#I hope that joke worked though

[solarmorrigan]

Silly idea I talked about ages ago with @azure7539arts, inspired by a similar event my workplace hosts every year. Would minors be allowed to participate in such an event? Probably not! But then again, it was the 80s, who can say for sure. Anyway, it's my birthday and I'll post nonsense if I want to <3

-

“I need you to buy me.”

Eddie looks up from his notebook, effectively jarred from his campaign-plotting fugue state by Steve’s declaration.

Steve is standing at the other end of the dining table, staring at him expectantly.

“Y’know, this is the part where someone usually follows up their completely bonkers demand with an explanation,” Eddie says slowly.

“At the charity auction,” Steve clarifies. “I need you to bid on me, and I need you to win.”

Ah, yes, that weird Rent-an-Athlete charity auction the school runs every year; anyone on any Hawkins High sports team could volunteer to be “auctioned” off in order to raise money for said sports team, to spend a day at the beck and call of the highest bidder (within reason, supposedly). It’s generally restricted to students, but occasionally, prominent alumni are invited to participate – and Steve certainly fits the bill, especially after the story the government spun about his heroism in the face of “serial killer” Henry Creel last spring.

“And what, deny all those pretty girls a chance to get at you?” Eddie asks drily (he’d never turned up at previous auctions himself, but you could hardly avoid gossip in a school their size; it had usually been some cheerleader bidding with daddy’s money who won a date– that is, a day with Steve Harrington).

“It wasn’t always a girl who won,” Steve says, crossing his arms over his chest. “One time it was Mrs. Dalton – you know, the lady on the school board who lives on my block? I just spent the day doing yard work for her. She gave me lemonade. That was pretty cool.”

“Right,” Eddie drawls. “And I’m sure she definitely didn’t sit outside and stare at your ass while you were working.”

“She did not– she– I mean she was on the porch, but, like– she wouldn’t have– she’s, like, seventy, Eddie,” Steve splutters, and it’s all Eddie can do not to laugh.

“Older gals have needs, too, Steve,” Eddie says, giving in to a smirk. “So she was checking you out from the porch, huh?”

Steve goes red. “Shut up, that isn’t the point. I’m trying to ask for your help.”

“Right, right, your absolutely reasonable request for me to buy you at market. Why, again?” Eddie asks.

“The kids are planning to bid on me,” Steve says gravely.

Eddie blinks at him. “Okay?” he says, when no further explanation is forthcoming. “You basically do most of what they ask, anyway, so…?”

“Okay, believe it or not, I actually say no to at least half of what they ask me to do. I would literally never get anything done if I gave in to all their demands.” Steve jabs a finger at Eddie, who holds up his hands in mock surrender. “Anyway, this is all Henderson’s fault.”

“It usually is,” Eddie agrees, nodding sagely.

“He decided that he was going to bid on me and then use that day to finally make me play your nerd game with you–” Eddie snorts, and Steve shoots him a look, “but Wheeler doesn’t want me to play, so he said he was going to bid against Dustin and make me do anything but sit in on a session with you guys.”

“So let Wheeler win.” Eddie shrugs.

“No! I can’t let fuckin’ Mike win, he’ll probably make me do something even more ridiculous!” Steve exclaims. "He’ll make me play chauffeur for him and El on a date, or something, and he’ll probably include the stupid hat.”

“Wait, I thought El broke up with him,” Eddie breaks in.

“No, they’re on again,” Steve says absently, shaking his head. “Which is why Max has been in a bad mood lately.”

Eddie bites back the reflexive need to ask “How can you tell?”, going instead with, “I thought she and Sinclair were on again.”

“No, they are. That’s why no one’s been actively murdered,” Steve says.

“How do you keep track of all of this?” Eddie asks, squinting at Steve.

“It’s a natural skill. And we’re getting off track,” Steve says quickly. “Normally, I wouldn’t be that worried, because Dustin regularly blows his savings on weird science gadgets or whatever, but then Lucas and Will started taking sides.”

“This is getting very involved,” Eddie says.

“So you see why I’m stressed!” Steve insists, smacking a hand to his forehead (personally, Eddie thinks Steve is stressed for many other reasons, but he figures pointing that out just now won’t be appreciated). “Lucas is on Dustin’s side, and that kid does odd jobs like nobody’s goddamn business; he actually has shit saved up. And usually I’d have faith in him being more, like, sensible than to spend it all on this, but the little shit is really fucking competitive.”

“Wonder who he got that from?” Eddie mutters.

“Okay, we do remember that I’m not actually biologically related to any of these idiots, right?” Steve snaps.

“Well now we’re just getting into nature versus nurture–”

“Eddie.”

“Right, sorry, continue.”

“Well, Will took Mike’s side–”

“Shocking.”

“Right? But anyway, I don’t know if the kid has much saved up, but between him and Wheeler, they might be able to win.” Steve sighs, looking far more world-weary than Eddie feels the situation really warrants.

“You know you don’t actually have to do what they ask you to, right?” Eddie points out.

Steve rolls his eyes. “If an auction winner complains to the school that the person they bid on didn’t fulfill their end of the bargain, they can get their money back. It’s a whole…” he waves his hand vaguely, “thing. Happened once when I was a sophomore; Deacon McNab. Lost a good chunk of change for the football team, and they vandalized the shit out of his car.”

“Ah, right. Forgot we went to school with literal psychopaths,” Eddie hums.

“So, I just need you to bid on me and win, so I’m not stuck wasting a Saturday on whatever the hell the kids are going to try to make me do. Or not do. Or– whatever,” Steve says.

“Okay, not that I don’t understand your predicament here, but I think you’re forgetting something kind of important, Steve,” Eddie drawls.

Steve’s brows draw together in question. “What?”

“I’m fucking poor.”

“Oh.” Steve shakes his head. “I didn’t mean– no, I will give you the money, you don’t have to spend a dime, man, I just need you to get me out of this.”

“Why not have Buckley do it?” Eddie asks.

“That was Plan A, but she actually has a date that night, and it’s kind of a big deal, so I don’t want her to cancel,” Steve says. “But I assumed you wouldn’t be busy.”

“Wow, rude,” Eddie scoffs, and Steve sighs.

“Fine, sorry, I just really hoped you wouldn’t be busy.” Steve gives him the most lethal set of puppy dog eyes Eddie has ever seen, as if there had been any chance from the beginning that he’d be able to say no. “Please?”

Just for show, Eddie lets out a long sigh, falling against his chair and letting his head flop over the backrest like he’s deflating.

“Fine.”

“Thank you,” Steve groans, sounding so genuinely relieved that Eddie almost feels bad about how quickly his thoughts dip into the realms of the inappropriate. “Oh my god, I owe you.”

Eddie glances back up at Steve, tongue darting out to wet his lips almost unconsciously. “You know I’m not as easy to appease as a couple of fifteen-year-olds, right?”

Steve’s eyes drop for just a second—maybe down to Eddie’s lips, maybe not; who can say?—before he looks back up, cocking an eyebrow at Eddie. “I think I can handle it.”

Slowly, Eddie grins. “We’ll see.”

[yardsards]

i needed to express a sentiment in the creative stylings of @dunmeshiminimumwage

[princeofcyberpunk]

hi motorcity fandom is this anything

i was not expecting the cartoon about teens with cars to genuinely change how i view the world

[coolnonsenseworld]

Samurai and Ninja in crappy pics because December here is under a constant cloud and I just want y'all to see them all golden and cute without learning how to take aesthetic pictures 🥴 💙❤️😆🥰

linktr.ee/Mezzy

[nostalgia-tblr]

"are people not into that?" i ask, after posting my weird niche shit to the internet, despite knowing it to be weird niche shit.

[maranull]

Some cozy headcanons for going on a long train ride with Malenia? I don't know if you're a big public transportation enthusiast but trains are one of the coziest places ever. It's a pleasant place to share a snack at, and sleeper trains are my favourites, there's space and privacy for cuddles..

I'm gonna spend a lot of time on the train in the coming months ><

Have a wonderful day <3 <3 <3

I'm all for public transportation! Though I personally prefer biking cause Athens' trains and buses can get extremely overcrowded.

Anyway, this will assume that you have taken the sleeper train with the cabin option, cause a) Malenia has the money to cover it with ease and b) I like the privacy for the headcanons (and I feel that Mal would be a pretty private person in general).

~

Malenia:

Mal generally likes starring at the window, especially when out of the city. If you want to take a nap, read, etc but don't feel like staying in your seat, she gladly lets you sit or rest on her lap. If you do so, she almost always plays with your hair as she looks outside. She will do pull-ups from the bunk bed and will pull out one of those tiny travel chess sets for a game or two. Other than that, during the day she mostly just looks out of the window or follows your suggestions/conversations. At night she sleeps a bit earlier than she does at home, meaning you might actually catch her sleeping. Her head will fall either on your shoulder if you're still sitting while she passes out, or on your face if she was already on pillow duty.

tldr: Mal will find a way to work out body and mind, then will assume pillow duties and join you in whatever you want

~

Hope your travels are good! <3

[glouris]

need the current hotd ao3 economics explained to me like I'm five, what happened there with aemond and luke?

and like don't get me wrong, I understand that those targs are built different and there's no avoiding alabama dynamics, that's okay ig. but the least y'all could've done is chosen the velaryon brother that isn't 13, come on now 😭😭 the bar was already low, how did y'all manage to still be limbo dancing with the devil

[lgbtlunaverse]

3zun data analysis part 2 electric boogaloo

So in my first post on 3zun data analysis I said I manually excluded all non-3zun ships in the 3zun tag to figure out how many of them were actually centered around 3zun.

So that's... actually not how i first went about that. Instead, I decided to, one after the other, include each 2-out-of-3zun ship, and then manually exclude every relationship not contained in 3zun. (leaving te other 2-out-of-3zun ships alone) Then, I'd figure out how many of these fics were exclusively tagged the ship I included, how many included only one of the other 2 ships, and how many included all 3, which would allow me to calculate how many 3zun fics in total had 2-out-of-3zun ships included but no other side pairings, which, upon being added to the otp:true fics, should give me the total number of 3zun fics exclusively focused on 3zun.

"Wow! That seems really inefficient" yes! But it did give me more information for this post. Because with these numbers, I can somewhat crudely estimate what 2-out-of-3zun pairing tends to get more narrative focus within 3zun fics.

Here are the results, data collected on march 18th 2024:

There are 196 3zun fics tagged with xiyao and no non-3zun relationships. Of these, 151 are also tagged nieyao, and 137 are tagged nielan.

Coincidentally, nieyao has the same number, also 196, 151 of wich are also tagged xiyao, but only 117 are tagged nielan.

Then there are 159 3zun fics tagged nielan with no non-3zun pairings, with 137 of them also being tagged xiyao and 117 nieyao. (I hope you've all noticed those numbers matching up!)

by the way, here are the raw stats in just the plain vanilla 3zun tag, no filters, for how many fics are tagged with the different ot2s.

Also, this has nothing to do with anything, but for nielan and xiyao i mostly had to filter out relatively normal side pairings, a few crossovers with mxtx's other works or different danmei, nothing too weird. But the nieyao tag had THIS

JESUS/JUDAS??? IN MY NIEYAO?? It's more likely than you think!!

Anyway, to the complicated numbers! Selecting for all 3 after excluding everything else gives you 112 fics.

With these numbers you can now calculate some really fun stuff. Taking the fics tagged with both xiyao and nieyao (151) and subtracting the fics tagging all 3 (112) you get the number of 3zun fics that are only tagged as xiyao and nieyao, excluding nielan. In this case: 39

"Couldn't you just exclude nielan on ao3" you have to understand I like doing things the hard way.

Doing this gives:

Fics tagged nieyao and xiyao but not nielan: 39

Fics tagged xiyao and nielan but not nieyao: 25

Fics tagged nieyao and nielan but not xiyao: 5

Generally tagging 2 ot2 pairings in an ot3 signals that either the relationship is a V and the excluded ship are not together, or that- even if they're a triad- the excluded ship doesn't feature in the narrative much. As you can see, xiyao is by far the least likely to be excluded here.

Now doing some more math (or, if you're normal, clicking a few extra times on ao3) will give you the fics exclusively tagged with one ot2 pairing besides 3zun. Generally that means that this relationship is the narrative focus, even if all of 3zun are together.

And these results actually surprised me.

Fics exclusively tagged xiyao: 196 - 112 - 39 - 25 = 20

Fics exclusively tagged nielan: 159 - 112- 25 - 5 = 17

Fics exclusively tagged nieyao: 196 - 112 - 39 - 5 = 40

I checked the answers by actually filtering on ao3 (making all my work redundant) and uh. Yeah. I had expected that, with xiyao being the least likely to be excluded, the most commonly tagged ship in 3zun overall, and simply the most popular ship, they'd be first here too.

And yet, not only does nieyao have more fics, it has more than nielan and xiyao combined. Despite having less fics in total than either of the other 2!

Out of interest, I repeated the experiment without manually excluding all the unrelated ships.

Basically, for each 2-out-of-3zun ship, I only filtered out the two other ships. This data will give us the same insight into narrative focus, just without excluding all other non 3zun rleated side pairings.

This time I just included one ship, and excluded the other 2-out-of-3zun ships. (the hard math comes later)

Doing this gives:

3zun fics only tagged xiyao: 45

3zun fics only tagged nielan: 33

3zun fics only tagged nieyao: 59

It's a less drastic difference, but nieyao still come out on top!!

What this means, I think, is that people with nieyao as their absolute favorite side of the triangle are a lot more likely to write 3zun fics than those for whom the same is true for nielan or xiyao.

That is to say: Someone who likes all 3zun pairings equally is more likely to write 3zun where the pairings all share narrative balance. And if you really really really love xiyao, and think nieyao and nielan are pretty ok but you don't go crazy over them, you're a lot more likely to just write a solo xiyao fic than you are a xiyao-focused 3zun fic. Idem ditto for nielan. But if nieyao is your absolute fave, you wanna put those guys in a throuple anyway.

What I'm saying is I think nieyaoists are the subfandom of triangular desire. Which... *looks at my own mutuals*... is the least surprising thing i've ever said.

Anyway! I didn't stop there! I wanted to see which pairings were more likely to get tagged together again. I also decided to make things even harder for myself!

Instead of filtering one ship at a time and seeing how many of each of the others were tagged alongside it, like i did last time, I only gave myself a few figures to calculate it manually: The overall number of tags each had in the 3zun tag (348, 328, and 284, as pictured above) the afformentioned data about exclusively tagged fics, and the number of fics tagged with all three 2-out-of-3zun ships (175)

Rather than a simple subtraction, I had to... Well i'm just gonna let y'all look at my notes app. I wanna stress that i could have looked all of this up in minutes and in fact did later to check my answers! No time was saved! A lot was wasted!

But I like number so 👉👈

Tldr:

Fics tagged xiyao and nieyao but not nielan: 73

Fics tagged xiyao and nielan but not nieyao: 55

Fics tagged nieyao and nielan but not xiyao: 21

Once again, similar but slightly less drastic results.

With this I can only come to one conclusion: the fandom likes to joke about 3zun being a love triangle with xichen in the middle. But looking at these numbers? The real center is jiggy. Everything revolves around a-yao, baby!.

[sciderman]

Why so pessimistic about Deadpool 3? We didnt even get the trailer so we really don't know how they will do Deadpool in mcu. We gotta have hope!

we're not getting hope! we're not even going to have cable!

[bonefall]

I recognize a lot of ADHD symptoms in Nightheart too.

The thinking everyone hates him is a big thing, taking rejection harder than it should be,

You're right... the Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria... I am Nightheart's therapist and I am slapping him with so many mental illnesses.

[ssreeder]

I'm so looking forward to iroh and zuko properly talking and seeing irohs reaction to zuko being gay.

Like we all know he doesn't agree with the fire nation rn but how will he react?

Will he not support him cause sokkas a guy? Will he not support him because it's SOKKA? Will he accept him? Will he reveal he's known for years zuko was gay?

Especially with everything that happened with zhao, regarding to what jee said to bato on their date. (Which is a very understandable perspective, zuko just got out of this very sexually traumatising situation and almost immediately starts a relationship (his first relationship) with sokka, but then again it is a very unique situation)

One thing I love about some atla fics is how they portray the FNs thoughts on queerness, cause on one hand they were one of the only country's (I think) that treated men and women the same but then again it's also the fucking fire nation.

And I also think zukos whole canon arc can be very comparative to queerness,

His dads an asshole and after speaking out against him he throws him out, and zuko try's for 3 years to regain his father's love and acceptance, and then faced with the opportunity of regaining it takes it immediately regardless of who or what he may hurt (iroh, his own morals etc) but once he makes it back home realises how fucked up everything is and eventually confronts his dad and openly tells him he doesn't agree with him then runs aways.

I also wonder if iroh secretly knows jee is queer it doesn't seem that likely to me but it also is iroh so who knows.

<3

I do think Iroh’s reaction will be a big moment for not only the story but for Zuko’s character development. Right now, Zuko’s technically still a prisoner, holding himself there by assuming Iroh will not understand or judge him when in reality he’ll never know what his uncle is thinking until they TALK ABOUT IT. (Which the FN royal family is just sooo good at healthy communication I don’t understand why this is so hard for them lol?!)

I do agree that the suddenness of the relationship combined with the intensity from both zuko and Sokka is very alarming for people looking at it from the outside (I mean we all totally get it cause we were there but others are like uhhhh hmmmm ok this might be concerning) so I get them gossiping and wondering if this is truly real or what the fucks going on with those boys.

I love Zukos canon arc because there’s just so much about zukos story that can be relatable no matter who you are and I think that’s why he is a fan favorite (it doesn’t explain why we torture him the way we do but ehhhh it’s fine haha)

Hmmmmmm does iroh know Jees gay? Depends on how saucy those music nights got ;)

[crescentfool]

not indicative of anything, just something silly i thought about! feel free to fill in the variables with whatever you like.

[wickedb-tchofthemidwest]

I'm sick and tired of acting like I'm not literally in love with Kellen Goff. He's absolutely perfect. Thank you for existing, man.

[roman-vs-usernames]

I’m rereading this short story I wrote about a year ago, and I’m afraid I made it fairly obvious that there is something Deeply Wrong with me

[youremyonlyhope]

Hey. RTD2. If you're playing some sort of long game with this whole not even mentioning the existence of Martha Jones thing as a way to throw us off the scent of a possible appearance from her later in season "1" or "2" of this era...

Nah. I can't even begin to let myself hope it will happen.