#but I draw the line at Peter Parker existing...

[the-cat-and-the-birdie]

Oh so when Wanda literally enslaves a whole town for weeks and tries to murder a random ass teenager (America Chavez) in cold blood and basically abuses the hell outta her husband AND her own variant to be with 'her' kids it's a tragic story of a woman experiencing parenting and loss

But when Miguel takes the place of his already dying variant and is shown doing everything in his power to give Gabby a good life and somehow he's evil and most likely an abusive predator???

Do you see how that don't add up?????

TO THAT I SAY -

[buckets-and-trees]

Hehe. 😇

This Mafia Bucky means business.

Now... Did you unknowingly tap into this image as exactly the Bucky I have tucked away on a story I've told no one about?

Maybe...

And because I'm feeling a little wild this Wednesday, WHY NOT LIFT SOMETHING OUT OF THE MESSY WIP AND PUT IT OUT THERE???

Working title for the AU is currently Shedding My Velvet...

Bucky turns to his head to the left, and Steve monitoring the security cameras and on comms with him, asks, "What do you see?"

“Green cardigan,” Bucky specifies.

To his credit, Steve doesn't let much of the smirk Bucky knows he must be smirking to bleed through his tone as he responds on the ear piece. "Got it. Running her through the database now."

One he takes his seat in the crowd, Bucky only glances back your way twice more before the boss of the Bronx finally shows up for their meeting.

Quill’s not late, they arranged to arrive at staggered times to draw less attention, but Bucky never likes to wait. Still, he chose to arrive first because he didn’t want Quill ahead of him in any way in any arena.

“Barnes,” the man says in greeting.

“Quill,” Bucky returns.

Bucky doesn’t roll his eyes, but he wants to every time he sees this man in the dark red leather jacket he’s built into his identity.

Quill waits for Bucky to speak, but Bucky doesn’t. He’s not verbose by any means, and he knows it irks Quill, especially when Bucky forces him to speak first. So he waits in the silence waiting for Quill to push the conversation they've both come here to have forward.

“Tony says you’ll agree if I agree.”

“Yes," Bucky affirms.

“Well, I agree.”

Bucky nods. He doesn’t respect Peter Quill, but he has no professional qualms. He neither trusts nor mistrusts him, but he does know Quill is a man of his word, and he’s got a track record of reliability within the accords of The Five. Bucky told Tony as much, and that’s why they were sitting on this bench. If Bucky heard it with his own ears, it would be done. He’d still monitor with a healthy amount of skepticism as he always did, but that was modus operandi.

“Then we leave Queens to the kid.”

“Eighteen months,” Bucky states.

Bucky nods again. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Steve stand from his bench and leave.

“And you think Danvers will stay out of it?”

Bucky scoffs, and this time he does roll his eyes. “Come on, Quill, you know Danvers has made it clear she barely deigns to deal with us and only indulges the accords to make sure she can operate her own territory as if we don’t exist.”

“All right, all right, I was just getting your read on the situation.”

“You and I are ostensibly the wildcards.”

If there were to be a turf war over trying to expand the territory and take over Queens, it would be Manhattan, the Bronx, and Brooklyn who stood to gain. Tony had already stated he would maintain status quo. Tony and Ben hadn’t been in power, but they’d both been around when the accords of the five had been fought out, and they’d battled through the chaos before the lines were drawn. Tony and Ben were old school, and they’d respected each other when they both came into power, ascending around the same time.

They were quiet again, but in this moment, the impatience on Quill’s end for Bucky’s silences had been put on pause.

“He’s young,” he finally said.

Bucky shrugged. “So were we.”

“He’s too young,” Quill qualified. It wasn’t a criticism; it was said remorsefully.

Bucky sighed. “Maybe.”

Ben Parker had been clear that his nephew Peter would take over Queens, had been unquestionably preparing him to take over, but everyone expected it to be another ten years and retirement before Ben was out of the scene, not an ascension due to a brutal murder of the mob boss, killer still unknown and at large.

After a few moments, Quill speaks again. “We done here?”

Bucky nods. They both stand, shake hands, and then turn their backs on each other and depart. Bucky looks to Steve first, then his eyes flick to the now-empty table where you had been, and then back to Steve, who falls into step with him as they walk away from the meet.

“Quill agreed to the terms,” Bucky starts. “Eighteen months from the day of Ben’s funeral to let Peter Parker step in and establish his power in Queens.”

“We knew he would.”

They both slip into the back of the black SUV at the curb, and once they’re settled in, Bucky turns to Steve. “Now tell me what you really want to tell me. You’re hardly keeping the grin off your face.”

Steve then lets the smile break freely - but it's warm, not gloating. “As it is the first time you have ever had me look into the identity of a stranger you’ve developed a crush on at first sight, you can’t blame me for being incredibly happy about this.”

Bucky grunts.

“I’ve got preliminary findings for you from Joaquin,” he starts.

“Torres?” Bucky protests. “You put the new kid on this?”

“He is our intelligence guy. Who else would I put on it?”

Bucky rolls his eyes.

“He’s younger than us,” Steve continues, “doesn’t make him a kid. We’re past the days when we were the young guys in this business. You’ve been nothing but impressed with him up to this point, and he’s coming up on a year with us.”

“Fine. Continue.”

“I already told him to keep this close to the chest. You, me, him – not even Sam.”

“Sam is the last person who gets to learn about anything like this.”

Steve laughs. “He’s already got her identity narrowed down to two possibilities and he’s confident he’ll have the full dossier ready to report by the time you come out of your meeting with Tony.”

[lurkinglurkerwholurks]

Why Should a Star, a Star Ever Be Afraid of the Dark

First posted: May 17, 2019

Focuses on: Peter Parker and Morgan Stark (MCU)

Tier: Low, so low, so unappreciated

This is my “behind the scenes” series where I indulge myself horribly by annotating my fics. Link to the fic itself above. Thoughts below the cut.

Ah, another unexpected MCU fic that burst out of my chest through the force of my post-Endgame emotions. Since it's not my primary fandom and I posted in a time where much much larger writers were also saying things, it got next to no attention, then or now. That's okay. I'm still glad I wrote it.

Peter bit his bottom lip as he traced the metal leg of the Imperial Walker, extending the line of grey from the box shape of the body down to where the snow would be. Maybe he shouldn’t have picked the Battle of Hoth as his muse. A snow battle on white paper was boring. He paused, frowned, and set the paper aside.

It's funny, writing fic with well-known characters, because you want to get them right. But there are so many ways to perceive a character, especially one that's been portrayed and analyzed so many different ways, so it often comes down less to what makes logical, concrete sense and more about what just feels right. Even this opening was a lot of mentally flipping through a bunch of different options until I found one that felt right for Peter. I also think Calvin and Hobbes did a similar joke with a drawing of a tiger hiding in snow or something. Call it an homage.

Peter was still getting used to Morgan, to everything like her that proved that life had gone on while he had been… away. One minute, he’d been a regular kid punching aliens in space, and the next, it was five years later. Five whole years. And there were people like Morgan who hadn’t existed when he’d closed his eyes but were suddenly here, sparkly princess tiara on her head and a tiny Ready to Rock t-shirt stained with what looked like a smear of goldfish crackers.

MCU really really failed when it came to the ramifications of the Snap. Such a travesty.

“See?” she had said, swinging her bare toes over the surface of the lake. “It’s better with your shoes off.” Peter had taken off his shoes, and they had sat there together, watching the air slowly thicken with gnats and then mosquitoes as the sun dipped lower and lower and turned the lake golden. She had been right about the shoes.

I forgot how much I liked this fic.

“Cheering,” Morgan said matter-of-factly. “That’s Mommy and Happy and Uncle Rhodey and you and Amanda and Maddox and Mr. Lu and Mrs. Iye and—“

It's fun naming incidental characters. Sometimes you get to slip friends in. Just for fun.

For every happy story about a family reunited, there was another about people returning only to find out that their loved ones had moved on or died. Weddings were still a thing after the Snap. So were babies. And car accidents and relocations and cancer and birthdays. Life went on. Death went on, too.

MCU BIT IT. JUST UTTERLY TANKED IT.

The crayon snapped in Peter’s hand, a tiny crack of Fern.

I had to google green crayon colors.

This was a good little fic. Next to no attention, but again, that's okay. I think I wrote a good kid Morgan who isn't too cutesy, a decent Peter, and a tolerable little look at grief. Yay me.

[monalisamartian]

INFO DUMP FOR UNIVERSE 11208

This universe doesn't have a Spiderman Instead it has a Prowler. (Which leads to alot more crime since no one is around to stop it)

The symbioties of this universe are huge (Venom is about 8ft tall in his big form and carnage is even bigger big tinner) they also have tails and spikes/horns. They are more animal like and are more intune with the hive mind that spans across the multiverse.

Hobie brown is the prowler of this universe. (Cos we love a evil version of the man I love)

Eddie "spiderman" aka the first Venom but they where doing the whole hero thing until he got hurt and is now in a coma (hence why Vi now has him)

Vi and Eddie dated (which is why he chose Vi to take on Venom, she already knew about him and they had a weird 3 way thrupple going on)

The sister 6 is mostly that same but a little more sinister then silly. (I will desing them at some point)

Symbiotes are a big part of the universe and will show up a lot with and without a host.

The Symbiotes can still have thier own big form even when attached to a host insted of the host wearing them (they are alot more independent, mostly using host as an energy battery)

Norman Osborn is the green goblin and is actually a pretty big threat to the universe they live in.

Since Vi is on a mission to connect all the Vemons to the bigger hive mind she barely spends time in her own universe. So she's got merch of all different spidermen and definitely has favourites since her own universe lacks a proper Spiderman.

Hobie brown became the prowler after Venom ate his mother. (Drama)

So answer thesew from discord

Q; first question I got are How did Vi and Venom bond? And I know you said Spider-man doesn't exist in your world, so what happened to Peter, Miles, Eddie, Cletus, and Flash?"

A; Vivvian was dating her universes Eddie while he was trying to be the hero the word despretly needed. But in a fight against Carnage (hyped up on goblin toxins) Eddie got hurt and ended up in a coma with a head injury. Peter Parker never got bit he's just a regular dude (tho I'm thinking about making him a carnage host later down the line)

Q; are Vi and Venom connected like Eddie and venom and the movies, or do they are Separated but still Is connected if that makes sense

A; So Venom and Vi are always connected even when he's in his big form separate from her he's connected by atleast one tendril at all times (which means they can't go more then a few meters apart at any given time) but Oh yeah for sure, it's thier biggest weakness. But they work around it and are good at working as a duo. But if Venom ever dose get de attached Vi loses all her powers (she isn't a spider man so she never got bit by a spider, she's only got venom powering her)

a add on from this, Vis biggest draw backs are that 1 she would absolutely die in a fight without venom. 2 the connection (they do have a connection in her DNA so it's hard to disconnect them but one he's not on her…she's kinda helpless) 3 she is strong AF and doesn't hold back bit because she's powering a whole nother person she runs out of energy faster and looses stamina faster then most.

[therealgothambychelsealauren]

Chapter I: While in the Shadows

*opening sequence - making coffee, getting ready for school*

In 2021, the National Institute of Health published a study that demonstrated how parents were statistically more likely to misperceive a black child as feeling angry than a white child. The NIH used buzzwords like "adultification" and "racialized anger bias" to explain the disproportionate phenomenon between race of children and mis-labeling of emotions. Basically, to scientifically say what us Black folk already know - the "angry Black woman" stereotype wasn't created by accident.

I had many things to be angry about in my teen years; the star of the boys' soccer team didn't wanna date me, my sister needed medication we couldn't afford, my clothes were found on sale at Goodwill and Old Navy, I was a child and a co-parent at the same time, my mother had demons in her head that needed more than holy water to exorcise.

In the study I mentioned earlier, they conclude that a large reason for the "racially-biased misconception of anger in children" is because it correlates with how Black children are also misperceived as being older (and presumed more mature) than they actually are. And like these researchers and other Black folks can tell you, there are cultural and systemic contributions from our society that allow this correlation to exist. The suggested solution to this psycho-social problem is to acknowledge the cultural phenomenon and the impact it has on our children.

For me, I just doodled cartoons and read comic books.

I was the oldest of 3 kids. We needed a dad - a safe dad, who didn't make us feel like we had to sleep with one eye open if he stayed the night, who was gonna keep our stomachs from growling and the bullies from laughing.

But despite my mother's beauty and desperation, Superman would only hover before vanishing from our doorstep.

My brother and sister were into Spiderman mostly; they liked his vibrant bright colors and his cool backstory. He made the spiders creeping around our section-8 housing less scary (they could potentially give you superpowers, apparently). And of course, the iconic quote - "with great power comes great responsibility" is a line that just carresses the nostalgia part of our brains.

But I was of the minority opinion. At the public library, the sibs read adventures about Peter Parker and the Avengers rescuing New York City, whereas I gravitated towards the darker grittier side of comicbooks - the side that mirrored my reality rather than glamorized it.

"You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain" - that was the favorite movie quote I introduced myself with on the first day of 9th grade history class, and I remember the judgemental glances and snickers exchanged amongst my classmates.

The Long Halloween.

Batman Year One.

Arkham Knight.

The Killing Joke.

My library list of titles and due dates was a monochromatic receipt in theme and morals compared to what my siblings borrowed. My mother noticed, and she especially noticed when I dressed up as Batgirl for Halloween three years in a row. She didn't mind Batman, but pictures of the Joker scared her. My brother had to convince her to let us watch The Dark Knight on DVD. I think when my sister moved on from My Little Pony to Sailor Moon and my brother became obsessed with Minecraft instead of Legos, my mother hoped I'd turn away from the dark compelling images of bloody clowns and tormented Caped Crusaders into something less dark and disturbing.

But I needed the Batman.

Drawing Batman punching The Riddler square in the jaw felt like releasing my own fistfights through my knuckles tightly clenched around a pencil. When Batman snarled, I gritted my teeth. When the Joker laughed, I screamed.

Batman mirrored the reality my soul writhed and burned within. Every morally gray act was a validation of my anger in such a corrupt system. I wasn't a villain, I was a product of my environment. I wasn't a hero, I was a survivor.

In college, I drafted a short film inspired by this coping mechanism of my childhood. My freshman year of college was the first year of the Covid pandemic, the momentous year of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the year I realized my mother's white parenting and upbringing did not protect me from the biases and cruelties systemically distributed to Black folks. My final year of college occurred soon after the overturn of Roe v. Wade. Personal and world-wide losses and challenges were faced and scarred in the years between.

After college and the worst summer of my adulthood, I packed my bags for an opportunity to serve as a peer mentor for students in underresourced schools in the real Gotham City - New York City. It was an experience that taught me a lot and, unfortunately, burnt me a lot, both in physical burnout and in an emotional metaphorical sense. Following the year of servitude, I was accepted into law school.

Which brings me to today, the start of my first 1L semester. It's exciting, but also harrowing as I learn how much of my life has been a pawn in the unsaid chess match between law and empathy, between control and anarchy. I have stayed in Gotham, never feeling so at home anywhere else.

And as I learn more and more about the legal system, I feel the dark cowl of the Batman hovering closer and closer over my mind like a noose dangling over my neck, dooming me to risk dying a hero or play the game long enough to become one of them. Can I be clever and resourceful like the Batman? Will this rope tied by generations of oppression choke me out, or will my hands snap it at just the right moment to use it like a grappling hook and pull myself up above the cycle?

[joyaliciouss]

wherever you go i won't be far to follow

Tony woke up and there was something missing, like his arm or his ribcage. He woke up and there was a hole in his chest that he couldn't quite explain. He rose early as always, with Morgan drooling on his shoulder and Pepper at the edges of his fingertips. They were his whole world, his universe, as they should be—

—but. 

He shook the fog of sleep from his head and stretched his old bones, moving past the kitchen and straight to his office, where an extension of FRIDAY operated the lab upstate. Dum-E greeted him with an enthusiastic cup of something that was definitely motor oil and not a cup of coffee, but Tony took it anyway.

“Good job, bud,” he said, setting it on the corner of his table. Dum-E chirped and went back to assembling and disassembling Morgan’s pile of toys. Tony shuffled the papers stacked on his desk - Morgan’s drawings, Stark Industries projects, Spiderman suit blueprints, Web Fluid variations, Spiderman news clippings, Spiderman - He paused.

A beat passed.

He stepped back from his desk and scowled. A table sat in the corner of his office, cluttered with junk and gizmos that he did not make. Spiderman and Iron Man lego paraphernalia littered the sides of it and he felt a twinge of irritation just looking at the collection. His feet felt the ghost of its pointed edges and he knew that he often stepped on it—

—but.

Morgan was too small to reach the table and Pepper was not a fan of legos and junk. 

“Tony?” Pepper called softly by the doorway, snapping him out of his reverie.

“Yeah?”

She frowned, eyes roaming over his face then to his table where the cup of motor oil was. “Did you drink motor oil again?”

“What? No?” He said, but it only made Pepper frown even more.

“Well, you looked like you did.” She moved closer - cautiously - as if he was on the verge of a panic attack. “Are you alright?”

Tony swallowed and smiled. “Of course. Yeah - yeah, I’m fine.”

o o o

Peter swallowed the words in his mouth and said, “Can I get a cup of coffee?”

"Okay, Peter Parker." MJ smiled politely, her usual poker face visibly confused. Peter didn’t register what happened after. Only that he got home and that his legs collapsed under the weight of his grief the moment he closed the crappy door of his crappy apartment. He didn’t cry - couldn’t cry at the happy, contented faces of his friends. 

No.

His tears already ran out as he watched them lower Aunt May’s casket under the ground. People who once loved and supported them cried, and he couldn’t even take a step further from the tree line to comfort them because Peter Parker did not exist. May Parker was not a loving aunt to her nephew, but a single woman who devoted her time to helping the needy. 

And everyone he once knew was better off living without him - anonymous and infinitely safer. 

So his heart shouldn’t shatter when Ned walked past him without their custom handshake, his eyes shouldn’t burn when MJ looked at him without love in her eyes, and his throat shouldn’t hold an agonizing scream when he swings past Stark Industries because there’s no Tony, no Pepper, no Morgan, no Happy--

Because Peter Parker did not exist.

And all of this was okay rather than the universe breaking because of his selfishness. It was time to choose and he made his choice.

So Peter held the tremble in his bones and stood, putting on his new suit and sliding the mask over his face. 

o o o

Tony stared at the cobwebs up on the ceiling. Last week, it was spotless but he and Pepper couldn’t reach that height nor did they have the energy and time to do so. He had this itch in his brain he couldn’t get rid of and a tick of looking at his watch every four in the afternoon. 

“What is it?” Pepper asked over her cup of tea. “You have that look on your face again.”

“Nothing,” he said, looking away from the ceiling. 

“Tony,” she said, warm and worried, and something in it cracked away at him. 

“I just -” He pursed his lips. “I don’t get it.”

“Well, that’s new.” She looked down at her tea, smiling. Tony huffed, amused. “But seriously, what is it you don’t get?”

“Ever since last week, I’ve been feeling… off.” He started, unsure. “Like, something’s--”

“--missing,” Pepper finished, looking into his eyes. Tony licked his suddenly dry lips, the answer at the back of his mind, the tip of his tongue - somewhere close, but so out of his reach and it drove him mad with confusion every time he tried to catch it. 

“Right?” He said, eyes wide and frenzied. “Like, something - or someone is supposed to be here but they’re not.”

“Yeah, I get that feeling, too,” Pepper agreed, morose. 

“I think - I think it has something to do with Spiderman,” Tony said, voice low, as he pulled a Spiderman lego piece out of his pocket.

“That vigilante?” She asked. Tony nodded in response.

“I have the blueprints of his suit, his web formula, and news clippings of him but he hasn’t been here since last week.”

“Well, maybe he’s busy?”

“Maybe.” He shrugged. “Or maybe he can’t get here.”

Tony gazed at Pepper’s eyes with an intensity she only saw once - when the world was falling apart and Tony walked towards his death to save the whole world. 

“I have to find him.”

o o o

Peter swung down from his window and ripped off his mask, breathing heavily. Today went pretty well and was piled with minor crimes in Queens, but patrol took a lot out of him. He turned to his workstation, full of junk and readied himself to work when--

“Hi,” a voice he hadn’t heard of in a long time said. Peter gasped, turning on his heel and clutching his chest.

Tony was here. Tony came here. In his apartment. Was it possible? Did he--

“Woah, woah, woah, kid,” Tony said, raising the palm of his hands towards him. “I know I’m Tony Stark, but c’mon.”

Peter swallowed the bile threatening to burst from his mouth, but the burn of it didn’t manage to overpower the disappointment that bloomed in his stomach. Tony didn’t know him. That’s right. Tony wouldn’t know him because Peter Parker did not exist. 

“Mr. Stark,” Peter rasped out. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Mr. Stark, what are you doing here—”

“Up-up, Me first.” Tony sat on his bed like he owned it and the familiarity of it struck something painful in Peter. “Quick question of the rhetorical variety -” He held up his phone and a video of him swinging through New York flashed through the musty air of his apartment. “-That’s you, right?”

“No,” he scoffed, and the old Tony would have been proud of his lying face if not for the fact that Tony probably saw him swing through the window and that he’s wearing the goddamn costume. “This - this - I’m cosplaying. As. Yes. There’s a con - somewhere.”

Damn it, Peter.

“So, you’re Spiderman.” Tony barreled through like he always does and Peter doesn’t have it in him to fight anymore.

“Is there anything you need, Mr. Stark? For a mission? Please don’t tell me we have to fight something again because I am not in the mood to fight another—”

“I know you,” Tony said, and Peter froze. He didn’t want to be here. He was exhausted, and in minor pain, and Tony still doesn’t remember him, but now he’s telling Peter he knows him. “Yet weirdly not at the same time, you get me?”

“You know me as Spiderman, sir. That’s all.” Peter shrugged. 

Tony’s eyes roamed his face as if searching for something, “No. I have your suit blueprints, your web fluid formula, news clippings of you saving a cat of all things from a tree, and a certificate of  Tony Stark’s best intern that I definitely did not remember hiring.” He picked up the frame of the document.

Peter shot from his position to grab the certificate and held it close to his chest preciously. “That’s edited. I edited it because - because I’m a fan.”

“You have a desk at my home like a junkyard and I think you clean my ceiling regularly.”

“Hey, they’re not junk! They’re retro…” Peter mumbled, then bit his tongue. “What I mean is, I’ve never been to your office, Mr. Stark.”

“You mean ‘house’.” Tony offered, eyebrows rising to his graying hair. 

“Yeah, I totally meant house.” 

Tony rolled his eyes. “Knock it off kid, you’re not fooling me here. Fess up.”

"This could be considered trespassing. I can call the police."

Tony snorted though not unkind. "Like you would.”

"And how would you know? You don't know me." Nasty, unpleasant hope crept up the cracks of his heart, hot, and searing, and burning so brightly it left him breathless. Please, his heart begged. You can’t, his mind whispered brokenly. 

“But I think I do,” Tony said firmly, eyes locked onto him as he stood. Peter’s breath hitched and his hands clenched, nails digging into his skin.

(“Spiderman’s trying to kill me - 

- and his name,

His name is Peter Benjamin Parker!”

“Right now, we are outside of Stark Industries where the illustrious Tony Stark is said to be involved with producing the weapons that Spiderman, or Peter Benjamin Parker, used to murder Mysterio.”

“Here we are at the Trial Court where Tony Stark is facing charges -”)

“It’s better if you didn’t, actually.” 

(“Peter,” Tony said, voice cracking, “Peter, I’m on my way. I’m on my way, kiddo. We can fix this.”

“I’m making my choice, Tony.”

“Peter! Please, Peter, just wait for me. We can still fix it. I can still fix it!”

Peter eyed the distant suit growing near. He sobbed.

“Thank you - for everything.” Peter looked at Strange and nodded. The suit landed on the statue roughly, opening to reveal Tony - salt and pepper hair, suit wrinkled, eyes wide and desperate - reaching for him.

“Strange, don’t you fucking dare -”

The spell was cast. The world exploded into a myriad of colors. 

Tony woke up and there was something missing.)

“Peter - Pete -” Tony said, an arm lifting to touch him.

“Don’t,” Peter said. He took his phone from the table and pressed the dial button. Please, please, please, please remember me, even just one, please - “Leave or I will call the police.”

Tony’s face fell, then hardened. “Don’t think this is over, kid.”

Peter collapsed on his bed after Tony closed the door, more exhausted than ever. He put a pillow over his face. He screamed.

[envoyartsguild]

Rambling to thoughts get off my chest

I’m starting to have to accept the fact some of my friends do not see representation in the same way I do. 

I have two friends who are also PJO fans and they had a more negative reaction to Annabeth being cast with a black actress. (One of them is black btw). I reacted positively. I think it’s cool and potentially great representation. I’ve also seen some compelling arguments on Tiktok by some black female creators I follow. 

My friends are Neurodiverse and they like familiarity, they’re nostalgic (same here), and sometimes it’s difficult to convince them of new ideas or to change ideas or see things from a different perspective. One of them really thinks in terms of black and white. It’s good or bad.

Sometimes it’s frustrating for me personally to see something and be hype for it and they’re either ambivalent or completely opposed. They like the familiarity of blonde grey eyed Annabeth Chase. This live action adaptation probably isn’t meant for them exactly and will probably pull in new readers of PJO which is awesome. Also the new show could address a lot of criticism and aspects that didn’t age well within the Percy Jackson universe. They don’t always see it that way.

Whenever someone argues forced diversity my red flags go off in my head to approach subject with caution because forced diversity has just become a trigger into my head of someone’s going to say some kind of Anti-SJW shit where it’s just some misogynistic echo chamber slogan where some guy on the internet had a problem with a woman existing in a movie/video game/comic or insert thing here. Most of the time when someone makes the forced diversity argument it’s an inarticulate and inaccurate portrayal of what feels like the root of the problem. The problem that is capitalism and commodification of social justice as clout. 

Like yeah, diversity should be done well but like we can’t make impossible Goldilocks standards for creators for a black woman to exist in a universe, or make up an in universe reason why a minority is here. The female character can’t be a virgin but she can’t be a whore, she’s too nice but she can’t be too mean. She’s a mary sue and skilled at everything or she’s useless and does nothing for the plot. None of these arguments work with each other but I hear them all the time for the same characters. 

I agree raceswapping certain characters is a bad idea because sometimes it’s very important to who they are as a character. Like bad idea to make Mulan a white person. However, I also feel sometimes it’s a missed opportunity if you change a white person into POC and part of their thematic journey or character arc involves oppression sometimes in certain contexts if would be proper and make the story deeper if you included that new aspect. Not every POC has to address racism as a systemic problem. Just like how not every queer person has to have a coming out plot line. I understand why some people want there to feel like effort and care was put into representation.

Some people feel like that can only be done with new characters. Like the Stan Lee approach of maybe not have Peter Parker be black but hey we got Miles Morales. Yeah that’s true in some scenarios but it feels like drawing a boundary, like this invisible line, where POC can’t have certain characters. You can’t have my toy go make your own. Tries to make own but doesn’t get funding, marketing, or attention it deserves. You can’t really replace Peter Parker with Miles Morales cause Miles will always be associated with Peter but Peter won’t have to be associated with Miles. 

IDK it all gets so complicated so fast. IDK solutions or how to feel about all this stuff. I just try and understand how I feel about things, how other people feel about it, and self-reflect whether or not I need to change or add to my opinion on how exactly we can make better stories. 

One way is to dismantle capitalism.

Other ways are varied and will always differ between people. *sigh* I’ll just do my thing and they’ll do their thing in the end. 

[junova]

after midnight — steve rogers

pairing: college!steve rogers x reader, college!peter parker x reader

forewarning: 18+ only, friends to lovers, cheating, smut (if you squint), asshole!peter (ooc peter), sexual themes throughout, spiderman exists and cap doesn't bc i wanna

wc: 1.8k+

summary: you're left scorned by your lovers betrayal, but maybe there's always been someone right under your nose who can pick up the pieces.

“He won’t like it.” You were sitting on his lap, trying to stay engaged even if his arm was wrapped around your body keeping you in place. The group of people at the party were increasing and the odds of your ex showing up was causing your nerves to skyrocket through the roof.

“If you’re involved, I’ll be more than happy to comply kitten.” His breath causing a tingle to draw up your spine, his body pressed more than tightly against yours. “Who gives a fuck what the asshole likes? It’s not my problem he was dumb enough to get his dick wet by someone who wasn’t you.”

It was true, you had caught him spearing into his best friend who he told you to never worry about. Until you found them fucking in his bed. It was comical really. You arrived early from visiting your family over the holidays, anxiously excited to see your boyfriend of two years.

Until you walked into his apartment, the scene setting the tone for what you’d find. His clothes and hers’ lead a path into the bedroom to find them tangled, sweat and regret were written all over their guilty faces when they finally acknowledged you. It took them a minute or two as you watched as he fucked her. You wished it would have been hard and fast — a means to a horny end. But it wasn’t like that at all.

It was slow and passionate as you saw him whisper in her ear like he meant to be there and not anywhere else. You listened to her whines, chanting his name over and over again — her pants and his moans burying you in the grave.

Then, he saw you.

Tears were the first thing he noticed, the stained ones on your cheeks and new ones that you couldn’t stop from coming out. Not a word came from you as he slid out of her and rushed to find some clothes. She grabbed the sheet from the bed and walked straight past you, too shameful and embarrassed to meet your eyes.

“I think I should go.” You whispered, too shocked and betrayed to fully process what he’d done to the both of you. “Please don’t. We should talk about this.”

“Talk about what, Peter? How we’re having issues of you not trusting me with Steve, who is the only family I’ve ever had, and then you decide this would be a great time to fuck your best friend?”

He was speechless, no words were able to fall from his lips. There was no apology or redeemable line he could spit because he knew you hated him. He hated himself and now you did too. It wasn’t like he meant for you to find out this way, but Gwen knew he was spider-man. He could confide to her in ways he couldn’t with you. Paired with his trust issues with you, Gwen was there to wipe away every stressed tear.

Then, there was Steve Rogers — stupidly muscular, star wide receiver standing at 6’4”, and a smile that everyone fell for. He’d known you since you were fourteen and would always know you in ways Peter could never measure up to and it infuriated him.

It didn’t help that women threw themself at Steve, yet he always ended up rejecting them all. Peter had an inkling on why and it was the reason for why the two of you had been fighting for weeks.

You love Peter more than anything and you just wanted him to see that, so you got an early flight out wanting to surprise him. Mentally agreeing to take a step back on your friendship with Steve if it's took to make your relationship work in the long run, it’s what had to be done. In time, you tried to convince yourself it was the for the best.

Now, you realized Peter had just been projecting his own guilt.

“I wanted to tell you how sorry I am for making you feel like Steve was more important, but I guess you’re the one who should be.” You allowed yourself to meet his doe brown eyes like he was caught in the headlight. He was crying too and it made you feel better it some sick, narcissistic way.

“I never meant for any of this to happen. I love you. She means nothing to me, I promise.” He tried to plead, but he could tell you were more than fed up with him.

“Peter, you realize how incredibly absurd you sound? You love me? You don’t do this to someone you love. Gwen is your best friend and clearly she means more to you than I do. If you even respected me at all, the least you could have done was break up with me first.” The calm tone you spoke in was sending chills down his spine.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what else I can say to fix this.” He tried to step forward but you just took two steps back.

“I just hope she was worth it.” You left and he didn’t follow you — didn’t call and didn’t text you. You spent the next three weeks crying your eyes out, mourning what you thought might have been your forever.

Steve was there for you, wouldn’t leave actually. He’d been bringing a bag every time he came over, filled with goodies for you, and an extra change of clothes for him to change into in the morning. He held you as your cries vibrated his chest, doing his absolute best to calm you down. It was really taking everything in him not to pummel Peter but you had wished him not to so he didn’t.

The days were starting to get better, you had stopped crying and calling out Peter’s name in your sleep.

Your roommate, Nat, had been making herself scarce ever since her and Bucky started dating a few months ago. Leaving Steve and you to be alone. You were thankful for it, you didn't need anyone else to see the heartbreak you were constantly wearing on your sleeve.

“Come with me tonight. It’ll be fun.” Steve’s attempt to coax out of the four walls of your home. Besides class, you hadn’t really gone anywhere no matter how much he begged you and he was doing quite a lot of it lately.

Part of him only having his selfish agenda in mind, but the softer, kinder bits of his soul just wanted to see you happy again. You’d been tense, a bit bitter even. Anyone who knew you in the slightest could tell, and Steve was fortunate enough to be one of those few you happened to let in.

Maybe he just wants to see the light in her eyes shine again and hear your big, bright filled laugh dance on his senses again. You were pulling from within yourself, practically drowning and he was holding onto you dear life but you can only save someone from themselves if they’re willing to accept it.

“I don’t know, Steve. What if he’s there?” You asked him, trying to summon up the best excuses you could come up with. “Then we’ll make him regret cheating on the most beautiful woman alive.” The cheekiest of smiles etched on his face as he flashed you his dazzling blues. So full of hope almost like he knew what was coming.

Truth is, you could never say no to him — never have. It’s how you ended up here perched on his lap surrounded by his friends and yours. With liquor in your system and the devil’s lettuce coursing through you, making you feel lighter than the heartache Peter had served you.

You knew Steve was a flirt by nature, it was practically in his blood, but he was laying it on thick tonight. He wouldn’t let you leave his side, not that you were against it. His touch was intoxicating, even more so knowing how many women came up to him tonight wanting a piece of him. He didn’t even entertain it though. Not tonight, not when you were single and for the first time since ever timing was aligning just right for him.

It was like he wanted for you to know he was the one touching you, the one making you feel better. It was all him and no one else.

Three in the morning is when everyone seemed to funnel out, the people who were sticking around were the frat boys who lived here and their girlfriends. The two of you had barely moved all night, your ass practically glued to his lap.

You were playing with his hair, raking it through your fingers as he hummed out in acceptance of your touch. Just like he’d been doing all night and you weren’t sober enough to dismiss his low moans making every part of you want every part of him.

“Stay the night, kitten.” His thick fingers finding home on your hips, delicately rubbing his thumb against the thin fabric of your pretty, lilac dress.

“The both of us know that’s probably not the best idea.”

“I think it’s a great idea. I think you do, too.” Fuck.

“Stevie, I just broke up with him and it’s not even about Peter. You are everything to me — one night of drunken, hot sex isn’t going to take my pain away. I need you in my life, always.”

“I really want to hear more about this hot sex we’d be having, just a tad bit intrigued, but who said anything about one night?” He had you cornered, his words making stubbles incoherent words fall from your lips. Of course, causing him to laugh like a fucking angel.

“Steve, I will literally kill you and everyone in this house if you ever tell anyone what I just said. Let’s just forget this conversation, okay?”

“Why would you think I wouldn’t want more than one night?” He questioned you, but you looked away from him. Trying to pull away but he wouldn’t let you.

“I-I’m not sure. You’re just…you’re you and I’m me.” You moved your hands to your sides wanting nothing more than to vanish into thin air. He smelled so good and his touch felt like a scolding hot fire, burning you up from the inside out.

“Plus, you don’t exactly seem like you’d want more than that. Not like I’m looking right now, I’m the last person that needs to be diving into a relationship.”

“Who’s to say I’m not?” His voice reaches an octave lower than it should, sending wanted waves down to your core.

“Come on, be honest. It’s just me.” You felt anxious now, the moment turning into something you never expected — a side you’d never thought could be viewed from your eyes.

Carefully and calculated, he brought his thumb before tugging at your bottom, plump lip. Fighting his own urge to choke you with it.

“I would want more than one night with you.” His free hand moved so it rested on your ass, his touch so soft you weren’t even sure if it was there. “But I’ll take it if that’s all you want to give.”

He was waiting for you to make a move, to do something, anything.

“Let’s see what that mouth can do first, Stevie.”

[slowdownurdoingfine]

Recovery (TASM! Peter Parker x reader)

(College!AU)

Y/N was the kind of person that no one could pin down. With her long list of small misdemeanors and unfriendly personality she was someone that many wouldn’t look twice over. Her intelligence was shocking to the normal person but not to Peter Parker. He understood the secrets, the toll it takes on a person. After being paired for a group project the both go on a journey of self realization, overcoming grief and most importantly finding how to love after loss.

A/N: AYO! MY VERY FIRST EVER SERIES! This one is a slow burn prolly gonna be 4/5 parts. I’m in love with TASM!Peter x Reader so I thought’d I would write this. It includes angst, fluff and MAYBE smut. I’ve never written it but I feel like for this it makes sense. I’m also open for requests!! LMK IF U WANT TO BE TAGGED I CANT WAIT HERES THE FIRST PART!!

Y/N L/N had never known any peace. Her life was a full of fuck-ups and small midemenors. That is how she found herself as a student at Empire University, the community college of New York. She was smart enough to go anywhere she wanted but obviously no one wanted her. With all her vandalization, public intoxication, and the one assault charge (for beating up a drunk guy wouldn’t leave her best girlfriend alone-- she pleaded her case but her other charges made her guilty) other schools we’re clearly not an option. This is also how she found herself paired with a brown haired, brown doe eyed, lanky, awkward, 20-something year old guy for an advanced science project. Picking up her bag she slings it over her shoulder plugging in earbuds making her way out of the classroom after groups were made. She had to get home and walk Frank, her 110 pound Bernese Mountain Dog silently praying that he hadn’t peed on her carpet. Waving goodbye to her favorite teacher, Ms. Brown, she steps into the hallways. Her beat up black converse were squeaking on the clean floors as she made her way to the exit doors. Suddenly she feels a cold presence on the right side of her and halts her movements, head whipping to the side. She’s met with a dorky looking smile and wave from her school assigned partner.

“Hi. We’re lab partners.” He says eyes darting around unable to meet her. She doesn’t miss the soft blush that paints his cheek when he finally is able to make eye contact.

“Uh-huh.” She states plainly, giving him a once over and continuing to walk to the doors.

Admittedly she’s a little shocked when he jumps a little and jogs over matching her pace towards the door.

“So, I’m Peter.”

“I know.”

So she’s not the talking type, he notes. He had always had a little classroom crush on the girl. The way she always stayed silent even though everyone knew she had all of the answers. It was almost fully based on her high intelligence but her looks definitely didn’t hurt his case. They had never talked as after every class she would swiftly leave like she had something to do.

“Cool, cool cool cool,” He stammers and she cracks a small smile at his nerves. It goes away as soon as it comes but Peter never misses anything, catching it and holding onto the soft glow he felt inside over it. “So, uh, anyways. ‘Was hoping that we could meet and talk about possible subjects for the project.”

She pushes the heavy metal doors being faced with the intense wind outside.

“Sure, but I have to walk my dog.” She says, walking down the stairs to the sidewalk. He follows her like a puppy.

“No, yea. Totally get that, dogs have needs and stuff.” He says, the wind whipping his hair into his face.

Finally she stops and looks at him. She had never noticed him before, didn’t even know he existed. Now here he was, stammering and blushing about to follow her into the subway. She tilts her head curiously at him. What was he going on about over dogs?

“Very true.” She responds and draws her lips into a straight line.

He has no idea what to say back to that and quickly pushes the hair out of his face.

“Dog’s are cool.” He decides on, immediately kicking himself mentally for saying that.

“What was your name again?” She responds by taking an earbud out.

“Peter.” He pauses. “Uh, Peter Parker?” He says it almost like a question voice rising in pitch at the end.

She raises an eyebrow, “Seems like that was a tough question for you.” She starts to walk again.

Looking down he messed with the sleeve of his sweatshirt, “Ha, no uh. Yeah.” He says to the ground, and mostly just for himself, and quickly looks up seeing her already walking away. “I mean! It’s not a hard question. That’s my name. Could I get your number?”

She’s a bit stunned by the way he sneakily asked the question. “Wow, and not even gonna offer to buy me a drink first…” She jokes, face turned forward but she can almost feel the heat radiate off of him from his blush.

“No! No, I don’t mean it like that!” He stammers again, his hands waving the comment away. Jesus, why is he acting like a teenager again? “I mean it as in, to connect about the project. After your dog.”

“I know.” She smirks, looking up at him. “I’m fucking with you.”

He exhales loudly, wiping his face with his hand. “I knew that.”

She lets out a short laugh shaking her head. “Of course you did.”

The pair reach to steps that go down towards the subway that will take her towards her shitty apartment. He stops walking not wanting to come off as a lingering creep as she makes her way down the stairs turning towards him.

“I’ll text you.” She calls up towards him.

“You don’t even have my number!”

She gives him a look, but he can’t tell exactly what it means. “I’ll text you, Peter Parker.”

With that she leaves down the stairs, blending into the crowds leaving him a questioning mess.

He turns walking away from the stairs, smiling and shaking his head. A few hours later, when the sun goes down and patrolling starts he sits on top of the Empire State building about to swing into action when he feels his phone ping. Pulling it out he looks down seeing a text from an unknown number.

It’s Y/N.

And then another.

Before you ask how, I know people.

Finally,

Meet me in Brooklyn tomorrow @8 am, Elms coffee shop. We can talk about project topics.

He can’t help the smile that spread across his face, behind the Spider-Man mask.

[vintamcu]

Do I Know You? Pt. 3│Andrew Garfield!Spiderman x Reader

Warnings: NWH SPOILERS!!; slight angst; fluff; slight cursing 

Word Count: 1.6k

Summary: After Thanos had wiped half the population of the entire universe, and the Avengers brought them back, there were bound to be a few anomalies. When you fall asleep and wake up in another universe, you realize you’re one of those anomalies. 

Author's Note: THE FINAL PART OF “DO I KNOW YOU?” IS HERE!!! PLEASE ENJOY. Also, as much as I love NWH, I’m still very confused about the spell and how it affects everyone’s memories. Apparently the writers still don’t have it figured out and just want audiences to focus on the emotion. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work with what I’m writing so let’s imagine it as where all digital and physical evidence of Peter Parker is gone, including memories. That being said, any connections built because of Peter are held (M.J and Ned for example) but replaced with different memories. Memories of Spiderman are kept but without Peter’s identity being involved. Hope that makes sense. 

Part 1 ; Part 2 

Sitting in New York’s Sanctum, you hold out your hands for Doctor Strange to examine.

“Have you tried talking to your physician about this?” 

Snorting in response, you’re quick to apologize when you spot the look on his face. “It’s nothing that science can explain. Or at least, not what’s available to me at Stark Industries.”

Strange nods. You watch in silence, his hands hovering over yours until he begins pulling golden threads out from the palms of your hands. Symbols start to appear above them, expanding until they go purple. The once golden lines begin to splinter, appearing in various shades of purple. The sorcerer in front of you is quick to stop whatever he’s doing, his expressionless face leaving you to wonder in worry.

“Were you blipped?”

“No, I wasn’t. Why?”

“We’ve been noticing a lot more people with abilities since Thanos wiped half of the population and was brought back. It’s not a lot, but more than enough to draw concern. It was always going to be a possibility given that people were affected by the stones.”

“But I’m not one of those who disappeared.”

He starts the spell again, this time more cautiously. The golden strands appear once more, this time only circling around you.“I never said the people who blipped were the only ones with abilities. All of us were affected by the stones.”

“If we’re going with that theory, then why did my ‘ability’ show up so late?”

Again, purple begins to appear, though this time without the splintering. He continues, his pace going slower than before. “Certain events in our lives can trigger it. When did yours start appearing?”

“It was after the incident at the Statue of Liberty.” The memories of that day were foggy, though you simply chalked up to trauma until now. Your body was merely protecting you from the events that occurred that night. Every time you tried to think about it, to figure out what happened, the memories got more blurry. But now that you thought about it more deeply, perhaps it wasn’t purely trauma. 

No.

You were having dreams now, seeing someone you had never met before. Hearing a name that you could never remember when you woke up. And now, certain dreams became more vivid. You would be in New York, but not your New York. Your apartment complex would be gone in one. In another, no one knew of the Avengers, and in the most recent, people with superpowers didn’t exist. They were merely characters in comics and films. 

Dreams. That’s all they were. That is until you received a cut on your cheek from a window breaking near you. When you woke up, you felt a familiar sting on your cheek. You began to tread more carefully after that. 

“You’re entering different Earths.” Strange concludes, ending the spell. 

“I’m sorry, different Earths? Are you telling me the multiverse is real?” 

“Very real.” The levitating platform the both of you were on begins to descend. “Until I can figure out a way to subdue your abilities, whenever you appear on a different Earth, mind your business and keep your head down.”

“And (L/n)?” Strange calls as you reach for the door. 

“Yes?”

“For the sake of our universe, and every other one out there. Don’t attempt to use your abilities when awake.”

He didn’t have to tell you twice. 

———

That night, you once again entered a different universe. 

This one was different, though something felt off. You had appeared at someone’s apartment, but not yours. Carefully making your way through the apartment, you make sure to avoid leaving any signs that you were there. Looking out into the night sky, you spot the familiar Empire State Building, but no Avengers Tower. No Stark Tower. Instead, you see the name “Oscorp Industries” decorating a building in green lights. The name sounded oddly familiar, tickling something in the back of your brain, but the harder you tried, the worse the headache. For that reason, you had long given up on trying to discern those memories.

Looking at the digital clock on the nightstand, you bite your lip as you note the time. You had no idea how long you would be here for. Time worked differently on each Earth. Your alarm would go off in eight hours. However, that meant little to you. For on one Earth, that was only a few minutes. Yet on another, it took an entire twenty-four hours. There was no consistency, and you had yet to learn how to take yourself back of your own will. 

Standing in the center of the small apartment, you gently sway back and forth, debating on whether you should leave the apartment or explore. You had yet to meet yourself in another universe, and you hoped to keep it that way. 

Doctor Strange did say to keep a low profile, and if you were honest, the man slightly intimidated you. Magic was not your thing. Science was. If he said to keep a low profile, you most certainly would.

Hearing a window slide open, you no longer have to debate. Running was your only option now. Placing your hand on the doorknob, you barely have the chance to turn it before hearing a familiar sound. Your hand was stuck on the knob, a web firmly keeping it there. Just your luck, you had broken into Spiderman’s apartment. 

“Listen—” You start talking first, anxiety getting the better of you. “This is all just a mistake. I entered the wrong apartment, you see.” 

You continue to ramble, turning your attention to the hero. As soon as you see the suit, you cut yourself off. It was different from Spiderman back in your New York. The spider at the front was more elongated, and the eyes of his mask were differently shaped. 

“(Y/n)?”

Well, shit. 

“Yes?” Your voice is timid, heart racing as you attempt to figure out the situation. Though your thoughts don’t get very far as you find yourself in someone’s embrace. Feeling the suit against your skin, you’re startled by the sudden action but not uncomfortable. Oddly, it felt familiar. The hero pulls away slightly, removing his mask so you can see one another. 

Meeting dark brown eyes, you stare at the face of Spiderman, well, a Spiderman. Images ran through your mind, some too fast for you to understand. Stealing Stark tech, going to Midtown High, helping three Spidermen. 

Stumbling slightly, the man in front of you holds you steady, keeping you from hitting the floor. His arms stay wrapped around your waist, face filled with worry as he wondered what was going on. Wincing, you bring your hand to your face, putting pressure against your forehead to ease the headache. It slowly subsides, and you’re able to get your bearings again. 

“Peter?” 

The two of you look at one another, your arms now gripping his biceps as everything begins to make sense. Strange’s spell had wiped your memory. Everyone’s memories. Feeling your heart deflate, you stare at the Peter in front of you. Would he recognize you as the (Y/n) from the other universe? Not his (Y/n) who had died?

“I thought I was Peter #3?” He’s joking, but you can tell by the way his voice cracks at the end that he was just as emotional. 

Laughing quietly, you pull him into an embrace. The both of you stay that way for a while, neither of you believing that the other was here. Slowly pulling away, the two of you sit down to properly catch up.

“How are you here?” 

“Remember the magician?” Peter nods, placing his mask on the table. You continue, telling him all the events that occurred and how that’s why you were older than Peter, M.J, and Ned. He had placed his hand on top of yours during that part, sensing your distraught. Clearing your throat, you continue, eyes flickering away from him as shyness comes over. You were sure he could hear your heart racing. 

“And so every night I’ve been jumping to different universes. I have no control, but I’m doing my best to stay safe. At least until Doctor Strange can help me control it.”

There’s a hopefulness in your voice. If you could control it, you could come and see Peter again. The two of you looked at one another, and you could see the hope in his eyes as well. Biting the inside of your cheek, you look out the window, seeing snowfall. 

“Do you want to go out for a swing?” Peter asks, voice shy.

“I’d love to.”

There was no telling when you would disappear and come back again, but for now, Peter would gladly enjoy the time he had with you. He had slipped on his mask, handing you a hoodie of his to hide your appearance before taking you outside. You never had the opportunity to do this before, but it was breathtaking. Not at first, though. Your stomach felt like it was in your throat at the beginning, but as the two of you stood at the top of the Empire State Building, fingers laced together, you didn’t regret a second of it. 

As the sun rose up, the scene in front of you flickered purple. Squeezing Peter’s fingers, he could tell what you were about to say. You were leaving. Turning your attention towards him, you smile.

“I’ll be back. I promise.” 

Removing one of the rings on your finger, you take his hand, placing it in his palm.

“See you soon, Peter.”

“Bye, (Y/n).”

The world ripples and you find yourself losing Peter’s warmth gradually before it disappears entirely. You know you’ve returned to your universe when you reappear on your bed, your alarm blaring next to you on your nightstand. Turning it off, you wrap yourself in your sheets as you stare out the window. There was no Oscorp, no Peter #3, but there was a Peter #1 who had no one right now. 

Until you could see the boy who had snatched your heart again, you would search for this universe’s Peter and remind him he was not alone. 

And meanwhile, the Peter in the other universe would gladly wait for your return. 

Happiness was not lost. 

Taglist: @ancailinaerach @uglyasswoman @maybe-a-fangurl @plutoneu @byelannie @themazerunnersupremacy​

[oliveroctavius]

A ramble about how the different internal world logic of different Spider-Man universes affects characterization/how much I enjoy the story (featuring ITSV, Raimi, TASM, and NWH)

superhero vs villain stuff is the most basic morality play. There are Good guys and Bad guys and when the Bad guy hits the Good guy, it's bad; but when the Good guy hits the Bad guy it's good. You just have to assign roles and start a fight, and every story is going to draw that line differently.

this doesn't HAVE to be realistic at all and I'd argue it's most fun when it's not trying to be. You don't have to tackle systemic issues in a story about a guy who can scale buldings unless you're certain you have something to say. They can be figurative challenges, I can understand metaphor.

Spider-Verse understood this SO well it makes it visual. Every character exists inside rules that are very real to them even if they're nonsense to someone else there. The physical rules of Spider-Ham's world are non literal (he can fit a hammer in his pocket) as are the moral rules (he can eat a hotdog as a joke). On the other end of the spectrum, Peter B. has back problems, financial issues, just went through a messy divorce... Real Person Problems. The ads in his dimension are also for real life products, while Miles' are all made up. Miles' Peter was "perfect", so we accept that in his dimension there are archetypical heroes—and archetypical villains. They can have simplistic motivations and speak in clichés; don't worry about it. But Miles' Peter died in a very real tragedy, so we know the world rules still take consequences seriously even if the conflict is stylized. The metaphor is made clear with "anyone can wear the mask": anyone, from any world, can draw inspiration from the archetypical hero.

I always have to put in a disclaimer when I'm rambling so I don't sound insufferable: I do get why people's enjoyment hinges on characters. I don't think caring about World Rules is the only like, moral way to enjoy fiction I'm just weird and love dissecting systems. That said, this perspective really wrecks the TASM movies compared to the Raimi movies for me.

Both these movies are (1) live action and (2) create a superhero into a world that doesn't have that archetype yet. So the world has to explain its reasoning for what makes a hero vs a villain before the punching starts. Not just "a villain is a villain because I caught them doing something bad" but "why did they decide to do something bad to start with?"

I really like the Raimi movies' premise, always drawing parallels between the hero and villain as outcasts who gain a large amount of power over others right after a major personal tragedy. This kinda ruins the "sanctity" of the characters but builds a really strong theme. The difference is: when they get a chance to make a choice, do they listen to the voice that wants to make the selfish one, or do they make the kind one? OBVIOUSLY if this was a literal political stance there's a lot wrong with "criminals are criminals bc they choose to be" but the world rules are very intentionally cheesy. The actual criminal justice system is barely a presence because this is a metaphor for you and your ability to help people despite your worst instincts.

The TASM movies on the other hand seem to want to be more serious in science, effects, personality, and dialogue. But then the through-line separating heroes and villains is bioengineered genetics. Booo. That's already weird, but the more seriously I'm told to take it the more I hate it.

Electro is my favorite TASM villain partially because he has more complex motivations. I love TASM Max Dillon but the world rules don't seem to! Garfield would be the superior Peter Parker in a universe that wasn't so dedicated to proving him wrong. Yes, he mouths off to a police officer in his own home. And then the movie has that officer nobly save his life at the climax. Sure, he's just an average guy doing his best. But then the movie explains that this is literally his genetic heritage. Yeah, he tries to talk Electro down. But when the police ruin the moment, it's like it's only for "realism" rather than commentary, and the tragedy of that failure is immediately forgotten. Max and Harry become villains in large part due to abuse by the powers that be, but Peter stops them once they fight back while Oscorp goes unpunished. Systemic injustice is written in as something that creates villains, but the hero is never allowed to meaningfully challenge that injustice, just deal with the mess it creates.

Plus, because Peter is written to be smart, he has to uncritically agree with the genes nonsense. He's probably right that his Parker blood would kill Harry if it got into his cursed Osborn bloodstream. That's just the way the world rules work, forcing him to play by their moral code and make the cruel choice even as a kind character. Hell world. Hell world.

I don't have much to say about the MCU's world rules; I figure they were built for characters who aren't Peter Parker and it shows. NWH is interesting though to compare to ITSV. ITSV didn't have to make its universes play by different rules, but they did. NWH was actually pulling characters from universes with established rules, but that only really comes up in jokes for Spideybros stuff, really.

All the villains are treated in Exactly the Same Way though which raises some major questions. It doesn't mess up the TASM villains too bad to offer them cures since plenty of their problems were medical or systemic, even if it feels totally evil to leave out Harry when his entire arc was around needing a cure he never got. But since the Raimi villains come from a 'verse where their villainy is tied to their choices they're being cured of... the ability to make a choice. Which feels. How do you say. Wack. I honestly don't understand what the MCU thinks the difference is between its heroes and villains. Brand recognition, maybe.

I think the strongest case for TASM's world rules being cruel is that Electro is finally given more respect as a human being when he's handled with the MCU's world rules, while the Raimi villains are given less. Sure Curt is given less respect but I'm going to be honest: I don't think he deserved the respect the TASM movies gave him. He was a eugenicist before the lizard thing and it's anyone's guess if he ever learned a lesson beyond "don't test lizard serums on yourself". Which isn't a terribly generalizable life lesson outside their universe.

There's no real moral to this one, I just have to talk to myself out loud sometimes to avoid going mad. I think world rules are under-discussed in fandom, maybe because imagining characters into different worlds is an ancient fandom pastime. People will get mad at you for being OOC but not OOU (out of universe). Funny, because I don't think you can really separate those things.

[ask-spider-man-61610]

The Life Foundation had taken a lot of precautions to keep their Mill Valley facility out of the public eye. Sure, lots of their experiments were unethical, but this was where human trials happened, and prying eyes could have spelled disaster. So the facility was a secret--disguised as a run-down startup, all its labs far belowground. Only hacking into the Foundation's servers directly could have revealed that the facility even existed. No press got anywhere near it, no safety inspectors were ever made aware it needed inspected, and no fire drills were ever conducted for fear that the crowd outside would draw attention.

Consequently, Emjay had found emptying the building to be shockingly easy. All it took was to pull a fire alarm and, as the staff rushed out in confusion and panic, lock the doors behind them.

Spider-Man dusted shards of broken glass off of himself as he walked. Vee had hardened their outermost cells as the two of them had gone through the window, so he'd had no reason to fear lacerations, but that didn't stop a little twinge of spider-sense for as long as the fragments clung to him. As that twinge faded, it was easy to focus on Emjay's heartbeat on a lower floor...and beyond that, rooms upon rooms of test subjects. Peter hadn't spent enough time around Emily Brock to know which of those myriad heartbeats were hers. As he descended the stairs, he talked silently to the little symbiotic whisper in the back of his mind, for Vee knew Brock's heart better than they knew anything in the world. They rifled though his senses, he provided clarification as they asked, and together the two made their way down to the lab entrances, where Emjay stood and fretted outside of a locked steel door.

She turned at the sound of footsteps and jumped out of her skin for a second. The first thing she had seen was a black silhouette, with a grey spider across the chest and two milky, expressive eyes, and in an instant she had flashed back to the moment Venom had confronted her in her home when she was eighteen. The moment passed, her heartrate settled, and she smiled as the black mask melted down into Peter's shoulders and he peeled off the webbed-red mask it had covered up.

"Kickass job emptying the building," he said, pressing his mask against his thigh. Vee formed a few tendrils to swallow it up and keep it in a pocket.

Emjay smirked. "You'd be helpless without me," she joked, then glanced down at the black suit. Her smile faded into mild unease. "...So, uh. Venom? Vee?"

"Vee." It was a deep, roughened voice from somewhere around the level of Peter's chest.

"Right. I'm getting my husband back at the end of this, right?"

"Mrs. Parker," they said, as Peter stepped past her to the door. "Once I get back to Emily, I wouldn't stay on this man if you paid me. You can take him." As Peter began to kick down the door, the black mask reformed over his face, and its white eyes narrowed in concentration.

The first kick put a dent in the steel nearly a foot deep. The second kick, with Vee forming additional muscle fibers around Spider-Man's thigh, sent it careening into the lab to bounce off the opposite wall. He stepped inside, Emjay following close behind, and their eyes swept over the desks and computers lining the room. A control center, with a door on both the left and right walls that led to the labs themselves.

"You've still got the data drives, right?" Spider-Man said to Emjay, who nodded and took out a small handful of USB ports and wafer-thin adhesive squares. "Awesome." Darting to the central computer, he bypassed a few security measures and began to type faster than the eye could follow. A screen on the wall blinked back to life, displaying a list of serial numbers and current conditions, and Spider-Man stepped around the desk to peer more closely at it. His finger skimmed down the list, committing each number and lab name to memory, as behind him Emjay plugged in her first flash drive and began to copy every file she found.

For a second, turning around, Peter could just watch her work. Her eyebrows knitted together in concentration; even with the fake hair and wrinkles she had given herself as a disguise, she was gorgeous. Then Vee, growling in impatience in the back of his mind, snapped him out of it, and he said, "We're gonna start getting people out," he said, pointing a thumb towards a door. "We'll send them this way, so be ready for that."

She glanced up at him, flashing a smile. "Go get 'em, Tiger. And Vee." As she returned to her task, Spider-Man slipped out the nearest door.

Glass walls, glass walls. Everywhere Spider-Man looked, glass walls. They separated the labs, cordoned off the holding pens for the prisoners, and without exception were smeared with fingerprints and dust. No custodians knew about this place either, Peter supposed. He moved quickly, ripping open cells and tearing the straps off of operating tables. A few people needed help to stand; he put them in teams as often as not, asking one to support the weight of another. Most of these people, he suspected, were homeless and kidnapped off the street. A few of them were mutants, and a few others set off his spider-sense in a way he didn't have time to examine. He sent each of them on their way, room by room, floor by floor.

Vee's anxiety grew with every floor. They knew, intellectually, that Emily was on the lowest level in the facility. They had felt her heartbeat through Peter's skin, and they felt her movements now--slight and constrained though they were. But until they could see her, this fear would not fade. They had been separated for far, far too long already. They wouldn't feel whole until their host was back in their embrace.

So when Spider-Man slammed open the stairwell door, their white eyes fixed on the sole human figure in the Life Foundation's last laboratory. Together, Vee and Spider-Man sprinted for Emily with a singleminded focus--despite the way spider-sense crackled and screamed, despite the feeling of horror that loomed in the back of Vee's soul. The glass wall shattered across the floor as they cut a corner.

And there, strapped to an operating table, was Emily Brock: her arm hooked to four different IVs, her neck and wrists bearing surgical scars and sutures, her head lolling to one side, her eyes half-closed and bleary.

"Brock," said Spider-Man, but then Vee hijacked his mouth and spoke for him. "Emily!" they cried, as Spider-Man began to tear away the belts that held her down. "Emily, look at me. Look at me, I'm here."

It took a long time for her to focus on the black, white-eyed face above her. "...Vee...?"

Vee's eyes smiled. "Hey, baby." Spider-Man was in the middle of ripping the straps off of her arm when tendrils began to snake off of his fingers, reaching for Emily's hand: and maybe one of them should have noticed the look of terror that flashed across her face. "I'll get you back on your feet. It's so good t--"

The tendrils, which had begun to sink into Emily's skin, suddenly recoiled as if burned. Peter's spider-sense exploded, screaming about the danger of the woman in front of him, but he was caught between that and the agony that had gone through Vee like an electric shock. He didn't move until a second too late, and Emily's hand closed and clamped around his bicep.

"AAAAAAAAAAGGGHHHH!!"

Two voices screamed in pain; Peter Parker's and the symbiote's. His knees almost buckled; through tears of agony and Vee's wavering concentration, he saw black biomass on either side of Brock's hand going dry and flaking off like dead skin. His own pain was like a buzzsaw going through his arm. No--the pain was like hydrochloric acid, injected into his veins and his marrow, eating his arm off from the inside out. It was some combination of luck and willpower that moved his legs for him: they bent, then pushed upward and backward, and he tore himself from her grasp and hurtled across the room until stopped by a wall.

It wasn't just Vee, he realized as he examined where she had touched him. A portion of Vee's mass had indeed died, but the spandex that he wore under it had been torn away too. And his skin...in the shape of Emily's handprint, a patch of his skin looked melted, the very cells attacked and torn apart. Gingerly he touched it, feeling the blood that pulsed through just beneath, and found that the surface layer of flesh tore like tissue paper. Vee rearranged themself, covering up both their wounds and getting to work on replacing the ruined cells, but Peter looked up at Emily, and what he saw turned his stomach.

Emily had fallen halfway off of the table from the force of Spider-Man's jump. Only one limb, her right arm, was still strapped down, but she flailed and shook as though having a seizure. From her mouth, her nose, and the portion of her hand that Vee had touched, a milky-white fluid seeped across her skin, covering her and forming into claws.

"Vee..." she repeated, a moment before her jaw broke. Tears rolled from her cheeks--of pain? fear? guilt? all three?--but these were covered in seconds by the white substance that seemed determined to enclose her completely. No, not just white; the claws that formed on her fingertips were frostbite-black, as were the teeth that formed as her jaw stretched and made room. "...Save yourself..." she choked out, her other arm tearing itself from the table with ease, "...from me..."

Spider-sense had gone silent. This thing, like any Klyntar descended from Vee, was invisible to it. Afraid to touch it again, Spider-Man and Vee watched in wide-eyed horror as Emily screamed, throwing her head back, her white biomass expanding into muscle and spikes, her veins going black, a dark spider forming across her chest. In seconds she had vanished entirely beneath it.

No, not entirely. It looked up at the pair, and amidst the black, eye-like patterns on its face, Emily's dull blue eyes shone clear as day. But it wasn't her who saw out of them now.

[sadachmesarthim]

just think about them for a minute:

- i want peter parker, the new boy king of an organized crime unit ben has figureheaded for decades. the entire seaboard adores him - no one knows what's really paying the bills. as far as they know, real estate is booming again 

- i want tony stark, our sweet young man from the city, taking after his father howard doing pro bono defense cases and helping the more unfortunate souls of new york 

- i want quentin beck, disgraced reporter for the bugle, who is this fucking close to being fired if he won't stop going on and on about these old money families the entire city loves and actually find a credible story 

- i want an angry quen beck, heart still aching and shattered, freshly broken up with, ready to spill every single secret about the parkers, and i want tony. poor, sweet, innocent tony, willing to walk right into the parker estate and practically announce that he's there for more evidence. and, because he's a total fucking moron, i want him to get caught.

- i want a peter that likes this little fly he's caught, this... tony stark. a peter that'll play with his food before he eats it. maybe he doesn't keep him - at least not locked in his basement or chained to the wall. but maybe he brings buck & steve over, whispers to them just loud enough for tony to hear. tells them to bring q to the house, however they had to.

- i want a peter that likes this little fly he's caught, this... tony stark. a peter that'll play with his food before he eats it. maybe he doesn't keep him - at least not locked in his basement or chained to the wall. but maybe he brings buck & steve over, whispers to them just loud enough for tony to hear. tells them to bring q to the house, however they had to.

- and maybe they sit tony down in front of quentin, not bound or restrained in anyway - just sitting in front of quentin and watching as peter forces q onto his knees and pulls the bag off his head. and tony .... doesn't want to run. this is just more evidence, right??? and peter is so content, inside, because he knows tony is just a tad bit too interested, and quentin beck is scared as fuck. because he knew he would get caught. he just didn't think it would be so soon. 

- i want peter to sit next to tony as steve and bucky take turns whaling on quentin. i want tony watching, unwavering, as fists fly and blood runs. i want peter watching tony, eyes not leaving the man next to him, absolutely enraptured by his lack of fear. i want peter not at all concerned with the feeling in his gut as he watched tony's eyes get big when he sees quentin spit a bloody tooth out of his mouth. i want tony really fucking concerned by the total lack of fear and self preservation instincts he has within himself throughout the entire thing.

- i want him even more concerned when he doesn't even flinch, not when the two big buff guys are hitting quentin, not when peter stands up. not at all concerned when peter pulls a gun out from underneath his jacket. not when peter glances back at tony from over his shoulder, or when peter clicks the safety off and lines it up with quentin's right temple. not when peter shoots the little rat that got tony here in the first place, not when a fine spray of blood ends up all over his face. not when peter comes to kneel in front of him, safety still off and barrel still warm and gun resting right next to tony's dick what the fuck is this guy doing. not when peter snatches his own silk square from his breast pocket and wipes tony's face off, dabbing away the offensive red stains. not even when peter brings his lips up to tony's ear and whispers "i know you can keep quiet for me, can't you baby?".

- not when the gun is pulled away from his crotch and brought up to his hairline, tip of it dragged so gently from temple to chin. not when peter tips his head up so tony can fully face him, fully meet his eyes. i want the butterflies in tony's stomach when peter uses his loaded gun to force tony to his feet. i want them when peter uses his gun instead of his fingers to draw tony's lips toward his own. i want the catch in his throat when peter's unoccupied hand closes around it, when tony's forced into a box he didn't even know existed. i want the questionable sense of safety that wraps its way around him after the only first night he spends in peters bed. i want the security he feels when the blood is rinsed out of the clothes he wore that day - good as new, it never happened. i want the love he feels when peter buys him a ring - for his middle finger of course, a modestly sized titanium band, with an inscription on the inside 

- i want the emptiness that he feels when peter tells him to never come back to the house. to never contact him again. that he can never come back. i want the tan line that develops around that ring - the feeling of distant ownership that comes with being peter parker's silent boy - i want the raised imprint on his skin - "quiet for me" - that's visible whenever he takes the ring off. he never takes the ring off. and maybe peter still helps fund howards tonys law firm, and helps make it possible for him to take all those pro bono cases and still eat regularly. and maybe he still keeps tony safe from the less desirable people seeking his services, that peter knows would look at or touch or think about him in ways that ,,, set peter's skin on fire. and maybe peter likes it. having his hands around the sweet defense lawyer boy from down the street, even if it's from afar. and maybe tony likes it too. likes keeping peters secrets. likes being his metaphorical kept boy. likes having the physical reminder on his finger that if he were ever to open his mouth, he would end up just like quentin.

- but maybe. maybe it isn't really enough for either of them. so maybe tony fucks up one day and asks to be seen. he knows he's not allowed to come back to the house. he knows he's not allowed to talk to peter again. but he has to. tony has to see him again. so he goes and he insists and that gets him a nice swift punch to the stomach - but he still gets to see peter. and peter waives everyone else away but tony, and they go, and they talk. they talk like lovers 50 years married. they talk like soulmates ripped from each others grasp. tony breaks down and says that he cant stay away. that he'll stay quiet for the rest of his life - that peter can do whatever he wants to him to make sure of it - but he can't just stay away. and peter's heart... it hurts. it aches for the man in front of him because he wants so desperately to keep him.

- and maybe... maybe tony stark, new york lawyer, 28, heir to the stark law firm, goes missing one day. maybe howard and maria are devastated and do everything in their power to find their son. maybe they wake up one morning to a loud knock on the door and an envelope sliding underneath. maybe they open it to a letter from their missing son and a check for $10,000,000. maybe they read a beautifully worded goodbye, a heartbroken apology for abandoning them, but assurance that he's okay. maybe tony spends his days in plush robes and silk shirts and $500 boxers. maybe he has a beautiful collection of collars and bracelets and rings and even crowns that his lover has bought him. maybe he enjoys it when peter comes in with a new circle of gold to wrap around his neck or finger or wrist or head. maybe he likes playing dress-up for his prince. and maybe, just maybe... peter likes spoiling the little fly he caught in his web. he likes putting gold and diamonds and gemstones all over this precious little catch 

- because he loves his tony, and his tony loves him, and the best way to keep him quiet is to keep him close 

inspiration: black treacle - arctic monkeys, suck it and see - arctic monkeys

i know the formatting on this sucks i don’t know how to fix it i’m sorry

[river-bottom-nightmare]

Nightwing #81 Review

i swear i actually thought no one was interested so i didn’t write one but a grand total of two (2) people said they wanted to read it, so here it is. honestly, my opinion’s been going a bit downhill, but the art is really cool and there are some decent parts so. holding out i guess? i really hope taylor has an end goal or at least a cohesive plan, otherwise i don’t see this series going anywhere i’ll particularly enjoy

the cover is very straightforward in its imagery, this villain has nightwing in the palm of his hand, easily manipulated, easily controlled no matter the action dick thinks he’ll take. 

what i find interesting is the colour: both previously and heavily in this issue, the colourist has chosen to make pink this villain’s main colour, with different shades of pink as accents. so why the red in the cover? possibly to just make it more eye-grabbing, though one could argue that pink is even more eye-catching than red. maybe to convey a sense of dread or fear that pink won’t fully get across. either way, it’s definitely a decision i’m curious about.

so melinda zucco is in a high enough political position within bludhaven that she is next in line to become the mayor after the previous mayor died and dick just,,,,didn’t have any idea she existed? dick didn’t know anything about her? forget dick’s own brilliant detective skills, forget his doggedness at anything zucco related, you’re telling me bruce never found her and told dick about her? maybe he wouldn’t have now, but back when dick was a young kid, he definitely would have at least made dick aware of her existence, to let dick know and ask if he wanted to interfere with her life or anything.

i have a thought about zucco’s facial expressions. she is very much stone-cold poker face throughout the entire issue. the only time i see her pull a different expression is near the end when dick corners her against a wall with an arm around her throat. 

this is most certainly intentional, what with the varied and intense expressions we see on other characters, dick most prominently. i’m wondering what exactly is the creative team’s reasoning behind this. in these panels, zucco is meeting with the most dangerous, powerful, near-bloodthirsty man in all of bludhaven and becoming the mayor of the city respectfully. in both of these panels, there is barely a hint of emotion in her face: no fear, no determination, no satisfaction. it’s just odd, considering the circumstances she’s in, regardless of any training recieved.

just spitballing here but. like. from what i’ve read so far, dick doesn’t really seem like bludhaven’s guardian angel. more like when peter parker first put on spandex and blindly stepped out into new york.

dick, how exactly can you underestimate someone from one move. so he caught your escrima. anyone with enhanced reflexes can do that. you still don’t know how he can actually fight, and this is shown in the next set of panels. 

i just don’t like the wording here. dick’s “underestimated” him, but beats him up easy in the next page. in addition, i don’t know much about combat, but i would assume it would take more than one move to determine exactly what an opponent’s skill level is, made even more complex when you add physical enhancements and metahumans and aliens into the mixture.

idk my first thought when i saw that he caught the stick was “ah ok he’s enhanced” because obviously he couldn’t have reacted fast enough if he wasn’t (as there are few people trained enough to catch it on human reflexes alone.) then the wording in the next panel, i’ve underestimated him, made me think “oh no ok so he’s not enhanced, he’s just a really good fighter and can give dick a run for his money in a fight.” then, it turns out my first assumption was proven correct in the next panel. it just comes across as misleading to me.

(also sidenote but his curls are cute.)

have i praised the art enough in this series? no, i have not.

i adore the way this is laid out and illustrated. without even having to read the text, the action sequence is visually engaging and intense, and easily followable from one panel to the next. dick’s physical expertise comes through quite efficiently, and i love the special attention shown to draw our attention to dick’s escrima in the bottom right corner.

also that move in the middle row leftmost panel that’s the mcu black widow move to get up off the ground it was the first thing i noticed and it made me laugh; thought it was worth noting

i’m really loving dick’s escrima sticks in this run. they’re just so multipurpose, it’s hilarious and exhilarating. kinda reminds me of bruce’s belt, the way the button in the middle does eevveeerrryyytthhiinngg. 

got a problem? don’t worry! dick’s installed a feature into his escrima that can fix that! (i like thinking dick helped make them it makes me happy and makes my engineer!dick side satisfied)

yawn. your big heart is your one true weakness yadda yadda the fact that you care will be used against you blah blah we get it. jesus can the villains please find a different weakness to exploit, this is getting old.

i need dick’s capacity to empathize and care and love to stop being a weakness that villains sneer about. bonus points if dick saves everyone anyway, either because of or despite his great big heart and the villain is surprised by the goodness of mankind or some shit like that.

i need it to be a strength, right from the get-go. the fact that he cares so incredibly much should be an asset that dick has and will use. he’s a very complex character with years of background, it can’t possibly be that hard to find another weakness of his. 

ooooh this is cool, gosh i absolutely love this.

because what exactly is the reader doing? we are seeing the fear in dick’s face, just as this villain intended. even better, we’re seeing the reflection of it from the villain’s glossy mask, telling us exactly what we’re seeing and exactly what he likes so much about it.

dick’s standing up straight, shoulders drawn back, looking up at this villain’s face with determination and resolve, but his suit is tattered. one eye looks to be swollen. his hair is falling limply around his eyes, as opposed to the curls from earlier. his escrima aren’t even part of the main focus, instead blending into the side of the mask in the outer corners of the mask’s eyes, which tells you exactly how big of a threat they are to this villain.

poor bitewing’s quite alarmed.

also on second thought why would you bring your puppy out like this, when you know you’re gonna end up fighting someone in the suit. a) how many grey three-legged adorable little puppies live in the bludhaven area dick? and how easy will it be to connect the doggo running around with nightwing with the doggo that dick grayson owns? and 2) is this puppers trained? does she have fighting experience? how exactly can you ensure she will survive this highly stressful situation?

dick take better care of your dog 

you know what? i was with tim on this one. why exactly is dick so optimistic and trusting about the people of bludhaven? bludhaven, which has been described as gotham’s smaller, smellier, more corrupt sister city once or twice. it’s not just the corrupt people in power, the entire system needs to change and people need to have faith and hope in order for them to come together, espcially if they’ve been living in conditions like how bludhaven has been described. from how clueless dick is about his own goddamn city, i can tell he hasn’t been here long.

it was a nice moment of hope, i’ll admit. but it was a tad unrealistic for me.

also it was in a weird place in the comic. this sort of confrontation and big get-together of the people to rejuvenate hope in each other feels like it should come near the end of a run, if not the end of an issue. certainly not in the first third of an issue. the pacing’s a bit off to me.

loyal little puppy patiently waiting for her human to wake up. i love her so much.

no it’s not. it’s bitewing.

living for this t-shirt honestly. do comics of dc characters exist in the dc universe? they must if the mug and the shirt are any indication

(now i’m imagining the first batman movie that came out in the dc universe and bruce just. being so offended at who they chose to play him.)

well, yes. but when a group of people are put through hellish conditions over and over again, they soon become desensitized to the pain and terror of their everyday lives in order to both stay sane and keep their life relatively stable, and part of that becomes ignoring or blocking out anything that isn’t directly important to you or your loved ones. having a bleeding heart will most likely get you killed in a city like bludhaven if you don’t have the same skills that vigilantes have.

and of course, people are more than capable of coming together and rallying under their city’s vigilante after seeing the good they’ve done and how they’ve helped the people, but that sort of trust takes time and effort to build. dick also had the whole ric arc and was gone for a while, which has been referenced several times in this particular issue in fact. that’s not going to make bludhaven’s citizens any more likely to trust him.

maybe i’m being a bit harsh but this comic is comic off as a bit too idealistic for the amount of change nightwing can do in a city given the present and past circumstances as well as nightwing’s own abilities. even dick grayson can’t pull off everything.

ok seriously this needs to stop this needs to stop.

right now, dick reminds me of oliver queen in the few episodes of the cw’s arrow i watched. he does the punchy-kicky-fighty and occasionally has smart insights due to the skills he gained from his past that he certainly definitely totally has but only ever exhibits once, while his team does all of the background research and information gathering and actual work.

this is dick’s city. if he has the same intelligence, worth ethic, and stubbornness in this run that he’s been shown to possess all his life, then he knows this city inside out. he’ll have meticulous notes organized in a ridiculously efficient system, he’ll have scouted out zucco long before this started, he’ll have known when anything big happened in the bludhaven political landscape in an instant.

i’m really not liking exactly how much dick’s relying on babs and tim in this series. sure, he loves them and cares for them and likes working cases with them. but he always pulls his own weight, has always been a mentor figure to tim instead of what’s weirdly becoming the other way around, and takes point on the cases in his own damn city.

what kind of weak-ass oracle is this?? redacted fbi files are child’s play. babs used to hack into the fbi for fun. this one particular picture is so out of character i want to laugh.

reading this series has unfortunately made me confront that, despite the tiny fluid acrobat dick that lives in my head 24/7, canon dick is impossibly 5′10 and muscular at that.

mmm. titties.

tim said hydrate or die-drate bitch

love how dick’s doing all this intense brooding and stuff meanwhile bitewing is curled up in a soft comfy post having the time of her life.

you don’t understand i would legitimately kill myself for her.

also the lighting in this one scene is cool. the blue tones come off so well.

they’re just. so multipurpose!! they can become a bo staff. they can cut glass. they can become a grapple hook/line. they can electrify someone. they’re a funky colour. i’m becoming really attached to these things. absolute solid choice in weaponry.

if you’re gonna write up every rookie mistake dick has made during this series to head trauma, then dick shouldn’t be out and about at all, much less in costume.

see this? this is just straight up wrong. dick most definitely should have spotted her, and would have immediately moved to take her down.

scratch that, dick would have done a full check of the building, because he knows not to break into places uninformed, especially if the owner of the apartment was raised by the maroni family. someone as highly trained, experienced, and competent as dick wouldn’t have done this.

and if you chalk it up to head injury, (which is probably true), than his ~love interest~ and his little brother should have done a much better job making sure he stays in his house.

zucco looks so awkward it’s fucking hilarious

are those shadows that mimic a domino mask, to both reflect and hide the fact that his mask is missing? are those bruises around his eyes, to show how, despite what good he’s doing, being nightwing is hurting dick right now? 

(isn’t his domino mask supposed to have an electrifying feature that keeps people from removing them?)

it’s a little odd how the three known villains of this series are all coloured in warm shades, more specifically pink. meanwhile, in earlier issues, dick’s fondest memories were in pink, memories of him and alfred in particular. why has the colour pink changed from signifying something benevolent to something malicious? idk i hope this gets explained later.

this i did like. either it’s just a display of brute force in anger, or dick slipped the ties and pulled them off once untied. both ways, it’s an unintentional display of power, and i think that’s kinda cool.

again. dick is,,,tall? sort of? weirdddd

i’m so glad most readers are unified in the notion that this was the absolute dumbest fucking thing.

i’m hoping this gets disproved or something soon. and i hope dick doesn’t fall for it, because he definitely knows better than to take something as important as this at face value.

what exactly is taylor trying to accomplish here? why is he trying to go back on what we all knew was a happy, loving childhood and throw strife and disharmony and (what i’m assuming will be) infidelity? this will not end well at all.

---

,,,,,this review got way longer than expected lol. and i realize most of it just became me ranting. i guess i didn’t realize how ticked off i was originally. fingers crossed it gets better.

tag list: @woahjaybird @birdy-bat-writes @anothertimdrakestan @subtleappreciation @screennamealreadyused @bikoncon @pricetagofficial @catxsnow @thatsthewhump @xatanna-troy @red-hood-redemption @capricorn-stark @batshit-birds​ @comics-observer

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

A for the first step of kintsugi/pottery shards

A: How did you come up with the title to [insert fic]?

So, for those who don’t know, kintsugi is this:

It’s a Japanese method of repairing broken pottery with a usually-gold lacquer so as to turn an otherwise broken piece into something that’s quite frankly sick as fuck.

And the first step of kintsugi is, of course, to smash some fucking pottery.

The pottery shards verse is really one of those “it will get worse so it can get better” kind of things. (For the record? We’re still in the get worse period.) There’s one very specific thing of Peter Parker’s that I think canon constantly risked breaking that it never really explored, so I’m doing it for it. The goal is to smash it and rebuild it into something that’s different but hopefully beautiful.

The other thing about kintsugi is that it’s not always the result of accidents. Sometimes, it’s meant to repair pottery that’s otherwise been lost, but sometimes it’s just for the sake of the end goal. Specifically, pottery that’s seen as defective or not good enough on its own is usually targeted.

porcelain chips is the prelude, and it’s not really meant to be a cohesive narrative. It’s just all the things that stacked up to culminate into who peter Parker is today. It’s a bunch of little chips on a piece of once-pristine porcelain that may lead to its smashing. He’s been building towards a break for a long time, and it didn’t start with uncle ben or Germany or Frank. Peters inherently a child who has gone to frankly extreme lengths at a very young age. You don’t do that lightly, and you don’t do it because everything’s okay mentally. He’s the culmination of every little injustice he was meant to quietly bear.

glaze defects is an interlude character study thing of matt murdock and where he was during chapter seven. Glaze defects happen in the process of creating the pottery. Something gets fucked when you’re doing the firing or there’s an incompatibility between the body and the glaze and you end up with bumps or cracks or lines in the surface. People may be tempted to just smash a pot with a glaze defect.

I picked this title because there’s a lot of similarities between how we talk about the disabled and marginalized and how we talk about a fucked up pot.

Usually there’s a conversation of they should be this but instead they’re this. We act as if their existence is something that went wrong in the manufacturing process and it should be eradicated. As if there was a mistake in the process of creation, and we need to do better next time to make sure we don’t end up with a similar mistake. Which is bullshit. Which is exactly the mindset which led to the Supreme Court case Buck v Bell, which plays a central role in the study.

Marvel has tended to make superpowers a point of marginalization—mostly with the X-Men, but then we also see it with the Accords, and with scenes like in Jessica Jones where bitter people try to kill her after the Battle of New York. Whether or not it’s a fair comparison to draw an analogue between communities that traditionally face discrimination and like, superpowers is a different discussion. The language used is the same, so that’s the premise we’re left to operate from.

We inherently devalue things that we perceive as defective or different. I am more willing to break a fucked up pot than i am willing to break a beautiful pot. But a person isn’t a pot, and there is no standard to draw from that’s like “this is the model person, everything deviating is a manufacturing error.” People will pretend that there is—that’s how we ended up with eugenics in the first place.

A core trend in the anti-canon in that we tend to try and get around rights and liberties we’ve already decided to give to everyone. We made broad statements about how all men are created equal right off the fucking bat and ever since then we’ve been finding increasingly elaborate ways of saying “but not those men.”

Buck v Bell said that the disabled were a burden, and their ability to reproduce was a small sacrifice in comparison to their drain on society. Korematsu said that racial profiling, segregation, and forced internment was okay because the threat of wartime was such that it was necessary for public safety, and ergo not about race. Dred Scott said a slave being held in a free state could not sue for his freedom because he was property and had no rights. We qualify the shit out of things the second we see others as a problem as ourselves and we mitigate and we talk about burden and risks and what they really are and we have always, always done this. We hate fucking admitting that it’s okay that other people exist in ways we don’t like. We always make it about the danger they pose us, the burden they place on us, the fact that they’re really not a person if you think about it.

The thing about a glaze defect is that there’s not actually anything wrong with the pot. It doesn’t look the way you thought it would, but it’s still a pot. A lot of the disappointment in having a glaze defect is based in how you think it should have been made. Which is a fine consideration to make when you’re an outside observer. When you’re the pot? It’s a reason for people to break you. 

so glaze defects is called glaze defects because it involves two parallel stories of things that people may perceive as a problem in the actual form of the thing, and thereby discount the thing itself--disability, and how we’ve historically dealt with it, and on the flip side, superpowers, and the fact that the presence of powers tends to be a more valuable consideration than the person who has them. 

[jesslockwood]

Jess’ 700 Celebration

Bingo writing challenge!

So I haven’t quite reached 700 but close enough… right? I also wanted to get this out early so y’all have time to write them, so I therefore introduce this madness I came up with!

(I’m also sorry if anything is misspelled I made this so quickly at 4am lol)

Quick How it works

(rules, guidelines and bingos are under the read more line)

The whole point of this challenge is to mix and match different ideas and challenge yourself creativity to come up with something awesome!

This is not your average writing challenge, as you will be picking 2 to however many Au’s and prompts and smushing it into one piece of writing!

So for visual example:

Pick 2+ for a combination to write on one bingo sheet (for example i highlighted the two on this pic but you can add many more if you like)

Send an ask to me telling me what you’re writing and for who

Write it

PLEASE actually Highlight the bingo spaces you used so it’s easy to tell!!! (Apps you can use are ones that have a drawing feature like Snapchat or pics art!)

And post it!

⬇️ The Rules, Guidelines and Bingos below ⬇️

Not necessary but a follow would be nice!

Send me an ask (with your user if on anon), the bingo number (1, 2 or 3) and 2+ tropes/prompts/AU’s you’re writing with, and who it’s for

Eg: I’d like to use bingo card 3 with the Blank AU(s) and the trope(s) A blanks B (etc.)

Write a piece by September 7 2021 (if you need an extension don’t be afraid to ask!)

Please don’t combine bingo cards unless you ask first because my one brain cell will get confused!!! (But if you want a challenge use one bingo card itself. Or as many prompts/Aus you can fit I will be impressed lol)

Most importantly have fun!!!

Guidelines for writings

NO non-con

NO Incest

NO smut for characters who are minors

NO minors writing smut

It’s fine to: Suggest characters had intercourse without actually writing it, and aged up characters (eg. Peter parker at university age) are okay for any suggested intercourse or smut

***Put warnings to possibly triggering content before writings

Reader insert and OC allowed

If Over 500 words put a read more line (there’s no set limit on how much or little you want to write btw!)

There is no limit to how many individual ones you want to write for this challenge

You can totally use an already existing series as long as it includes the things you pick on the bingo!

please tag your works with #arg700bingowritingchallange so I can reblog it and read it!

ANY FANDOM IS ALLOWED :)

***please post writing with the bingo sheet you used with highlighted tropes and Au’s

(P.S if anyone wants to use this idea for a celebration of your own you are welcome to as long as you give credit where due, and totally tag me in it cause I will most likely be joining!)

THE BINGOS 🎉

Tags for mutuals who might be interested:

@duskholland @worldoftom @tomhollandd @spideyspeaches @harryhollandsgirlfriend @tomhollandsgirlfriend @samhollandscupcake @tommysparker @londonspidey @miseryholland @greenorangevioletgrass