transstuckywriter

[transstuckywriter]

For the last time dude, my leitmotif sounds exactly like it always has. There is no symbolism for creeping corruption in there

[transstuckywriter]

imagine bucky and steve taking shots of like 100 proof vodka and trying to get DRUNK and steve is totally unaffected but after the 20th shot or something bucky is drunk as fuck and he looks at steve really seriously (while swaying slightly in his chair) and steve is kind of nervous because bucky hasn’t looked at him this intently since before the war when steve came home with two broken ribs and bucky just stared at him for five minutes before giving him the longest lecture of his entire life so yeah steve is kinda nervous. finally bucky rubs his hand over his face, sighs and says, “steve, i fucking hate it when you wear khakis” and steve laughs so hard he can’t breathe

[transstuckywriter]

it’s crazy how different you get treated in a mask but what really gets me is that when people ask why I’m masking, I’ve stopped saying I’m immunodeficient and started saying I have an immunodeficient family member at home. I am not exaggerating when I tell you this has 100% improved every single encounter I’ve had with anti-maskers. i’m not exaggerating in the slightest.

i used to tell people i’m immunodeficient and they’d ask invasive questions about my diagnosis, whether my parents kept my childhood overly sterile, whether I was vaccinated as a child (with the implication that it would have been bad if I were).

Now that I say I have an immunodeficient family member at home, people smile knowingly and say, “oh, well you do what you have to do,” and “my mom went through chemo. I remember how hard it was to do all the precautions” and “that’s so kind of you.”

if i tell someone i mask because i’m disabled, i’m assumed to be the weak link in our society, a burden to my family.

if i tell someone i mask to protect a disabled family member, i become the burdened, compassionate caretaker deserving of sympathy. how sad that i must limit myself to protect someone i love. how heroic that i choose to do so.

[transstuckywriter]

ichthyologists in 1938:

[transstuckywriter]

giving birth sucks tbh. not only do you and the baby you’re birthing almost die, usually you shit yourself and often you tear your taint. then you have to push an organ out of your body (placenta) and if even a little of that remains in your body, you can hemorrhage to death or develop an infection that essentially rots your body from the inside out. even if you had a relatively “easy birth”, you bleed for weeks on end. even after that stops, your body and brain is changed for the rest of your life, the pregnancy leeched minerals from your bones, that can cause osteoporosis later. minor urinary incontinence is not uncommon, brain scans of people who gave birth show permanent changes in their brain, you’re never quite the same.

I say all of this not to say giving birth is disgusting but it is a harrowing and visceral experience. society downplays how fucking awful it is and makes it out to be a ~magical~ experience but it isn’t a magical transformative experience for everyone. it can be an extremely traumatic experience for someone who wanted to carry a pregnancy to term, much more so for someone who did not want to be pregnant in the first place or someone who knows their baby won’t survive the birth. anyway, abortion is a right. pregnancy and birth aren’t just inconvenient, it’s fucking awful.

[transstuckywriter]

idk how to word this properly but wrt the fanfic thing you reblogged earlier. Why do fanfic writers have such different expectations than any other content hosting platform?

Like lets take youtube as a point of comparison, Engagement like comments and likes largely exists to boost the works place in algorithm, thats why youtubers put in calls to action and other engament bait. Few with decent reach even read the comments and the audience shouldnt try to develop any weird parasocial relationship with the youtuber. Fanfic authors ask for likes (kudos, because the websites gotta use nonstandard language for some reason) and comments despite them not having any impact on an algorithm, and seem to want the audience to try and develop a relationship with the author based on tumblr posts like that one.

Why the radical difference in behaviour away from the norm? And honestly with all the (usually) metaphorical blood spilled online about parasociality why are authors really surprised that the audience tries to keep their distance as is best practice with any other content producer?

okay I am going to answer this as kindly and as calmly as I can and try to assume that you are asking this in good faith. because my friend, the fact that you feel the need to ask is, to me, The Problem.

[this is, for the record, in response to this post]

fanfiction writers are not *posting content.* (I also have reservations about engaging with the term "content producer" or "content creator" but let's put that aside for now, I'll circle back to it.) you say "they seem to want the audience to try and develop a relationship with the author" as though it is strange, off-putting, and incomprehensible to you, when in fact that is the point of writing fanfiction. it is a way of participating in fandom. it is a way of building community and exchanging ideas and becoming closer with people.

if authors wanted to solely ~generate content~ that would get them attention (?? to what end, the dynamic you have described seems to equate algorithmic supremacy as winning for winning's sake, as though all anyone wants to do is BUILD an audience without ENGAGING with them, which I cannot fathom but let's pretend for a moment that is, in fact, true) then like. if that were the case why on earth would they choose a medium in which they categorically cannot succeed and profit, because it isn't their IP?

you are equating two things that are not at all the same thing. to the degree that parasocial relationships are to be avoided, and "that person is not trying to be your friend they are trying to entertain you, please respect their boundaries" is a real dynamic -- which it is!! -- like. you have to understand that the reason that is true for the people of whom it is true is because it is their JOB. they are storytellers by profession, and they are either through direct payment, or sponsorship, or advertising, or through some other means, profiting off of your attention. i don't say this to be dismissive, many wonderful artists and actors and comedians and any number of a thousand things that i enjoy very much go this route but they do so as a *career choice.* and so when you violate the public/private boundary with them, you are presuming to know a Person rather than their Worksona. the people who work at Dropout or who stream their actual play tabletop games or who broadcast on TikTok or YouTube are inviting me to feel like i know them to the degree to which that helps them succeed in their medium and at their craft, but there MUST be a mutual understanding that that's a feeling, not a fact.

however.

a fanfiction writer is not an influencer, not a professional, and is not looking to garner "success." there is no share of audience we are trying to gain for gain's sake, because we are not competition with one another, because there is nothing to win other than the pleasure of each other's company. we are doing this for no other reason than the love of the game; because we have things we want desperately to say about these worlds, these characters, these dynamics, and because we *want more than anything to know we are not alone in our thoughts and feelings.* fanfiction is a bid for interaction, engagement, attention, and consideration. it is not meant to be consumed and then moved on from because we are NOT paid for our work, nor do we want to be. the reward we seek is "attention," but attention as in CONVERSATION, not attention as in clicks. we are not IN this for profit, or for number-go-up. there is no such thing: legally there cannot be. we are in this because we want to be seen and known.

like. please understand. i am now married to someone i met because of mutual comments on fanfiction. our close friend and roommate, with whom i have cohabitated for over a decade now, is someone I met because of mutual comments on fanfiction and livejournal posts. that is my household. beyond my household, the vast majority of my closest personal friends are people with whom I built relationships in this way.

you ask why fanfiction writers want THIS and not "the norm," but the idea of everything being built to cater to an algorithm to continue to build clout, as though the only method of reaching people is Distant Overlord Creator and Passive Receptive Audience being "the norm" is EXTREMELY NEW. this is not how it has always been!! please think of the writers of zines in a pre-internet fandom, using paper and glue and xerox to try and meet like-minded people in a world that was designed for you to only ever meet people in person, by happenstance, in your own hometown. imagine the writers of the early internet, building webrings from scratch to CREATE a community to find each other, despite distance. imagine livejournal groups, forums, and -- yes, indeed, of course -- comment threads IN STORIES -- as places where people go to *converse.* in the past, we had an entire Type Of Guy that everyone knew about, the BNF ("Big Name Fan") whose existence had to be described via meme because it was SO DIFFERENT THAN THE NORM. treating fellow fans like celebrities or people too cool for the regular kids to know was an OUTLIER, and one commonly understood to lead to toxicity.

in the past, I have likened writing fanfiction to echolocation. i am not screaming because I like hearing the sound of my own voice, though i can and do find my voice beautiful. i am screaming so that the vibrations can bounce back to me and show me the world. the purpose is in the feedback. otherwise it is just noise.

does this make any sense? can you see, when i describe it that way, why an ask like yours makes me feel despair, because it makes us all sound so horribly separate from one another?

perhaps I will try another metaphor:

a professional chef who runs a restaurant will not have her feelings hurt if you never fight your way into the kitchen to personally tell her how much you enjoyed the meal. that would, indeed, violate a boundary. professional kitchens are a place of work, and you have already showed her you enjoyed the meal by paying for it, or by perhaps spreading your enjoyment by word of mouth to your friends so they, too, can have good meals. you show your appreciation by continuing to come back. if a bunch of people sitting around randomly happen to have a conversation about how much they love the food, it wouldn't hurt that chef's feelings to not be included in the conversation. however: EVEN IN THIS INSTANCE, it is ADVISABLE AND APPROPRIATE to leave a good review! you might post about how much you like this restaurant on Yelp, and it would probably make the chef feel great to see those positive comments. but the chef doesn't NEED them, because the chef is, again, *also being paid to cook.* that's why she started the restaurant, to be paid to cook!

i am not being paid to cook.

i am at home in my own kitchen, making things for a community potluck where i hope everyone will bring something we can all enjoy together. some people at the potluck are better bakers, some better cooks; some can't cook at all but are great at logistics and make sure there's enough napkins for everyone; some people come just to enjoy the food, because that's what the party is for. and if I, as this enthusiast chef who made something from my heart for this reason alone, learned after the fact that a bunch of people got together in the parking lot to rave about my dish but no one of them had ever bothered to tell me while I sat alone at my table all night, occasionally seeing people come by to pick up a plate but never saying anything to me -- of course that would bother me, because I am not otherwise profiting off the labor I put in. this is not a bid to be paid, because if someone WERE to say "hey, great cake!! here's five bucks for a slice" i would say no, friend, that is not the point and give them the money back. i'm not trying to Get Mine. I am in it to see the look on your face. I'm in it so you can tell me what about it moved you, so that I can say back what moved me to make it in the first place. so we can TALK about it.

because what happened in the first place is this: one time I had a cake whose sweetness, richness, flavor, intensity, and composition moved me so much that I *taught myself to bake.* so I could see how much vanilla and sugar was too much, so I could learn how to make things rise instead of fall flat, so I could even better appreciate the original cake by seeing for myself the effort and talent and inspiration that goes into making one even half as good.

learning to do so is a satisfying accomplishment in and of itself, yes.

but I also did it because at the end of the day we should EAT the cake. and it's a lonely thing, to eat alone when a meal was always designed and intended to be shared.

so, to answer your last question: i'm not surprised, i'm just sad. because somehow two things that were never meant to be seen as the same have been labeled "content," and thus identical. and it diminishes both the things that ARE intended to be paid for AND the things that are not, because it removes any sense of intimacy or meaning from the work.

i hope you know i'm not mad at you for asking. but i'm frustrated we've come to live in a world where the question needs to be asked, because the answers are no longer intuitively obvious because we're so siloed.

[transstuckywriter]

I went to this Northwest Passage museum once where they had the white explorers' journals on one side of the exhibit and the native people's accounts on the other side of the exhibit and the explorer journals were like "our canoe had almost sunk when we encountered some kindly Indians" and the native histories were like "we watched a bunch of strangers come down the river in the shittiest canoe you'd ever seen. Also, they had no rain gear"

[transstuckywriter]

you know a joke that never EVER gets old is when a character says smth like “I will NOT go to [place] and that is FINAL” and then it cuts to them in that place I eat that shit up every single time

[transstuckywriter]

Next time transphobes call trans healthcare "experimental" you can show them this

[transstuckywriter]

Has anyone figured out what’s so viscerally wrong with this woman yet

[transstuckywriter]

terfs cannot be touching my fucking meowth posting when hes literally played by a trans woman okay like hes off limits. i know that cat dabbles a little in they/them and she/her

[transstuckywriter]

DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE NEANDERTHAL CHILD WITH DOWN'S SYNDROME? Because they're all I've been thinking about when I'm sad for the past few days. Their existence makes me less sad.

[transstuckywriter]

how do draw good

fill 14 sketch book

bad stuff is good stuff bc you made stuff

do you like sparkle???? draw sparkle

draw what make your heart do the smiley emote

member to drink lotsa agua or else bad time

d ont stress friend all is well

your art is hot like potato crisps

don’t let anyone piss on your good mood amigo

if they do

eat

them

[transstuckywriter]

when someone acts like lotion is an incriminating item or like it could only be in someone’s bedroom for masturbation that’s how i know their skin is wicked dry

[transstuckywriter]

Shipping MCU Steve and Bucky is awesome but not them in the comics because Bucky is like a son to Steve

[transstuckywriter]

some cop, unlucky enough to pull over captain america of all people: sir um could I see ur… uh… license?

steve rogers, someone who never bothered to get one: …..no

[transstuckywriter]

Concept: Steve is unfathomably horny for Bucky's metal arm but out of a mix of general-sexual-shyness/catholic-and-internalized-homophobia-fueled-shame/guilt-about-what-HYDRA-did-to-Bucky-without-Steve-ever-stopping-to-look-for-him, he can't admit it out loud.

Talking about things? Not your style, Rogers.

Bucky, of course, knows. This is Steve. He knows too much about Steve, always, even when he can hardly remember himself. Besides, Steve's a fucking idiot and a terrible liar--hiding in complete plain site. Every day... sometimes multiple times a day... sometimes every hour, Bucky easily sees how Steve's eyes track every slick movement and mechanical calibration hungrily. Subconsciously, Steve licks his stupidly pink lips. And if he's being especially weak and stupid and Bucky is extra smooth with his movements, he can get a ragged little exhale out of him.

The thing is, though, Bucky doesn't realize how deep Steve's hunger for his metal arm goes until he's gotten out of Steve a confession of how much he likes his hands, generally, and he has four flesh-and-blood fingers up Steve's ass. Yet, fuller than ever and Steve still asks for more, slurring, arching his back, and admitting, out of his goddamn mind, basically crying for it, that he wants the metal ones.

Up until then, Bucky's kept his metal fingers away from Steve's asshole. Tenderly, he starts. And. Bucky doesn't get fully how deep Steve's want goes until his loosened hole twitches around four metal fingers and how his pretty pink, soaked rim yields like hot butter to the thrust of his whole fucking hand. Bucky slips inside past the base of his hand before he realizes it. Steve's body devours his metal arm. He isn't just hungry for it--he's starved. He takes his whole fucking hand, just like that, up to his wrist.

Bucky, scraping his jaw off the floor and fighting to not rut himself against the back of Steve's thigh until he busts, is convinced Steve would take it up to the shoulder if Bucky let him 😮‍💨