#But twitter told me if i don't at least get five likes on my post

[chewysgummies]

Jfc is Twitter really fucking bad. Wtf

[sturnsreader]

scars

TW: self harm

!! requested by @sturns-posts !!

౨ৎ ⋆｡˚

“y/n?” you heard your boyfriend, matt, call from upstairs. you sighed and made your way up stairs to find matt on his laptop. you walked around the corner and smiled walking up to him.

“yes matty?” you asked cheerfully.

“are you okay?” he asked sounding concerned.

“yeah, why?” you asked confused at by the sudden worry.

“well, im just worried about you.” he sighed. you noticed that he kept looking back down to his computer screen to making glances at your arms.

“you would tell me if you weren't, right?” he asked.

you gulped wondering what he knew.

“yes, baby, please dont worry about it.” you nodded quickly before turning back to go downstairs.

he grabbed your waist and pulled you back into his arms playing with your hair.

“are you sure you’re okay?” he asked again repeating himself. you nodded into his chest before he pulled you back leading you into his room. he didn’t say a word, just sat you on his bed and opened up the screen. on the left hand side of the screen was a recent picture of you in mcdonalds that a camera man had taken, on the right hand side was the same photo just zoomed into your wrist. your scars visible for the world to see. you read the headline over and over in your head sighing.

'HAS TWITTER TROLLS PUSHED MATTHEW STURNIOLO’S GIRLFRIEND OVER THE EDGE?'

“what is this? you told me you stopped a while ago and if you felt like that you were going to tell me. did i do something wrong?” he asked pointing to your wrist on the screen with teary eyes. you couldn't speak, your whole throat had closed up.

he noticed and pulled you onto his lap staring into your stinging eyes.

“i love you so much and i want nothing but for you to be the happiest girl ever. i let anyone hurt you. whether they're old or new, i don't care because i'm here for you now and i always will be." he smiled before kissing your forehead softly. a tear escaped your eye making you smile.

“we don't have to talk about this now, whenever you're ready.” he smiled resting your head onto his chest as he wiped the tears off.

| 2 hours later |

“hey, i know you wanted to go to the cabin back in massachusetts, so were going with nick and chris tomorrow morning!” he said with a smile while tucking your hair behind your ear.

“baby, you didn’t have to”

“shh, i wanted to.” he said as he hugged you around the waist.

you waited at least 10 seconds before letting go. matt’s hugs were the most comforting thing ever. “can you help me pack, please.”

matt shook his head up and down with a big smirk while grabbing your hand and walking downstairs to the bedroom.

“oh, how long are we staying.”

“since were with nick and chris we are staying for a week and a half, but soon we can go alone.”

he was digging through the closet trying to find a bag big enough before you made him stop.

“i love you so much.”

“i love you more, my love” you could tell he meant it. “we are going down to nick and chris’s house tomorrow morning at 4 am. i know its early but i want to get there earlier, if its okay with you.” he said right after he found a perfect suitcase to fit all your stuff.

| two days later |

“hey babe i was scrolling through things to do here and there is a tattoo parlor like five minutes away from us can we PLEASE get tattoos together!” nick said excitedly.

“shut up you have been rambling about tattoos the whole time we-“ chris said as you cut him off.

“nick i would LOVE to get a tattoo with you and i know exactly what i want. follow me!” you said as you go to find matt in the store.

“im getting a tattoo with nick and i just want you to draw stars around my scars.” you say while going through your purse to find a pen.

matt looks at you in awe as he takes the marker and draws the cutest stars ever. you start to tear up. you look up at him as he concentrates on drawing them all.

౨ৎ ⋆｡˚

not my best work but i tried 🥲🥲

i hope you enjoyed and if you have anything you need to talk about message me! i love you guys sm🩷.

[immaturityofthomasastruc]

#23: “The Miraculous Ladybug Movie May Give You What You Want, but My Show Gives You What You Actually Need! You Don’t Work in Television, so You Wouldn’t Understand.”

I've been running this blog for almost three years at this point, and I've seen Astruc talk trash about various things while claiming his show is better, like Winx Club, Paw Patrol, Pokemon, and Pixar as a whole. I never thought I'd see Astruc act like his show was better than a movie based on his show though.

For those who don't know (and you'd be forgiven, seeing how Astruc has barely talked about it on his Twitter), there was recently a movie that hit theaters based on Miraculous Ladybug called Ladybug & Cat Noir: The Movie. Supposedly, it's meant to be a retelling of how Marinette and Adrien met as civilians and as heroes. While I haven't seen it, it seems to be getting good reception, with some saying it's better than the show it's based on.

Of course, Astruc had something to say about this.

Okay, I sort of get what he's trying to say here. It's hard to compare the experience of watching an hour and a half long movie and a TV show with five seasons under its belt, but at the same time, the way Astruc phrased it still made it seem like he was trying to say the show was the better option because it “gives you what you need”. Nobody was expecting the Love Square to be resolved in a few episodes. Most people at least wanted more stories about the two to be told that don't involve constant padding. Astruc also acts like the Love Square is the only draw for the series instead of, oh, I don't know, the superhero action? You're really telling me they couldn't have tried focusing more on that after resolving the Love Square? I'm just saying, if The Office can continue after Jim and Pam got together, you can at least try to actually write other stories after the Love Square becomes canon.

One user in particular had some things to say in response to Astruc's claims, and you can guess how well Astruc took that.

Again, nobody is saying that working in television is all sunshine and rainbows, Astruc, but just because someone isn't familiar with dealing with network constraints and test audiences, it doesn't mean that they're unable to provide any meaningful criticism.

Also, Astruc is once again using a psychology term, in this case, the Dunning-Kruger Effect, to act like he's smarter than the critics. This man took psychology as an elective in college, didn't he?

But then again, this is coming from someone who doesn't think constructive criticism is a real thing.

Funny how he once again acts like anything that isn't positive feedback of his show is delusional, isn't it?

Eventually, this devolved into Astruc posting a little tangent about how fandoms have only gotten more toxic, which would have been a decent point... it if didn't come after all the things he said about fans not being able to criticize his show.

Again, there's nothing wrong with what he's trying to say here, but it feels less like a critique of how fans have become more toxic with the advent of the internet, and more like he's complaining about how mean people have been to him lately.

And, of course, this led to the usual fare of people calling out Astruc for his close mindedness, and Astruc once again saying how people aren't allowed to criticize his show in any way that isn't blind praise.

And here's the thing. We're still not done yet. This little tangent only warranted more comments about how Astruc handles criticism, only this time, it's also about calling out the people who think they can do a better job handling the show.

First, do you mind giving us an example of what kind of constraints you have to deal with, Astruc? We all know that TV executives suck, but I think we'd have more of a reason to understand your struggles if you actually explained some things that needed to be changed because of executive meddling.

Second, nobody wants a beach episode, Astruc, especially after that one issue of the comic you're choosing to ignore. We just want a more consistent story that doesn't rely on endlessly padding out the Love Square.

And finally, did you just say you have to be French if you want to rewrite Miraculous Ladybug? What does being French have to do with any of this? I remember seeing a little tweet a few years ago suggesting you would be a good choice to write a Superman story, but last time I checked, you aren't American.

Let's review in case you got lost. Someone tweeted that they thought the Miraculous Ladybug movie did a better job at the story it set out to tell than the Miraculous Ladybug TV show, Astruc tried to explain how his show is still good in its own way while justifying how long it's been going on for, he ranted and raved at fans for daring to criticize his team's writing before going on a tangent about how the internet has made people more hostile over the years, and when people still weren't happy with him, he claimed that you could only criticize or rewrite the show if you're an experienced French TV writer like him.

So just keep that in mind, fanfic writers. Unless you're French and have experience writing for television, you don't have a chance in hell to successfully write your own version of Miraculous Ladybug.

[kaiowut99]

Duel Links Re-Translation Mod Project (Announcement post I guess?) - Dark Yugi In-Duel Line Re-Translation Test (WIP)

(Alternate project tagline: #LetYubelSayLove)

(Forgive some video stuttering, my Nvidia game recording thing was a bit buggy 😩)

~~~~~~~~

So. For the longest, I've been hella curious to figure out where the text for Duel Links is in the file assets, the in-duel lines in particular--as I'm sure most folks know, the English dubtitle text applied for the English dialogue is, nine times out of ten, inaccurate or decently simplified vs the Japanese audio played on the same line, and it's a bit wild that we still don't have a second English option for a more faithful take this long after Konami gave us the Japanese voices natively on Steam and made modding the game to get them a thing of the past. But for all my occasional searching through the files, I had little luck due to encryption and junk; at some point in September, I got curious and did more digging and was able to find some card text, at least, but nowhere near as much as is in the game now, and still no dialogue lines.

And then, 2-3 weeks ago, I saw that Aura (Octomaidly over on Twitter, part of @entamesubs handling Studio Bridge-era YGO fansubs for SEVENS+) had been working with a couple of folks to decrypt and re-translate the in-duel lines for SEVENS characters and came across her video on Twitter sharing her progress; I immediately reached out to find out how they're doing it and mentioned how I'd like to try and re-translate pre-SEVENS stuff, lol. (You can watch her latest video demoing her re-translation for GO RUSH world here; find her work as it develops on the NexusMods page for it.)

After connecting with Aura and the folks helping her and getting set up to work on things, I set up a quick re-translation for Dark Yugi's lines, had it all imported for a test-run, and recorded this demo test vs Kaiba to see 'em in action; I did fix a few things since recording this, like some line breaks here/there, but also fixed the one mention of "Dark Magician" in the cut-in shot since this was a test of my OCG-name translation (more on that below) and thus "Black Magician" should've been there--but all told, it looks pretty good overall!

All that to say that this is now another lil' project on my list 😅 It's very cool that this is finally doable and I'm looking forward to working with Aura and co to make it happen--though do note that it'll be at a bit of a slower pace since work on my finalized GX subs (currently revision work on 117-119 is underway) and Tag Force Special is a bit higher priority. That said, the nice thing is that working on in-duel lines in TFSP kinda does half my work for me here, lol; maybe half of Dark Yugi's lines, for example, are recycled verbatim from TFSP--the only difference being that Shunsuke Kazama is actually voicing him--with the rest being lines newly added for him in DL, from lines for dueling other characters to cards he didn't have lines for in TFSP, and this should be the case across the board for anyone who showed up in TF[SP].

My intention is also to work on two translations: one with OCG card names and one with the TCG names, as we're doing with TFSP, and I'll be starting this off by working on the first five characters from each series that appeared in TFSP, since that's how I'm working on the story events there (so for DM, working on Dark Yugi, Kaiba, Jounouchi, Ishizu, and Mai first), and then once done through VRAINS, that might probably be the first version of the mod I'd release. Or maybe I'll release a version as I get each set of five done; we'll see lol. I do plan to contribute my translations to Aura's project, as well. (Also we just recently dug up event dialogue text so those will be re-translatable, too; doing this for the older series' events that likely won't get reruns will at least be worth it since you can spend Gems to get those event scenes)

But overall, it's pretty encouraging--stay tuned!

[prettyboybuckley]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

tagged by @saybiwithme @bi-buckrights @zainclaw

How many works do you have on ao3?

160

What's your total ao3 word count?

1,070,239

What fandoms do you write for?

I've mostly written for 9-1-1, though I started off with Shameless (6 fics) and I have written some for Teen Wolf (5 fics). There's one 9-1-1 crossover with Schitt's Creek.

Top five fics by kudos:

parents always yelling (telling us to get our acts together)

i just want something to hold on to (and a little of that human touch)

I will come to you (even in my sleep)

open up again (i believe in second chances)

exes and the oh's

Do you respond to comments?

Always, even if it takes me months. I actually just caught up again (there's still a bunch to go, but right now the oldest is 17 days ago instead of 250 days...). It's just a rule I have for myself, and even with the backlog I've kept it up so far, so I'm not going to stop doing it now.

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I'm not a big fan of angsty endings, I generally try to at least make it a hopeful ending or, in the case of the college au, use an epilogue to fix things.

But I guess sunny skies & summer highs qualifies as an angsty ending simply because of the cliffhanger (and yes, there is still going to be a continuation, I'm working on it 🙈).

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Choosing one out of 160 is really hard, but I think tell me, will you stay or will you run away is definitely one that deserves a mention here, because it already has a happy ending and then the epilogue just makes it even better 🥰

Do you get hate on fics?

Not commented on the fic itself, no. I've had some people talk shit about my fics on twitter, though, and not even vaguely but calling me by (user)name.

Do you write smut?

Is grass green? Yeah, I write smut 🤭 Thanks to two times kinktober, I have 95 explicit fics, by far the most used rating for my fics.

Craziest crossover:

let's have some fun tonight is my 9-1-1/Schitt's Creek crossover fic for 9-1-1 Rarepair Week, and my only crossover fic

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

My head over feet Buddie valentine's two-parter got posted as one chapter in Wattpad work with over 30 fics once. Filed a DMCA and Wattpad took it down within two hours.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Two of my fics have been translated into Russian afaik, one on ao3 and one on Ficbook

Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

Nope. It may be a nice challenge for the future? Not sure who I'd do it with.

All time favourite ship?

Gotta go for Buddie on that one, lol. Especially if you look at my writing history. But I often tend to hyperfixate on one ship at a time (current reading obsession is McDanno)

What's a wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

Buck's POV of if love is art then you might be my masterpiece. I really want to, but at this point it's been two years since the original so I don't know if it'd be worth it either. (I know not everyone was happy about how I ended it, but I doubt any of them are still waiting for more). Writing a different POV of the same fic takes an amount of planning that my brain just really struggles with. And I could pick up where the last chapter (before the epilogue) picks up, but I think that way there would be some crucial information about Buck missing.

What are your writing strengths?

I've been told quite a lot of times that I am good at keeping characters, well, in character, even when putting them in partial or complete AU's. Of course, what is in character or not is subjective, but I do always challenge myself to work as much of the canon backstory and personality into who they are in the AU as possible.

And I like to think I'm pretty good at writing smut.

What are your writing weaknesses?

I'm terrible at pacing, which multiple of my long fics prove. It'll be drawn out first and then suddenly rushing. And being ESL I do struggle with things like sentence structure and grammar pretty regularly still.

Thoughts on dialogue in another language?

As long as there is some kind of translation provided somewhere I like it, but I'm not so quick to use it myself. Not beyond a few Spanish words here and there (generally pet names between Eddie and his family we've seen on the show or the occasional curse word when I feel it fits better than an English one, but I usually need to employ help from Spanish-speaking friends for those).

First fandom you wrote in?

Shameless! I binged that right before I started 9-1-1 and combined with the creative writing minor I was doing, it was actually what got me back into writing in general and what made me write my first ever fic.

Favorite fic you've written?

My in your arms i feel safe-series (which I always lovingly refer to as the ace kink fic) is definitely one of my favorites simply because of how personal it is to me and for the reason behind me writing it in the first place.

Other strong contenders are i would've loved you forever (it's never enough but i wanted it to be) and i'm begging you, come home to me (Teen Wolf, Thiam)

tagging @monsterrae1 @rogerzsteven @loserdiaz @watchyourbuck

[joseac96]

"IT'S...ME!"

Around the time the Five Nights at Freddy's movie was coming out, like shortly after the first trailer dropped, I made this canvas painting of Golden Freddy leaned back against a wall with the phrase "IT'S..." "...ME" with the Vengeful Spirit, assumed to be Cassidy, along with the 4 animatronics, Freddy Fazbear, Bonnie the Bunnies, Chica the Chicken and Foxy the Pirate Fox above the yellow bear. Oh, don't mind the red stains splattered around btw, that's just pizza sauce... nothing suspicious....OK, this is FNaF, what do you expect? 😂

Anyway, this painting was actually made for one of my cousin's kids as they happen to be a fan of the FNaF series and I thought it would be a good way for them to get hyped for the movie. But to my surprise, after giving them the painting, around the time the movie came out, they actually took the painting with them when seeing the movie and guests at the theater they went found interest in the painting, or at least that's what I was told by them.

I heard that the sequel is in the works and releasing some time next year. Wondering if I should do another painting for that movie as well.

Originally posted on Twitter on August 22, 2023

[catherine-clover]

I follow 750 people, and about 20 of those are mutuals. I joined almost ten years ago at this point, way before there was an algorithm like the for you page (which is like two years old, max). Back before they started generating a feed for you the only ways to see posts at all would be following users to get posts on your dash or by exploring tags. Exploring tags constantly can get annoying so I followed people.

I only have about 200 followers total but I've had multiple posts breach containment - to keep my sanity I just turned off push notifications entirely except for when I get a dm. If you really want to stop a post from clogging up your activity feed while it's blowing up, the mute button has never really worked well according to reports - but you can delete the original post if you want. You'll never get a reblog in your feed again.

The reason I follow so many people is because I do like being able to see as many posts as I have time for - I follow a large amount of artists, some who only post once or twice a month, so that alone would truly be an empty feed. And on top of that I'd estimate at least 150 of them are dead blogs that haven't updated in five years because I don't have the heart to unfollow people who've moved on. I like to reblog a lot - before a lot of people flooded in from other social medias, reblogging was "the thing" you did on tumblr to a post you liked. It was really common for a post to have more reblogs than likes, with likes functioning more like bookmarks than anything. I haven't really changed how I view interacting on tumblr in a long time, but the culture here sure has changed around me. When I'm in the swing of things, I run a queue of 45 reblogged posts a day. I prefer to see posts to reblog as they get posted and reblogged by people and blogs I know, instead of always seeing posts from strangers. In my head the same post can have a different flavor coming from different users reblogging it. I enjoy having a lot of posts on my dash but I don't want the tumblr algorithm (which has a history of being flaky, making nonsensical decisions, and not giving you enough control over what you see) to be in charge of the content, I much prefer to see stuff curated by people I trust and share interests with. I hope this makes sense. Good luck with the too many notes! Tens of thousands really gets overwhelming at times.

If you really want to stop a post from clogging up your activity feed while it's blowing up, the mute button has never really worked well according to reports - but you can delete the original post if you want. You'll never get a reblog in your feed again.

Finally, someone who actually addressed the issue! Thanks!! Though I kinda wanna keep the post on my profile as functionally a souvenir, lol. Maybe I'll take it down if it bursts again.

before a lot of people flooded in from other social medias

When was this btw? What was the tipping point? When did likes become more common than reblogs? I always make sure to reblog/queue a bunch because I was told about that immediately. There have been a few movements to and from Twitter, TikTok, and Reddit.

before a lot of people flooded in from other social medias

Ack, why 45? That's so close to 50, the limit!

Good luck with the too many notes! Tens of thousands really gets overwhelming at times.

Yeah, thanks. Have fun in the processing vortex.

[takaispog]

Intro :]

I'm Taka, but I also go by Blake or Peter. [preference order; Taka, Peter, Blake]

I use he/they/it pronouns, I DO care what you use for me, I hate she/her pronouns with a passion I will never EVER use them for myself. [preference order; he, it, they]

I am an artist, but don't expect much from me cause I am awful when it comes down to actually drawing. Most of my drawings either take a few hours or a whole week, I literally cannot sit down at my computer and focus for more than 10 minutes, it's hard living in such a world.. [adhd + autism]

IM NEVER ONLINE DATING AGAIN. WORST MISTAKE OF MY LIFE.

Oh, also I'm a writer and I spend a lot of my time writing more than I do drawing. I've made several AUs [mostly DSAF] that I would love to share with you all!! I'm the creator of Broken Promises on Twitter [@dsafbrknpromise] and although it's been a while since I've actually done anything with it, maybe this'll give me the motivation to continue it / make content related to it.

Not in a lot of fandoms because I can't have more than one interest at a time due to not being able to get into stuff easily. Mostly cause DSAF is such a huge hyperfixation as of currently and I can't watch anything without going "haha dsaf" whenever somebody says the name Jack or Peter.

The fandoms I am in are as follows; [ Most liked to Least liked ]

Dayshift at Freddy's [DSAF]

Dialtown

How To Train Your Dragon [HTTYD]

Pokémon

Slime Rancher

Overwatch

Five Nights at Freddy's [FNAF]

Also a HUUUUGE Group Chat fan [ Isaacwhy, Softwilly, etc.. ] so if anybody out there a huge fan too, hmu.

Will mostly be a DSAF account, will probably post about Peter Kennedy a lot due to him being my husband and us having three children and a house on a hill!

BYF;

I make jokes about wanting to kms and sexual jokes towards fictional adult characters, I'm also really REALLY into DSAF so if spam about the game / fanfiction / art pisses you off gtfo. I do not give a damn. [if you also hate the game get off my page idc about ur opinions]

I make die jokes towards close friends [unless told not to] and type in all caps sometimes, if that makes you uncomfortable in any way you are free to leave!! :] I don't want anybody on my page to feel uncomfortable or anything, I do genuinely care about the people of this fandom, you guys are funny / cool / incredibly talented and I cannot wait to meet new people and make friends.

I sometimes come off a little strong / rude and that's because I cannot read my own tone!! So sorry if I sound sarcastic sometimes or if I sound mean about something, I don't mean to be!! I will make it known if I meant to come off as rude though.

I am an OSDD-1b system. If you don't know what that is, you could do research about it!! If you don't want to idc I tend to keep my system off my shit.

DNI;

Basic DNI shit, if you're a weirdo gtfo. Proshippers, pedophiles, the whole bunch of you, I DO NOT LIKE YOU. If you step foot into my account I will get angry or something idk.

DSAF hater / disliker, if you don't know what the game is I will gladly teach you!! I loooove DSAF, it's my comfort game, I write / draw for it every day. I will point my long, wrinkly finger towards the door if you say anything negative about it.

That's about it!! Thank you for reading <3

[pettyprocrastination]

hiiii congrats on ur story being accepted to a lit journal!! ur writing is rlly gorgeous and hope more good things come to you 💌🫀!!

+ i guess i did have a question lol (and feel free to ignore or not answer!!) how did u find lit journals to submit to i guess? like what was your criteria for looking / how did u know how to go about looking lol. again! if you don’t want to answer totally fine :))) hope u have a great day !!

thank you so much love! And I'm happy to answer your questions!

one of my biggest pieces of advice is to look at small journals! I know personally it'd be nice to be able to get into a big journal on the first try but sadly for many (or at least myself lol) that usually isn't the case. My acceptance was from a very small run journal with a following of only about 100-130. It isn't to say that you don't have the talent to get into bigger literary journals- but there going to be much more competitive because they'll most likely have a lot more submissions to go through as well.

there are lots of small-run journals I've found through looking on instagram and twitter: often times when you find one you like their following list will be similarly themed/subject literary journals of the same vein or will have posts recommending fellow journals that you'll also find as good fits for your work!

Use submittable! It's a wonderful website that lets you filter through calls for submissions for art, essays, poetry, short stories, and media pieces of the like for contests and journals around the world for free as a writer/artist. It also allows you to keep track of your submissions and withdraw them easier than just doing so through plain email. (screenshot of website featured below)

Don't feel any pressure to submit to journals that require a submission fee- there are plenty of amazing journals both big and small that you can submit to for free

Now I will say that some literary journals you may find won't use submittable (because a subscription to it as a literary journal is quite expensive) which is also fine! That just means you'll have to be more content with checking your email more often for responses

I know personally I had to look for journals that allowed more "outside of the box" writing/subject matter simply because my story featured cannibalism quite heavily and things like that can be a big no-no for other journals because it may not fit the general theme of their issue/clash with the stories they had already accepted for that time slot. So look for ones that best fit to your style! My professor had told me it's best to look for literary journals that don't worry about genre but it can be hard if you write for genres that are often hard sells (ie horror) for others.

i'd say the biggest thing personally was submitting to a lot of places. Many journals allow simultaneous submissions (submitting one story to multiple journals at once) but it's best to let them know initially and then withdraw as soon as you get accepted somewhere else. Sometimes it really is a numbers game of "if i submit this story to five places I'm more likely to get an acceptance from at least one of them" but keep in mind that 1. Not all journals allow simultaneous submissions and 2. If there's one journal in particular that you really really want to be featured in I'd recommend submitting your piece to only that one so you don't get jinxed and get accepted somewhere else before they have a chance to respond.

I know it may sound moot but keep an ongoing list of the journals you like and plan to submit to!! If you aren't using submittable, it can be very easy to lose track of the journals you want to submit to without anyway of definitely remembering them so I've started by making a google docs full of journals I come across that I want to one day be accepted in + their next submission deadline because once you look at so many its definitely easy for the titles and dates to slip your mind without thinking

And finally my biggest piece of advice is to be patient and take rejections with grace. Coming from somebody who has had her stories rejected multiple times and is currently on staff for a literary journal: rejections don't mean your story is bad. It can mean they already accepted too many of the same theme/subject, the story doesn't match the theme of their current issue or many other topics. You're a talented writer and you can't let rejections pull you away from submitting! As frustrating as it is, publication for a lot of us is a small group of fish in a very big pond of rejections, as is the way of writing!

Anyways- be patient, be confident, and have fun!

[hopecorps]

speedran the stages of grief in less than a week and this is just the culmination of that

i just think that if you are best friends with someone for five years and lived with them and their girlfriend for two years that maybe they have a right to know why you stopped talking to them right before you got engaged and why you're not inviting them to your wedding

i like. i don't even want an invite anymore i just want to know why you don't like me.

clearly something happened, maybe it was when i was upset about you being inconsiderate to me over over again in the last year of our friendship and you didn't like it and never apologized, maybe it's that i don't have the money your girlfriend does, maybe you think i'm immature or annoying or going nowhere in life, maybe you don't like my girlfriend, or maybe your girlfriend doesn't like me (though they have at least pretended to want me in their lived and even wished me a happy birthday when you didnt), or maybe youve wanted me out of your life for years and i just couldn't take a hint

i don't even care what it is at this point. i just want like some kind of acknowledgement that either you're treating me in a way i don't deserve, or you DO think i deserve to be treated this way. or maybe you've stopped caring about me a long long time ago and haven't thought about my feelings at all. maybe you haven't cared to notice how you've been treating me.

of course i won't get any of that. and i have to be fine with it. i have to stop expecting things from people. i have to stop expecting an explanation as to why people don't like me anymore. it's hardest i think because you were my best friend for so long (and i know i was never yours) and you knew how much hurt id felt with things like this

it's just so funny because i was so upset when i heard about the engagement because i KNEW you were going to propose because you told me your plan last year, and i had offered to hide in the bushes and take video and pictures, but i found out you did it on twitter. for a week i was in shock because i thought i was the kind of friend you call and tell that youre getting married. and it turns out i'm not even the kind of friend you invite to the wedding. isn't that sad.

i'm the friend who has to ask if im going to get a save the date that i know you sent out, and get and impersonal "hey! you're not. sorry!" which, well. i'm not much of a friend at all i guess.

it hurts from both of you so much, but you and i had a fake wedding once. you picked out and named my cat. we talked about adopting and raising kids together. my parents don't understand why one of the only friends of mine theyve ever loved isn't in my life anymore and i don't have an answer and i never will and it's not because we had a fight it's because you stopped caring about me and that's just. i guess what happens to people when they grow up.

i'm fine to send you memes on twitter and wish you happy birthday and think of you on fridays when i do karaoke a two minute drive from your apartment even though you never come when i invite you and even though we used to love to sing together. i'm fine to type out this pathetically long post on an account you would never see because i'm not the kind of friend that you would even want to hear this from.

i'm fine because i do have other friends that care about me and love me and enjoy my company. i have friends from college and friends who would travel the ten minutes to hang out with me because they would want to if they lived that close. i have friends who have traveled hours to see me. i have friends who wish me happy birthday and i have friends who want me to be happy when it's not my birthday. ive made good friends who i sing with and who invite me to hang out with them when we aren't singing. i have friends who would tell me theyre engaged even if we haven't spoken in a while and i have friends who want me to come to their wedding. i have friends who would probably put me in their wedding.

so i will be okay. because i think i actually am a good friend. and other people think so too even if you don't. even if neither of you ever even did.

[lindsaywesker]

Good morning! I hope you slept well and feel rested? Currently sitting at my desk, in my study, attired only in my blue towelling robe, enjoying my first cuppa of the day. Happy Hump Day!

Here is my new idea for Wednesday’s status. I hope you like it?

I am calling today’s status WEDNESDAY WORDS.

I love words. I have written stage plays, radio plays, TV scripts, novels, short stories, songs, newspaper articles and, obviously, this blog every morning, so you must know I love words!

Here are the rules of WEDNESDAY WORDS: if you decide to post a comment today, just post some words that you really love. Let me repeat that: IF you decide to post a comment today, just post some words that you really love. It could be a few words from a novel? A few lines from a poem? Some lyrics from one of your favourite songs? A profound quote? A philosophical thought? A great line of dialogue from a play or film? Anything you want. Long or short; five words or 30 words, I don’t care! Don’t give us any names or titles, just give us the words they said. If people really like them, they can ‘Google’ the source.

I will start.

“Ism's in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon, ‘I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me.’ Good point there. After all, he was The Walrus.”

REMEMBER: if you decide to post a comment today, just post some words that you really love.

Saw a great ‘vox pop’ on my Twitter timeline the other day. An English journalist asking English people how much they thought medical costs were in America. His respondents were fairly freaked-out when he quoted the figures. Without health insurance, the average per-day hospital cost in the U.S. is $2,883, with California ($4,181) the most expensive, and Mississippi ($1,305) the least. The average hospital stay is 4.6 days, at an average cost of $13,262. If surgery is involved, hospital costs soar through the roof. Calling an ambulance can cost you $400, visiting the ER can cost you $150, pancreatic cancer treatment can cost you $31,000-plus, breast cancer treatment can cost you $48,000-plus. When the government gets rid of the NHS, we can all look forward to these costs but, as we’ve all got loads of available cash, this shouldn’t be a problem.

One of my students was playing me some music by one of his favourite artists. A successful, young trap act from Atlanta. He asked me my opinion. I had to tell him I preferred – what for me is – the golden age of hip hop: EPMD, Biggie, 2Pac, A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Jungle Brothers, Busta Rhymes, The Roots, Outkast, Mos Def, Pharaoahe Monch, Common etc. The video he was showing me was slow and grungy, used the ’n’ word about 200 times and featured really dark violence. No wonder kids think nothing of killing each other! There was no bass line just a very low, distorted sound. I told him that, back in the day, hip hop was dance music (‘Don’t Scandalize Mine’, ‘Talkin’ All That Jazz’, ‘Treat ‘Em Right’ etc.) He said that young people danced to this music. I was not shocked. What passes for hip hop these days is often very slow and very depressing. Definitely a generational thing!

Have a wonderful and well-endowed Wednesday. I love you all. Yes, a crazy, bald man loves and cares about you.

[salarymanwaka]

WAKA!!!! IF U PUBLISHED AN ORIGINAL BL COMIC!! I WOULD PAY FIVE MILLION DOLALRS TO READ IT

UEEEEEE that is so sweet of you to say haha, even if you can't sponsor that many coins right now, the sentiment means a lot to me so thank you so much for your kindness, really..!! (இuஇ`｡) I actually told myself while making new year's resolutions that this year I want to try getting over my fears and share at least a little bit from my original BL works publicly, whether it's character design or basic settei... but honestly it is a big risk in many ways and if it goes badly I don't know if I can recover haha;; The main barrier for pretty much every person I know who wants to make original BL/comics is (1) no money to rent their own free time from the capitalist society for drawing, and (2) anti LGBTQ+ troubles in their environment.... And even if they are not in the closet like me there are many differences in taste/culture and taboo topics between east and west when it comes to BL works that can be confusing to navigate, so some of my friends have experienced unexpected controversy and attacks with international publishing, and in many ways even if it's something so simple like posting your own OC on twitter, it feels very scary...!! Anyway I am very grateful to everyone who has ever expressed interest or support in my original works, (without even seeing them haha) I've thought about using something like pixiv fanbox or patreon to help with piracy and income etc, but at the moment I don't think I can release something on a consistent schedule that is worthy of sponsorship, so I don't want to disappoint anyone o(; u;)o;;; I will still try to figure out how to fulfil my new year's resolution this year though!! Thank you again for your message which lends this silly snail a lot of courage!! I'm sorry I don't know why the reply became so long and self-centred!! I hope that you will have a wonderful weekend and find $20 on the floor!!!!!!

[play-now-my-lord]

twitter retrospective

i was active on twitter from 2018 to the present. i can periodize this as hanging gently on the robes of more popular posters 2018-2019 developing a following 2019-2020, and the Pandemic Hell Years, during which i found myself influential on social media for the second time in my life. it was vertiginous, and while i don't believe it was a waste - people showed up for me in my times of need, and i think i had a positive impact on people around me - i also don't think my behavior was blameless, because essentially no one's can be in such a brutal environment. i think nothing in particular will keep me awake at night about it, though. i posted some funny shit and had fun reading other people's funny shit. i developed a sort of battle-hardened attitude towards the horrors of the world that i think i'll have to spend a while unlearning. i do not like the degree to which being on twitter encouraged me to view these horrors as a spectacle to be commented on with glib detachment.

i guess that's the thing that stands out most to me, and has been standing out to me as i try to stake less of my life on the success or failure of one website over the last few weeks. a friend of mine once wrote something to the effect of, "i think being popular on the internet breaks your brain". i think that's true. i think the ways the internet mediates microcelebrity are horrible, and i don't wish it on anyone. the money's shit, not worth the trouble. i once told another friend that i viewed my twitter presence as a sort of outsider performance art, with the "art" in question being the category of influencer. most of those people are bought and paid for by shadowy donors or organs of the state of one variety or another. i'm not, and consequently could never have their reach or their cultural importance. i think this comes out in the wash because my soul will not burn in hell as theirs will when i die, or at least if it does it will be for different, more personally significant reasons. i'd hate to spend eternity in the malebolge on the MyPillow guy's account, is all i'm saying. podcasts guested on: one. viral tweets: about a hundred, give or take. enemies made: like five or six, maybe did it get my dick wet: no overall rating: mediocre. Try your best next time!!

[soundsfaebutokay]

So I've recc'd this video before, but it deserves its own post because it's one of my favorite things on youtube. It's a Tedx Talk by comics writer, editor, and journalist Jay Edidin, and I really think that it will connect with a lot of people here.

If you live and breathe stories of all kinds, you might like this.

If you care about media representation, you might like this.

If you're neurodivergent, you might like this.

If you're interested in a gender transition story that veers from the norm, you might like this.

If you love the original Leverage and especially Parker, and understand how important it is that a character like her exists, you will definitely like this.

Transcript below the cut:

You Are Here: The Cartography of Stories

by Jay Edidin

I am autistic. And what this means in practice is that there are some things that are easier for me than they are for most people, and a great many things that are somewhat harder, and these affect my life in more or less overt ways. As it goes, I'm pretty lucky. I've been able to build a career around special interests and granular obsession. My main gig at the moment is explaining superhero comics continuity and publishing history for which work I am somehow paid in actual legal currency—which is both a triumph of the frivolous in an era of the frantically pragmatic, and a job that's really singularly suited to my strengths and also to my idiosyncrasies.

I like comics. I like stories in general, because they make sense to me in ways that the rest of the world and my own mind often don't. Self-knowledge is not an intuitive thing for me. What sense of self I have, I've built gradually and laboriously and mostly through long-term pattern recognition. For decades, I didn't even really have a self-image. If you'd asked me to draw myself, I would eventually have given you a pair of glasses and maybe a very messy scribble of hair, and that would've been about it. But what I do know—backwards, forwards, and in pretty much every way that matters—are stories. I know how they work. I understand their language, their complex inner clockwork, and I can use those things to extrapolate a sort of external compass that picks up where my internal one falls short. Stories—their forms, their structure, the sense of order inherent to them—give me the means to navigate what otherwise, at least for me, would be an impassable storm of unparsable data. Or stories are a periscope, angled to access the parts of myself I can't intuitively see. Or stories are a series of mirrors by which I can assemble a composite sketch of an identity I rarely recognize whole...which is how I worked out that I was transgender, in my early thirties, by way of a television show.

This is my story. And it's about narrative cartography, and representation, and why those things matter. It's about autism and it's about gender and it's about how they intersect. And it's about the kinds of people we know how to see, and the kinds of people we don't. It's not the kind of story that gets told a lot, you might hear a lot, because the narrative around gender transition and dysphoria in our culture is really, really prescriptive. It's basically the story of the kid who has known for their whole life that they're this and not that, and that story demands the kind of intuitive self-knowledge that I can't really do, and a kind of relationship to gender that I don't really have—which is part of why it took me so long to figure my own stuff out.

So, to what extent this story, my story has a beginning, it begins early in 2014 when I published an essay titled, "I See Your Value Now: Asperger's and the Art of Allegory." And it explored, among other things, the ways that I use narrative and narrative structures to navigate real life. And it got picked up in a number of fairly prominent places that got linked, and I casually followed the ensuing discussion. And I was surprised to discover that readers were fairly consistently assuming I was a man. Now, that in itself wasn't a new experience for me, even though at the time I was writing under a very unambiguously female byline. It had happened in the letter columns of comics I'd edited. It had happened when a parody Twitter account I'd created went viral. When I was on staff at Wired, I budgeted for fancy scotch by putting a dollar in a box every time a reader responded in a way that made it clear they were assuming I was a man in response to an article where my name was clearly visible, and then I had to stop doing that because it happened so often I couldn't afford to keep it up. But in all of those cases, the context, you know, the reasons were pretty obvious. The fields I'd worked in, the beats I covered, they were places where women had had to fight disproportionally hard for visibility and recognition. We live in a culture that assumes a male default, so given a neutral voice and a character limit, most readers will assume a male author.

But this was different, because this wasn't just a book I'd edited, it wasn't a story I'd reported—it was me, it was my story. And it made me uncomfortable, got under my skin in ways that the other stuff really hadn't. And so I did what I do when that happens, and I tried to sort of reverse-engineer it to look at the conclusions and peel them back to see the narratives behind them and the stories that made them tick. And I started this, I started this by going back to the text of the essay, and you know, examining it every way I could think of: looking at craft, looking at content. And in doing so, I was surprised to realize that while I had written about a number of characters with whom I identified closely, that every single one of those characters I'd written about was male. And that surprised me even more than the responses to the essay had, because I've spent my career writing and talking and thinking about gender and representation in popular media. In 2014, I'd been the feminist gadfly of an editorial department and multiple mastheads. I'd been a founding board member of an organization that existed to advocate for more and better representation of women and girls in comics characters and creators. And most of my favorite characters, the ones I'd actively seek out and follow, were women. Just not, apparently, the characters I saw myself in.

Now I still didn't realize it was me at this point. Remember: self-knowledge, not very intuitive for me. And while I had spent a lot of time thinking about gender, I'd never really bothered to think much about my own. I knew academically that the way other people read and interpreted my gender affected and had influenced a lifetime of social and professional interactions, and that those in turn had informed the person I'd grown up into during that time. But I really believed, like I just sort of had in the back of my head, that if you peeled away all of that social conditioning, you'd basically end up with what I got when I tried to draw a self-portrait. So: a pair of glasses, messy scribble of hair, and in this case, maybe also some very strong opinions about the X-Men. I mean, I knew something was off. I'd always known something was off, that my relationship to gender was messy and uncomfortable, but gender itself struck me as messy and uncomfortable, and it had never been a large enough part of how I defined myself to really feel like something that merited further study, and I had deadlines, and...so it was always on the back burner. So, I looked, I looked at what I had, at this improbable group of exclusively male characters. And I looked and I figured that if this wasn't me, then it had to be a result of the stories I had access to, to choose from, and the entertainment landscape I was looking at. And the funny thing is, I wasn't wrong, exactly. I just wasn't right either.

See, the characters I'd written about had one other significant trait in common aside from their gender, which is that they were all more or less explicitly, more or less heavily coded as autistic. And I thought, "Ah, yes. This explains it. This is under representation in fiction echoing under representation in life and vice versa." Because the characteristics that I'd honed in on, that I particularly identified with in these guys, were things like emotional unavailability and social awkwardness and granular obsession, and all of those are characteristics that are seen as unsympathetic and therefore unmarketable in female characters. Which is also why readers were assuming that I was a man.

Because, you see, here's the thing. I'm not the only one who uses stories to navigate the world. I'm just a little more deliberate about it. For humans, stories formed the bridge between data and understanding. They're where we look when we need to contextualize something new, or to recognize something we're pretty sure we've seen before. They're how we identify ourselves; they're how we locate ourselves and each other in the larger world. There were no fictional women like me; there weren't representations of women like me in media, and so readers were primed not to recognize women like me in real life either.

Now by this point, I had started writing a follow-up essay, and this one was also about autism and narratives, but specifically focused on how they intersected with gender and representation in media. And in context of this essay, I went about looking to see if I could find even one female character who had that cluster of traits I'd been looking for, and I was asking around in autistic communities. And I got a few more or less useful one-off suggestions, and some really, really splendid arguments about semantics and standards, and um...then I got one answer over and over and over in community after community after community. "Leverage," people told me. "You have to watch Leverage."

So I watched Leverage. Leverage is five seasons of ensemble heist drama. It's about a team of very skilled con artists who take down corrupt and powerful plutocrats and the like, and it's a lot of fun, and it's very clever, and it's clever enough that it doesn't really matter that it's pretty formulaic, and I enjoyed it a lot. But what's most important, what Leverage has is Parker.

Parker is a master thief, and she is the best of the best of the best in ways that all of Leverage's characters are the best of the best. And superficially, she looks like the kind of woman you see on TV. So she's young, and she's slender, and she's blonde, and she's attractive but in a sort of approachable way. And all of that familiarity is brilliant misdirection, because the thing is, there are no other women like Parker on TV. Because Parker—even if it's never explicitly stated in the show—Parker is coded incredibly clearly as autistic. Parker is socially awkward. Her speech tends to have limited inflection; what inflection it does have is repetitive and sounds rehearsed a lot of the time. She's not emotionally literate; she struggles with it, and the social skills she develops over the series, she learns by rote, like they're just another grift. When she's not scaling skyscrapers or cartwheeling through laser grids, she wears her body like an ill-fitting suit. Parker moves like me. And Parker, Parker was a revelation—she was a revolution unto herself. In a media landscape where unempathetic women usually exist to either be punished or "loved whole," Parker got to play the crabby savant. And she wasn't emotionally intuitive but it was never ever played as the product of abuse or trauma even though she had survived both of those—it was just part of her, as much as were her hands or her eyes. And she had a genuine character arc. My god, she had a genuine romantic arc, even. And none of that required her to turn into anything other than what she was. And in Parker I recognized a thousand tics and details of my life and my personality...but. I didn't recognize myself.

Why? What difference was there in Parker, you know, between Parker and the other characters I'd written about? Those characters, they'd spanned ethnicities and backgrounds and different media and appearances and the only other characteristic they all had in common was their gender. So that was where I started to look next, and I thought, "Well, okay, maybe, maybe it's masculinity. Maybe if Parker were less feminine, she'd click with me the way those other characters had." So then I tried to imagine a Parker with short hair, who's explicitly butch, and...nothing. So okay, I extended it in what seems like the only logical direction to extend it. I said, "Well, if it's not masculinity, what if it's actual maleness? What if Parker were a man?" Ah. Yeah.

In the end, everything changed, and nothing changed, which is often the way that it goes for me. Add a landmark, no matter how slight, and the map is irrevocably altered. Add a landmark, and paths that were invisible before open wide. Add a landmark, and you may not have moved, but suddenly you know where you are and where you can go.

I wasn't going to tell this story when I started planning this talk. I was gonna tell a similar story, it was about stories, like this is, about narratives and the ways that they influence our culture and vice versa. And it centered around a group of women at NASA who had basically rewritten the narrative around space exploration, and it was a lot more fun, and I still think it was more interesting. But it's also a story you can probably work out for yourselves. In fact it's a story some of you probably have, if you follow that kind of thing, which you probably do given that you're here. And this is a story, my story is not a story that I like to tell. It's not a fun story to talk about because it's very personal and I am a very private person. And it's not universal. And it's not always relatable, and it's definitely not aspirational. And it's not the kind of story that you tend to encounter unless you're already part of it...which is why I'm telling it now. Because the thing is, I'm not the only person who uses stories to parse the world and navigate it. I'm just a little more deliberate. Because I'm tired of having to rely on composite sketches.

Open your maps. Add a landmark. Reroute accordingly.

[remindingpersephone]

Returning With Randomness

Good morning, my darlings. My Tumblr mini-break has resulted in me changing the way I utilize the blue hellsite. I'm putting all this babbling under a jump to keep your scrolling aesthetically pleasing.

14 days isn't much of a break, but I was testing out a theory. I felt like I was checking social media, or at least the 4 Biggies: Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram, too frequently and in too automated a fashion. Got five minutes between tasks? Check Insta! Need a breather from spreadsheet madness? Log in to Twitter! And on and on. While it is always nice to check in with my mutuals, I would then get sidetracked and the next things I know I've lost 20 minutes to somebody's thread about SCOTUS or lunar eclipse or whatever. Not terrible, in and of itself, but when added to all the other noise and distraction in the world, it has become detrimental.

Life offline these days is busy and stressful. My job is good but hectic, so I have to stay focused and disciplined with my time and attention. Home life is difficult and I'll leave it at that because it involves other people who don't want their shit aired out online. So even if I wanted to read about the latest Kardashian drama (keep your mitts of Marilyn's dress, Kim!) I just don't have the time or the mental bandwidth.

Moreover, reading gossip and useless opinions just isn't good for my mental health. I'd argue it's not good for anyone's mental health, but I believe everyone has to the right to live their life any way they see fit, including but not limited to social media brainrot. You do you, baby.

Which brings me to my point (I have one, I swear): social media may have been an unfortunate mistake. Or at least, 75% of it. The 25% that allows us to meet each other, learn new things, talk to people around the world, share, connect, inspire, is awesome. A truly wonderful gift. But the other 75%: rampant disinformation, bullying, repeated ugliness, echo chamber effect - is an awfully high price to pay. Is it too high? I don't know. I think we need to recognize it now, acknowledge the problem it has become, and find a way to preserve the good and eliminate the bad. There has to be a way. Our society has done some amazing things. We have to find a way to keep trolls from ruining the world.

I think it was @hopefulmisanthrope who said a while back "Do we really need everyone's opinion?" in regards to social media's negative effect. I found myself repeating this sentiment a few days ago. I told someone "We don't need everyone's opinion, all the time."

I must clarify that there is a difference between using Twitter or Tumblr, etc. to express yourself, and using it to spread maliciousness. Use it to write something silly or sad or moving or beautiful. To just put something out into the universe. I wholeheartedly support this for everyone. Remember, a thing isn't free unless it's free for everyone. So follow your bliss and post your heart out if it brings you joy. God knows, I've posted about meaningless shit before, because it made me happy. I just posted on Twitter about wind, for fuck's sake. I'm not contributing to the overall betterment of society with my 479th Instagram picture of orchids. But neither am I harming it buy doing this. It's the thousand mile long thread of echoed hatred and ignorance that worries me. That's the shit we've got to stop. It is not a case of, "Well, who's to say what's hate and what's not?" We are. We all know the difference between what is evil and vicious and what is harmless. I want the people that scream freedom as a way to absolve themselves of responsibility for the things they say and do to shut their mouths. Adults know when they are protecting true freedom and when they are using it to mask discrimination and acrimony.

So, to get back to my original thought when I started writing this post a hundred years ago, is to say that I want to use Tumblr differently. I want to check in on my mutuals by going to their individual blogs. I want to write my own posts when I either have something to capture so I can refer back to it later, or because I want to share something. I don't want to start scrolling mindlessly, miss all the good stuff, while zoning out. So if I don't appear for a while and then suddenly heart bomb the hell out of you, this is why. And if I miss you and you wonder why, drop me a line. I do check messages to see if anyone is trying to reach me directly.

Everything is tumultuous (to put it mildly) in the world these days. I'm looking for ways to maintain equilibrium with my energy, attention, and output. I am responsible for what I allow myself to absorb, and what I put out into the universe. I want both of those to be good, healthy and helpful. So the learning and the adjusting and the analyzing and the changing and the growing never stops. Neither does my rambling, apparently. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I love you, kittens. Take care of yourselves and be good to each other.

[evendeadlmthehero]

The Five Year Promise: The Snap (5/10)

Summary: Y/N Stark, 20 year old superhero, makes a promise with a 16 year old Peter Parker after being cheated on, that if she hasn’t found love in the next 5 years, they’d finally go on a date. Then the snap happens. Y/N is gone and Peter isn’t

Warnings: lots of angst and swearing

Twitter// buckyslemons

The Five Year Promise Masterlist

A/N: no one told me how to add read more in my posts on a MOBILE APP, not the laptop so if I see comments saying to add ‘read more’, either teach me or please be quiet.

You and your father were hidden from above watching as needles started to come in contact Dr. Strange's face, causing an obviously painful whitish subcutaneous glow at each touch. “Give me the stone!”

You watch, trying to plan your next move before something taps your shoulder. You raise your hand to it, ready to shoot, but then see what it is and stand down. It was Strange’s cloak. Your father looked at it confusedly. “Wow you're a seriously loyal piece of outerwear, aren't you?”

Suddenly you hear someone drop down before you, making both you and your father turn around. “Yeah, uh, speaking of loyalty.”

“What the-“

“I know what you're both gonna say,” Peter begun as he raised his hands up. He watched as your face turned into one of anger.

“You should not be here,” your father had muttered, shaking his head at both of you. “I did not want either of you here.”

“I was gonna go home-“

“I don't wanna hear it.”

“But it was such a long way down and I just thought about you both,” Peter spoke, glancing at you specifically.

“You’re such an idiot peter!” You told him, anger coursing throughout your body. “My father and I could’ve handled this! This isn’t a fucking game peter, this is a one way ticket!”

“Don’t you think I get that-“

“Obviously not!” You cut him off, taking a step closer to him. “You can’t just risk your life recklessly like that!”

“You’re doing the same thing!” Peter spoke back, his turn to get angry. “I don’t get why it’s so bad when I do it!”

“Because you’re a damn kid Peter!” You yelled back at him. His face dropped for a second before looking at the floor as he played with his fingers. “You do things out of pure instinct. Not thinking that two avengers plus a wizard was enough as it is.”

‘Just a kid,’ he had though. ‘Just a little kid.’

“Come on guys,” your father breathed in heavily as he took you both to the viewpoint as tension between you and Peter rose. “We got a situation. See him down there? He's in trouble. What's our plan? Go.”

“Um. Okay, okay,” Peter spoke, trying to forget what you had said earlier on and concentrate. He had to prove you wrong. That he wasn’t a impulsive teenager. That he was an asset. He and the Cloak then popped back upright. “Okay. Did you ever see this really old movie, Aliens?”

-

“Painful aren't they?” You heard maw speak as he poked Stephen with needles, making him scream. “They were originally designed for microsurgery. And any one of them-“

He stops as he hears a thump behind him. Maw turns to see Iron Man standing there, hand repulsors ready to fire. Ebony Maw’s face remained unchanged as he looked at your father. “Could end your friend's life in an instant.”

Your dad shrugged, acting like he didn’t care. “Gotta tell you, he's not really my friend. Saving his life is more a professional courtesy.”

Maw walks slowly towards your father, beckoning very large, very solid metal objects to float behind him. “You've saved nothing. Your powers are inconsequential compared to mine.”

Your father remained unbothered as he sighed. You readied into position, your fists pointed towards the wall of the spaceship. “Yeah, but the kid's seen more movies.”

You let out a quantum blast which pierces the side of the ship to Maw's right and begins to suck everything out with depressurization, especially Maw and his large objects. Dr. Strange is pulled loose of his pinnings, loses the needles, but also heads for the hole, helpless to resist. The Cape wraps around his arm and an anchor point, but Dr. Strange's arm slips loose and he keeps going.

You are also struggling to hold tight to the pipe attached to the wall. Peter sees this and shoots a web strand at Dr. Strange and you with one hand, while he holds onto a piece of the ship with the other. It breaks, sending them both towards space when his Iron-Spider suit's metal arms brace him to keep him from being sucked out. Fortunately, Dr. Strange is still surrounded by the ship's atmosphere making haste to leave.

“Yes!” Peter yelled excitedly as spider-legs came out of his suit. “Wait what are those!”

Peter crouches with his new spider-legs, and makes a mighty leap and pulls you both back inside. Your father quickly sprays nanites onto the hole to plug it up. He then walks past Dr. Strange, shaking his head and with his armor retreating into its containment as Dr. Strange gets to his feet and becomes en-Cloaked. “We've gotta turn this ship around.”

“Yeah,” you replied back sarcastically as you walked over and sat on the floor, your back against the wall. “Now he wants to run. Great plan.”

Dr. Strange looked over at you. “No, I want to protect the stone.”

Your dad walked towards the expansive front view-port before speaking. “And I want you to thank me now. Go ahead, I'm listening.”

“For what?” Stephen had scoffed, matching Tony’s ego. “Nearly blasting me into space?”

Your father moved his head to the side looking at Strange absurdly. “Who just saved your magical ass? Me.”

Strange shook his head at your dad, letting out a bitter laugh. “I seriously don't know how you fit your head into that helmet.”

“Admit it.” Your father had spoke, taking a step forward. “You should have ducked out when I told you to. I tried to bench you. You refused.”

“Unlike everyone else in your life, I don't work for you.”

“And due to that fact, we're now in a flying doughnut billions of miles away from Earth with no backup!”

“Can you guys for one secound just shut up!” You cut them both off as you walked over to the ship’s systems, trying to work out what it was doing. “This ship is self-correcting its course. Thing's on autopilot.”

Dr. Strange walks closer to you. “Can we control it? Fly us home?”

“Maybe,” you spoke shaking your head as you looked at the various switches and buttons. “Might take a while but we could get home, gather the remaining Avengers and-“

“-I'm not so sure we should,” your father cut you off as he looked to be in a deep thought. You looked at your father confusedly.

“Under no circumstance can we bring the Time Stone to Thanos,” Strange shot at your father. “I don't think you quite understand what's at stake here.”

Your father stalks over to Strange. “No. It's you who doesn't understand, that Thanos has been inside my head for six years since he sent an army to New York and now he's back! And I don't know what to do. So I'm not so sure if it's a better plan to fight him on our turf or his but you saw what they did, what they can do. At least on his turf, he's not expecting it. So I say we take the fight to him. Doctor. Do you concur?”

Dr. Strange thinks for a secound before nodding his head. “Alright, Stark. We go to him. But you have to understand. if it comes to saving you, your daughter, the kid or the Time Stone, I will not hesitate to let either of you die. I can't, because the fate of the universe depends on it.”

“Nice. Good. Moral compass. We're straight,” your father nods at Strange. He then steps over to Peter, as he formally taps each of Peter's shoulders with the edge of his hand, dubbing him as is done at a knighting. “Alright, kid. You're an Avenger now.”

Your father doesn't look at him as he says those words, knowing well what he is signing him up for. Peter however looks at Tony in disbelief, and then cycles through delight, satisfaction, pride and determination, and braces himself for what's to come. You scoff at your dad, knowing all to well what he was doing. You then look at Peter before shaking your head and storming off to find a quiet place out of here.

“Go after her,” your father spoke, giving Peter a little tap on the back. “See if she’s alright.”

Peter nodded at Tony before going over to where you had stormed off. He walked around for a few minutes before he saw you pacing around in an empty room. “I can’t believe it! I can’t believe he just made you an Avenger! I can’t believe you’ve risked your life for no reason and my dad has made you an Avenger!”

Peter scoffed, walking into to room you were in. “You expect me to stay there while you’re up here!”

“You heard me Peter, it’s a one way ticket!” You stopped pacing to look at him as you waved your arms around. “You should’ve stayed there no matter what happens to me!”

“You don’t fucking get it do you!” Peter yelled in frustration, pushing back his hair as his heart started beating rapidly out of anger and exasperation. “For the smartest person in the world you can be so daft!”

You crossed your arms, looking at Peter as he offended you. “Excuse me?”

“Last week you asked if I liked you. I don’t.” He spoke as he clenched his jaw. Your heart dropped for a moment as you took a step back. “The truth is I love you.”

“Peter,” you mumbled, shaking your head at him. “You don’t even know what love is.”

“And there you again, patronising me,” Peter spat out as he laughed bitterly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“I’m not!” You told him, uncrossing your arms.

“Yes you are! You always do!” He accused you as he pointed a finger at you. “You think because I’m four years younger than you, that I don’t know anything!”

“I’m not saying that, I’m just saying you haven’t been exposed to many things in life yet,” you replied back, trying to get him to understand where you were coming from. Peter wasn’t in love with you, was he? “Love being one of them.”

“Not exposed?” Peter shouted, his face displaying a look of unbelief for your lack of awareness. “I’ve been exposed for years! For years I’ve been exposed to love because of you! I can’t think of anything but you! And you don’t even fucking see it!”

“Pete-“

“No! You don’t get to talk! Because it’s been like this for two years, of you looking at me like I’m some sort of kid! And this watch?” He held up his wrist as he showed you the watch you gave him. “This is because you feel sorry for me! You don’t love me! C’mon Y/N tell me you don’t actually see me more than a brother, because it’s a one way trip, remember! I might not come back to hear the truth!”

“Peter,” you let out a sigh as you pinched your nose. You honestly don’t why you gave him the watch. Maybe you saw potential in the guy, because he sure did pay attention to you. You thought in the future, you might give it a shot. “you’re a nice guy. I though that-“

“That if you exhausted all your options and still didn’t find the one that I was the last person who you’d date,” Peter let out a little chuckle, looking at the floor. “Its fine I get it.”

“Peter, look you might not even ‘love’ me by the end of five years,” you tried to reason with him, taking a step forward. “You might find someone else when that timer hits zero.”

Peter let out another bitter laugh as he walked over toward you, making your breath halt.

“You know how I know that this is what love is?” Peter spoke, looking at you dead in the eye. “Because what you just said sounds fucking impossible.”

-

You, Peter, Tony and Dr. Strange are aboard the ship when you see the surface of a planet approaching. Dr. Strange looked at your father, walking near the window. “I think we're here.”

“I don't think this rig has a self-park function,” your father spoke before looking at you. “Get your hand into this steering gimbal. Close those around it. You understand?”

“Got it,” you replied back. You walk over to the steering wheel that looked like two gloves, as you put your hand in one of the gloves.

Your father places his hand on the other glove. “This was meant for one big guy, so we gotta to move at the same time.”

The ringship is heading straight for the center of what looks like one of a colossal game of jacks. “We might wanna turn. Turn! Turn! Turn!”

Your father armors up as the ringship clips the "jack" obliquely, but still losing a good third of its hull in the collision. Peter throws up his helmet at the same time. Doctor Strange steps between them and creates the Shield of the Seraphim around you all, anticipating a rough landing. The ship, now reduced to about 40%, plows through the dirt and stops, leaning slightly to one side. Doctor Strange helps you and your now de-helmeted father, to your feet. You’re both panting a little from the exertion of arrival. “You alright? That was close. I owe you one.”

Peter descends from above in classically spider-like fashion as all three of you looked at him. “Let me just say, if aliens wind up implanting eggs in my chest or something, and I end up eating you, I'm sorry.”

Your father pointed at Peter like a parent telling off his child. “I don't wanna hear another single pop culture out of you for the rest of the trip. You understand?”

“I'm trying to say that-“ Peter stopped as he looked behind you both. “Something is coming.”

A grenade rolls into view. You, Peter, Strange and Tony get thrown well back when it fires its energy pulse.

“Thanos!” You hear a creature yell as he flings a blade at Doctor Strange, who neatly deflects it with a mystical shield, and in return sends the Cloak of Levitation at the creatures face, half-smothering him and throwing him to the floor. You see what seemed to be a Human attacking your father and due to how close your father was to him, you couldn’t just shoot at him. The man had your father in what seemed to be a magnet.

You opted for your black widow skills and ran toward him, wrapping your legs around his neck, choking him with your thighs.

“Get off me!” The man yelled as he tried to smack you in the head with the back of his gun. You grabbed it with your hand. The man purposely fell backwards to get you off his back, making you see a daze. He then shot an electric current that wrapped around you like a cord. Your dad pulls free of the magnet then runs towards Drax as soon as he sees that Quill had you, putting a foot on his torso.

Quill has you in a head-lock, gun pointed at your head. Doctor Strange has a mystical shield of golden energy up, and stands ready at the third point of the triangle. Mantis had Parker in a coma.

It was a complete mess.

“Alright, everybody, stay where you are, chill the F out,” Quill spoke as he depowered his helmet. “I'm gonna ask you this one time. Where's Gamora?”

Your father spoke, dehelmeting as well. “Yeah, I'll do you one better. Who's Gamora?”

“I’ll do you one better! Why is Gamora?” The creature that was headlocked by your father spoke out.

“What the fuck is wrong with him,” you whispered to yourself as you looked at the creature that your father had under his foot.

“Tell me where the girl is, or I swear to you, I'm gonna French-fry little miss thighs of death!” Quill had spoke, pushing the gun towards your head more.

“Let's do it! You shoot my daughter, I blast him. Let's go!” Your father threatened as he extends his nano-tech cannon, looking uncannily like an electric shark about to eat Drax's face.

“Do it, Quill! I can take it.”

“No, he can't take it!” Mantis yelled back.

“She's right. You can't,” Dr Strange deadpanned.

“Oh yeah? You don't wanna tell me where she is? That's fine. I'll kill all four of you and beat it out of Thanos myself,” the man spoke before looking at you. “Starting with you.”

“Wait, what. Thanos?” Dr Strange spoke, trying to inject clarity and sanity into the situation. “Alright, let me ask you this one time. What master do you serve?”

“What master do I serve? What am I supposed to say? "Jesus"?” The guy spoke making you roll your eyes at him as it dawned to you.

“You're from Earth?” You had asked him, turning around to look at him from the death grip he had you in.

“I’m not from Earth. I'm from Missouri.”

‘Well this was going to be a long day,’ you thought you yourself as you closed you eyes and sighed.

-

Peter and yourself had sat on one of the rocks in the planet which you came to learn was called titan. Despite your predicament and the place in ruins, it was a beautiful place.

Your dad was trying to explain the plan to a group of people who you’d learnt the names of a while ago. The one that looked like a Prey Mantis had the name Mantis. Go figure.

Mantis was currently jumping on what seemed to be a gas emitting from the ground or something, you didn’t know. But what you did know was if Thanos was as strong as others had told you he was, then you guys were in for it. Because you had found a team of some questionable characters.

You sighed, rubbing your temple before facing Peter, who looked like he was ignoring you. “Pete?”

He didn’t respond, staring at the rocks in front of him. You shook your head, playing with your fingers.

“Come one Pete,” you softly spoke, turning around to have your body face him. “We might not come back out of this. We need to talk.”

“Fine,” Peter mumbled, grabbing a rock from the floor and chucking it across. “You go first since I already confessed about how I love you and how apparently it’s not even real.”

You rubbed your eye before biting the bottom of your lip, trying to form some logical explanation on your outburst. You looked around the planet, playing with the material of your suit.

“Truth is Peter, you’re not a kid. You’re smart, mature, attentive and heroic,” you spoke. “But I didn’t give you that watch to risk your life for me. Or to ignore other girls for me. I gave you that watch because if you exhaust all your options, and there’s no one else left, that we give it a go. Because I want to. But I want to make sure you 100% want to and not because I’m the first girl you like.”

Peter’s head moved up at that comment. “That’s the thing. I don’t think I’ll ever find someone like you. And it scares me. So when you gave me that watch...for once I-I felt hopeful. I felt hopeful that we might have something. Maybe not now, but in the future.”

“Exactly Peter,” you spoke, putting your arm around his shoulders as you pointed at his watch. “This is for the future. In the future things change. Things become unpredictable. Hell, you might not want to wear this in a couple of months or years time. But that’s okay. The main thing is when we’re both ready, if we are ready, we’ll give it a shot. It’s just now I can’t. Not because of age primarily but because I just got my heart broken. And you need to meet other girls before you decide what you want. Because once we start, we can’t be friends if things go wrong.”

“I get it,” Peter whispered to himself, rubbing his arm. “You need time. And I need time too. I need time to actually grow. To learn. To be a man. I’m 16 and you’re 21. We both need time. It isn’t right to try now.”

You give Peter a hug which he returns. It’s warm and gives you a feeling of eating a hot chocolate fudge during Christmas. Like home. “I hope the future is kind to us.”

“I hope so too,” Peter replied back as you both pulled away from each other. You then looked at each other’s eyes, for a secound almost lost.

You then awkwardly looked away, your attention once again caught by the Mantis girl as she spoke. “Excuse me, but, does your friend often do that?”

You looked over to where she was pointing, where you see Dr. Strange sitting cross-legged. He was floating slightly above the ground, his hands poised in a mystic gesture with the Time Stone glowing brightly in the Eye of Agamotto setting. Green vapor-like energy flows from the stone, and more intricate magical energy patterns circle Dr. Strange's forearms. The Cloak of Levitation flows behind him as if the Stone is creating a strong breeze. His eyes are closed, and his head is jerking rapidly from side to side, the motion blurring, but resembling looking for something.

Peter, you and your father ran over to him. Your father grabbed him, shaking him. “Strange! We alright?”

Dr. Strange snaps out of his trance and falls forward, letting out a cry.

“You're back. You're alright,” your father breathed in heavily as he took a step back.

“Hey, what was that?” Peter asked Strange who was still breathing deeply. He then sighed, looking at you all.

“I went forward in time to view alternate futures. To see all the possible outcomes of the coming conflict,” Strange spoke, looking deflated.

“How many did you see?” Quill had asked him.

“14,000,605”

Your father looked nervous as he asked the next question. “How many did we win?”

Dr. Strange stares intently at Tony for a moment. He looks at your father like he was silently apologising to him, giving you a quick glance. “One.”

At the time, that look meant nothing to you. Like it was just Strange tired from viewing all possible outcomes.

But looking back at it, you would’ve yelled at him. Pleaded with him. That somehow, someway it could’ve gone differently.

That there was an outcome that he may have missed.

-

You hid behind a rock with Peter, waiting for the arrival of Thanos. You were lying if you said you weren’t afraid. You were. It was like being a child. You think there’s monsters under your bed. You tell your parents, and they laugh, saying that monsters aren’t real. And then you return to bed, unable to sleep.

This is what it felt like, your heart thudding against your chest. This is it. This is what you’ve been waiting for. And although you’ve been waiting six years, you still didn’t feel prepared.

“Somethings not right,” you whispered to Peter, giving him a quick glance before keeping your eyes out for Thanos. “Something- I don’t think I- I will make it- fuck.”

You shook your head, tears welling up in your eyes. Peter moved towards you, rubbing your back. “Pete? Can you promise me something?”

“Anything,” Peter spoke, looking at you concerned. You bit the inside of your cheek, trying to contain yourself.

“I don’t want you to comment on this, just a yes or a no. I don’t want sympathy and I don’t won’t hope. I just want a yes or a no,” You begun before looking away at him and back where Strange was. “If I don’t make it, take care of my father will you?”

“Y/N-“

“Will you?” You reinforced. Peter gulped, before nodding. He wouldn’t let you die. He couldn’t let you die. “Good. Great talk.”

You let out a little breath before you look back. A blue mist started appearing, getting bigger and bigger. You know what it was. It was a portal created by the tesseract. You remembered it from 2012.

You then see a giant man who looked almost 8 foot tall. He had a violet complexion and donned a gauntlet with four stones; reality, space, power and soul.

You held your breath as you realised he’s here. Thanos is here.

“Oh, yeah, you're much more of a "Thanos”,” Dr Strange spoke from the stone he was sitting on. Thanos looked at him, his face unchanged.

“I take it the Maw is dead,” Thanos sighed, as he slowly walked around before stopping. “This day extracts a heavy toll. Still, he accomplished his mission.”

“You may regret that,” Dr Strange replied arrogantly. “He brought you face-to-face with the Master of the Mystic Arts.”

Thanos let out a little smile. “And where do you think he brought you?”

You see Star-Lord crouch behind wreckage with his weapon ready, behind Thanos. You and Peter peek from behind Dr Strange. “Let me guess. Your home?”

Thanos begun explaining his home, showing various imagery of what used to be. Explains why he was doing what he was. Trying to justify himself.

Dr. Strange summons his Mandalas, entering a fighting pose. “I think you'll find our will equal to yours.”

And that’s when you all get out of your position.

“Ours?” Thanos spokes before he looks up to a see a chunk of wreckage descending rapidly on him, too rapidly to react and powered by your father. He is subsequently crushed by it.

The wreckage on top of Thanos erupts in purple, as he bellows in rage. He turns the hovering fragments into a flock of bats with the Reality Stone and swarms your dad with them, driving him back through the ruins.

Peter webs his eyes, and swings in to kick him in the face at the same time that Drax leaps from cover, blades in both hands, to knee-slide behind Thanos and try for a tendon slide across the back of the Titan's knee.

You jump through a portal that strange had created and blast golden energy, that sends Thanos hurdling back. He uses the reality stone to send the discarded ship towards you, but you fly in full speed right through it as the heat from the quantum energy sliced the metal of the ship.

Strange starts dueling with Thanos while Drax attacks similarly on his other side. Thanos punches Drax through a ruined wall, then shatters the blade with one hand and tears the web from his eyes. He advances on Doctor Strange and kicks at him, but Strange's shield absorbs the damage.

You make your way back on the ground, and shoot Thanos from behind. Thanos uses the Power Stone to shoot balls of energy towards you but you quickly deflect them with your own powers. You then use quantum energy to lift up a massive rock and aim it at Thanos who crushes it before it even reaches him.

“Don’t let him close his fist,” you had heard Dr Strange whisper to his cloak. The Cloak swoops off Doctor Strange's shoulders and wraps itself tightly around Thanos' armored hand, who starts tugging at this unexpected wrapping.

Doctor Strange starts throwing portals everywhere. Peter leaps through one on Thanos' left.

“Magic!” He punches Thanos in the head and vanishes through a portal to the lower right before reappearing above Thanos. “More magic! Magic with a kick! Magic with a-“

Before he can finish Thanos turns, grabbing him from the air, and throwing him to the ground, with his hand around his neck. “Insect!”

He then throws him at Doctor Strange, knocking them both down. Thanos finally tears the Cloak away and is then promptly surrounded by fiery explosions as you bombarded him with your powers.

He sucks all the flame into the gauntlet with the Power Stone and fires it in a stream back at you, hitting you dead on and sending you far away.

Peter leaps from behind, more conventionally this time, while Thanos concentrates his fire on you, and webs the gauntlet and drops down in front of him, pulling hard to stop Thanos from hurting you.

‘Can’t let her die,’ Peter had thought.

Thanos yanks on the web-line, pulling the much lighter teenager towards him, and punching him on his way past. He tears the webbing free of the gauntlet just in time for a small spaceship to attempt to crash-land on him.

The ship drags Thanos along for a distance, burying him under debris. He stands just as the pilot leaps in a great arc to punch him, landing in front of him with an energy-blade at the ready.

It was Nebula.

Thanos punches her away. Doctor Strange uses the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak to pinion the gauntlet, pulling Thanos' fingers open and trying to pry the gauntlet off his hand.

Thanos tries to pull free, as Drax slides in from his right, kicking his knee and knocking him off-balance, then wrapping himself around Thanos' kneeling leg. You quantum blast his legs, making him fall, before holding his legs in a ball of energy.

Star-Lord shoots a electric trap onto the ground to Thanos' right, the tangle-field holding down his unarmored hand. Peter swings in, webs Thanos' chest then wraps it around behind him, digging his Iron Spider legs into the ground to anchor himself.

Doctor Strange opens a portal straight above Thanos' out of which drops Mantis, landing on the Titan's shoulders, her hands on his temples. He bellows as she tries to put him under.

Thanos was now trapped. And you were slightly relieved.

Your father is pulling on the gauntlet. Doctor Strange reapplies the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak to reinforce the trap's hold on Thanos' right hand, and the Cloak helps him pull. Thanos is finally subdued enough to incapacitate, not fully asleep.

“Is he under?” Your father spoke as continued pulling on the gauntlet. “Don't let up.”

“Be quick,” Mantis cried as she clenched her eyes closed, trying to concentrate. “He is very strong.”

“Parker, help! Get over here,” your father spoke as Peter drops his web-line, and hurries to help Tony with the gauntlet. “She can't hold him much longer. Let's go.”

Quill flies over to join the others, stands in front of Thanos, tauntingly. “I thought you'd be harder to catch. For the record, this was my plan. Not so strong now, huh? Where is Gamora?”

Thanos stirred from that name, still under asleep. “My Gamora.”

“No, bullshit,” Quill spat out, as you continued comcentrating your power on holding Thanos’ legs. “Where is she?”

Mantis lets out a sob, her face in shock. “He is in anguish.”

“Good,” Quill spat out harshly, staring at Thanos.

“He- he mourns.”

“What does this monster have to mourn?” Drax yelled.

Nebula had stood there, her eyes welling up as she put the pieces together. “Gamora.”

“Fuck,” you whispered, looking at Quill who’s face was in shock.

“What?”

Nebula shook her head with horror and sadness at what had happened. “He took her to Vormir. He came back with the Soul Stone but she didn't.”

Your father frasps the danger immediately and de-helmets. “Okay, Quill, you gotta cool it right now, you understand?”

Quill slowly turns to Thanos.

“Don't, don't, don't engage, we've almost got this off!”

“Tell me she's lying,” Quill spoke, now enraged. “Asshole! Tell me you didn't do it!”

“I had to.”

Quill shook his head while starting to tear up. “No, you didn't! No, you didn't!.”

He continues to rage and then pistol-whipping Thanos twice in the face, causing Mantis to let go in pain. “No you didn’t!”

“Quill!”

Your father leaps for Star-Lord's arm, re-helmeting and leaving Peter to pull off the gauntlet. You hold onto Thanos’ legs with your powers more strongly, your whole body aching in pain. Thanos wakes completely, now well and truly furious. He head-butts Mantis, grabbing the cuff of the gauntlet just as it is sliding off his hand, causing Peter to stumble back, and then throwing Mantis away off his shoulders.

Thanos kicks Drax off his right leg and into Nebula and Star-Lord, knocking them down. He yanks on the Crimson Bands holding his right hand to throw Doctor Strange far away, and swats away your father and his repulsor shots.

He then grabs you, using the power stone to chuck you across the sky. Peter sees this and runs over to you but before he reaches you, your head hits the rock.

Your vision starts to daze, the last thing you see is Peter’s face before you black out.

-

Your vision was blurry as you opened your eyes, blinking rapidly. You could hear voices murmuring somewhere as you focussed on the orange sky above you. You look to your left, seeing a familiar brown pair of eyes. “Peter?”

Peter smiled at you, but it didn’t fully reach his face. Your head was pounding as you looked at your surroundings. Half of the guardians passed out and you dad clutching his injured stomach. And then Strange. Strange didn’t have the time stone.

“Oh no,” you muttered shaking your head, making your head pound even more. “Wh- what happened.”

“Thanos wanted to kill your dad,” he mumbled defeatly, making your eyes widen as you looked over to your dad. “Then Dr Strange gave up the stone for his life.”

You quickly got up, Peter quickly trailing behind you just in case you had fell. You had ran up to your dad, taking him by surprise as you gave him a tight squeeze. No words were exchanged, but both of you knew how much you loved one another.

“Stop being such a self-sacrificial ass, okay?” you told him, grabbing his cheeks as you made him look you in the eyes. Your father gave you a sad grin and a little nod. “Y-you can’t do that.”

You then grabbed Peter and pulled him into the hug with you and your father. You guys all squeezed each other, happy that none of you guys had died. That you might have a chance of coming back home, or to what’s left of it if the remaining Avengers don’t win.

You then made eye contact with Dr Strange, who hasn’t stopped looking at you for a while now. You then pull away from the hug and walk over to him. “You gave away the stone.”

Dr Strange nodded, not breaking eye contact with you. “Yeah, I did.”

You nodded, looking at his face for any answers on why he did what he did. A thunder broke your gaze, as you looked up and saw a cloud forming. You then saw Dr Strange in the side of your eye let out a sigh.

You then felt sick, your stomach doing somersaults. Your vision started going in and out of focus, your whole body shivering. You were scared and terrified. You didn’t know what was happening but you knew it was something horrible.

“Ah!” You screamed, as you held your stomach in pain. Peter and your father ran over to you, trying to hold you upright.

“Hey, hey what’s wrong?” Your father asked as he sat you down. You shook your head, your eyes filled with tears as the most excruciating pain jolted throughout your body.

“Something is happpening,” Mantis cries as everyone looked over to her. And then the most horrifying thing happened to her. Her body had slowly disenergrated into ash, the wind carrying it away.

“Quill?” Drax had spoken as he too had disenergrated whilst Quill watched in horror. Your father had gotten up, walking over to Star-Lord as he too started to fade.

“Steady, Quill,” your dad spoke before Quill had vanished. You let out a sob as the pain got worse and worse.

“Tony,” Dr Strange had spoken, catching your father’s attention. Little speckles left his body as he looked at your dad with pleading eyes. “There was no other way.”

He had vanished as well, leaving you, Peter, your father and Nebula. You let out a cry before shaking your head. “It hurts so much!”

“Hey, Hey, Hey,” your dad spoke, his eyes tearing up. “It’s going to be fine. We just have to get back to earth.”

“You don’t understand!” You told him, lifting your arm up as you saw dust particles leave your hand and then re-forming. “Dad I- it’s me too. I have- he-“

You shook your head, not wanting to say. Your suit was trying to heal you. But the pain was getting worse and worse. “I h-have to turn the suit off.”

“No!” Your dad yelled at you. You looked at Peter, seeing tears fall down his face as he watched on silently. You closed your eyes, falling into a hysteria of cries.

“I’m gonna g-go either way Dad,” you spoke, unable to form coherent sentences. “I have to do it.”

“Please-“

“I l-love you dad. Please don’t waste your life,” you cried out to him, holding his hand. You then looked at Peter giving him a sad smile. “And Pete, I like you. I do. B-but I was always scared to give it a go. B-but remembered what you promised. P-please.”

“No, no, no you can’t just do that! You can’t smile at me and tell me everything’s gonna be alright every time it isn’t!” Peter shook his head at you, grabbing your hand. “You- you- please just- just lets take you home, we can fix this. P-please j-just look me in the- the eyes-“

“F.R.I.D.A.Y,” you whispered, as you gave your father one last look before looking at Peter who was a sobbing mess. You then squeezed his arm while he was speaking.

“A-and know everything’s going to be fine,” Peter finished, his whole body shaking. His Spider senses was on overdrive as anxiety flooded his whole body. He couldn’t lose you. Not again. Not ever. “J-Just please stay.”

“Turn off my suit,” you finished your command, giving both men a smile as you saw dust particles slowly leave your body.

“No!” Peter yelled out, trying to stop the dust from leaving your body. Your dad watched you, unable to take his eyes off from decaying daughter, watching in absolute shock and grief.

Peter’s senses allowed him to hear your heartbeat get fader and fader before it wasn’t there at all. He can hear every spec leave your body, one by one. It was by far one of the worst experiences in his life.

Peter Parker had to watch you die twice.

Your body slowly collapsed into a pile of ash. Peter sobbed as he grabbed the dust from the floor and trying to put them together. “Th-this isn’t h-her! S-she doesn’t l-look like this! She- we have to- she can’t- We have to fix her!”

Tony watched in silence as Peter tried to pick up your ashes. He watched as Peter let out a gut wrenching cry as he realised he couldn’t do anything with what was left of you. Tony then slowly picked up what was left of you and closed his hand into a fist as he placed it near his heart.

He had failed. He had lost his only daughter.