#i made a whole new blog and ao3 just because of this fic

[caelum-in-the-avatarverse]

Fandom can do a little gatekeeping. As a treat.

So I finally decided to archive-lock my fics on AO3 last night. I’ve been considering it since the AI scrape last year, but the tipping point was this whole lore.fm debacle, coupled with some thoughts I’ve been thinking regarding Fandom These Days in general and Fandom As A Community in particular. So I wanna explain why I waited so long, why I locked my stuff up now, and why I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m a-okay with making it harder for people to see my stories.

Lurkers really are great, tho

I’m a chronic lurker, and have been since I started hanging out on the internet as a teen in the 00s. These days it’s just cuz I don’t feel a need to socialize very often, but back then it was because I was shy and knew I was socially awkward. Even if I made an account, I’d spend months lurking on message boards or forums or Livejournals, watching other people interact and getting a feel for that particular community’s culture and etiquette before I finally started interacting myself. And y’know, that approach saved me a lot of embarrassment. Over the course of my lurking on any site, there was always some other person who’d clearly joined up five minutes after learning the place existed, barged in without a care for their behavior, and committed so many social faux pas that all the other users were immediately annoyed with them at best. I learned a lot observing those incidents. Lurk More is Rule 33 of the internet for very good reason.

Lurking isn’t bad or weird or creepy. It’s perfectly normal. I love lurking. It’s hard for me to not lurk - socializing takes a lot of energy out of me, even via text. (Heck it took 12 hours for me to write this post, I wish I was kidding--) Occasionally I’ll manage longer bouts of interaction - a few weeks posting here, almost a year chatting in a discord there - but I’m always gonna end up going radio silent for months at some point. I used to feel bad about it, but I’ve long since made peace with the fact that it’s just the way my brain works. I’m a chronic lurker, and in the long term nothing is going to change that.

The thing with being a chronic lurker is that you have to accept that you are not actually seen as part of the community you are lurking in. That’s not to say that lurkers are unimportant - lurkers actually are important, and they make up a large proportion of any online community - but it’s simple cause and effect. You may think of it as “your community”, but if you’ve never said a word, how is the community supposed to know you exist? If I lurked on someone’s LJ, and then that person suddenly friendslocked their blog, I knew that I had two choices: Either accept that I would never be able to read their posts again, or reach out to them and ask if I could be added to their friends list with the full understanding that I was a rando they might not decide to trust. I usually went with the first option, because my invisibility as a lurker was more important to me than talking to strangers on the internet.

Lurking is like sitting on a park bench, quietly people-watching and eavesdropping on the conversations other people are having around you. You’re in the park, but you’re not actively participating in anything happening there. You can see and hear things that you become very interested in! But if you don’t introduce yourself and become part of the conversation, you won’t be able to keep listening to it when those people walk away. When fandom migrated away from Livejournal, people moved to new platforms alongside their friends, but lurkers were often left behind. No one knew they existed, so they weren’t told where everyone else was going. To be seen as part of a fandom community, you need to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known, etc. etc.

There’s nothing wrong with lurking. There can actually be benefits to lurking, both for the lurkers and the communities they lurk in. It’s just another way to be in a fandom. But if that is how you exist in fandom--and remember, I say this as someone who often does exist that way in fandom--you need to remember that you’re on the outside looking in, and the curtains can always close.

I’ve always been super sympathetic to lurkers, because I am one. I know there’s a lot of people like me who just don’t socialize often. I know there’s plenty of reasons why someone might not make an account on the internet - maybe they’re nervous, maybe they’re young and their parents don’t allow them to, maybe they’re in a bad situation where someone is monitoring their activity, maybe they can only access the internet from public computer terminals. Heck, I’ve never even logged into AO3 on my phone--if I’m away from my computer I just read what’s publicly available. 

I know I have people lurking on my fics. I know my fics probably mean a lot to someone I don’t even know exists. I know this because there are plenty of fics I love whose writers don’t know I exist.

I love my commenters personally; I love my lurkers as an abstract concept. I know they’re there and I wish them well, and if they ever de-lurk I love them all the more.

So up until last year I never considered archive-locking my fic, because I get it. The AI scraping was upsetting, but I still hesitated because I was thinking of lurkers and guests and remembering what it felt like to be 15 and wondering if it’d be worth letting a stranger on the internet know I existed and asking to be added to their friends list just so I could reread a funny post they made once.

But the internet has changed a lot since the 00s, and fandom has changed with it. I’ve read some things and been doing some thinking about fandom-as-community over the last few years, and reading through the lore.fm drama made me decide that it’s time for me to set some boundaries.

I still love my lurkers, and I feel bad about leaving any guest commenters behind, especially if they’re in a situation where they can’t make an account for some reason. But from here on out, even my lurkers are going to have to do the bare minimum to read my fics--make an AO3 account.

Should we gatekeep fandom?

I’ve seen a few people ask this question, usually rhetorically, sometimes as a joke, always with a bit of seriousness. And I think…yeah, maybe we should. Except wait, no, not like that--

A decade ago, when people talked about fandom gatekeeping and why it was bad to do, it intersected with a lot of other things, mainly feminism and classism. The prevalent image of fandom gatekeeping was, like, a man learning that a woman likes Star Wars and haughtily demanding, “Oh, yeah? Well if you’re REALLY a fan, name ten EU novels” to belittle and dismiss her, expecting that a “real fan” would have the money and time to be familiar with the EU, and ignoring the fact that male movie-only fans were still considered fans. The thing being gatekept was the very definition of “being a fan” and people’s right to describe themselves as one.

That’s not what I mean when I say maybe fandom should gatekeep more. Anyone can call themselves a fan if they like something, that’s fine. But when it comes to the ability to enjoy the fanworks produced by the fandom community…that might be something worth gatekeeping.

See, back in the 00s, it was perfectly common for people to just…not go on the internet. Surfing the web was a thing, but it was just, like, a fun pastime. Not everyone did it. It wasn’t until the rise of social media that going online became a thing everyone and their grandmother did every day. Back then, going on the internet was just…a hobby.

So one of the first gates online fandom ever had was the simple fact that the entire world wasn’t here yet.

The entire world is here now. That gate has been demolished.

And it’s a lot easier to find us now. Even scattered across platforms, fandom is so centralized these days. It isn’t a network of dedicated webshrines and forums that you can only find via webrings anymore, it’s right there on all the big social media sites. AO3 didn’t set out to be the main fanfic website, but that’s definitely what it’s become. It’s easy for people to find us--and that includes people who don’t care about the community, and just want “content.”

Transformative fandom doesn’t like it when people see our fanworks as “content”. “Content” is a pretty broad term, but when fandom uses it we’re usually referring to creative works that are churned out by content creators to be consumed by an audience as quickly as possible as often as possible so that the content creator can generate revenue. This not-so-new normal has caused a massive shift in how people who are new to fandom view fanworks--instead of seeing fic or art as something a fellow fan made and shared with you, they see fanworks as products to be consumed.

Transformative fandom has, in general, always been a gift economy. We put time and effort into creating fanworks that we share with our fellow fans for free. We do this so we don’t get sued, but fandom as a whole actually gets a lot out of the gift economy. Offer your community a story, and in return you can get comments, build friendships, or inspire other people to write things that you might want to read. Readers are given the gift of free stories to read and enjoy, and while lurking is fine, they have the choice to engage with the writer and other readers by leaving comments or making reclists to help build the community.

And look, don’t get me wrong. People have never engaged with fanfic as much as fan writers wish they would. There has always been “no one comments anymore” wank. There have always been people who only comment to say “MORE!” or otherwise demand or guilt trip writers into posting the next chapter. But fandom has always agreed that those commenters are rude and annoying, and as those commenters navigate fandom they have the chance to learn proper community etiquette.

However, now it seems that a lot of the people who are consuming fanworks aren’t actually in the community. 

I won’t say “they aren’t real fans” because that’s silly; there’s lots of ways to be a fan. But there seem to be a lot of fans now who have no interest in fandom as a community, or in adhering to community etiquette, or in respecting the gift economy. They consume our fics, but they don’t appreciate fan labor. They want our “content”, but they don’t respect our control over our creations.

And even worse--they see us as a resource. We share our work for free, as a gift, but all they see is an open-source content farm waiting to be tapped into. We shared it for free, so clearly they can do whatever they want with it. Why should we care if they feed our work into AI training datasets, or copy/paste our unfinished stories into ChatGPT to get an ending, or charge people for an unnecessary third-party AO3 app, or sell fanbindings on etsy for a profit without the author’s permission, or turn our stories into poor imitations of podfics to be posted on other platforms without giving us credit or asking our consent, while also using it to lure in people they can datascrape for their Forbes 30 Under 30 company? 

And sure, people have been doing shady things with other people’s fanworks since forever. Art theft and reposting has always been a big problem. Fanfic is harder to flat-out repost, but I’ve heard of unauthorized fic translations getting posted without crediting the original author. Once in…I think the 2010s? I read a post by a woman who had gone to some sort of local bookselling event, only to find that the man selling “his” novel had actually self-published her fanfic. (Wish I could find that one again, I don’t even remember where I read it.)

But aside from that third example, the thing is…as awful as fanart/writing theft is, back in the day, the main thing a thief would gain from it was clout. Clout that should rightfully go to the creators who gifted their work in the first place, yeah, but still. Just clout. People will do a lot of hurtful things for clout, but fandom clout means nothing outside of fandom. Fandom clout is not enough to incentivize the sort of wide-scale pillaging we’re seeing from community outsiders today.

Money, on the other hand… Well, fandom’s just a giant, untapped content farm, isn’t it? Think of how much revenue all that content could generate.

Lurkers are a normal and even beneficial part of any online community. Maybe one day they’ll de-lurk and easily slide into place beside their fellow fans because they already know the etiquette. Maybe they’re active in another community, and they can spread information from the community they lurk in to the community they’re active in. At the very least, they silently observe, and even if they’re not active community members, they understand the community.

Fans who see fanworks as “content” don’t belong in the same category as lurkers. They’re tourists. 

While reading through the initial Reddit thread on the lore.fm situation, I found this comment:

[ID: Reddit User Cabbitowo says: ... So in anime fandoms we have a word called tourist and essentially it means a fan of a few anime and doesn't care about anime tropes and actively criticizes them. This is kind of how fandoms on tiktok feel. They're touring fanfics and fanart and actively criticizes tropes that have been in the fandom since the 60s. They want to be in a fandom but they don't want to engage in fandom 

OP totallymandy responds: Just entered back into Reddit after a long day to see this most recent reply. And as a fellow anime fan this making me laugh so much since it’s true! But it sorta hurts too when the reality sets in. Modern fandom is so entitled and bratty and you’d think it’s the minors only but that’s not even true, my age-mates and older seem to be like that. They want to eat their cake and complain all whilst bringing nothing to the potluck… :/ END ID]

-

“Tourist” is an apt name for this sort of fan. They don’t want to be part of our community, and they don’t have to be in order to come into our spaces and consume our work. Even if they don’t steal our work themselves, they feel so entitled to it that they’re fine with ignoring our wishes and letting other people take it to make AI “podfics” for them to listen to (there are a lot of comments on lore.fm’s shutdown announcement video from people telling them to just ignore the writers and do it anyway). They’ll use AI to generate an ending to an unfinished fic because they don’t care about seeing “the ending this writer would have given to the story they were telling”, they just want “an ending”. For these tourist fans, the ends justify the means, and their end goal is content for them to consume, with no care for the community that created it for them in the first place.

I don’t think this is confined to a specific age group. This isn’t “13-year-olds on Wattpad” or “Zoomers on TikTok” or whatever pointless generation war we’re in now. This is coming from people who are new to fandom, whose main experience with creative works on the internet is this new content culture and who don’t understand fandom as a community. That description can be true of someone from any age group.

It’s so easy to find fandom these days. It is, in fact, too easy. Newcomers face no hurdles or challenges that would encourage them to lurk and observe a bit before engaging, and it’s easy for people who would otherwise move on and leave us alone to start making trouble. From tourist fans to content entrepreneurs to random people who just want to gawk, it’s so easy for people who don’t care about the fandom community to reap all of its fruits. 

So when I say maybe fandom should start gatekeeping a bit, I’m referring to the fact that we barely even have a gate anymore. Everyone is on the internet now; the entire world can find us, and they don’t need to bother learning community etiquette when they do. Before, we were protected by the fact that fandom was considered weird and most people didn’t look at it twice. Now, fandom is pretty mainstream. People who never would’ve bothered with it before are now comfortable strolling in like they own the place. They have no regard for the fandom community, they don’t understand it, and they don’t want to. They want to treat it just like the rest of the content they consume online.

And then they’re surprised when those of us who understand fandom culture get upset. Fanworks have existed far longer than the algorithmic internet’s content. Fanworks existed long before the internet. We’ve lived like this for ages and we like it.

So if someone can’t be bothered to respect fandom as a community, I don’t see why I should give them easy access to my fics.

Think of it like a garden gate

When I interact with commenters on my fic, I have this sense of hospitality.

The comment section is my front porch. The fic is my garden. I created my garden because I really wanted to, and I’m proud of it, and I’m happy to share it with other people. 

Lots of people enjoy looking at my garden. Many walk through without saying anything. Some stop to leave kudos. Some recommend my garden to their friends. And some people take the time to stop by my front porch and let me know what a beautiful garden it is and how much they’ve enjoyed it. 

Any fic writer can tell you that getting comments is an incredible feeling. I always try to answer all my comments. I don’t always manage it, but my fics’ comment sections are the one place that I manage to consistently socialize in fandom. When I respond to a comment, it feels like I’m pouring out a glass of lemonade to share with this lovely commenter on my front porch, a thank you for their thank you. We take a moment to admire my garden together, and then I see them out. The next time they drop by, I recognize them and am happy to pour another glass of lemonade.

My garden has always been open and easy to access. No fences, no walls. You just have to know where to find it. Fandom in general was once protected by its own obscurity, an out-of-the-way town that showed up on maps but was usually ignored.

But now there’s a highway that makes it easy to get to, and we have all these out-of-towner tourists coming in to gawk and steal our lawn ornaments and wonder if they can use the place to make themselves some money.

I don’t care to have those types trampling over my garden and eating all my vegetables and digging up my flowers to repot and sell, so I’ve put up a wall. It has a gate that visitors can get through if they just take the time to open it.

Admittedly, it’s a small obstacle. But when I share my fics, I share them as a gift with my fellow fans, the ones who understand that fandom is a community, even if they’re lurkers. As for tourist fans and entrepreneurs who see fic as content, who have no qualms ignoring the writer’s wishes, who refuse to respect or understand the fandom community…well, they’re not the people I mean to share my fic with, so I have no issues locking them out. If they want access to my stories, they’ll have to do the bare minimum to become a community member and join the AO3 invite queue.

And y’know, I’ve said a lot about fandom and community here, and I just want to say, I hope it’s not intimidating. When I was younger, talk about The Fandom Community made me feel insecure, and I didn’t think I’d ever manage to be active enough in fandom spaces to be counted as A Member Of The Community. But you don’t have to be a social butterfly to participate in fandom. I’ll always and forever be a chronic lurker, I reblog more than I post, I rarely manage to comment on fic, and I go radio silent for months at a time--but I write and post fanfiction. That’s my contribution.

Do you write, draw, vid, gif, or otherwise create? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you leave comments? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you curate reclists? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you maintain a fandom blog or fuckyeah blog? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you provide a space for other fans to convene in? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you regularly send asks (off anon so people know who you are)? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you have fandom friends who you interact with? Congrats, you're a community member.

There’s lots of ways to be a fan. Just make sure to respect and appreciate your fellow fans and the work they put in for you to enjoy and the gift economy fandom culture that keeps this community going.

[sevikasenby]

three months. (ao3 link)

a/n: first fic for @sevikaweek and i thought i’d end the last day, the deal, with another ending <3

summary: sevika goes into hiding because of the war between piltover and the undercity and you and sevika make a deal, a promise even: 3 months. that was it. rating: explicit, MDNI wc: 2,983 warning for major character death, mentions of blood

AGELESS BLOGS, MINORS AND MEN DNI

“they won’t find where i’m going. hell, they hardy know where this place is anyways so-“

“yeah they don’t know where we are right now, so why can’t you just stay here, sev!?” 

sevika stared at you. she opened her mouth to speak but closed it and let out a long, weary sigh and looked around. you were both stood in the living room because she had come to you with this while you were lounging on the couch. 

she knew you were frustrated, hence why you had just snapped at her a bit, but she was to because you weren’t understanding. maybe you never would. 

she looked at you with saddened eyes, “because you’re not a target, baby.”  she lifted her hand to cup your cheek, letting you nuzzle into it. “if they find this place and they see you with me, they will either take you or kill you too and i cannot let that happen.”

the enforcers were after sevika, but mainly jinx, wanting them dead or alive, and anyone who could’ve been helping either of them, hiding them, etc because of the war between piltover and the undercity going on. they already got a couple people including some firelights, lock and even singed because of the shimmer distribution. 

ran was actually the one helping jinx, letting her stay in their apartment since it was a bit like yours and sevika’s, off the enforcers radar and likely they wouldn’t be caught here. you had even questioned why sevika couldn’t go and stay with ran. she said it was because they were already hiding someone and she didn’t want to put them more at risk for helping. 

sevika just didn’t want to chance anything. she wanted to leave to keep you safe, to go to an even more secluded area, one far back in the undercity in hopes the enforcers would be too scared to go back there. 

“look,” sevika started when you looked away from her, thinking about what she said. “i’ll make a deal with you. give it three months. that’s it.”

“three months? for what?”

“in three months everything should be died down enough to where i can come back and be alright living here. probably will still keep low profile but it should be fine.”

“and if it’s not?” you placed your hand on top of hers where it still rested on your cheek. 

“then i stay where i am and i will come back to you as soon as it is, i promise. until then, you stay here. ran, i’m sure will keep you company, and you do not, under any circumstances, come looking for me. deal?”

it was your time to sigh. you raised your hand and moved the few stranded of hair out of face. she had cut her hair a lot shorter as a way to disguise herself, she had actually changed her whole outfit (jinx made her go shopping) for that matter, a new dark purple cloak. she had a new mech arm (jinx actually made some of it) and even got her first piercing right under her bottom lip. obviously it wasn’t going to disguise her a hundred percent but enforcers would be looking for her with a different description than she has now. 

“okay.” you said after a while. you still didn’t understand why she couldn’t just stay where she was, here with you. yes she wanted to protect you but just as she said, enforcers really didn’t know where they were. yes it was a chance of them coming your way, but sevika couldn’t bare the thought of anything happening to you so she decided herself that she was going to leave, that it was the best option for the both of you. 

two days later sevika had packed her bags. it wasn’t much, she’s never been someone to own a lot of things, she just packed what she needed. she also packed her clothes that were in the closet and put them away so just in case enforcers did make their way in, they wouldn’t know she lives here, they would only think you did. 

you laid in bed that night, resting on sevika’s chest, catching your breath, a pit of despair looming over you knowing what was coming the following day. you just had sex, like any regular night. but this time it wasn’t rough, it wasn’t fast, it felt completely different. yes you’ve had sex where it wasn’t your regular fast pace. this felt softer. her touch was somehow even more gentle than it normally was. it was slow, like she didn’t want it to ever end. she kept you close to her, her fingers were never not intertwined with yours as her wet clit moved against you. 

maybe you saw the tears in her eyes right before she buried her face in your neck, clearly not wanting you to see, but you didn’t mention it. and maybe a few of your own tears fell into her hair as you wrapped one of your arms around her, holding the back on her head. sevika didn’t notice. 

yes she was only going away for 3 months, not really a long time, so why were you both crying? it was probably because there was a possibility of her not coming back, you both knew it, but it was never said. because if its never spoken out loud, maybe it wouldn’t be real…

you looked up at her, rubbing you thumb across her chest. “i love you so much, sev.”

“i love you too, baby. you don’t understand how much i love you.” she leaned down to kiss your lips. “i barely even understand it.” 

_________________

the next morning it was quiet. too quiet for sevika’s liking. because sevika left before you even woke up since she knew she wouldn’t be able to leave after seeing the look in your eyes knowing she’s gonna be gone for three months, maybe even longer, but the hope was only three. she left with the memory of you sleeping peacefully, of you humming softly in your sleep as she caressed your hair and rubbed your back. 

if she sat at her desk, debating if this was the right decision once again and if she had tears slowing falling down her face while she kissed your forehead and made her way out the door once telling herself again that it was, it was the right decision, you didn’t need to know that. 

you woke up to a cold, empty bed. you weren’t necessarily surprised, she’s left to go to work way before you woke up at times. but this time was different. she was gone. you weren’t going to see her for what is probably gonna feel like a life time for you. for the both of you. 

you reached out and grabbed her pillow to hug to your chest. when you did, something caught your attention. her old outfit along with her old red cloak were still draped over her desk chair. you had washed them the other day and you knew you had to put them up and keep them away incase enforcers were to show. but at that moment you couldn’t, you got out of bed and grabbed her cloak, wrapping yourself in it as you hoped and prayed to whatever was out there that sevika would be safe and that she came back to you in one piece. 

_________________

it was a little over two months later, three months was just around the corner. you were starting to feel a little bit of hope bubble up inside of you. shit had died down as sevika had said, (other than the incident that happened about two weeks ago) and enforcers were getting tired of running in circles and the number of them that came down to the underity kept lowering. 

right after sevika left, it was a bit rough. ran had came by and stayed with you for a full day or two to keep you company and make sure you were doing okay, reminding you that sevika knew what she was doing, that she wouldn’t have left if she didn’t think it was the best option. they didn’t stay the night because enforcers were more likely to be coming down while it was dark but they came by almost every day to check in on you. 

you finally decided that you could do this. you trusted sevika. you trusted her with everything in you. and again, three months was just around the corner. 

_________________

a knock on the door interrupted your thoughts as you were getting ready to go to bed. it was a quiet night, only hearing the pitter patter of rain hitting the roof. you went and looked through the peephole in the door (because sevika reminded you to not open the door until you check who it is) and saw that it wasn’t an enforcer. 

so you opened the door and stared at ran in front of you, they were looking down. their hair and clothes were soaked bc of the rain and when they finally looked up at you, you could see their makeup was running down their face. 

they were sobbing you realized and your heart stopped. you looked down to see what they were holding and…

oh. 

sevika. 

she came back to you…but only one piece of her came back. 

the wet purple cloak was clutched tightly in their hands and your heart started racing, you started shaking and tears immediately formed in your eyes when you noticed the red splotches on it. 

“i-i-i’m sorry.” ran stuttered out. they stumbled inside just enough to where they would fall into you and you both nearly hit the ground. 

“no, no, no, no ,no-“ you started and ran wrapped one of their arms around you, let out a chocked sob and then both of you were on the ground, almost in the middle of the doorway while it was still raining. you felt the cloak in between you two and the tears finally fell. you felt completely empty, shattered, like you wanted to scream at the sky and sob until the only thing rolling down your face was the rain. 

three months…that was the deal. it was almost here. and now it never will be. 

_________________

it was hours after ran came by, hours after ran stopped crying, hours after you stopped sobbing into the purple cloak, now soaked with your tears instead of the rain. it was hours after the rain had stopped and it was past midnight that ran was finally able to tell you what happened. 

they didn’t know, really. they told you they ran into an old friend and one of the first things he said to ran was “oh, and i’m really sorry about sevika.”

ran was confused by what he said and their friend then realized they didn’t know what he was talking about. he was hesitant to tell them, of course, but told them what he knew. 

he said he saw three zaunite’s coming from a house about two weeks ago, way back in the undercity where he roamed about a lot simply because it was quiet, less people. it was safe, but maybe not so much anymore. the three men were clearly carrying a body with a white sheet over them. as they walked, a mech arm had slipped out and hit one of the guys in the leg and startled him. ran’s friend recognized it as sevika’s.

ran asked him to show them where the house was and he did. ran rushed into the house, noticing the trail of blood going up the steps and was met with one of their worst fears inside. the purple cloak on the floor was the first thing they noticed. then they noticed the blood on the cloak, then on the floor. it was enough that ran rushed back outside to throw up over the side of the railing as they were almost hyperventilating.

the enforcers must have found her and shot her, is the conclusion ran came to. after a bit of silence, a few sniffles heard here and there, ran questioned how you were going to tell jinx. 

you had absolutely no idea. all you knew was that sevika’s gone. she’s been gone. and you had no idea. 

_________________

sevika had heard from listening in on a few peoples conversation that another wave had started. more enforcers were swarming the undercity. what she didn’t know was it was because jinx almost got herself caught. it was an accident, of course, she didn’t mean to get in the line of sight of an enforcer when all she wanted to do was to go to jericho’s for a little snack for her and ran. but it pissed the enforcers off enough that they decided to adventure deep into the city to look for her. 

sevika went out, as she usually did. she checked every other day to see how things were doing, to try and see how many enforcers were out. but that night she went out at the wrong time because two enforcers were making their way down in search of jinx, thinking she might’ve been hiding deep in the shadows of the undercity. 

she noticed them before they noticed her. she turned around quickly, but not quickly enough. they had caught the end of her cloak, running up on her and she turned around when she heard the noise. they recognized her immediately, her mech arm poking out beneath her cloak. 

she didn’t have the time to think before one of them fired a shot at her, hitting her in the chest and knocking her to the ground. she had just enough energy to power her mech arm and use her blade to slice both legs of the enforcer who shot her. he screamed and fell to the ground in front of her.

the enforcers then decided that fuck it, she was shot, there’s a long way out of here and she wasn’t gonna make it out, so the enforcer helped his friend to his feet and they left, leaving sevika on the ground. 

she placed her hand over where she was shot, blood running down her hand. she knew she had to make it back inside, at least. breathing was getting difficult and her eye sight was blearing but she managed to get up the steps and inside the door. that was as far as her body would let her go. 

she was flat on her back on the floor of the run down house she was in. her own shuttered breath was the only noise she heard. the only thing she felt was a burning sensation in her chest. she knew she had to put something other than her hand on her wound but her cloak was tangled beneath her mech arm. she did her best and at least got it over her head but she tried and failed at pulling it out, giving up when her good arm was too weak to do so. 

she coughed and moved her head to the side to spit the blood out. as her eyes started feeling heavy, they started drooping and her mind started wondering. she thought of you. she thought about how she left almost three months ago. she left you sleeping peacefully, curled into the blankets where you were previously curled up in her arms. you always loved being in her arms, she was always so warm. but right now she felt cold, so so cold. 

she wondered for a moment how you were. if you were eating, drinking, getting enough sleep. she wondered if ran and jinx were  doing okay, if they were still safe. ran became sevika’s friend after they both started working for silco. the first thing sevika noticed was that ran never said much. which was never an issue. then she noticed they were the only person who could come close to beating her at cards and then suddenly they were friends. jinx was…well she was jinx. sevika may have felt a bit (a lot) of hatred for her in the past, mostly for blowing her up multiple times, but the little shit had grown on her. not that she’d ever let jinx know that.

now the burning pain in her chest was getting unbearable and a tear slipped down her face. she thought about what if she had stayed and just for a moment she almost regretted leaving you. she thought about what would’ve happened if you were with her right now. you would probably be frantically trying to stop her bleeding, that is if you hadn’t been shot along with her, which was more likely. if you hadn’t been shot, you probably would’ve been moving her hair out of her eyes, making her keep them open as you talked to her. 

then she thought about why she felt the need to leave so bad because of course she could have stayed. she could have protected you, at least she wants to believe she could have, and then it clicked. 

it was because you were never apart of her plans. you came along so suddenly and changed everything for her so fast that she couldn’t keep up. she never planned to care about someone so much. and she cared about you so fucking much, too much to let you die because of her. you weren’t supposed to be apart of this. she never planned for you to be apart of her life. 

you were her last thought and her last breath was more of a sigh, a sigh of content knowing you were safe, knowing that you weren’t holding her hand or kissing her forehead, knowing that you weren’t here with her… and she was okay with that. 

[scary-grace]

Off-Script - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

Tomura's been Dabi's stunt double for almost a decade, and he's not easily impressed, but when he squares up with you for a fight scene, he finds himself caught off-guard in more ways than one. As the shoot progresses and sparks fly between the two of you, Tomura has to decide if you're worth the risk -- or if the best sparring partner he's ever had is all you'll ever be. (cross-posted to Ao3)

This is my second fic for @threadbaresweater's follower milestone event, with the prompt 'summer blockbuster'! As usual, thank you for running this event and congratulations on the milestone!

Chapter 1

“No.”

“No?” Midoriya Izuku repeats. He taps his headset, like there’s something wrong with it instead of what Dabi just said. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t do swordfighting,” Dabi says. “It’s in my contract.”

Midoriya looks baffled, just like every newbie director who’s ever hit their head against one of the batshit provisions in Dabi’s contracts. And Dabi’s not anywhere close to done with kicking the director around. “How come I’ve got a sword, anyway? Quicksilver didn’t have one in any of the other movies. Or the comics.”

In Tomura’s opinion, Dabi should keep his mouth shut about what happens in the X-Men comics. Everything he knows about the comics and the character he plays is something Tomura had to explain to him way too many times, in detail. “We’re rebooting the Apocalypse arc,” Midoriya says. “The premise is that Apocalypse rises in every age – long enough for people to forget about him in between – and the same characters have been fighting him the whole time, reincarnated over and over again. Only this time it’s different, because four of those characters have been chosen as Horsemen, and they’re fighting for Apocalypse, not against him.”

“Great. Why is there a swordfight?”

“In the original arc, technology provided a boost to the anti-Apocalypse forces,” Midoriya says. “By setting it in the Iron Age, we’re taking that advantage away. That’s why everyone has weapons. Including Quicksilver.”

“Cool.” Dabi lights up a cigarette. “I’m still not doing it.”

“But –”

“That’s what I pay him for.” Dabi jerks a thumb at Tomura. “Talk to him.”

Tomura’s been Dabi’s stunt double for basically all of Dabi’s career. Most stunt doubles stick to stunts, but over the years, Tomura’s role has expanded from stunts to include anything Dabi doesn’t feel like doing. Swordfighting isn’t a stunt. It should be well within Dabi’s skills. And it is – he just doesn’t want to do it. Which means that Tomura’s up.

Midoriya looks at Tomura hopefully. Tomura levers himself up off the wall and rolls his shoulders. “Yeah, okay. Let’s go.”

Midoriya follows him to costume and makeup, yapping the whole way, trying to figure out what he did to upset Dabi so much. Tomura thinks about explaining that it’s not Midoriya’s problem and Dabi’s just like that, then decides against it. Midoriya’s the one who decided not to recast Quicksilver, and Dabi isn’t exactly known for being easy to work with. He made his own bed. Tomura’s not here to tuck him in, and he’s not here to make excuses for Dabi. He’s here to do stunts. That’s it.

Quicksilver’s costume isn’t skintight, which makes it miles better than any of the other Quicksilver suits Tomura’s had to wear since Dabi was first cast in the franchise. It’s his first time in the outfit, so he asks the costumer about it. “There was no Lycra in the Iron Age,” Magne explains as she stitches one last panel into place. “The director wanted historically accurate materials. And the SFX team threatened to quit if they had to edit any more bulges out of the shots.”

That’s a relief. Whenever a new movie in the franchise comes out, the fan blogs make lists ranking all the bulges, which is awkward at best and career-threatening at worst, given the one time a list used a shot where Tomura was doubling Dabi and ranked it higher than Dabi had ever placed on his own. Midoriya is deeply weird, even as far as directors go, but Tomura will take the wins where he can get them.

He tunes back in to what Midoriya’s saying as Magne screws around with his hair to mimic Quicksilver’s signature look. “Who am I fighting again?”

“Psylocke. You read the script, right?”

Sure, Tomura read the script. The script isn’t the problem so much as the fact that the actress playing Psylocke quit last week. “Did you find a new one?”

“Of course!” Midoriya brightens up creepily fast. “Right, you should meet her! She’s – um –”

“Up at the site already,” Magne says, spraying Tomura with hairspray without warning him first. “She was pretty quick to costume. I didn’t even have to put her in a wig.”

Midoriya beams. “She’s great,” he says. “We’re lucky we found her on such short notice.”

“Who is she?”

Midoriya says a name Tomura’s never heard in his life. Magne hasn’t heard it, either. “Come again?”

“She’s on the newer side,” Midoriya says. His smile’s looking a little insane. “Are you ready yet?”

“Just a sec.” Magne sprays Tomura again, then attaches three motion-capture dots to his forehead. “There we go. All set.”

Tomura stands up, but he doesn’t get clear fast enough to avoid Magne’s customary ass-slap. “Break a leg,” she says.

“Thanks.” Tomura slinks out of the costume tent, already in a mood.

They drive to the site in one of the various beat-to-shit Jeeps Midoriya inherited from the person who directed the last X-Men movie. Midoriya drives, which is bad all on its own, but halfway there, Tomura realizes there’s someone missing. “Don’t we need Aizawa on this?”

“Aizawa’s choreographing the first big fight scene. Most of the actors haven’t done real swordfighting before, so it’s taking a while.” Midoriya’s grip on the steering wheel goes white-knuckled in a way that makes Tomura wonder if he should be bailing out of the car. He’s pretty sure he can do it without getting a single bruise. “Even if it’s just for a few tracking shots before we cut away to you – sorry, Dabi – chasing Psylocke, it needs to look good.”

That’s fair. Tomura hates a lazy background shot, on the rare occasions when he watches a movie. Midoriya glances at him. “I know you said you read the script, but – give me your take on what’s going on in the scene.”

Tomura’s heard Midoriya ask people that before. Correction: He’s heard him ask actors before. “I’m not an actor.”

“There’s not a ton of dialogue in this scene. The physical aspect has to tell the story,” Midoriya says. “So?”

He’s not going to let this go. Tomura decides to get it over with. “During the main fight, Psylocke lifts the artifact everybody’s fighting over and runs. Quicksilver goes to catch her, but she uses her mutation to slow down time around him, which puts him on the same playing field as she is. They fight, he pulls her mask off, and figures out she used to be on his side. Then she cheap-shots him and escapes with half the artifact. Did I get it?”

Midoriya nods, but he’s frowning. “Quicksilver and Psylocke are foil characters in this interpretation of the story. He’s Magneto’s son and she’s part of a family of heroes. When they recognize each other, it should be a shock – they’re not just seeing a friend who’s now an enemy, they’re each seeing the person they should have been. So the back half of the fight should, like, reflect that.”

Tomura doesn’t do emotional turmoil. “You want Dabi for this.”

“That was the plan,” Midoriya says. He sighs. “Just – do your best, okay?”

Tomura was doing high-wire stunts while Midoriya was still in high school. He doesn’t need hyping up for a swordfight he can do in his sleep. But just because he can do it in his sleep doesn’t mean the actress Midoriya pulled out of a cattle call will be any good at it. “Does Psylocke 2.0 know what she’s doing?”

“That’s why I picked her.”

Huh. Tomura crosses his arms over his chest and slouches in his seat for the remainder of the ride.

The site is up on a bluff, in a stretch of forest thick enough that barely any sunlight gets through. “This is supposed to be a nighttime scene, but thanks to the tree cover we can fake it,” Midoriya explains as he parks the Jeep and scrambles out. “Hey, guys! Over here!”

The crew looks like they’ve been waiting a while. Tomura knows most of them after spending the last seven years on the sets of various X-Men movies and hanging out at C-list afterparties. Of the group, he really only gets along with Spinner, who handles props. Everybody else is just someone else to be irritated with when they inevitably start bossing Tomura around. He props his feet on the dashboard and waits for something to happen.

“Psylocke! Quicksilver! Over here!”

Midoriya’s beckoning to him. Tomura forgot about Midoriya’s habit of using character names during shoots, and he thought Dabi was just using it as something to bitch about until right now. It’s annoying as hell. Tomura gets out of the car and skulks over, but someone else gets there first. Midoriya’s talking to her as Tomura approaches. “I know the script says you’re shooting with Dabi, but he, um, doesn’t do swordfights, so he sent his stunt double instead.”

“Oh.”

“It’s not you,” Midoriya says hurriedly. “He’s just having an off day.”

“An off year,” Tomura corrects. Midoriya jumps, steps aside, and gives Tomura his first look at you.

He sees right away what Magne meant about your hair – you match Psylocke’s design from the comments in length and color, even if the texture’s wrong. You’re a little shorter than the original actress, and you don’t look like an actress, even though the makeup artists already got to you. Actresses in big-budget films look a lot like each other, because they’re all wearing the same makeup and getting the same plastic surgeries, and they’re all the same kind of hot. You look way too much like a person. Like you should be behind the camera, not in front of it.

As Tomura sizes you up, he’s well aware that you’re doing the same thing to him, probably having the same thoughts. But you smile and hold out your hand to shake. “Hi. I’m looking forward to working with you.”

Tomura shakes your hand for lack of anything better to do. “Go see Spinner for props,” Midoriya instructs, “and think about how you want to do this. Maybe get in character also? I’m not sure how many takes we’ll get before the light changes.”

“Got it,” you say. “Spinner is –”

“The guy with the swords,” Tomura says. It’s hard not to roll his eyes, and it gets harder when you fall into step beside him. Spinner is waiting for you both behind the props table. “Hey.”

“I was expecting Dabi,” Spinner says, picking up a sword. When Tomura reaches for it, Spinner chucks it to one side and lifts another. “I was gonna give him that one, but you’re better than he is, so I can trust you with this.”

Instead of the kodachi, he’s holding out a tachi to Tomura. “See how you like the balance on that. And for you, Psylocke – one katana, coming right up.”

Tomura keeps one eye on you and your sword while he’s testing the balance on his. You’re not being stupid with it, at least not yet. Holding it properly is the lowest possible bar, but Tomura’s met plenty of actors who can’t even manage that, and at least your grip looks solid. You walk a few steps away to practice sheathing and unsheathing it, and Spinner elbows Tomura. He nods in your direction. “What do you think?”

“What rock did Midoriya find her under?”

“I think she’s a stage actor,” Spinners says. Great. “Mainly musicals. She’s never gotten cast as anything bigger than an understudy.”

Tomura would facepalm, except he’s holding a sword. “Still,” Spinner says speculatively, “the director’s not a total moron. He must have seen something he likes.”

“Yeah. He likes not having to blow the costume budget on a wig,” Tomura says, probably a little too loudly. He sees your shoulders stiffen, and you turn to face him. You don’t look like you’re going to cry or anything, but Tomura’s been wrong about that before. “What?”

“I was just going to ask if you wanted to practice, or if we’re doing it blind,” you say. Before Tomura can answer, you make the decision. “I say blind. It’ll look more authentic if we’ve never fought each other before.”

Tomura likes that idea, if only because the chaos will mask his total lack of acting skills, but he was counting on a practice round to test your actual abilities. Still, it’s your funeral. “Fine by me. I’m not going to go easy on you or anything.”

“I’m glad,” you say, and smile. Tomura already saw you smile once, but it was nowhere close to being this spooky. You have to be doing it on purpose. “I wasn’t planning to go easy on you, either.”

Tomura should say something – maybe along the lines of ‘we just got off on the wrong foot, don’t cut my fucking head off’ – but before he can, Midoriya orders everyone to places. He must have given you instructions ahead of time, because you vanish into the trees, leaving Tomura to follow Midoriya’s hyperspecific directions for hitting his first mark. “We’re just going to roll,” he says, as Tomura steps out of frame and braces himself to run. “I’ll call cut once things go sideways.”

Things go sideways in choreographed fight scenes all the time. Things going sideways in an improvised fight is a guarantee. “Right.”

“Psylocke, are you set?”

“Set,” you call out from somewhere.

Midoriya takes a deep breath, like he’s the one who’s about to start a fake fight. “Okay. Action!”

Fake-running and skidding to a stop isn’t Tomura’s specialty or anything, but he can make it work. He hits the mark Midoriya specified, raises his hand to the hilt of his sword without drawing it, and takes a look around. Right here and now, there’s no reason for Quicksilver to think that someone’s about to attack him. Even Psylocke using her powers to slow him down could just be a tactic to ensure her escape. She’s basically already escaped. All Quicksilver has to do is wait for her grip on time to slacken, and then –

A twig snaps behind Tomura and he throws himself forward into a roll, pivoting as he gets to his knees and drawing his sword in the same moment. You put a lot of strength and a lot of momentum into your first strike, and if this was a real fight, Tomura would be injured or dead. As it is, you checked yourself at the last second, and you take your time settling into your next attack, giving Tomura just a second or two to plan out his own.

No attack yet. His wingspan is wider than yours and the blade of his sword is longer, which means the first step for Quicksilver to avoid a katana through the neck is to get out of Psylocke’s range. You’re not screwing around, so Tomura won’t, either – he picks up a handful of leaf litter, throws it into your face, and gets to a safe distance, remembering at the last second to make it look even sort of stylized. It’s a movie, after all.

You’re taking it seriously. The suddenness of your first attack has Tomura on edge, and the lack of any direction or choreography means he’s got no idea what you’re going to do. They won’t be in the back half of the fight until he pulls your mask down, and haphazard grabs look stupid on camera. He needs to get your mask on the first try, and between now and then, he needs to put on a show.

Tomura strikes at you, and you duck, pivot, halfway inside his guard before he can reverse the strike. But you’re in too close to use your katana effectively – on purpose – and Tomura aims a punch at your torso, hoping you know how to fake a hit. You do. You exhale sharply, jerk backwards, and Tomura separates from you again.

Who the hell are you? Where did you come from? Why are you going this hard? It occurs to Tomura as he parries your counterstrike and returns a few of his own that these are the same thoughts Quicksilver would be having if any of this was real. Now that Tomura’s introduced hand-to-hand combat into the equation, you start using it, too, throwing a high kick that brushes ever so slightly against Tomura’s jaw. Tomura snaps his head sideways to make it look good, then lurches backwards in response to a fake punch to the solar plexus. He’s holding his own, and he’s in control of the fight, but to the camera and everybody else it’s going to look like Psylocke is handing Quicksilver his ass.

And you should be. Tomura underestimated you, then insulted you, and now you’re making him pay. But as interesting as the fight’s getting, it’s a movie, not a grudge match. Tomura shortens his attacks and you step in closer, close enough for him to grab your mask. Or it would be, if your face was where it’s supposed to be. Instead you’ve gotten all the way inside Tomura’s guard, stepped across him, and grabbed his shoulder with your free hand – and now you’re throwing him over your hip to the ground.

You’ve got the physical strength to pull it off – Tomura can feel it – but he gives you some help anyway, making the resulting fall look even harder than it’s supposed to. He lands flat on his back with you poised above him, pinning him down with your katana at the ready. Now would be a great time to grab the artifact, since it’s hanging on a loop around your neck, but Tomura’s got his orders, as stupid as they are. He reaches up, seizes the mask over your mouth and nose, and pulls it down.

You really can act. Tomura watches your expression shift from startled to shocked to something else, and you recoil backwards away from him. Tomura’s slow to rise, because Quicksilver’s supposed to be shocked, too. Dabi’s going to have to deal with whatever character choices Tomura’s making here, and he’s going to be pissed. Tomura doesn’t care. If Dabi wanted to have a say over what this fight looks like, he should have done it himself.

You’re pulling your mask over your face, pressing it down. You’re so busy with it that Tomura almost gets away clean with grabbing the artifact from around your neck. You catch him at the last minute and pull it back, and it splits cleanly between his hand and yours. You take one artfully reckless swing with your katana and Tomura ducks back just a little farther than he needs to. Which is when you turn and run, booking it out of frame and towards the far edge of the woods.

Some camera guy – Iida, Tomura thinks – chases after you. Tomura’s off the hook, but he holds still anyway. He’s gotten yelled at more than a few times for moving before the director’s officially called cut. But Midoriya isn’t calling cut. He keeps not calling it. Tomura can hear him, though. He’s muttering to himself.

“Hey, boss-man!” hollers the unit director – Togata, or something. “Want to call a cut?”

“Oh, oops! Cut! Definitely cut.” Midoriya sounds like he couldn’t give less of a shit. When Tomura turns to look at him, he’s got a notebook and he’s writing furiously. And mumbling again. Tomura’s worked with a lot of directors and more than a few weird ones, and once he rules out the hand fetishist and the guy who wanted the fight scenes to include real knives and real blood, Midoriya’s definitely the weirdest.

You come back from wherever you ran off to, and you don’t seem to think Midoriya’s as weird as everyone else does. “Are we waiting for notes?”

“Huh?”

“After we run a scene in a stage show, we get notes,” you say. You’re not quite breathing hard. Neither is Tomura. “Do you not do that around here?”

“Nah,” Togata or whoever says. “Usually the director just hollers at whoever screws up and makes everybody do another take.”

“Okay,” you say slowly. “Who screwed up? Was it me?”

“You certainly took some liberties with the scene,” Iida says. “The original intent –”

“You want original intent, don’t tell us to improv,” Tomura says. The fight with you was maybe the most intense fight scene he’s ever done. When Midoriya inevitably nixes it, Tomura wants a copy. He addresses you. “It wasn’t you. Somebody on the sound side probably fucked up.”

“Excuse me?” The sound tech – maybe Jiro? – looks like she wants to club Tomura to death with a boom mic. “I fucked up? If you two hadn’t gotten all –”

“Midoriya,” Togata sings out, patting Midoriya on the shoulder. Midoriya jumps. “Hey! Good to have you back! Should we get set for another take?”

“No.”

Mirio looks confused. He’s not the only one. “Are we taking this one back to the drawing board?”

“No.” Midoriya shuts his notebook and looks up, his eyes shining in the crazy way movie people get when they have a really wild idea. “That was the take. We’re done.”

“What?”

“That was it.” Midoriya’s grinning. “It was perfect.”

Now you look weirded out. Finally. “No notes?”

“We need some close-ups, but –” Midoriya grabs his radio and hollers for somebody to put Dabi in his costume “ – you guys did a great job. Like, even the timing – it’s going to be so easy to use those beats for close-ups, and all the character stuff – you were so in sync it was scary, but emotionally you were each totally on your own journey, and it looked –”

“Hey, take a breath. Don’t faint,” Jiro instructs. Midoriya sucks down some air, and Jiro turns to you. “You did your first fight scene in one take. Congrats.”

Spinner lifts the sword out of Tomura’s hand, then takes the two halves of the artifact from both of you. Tomura’s done here for now. He’ll hitch a ride back on the Jeep that brings Dabi up and find a place to nap. Hopefully. He feels a little too keyed up to take a break right now.

You’re still standing there, looking sort of dazed. It annoys Tomura for a second, until he remembers that you’re used to understudying in musicals, not shooting superhero movies. “Hey,” he says, and you startle. “That was a solid fight. You’re better than I thought.”

“That’s not hard,” you say. “All I had to do to be better than you thought I’d be was to not impale myself or anybody else.”

“I haven’t seen you work before today. Sue me,” Tomura says. “You know what you’re doing. That was a really good fight.”

You shrug. It pisses Tomura off. Fishing for compliments always does, and Tomura hates it – but instead of telling you to grow up, he tries to hit you over the head with it for real. “You might not know your head from your ass yet, but I do, and it was a good scene. I haven’t had a fight like that in –”

Years? A decade? Tomura doesn’t think he’s ever been in a fake fight that felt real without actually feeling unsafe. “That’s the best one I’ve done in a long time,” he says finally. “You’re a real actress now. That modesty shit isn’t cute.”

You shrug again and make your way over to where Midoriya and Iida are talking. You’re probably going to ask Midoriya if you did something wrong, and he’ll get weird and reshoot the whole thing. Or he won’t, and he’ll think you’re insecure, which drives most directors up the wall. The fight scene was good on the first take. That never happens. Excuse Tomura for wanting to enjoy it.

“Shigaraki,” Spinner says from behind Tomura, and Tomura looks at him. “That’s not how you talk to girls.”

“Huh?”

“You, like – negged her. A lot,” Spinner says. Bullshit. Tomura knows what negging is. He knows he wasn’t doing it. “You told her she sucks, and then you told her she doesn’t suck as much as you thought she did. And then you trashed her whole career before now –”

“When did I do that?” Tomura’s done with this. “I said she knew what she was doing.”

“Uh, yeah. She took you to the cleaners on camera,” Spinner says. “And I hate to be the one to say this, but you looked really into it.”

What does he mean, into it? Tomura was doing his job. If he doesn’t get into it, he has to do extra takes. “So, like I said,” Spinner continues, “if you want to talk to girls and have it go anywhere, you have to give actual compliments. Not just tell her you’re surprised she wasn’t worse.”

“That’s not what I said,” Tomura growls. He doesn’t like anything about this conversation – not what Spinner’s implying, not what Spinner’s telling him to do. “Since when do you give me advice about girls?”

“Since I’ve gone on a date in the last six months,” Spinner says without blinking. “When was the last time you went out?”

“I’ve been busy.”

“Dabi spent the last six months in rehab. You could have gotten out there,” Spinner says. Tomura glares at him. “All you did was work out and play League.”

“That’s what I was busy doing,” Tomura says. “I don’t need lessons on talking to girls.”

“Sure,” Spinner says. “Give her a real compliment next time. It’ll help.”

It’ll help with what? Tomura doesn’t know what Spinner thought he saw, but whatever it is, it wasn’t there. Tomura doesn’t date actresses. Or actors, in spite of what a bunch of Dabi’s fans seem to think is going on between the two of them. And even if Tomura was going to date an actress, he wouldn’t date somebody like you – somebody new to all of this, somebody naïve, somebody whose confidence can barely survive a single hit. Maybe you’ll be the kind of actress Tomura would date if you make it through this shoot alive. The fact that no actress would ever date Tomura doesn’t matter at all.

Even if this is the only blockbuster you ever do, he’ll get to fight you at least one more time. There’s another fight scene between Quicksilver and Psylocke later on in the script. As Tomura leans against a tree waiting for his ride to show up while you talk way too earnestly to Midoriya, he finds that he’s already looking forward to it.

[wanderingaldecaldo]

An open letter to the Cyberpunk fandom in general, and a few people in particular

It’s time to clear the air, and I want to take responsibility where appropriate.

Before we get into the recent drama, a history lesson is in order, both for the newer people in fandom and for those who have been around and just haven’t heard things from my side. This might be long with all the linked posts, so buckle up.

I don’t talk much to people about my experiences in fandom for several reasons — first, I don’t like to talk about others with people I don’t know; gossiping with friends is one thing, but otherwise it’s an undesirable trait. Because I’m human and fallible and absolutely capable of failing to meet my own standards, I have violated that rule, and it rarely does anything good. Second, even when I do share, people don’t tend to believe me because the responsible party, PinkyDude (PKD), has been “so nice” to them. “Surely there was a misunderstanding” is the most common response. 

No, there’s been no misunderstanding. He has harassed me repeatedly, both directly and indirectly, and has deleted most of the posts he’s made or reblogged from his friends/mutuals/followers that would serve as proof of this harassment. I could dig up old screenshots that people sent or I saved myself after being told of a post’s existence, but honestly I don’t want to go through that dreck again; my mental health is worth more to me than that. Instead I’ll present in my own words what happened to me over the last three years. I have spoken publicly about him three times before now — four if you count my response to the anon, which never referenced him or his ship. All of those posts are still visible and will be linked. I told you this would be a long read, but you need the context.

I joined Tumblr in spring/early 2021, back when I only wrote fic and played on console. PKD blocked me the first time I posted my fic, as is his right. As I was new to Tumblr, I didn’t understand the Tumblr app was actually telling me I was blocked whenever I clicked on the links on Discord, so I thought it was just bad software. Spoiler: it’s still bad software (affectionate). When I found out I was blocked, I was upset; I didn’t know about RSD at the time. I sent one anon asking why he blocked people; I was just a lowly AO3 author and he was the big, popular modder, and I was baffled and very upset and should have closed the browser, to be honest. He answered and explained why he blocked people (totally valid!! I will continue to emphasize that!) and shared how blocked people could still view his blog in a number of ways. Honestly, it was too much work for me to go through all of those steps, so I moved on with my life.

Not long after, he did unblock me for a few weeks and posted how someone had shown him how to filter posts. He messaged me to tell me I was unblocked, and we exchanged a few courteous messages. I believe I asked if it would be okay if I followed him. I know he expressed concern about me feeling discomfort at his ship. I don’t remember my exact response but I said I thought they were cute. That was the whole point of me joining fandom — I want to share love for blorbos! Things were civil, as far as I knew, though based on his comments later, it seems he and I had two completely different experiences. Where I believed I was polite and tried to be respectful to someone who had established boundaries, he accused me of being spiteful and vengeful. Soon after I started taking my own VP (with Mitch) he blocked me again. He sent a message to apologize that he needed to do it, and made a vague post that was directed to me, I assume, as it was something like “Sorry I tried” or whatever, and I moved on with my life, or tried. I still saw his Mitch pics in Discord servers when people shared them, though I saw fewer that were just Mitch alone.

The first time I spoke about PKD was Fall 2021, during the “not PKD approved” debacle, where someone (a follower of his! Not my follower! I cannot stress that enough!) reblogged a gif of Val and Mitch with the tag “not PKD approved.” I shared a screenshot with friends because, uh, that’s what you do, right? That’s what anyone would do — share a screenshot of an offensive tag with friends. One of those friends, a writer who had published Mitch/V on AO3 and also received anon hate on their Mitch fics, thought it was funny and used it for their Discord status. Someone shared that status with PKD, and he made vague accusations about who started the hashtag. 

I publicly defended a person who thought they were being accused, a friend at the time, and made the only statement about him that I regret and would take back — I commented on his propensity for reblogging posts that emphasize having the right to block people. I shouldn’t have said that, it wasn’t appropriate, and I apologize. Of course everyone has the right to block people for whatever reason they want. I disagree with what I said then and retract it now. 

Back to how I was targeted... Remember that it was my post that someone tagged with another person’s name; another person who had me blocked because of their jealousy about seeing anyone else with Mitch. I never named the person who tagged my post, yet I was deemed the perpetrator. Many months later, Zwei DMed me when we shared a small server to offer the most non-apology apology ever for telling people that I started the hashtag. Thanks, Zwei! Almost makes up for the other lies you told about me!

The second time was my response to the anon I got trying to “educate” me after the Pawel stream. I never referenced PKD or his ship. We’ll come back to this more in-depth later because it’s what PKD keeps using to harass me.

The third time I spoke publicly about PKD was when Silvay (sp?) posted first on Twitter, then later Tumblr. I posted a follow up the next day. I debated not saying anything. I’m an avoidant person. I don’t like conflict. I have a loud bark and no bite. My former team members can attest to this. But when I do... I don’t make public statements I’m not willing to defend, which is why everything I have linked is still published.

I do recommend stopping to read the posts linked here, and even the other posts I reblogged at the time from other people who shared their own experiences with PKD and the fandom. As I said, I don’t make public statements I won’t defend; or at least apologize and issue a public retraction. But, if you want to stay with the present and would rather have the TL;DR: I was regularly vagued about by PKD or his friends/followers, calling me transphobic and homophobic; one accused me of corrective rape; and I got tired of it.

I thought that posting publicly might bring some closure. It was cathartic to finally get it out and stop carrying that shame, and it was reassuring to hear from people who had similar experiences. At the same time, quite a few people made their own posts along the lines of “HE WAS ALWAYS NICE TO ME”. 

Oh, but he’s always been nice to me!

Look me in the eyes. Look me in the eyes and tell me that you truly believe he would be nice to you if you shipped with Mitch. Do you really believe he would? Do you think he would “block and move on” with you, unlike how he did with me?

None of those people shipped with Mitch, or other characters that people in his clique were protective over. A few months later he made a post saying not to tag me with him, and listed off every screenname I had used since I joined fandom, including the very first tumblr name I was assigned in 2021 and kept for several months because I thought it was funny. How’s that for a dog whistle? Want PKD’s attention? Better not tag wash!! [I’m sure there’s a screenshot somewhere but again, I didn’t have the energy to find it.]

By the way, why do I know all this? If I’m blocked, I shouldn’t see anything he posts without circumventing “the system”. We are mutually blocked and I don’t spy on him, or have my friends spy on him. I always knew what was going on because people were always quick to let me know anytime he was vaguing about me. “Friends” who were really concerned about the latest thing he said about me, or thought it was just terrible how people were always attacking my ship and wanted to share that feeling with me, but they only shared those thoughts in private. Slowly I separated myself from people who felt the need to keep me updated on drama, or some of them separated themselves from me and became friends with PKD, to the point that either nothing happened for some time or I just stopped seeing it, at least until last fall.

The last time I talked about him publicly was when I wrote about Fem V Friday in Fall 2023. Through the usual chain of vague posting about vague posts, a third person wrote a vague post and cast aspersions on the origin of Fem V Friday, suggesting it was created out of jealousy. PKD helpfully weighed in about a person named “W”  starting FVF from jealousy and spite, and implied he’s seen things I’ve said about him. I’d love to know what I’ve said, the context in which it was said, and the context in which he was told about what I said. 🤷

My post in response didn’t reference the vague post that spurred its creation, nor what PKD said about me, even though PKD must know my intentions and history better than me. I wrote about my love for Fem V and what drove my continued involvement week to week.

Despite my attempts to keep to my own corner or defend my name, PKD continues to defame and harass me. He has repeatedly dragged other people into his drama, sometimes my friends, just as he did in May when he brought up my anon response again. 

It was over two years ago now that I received the anon to “educate” me on Mitch being gay. I have never believed PKD sent the anon, despite his implications, and I have certainly never told anyone that he did.

Two years ago, a coward came into my inbox on anon and tried to bully me, and instead of spending a day writing five thousand words on “death of the author” and what constitutes canon and refuting the argument that I didn’t want to have, I used that energy to write about my ship in my favorite genre (smut) and published a fic on AO3. Neither my fic nor my response on tumblr referenced Mitch being gay or PKD’s ship. Before we go further, I encourage you to watch the relevant clip from the Pawel stream. It’s only 30 seconds of your time, but those 30 seconds are what PKD and others have used to justify their harassment of me.

The transcript for anyone not inclined to watch:

PKD: Am I right to overanalyze every detail in every place like the gay romance novel in Mitch's tent? Is that intentional? Pawel: My friend, on this stream, you could have learned already that everything is intentional...

The “gay romance novel in Mitch’s tent” is 1000 Beats Per Minute, a shard found all across Night City, nay, the continent as the shard/prop can be found in such locations as All Foods just after you meet Dum Dum, the foot of V’s bed in A10, and So Mi’s Brooklyn apartment. 

The contents of the shard are worth reading, if only for recognizing that the narrator is an ungendered person named “Alex” who is experiencing love for a man for the first time. Is Alex a man or a woman or neither? Whoever they are, Alex is having a queer experience, and to insist that the shard can only be about gay men is to erase a lot of other queer experiences.

Back to my anon response, PKD once again called my response transphobic and homophobic, though I will give him credit for saying he wasn’t calling me trans/homophobic, which is an upgrade from previous posts. He claims that I used the smut that I wrote as my response because I referenced writing “the smuttiest pussy eating smut I could”. I said “pussy eating” not in relation to anything about the claim that Mitch is gay, but as response to the intentions of the anon, which were never good.

The full context of my words: 

Not entirely sure what you were trying to accomplish with this message, anon. Should I pack up my words and keyboard and go home? See if it's too late to return my gaming PC because I can't take screenshots of Mitch anymore? Whatever your goal was, you pushed me to write the smuttiest pussy eating smut I could imagine. You know who wins today? - I do, because I wrote a shitload of words in one day and finished a piece that didn't even exist 8hrs ago - people who want more Fem V/Mitch content do - my meat husband does bc damn, I wrote 1800 words of smut today - not you

PKD is claiming that my description of smut I wrote about my ship is trans/homophobic.

The description of the smut I wrote about a cis bisexual female (Val) whose pussy was eaten by her cis bisexual male partner (Mitch). 

The smut I wrote about my ship, in which no one is trans or gay. 

You cannot apply the lens of PKD’s ship and characters to my writing and call it transphobic or homophobic. That’s not how literary analysis works. That’s not how social justice works.

The truth is that PKD and his mutuals/friends used his ship and beliefs to harass me. 

If that were me and it were my beliefs being used to harass someone on anon, I would demand whoever it was to stop immediately, not only because harassing people over fictional characters is awful and wrong, but good lord, to use me as the excuse? I would be mortified! Instead, PKD and his mutuals/followers used it as evidence of my being a bad person, and after several months of that, I borrowed Silvay’s courage when he posted on Twitter, and shared my own experience.

Now that we have the full background, let’s move on to recent drama and address the Flat Chest body and the wearable pecs mod, and what part I played in the process and when. This next part is for motherherbivore. I wish you had talked to me first. I thought I’d rate high enough for a DM. 

A Brief History of The Flat Chest Body Under Curation of Wash

I reached out to Na in March about helping update the Flat Chest body. I specifically wanted to update it to dynamic to take advantage of AXL’s dynamic clothing and, more importantly to me, reduce the number of clothing overrides I had to install for Hilary; plus I wanted to add toggle feet so I could have better options for shoes. Also I had another OC I’d been kicking around in my head, Grem, that I wanted to make using the flat chest. Grem did debut recently, but he changed drastically from my original vision for him.

Sharing the news with Kitty (shared with permission)

I started working on updating the mod in April but got stuck because I didn’t understand resource patching, even though I was sure it would be easy. :hidethepain: I tried adding the feet too, but everything I did resulted in a seam at the calves. As is all too common with my ADHD, I moved onto something else after getting stuck.

As I mentioned I was interested in dynamic AXL, and wanted to update my custom tee framework for Pride. With dynamic AXL, someone could generate all colors with all logos at once! (220, do not try this at home!) I included the dynamic version of the Flat Chest mesh in the upload to Nexus, even though the Flat Chest body wasn’t ready yet, but as a goal for me to also have it done in June.

I had the UV version working in early June, before the Angel body came out. I don’t remember if we already knew about the body’s existence at that point, but the community outcry against yet another unrealistic and fetishistic body mod sustained me in updating a mod that appealed to a small subset of fandom.

The message I sent to Na the morning I got it working

I got the UV version working first, since that’s what Hilary uses, then took a look at toggle feet again. After further investigation using both UV and VTK bodies, I realized there would always be a seam because the bodies were drastically different from the current body; they were completely different meshes underneath, and the seams would never line up properly. 

At that point I decided to release the functioning dynamic version without toggle feet, as I wanted to get it out for Pride. I reached out to mhb to test, as had always been my intention. For me Sanctuary is the most iconic OC to use the Flat Chest. After some technical difficulties I figured out that she used the vanilla version, and came back a few days later with a functioning vanilla version. I released my update once I had assembled the necessary files and pics from the testers, mhb included.

Later when PKD released the refits for his pecs, someone commented that the vanilla refits worked for the Flat Chest body. That’s been my only interest in his pecs mod — because people who use the Flat Chest were interested in having more clothing options. The release of the so-called “Flat Chest Detector” meant that Flat Chest body users wouldn’t be able to use the clothing refit for his wearable pecs, because it required using his pecs, which clipped with tattoos and cyberware — as is expected because it’s not a body mod, as he himself said on the mod page.

As the representative for the Flat Chest body, I agreed when streetkid-named-desire (Rat) asked me to be involved in the conversation with Berdagon about adapting their “Flat Chest” detector to recognize the Flat Chest body. Rat drove this conversation. I don’t say this to dump responsibility on them. In fact, I visited them last weekend and we talked through the situation. I suggested to Rat that I could have urged them to slow down, but they refused to let me take that responsibility, and at the end of the day they’re right — I can only control my own actions.

I do have one regret and one opportunity where I could have acted differently: when Rat asked Berdagon about the original script, Rat very explicitly asked whether the script was commissioned by PKD, and if so, Rat stated they were willing to pay to make changes; Berdagon never answered the question, and I wish I had pushed for an answer. Perhaps that could have prevented the entire situation; we could have stopped right then. While Berdagon never mentioned payment, Rat was so excited by how quickly they implemented the requested changes that they tipped them for the work.

Berdagon, the original script writer, owed PKD the responsibility to check in before modifying something that PKD paid for. Yes, Berdagon does have responsibility here as a professional who took money for a commission. When they didn’t answer the question, I could have stopped the process and pushed for an answer. I would have stopped things immediately upon hearing the answer that the script had been commissioned by PKD. PKD could still have been outraged at Rat asking for changes, but there wouldn’t have been fandom-wide drama about a body that only a dozen people use.

That’s the responsibility I will take — I, as a professional who works with consultants and freelancers, could have taken steps to ensure that everyone was acting professionally, including the person who received money twice to work on the same script.

Because I feel the need to be thorough in my explanation, here’s a simplified timeline of the release of the Flat Chest mod compared to the wearable pecs:

Late March - I receive files from Na for Flat Chest

April - I get stuck, stop working on it

April-May - I figure out dynamic AXL and convert tee framework

June 3 - I have a working dynamic UV Flat Chest

In response to outcry over the Angel body, PKD makes a poll asking what body types people want refits for and excludes Flat Chest body as an option

In response to people commenting over why Flat Chest wasn’t included, PKD explains he won’t support the body and that he would support a different Flat Chest body if someone made it

June 10 - I share the UV version for testing with several people. Two of those people, including mhb, use vanilla. I didn’t realize that, and because I didn’t name the file `UV` it took a long time to troubleshoot why things weren’t working

PKD releases the pecs

I share vanilla for testing

I post Flat Chest 2.0 before the end of June

I didn’t use you, mhb. I asked you to test because, like I said above and on Nexus, Sanctuary is the Flat Chest character for me. I asked you to test because I make mods for my friends first and foremost, and I thought you were my friend. I thought you were my friend because we’d known each other for several years now, and because of shared experiences and conversations we’ve had. I’ve been wrong before about who is a friend, and this one stings a lot.

I’m tired. I am 30 or 40 (or 50) years old and I do not need this. I have a career and a job I love, and an amazing partner who I’ve been with for a third of my life now. I have friends and hobbies in meatspace and friends who share those hobbies, and the real truth is, if I was actually trans/homophobic, well, that number would be tiny, but it’s not. I have a life that I love and that is full of joy. Most people in fandom only know the smallest fraction of the real wash, and I do not take pleasure in being targeted in a public fandom “feud”.

PKD, I say this with all the kindness I can muster for another human being who is clearly hurting: please get help. Go to therapy or see a psychiatrist or use whatever tools you can access. This obsession you have with me and my ship is not healthy for you, and your repeated pattern of bullying has hurt me and people close to me, just as your need to rehash old fandom drama hurts the community.

[aphroditessaturn]

𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐒𝐔𝐍𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐄 || 𝐌.𝐎

pairing || miguel o'hara x venom!fem!reader

summary || Miguel is cold, bossy and grumpy. You on the other hand are warm, considerate and sunshine. The two of you couldn't be more different, but that’s exactly why you were made for each other

warnings || no smut, just fluff! I wanted smut but then didn't have the motivation for it so here it is. ngl I kinda hate it, but I'll let you be the judge of that

note || this does not fully follow the story line of the movie - none of my fics do, just wanted to put that out there. This is for all my girls who want to be a sunshine but are not and of course for our sunshines! who are too cute too walk this earth. Also someone please tell me they have the same problem that they just don' wanna disappoint anyone. please reblog/comment and give feedback!

legend || ven aquí, cariño. ¿Por qué estás llorando?  = ?come here, darling. Why are you crying?; ten cuidado cariño = be careful honey; mi amor = my love

BLOGS | WEBSITE | AO3 | WATTPAD | TAGLIST

Saving a universe was nothing new to you, only the Spider-Man you just met was. Miles Morales, a young boy who wore a black and red suit and was amazed by the people he just met.

It seemed he already knew Gwen, but Hobie and Pavitr were yet unknown to him as were you. For a while you just observed them before holding out your hand for him, introducing yourself. You adored how excited he was, “he looks yummy too,” a voice in your head-butted in. “Venom, stop it!” you giggled and turned all the attention to you.

Miles tilted his head up in confusion, “who are you talking to?” he questioned looking around.

“Oh, my symbiont Venom, because of him I have this cool suit,” you gushed showing off your suit. Your whole body was covered in black, with one huge white spider on your chest and unlike most your mask only covered your eyes, making them look white.

Your hair was slicked back to prevent any loose strands from falling into your face. The rest of your hair was open with dark strands of black.

“Yeah, she got this weird thing inside ‘er,” Hobie said and pointed at you as behind you a tentacle emerged, Venom heard exactly what Spider-Punk said. As a result, he lunged at him, which Hobie could duck, “come on, mate!”

“You know better than that!” you gently scolded him with a grin as Venom retrieved himself.

Jessica interrupted the moment, telling Miles that Miguel wanted him in the HQ, with excitement you jumped up and down. “You’re gonna love it in the HQ, everyone’s so cool,” you explained and followed Jess, “he’s already waiting for you,” she whispered to you. Her words made your heartbeat faster.

You all walked through the HQ, though you had a tad more speed on you than the others, “someone’s got a pap in their step,” Venom teased you, but he was already aware of how much you loved Miguel.

“Well why wouldn’t I? I haven’t seen him in forever,” you spoke out aloud, “yesterday, you saw him yesterday,” he told you. Playfully you rolled your eyes at him, smiling to yourself at the thought of your boyfriend.

No one paid your conversation any attention, besides Miles who was still amazed how you talked with Venom.

Quickly he caught up with you, “so that thing in your head…what exactly is it?” he asked you. “Thing? I’m not a thing!” Venom got louder in your head, you chuckled at his actions.

“He’s an alien who was brought to earth, at first he wanted to kill everyone,” “still kinda do,” but now he wants to fight the bad guys,” you told Miles and ignored Venom’s comment. It wasn’t true, he was just being protective over you.

“An alien? That’s so cool, but is he like a parasite?” Oh, no. Venom hated the word ‘parasite’, “what did that little shit just say?” “Hey, calm down, he didn’t mean to be rude. Miles is just curious,” you tried to smooth Venom and excused yourself for a moment.

Miles stood back dumbfounded, processing what just happened as suddenly an arm wrapped over his shoulder, “you’ll get used to it,” Hobie shrugged.

When you were a few more steps away from them Venom’s head came from your shoulder looking as dangerous as ever. “You can’t take to heart everything that people say,” you said with a smile, “but I’m not a parasite,” he argued. You noticed him pouting to which you giggled, “don’t be sad, you’re not! Ignore it.”

Venom could be a real drama queen but enjoyed it just as much, he was just too cute when he was mad.

After he felt better you rejoined the group who now stood by Miguel’s platform, with one jump you were next to him. Miguel looked as grumpy as ever, once he saw you however his face lit up a little.

“We finished our mission successfully,” you told him with a proud smile as you came to a stop in front of him. “Mhm, I saw that…you did an amazing job mi amor,” the last part was only meant for your ears, whispered just loud enough for you to hear.

You interlocked your fingers with his and looked up at him with heart shaped eyes. Your expression held pure adoration for Miguel and his was no different.

Miguel would do everything for you - does everything for you. Because for him you were the apple of his eye, the one he got a second chance with and would never lose again.

“Miles meet Miguel O’Hara,” Gwen introduced the two, Miguel glared at them. He knew Miles already - hell he knew everyone - and wasn’t fond of the boy - okay there were like three or four people Miguel liked.

Suddenly Venom decided to make an appearance and stick his head out, moving between you and Miguel, “he called me a parasite,” internally you smacked Venom, that little drama queen. Miles jumped back once he saw what came from your shoulder, Venom did his usual scary face.

Miles caught himself and started telling Miguel how he could speak Spanish too, that he got him an Empanada. Long story short, Miguel didn’t like it and threw the Empanada across the room. From the corner of your eye, you saw Hobie snatching the Empanada which caused you to giggle lightly.

The sound made Miguel relax a little, but he was still in rage over Miles which was interrupted by Peter Parker, “go easy on him Miguel, he had a terrible teacher.”

Excitement overtook you as you saw him, “Mayday!” you shouted and jumped from the platform, “ten cuidado cariño,” Miguel called after you, concern laced in his tone. The toddler reached her hands out for you, and you gladly took her.

You walked with her back to Miguel, “hold on tight yeah?” you told her and jumped back up to Miguel.

“Oh, of course that would explain why he blows holes into the multiverse,” Miguel snapped at Peter, his words made your ears perk up. You thought you had ended the mission with success, but if there were holes then that would mean the opposite.

“I thought we were successful,” you voiced your concern to your boyfriend who looked at you. Suddenly he was at a loss of words, how could he tell you that saving the people was wrong? It tore his heart apart when he saw your disappointed expression, he decided on the only thing he could bear.

“You did, the mission you had was successful,” assured you, the answer had you confused. Was your mission different from the others?

When he spoke to you his voice turned softer, more considerate as when he talked to Miles and Peter. He didn't want to hurt your feelings hence why he couldn't tell you.

For a moment you studied him, you weren't stupid you knew something was up. The look on his face told you that saving the people was wrong, the canon had been broken. You pouted, you hated upsetting anyone, especially Miguel.

Miguel’s body language drastically changed, his once confident and intimidating posture faltered. His expression was helpless, “mi amor, please don’t pout, you did the right thing. It’s what you do,” his hand rested on your heated cheeks. You looked up at him, teary eyes and not knowing what to do.

“You don’t need to sweet talk me, we should’ve let the canon event happen and not stop it…,” you said, all of a sudden not being able to meet his eyes, instead looking down at your feet.

“Hold on, why is what she did right and I did wrong?” Miles questioned, pointing at you. He was offended, Miguel had lectured him and Gwen but you get away with it? “Shouldn’t she know better as well?” he added, taking a step forward.

Miguel turned back to the boy, face hard and a cold stare. He stood tall, posture back with a hint of possessiveness.

“It’s not the first time you blew a hole into the multiverse and you think you can just come here and act as if you didn’t do anything?” Miguel’s rage picked up with every second he looked at Miles.

The reason why he didn’t lecture you wasn’t because he loved you – though a part of him didn’t because of that – but because you went on the mission last minute. You weren’t supposed to come with them, you didn’t know what event had to happen.“Miguel, I’m sorry,” you said, trying to calm the situation, “don’t take it out on Miles,” you lifted your head to meet his eyes, hand gently touching his forearm.

Everything was wiped away the moment he heard your soft voice, felt your touch. His blood pressure calmed down, relaxing slightly when turned to meet your gaze. No, it wasn’t your fault, you shouldn’t have to apologize.

“This isn’t over, now go,” Miguel snapped at the three Spider-Man variants before giving you his full attention.

You felt guilty, maybe you shouldn’t but you did. You have been in the society almost as long as Miguel and should’ve informed yourself about the mission. Now here you were the reason Miles and Gwen got a lecture from your boyfriend while you thought the mission went well. Apparently not.

“Stop it, mi amor. I can see your thoughts running. You did nothing wrong, I could have told you what needed to be done,” his tone was soft, quiet.

Miguel laid his hands on your cheeks, thumb stroking over your temple and resting his forehead against yours. That was when he felt the first tear running along his hand, “vYou wrapped your arms around his middle, hugging him as tight as you could.

“I disappointed you,” you mumbled into his chest, fingers interlocking to keep him as close as possible. He closed his eyes, his heart burned with pain.

He hated seeing you fault yourself for something that wasn’t your fault. You also didn’t disappoint him, it was an impossible task, “mi amor, if there is one thing you could never do is disappoint me. Yes, you broke the canon, but you didn’t know what was canon and I will not fault you for that.”

You sniffed, his words only made it partly better but his hug. Oh, his hug made everything better. Miguel O’Hara gave the best hugs in the world.

— — — —

Miguel hated eating in the cafeteria. Everything and everyone was so loud, they wanted to talk, sit next to you and make their "funny" jokes.

You loved eating in the cafeteria. Everyone would tell their stories of whom they fought or just something funny.

If it weren't for you, Miguel wouldn't set a foot in there but you liked eating there so here he was. Sitting with you on one of the tables, as far away from everyone as possible.

He had his usual grumpy expression on while you told him about the cows you so the other day. Occasionally slipping Venom some of your french fries. The story of how you feed them warmed his heart, he could listen forever – until unwanted guests came.

"Hey, sunshine," Peter B. greeted you with Mayday sitting in front of his chest. The nickname was a common one amongst the spider people.

"Miguel, my friend! See I just wanted to come and ask you some things," he enthusiastically said and sat down beside him. Mayday escaped him and crawled towards you, Venom who had one of his tentacles out started playing with her.

"So I was thinking," Peter started and Miguel already let his head hang low, "why don't we make like a little get together to celebrate-," "dios mío, no," Miguel instantly shut down the idea.

"Come on, it will be fun!" Peter continued to try and convince Miguel, but it was no use.

"It's dangerous, we have missions and we can't ignore them," Miguel shook his head and went back to eating his food. Peter pouted and looked at you for help, you didn’t immediately notice him as you were busy with Mayday.

Once you did your eyes widened, quickly it downed on you what he was asking of you. “I think it could be fun, it doesn’t have to be big and nobody has to come.”

Miguel stopped eating and looked at you with a cocked brow, his expression was one you got often when you asked him for something because of someone else. Well he couldn’t exactly say no to you.

“Mhm, can’t say no huh?” Venom said to him as he showed his face, Miguel grumbled something under his breath which no one could make out.

“Fine,” he stated and got up from his seat to leave for his office, Venom turned his head to you, knowing you’d follow him. “You’re welcome! I’m already excited and we would love to come. Oh, you know what, I'm gonna bake some cupcakes with little spiders on top, they’re gonna look so cool!” you gushed at Peter with a huge grin before skipping after Miguel.

“Miguel this is gonna be so much fun, we gotta have music and food! Maybe you could bring some decoration, like these spider garlands you can get on Halloween,” you ranted, telling him all the ideas you had.

Your eyes were filled with excitement, it made Miguel happy to see how much you enjoyed planning this. He knew it was dangerous but maybe for one little moment it could be okay.

“Stop frowning,” you commented and nudged your hip against him, in response he rolled his eyes sitting down in his chair. Slightly offended, you gasped, “did you just roll your eyes at me.” Miguel chuckled and pulled you into his lap

“Don’t act as you never roll your eyes at me,” he argued to which you gave a huff, “I do not!”

His hands traveled along your waist, head leaning into the crook of your neck, “mhm, I seem to remember how your eyes roll when I have you filled to the brim with my cock,” his words made you shiver and cheeks heat up.

You whined when you felt his lips kiss along your neck, “Miggy,” he was teasing you. Arms wrapping around your waist to keep you close.

“How about we recreate that, mhm mi amor?” His voice was deep, filled with lust and you could feel his hardness pressing against your ass. Your panties were already drenched, thighs pressing together.

“Yup, that’s my que to leave.”

please reblog/comment and give feedback!

BLOGS | WEBSITE | AO3 | WATTPAD | TAGLIST

[pluckyredhead]

hi! i'm new to comics and i got in through reading your fics and wayne family adventures. i've since started reading more of the mainstream verse and i realized that most comic fans consider wfa to be totally fanon. you're one of the few i saw that disagrees. would you mind elaborating a lil on why? i'm too new to really form an opinion either way but i'd like to know your's!

(also yes i really did stalk your blog back years worth of posts i'm sorry! 😭😭)

Aw I love this! Welcome!

So I think it's really important to be clear on definitions here:

Canon means it's part of an official text. It's literally in a comic (or book or movie or other property) published or licensed by DC.

Fanon means it's made up by fans. That doesn't mean bad or good, it just means that it comes from fandom and is not part of the official text.

Wayne Family Adventures is an official licensed comic by DC, so by definition, it cannot be fanon. That doesn't mean everyone has to like it, but it's not a fan comic. It's an official DC product. It's not fanon.

Now, WFA isn't part of the main DCU canon. It takes place in a separate universe. The Jason in Batman #138 and the Jason in WFA are not the same and they are having very different experiences. (And I'm sure the Jason in WFA would be grateful if he knew.)

But that's no different than a comic that takes place in an alternate universe, like Dark Knights of Steel or DCeased, or a movie like Blue Beetle or a show like My Adventures with Superman. They all take place in their own universes, but all of those universes are canon. None of them are fanon.

What I think most people mean when they say WFA is fanon is that WFA draws on tropes and characterizations that are popular in fandom. Which...yes, absolutely. This is on purpose, and honestly, it pisses me off when people complain about it. (Not you, anon! Your question was lovely, you just triggered my unskippable cut scene of dialogue. Sorry lol.)

Wayne Family Adventures is probably the single best idea DC has had in the 20 years I've been reading comics. (The second best was the kids and YA graphic novel lines.)

I just checked, and WFA has 1.3 MILLION subscribers. That's more than every floppy comic starring Batman sells in a month, combined. It's more than literally any superhero comic has sold in decades - in this century! The combined strips have over A HUNDRED MILLION VIEWS. That is bonkerstown. That is a readership like DC hasn't seen since the 1970s. That is unparalleled success, and it's introducing characters like Kate Kane and Duke Thomas to a whole new audience.

Now, WFA was clearly designed to appeal to Batfans who were active on social media and fanfic sites like AO3 and Wattpad, and Webtoon readers. The readership of Webtoon is mostly young and female. Fandom as a whole is mostly female. The writer of WFA is female.

And maybe I'm not being fair here, but when I see people dismiss WFA as "just fanon," I always catch a whiff of "It's not a real Batman comic. It's a girl comic for girls."

I have spent the past 20 years begging DC (and Marvel, DC is not alone in this) to see women as a viable audience - as their largest potential growth audience! I have watched in dumbfounded frustration as they ignored the juggernaut success of Raina Telgemeier and Ngozi Ukazu and Alice Oseman running rings around the NY Times bestseller list and counted a 50k shipment here and there as a resounding triumph. I have literally seen them throw out survey responses from women because "those women had an agenda." (This is a true story. 2011 was rough, y'all.)

And all of a sudden, they gave us a comic actually catering to women and young people and fandom, and they put it on the most popular, current, modern platform for comics availably - and it's brilliant. It's smart and funny and stunningly drawn and every episode makes clever, inventive use of the scrolling format. They FINALLY gave us a girl comic for girls, and it's a masterpiece.

And yes, it riffs on fanon concepts. It also has its roots firmly in mainstream DCU canon. It references deep cuts. CRC Payne and StarBite know their shit. Jason Todd being a bookworm may be a fanon staple, but he does plenty of reading - including Jane Austen - in the 100% canon mainstream DCU comics.

It's not going to be for everything, because nothing is. It's completely fine if you don't like WFA. No one has to read it or enjoy it. If you're into Batman for the darkness and the crime and the ongoing plotlines and the angst, WFA won't be for you, and that's totally fine!

But to finally, finally be valued as a reader by DC, to have them do something smart and innovative and so, so well executed, and have the exact people they made it for dismiss it out of hand because Bruce has a "World's Okayest Dad" mug or whatever? Yeah, that chafes.

[sameschmidtdiffname]

And now, for some shit ain't nobody asked for... *drumroll please...*

Fanboy Futturman Headcanons That Hardly Make Sense Unless You're Deranged

(because it's fun)

Tags: just rawdog it bruh, idk what this is. I got fucken murmed.

Notes: Special thanks to @luverstream for going insane with me. This list is based off of our oddly specific thread. Love you pookers <3

                        °☆>》¤●¤《<☆°

• 100% started writing fanfiction for 'Biotic Wars' because there was only two works in the whole fandom and they were both illiterate/ooc

• It started as a challenge because he likes writing as a hobby so he made a random account on Tumblr and wrote a one-shot from Tigers POV just for shits and giggles

• He didn't expect literally anyone to read it, maybe a couple notes

• Then around his lunch break the next day his phone won't. Stop. Dinging.

• Long story short, he ends up with an account with like. 1.1k followers

• Once he realizes he has a serious reader base, he takes his blog seriously

• He spends a weird amount of time perfectly curating his blogs aesthetic with mods and whatever extentions he can find

• Personally commissions other fans for his fanfic borders, proper gifs, etc. He has one fanfic actually illustrated for Kinktober and it stays at the top of the 'Biotic War' tags for months

• Speaking of Kinktober, literally will not make plans for October/late September because he knows he's gonna aim to post everyday

• Will stay up for days writing when he gets hyperfixated

• Hates posting short fics. If the number doesn't end with a .k he doesn't post it until it does

• Also has a bunch of Easter eggs from his favorite movies and such in his works as well

• Knows an insane amount of copywrite laws because he's had to deal with people illegally selling his works/uploading them on other platforms

• When he eventually gets a partner he initially lies and says he wanted to become a lawyer when he was a kid, thus why he knows so much

• That works for about 12 minutes before he finally breaks down and tells them the truth, then offers to show them his work because he's told literally no one in his personal life about it

• His partner eventually becomes his editor and co-author on certain works (mainly smut)

• Half the time when he's actively working on smut he's gotta stop midway to "test the accuracy" w/ said partner

• Writes OUTRAGEOUS smut that makes him unable to look in the mirror while he's writing it

• Deadass hides under his blankets in total darkness with tape over his computers camera because of the shame

• Has a collection of proofreaders/consultants because his first smut included cervix penetration and he got dragged by basically everyone on Tumblr for it

• Had a work get popular enough one time one of his friends sent it to him because they figured he'd get a kick out of it

• Which made him panic and stop writing for like a month to lay low

• Has a completely different Spotify account for writing because his mom uses his "normal" account even though he has a family plan (side note: they make little playlists for each other :))

• Has like 50 different playlists dedicated to his fics that's available for his readers to listen to

• The artists all range from Deftones to dodie depending on the work

• His top artist is Ayesha Erotica with 2000+ minutes spent on 'Yummy'

• (Also has an impossible amount of hours logged on said Spotify account)

• Has a whole panic attack when he leaves his phone in the 60s because he had a whole new chapter ready to publish in his 20 part hurt/no comfort/slowburn fic that was over 10.k words in his notes app

• Wolf finds his Ao3 account one time and becomes... concerningly obsessed with Futturmans work without realizing Futturman is the author

• It gets to the point Wolf will legit go on 30+ minute rants about the stories while Futturman is just hyperventilating in the corner because he doesn't know how long he can keep up the facade

• It gets worse when Wolf makes an account and starts actually commenting on the works

• However he ends up getting impressive tips from the rants and ends up incorporating his suggestions into his works

• Wolf never stops bragging about this

• His most popular work/series follows a female oc that originally started as a one-shot request for a oc x Wolf fic (which Wolf hates because he says it's OoC. Futturman does not agree nor care.) But ended up getting popular enough there's well over 20 parts

• At some point he, Wolf and Tiger get into a massive argument because he finds a bound copy of all of his works amongst their supplies and no one will confess who's it is and keep blaming each other

• (It's Tigers)

• When he gets to his final timeline he manages to get his all of his drafts back through Susan (who had a lot of questions, and was given no answers) and just publishes his work as an original series since Biotic Wars no longer exists

• "Orginial series" gets insanely popular and now he has like five burner accounts so he can read fanfiction of his own fanfiction

• Writes fanfiction for his own series purposely to fuck with the fanbase

• Usually will make it ooc but well written, but once in awhile comes up with a "headcanon" that will come true in his next book so he can watch the readers implode

• And last but not least

• He casts his other self in the final timeline as the male lead in the eventual movie adaptation. Because of course he would

(Bonus: in the OG timeline when Futturman ends up disappearing, his biggest series ends up never being finished, nor his blog updated. Leading to a weirdly thorough four hour video docuseries made by Wendigoon about the rise and disappearance of the mysterious author and how the 'Biotic Wars' fandom eventually finished the fic themselves and created their own spinoffs, leading the work to get more popular than 'Biotic Wars' ever was and like five different people falsely claiming they wrote it, only to be disproven within an insanely short amount of time. Yeah, kinda a full on My Immortal.)

                           >¤》○《¤<

Don't ask me what this was, I think I got possessed. Anyways, bon achoo sweet.

Taglist:

@cassiecasluciluce @gh0u1ishly @joshhutchersons-slut @schmidtsbimbo @sugarevans @wompwompwomp57 . Thank you for your support pookies!!! <3

               •▪︎Masterlist▪︎•

[songfell-ut]

Songfell anniversary post, pt 1

Eyyy so four years ago today, I posted the first three chapters of my story on AO3, having seen an unfinished comic and gotten permission from the artist to write a fic using her premise. This here is the first piece of Songfell art ever, commission from the OG comic creator, @lostmypotatoes 👌

So! I am not posting any new content for the moment. My mom has been having health problems, including me having to help take her to the ER (she's fine, just needs to stay in bed for a while), which delays actual writings a bit. What I am doing is reposting art from four years of Tumblr! C'mon down memory lane, wheeeeee

(Part 2, Part 3)

This is going to be in VERY VERY approximate chronological order as it depicts stuff in the story. Stuff with no set place in the story will be guesstimated because I have that power ah ha ha ha ha

Disclaimer: I've pulled all of these from posts or reblogs made by this specific blog. If I didn't see or repost any Songfell art you've done, especially for the videos, I did not leave it out on purpose. I threw in exactly one image from Discord for the sake of completing a set, but that was it.

In cases of multiple...okay it's just the fork scene that has multiple iterations because everyone liked it, but besides the opening one here (which is still my AO3 pfp!), the one that was the first piece of non-commissioned art I ever got will be first. Enjoy!

This was the first non-potatoes art in the videos, I believe, done by the superlative @venelona (probably the most prolific of the arts on here), when somebody realizes he's gonna lose 😘

The collection skips ahead to Sans contemplating killing the nice lady and then totally randomly thinking of Kris instead, by @mambourin D: But whaddya know--

See? That's the sound of losing, son

That's the sight of losing, by @sharkowskii, whose work speaks for itself. Here's the whole thing, colored fantastically by Vene.

Know what else they did together, and happens once he's been knocked out?

(Look at this so good holy shit) Frisk's had a bit of a tired, scared cry in the hall, and it's time to face her new guest head-on.

I lost my mind at least a little bit when I first saw these, ngl. I can't find the next page that she did for the compiled "movie" video 😢 But now we're coming up on a fun bit of Songfell lore!

I was scrolling through Tumblr and glanced over what looked like a picture of my Frisk ha ha that was kind of VENELONA DID A THING WAIT WHAT

First ever fanart, that's what. We have a High Priestess who is completely done with his goddamn nonsense, and

Pictured: goddamned nonsense. N-Not like he LIKES you, baka

Aaand here's my Discord pfp, by @xxkoichiixx (who seems not to be on here anymore D:).

And here's a very plausible alternate outcome by @vafro1.

Though this was a bit more like it, thanks to @naomyart.

Oh look a distraction after he was stupid what are the odds (Catler1!)

Last and never least (none of you are >:( so there), puns are dumb and it turns out they're into it. The End...for now

...

Bonus outtake recording illustration from @dale-the-human

[fuck-i-like-too-much-stuff]

I dont know if anyone is ready for this but these are my "Problems in We Are" post:

Disclaimer: if you have been on my blog or know me at all, you know that i love this series with my whole heart. But that being said, im nothing if not fair, and in all fairness, this series had its flaws. Less than most, but still there, these flaws do need to be addressed. My love for the series does not decrease, nor does it for the actors, characters, plots and settings.

QToey: Stagnancy that was Very Fixable.

I don't think many would disagree with me on the fact that Q and Toey's relationship became stagnant after the confession. Their moments could only be seen as Cute and their dynamic was definitely not explored any more. Another thing everyone would agree on is that we would have loved to see the ase/demisexual representation in these two characters. Had this been done, just one conversation around it, the whole plot and mood could have been shifted to a much more positive and progressive impact. Yeah the whole conversation would be a "difficult" one but Satang and Winny could have handled it.

The Lack of Focus on ChainPun

Look, I get it. There's a heirarchy of importance and ChainPun were definitely on a lower rung than the rest. I also am not against them getting together in the last minute of the last episode. But there were definitely times where there could have been a flashback scene for them, like all the others got. The only reason their relationship didnt become a background/2D narrative was because of Marc and Poon being brilliant actors. Had their efforts to make Chain and Pun important not made through the screen, there would be very little cheer for them and certainly no impact.

The First Few Episodes

Till the 5th episode, the direction and cinematography of this show was choppy as fuck. There were stills of absolutely irrelevant objects, sceneries or characters (in the moment) that could've been fixed with just a little bit of finesse in editing. It was fixed in the episodes that aired 5th and onwards, but it did almost make me drop the series (i get slightly OCD about these things)

Yet Another Almost Useless Female Character

Look me in the eyes and tell me that my girl Fai didnt deserve more. In the first couple of episodes she is shown to be integral to the group, a core member and close friend. And then poof she goes, only to appear when it is convenient to the plot. Yes we did have Aunt Pui as a prominent female character, but her role was that of a Guardian that is there in ever series, while the same series disposes every other female in it. Fai could have been given a role in the group, including the trips and outtings, and i shall die on that hill if i must.

Lastly, and surprisingly, the Way they handled Phum's parents

Till the last episode, i was big on Peem only encouraging reconciliation as he hoped for Phum to receive the love that he had himself received from his own parents. And yes, that does remain. But they could have gone without making Phum accept his father, or his father being this sweet guy who is "trying". Phum's dad is not sweet, he is not trying, he is not worthy of Phum or Fang's forgiveness. Though it was only implied and signifies just healing, i wish that the family dinner could've just meant Phum, Fang, Peem, Tan and maybe their brother, with if any, his partner, and a small intro of Peem to Phum's mom. But we shall work with what we have Ao3 and Fix Its.

With that, I end my saga and shall return to random thoughts as and when I have them and maybe a new chapter every now and then to the relic of a fic i have that no one reads lmao.

Thank you for reading and please do add on/leave your opinionss

[robertdowneyjjr]

hey, so. funny thing.

@whinysteve and i have been going insane for like two days because we couldn't find this one fic we really liked, and we both remembered reading it not so long ago but somehow neither of us could recall how it ended? and we kept saying that it's so GOOD and how the heck did it just disappear? well, after hours of losing my mind going through my ao3 history, the steve/tony tag with various keywords, the findingstony blog... it. it hit me that i can't find it because it doesn't exist. because it was the soulmates au idea you posted like two weeks ago where their words only show up after they've met their soulmate.

i thought you might find this amusing. 😩 (i do, but i also need to lie down for a bit because i will never know how steve fixed that mess)

hahahaha omg liv if this is your way of peer pressuring me into writing the whole fic i might actually do it??? because your ask has got me thinking about what would happen next.

that said, steve still hasn't figured out how to fix this mess. i'm very sorry about this.

(stonyclunks soulmates au part one here)

---

having been rescued by SHIELD, news of steve's recovery was immediately delivered to howard stark who, while not as involved with SHIELD as he used to be, still receives weekly reports as one of its co-founders.

he'd gone home that night and brought it up in the middle of cutting his steak. coincidentally, tony had been visiting that day and stayed for dinner, so he found out about captain america's miraculous resurrection before the general public did, and honestly, he had enough of hearing about how great this guy was growing up. he really didn't need to keep hearing about it as an adult after he'd finally worked through his issues with his dad and his obsession with a (not quite) dead war hero.

so after howard's announcement, tony politely requested howard refrain from talking about this guy with him.

"i know he's your friend, and you'll probably be spending a bit of time with him now that he's been found, and i'm really happy for you, but i think it would be better for our relationship if we could talk about literally anything but him," he'd said.

and, well. howard was trying. he knew he wasn't the best dad and he also wanted to do right by maria, who spent so many years torn between her son and her husband while trying to mend their relationship. they were finally in a relatively good place with each other which made maria happy. and to be frank, howard had actually come to really enjoy tony's company whenever he was home. he was quite happy too. so he agreed. they don't talk about steve and howard doesn't ask tony to meet steve.

that very night, tony made sure 'captain america' and 'steve rogers' were muted in all his news feeds and social channels.

he literally doesn't know a single thing about the man besides what he learned in his childhood, which he's blocked out. it's a peaceful two years of blissful ignorance.

fast forward to now, tony's packing up his suitcase and getting ready to check out of his hotel when he sees a text from his mom in their family group chat.

seems he's not quite the perfect role model you always made him out to be, howard 🤡, her message reads.

what follows is a link to an instagram post, and from the message preview he can see that it's steve rogers' profile, and under normal circumstances he wouldn't even bother clicking the link.

but 1) maria usually never brings up the man in tony's presence either, and 2) her comment made him laugh. so color tony intrigued.

he taps the link and sees the post. it's a picture of a coffee cup from the place he was at a week ago. the one where he got body slammed by his mysterious dick of a soulmate and unfairly yelled at for it.

he reads the caption and his legs give out under him.

i don't even know if you'll see this, but all i can do is hope. i'm sorry for the words that have made their mark on you. i know i don't deserve it, but i'm hoping you could give me a second chance. i won't yell at you this time, i promise. yours, a fucking asshole

one week ago, captain america was barely even a blip on tony's radar and that's how he preferred it. now, steve rogers is tony's mysterious dick of a soulmate.

what the fuck even is his life.

[crazylittlejester]

bro. i am in the same boat as you.

asfhdjkss seeing you stress and become disappointed about whumptober is making ME FEEL THE SAME......

feeling upset about your writing and all the prompts not being correctly put down into words can be very hard and complicated!! i get it!!!

it's totally normal to feel that way and i assure you, it's okay!

just know that, even if it is your own decision, you don't have to feel obligated to do all 32 days. that's a bunch of work for someone and a whole lot of planning and writing and that can effect someone's energy and mental health. i appreciate your effort in trying to do it though! but please, don't get worried about producing so many mediocre fics, at the end of the day you're still writing things and im proud!!!

i saw your post about this and immediately felt bad so i hope this can help you feel even a little better... even so, i will be looking forward to anything you end up writing! you are such a fantastic author, never forget that. <3

thanks man 🫶 /gen

i have really been struggling a lot lately with this, and it’s been very hard to not get angry with myself over it because I feel like I haven’t been able to write in months and I’ve been struggling with hating most of what I write these days and I get so incredibly anxious to post anything because I feel like my ability to write and the quality of my fics has deteriorated sooo much. I’ve had my ao3 acc since 2018 and every year I’ve kinda made a tradition almost of orphaning everything I write and starting fresh at the start of the new year because I dislike the vast majority of what I write but I realized a few months ago that I don’t think I can do that this year- this is certainly the most attention my fics have ever gotten and I think at least one person would come yell at me in my asks if i disappeared off the face of the earth never to write for LU again allddkkd

its just very hard not to feel upset about being burnt out for so many months, and it’s hard to see how engagement has been down and have to remind myself it’s not because i suck, it’s literally just because i’ve been making less content. of course engagement would be down, the main reason most people interact with me is BECAUSE I write or do analysis posts or make content, so if im not putting out as much as i used to then that tracks and makes sense, but it’s hard to stop the intrusive thoughts sometimes. It is certainly a fight to not feel useless when I can’t do the one thing I’m supposed to be doing with this blog

anyways… it makes me really happy that there are at least a few people who will read whatever i throw up onto ao3, and all of you who regularly read the things i write and send me asks n such genuinely make me so happy. all of you are awesome

and thank you for this, it was really kind and sweet of you. i hope you have a good day, remember to take care of yourself and get some water n food 🫶

*wet cough* anyway *sniffle* y’all wanna see my tav…? /j *kicks a rock*

[operationmorewhitecollar]

Shall we play a game?

Nope, not chess or Parchisi. And not even global thermonuclear war. (If you get that reference, you might just be as old as we are!) But no, none of those games are where we're headed. This year, we're hosting a good old-fashioned game of bingo!

That's right, since we're almost two weeks into the new year, we thought it might be time to roll out our new creative challenge, which will continue throughout 2024.

As always, we're in the market for any and all fan creations centered on White Collar, and this year, we're providing prompts in the form of mini bingo cards, with new prompt cards coming out quarterly. (Jan, April, July, October) If you want to play, just let us know (comment here, dm, however you want to get in touch), and we'll get you a card so you can get started!

Some details:

When we say "any and all fan creations," we mean it--let your creativity run wild and make whatever you want to make! Draw, write, paint, record a podcast, shoot a video, whatever your creative preference.

We're using a 4x4 card format, and there is a FREE space, so that means a total of 15 prompts for three months. Complete a line of prompts, get a bingo; complete the whole card during the quarter, and that, dear friends, is a blackout!

Much like our drabble prompts, the bingo prompts are pretty broad, and many (maybe most?) are only one word. They run the gamut from theme words to genre to story length and beyond. (Not to worry if you're making art or some other non-written creations; we've got provisions for swapping prompts.)

Prompts were randomized to create the cards, and the card numbers were randomized to create the distribution order, so the prompts you end up with are strictly luck.

Okay, that's probably the most important stuff to know, except, of course, that we hope lots of you will join in and that everyone has tons of fun creating new White Collar stuff, because we're sure going to have fun seeing whatever you make!

So whenever you're ready, shall we play a game?

(We'll put a few more detailed FAQ items below the cut, but if you've got questions we didn't think of, just let us know and we'll make up an answer.😉)

Q: What can my entries be? A: Any type of creation you choose. fic, art, blog post, essay, cross-stitch, we're not picky. Interpret the prompts any way you like, in any genre, any relationship, any rating, any characters, you get the idea. (Unless, of course, the prompt is more specific.) As long as it's White Collar, it's fair game.

Q: Where do we share our work/how will you know we made something or got a bingo? A: First, put your creations somewhere we can see them! There'll be a collection on AO3 where most types of work can be shared. (We're debating if it's better to have just one collection for the year or one for each quarter; if you've got any opinions on that, feel free to weigh in.) If you're sharing here or on other socials, be sure to @ us, and use #WhiteCollarBingo. But, while we'll be doing our best to keep up, we're hoping there will be so many entries we'll lose track, so definitely tell us if you completed a bingo!

Q: Can I make one story/picture/video/etc. for the whole card? A: You may use as many prompts as you like in each entry, but only 2 prompts per line may be counted toward a bingo. (So you will need at least two entries to achieve a single bingo, and though we may have miscounted, we think that means at least ten entries to make a blackout.)

Q: Are crossovers allowed? A: Yes (and may even be a prompt!), but White Collar should obviously be prevalent in your work.

Q: How long do I have to complete my entries? A: We'll be issuing new cards each quarter (Jan-March, April-June, July-Sept, Oct-December), and in a perfect world, we'd like to receive entries within that quarter. But you know we've never been sticklers for schedules, and the point is to encourage more White Collar creations, so we'll be glad to get them whenever you finish.

Q: What do I win when I bingo? A: Bragging rights, and your name on our (soon to be created) bingo accomplishments page.

Q: What if there are some prompts I really don't want to use, but I want to try for blackout? A: We will provide a max of two alternate prompts. (This max does not apply if you're making non-written creations and somehow ended up with a card full of writing-centric prompts.)

Q: What if I just can't work with the card I receive at all? A: We'll exchange your card one time. Part of the fun is stretching our creative muscles.

Q: If I exchange my card, will any previous entries count toward bingo on my new card? A: Nope. It's a fresh slate, so examine your card when you get it to decide if it works for you.

Q: If I complete my card, can I have another? A: Yep, and we'd be very impressed! (and happy!)

Q: Where did these prompts come from? A: Many suggestions from our followers, and we've been hunting and gathering, too. But we want to have lots of variety as the year rolls along, so please keep those suggestions rolling in.

Q: Can something I made for another challenge count toward a bingo prompt/Can I submit my work to more than one collection or challenge? A: As long as it's new work, and if the other challenge doesn't ask for exclusivity, bring it on! And frankly, we'd love to see more White Collar activity in multi-fandom spaces. Also, we'll surely be hosting other events throughout the year (at least Mozzie Mania and Caffrey-Burke Day), and you can certainly use a bingo prompt for any of those challenges as well.

[ao3-anonymous]

don’t you think saying you don’t care about the veracity of the data because you’re having fun watching the fandom get dunked on and simultaneously saying it’s irrelevant and the fandom should be glad that you brought attention to it is kind of a dick move? a fandom that only has 200 works probably didn’t want a whole lot of attention. I’m a data scientist and I feel like you have to understand the responsibility of data and your following especially if you’re not going to make sure that it’s correct.

Okay I wasn’t going to respond to this but apparently this needs to be addressed because this is not the only rude ask in my inbox.

I built and maintain this dashboard covering SIX MILLION fandoms for free. I have been making these posts highlighting fun fandom trends EVERY WEEK for free.

This is not my job and I do not get paid for this.

I spent hours last week rewriting my code to account for the new AO3 privacy changes to bring y’all correct fic counts including locked fics again. Then I spent another couple hours writing a script to calculate the percentage of locked fics in every single one of those six million fandoms and use that number to retroactively adjust the fic counts for the affected period.

So when it became apparent that somehow one small fandom did not get adjusted properly (and it’s quite feasibly not the only one), I just added a note to the original post, removed the TBS tag, and moved on. Because it didn’t seem worth any more of my free time to fix an issue that won’t be relevant next week since the underlying issue is already fixed.

My response was meant to be lighthearted (as are most of the responses to the original I’ve seen - idk where you got the idea that anyone is dunking on the TBS fandom). I thought it was entertaining that people were so excited/surprised to see TBS on their dash in 2024 and I made a joke about it reviving the fandom, while acknowledging that something was probably wonky with the data.

But overall, like everything in fandom, this dashboard and associated posts are not meant to be perfect. They are an act of love towards fandom that I put my best effort into and I expect people to understand that and respond with grace. I never intentionally mislead my followers and I try to acknowledge any errors when I find them, but anyone who expects perfection from a free blog needs to reconsider their own entitlement.

This kind of behavior makes me want to stop posting at all (since that’s the only way to guarantee there will be no errors). Please think twice before you send asks like this and if my methods do not align with your high standards, feel free to unfollow and create your own fandom stats blog.

[klaineccfanficlibrary]

Hello To All!

Hope you all are enjoying your weekend! I read on my phone and I’m not able to find stories. If there’s a way, please tell me how.

Please suggest adult stories for me with a great/happy ending. I prefer chapter stories of adult Klaine. Any suggestions are welcome. Need something to read tonight. Thank you for all you do!

Hello, when I search from my phone, I go onto our libary blog and into the "magnifying glass/search" at the top. I type in a particular word like "adult" or "enemies to lovers" and then a whole lot of previously recommended fics appear. Alternatively download A03 app, and you can search and filter on it.

Also on AO3 check out our 2023 Klainebingo which has 191 tagged stories written 2016-23 that fandom have recommended - not all adult klaine, but definitely worth looking at.

What I've done is made a list of recommendations here of some of Klaine fics I've enjoyed, where they are adults, or mostly post college age. Some newer, some older. ~ Jen

Seven by @scatterthestars

How far would you go for someone you love? For Kurt, that means doing the unimaginable. But if it means saving his dad, he's willing to take that risk. A risk that has him leaving his home to go states away to spend a week with the last person he ever expected to meet. Over the course of the next seven days, things don't go as planned, or thought.

Can seven days change everything?

~~~~~

Feel my heart's intention by @kurtsascot

Blaine started to hate Kurt on his first day. And it was a shame, really, because they could have been cute together. 

~~~~~

Falling for You By @caramelcoffeeaddict Coffeeaddict80

A fic written based off a mash-up of these two prompts from the @gleepotluckbigbang prompt page -- Prompt1: During rehearsal I tripped and fell into the orchestra pit and landed on you Prompt2: I have to share a dressing room with the most obnoxious, self-centered jerk; and when you sent flowers to our dressing room, they took them assuming they were for them but they were really for me Featuring: Broadway!Kurt, PianoPlayer!Blaine, Obnoxious!Broadway!Sebastian

~~~~~

Rock, paper, scissors by @gleefulpoppet

Kurt and his seven-year-old daughter are moving from the hustle and bustle of New York to the Rocky Mountains for a fresh start. On a connecting flight from Atlanta, they meet a warmhearted man who captures their attention with his enthusiasm. Will they ever see him again? And even if they do, how will he fit into their new life?

~~~~~

Nashville! by @hkvoyage

Kurt lands the lead role in a new musical, but it flops during the previews. However, his performance captivates Nashville’s newest country music sensation. They share an instant connection and it grows deeper as they get to know each other. Will Kurt be able to save the musical and keep the man of his dreams? An AU meeting featuring country singer!Blaine and Broadway!Kurt.

~~~~~

Made to keep your body warm by @quizasvivamos

Blaine is a meteorologist who works as a weatherman for a local New York news station where he's especially well-known for predicting storms. But, when a huge nor'easter blows in and the news crew is trapped at the station for three days by snow, can he predict what happens when he meets a young new intern?

~~~~~

If music be by @blurglesmurfklaine

Kurt’s just trying to survive his last semester of college, which means making it through student teaching in one piece.

~~~~~

In my place by @heartsmadeofbooks

Blaine has always been shy and introverted, so after his father dies, he looks for comfort into his childhood dream - owning a bookstore. But then Kurt Hummel walks into his life, turning his dream into a complicated affair.

~~~~~

These inconvenient fireworks by @redheadgleek

After an unexpected Tony award, Kurt Hummel is Broadway's hottest up and coming star, which comes with expectations and some admirers that won't take a hint. When his best friend Elliott Gilbert suggests that they pretend to date to get the leeches to back off, Kurt takes him up on the idea. It's all working out great - until Kurt starts to fall hard for the dark-haired music director of his latest musical.

~~~~~

Scenes from December by @spaceorphan18

An exploration of Kurt's life throughout various Decembers. The story of family and how the definition of family changes over time.

~~~~~

Home away from home by @lilyvandersteen

Cooper buys a hotel sight unseen and asks Blaine to run it for him over the summer. Only, the hotel is a health and safety hazard and Inspectors Hummel and Abrams are hell-bent on closing it down. Can Blaine spruce the hotel up in time and save Cooper's investment?

~~~~~

Living Haphazard by anna_timberlake @shame-is-a-wasted-emotion

Have you ever thought of getting cheated by a house broker and getting to know that you had to stay with another stranger who was also cheated? What if you are getting stuck up with the stranger in the apartment due to unavoidable circumstances? What if you hate him as well as have a crush on him? What if you had to fight your inner self and the stranger? What if he agreed on helping you which can only happen in dreams? This is a real living haphazard, isn't it?

~~~~ Someone like you by @iconicklaine

Kurt and Blaine keep up their very own version of "When Harry Met Sally" for years, a friendship fraught with sexual tension and longing, until the agendas of Adele (yes, THE Adele), a bored NY socialite and a super-sweet hetero couple bring our boys together. The only problem is... they're both in committed relationships.

Note: This story is AU after "Sexy" and assumes Kurt and Blaine graduate from Dalton in the same year. In this future fic, set in 2025, Blaine is based off of Season 2 Blaine. Originally posted on LJ and S&C.

~~~~~

The Journeying By @flowerfan2

Freshly graduated from music school, Blaine is thrilled when he is chosen to stay in the cast when the production of Into the Woods he was lucky enough to be part of in Boston moves to Broadway. He knows it’s going to be hard returning to New York City – the scene of his epic breakup with his fiancé and the emotional meltdown which cost him his place at NYADA. But he’s determined that this time, everything will be different. Little does Blaine know that out of thousands of potential castmates, his director has chosen none other than Kurt Hummel to play the part of Jack. Blaine has worked hard to recover from their breakup three years ago, and struggles to find a new way to relate to Kurt and simultaneously protect himself, especially when tragedy strikes.

This story looks at what would have happened if Kurt and Blaine had reacted differently to the break up in 6x01 than they did in canon; if events hadn’t brought them back together as soon, and if forgiveness hadn’t come so easily.

[btheleaf]

What made you like Pema? :3 Just out of curiosity, I feel like she's a character many people tend to kind of ignore or dislike.

Short answer: Spite

(Very) Long answer under the cut:

Tenzin was my first love and obsession when I got back into LOK. I went to AO3 to read about him and his wife! and found the attitudes towards Pemzin... odd? The ship is way less popular than Linzin, which was strange to me at the time, considering Pema/Tenzin are literally married in canon. But hey, whatever, to each their own. Maybe people just like Linzin more. Lin is a sexy badass, so I get it. Maybe people don't wanna write about the air babies. Maybe the age gap or any other countless things were giving people the ick about pemzin. Fine. It's all good to me. I began to look for pemzin fics to enjoy and found 🥲 strange things.

Pema was usually written as some kind of man-stealing demon with a magic coochie that could make Tenzin bend to her will and stay with her despite the fact that he loved Lin more, but at the same time she was a dumb and useless broodmare? More often than not, the Pema/Tenzin fics seemed to be written by people who didn't actually care for the ship and had Linzin endgame in mind.

I thought, "Okay, I'll check out Linzin, surely with way more fics to pick from, I'll find something that focuses on Lin/Tenzin and not Bad and Evil Pema."

I was disappointed to say the least.

So much cheating and lying, so many secret babies. SO MUCH Pema v. Lin, which doesn't do anything for me. I could understand it if there were Actual Reasons, but it was like Pema was showing up to be an emotional homewrecker despite her being IN HER OWN HOUSE. I just... like what the fuck is going on there?

Why does Pema hate Lin SO MUCH? Did the stories ever touch upon that? No. She just hates Lin. Obviously. Lin dated her husband 20 years ago, so she hates her. Logical. Much logic. No explanation. Look no further. Your bad guy is here. Bye-bye interesting concepts. Pema is a bitch and a snake and a man-trap and she never loved Tenzin anyway. She just wanted to be a trophy wife who ushered in a new generation of airbenders. No explanation. Don't question it. She's one-dimensional in a 3D world.

Pema is everyone's favorite bad guy in Linzin fics all because of that one line from Book one that is honestly super fucking cringe about her "seeing her soul mate with someone else." Linzin shippers asked if anyone was going to demonize this mother of four and didn't wait for an answer.

Both Pemzin and Linzin shippers need to learn how to tag their fics for both "emotional cheating" and just straight up "cheating." Navigating this shit is terrible. I once read 50k of a very interesting concept, and then all of a sudden Pema came out of nowhere and just started acting like a jealous 13 year old for no reason and Tenzin QUICKLY left her and the kids to go be with Lin. Like?? I do not understand what the fuck is going on in some people's minds.

WHERE WERE THE FICS THAT PAINTED PEMA AS A WHOLE HUMAN PERSON WITH FLAWS AND WANTS AND DESIRES??? I think most of my comments started having "thank you for writing Pema like a person" somewhere in them.

When I first made this blog and Let It Be Known that I ship pemzin, I got a looooooot of weird anons asking me stuff about like, if I support cheating and shit? I realized that these attitudes towards Pema were not Old Beliefs. These were very real people in the year of 2024 still unable to conceptualize an interesting idea for a character that has SO MUCH room to play with.

We know jack shit about her. We know just enough that makes her entire character like candy to me. She's not around a lot in the show, but also somehow is always still right there? She goes through Some Very Real Shit in every season, and her absence from screen time is like free real estate to fic writers. I literally don't understand how so many people manage to summarize her entire being into the word "snake" and move on. The potential for expanding on her character is limitless because of how little we know. The more people try to stuff her into a box, the more I'll pull her out of it.

I didn't really care about Pema until it became clear that everyone else disliked her. The more people hate her, the more I love her and the more powerful I become.

I'm like this because of how the fandom treats her.

[fumifooms]

Do you know about the Marchil h-doujin, just called "Marchil Meshi"? (Dunno wether you're comfortable about adult content regarding the ship. If not, sorry and feel free to ignore).

Imagine my surprise… When a few months ago, I was looking up places to buy doujins for dunmeshi online bc of that new-ish laimar (sfw) doujin and I find, many many nsfw ones bUT AMONGST THE HORDE… MARCHIL MESHI. I ate it up. It’s a lil iconic to me ngl, I quote it in my head sometimes. Marcille angrily gesturing always gets me cackling. It honestly has no business being this good, it was made pretty early on in the story so many years ago, and STILL! So in character, and honestly so funny, AND no weird business either. Like listen, I scour the internet, looking for any marchil content, any marchil content at all… And find a dry af desert, no life here, literally jackshit nothing. Only Pixiv has some afaik but the nsfw is def… Hm. 😔 (2 fics tagged chirumaru on there btw!! That aren’t mine lol) Thank you marchil meshi author if I had to pick 1 piece of marchil nsfw to exist I’d choose this one (honestly that’s already so close to reality lol) Thank u Asaki Takayuki I owe u my life. I like zines but I’ve never bought doujins before so it didn’t cross my mind, but dunmeshi is taking a lot of my first times in fandom engagement and I bought said laimar doujin just the other day hehe 

I do want to keep my blog generally sfw but yes I’m 100% cheering on nsfw marchil content from the shadows, glad that ao3’s finally getting some too. I hope that fic writer makes more… Tallman Chil is so so good but I hope they also do some more general premises, which the end notes on that one do make me hopeful 👀 I want more marchil writers in general. More marchil fanartists. Sfw nsfw idk I need to be fed 😭 (<- This post was drafted before that new marchil smut fic WOOHOO. So much new marchil content this week!!)

Oh while I’m here, I find this so funny/odd, but in japanese fandom ship names are simply the beginning of each name smushed together, like marchil or chilmar. The order of the names is that the first one is the "top"… Idk how jp fandoms live without switches but aight, but in m/f ships this means that typically the man is the first half of the ship name right. WELL WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT marchil is so much more used than chilmar lmaoo. Even more stats: On Pixiv, the tag marchil had all the artworks, but the chilmar tag had all the fics. Ain’t that wack to think about. Anyways marchil or chilmar idc you go guys

Sighh thinking about them. They are so "I beg your pardon??!" "Then beg", "Fuck you!" "Fuck me yourself you coward"… Forget stamens and pistils, Chil is the cursed "You see, there are keys and there are locks…"

More under cut since I don’t get to talk about this often, screenshots and hcs for horny time

^ said panel that lives rent free in my head and makes me giggle. I wish I’d just put the whole page here it’s my fave but nahh go find it yourself

Why are they like this. Like what is thatttt

I need to stop collecting these I’m making myself feel insane (thank you fic writer for that last one I’d never noticed but omg)

Alright hc time what was I gonna talk about… Ah yes ah yes. I def think Chil is a pest, he’s horny and he wants sex and is flagrant about it, but also we know that he stayed faithful for 4 years without getting any, I feel like realistically the relationship sex wise would 100% be on Marcille’s pace. And this is the fun part, bc would Marcille be very eager? Would she want to do the romance book correct™️ route and that means no tapping until marriage, or he needs to court her all princely first? I hc that elves have a much lower libido than humans because of the whole long af lifespan thing, it’d be kinda funny if Marcille was like "Let’s take things slow… 🥺" aka first base achieved after two years of being together lol

But seee that’s the thing too bc Marcille is so afraid of loss she might rush through things as well, she very well could like, jump on him right after confessing. Is Chilchuck kind of a shithead or is he very gentlemanly and romantic, wanting to do it right and treat her well? They are such a blank canvas of sexual chemistry listen LISTENNN there are just so so many ways you can go with them they are so special. God the banter… They cannot stop bantering for a second I swear So many kinks they could fit… I like uhh praise kink for him and for her… Idk she just really loves him and the emotional adoration is what’s at the core of her enjoying it all so like, loving Chilchuck kink, which turns out those two really match together 🫶 He makes her sing and ummm um you see where this goes. They are so grossly in love and into each other

They are so domestic. I hate them