it working?”

“Actually, yes,” Tony said, looking up with a beatific grin. “How do you feel about some neighborhood involvement.”

“Huh?”

“Change the system from within,” Tony said. “Look, there are actually seven board positions--” Tony traced a line down the page. “And they’re filled entirely by volunteers.”

“Frost only has three people on--”

“I know. No one has volunteered in years. So it’s just Frost and her cronie, and Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, who’ve been on the board since the neighborhood was first build up,” Tony said. “There’s a sad lack of leadership these days. Frost controls the vote, because in the case of a tie, she gets to decide.”

“So--”

“I’m saying we volunteer, my darling,” Tony said, batting his eyelashes at his boyfriend.

“Us. Volunteer.”

“To be on the board,” Tony clarified. “That gives the board six votes total. And I already talked May Parker into it.” Parker had a kid, a nephew about four years old, and she’d gone up against Frost a few times too for things like sidewalk chalk and Big Wheels bikes. Which made for seven votes total.

“You think Jack or Stan will back anything we suggest?”

“I don’t know,” Tony admitted. “But what else can we do, aside from conform to Frost’s expectations. We can’t let her win, Bruce.”

“I wasn’t aware that this was a war,” Bruce pointed out, mildly.

“Look, the board positions are only open at the annual meeting. This meeting. So, if it doesn’t work out, we’re only doing it for a year. How bad can it be?”

“I’m quite positive we will regret this,” Bruce said.

“Oh, come on, Bruce, this is an excellent outlet for your anger issues, there’s something here to get angry about! Use your powers for good.”

Bruce pulled Tony into an embrace and kissed him several times until Tony relented and relaxed. “I’ll tell you a secret. I’m always angry.”