#like the level of plagiarism this man has committed against his own community…

[always-andromeda]

I always wondered how James Somerton could crank out such many well written video essays in such a short amount of time…

Because he’s stealing the words of literally dozens of writers who are better than him. 😀

[dyinglikenarcissus]

How It All Started

Bucky Barnes x Black Female Reader x Steve Rogers

Warnings: 18+ only! Language, nothing else really. This one’s short and sweet, an intro for our doll

Please don’t copy or repost my work, thanks! Plagiarism is rude

Comments, likes, and reblogs are always appreciated ☺️

1k words

Master List | Next Chapter

“A place all to ourselves!” Wanda cries after you and your two roommates finally finished moving in.

“Booze, parties, no curfew, boys,” Natasha listed. The last word rolling off her tongue suggestively.

“This is going to be amazing,” you sigh opening the door to the balcony and letting in some fresh air. You pat your back pocket and let out a feral whine. “Shit. I left my phone in the car. I’ll be right back,” you sigh and step out into the courtyard.

After being stuck in the dorms with every rule they could think of putting on you, it was a breath of fresh air to have a place to yourself.

Your school required that all freshmen spend their first year in the dorms with whatever grab bag roommates they gave you. You met Natasha and Wanda during orientation and instantly clicked.

They both hated their roommates while you had a one sided crush on yours who was already in a committed relationship so the three of you thought it was for the best to all move in together the second you got a chance. You were apartment hunting since the end of orientation and got on the waiting list for a beautiful townhouse rental community that was recently built off campus. It was perfect: you each had your own bedroom and bathroom, there were multiple pools, a tennis and basketball court, and a gym. You never had to leave. Except to go to class, of course. The day after school ended, you moved in. You still needed to find some furniture to make it more homey but the three of you could work on it over the summer and comfortably live out the rest of your academic careers in comfort.

You reach your little car and notice your phone on the dash board, just where you left it. You unlock it and snag the way word piece of technology, unlocking it to see if you missed anything while it was out of your sight.

Carol and Maria were on a celebratory beach trip, Clint posted a prank video he pulled on Laura, Tony was on live probably talking about how much smarter he was than everyone else and how he didn’t even study for his astro quantum physics or whatever exam and he got the highest score in history.

You met him once at a party. Why did you even bother following that guy?

You blink hearing Tony’s voice even though you never unmuted the video. You look at your phone and unmute it just to re mute it to confirm it’s not your phone his voice is coming from.

Bizarre, you think to yourself right before you crash into a wall and fall backwards onto your butt.

“Oh my gosh! I’m so sorry!” The wall talks.

You blink and look up to see the wall has blond hair and blue eyes and such a perfect jaw you want to melt.

The wall of a man crouches down to your level to offer you a hand. “Are you hurt?” He asks, brow knitted in concern.

You open your mouth but nothing comes out. You don’t know if the fall knocked the wind out of you or if you were at a loss for words at this beautiful man. “I can pick you up if you need me to,” he offers.

The thought of being cradle against his chest brings back your voice. “Um, no. I’m fine. I should’ve been watching where I was going.”

It seems you finally speaking calms him and his brow relaxes slightly.

“I think that makes two of us,” he smiles shyly and twitches his hand, reminding you that it’s there. You take it and feel how rough it is against your soft skin. He easily pulls you to standing with him and you can see how much taller he is than you. You almost whistle in awe looking up at him.

A plain white t shirt and grey sweats looked like a three piece suit on his sculpted body. You really wanted to touch but you retracted your hand from his once you were righted.

“Again, I am so sorry,” he frowns, seeming to look you over for injuries but you were sure all you’d have was a sore butt in the morning. You even managed to keep hold of your phone during he whole ordeal.

“No, really. I’m fine,” you insist, smiling up at him. He returns a soft grin and you almost melt. The reason you bumped into him in the first place pops back into your mind. “Were you watching Tony Stark’s live?”

He glances away, a soft blush tints his cheeks. “Yeah. It was more out of curiosity than anything,”

“Same,” you giggle. “I met him once at a party but his social media is kind of addicting. It’s kind of like watching a train wreck.”

The blond exhales a laugh that quickly becomes a chuckle. “I think that’s the best way to describe Tony, honestly. The man’s a genius, but, god is he full of it.”

“All my homies have a strong dislike for Tony Stark.”

“Isn’t it ‘all my homies hate Stewart Little’?” He asks cocking his head to the side. Oh, he’s cute.

“Yeah. But hate’s a strong word.” Well, Wanda might hate him.

“Are you new around here?” He asks changing the topic.

“Yeah. I just moved into 108.”

“Really? Then it’s nice to meet you, neighbor. I’m in 107.” Your mouth forms a small oh and you finally introduce yourself. “Steve Rogers,” the blond grins and extends his hand, “The old neighbors weren’t as easy on the eyes.” You feel your face heat at his comment. “I gotta hit the gym,” he smiles excusing himself. “Hey, if you need anything, don’t hesitate to drop by.” You nod and wave as he walks off towards the rec area.

God! That ass!

You bite your bottom lip and quickly search for ‘Steve Rogers’ on insta to stalk his page and curse that it’s private.

Maybe Facebook. You attempt to hunt this man down as you reenter your apartment distractedly.

“Get lost?” Nat asks hauling a box back upstairs.

“No,” you smile cryptically. “I just met one of our neighbors.” His Facebook was indeed public and he wasn’t shy about sharing photos either.

“What are they like?” Wanda asks stacking dishes in the kitchen.

You crock your finger for both of them to come see. You click on a photo of him beating up a punching bag to show your besties. “This is Steve Rogers.”

“What?” Natasha exhales.

“Wow,” Wanda grins.

“That is living next door to us?” Nat asks.

You nod. “In 107.”

“He’s gorgeous,” Wanda smiles before looking up at you with a suggestively raised eyebrow. “Did he flirt?”

“I’m not sure. He said I was easy on the eyes.”

“Interesting way to flirt,” the strawberry blonde mutters.

“Is he single?” Nat asks.

“His stat says ‘its complicated’,” you regurgitate after reading his profile.

“Complicated? How old is this kid? 12?” Nat chuckles before picking her box back up. You shrug and ponder your own pile of boxes.

“Oh well. Don’t get your hopes up too high and it won’t hurt when they fall,” Wanda states sagely. “I told Nat while you were out being easy on the eyes but Tony’s having an end of the year party. Vis invited us.”

“Vision’s inviting us places now?” You smirk tugging a box toward the stairs. You turn to watch a soft blush coat your best friend’s cheeks.

“As long as there’s free alcohol, I’m there!” Natasha shouts from upstairs.

“You know I’m going. I’ll take any chance to watch you and Vision make googoo eyes at each other,” you laugh and blink dramatically, clasping your hands in front of your chest.

“Go put your stuff away!” Wanda demands with a laughs.

Unpacking was just as much of a flurry as packing. Runs to discount furniture stores and Target seemed to happen once a day until the three of you threw away the last box together. You hugged and laughed and made a fancy dinner and invited over Vis, Pietro, and Clint.

It was great. The perfect start to your academic futures together.

Master List | Next Chapter

[vintage1der]

What separates these works from the Harry Potter fanfiction you find online may come down to snobbery. There is an undercurrent of misogyny in mainstream criticism of fanfiction, which is widely accepted to be dominated by women; one census of 10,500 AO3 users found that 80% of the users identified as female, with more users identified as genderqueer (6%) than male (4%). Novik has spent a good deal of time fighting against fanfiction’s stigma because she feels it is “an attack on women’s writing, specifically an attack on young women’s writing and the kind of stories that young women like to tell”. Which is not to say that young women only want to write about romance: “I think,” Novik says, “that [the popularity of fanfiction amongst women is] not unconnected to the lack of young women protagonists who are not romantic interests.” Devotees of fanfiction will sometimes tell you that it’s one of the oldest writing forms in the world. Seen with this generous eye, the art of writing stories using other people’s creations hails from long before our awareness of Twilight-fanfic-turned-BDSM romance Fifty Shades of Grey: perhaps Virgil, when he picked up where Homer left off with the story of Aeneas, or Shakespeare’s retelling of Arthur Brookes’s 1562 The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet. What most of us would recognise as fanfiction began in the 1960s, when Star Trek fans started creating zines about Spock and Captain Kirk’s adventures. Thirty years later, the internet arrived, which made sharing stories set in other people’s worlds – be they Harry Potter, Spider-Man, or anything and everything in between – easier. Fanfiction has always been out there, if you knew where to look. Now, it’s almost impossible to miss.

In the last few years, fanfiction has enjoyed something of a rebrand. Big-name authors such as EL James, author of the Fifty Shades books, and Cassandra Clare, who has always been open about writing Harry Potter fanfiction before her bestselling Mortal Instruments series, have helped bring it into the mainstream. These days, it’s fairly common knowledge that some people just really like writing about Captain America and Bucky Barnes falling in love, or Doctor Who fighting demons with Buffy. The general image of fanfiction has brightened somewhat: less creepy, more sweetly nerdy.

But the divide between fanfiction and original writing holds strong. It’s assumed that if people write fanfiction, it’s because they can’t produce their own. At best, it functions as training wheels, preparing a writer to commit to a real book. When they don’t – as in the famous case of Fifty Shades, which one plagiarism checker found had an 89% similarity rate with James’s original Twilight fanfiction – they are ridiculed. A real author, the logic goes, having moved on to writing their own books, doesn’t look back.

“Here’s the thing,” Naomi Novik explains over the phone from New York. She is the bestselling author of the Temeraire books, a fantasy series that adds dragons to the Napoleonic Wars, and Spinning Silver, which riffs on Rumpelstiltskin. “I don’t actually draw any line between my fanfiction work and my professional work – except that I only write the fanfiction stuff for love.”

In between writing her novels – or indeed during, as she admits that fanfiction is one of her favourite procrastination techniques – Novik is an active member of the fanfiction community. She is a co-founder of the Archive of Our Own (AO3), one of the most popular hosting websites, and a prolific writer in the universes of Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Merlin and many more.

And she’s not the only professional at work. Rainbow Rowell, the bestselling author of Eleanor and Park and other novels, once told the Bookseller that between two novels, she wrote a 30,000-word Harry Potter fanfiction. “It’s Harry and Draco as a couple who have been married for many years, and they’re raising Harry’s kids,” she said. “It’s them dealing with attachment parenting and step-parents and all these middle-aged issues.”

The divide between a fanfiction writer and an original fiction writer can look very arbitrary when looking at authors such as Michael Chabon, who once described his own novel Moonglow as “a Gravity’s Rainbow fanfic”. Or Madeline Miller, whose Orange-prize winning The Song of Achilles detailed the romantic relationship between Achilles and Patroclus, and whose latest novel Circe picks up on the witch who seduces Odysseus in the Odyssey. Miller said she was initially worried when one ex-boyfriend described her work as “Homeric fanfiction” but has since embraced her love of adapting and playing with Greek mythology. The tag could also be applied to classics such as Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, reworkings of Shakespeare by the likes of Margaret Atwood and Edward St Aubyn in the Hogarth series, and a spate of parodies: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, or Android Karenina.

What separates these works from the Harry Potter fanfiction you find online may come down to snobbery. There is an undercurrent of misogyny in mainstream criticism of fanfiction, which is widely accepted to be dominated by women; one census of 10,500 AO3 users found that 80% of the users identified as female, with more users identified as genderqueer (6%) than male (4%). Novik has spent a good deal of time fighting against fanfiction’s stigma because she feels it is “an attack on women’s writing, specifically an attack on young women’s writing and the kind of stories that young women like to tell”. Which is not to say that young women only want to write about romance: “I think,” Novik says, “that [the popularity of fanfiction amongst women is] not unconnected to the lack of young women protagonists who are not romantic interests.”

Others may find it odd that published authors would bother writing fanfiction alongside or between their professional work. But it’s all too simple to draw lines between two forms of writing that, in their separate ways, can be both productive and joyful. Neil Gaiman once wrote that the most important question an author can ask is: “What if?” Fanfiction takes this to the next level. What if King Arthur was gay? What if Voldemort won? What if Ned Stark escaped?

“I believe that all art, if it’s any good, is in dialogue with other art,” Novik says. “Fanfiction feels to me like a more intimate conversation. It’s a conversation where you need the reader to really have a lot of detail at their fingertips.”

For writers still wobbling on training wheels, fanfiction offers benefits: the immediate gratification of sharing writing without navigating publishers; passionate readers who are already interested in the characters, and a collegial stream of feedback from fellow writers.

“There was an audience of people who wanted to read my writing,” says young adult author Sarah Rees Brennan, who wrote Harry Potter fanfiction in her teens and twenties before she published her own novels, the latest of which, In Other Lands, was a Hugo award finalist. “Here were all these people online who wanted stories about familiar characters. Audiences were pre-invested and waiting.”

For writers, whether already published or on the path to being published, this instantaneous readership functions as a writer’s workshop: Novik calls it a “community of your peers”. Spending hours thrashing out the details of Draco Malfoy’s inner life can’t help but function as a crash course in character motivation. And the limits and constraints of working within a pre-existing world, with its own characters and settings, is a unique challenge.

“Fanfiction is a great incubator for writers,” Novik says. “The more constraints you have on you at the beginning, the better. It’s why people do writing exercises, or play scales. That kind of constraint forces you to practice certain skills, and then at a certain point you have the control to bring out the whole toolbox.”

Once some writers get those tools, they never look back. Rees Brennan no longer writes fanfiction. “I had a friend say it’s like the difference between babysitting kids and having children of your own,” she says. “With a world you built yourself, and characters you built, there’s this sense of deep, overwhelming love.”

But Rees Brennan is still a fan of collaborative writing and shared universes, as in the short stories she writes with Cassandra Clare about characters from Clare’s Mortal Instruments universe. “It’s amazing to gather around a kitchen table and yell at each other excitedly about what’s going to happen to mutually beloved characters,” she says. “I want that for every creative person – a chance to find their imaginative family, wherever it may be.”

Novik scorns the idea that published authors should turn their back on fanfiction. She recalls being on a panel where one member said he couldn’t understand why someone would waste their time writing it over an original work: “I said, ‘Have you ever played an instrument?’ He was like, ‘Yeah, I play piano’. I said, ‘So, do you compose all your own music?’”

“When I was first published, I deliberately went to my editors and said, ‘Yes, I’ve been writing fanfiction for 10 years. I love it.’ It was non-negotiable for me. As soon as you do that, by the way, it turns out that like half of the publishing industry has read or been involved in fanfiction,” she laughs. “Shockingly! It’s amazing how all these women who like storytelling have some connection to the community.”

For Novik and many other writers, fanfiction is a fundamental a way of expressing oneself, of teasing out new ideas and finding a joyous way to engage with writing again after the hard slog of editing a novel. The journey to become a published writer isn’t a straight line; it’s a spiral, as we grow older and continue to explore the characters and tropes we love. There’s so many stories waiting to be told – perhaps one or two of them could involve getting Captain America laid. God knows he needs it.