#Top Three Ships of 2024

[krys-kros]

MY TOP THREE SHIPS OF 2024

In the third place,

Ended Horribly

In the second place,

Will End Horribly

AAAAND IN FIRST PLACE WE HAVE *drumroll*

Ended Horribly and Still Going

[asteria7fics]

I am absolutely in the mood to read an essay about Kyle's portrayal in fanwork 👀 i could read South Park analysis till the cows come home

Alright alright I’m ready to get into this haha.

A couple of things before I start, everything I’m about to say is just my opinion, yeah? I’m no expert, I just think that the way the fandom treats Kyle in a lot of circumstances is… questionable :)

Oookay, let’s GO!

So believe it or not, I don’t actually read a ton of fanfiction. I don’t really have time these days, and when I do I’m so painfully picky about the way certain characters are portrayed that it’s very hard for me to find fics I really vibe with. That being said, I see a lotta shit on this fine website.

Let’s get the obvious shit out of the way. I do not think Kyle should be the default bottom in ANY ship. If we wanna really get into it, my personal take is that this is a holdover from yaoi/fujoshi culture that is so painfully steeped in heteronormative bullshit of one person needing to be the ‘dominant’ and one needing to be the ‘submissive’ even outside of the context of kink. Essentially, one character has to be the ‘girl’ and one has to be the ‘boy’, even in a homosexual relationship.

I’ve blabbed about this before, but I don’t think I’ve ever talked about why I don’t think that Kyle should be the default ‘submissive’ in his relationships.

First of all, Kyle is just not submissive. At all. Or I should say, he isn’t often. I think the only context where he tends to submit is with his mother, and if you really want to sit here and defend your choice based on him having ‘mommy issues’, I guess you can technically say that.

Personally, I see Kyle as being very headstrong and, honestly kinda intense. While this hasn’t always been super consistent in his personality early on in the show’s run, it’s certainly has been now. I mean, he was willing to shoot at his friends’ moms in The End of Obesity because he believed so strongly in what he was doing, and why he was doing it. Kyle’s stubbornness and unwillingness to waver on his morals and values is a driving force for conflict in the show, like, all the fucking time, whether he’s correct (as in, the creators agree with his stance) or not.

I bring up his personality in the early run because I do think a lot of the issues I have with his characterization now comes more from early fandom portrayals than anything that’s actually currently supported by the source material. As an example, Kyle being the weakest physically of the main four makes a lot of sense in the context of those early seasons, but it doesn’t really work with his current characterization, if I’m being honest.

This isn’t to say I dislike him being sickly, mind you. I actually think that can be really compelling if Kyle has to grapple with the fact that his physical weakness is at odds with his mental strength.

Hoooowever, I think this has to be done in a really specific way, and this sorta brings me to my next point.

Why are we out here victimizing Kyle so damn much? Like, I get it, bad shit happens to him in the show (don’t talk to me about Humancentipad) but why are we just tormenting Kyle for seemingly no reason? Are we in the middle of a dead dove arms race?

I do think this ties back to this idea of Kyle being a default submissive, and I’ve certainly not always been kind to the kid in my own work but damn you guys are fucking mean to him. What did he ever do to you??

I suppose tormenting characters is sort of… par for the course in any fandom, but man I just don’t see the appeal of it being Kyle that’s getting the brunt of the abuse, especially when he ends up being reduced to a helpless, pathetic little thing. Like at that point just pick a different character, I mean Butters is right there you guys.

I’m not going to act like any one ship leans more or less into these tropes either, I think all sides of the fandom are guilty of disregarding a lot of what makes Kyle’s character compelling in the show. I will, however, take a moment to complain about some of the popular ships that Kyle is in.

Kyman: You know how I feel about these two. A stellar dynamic with so much problematic shit bubbling under the surface. Let’s disregard the inherent discomfort around an open anti-Semite and a Jewish person being together because… I willingly ignore that to ship Yentlman in my main works (rip self read). Even without that bit of their relationship, these two are just too goddamn similar. Both stubborn, both going to extreme lengths to prove the other wrong, OR enabling one another to do some pretty shitty things.

I think Post Covid did it best by showing how they BOTH bring out the worst in one another. While I enjoy these two platonically, I don’t personally enjoy romantic ships that are this toxic.

I’ve also expressed before that I think a fic lives and dies on how Cartman is written, so while this post is about Kyle’s depictions in fan works, I do think we have to consider the way the other half of a pair is written as well.

I got some really lovely tags on that one post I reblogged and word vomited all over that brought up how Cartman, supported by canon, is a severely traumatized individual, and how that can support a more sympathetic view of him (I’m not tagging the person in case they don’t want to be involved in discourse like this but I appreciate your insights and you made a very good point, if you are reading this).

This does, however, bring up a whole other host of issues with their dynamic. If we’re romanticizing the idea that Kyle is some kind of moral savior for Cartman then… man, idk. You guys are gonna have to help me on this one, is that common in the ship? Is Kyle playing therapist with Cartman, and that’s how we’re justifying sanitizing him?

Also, say it with me now, there is no way in sand hell that Kyle would let Cartman top him. I know, I’ve read it, and I can see where the idea is coming from but come on. Kyle is too prideful for that shit. Now if y’all start giving me Kyle topping Cartman and making him fucking beg for that hot Jew sploog then MAYBE I’d be able to get behind this ship.

Style: Oh you thought my preferred ship was safe? Haha no ma’am, because Style shippers are the fucking WORST when it comes to feminizing Kyle.

I respect the Style shippers that came before me with their football star Stan and pissbaby twink Kyle, I really do. However it’s time to move on. I made this point in a previous post (that I know you’ve seen my friend, much love for your support on my hot takes) but for those who didn’t see it, I really believe the thing that separates Kyman shippers from Style shippers is that Kyman shippers tend to treat Kyle like an equal to Cartman, while Style shippers really lean on Kyle being weaker than Stan to make their dynamics work.

What’s really funny to me is that what I think makes Style work in its best iterations is when they are truly treated as equals, because they absolutely should be.

Now I may sound like a hypocrite here because I know I play around with power dynamics in my Styles quite a bit, but I think I make it very clear that even when Kyle is technically bottoming, he is not necessarily submitting.

I also can give credit where credit is due, Kyman shippers do not shy away from how much of an asshole Kyle can be sometimes. Style shippers though? Man, I understand wanting to lean more on Kyle's positive traits (he IS a very empathetic, friendly, driven person that always wants to do the right thing) but he can become 'too good' very quickly when you don't balance those things out with his negative traits.

Kyle is pretentious. Kyle thinks he knows best even when he really doesn't. Kyle is quick to anger and sometimes cares TOO much, to the point of getting carried away and making things worse (rip to Canada).

The only negative trait Style shippers are pretty consistently on board with is him being hotheaded, which is fair! But also? To stay consistent with my current branding, that's like seasoning all of your food with just salt and pepper. Like sure, it adds flavor, but we all know the dish could taste so much better if you sprinkle on a little something more.

K2: I am... Utterly indifferent to this ship. Like, I've seen some cute fanart? But I've never partaken and it doesn't really interest me, sorry gang.

Cryle: Another ship I've never really partaken in, but that makes significantly less sense to me. It's giving crack ship, which is fine? But from what I have consumed a lot of people sort of approach them with all the worst aspects of both Kyman and Style. Craig is not as compelling as Cartman as a foil for Kyle, so when people do lean into the evil Craig headcanon that was common in early fandom, it seems they also lean into the pathetic, victim Kyle tropes that are common in Style works.

I'm sorry if y'all love this ship, I'd never really paid it any mind until recently and while I have read works that included them that I thoroughly enjoyed, I don't think I'll ever root for them to be endgame.

And if your favorite Kyle ship isn't here, sorry to say I don't know enough to speak on them (in fact I shouldn't have even brought up K2 for that reason, but I figured someone would probably mention it since it seems pretty popular).

Look, this is a mess and I am certainly not the authority on characterizing any of these goobers. But you asked, and I hope you enjoyed my silly little opinions. This is in no way meant to be constructive, but if you guys want something more organized and constructive breaking down how I characterize Kyle or any of the kids, you know where to ask!

[maxpadelchampion]

CHARLES P3 IN A LAWN MOWER???????

[sleep-deprived-person]

So apparently KOSA (2024 edition) is getting either thrown out until next year or put into effect in six days. That was a guesstimate based on a different person saying that's when Congress is back in session and may be false.

Update that's going in the main post at the top: it has enough support to pass Congress.

It failed the last two times because people were voting against it.

This time, KOSA has traction among the pro-LGBTQ parties. Because nobody is fucking calling their bullshit and screaming from the rooftops that calling it the "Kids Online Safety Act" is misleading.

What will it passing do?

Nothing much, only prevent any education on LGBTQIA+ (it's that stupid fucking argument about us grooming kids again), shut down nearly every fandom space on the internet, and make it required for most big tech companies to have your ID.

Want to have resources for kids to discover their identity readily available? Yes? Then fucking speak up against this stupid fucking bill.

Fandom spaces like Tumblr, Twitter (? I thought the MAGA assholes liked Musk?), Tiktok, Archive Of Our Own, and any other website that hosts fanfic or fanart? Either shut down permanently, forced to uproot to a different country and down for a while (best case scenario, and they likely won't be able to send any data, and therefore fanfics, to the US), or gutted so that you only get to put G rated cishet ships on there, if any shipping at all. How to avoid that? I've already said it: Call your fucking representatives.

Want to avoid the fucking dystopic task of being legally obligated to give big tech your government issue ID? Again, cause an uproar. Call your goddamned representatives.

If they can pass this, the ripple effects could be catastrophic.

So, for fuck's sake, any Americans that can impact this stupid fucking bill and see this? Do everything in your power to shut it down because you have until February twenty sixth (26th) to send this bill back to where it belongs.

And if you can't do that? Reblog, copy my tags, and boost the signal.

Sorry not sorry for ranting, making you scroll through that, and swearing a probably excessive amount, but KOSA is a bill with a GLOBAL IMPACT being passed by ONE COUNTRY because some old people are scared of two guys with who were told they were girls kissing within five hundred miles of a child. Fuck this shit, I shouldn't have to worry about bad bills in America but I fucking do because I use the internet and would like to avoid mass censorship. Fuck this, fuck conservatives, and fuck the fact that some boomers make your country's policies.

Now, if you won't mind me, I'm going to be up until three in the morning downloading fanfiction or copying and pasting them into a a text file if I can't so I can read them by the end of the week.

[figmentforms]

★ Art Auction for the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund ★

Auction has closed! The winning donation was $1,234!!!! Thank you, Jeff!!!

And thank you so much to everyone that placed bids and got the donation to be this high! You're all very much appreciated! <3

★ Winning Bid: $1,234 * Ended April 15th, 2024 at 8:22 am ★

Auction will go until April 15th, 2024 at 7pm, Eastern Standard Time

The Palestine Children's Relief Fund (PCRF) is a non-political organization established in 1991 by concerned people in the U.S. to address the medical and humanitarian crisis facing Palestinian youth in the Middle East. The main objective of the PCRF is to identify and treat every child in the Middle East in need of specialized surgery not available to them locally. We locate, sponsor and run volunteer medical missions to the Middle East in adult and pediatric cardiac surgery, pediatric cardiology, plastic and reconstructive surgery, maxillofacial surgery, pediatric urology, ophthalmology, vascular surgery, pediatric orthopedic surgery, occupational therapy, and other specialties. They also have a fantastic 4-star rating on Charity Navigator ( https://www.pcrf.net/ )

★ Details About the Set of Paintings:

• Painted with acrylic on stretched canvas over wood triangle frames.

• Each of the three canvasses are 26 cm tall, 30 cm wide, 3.5 cm thick. (10 1/4 inches tall, 12 inches wide, and about 1 1/2 inches thick)

★ How to participate is below:

• To bid: email me at  figmentformsCharityArtAuction@gmail.com and let me know how much you want to bid.

• If the top bidder backs out, the paintings will go to the next highest bidder.

• The highest bid will be kept current at the top of this post (as best as I can keep up. I'm human).

• Bidding ends on April 15th, 2024 at 7pm, Eastern Standard Time.

• If you win, make your donation directly to Palestine Children’s Relief Fund ( https://www.pcrf.net/ ). Then email me a screenshot of your donation confirmation as proof. (feel free to blur out any personal info you would like.)

• Then let me know what address you would like your package shipped to. Free shipping within the United States. If outside that area, let me know and we can figure out something that works for us both.

Best wishes and hopefully this will do some good!

[zoloteh-volossya]

BG3 Fanfiction Statistics, Part 2

Welcome to part 2 of my BG3 AO3 fanfic statistical analysis! In part 1, which can be found here, I discussed general fanfic data for the fandom and took a look at pairing trends for the player character, Shadowheart, Karlach, Lae’zel, and Minthara. In this section, I will discuss pairing trends on AO3 for Astarion, Gale, Wyll, and Halsin, then compare all 8 main characters and talk about pairings more broadly.

Please note that the data for this analysis was gathered between July 21, 2024 and July 24, 2024. I gathered data for the top 300 ship tags in the BG3 fandom, and due to time constraints did not look at pairings with fewer than 5 fics.

I will try and be as transparent as possible when discussing how I obtained and processed this data. A copy of my spreadsheet can be found here and contains all of the tables I will be discussing for anyone who wishes to take a closer look at the data. If you don’t care about the numbers and/or my thoughts about them, feel free to skim through this post and just look at the charts!

I will be referencing the “PC” a lot in this section. See part 1 for an explanation of my methodology, but basically I combined Tav, Dark Urge, Original Character, Reader, and You into one Player Character (PC) supercategory while filtering to prevent double counting. This makes it clearer who each character is typically paired with. It also drops the number of ships from 300 to 162. Throughout this essay, I will use “ship tags” to refer to the original 300 ships that I gathered the data for and “pairings” to refer to the 162 ships that remain when I condense the player character down.

CHARACTER PAIRING STATISTICS, CONT.

In part 1, I went through Tav, the Dark Urge, Shadowheart, Karlach, Lae’zel, and Minthara and took a look at who they are shipped with and their fic category (F/M, M/M, F/F, Other, Multi) breakdown. In this continuation, I will look at Astarion, Gale, Wyll, and Halsin.

ASTARION

Astarion was included in 50.2% of all fic pairings (the number of fics tagged Astarion/PC + the number of fics tagged Astarion/Gale + the number of fics tagged Astarion/Halsin and so on, divided by the total sum of all fic pairings). This percentage increased to 53.9% when otp:true was applied. This means that over half of all shipping content for BG3 on AO3 involves Astarion!

Astarion is in 7 of the top 10 ship tags and 64 of the top 300 ship tags. When I condense the pairings with the PC down, he is in 7 of the top 30 ships and 40 of the 162 total pairings. The loss of 24 ship tags comes from me having to condense down not only all his ship tags with the PC but also all his threesomes and foursomes and moresomes with the PC.

Notably, Astarion was the only BG3 character to have race specific ship tags – Astarion/Tiefling!OC (68 fics), Astarion/Half-Elf!OC (27 fics), and Astarion/Drow!OC (9 fics). These all got condensed down into the Astarion/PC supercategory as well.

Astarion/Gale is #4 and his next pairings with a non-player character are #8 Halsin and #9 Wyll. Pairings #1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10, and 16 are all just him with different tags for the player character. Condensing down all the player character tags yields us his top 20 pairings.

As expected, the player character dominates his pairings with 11,756 fics. His biggest non-PC ships are with Gale with 2,431 fics (of which an unusually high proportion are otp:true – 1,752 – almost three quarters of all his fics with Gale), Halsin with 848 fics, and Wyll with 582 fics. Ignoring the PC, he mostly seems to be shipped with men – the first canon woman to show up is Karlach at #8 with 157 fics (an order of magnitude less than Gale). He has four threesomes (Halsin/PC/Astarion, Gale/PC/Astarion, Karlach/Wyll/Astarion, Wyll/PC/Astarion) in his top 20 ships. I was surprised at how high Cazador (#6, 387 fics) was at first, but a lot of that is likely from Astarion’s backstory.

#20 was Astarion/Astarion with 15 fics, which means that Astarion is following in the proud tradition of tumblr sexymen like the Onceler before him.

As expected from looking at Astarion’s pairings in general, he has slightly more M/M (8,923 fics) shipping than M/F (7,996 fics) shipping. M/M pairings have an unusually high rate of otp:true fics – that’s mostly from Astarion/Gale. Oddly, there’s a small number (51) of F/F otp:true fics – these are either genderbends or mistags.

Looking at the pattern of pairings with the PC only, a different pattern emerges.

This time, there’s significantly more M/F fics (6,910, 58.8% of Astarion’s fics with the PC) than M/M fics (4,182, 35.6%), though the numbers are closer when you look at otp:true (46.7% M/F vs 37.6% M/M). We can infer then that it is more common to ship female player characters with Astarion than men. The Other category is significant (1,601 fics, 13.6%) and likely was used for a tag for nonbinary player characters. There’s still a bizarre 38 otp:true F/F fics.

GALE

Gale is in 19.7% of all pairings and 26.5% of otp:true pairings. He has 33 ship tags in the top 300, which drops to 23 when I condense all the player characters into “PC.”

Unlike Astarion, whose chart was completely dominated by his pairing with the PC, Gale has almost as many fics with Astarion as he does with Tav. The top pairings for Gale are primarily with the player character – #1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 are all just different tags for the player character (Gale/You and Gale/Reader are synonymous and so have pretty much the same number of fics). Condensing all that down yields the following chart.

There’s a stark drop off after the player character and Astarion – an order of magnitude decrease in fics (#4 Shadowheart/Gale has 111 fics, a massive drop off from 2,431 Astarion/Gale fics). And #3 is just a threesome with both the PC and Astarion. I’ve commented on it before, but Gale/Astarion has a truly unusual proportion of otp:true fics – something that indicates that there are no background pairings in most of that ship’s activity. I would not be surprised if many of those fics are modern AUs or post game fics that don’t feature the other BG3 characters much if at all.

The quartet of Astarion-Gale-Halsin-PC is prominent in Gale’s top 20 ships. All permutations of that multiship are present: #1 Gale/PC, #2 Astarion/Gale, #5 Halsin/Gale, #3 Astarion/PC/Gale, #6 Astarion/Halsin/Gale, #11 Gale/Halsin/PC, and #15 Astarion/Gale/Halsin/PC. Towards the bottom of his top 20 we start getting into his multiships with most or all of the main protagonists. This’ll be more common with the other companions – there are only 11 Astarion / Gale / Wyll / Shadowheart / Lae’zel / Karlach fics, so when these show up the list is descending into very low fic count pairings.

Looking at Gale’s fic category breakdown, M/M predominates with 3,859 fics to M/F’s 2,938 fics. Given the very high proportion of otp:true fics, we can assume that most of that is Astarion/Gale. Indeed, when we look at Gale’s ship with the player character (his only other substantial ship), we see a very different picture.

Gale’s ship with the player character has much more M/F content than his general ship content and also than Astarion. M/M content drops from 57.1% of all his fics to 30.5% of his ships with the player character, while M/F content rises from 43.5% of all his fic content to 68.1% of his fic content with the player character. ‘Other’ shipping is about 9.6% of ship content with the player character. Looking at otp:true content, a little more than half as many male player characters are shipped with Gale as female player characters.

There are, for some reason, 16 F/F otp:true fics for all of Gale’s ships and 7 otp:true F/F fics for his ship with the player character.

WYLL

Wyll is featured in 5.2% of all pairings and 5.7% of otp:true pairings, a truly stunning drop from the ~50% of Astarion and 20-26% of Gale. He is in 24 of the top 300 BG3 ships, a number that drops to 18 when I condense all the player characters into one category.

Interestingly, Astarion/Wyll outpaces Wyll/Tav as Wyll’s most popular ship. Like with Gale/Astarion, the proportion of otp:true fics for that pairing is unusually high.

When we condense all of Wyll’s player character pairings into one category, it (barely) edges out Astarion/Wyll, with 588 and 582 fics respectively (also note that no Wyll pairing has thousands of fics, unlike Gale and Astarion before him). What also happens when we condense the player characters is that Wyll does not reach a full 20 ships – he drops to 18 pairings. He has more than this, of course, but my methodology ignores all pairings with fewer than 5 fics. Therefore, Wyll’s 19th and 20th most popular pairings have 4 fics or fewer. I have represented these missing pairings with little :( emojis, because this is a sad state of affairs.

Karlach is by far Wyll’s most popular ship after Astarion and the PC, with 327 fics. The otp:true proportion is low, so it is likely often a background ship or has background ships. The next highest pairing is #4, Gale, with 54 fics. The numbers rapidly drop from there – by #6 Wyll/Lae’zel we are at 26 fics and by #14 Wyll/Karlach/Shadowheart we are down to only 10 fics.

Wyll’s pairings, like all of the male characters, tend towards M/M, with 1,010 total fics. F/M follows up with 794 and Other with 162. Much of his M/M fics come from Astarion/Wyll, as we can see when we look at Wyll’s ships with the PC.

Like Astarion and Gale before him, the proportion of M/F rises when we look at Wyll’s pairings with the player character specifically. Unlike Astarion and Gale, though, no category even comes close to breaking 1,000 fics. M/F has 357 fics (or about 60.7% of his fics total) and M/M has 224 (38.1%). With otp:true applied, M/F is 56.3%, M/M is 40.7%, and Other has 13.3%. These numbers add to more than 100%, so even on otp:true fics people are evidently tagging multiple categories. This is likely due to “Reader” fics with a generic reader.

HALSIN

Halsin is featured in 9.7% of all pairings, almost twice Wyll’s proportion. This drops to 7.9% though when you apply otp:true – a much larger drop than pretty much anyone else other than the PC. It’s likely because Halsin has a disproportionately high number of fics with threesomes, which eliminate a fic from otp:true if the threesome subrelationships are also tagged.

He is in 31 of the top 300 ship tags and 21 of the top 162 pairings.

Like every other man in this essay, Halsin’s ship with Astarion is very prominent. The first canon woman to show up is Shadowheart at #15.

As expected, Halsin/PC is easily his most popular pairing, with 1,637 fics. Astarion and a threesome with Astarion and the PC follow with quite decent fic counts of 848 and 456 respectively. The otp:true proportion for Halsin/Astarion is abnormally high. Gale and Shadowheart seem to be his other major ships. Gale/Halsin is #4 with 106 fics and Gale/PC/Halsin is #8 with 19. Shadowheart/Halsin is #6 with 36 fics and Shadowheart/Halsin/PC is #10 with 17.

The Astarion-Halsin-Gale-PC quartet shows up prominently in Halsin’s top pairings. In addition to the ships previously mentioned, Halsin/Astarion/Gale is #5 with 92 fics.

What’s notable about Halsin’s fic categories is the abnormally large number of fics tagged Multi – 1,257 fics, or 37.4% of the total. Given that he’s the poly companion, this makes sense.

Looking at Halsin with the PC specifically, the typical pattern appears. The percentage of M/M drops and M/F rises. Unlike the other characters and like his general shipping situation, the percentage of Multi fic is quite high – 32.7%.

CHARACTER COMPARISON

Now that I’ve looked at all the main characters individually, let’s take a look at how they compare to each other across a variety of metrics.

FIC RATINGS

In my individual character discussions, I didn’t talk about their relative rating proportions much, even though I was carefully tracking it. This is because all rating plots look just about the same until you compare people against each other directly.

Taking a look at all fics, I noticed a couple of things. First of all, Wyll is the companion with the least amount of horny fic written about him, with 33.4% of fics that include him in a pairing being rated Explicit. Halsin is the horniest, no surprise, with 52.8% of fics that include him in a pairing being rated Explicit – over half! Astarion has 41.2% Explicit fics while Gale has 43.6%. Amongst the women, Minthara has the highest percentage of Explicit fics (47.8%) while all three other women are within 38% – 40%.

Interestingly, the percentage of fics rated Mature remains within 22% – 26% for all companions except Minthara, who has 27.8%. The proportion of General fic is between 9% and 11% for Astarion, Gale, Shadowheart, and Karlach. Wyll has more than that, with 11.4%, while Lae’zel and Minthara have less than that with 8.4% and 5.6% respectively.

The situation does not change appreciably when I only look at fics with the otp:true condition.

FIC CATEGORIES

I have been talking about the percentage of M/F, M/M, F/F, Other, and Multi fics for each of the main characters. It’s interesting to compare them with each other. Please note, though, that in the individual character sections the percentages given were the percent of all fics for that character, and so the percentages added up to more than 100% because many fics tag several categories. In this section, the percentages given are a percent of all pairings. They therefore all add up to 100%, but it also means that fics that tag multiple categories are counted multiple times in that 100%.

The men all have more M/F than the women do (Astarion and Gale have the most while Lae’zel and Minthara have the least). Halsin, unsurprisingly, has the most Multi fic while Minthara has the least. Karlach has a surprisingly low proportion of F/F fic.

An interesting note is that the men all have less F/F fic than the women do M/M fic. This means that women are in background pairings to M/M ships or have background M/M ships in their focus fics proportionally more often than the men have background F/F ships or are in the background of F/F fics. The exception is Wyll, who has a F/F percentage close to the percentage of M/M fics in the womens’ fics.

Looking at ships with the PC specifically, some interesting patterns emerge.

Astarion, Gale, Wyll and Halsin have significantly (by more than 10%) more M/F content and less M/M content in their ships with the PC than their ships in general. Lae’zel and Minthara see a slight (less than 5%) increases in M/F and decreases in F/F as well. Shadowheart mostly stays the same. Karlach, on the other hand, sees a moderate (between 5% and 10%) decrease in M/F and increase in F/F in her ship with the PC specifically.

But remember, all these values include background pairings, and we have no way of knowing what proportion of each category actually contains the character we are interested in. So, what happens when we strip background pairings out of the equation by applying otp:true?

Wow! What a difference! Now, these values aren’t necessarily representative of all their pairings – just the ones that authors like to focus on without any background ships. Recall from the individual character analyses that often the second most popular ship after the pairing with the PC had an unusually high otp:true ratio. So we can assume, for example, that a large proportion of the M/M fics for Astarion and for Gale are from Gale/Astarion.

Every woman except Karlach is gayer than all of the men. Surprisingly, Karlach is the straightest companion by this particular metric.

Applying otp:true to ships with the PC specifically yields very different results.

Like what we saw with all ships, ships between the PC and men have significantly more M/F content than the mens’ ships generally. In this case, every man except Astarion jumps to around 50% M/F, and Astarion still jumps from 24.3% to 42.9%. The consistent pattern is that when looking at otp:true fics, M/M is preferred unless the pairing is with the player character, in which case M/F is more popular.

The conclusions for the women are not as clear cut. Karlach has more F/F and less M/F when looking specifically at ships with the PC, while Lae’zel has almost twice as much M/F when you look at her ship with the PC than her general otp:true fics – almost certainly due to the loss of Shadowheart/Lae’zel. Shadowheart experiences a significant (>10%) decline in the proportion of F/F fics, while Minthara sees a smaller one (~5%). What remains true, though, is that the majority of the player character shipping for the women is F/F.

The green bars in the chart are for the Other category, an expansive category that includes a lot of nonbinary PC shipping. You can therefore estimate how popular it is to ship each main character with a nonbinary Tav. Karlach has the most (18.6%) while Lae’zel has the least (5.2%). Everyone else is between 10% (well, 9.8% for Gale) and 12% except for Astarion who has 13.6%.

PAIRINGS

Most of both parts of this essay has been spent looking at each main character in relative isolation. But if you plot all pairings next to each other it paints a very interesting picture about each character’s relative popularity.

Astarion shows up 7 times in the top 10 ship tags and 12 times in the top 30 ship tags. The first non-Astarion ship is #4, Tav/Gale. There are no canon women in the top 10 ship tags – the first to show up is Shadowheart, at #14. Wyll does not appear until #18, in a pairing with Astarion. His pairing with Tav is #25. Lae’zel’s ship with Tav does not even make it onto this plot, at #38. Minthara is in an even worse situation – she first shows up at #60.

The results when I condense all the player character tags into “PC” are... stark.

Astarion dominates the BG3 fanfiction sphere in a way that is very surprising for a piece of media with six strong main characters. In fact, in order to actually be able to see the teeny tiny bars representing everybody else, here's a second graph with Astarion/PC excluded.

Astarion/PC is far and away the most popular ship, with 11,756 fics. Gale/PC is the second, with 3,500 – less than a third as many. Next is Astarion/Gale (2,431 fics) with an unusually high “otp:true” ratio, which indicates that it is frequently being written without any background ships. Surprisingly, Gortash/PC is fourth with 1,891 fics, followed by Halsin/PC with 1,637. Shadowheart/PC is the first woman to show up, at #6 with 980 fics. This is still 657 fics less than Halsin/PC and 911 fics less than Gortash/PC, which means that Gortash/PC is almost twice as popular as Shadowheart/PC. Astarion/PC has 12 times as many fics as Shadowheart/PC.

Karlach follows Shadowheart at #7 with 890 fics. Of the main cast, Lae’zel is next at #10 with 694 fics, and unlike every other Origin character her most popular ship is not with the PC but with Shadowheart. Wyll/PC does not make it into the top 10 ships, coming in at #11 with 588 ships. Notably, Raphael has more fics with the PC than either Lae’zel or Wyll, coming in at #9 with 745. Astarion/PC has a whopping 20 times as many fics as Wyll does and Gortash has over three times as many fics with the PC as Wyll does.

Lae’zel/PC finally shows up at #16 with 348 fics. Rolan/PC has more fics (#13, 477), and Astarion/PC has 33 times as many fics. Minthara/PC, meanwhile, is all the way down at #23 with 234 fics. Raphael, Rolan, Zevlor, the Emperor, and Haarlep all have more fics with the PC than she does. Halsin/PC has 7 times as many fics as Minthara/PC.

If you add up all the pairings each main character is tagged in, you get the following chart.

Astarion is far and away the most written about character in the BG3 fandom, followed by Gale and Halsin. If you divide these numbers by the total number of pairings, Astarion is in 50% of pairings, Gale is in 20%, and Halsin is in 10%. No other character breaks 10% - Shadowheart is in 7% of pairings, Karlach in 6%, Wyll in 5%, Lae’zel in 4%, and Minthara is in 1%.

Out of curiosity, I tallied up the numbers for Gortash as well. He appears in 6% of all pairings and 7% of otp:true pairings. This means that Gortash breaks even with Karlach and appears in more pairings than Wyll, Lae’zel, or Minthara, and if you look at otp:true he beats all the women and Wyll. This is despite Gortash having very few ships with characters outside of the PC, unlike most of the main cast who have notable secondary ships like Shadowheart/Lae’zel.

PAIRING ANALYSIS

Why am I focusing so much on pairings? Mostly because BG3 is an ensemble game – many fics will tag characters who show up for any significant length of time, even if just in the background. Therefore, if a character is tagged that is indicative that they are being included but not necessarily a sign that they are being focused on.

AO3 is a largely romance focused site (only 12% of all BG fics are categorized as General) and so characters in a pairing are more likely to be a focus of a fic. Of course this is not a hard rule, as in-depth character studies may have no pairings tagged at all or may tag a pairing that shows up in the background – but I have no way to distinguish these fics from a fic that tags a character because they show up for one paragraph. There is also the problem that many pairings are background pairings that are tagged but show up only briefly. To try and avoid that, in the following conversation, I will often be focusing on ships with the PC specifically. Fics pairing a character with the PC are especially likely to be focusing on that character and their romance and are much less likely to be a background ship than other pairings.

Looking at the data, the four most popular characters to ship with the PC – Astarion, Gale, Halsin, and Gortash – constitute the majority of fan works. Astarion, Gale, and Halsin in particular are shipped in all the possible configurations and these pairings are comparatively popular. Astarion/Gale is #3, Astarion/Halsin is #8 (above any Wyll or Lae’zel ships), Astarion/Halsin/PC is #14 (above Lae’zel/PC and all Minthara ships), Astarion/Gale/PC is #26, Gale/Halsin is #33, and Astarion/Gale/Halsin is #34.

So I did a little experiment. I went through my data and counted all the pairings that contained ONLY Astarion, Gale, Halsin, Gortash, and/or the PC. Then, I went through and counted all the pairings that weren’t in that group but did contain at least one of Astarion, Gale, Halsin, or Gortash.

Pairings containing ONLY a combination of the PC, Astarion, Gale, Halsin, or Gortash constituted 66.9% of all fic pairings in the BG3 fandom and (in a neat coincidence) also 66.9% of otp:true fic pairings. Adding in fics that involve at least one of these men with someone else ups the numbers to 73.3% of all fics and 75.0% of otp:true fics. Which means that only about a quarter of pairings do NOT include one of these four white men.

Now, it isn’t unusual for a couple of people to dominate a fandom like this. Many fandoms’ creative output primarily consist of only a couple of popular characters and their associated pairings. What is notable, though, is that BG3 is an ensemble game with 6 strong and nuanced main characters, three of whom are women, and two additional strong side characters, one of whom is a woman. But the four primary objects of fandom’s focus are 2 of the main characters, one of the side characters, and a villain.

This discrepancy is especially notable for Shadowheart and Lae’zel. For ages, when I’ve seen people bring up the relative scarcity of women in fanfic, the rejoinder is that the true culprit is the source media. Stories just don’t feature complex, interesting women with fully realized arcs, people say. There’s no narrative meat to for fandom to sink their teeth into.

This is not the case in BG3.

Both Shadowheart and Lae’zel have excellent narrative arcs that are well embedded into the game – Lae’zel has two game areas dedicated to her plotline (the creche and the astral plane) and you literally cannot progress the game past act 2 without interacting with Shadowheart’s dedicated area. The characters grapple with crisises of faith, culture clashes, and important decisions throughout the game – and who they end up becoming changes depending on the player character’s actions. This is great stuff! But it does not translate into fanfic popularity.

Lae’zel in particular is underrepresented. It’s notable that she is main character who is integrally tied into the plot and yet she is only tagged in 16% of fics – even including all the fics that merely tag her as a background character. She only appears in 4% of pairings. Her pairing with the PC comes in at #16, with 355 fics. But hey, her largest ship is with Shadowheart, so let’s look at the total number of pairings she shows up in – 1,319. Gortash/Dark Urge has 1,594 fics – that single pairing has 275 more fics than all of Lae’zel’s pairings added together. Gortash’s total pairing count is 2,052 and exceeds Lae’zel’s by almost 700 fics. Halsin’s total pairing count is over 2.5 times as large as Lae’zel’s at 3,346 fics total. Gale’s total pairing count is over five times as large, at 6,760 fics total. Oof.

Shadowheart is a bit better off – her pairing with the PC is the most popular woman at #6 with 980 fics. But this is still 657 fics less than Halsin/PC and 911 fics less than Gortash/PC, which means that Gortash/PC is almost twice as popular as Shadowheart/PC. When you take Shadowheart’s other pairings into consideration, things improve a little bit. She has 2,418 pairings total, which is about 400 more than Gortash’s total, though still over 900 fics less than Halsin’s total. But any Shadowheart/Lae’zel fan can tell you about sifting through their fics and finding that many only feature them as a background pairing for Astarion/Tav or some other more popular pairing. So let’s take a look at the otp:true numbers. Looking at otp:true fics only, Shadowheart has 765 fics and Lae’zel has 495 fics. Meanwhile, Halsin has 858 and Gortash has 800 – more than Shadowheart and much more than Lae’zel.

Neither Gortash nor Halsin really have arcs in game, though both of them do have implied arcs that happened before it. They’re interesting characters, sure, but undoubtedly Shadowheart and Lae’zel have more going on, more narrative meat to chew on. And yet, they’re completely overshadowed in fandom.

Speaking of being overshadowed, let’s talk about Wyll. Wyll is the only man in the main cast who is not particularly popular. He does not even make it into the top 10 pairings! He has fewer fics than Shadowheart or Karlach. Notably he has far far fewer fics with the PC than any other major male character and even several male villains. Gortash/PC has over three times as many fics as he does, Halsin/PC has 2.78 times as many fics as he does, and Astarion/PC has a whopping 20 times as many fics as he does. Even Raphael/PC has more fanfic! Even taking total pairings into account, Gortash still has more pairings than Wyll’s 1,770 total, while Halsin has almost twice as many.

A counterpoint that is commonly raised in this fandom is that Wyll is a boring character with less content than other Origin companions. Now, I disagree with this assessment of Wyll’s comparative boringness (I find him more interesting than Gale and much more interesting than Halsin, personally) but for the sake of this argument let’s not dispute this. The fact of the matter is that even if Wyll’s arc is half baked, Halsin has no arc at all and much less content in game. Gortash has even less content, with any potential past entanglement with Dark Urge being merely implied. Raphael doesn’t even have the implications of a past relationship with the PC, is never in a position to be in a relationship with the PC, and is canonically bad in bed to boot. And yet these men have far more fanfic with the PC than Wyll does.

I cannot help but notice that Astarion, Gale, Halsin, and Gortash are white men and Raphael presents himself as a white man.

What’s also notable is who doesn’t show up. Many minor non-player characters have quite sizable followings with a significant number of ships. Rolan, for instance, has 586 fics across 9 pairings. Zevlor has 393 ships, Dammon has 257, Kar’niss has 131, and Abdirak has 112. Other male characters that showed up on my list include Ansur (110, all with Balduran/the Emperor), Blurg (69, all with Omeluum), Vellioth (55, all with Cazador), Rugan (54), Kith’rak Voss (49), Sebastian (47, all with Astarion), Orpheus (40), Geraldus (29), Nere (22), He Who Was (21), Yurgir (18), Loroakkan (15, all with Rolan), Aradin (12), Danis (11 with Bex), Barcus (9 with the PC, not Wulbren), Petras (8 with Astarion), Guex and Ikaron (8 with each other), Franc Peartree (7 with Gortash), Lump the Enlightened (6), and Cal (6).

Meanwhile, if I eliminate Aylin and Isobel (not really “minor” NPCs), the first female minor NPC to show up in my list is Alfira with 58 fics. Nocturne follows with 57, Lakrissa with 34, Bex with 11 (all with Danis), Councillor Florrick with 8 (all with Minthara), Duke Stelmane with 8 (all with the Emperor), Kagha with 6, and Cerys with 6 (all with Rolan).

Councillor Florrick is notable because she has as much of a role in acts 1, 2, and 3 as Rolan, Zevlor, and Dammon yet she has no fics with the PC that showed up in my dataset; her only appearance is as part of a ship with Minthara. Ulder Ravenguard – a notable NPC from act 3 – never shows up at all, while Geraldus – a very minor NPC from act 3 – does. Rugan shows up but his boss Zarys never does. Neither does Roah Moonglow, who has a role in acts 1, 2, and 3 while Rugan only shows up in act 1. Araj Oblodra does not show up, but Sebastian does. Cal and Rolan show up in my dataset, but their sister Lia does not. Petras is the only vampire spawn to have over 5 of a pairing – Dalyria, who is present in all scenes where he is, does not. Alfira has the same presence in the story as Rolan (if anything, she has more), yet she shows up in less than a tenth as many fics. Vellioth, who never shows up at all, has 5 times as many fics as Viconia, who does.

The fandom has a definite trend for who gets written about, and it’s not women or Black people.

I’m not writing this to try and shame or guilt anyone. I have a dear friend who absolutely adores Astarion, and fandom acquaintances who I respect that are deeply invested in Gale, Halsin, and Gortash. And I don’t blame anyone for seeing a minor character and being intrigued enough by him to write fic. It makes sense that people are drawn to these characters – they’re really well written characters with engaging storylines. But all of the main characters in BG3 are well written, and who fandom chooses to focus on and prioritize says things about whose stories, whose lives, we pay attention to and care about.

I don’t expect this essay to change anything. Honestly, it’s mostly a primal scream of annoyance, broadcast to tumblr in hopes that other people who are annoyed by this phenomenon can find it. But it’s also a cold hard repudiation of any claim that the reason that women or Black people are underrepresented in fandom is solely due to the source material being lacking. BG3 proves that false.

[bucktommykinkweek]

This event will take place October 13-19, 2024. There will be three prompts every day. You can write one, combine two or all three, or interpret them however you like! There is no minimum or maximum word count for fics, and art, graphics, or any other creative work are more than welcome!

This event is for 18+ participants only. If your age is not in your bio, your post will not be reblogged or added to the ao3 collection.

PROMPTS | AO3 COLLECTION | FAQS

Please include your prompt(s) and the fic rating at the top of your post, as well as any content warnings as you see fit.

Submissions can include other characters, but bucktommy should be the primary pairing. 

We do expect that most fics will be rated M or E, but note that non-sexual kink is also fully allowed and encouraged! Please ensure that if your works include sexual content it is rated appropriately. 

Please tag @bucktommykinkweek and #bucktommykinkweek so we can see your post! All posts will be vetted before being reblogged or added to the AO3 collection. Vetted posts will be reblogged into the queue, and a mod will comment a "⛓️" when your post has been added. If a mod has not replied to your post within 2 days, please message @bucktommykinkweek or @aringofsalt!

If your work is posted on AO3, there will be a collection on ao3 that you can add to. The collection will be moderated and all fics that appear there will have been vetted by a mod.

Late submissions will be accepted!

Artists: please put any explicit acts or nudity under a cut. Due to the way tumblr handles nsfw art, if you are more comfortable posting the full art elsewhere and linking a preview, please do so!

Once the event is complete, all submissions will be added to masterlists for each day.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to reach out!

This is first and foremost an event meant to celebrate bucktommy. We are looking forward to seeing and celebrating everyone’s work!

Please do not use this event to kinkshame or be negative towards other people’s kinks and headcanons. We are sex- and kink-positive, and this event is all in good fun! While we are focused on bucktommy, we will not be supporting nor endorsing any bashing of other ships or characters.

No content endorsing the following will be allowed to participate:

Homophobia

Transphobia

Ace/arophobia

Racism

Harassment of any kind

You may depict these things in your works if they are warned for, but work that is intended to be bigoted or harmful to others will not be included.

This event is moderated by @aringofsalt, @beefcakekinard, @kinkleydiaz, and @theweewooshow

[bowtiepastabitch]

Here's the deal on the Good Omens limbo situation. My optimistic and analytic two cents, if you will.

If we look at this through a capitalistic lens, the chances of the show being cancelled are pretty slim at the moment. Think for a moment about the top three amazon prime originals that you pay/keep the platform for. Can you think of three? I honestly can't, not off the top of my head. I know I'm not really the target audience for streaming services, since I don't watch a lot of new shows, but still. I can name plenty of netflix shows I like/might watch. That's why Netflix can cancel anything and everything so easy. They don't have just one or two fandom cash cows.

Amazon, though, doesn't have a lot. Here's a list of all their original shows. I only even recognize 8 titles. I've only actually watched 2. Plus, Good Omens is currently one of the biggest fandoms in fandom right now, with Aziracrow being the top ship on ao3 for the Jan-Dec 2023 wrap up and again on the Summer 2024 leaderboard, as well as the top ship on tumblr and Good Omens as the top tv show (plus second overall after Artists on Tumblr) for 2023. We're a big deal, and I'd bet money that they're betting money on us. I also lowkey think we're the reason Amazon is spending money on a british miniseries starring Michael Sheen tbh but that's just speculation. The show has also won a slew of awards, the same of which cannot, to my knowledge, be said of many of their other properties.

So let's talk production changes; I think there's a good chance they're doing this for the same reason. Our fandom had unique access to the creator via tumblr, and a majority of the conversation around the allegations of SA against Gaiman were and are taking place in fandom spaces. There have been petitions to fire him from the show and conversations (both productive and otherwise) about the duties of fandom when engaging with content connected to problematic individuals. Meanwhile, Gaiman has effectively dissappeared from the internet. Additionally, the video and threads sharing that Terry Pratchett wrote most of the original book have been making the rounds here and I think on the bird app(?). All that to say, if they're betting on us they want to make us happy and keep their good PR. I don't ever expect a major corporation to make a "good" decision, but they will always make the profitable one.

There is, of course, also the matter of the Pratchett estate and the other major players in the matter: the actors, directors, and creative team. These are forces at play with the power to block or stall productivity and profit for Amazon through copyright and labor power. I can imagine there's conversations happening backstage that we don't know about as well as what we see in headlines.

Ultimately, I think the biggest risk to season 3 is unfortunately going to be Neil Gaiman himself and how he responds to the situation at hand. If he steps back quietly, we're living in our best case scenario and everything moves forward as much according to plan as can be expected with at least this small justice being served. I see a hissy fit on his end as the greatest potential wrench in proceedings, but that would exacerbate the (currently quiet in the mainstream) bad PR for him so I give it low odds.

All that to say. From a pragmatic viewpoint, Amazon's best interest seems to be entirely tied to ours as a fandom, and I anticipate Season 3 being made and most likely being only minorly delayed. Either way. What happens behind the scenes in corporate office buildings between rich white men is entirely out of my and your control. I know how huge anxiety can get when it relates to a special interest or a community that has a huge role in your life, and whatever happens we're in this together as a fandom. It's going to be alright. Take a deep breath and maybe get some water. Whatever happens, we're in this together as a fandom, and at least it won't be the end of the world;)

[fictionproblem]

THREE STAR FAMILY DANGLE KEYCHAINS ARE UP FOR PREORDER ‼️🫶🏼

Running June 6 - June 20, ending 10 pm EST. Grab em here!

They’re double sided and glittery!! The top charm is 3 inches while the bottom is 2.5!

Further shipping information and preorder specifics in the item’s listing!

Reblogs are very helpful and incredibly appreciated!!

[drinkwithme-exchange]

Drink With Me: A Les Misérables Platonic Gift Exchange 2024

Hello everyone!!

One year more and we are back for another round of celebrating platonic affection :)

What is the Drink with Me Platonic Exchange?

It's a fandom event to celebrate the platonic relationships in Les Misérables! In it, each person gives up to three platonic ships, and receives another person's ships to make some kind of content for. Let's get the wine of friendship flowing!

How do I participate?

@p-trichor, @juliensorelisoverparty and @aromantic-enjolras are the mods.

Just send any of us a DM with the following :

Your three prefered platonic ships

Whether you're more aligned with the Brick, musical, or both

Any users/characters/other you want to avoid.

And we'll assign you a person accordingly (and keep that information confidential).

After the inscription process is done, you'll be assigned one person, along with their top three ships, and you can choose which one to make content for. You're not obligated to make content for all of them, we just want you to have wiggle room!

I can't write/draw, can I still participate?

Of course! Fics, fanart, videos, moodboards, gifsets, edits, etc.... All content is welcome!

What is the timeline?

Beginning today, the registrations are open till 10th July 2024. Your user and ships will be assigned within the next couple of days.

All the content must be uploaded on the 18th of August. And remember, it's a surprise, so please keep it secret until then!

If you're posting a fic on ao3, be sure to add it to the collection: Drink With Me 2024

Remember to tag the person who you're gifting, as well as @drinkwithme-exchange, and tag #drinkwithme2024

We want to see it!!

Feel free to drop a question in our askbox, if you have any doubts.

Happy creating!

[olderthannetfic]

I thought it would be interesting to see if I could easily determine which ships had the most works updated in 2023.

It turned out to be fairly easy, though a little time consuming. I think these results should be reasonably accurate.

Some points to note:

I did this on my own account, and I have like 2 people muted. So I am capturing the effects of archive-locked works, but my numbers might be off by one or two works due to muting.

Works updated in 2023 is a number that constantly changes as works are deleted or updated again in 2024.

I didn't scrape the entire archive or anything like that, so it's possible I missed a ship that would bump one of these down below 100. I'd take the last few at the bottom there with a grain of salt. But I think we can be reasonably sure the top ones are accurate and that the kinds of numbers that we see at the bottom there (eighteen hundred plus works updated in 2023) are about where the cutoff will be even if we find a ship I missed.

--

As for how I did this, I went to the category tags and the rating tags, filtered for updating in 2023, then excluded ships in the sidebar till I got to 130-150 ships excluded. I also grabbed ships that are big in general from tag search, which you can use to find all relationship canonicals, ordered by frequency.

I combined those lists of ships, cleaned off the works numbers, and generated a list without duplicates. That got me three hundred and something (yes, they were mostly duplicates). I generated the relevant AO3 URLs, opened them in batches with Open Multiple URLs, and copied the works totals into a spreadsheet. Not as tidy as using a script but honestly pretty easy if you know a few spreadsheet formulas to clean up data.

The key here is that if you're only going for pretty good and not accurate beyond a shadow of a doubt, all you need to do is generate a list of likely ships, then check them.

It's possible that there's some much-updated ship that is so evenly spread across these various other tags that it just missed showing up in the sidebar. Hopefully, grabbing more than just the top 100 avoided this problem.

This method also doesn't take into account backdated works. If a whole archive was imported in 2023 but all backdated, there could be some ship that didn't have new works but where AO3 users experience in 2023 was of an influx of content.

I also did this just now, in late March/early April, so some 2023 works have inevitably been deleted or updated again. So the exact work counts don't represent the experience of using AO3 throughout 2023. A fandom active in early 2023 might not have much updating in early 2024, while a fandom active in late 2023 would. This could demote the latter a few places in the rankings since I didn't grab numbers on January 1st.

Even if a person scraped AO3 every day or was monkeying around in the databases, you also have to ask what conceptual answer you're after. Is it works a user could have read at some point during 2023, whether they were deleted by the year's end or not? Is it new-to-AO3 works or only newly-created ones, not including imported archives? Does it matter if the works are fic? If they're in English? What about accidental double-uploads or translations of a single work?

I hope this makes it clear why a definitive ranking is not actually possible.

However, despite these drawbacks, I am confident that the rankings above accurately represent the broad trends on AO3 in 2023. Just don't get too fixated on whether a ship should be at number 73 or number 74.

And, of course, I excluded these from the top 100:

Original Character(s)/Original Character(s) - 20,026

Minor or Background Relationship(s) - 16,187

No Romantic Relationship(s) - 8,052

Original Female Character(s)/Original Male Character(s) - 7,195

Original Male Character/Original Male Character - 6,283

Other Relationship Tags to Be Added - 5,618

Original Female Character(s)/Original Female Character(s) - 3,990

Original Character(s) & Original Character(s) - 3,210

Here's a spreadsheet if you want to see the actual numbers not as a shitty screencap. I left the next few below 100 for context.

[dangermousie]

I was thinking about what my favorite cdrama OTP is for 2024 and - rather surprisingly even to myself - it is Fan Xian x Lin Wan’er from Joy of Life 2.

Now, JOL2 is my favorite cdrama of 2024 so far and it will take a sizable miracle to dislodge it in the coming three months, so perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that my n1 OTP is what it is.

Except the thing is, JOL2 is not a romance centric drama at all. This is a year with some glorious romantic cdramas (The Legend of Shenli alone is what my dreams are made of.) JOL2, however, is not primarily or even secondarily a romance. In fact, Fan Xian does not even reunite with Wan’er eps and eps into this season.

So why?

I think it’s a twofold thing - one is when I love characters and narrative, their emotional entanglements, all of them - become more vivid and important. Fan Xian is in my Top 3 cdrama leads of all time (!!) so of course I am just generally more invested in his emotional life. But the other, bigger thing is that I just love what this ship does and has.

Wan’er is Fan Xian’s peace in the maelstrom, the person with whom that busy mind can rest. I keep thinking about that scene in her carriage where in the middle of plots and counterplots and countercounterplots you just see him stop and just relax. It makes me think of a quote from Busman’s Honeymoon which probably sums up my fave ship dynamic - it’s what Lord Peter says to Harriet: “you are my corner. I’ve come to hide.”

And I love how crucial she is to him. This is a man who can and has taken on royals and martial legends, who is able and willing to change the world. And yet he is trembling and utterly undone when he thinks he lost her love (in the aftermath of the truth about her brother coming out), he is stripped bare of defenses - or perhaps not because to be stripped of defenses would imply he ever had them against her and he never has. There is something so heady about how someone so self-sufficient needs her and how someone so competent is lost without her.

And then there is Wan’er. I have seen so much criticism of her - she is not a martial genius like Haitang Duo Duo, not a schemer like Eldest Princess, not a budding genius doctor like Ruo Ruo. But I think that is why I love her - because she does not have power (martial or political or genius) but what she has is steadiness and love and warmth. She also shares an understanding of loneliness with Fan Xian because for very different reasons they stood aside from life at a remove like looking through a thick window for a very long time. In the narrative they both escape that glass and join the world for good or ill - he is the reason for that freedom for her and she is a catalyst for his (though eventually there are many more reasons for him not to be removed - once you step out of the glass cage you can’t go back in, you acquire attachments.)

But also - she is just steady. In the world where people rarely say what they mean and mean what they say, where alliances shift and bonds are uncertain, she is one of the few people who puts him first and close to the only one who is always exactly what she is with him.

I think of that scene of her and Wuzhu. Where here is the one who killed her beloved brother and he’s weak enough that she can actually avenge him (that is the only opportunity and she knows it - Wuzhu is grandmaster level and she has no power) and yet - she does not on the off chance Fan Xian may need his help on the mission he’s on. She does not know if Fan Xian will need help. She does not know if Wuzhu would be able to get there to provide it. And yet the possibility of the possibility of protecting her husband is enough for her to forego her revenge in any meaningful fashion because much as she mourns her brother, much as she wants vengeance, she wants Fan Xian safe and protected more.

Fan Xian, for all his glib manner and fast talking, for all his devil may care attitude cares an awful lot about the people he sees as his. He has an enormous capacity for love (which I think is what ironically keeping him safe with the emperor; emperor knows he has so many levers he can pull to get Fan Xian back in line if he needs to.) And with Wan’er, Fan Xian has found someone who would care just as much for him back and I find it glorious.

I guess it turned into a shipper manifesto, huh.

[bekkathyst]

Custom Wire Wrapped Necklaces

These are the stones I have available for wire wraps, for those of you who are interested!

If you would like to claim one, please be sure to read this entire post!

So here’s the rundown. Below is a picture with each stone numbered, and below that is the name of each stone, along with the price.

The price includes the following: the stone wrapped in the metal of your choice (sterling silver, 14k gold fill, 14k rose gold fill), an 18″ chain finished with a handmade clasp, and it includes free shipping worldwide! 

You will choose the style they’d like it wrapped in. There are three example pics below. 

Payment is due when the stone is claimed and all the options are chosen (metal, style, etc). PLEASE NOTE - these will be completed by the end of MARCH 2024. There’s always a possibility that something comes up that causes a delay, but I do try to get them early. They take a long time to make, please make sure you’re okay with the wait before ordering. I put the utmost care into this and have extreme attention to detail, and when that combines with my busy schedule, it means that it can take a while. If you are buying one for a certain event or deadline please be sure to let me know when ordering, so I can let you know if it’s possible for it to be completed before then!

To claim: send me a message over the instant messenger with your email address, the country you’re in, the stone you’d like to claim, the metal you’d like it wrapped in, and the style you’d like it wrapped in. I’ll then send your invoice and get started on your pendant! :) 

*Note* These are some of my best, highest quality stones! I’ve been collecting (and hoarding, if I’m honest) hundreds of top-quality stones for 10 years to build this collection I can share with you. All the stones from Italy were sourced from a lapidarist who mined and hand-cut every single piece in the Italian Alps.

Here are all the stones:

Lapis Lazuli - $150

Silver Moonstone - $165

High-Grade Rainbow Moonstone - $160

High-Grade Rainbow Moonstone - $155

Silvery Green Labradorite - $150

Genuine Spectrolite from Finland - $165

Serpentine from Italy - $185

Eudialyte from Canada - $160

Pyrope Garnet with Ellenbergerite from Italy - $170

Violan from Italy - $150

Blue Lace Agate - $140

Azurite from Siberia - $165

Moss Agate - $140

Hematite Included Quartz - $150

Faceted Smoky Quartz - $150

Faceted High Grade Ametrine - $240

Faceted Rutilated Quartz - $155

Faceted Tourmalinated Quartz - $150

Faceted "Super 7" Included Amethyst - $165

Faceted Lavender Quartz - $160

Rare Star Rutile Quartz - $165

Ethiopian Welo Opal - $165

California Green Tourmaline - $170

Imperial Topaz - $145

Faceted Green Tourmaline - $150

Etched Heliodor from Ukraine - $215

Koroit Boulder Opal - $175

Koroit Boulder Opal - $140

Koroit Boulder Opal - $160

These are the styles you can choose from (I do very minimalist wrapping so the stone really shines through! And the wrapping is super sturdy!) 

Style #1 (prongs): 

Style #2 (symmetrical): 

Style #3 (asymmetrical):  

I will cross out each stone as they are claimed! 

Extra little note: I have some square wire if you prefer that to the round, just let me know!

Thanks, everyone :) 

[waywardsou2]

Kinktober 2024: Alpha/Beta/Omega

Based on this post

Ngl this is very self indulgent and I will not be apologising for it. The scene with Soap walking in...the way it was in my head was delicious

Characters / Ships | Simon "Ghost" Riley X John "Soap" Mactavish X Male Reader

Summary | Being a male Omega in America is the worst of worst luck. Your doctor had agreed to fake the form when you were diagnosed at 11. But forgetting to take your suppressants can lead to a disaster. Or maybe a night to remember

Word Count | 4.1k+

Tags: a/b/o dynamics, scenting, double penetration, cussing, mentions of rape, dub con (if you squint), face fucking, slick, knotting

The mission had gone south. So far south that you had passed fucking geese on their way to migrate for the winter.

Two missed marks, false Intel and on-top of that a fucking snow storm had rolled in out of no where forcing the three of you to haul up in the closest building that still had its roof and walls.

That was your only grace here. That and the fact that Ghost was a walking heater. Somehow still radiating enough warmth to keep both you and Soap warm even though there was nothing to keep the chill from the storm out of this abandoned house.

The house was suitable enough. Four walls, a roof and the glass still in the windows.

All and all it could be worse.

And then it was. It got fucking worse.

Feigning needing to pee you walk away to the bathroom and lock the door. Quickly stripping off your gear as you felt something coating the inside of your boxers.

Shit

Shit shit shit

For all of your life you had been on suppressants to hide the fact that you were an Omega. Most people assumed you were a Beta and that was fine with you. They had thought that since your secondary sex characteristics started to show. But a year later they developed full and one trip to the doctors made your life come tumbling down.

In American society Omega's weren't good for anything other than being cock whores and pup bearers.

Thank fuck the doctor was reliable and had offered to fake the tests and prescribe your monthly prescription of suppressants.

After that you finished school and fresh out of highschool you enlisted to the military. Having lived with suppressants all your life you never had the face the challenges of being an Omega. Never been smelt on the streets or attacked in your own home. Everyone believes you were a Beta. And thought it was looked down upon for a man like yourself to be a Beta rather than an alpha at least you weren't an Omega. Or at least everyone believed so.

Price was the only one who knew. Since he was in-charge of what could and couldn't be delivered to the barracks and he made sure to scoop up your bi weekly delivery of suppressants and hand them to you under the table like a cover drug dealing.

Which technically it was.

You were thankful for Price.

But of course today was the day when your suppressants would start wearing off and you needed to take another dose. And instead you were a whole ocean away from getting what you needed and with a snow storm to boot. Keeping you trapped inside this house with two Alpha's.

You were so fucked

In every sense of the word

Simon and Johnny had been closest to you in the barracks despite being your Sargent and Lieutenant. The only guys who could put up with your attitude like it was a full time job. You and Johnny were the only ones who laughed at Simon's joke and only you and Simon were privy to Johnny's idle flirting. To anyone on the outside you three might've looked like a poly couple. But you were mostly happy with just being friends.

Mostly.

You'd never told either of them but you definitely had the biggest crushes on them when you first joined the military. However you never mentioned it to them because they seemed so warped around each other's fingers you didn't want to get in their way.

But right now you didn't know what to do. You didn't think leaving this room was a good idea with your heat building after years of never reaching the surface thanks to the suppressants and the puddle of slick coating the inside of your boxers and legs.

You had nothing to stop your heat and no way to cool yourself down. You could feel a sweat slowly building under your skin and a warmth in your stomach and solar plexus that was growing despite the cold. And snow wouldn't help at all you would just get hypothermia.

Fuck

"Aye lad, is everythin' aight in there?" Soaps voice called from the main room they had "set up camp" in

"Y-Yeah" you called back. You looked around and through some cupboards before you found some spare toilet paper and tried to clear up the mess in your pants but the slick in your heat was still seeping down your legs.

Sighing and smacking yourself in the head for being such an idiot you pull up your pants and buckle them as tight as you can.

Yeah as if that'll help dumbass

You open the door and hope that the Alpha's can't smell you.

You join them back in what you thought used to be a living room and sit on the dusty couch. Keeping your legs firmly crossed.

But after a while even to your nose the sent in the air was growing heavier by the second and you were starting to feel dizzy. Your body was clammy with sweat soaking your undershirt and the heat in your stomach becoming almost unbearable.

It hurt but in a good way and you couldn't think about that. Instead you watched your friends. Ghost was scoping the surroundings, not that you believed he could actually see anything useful and Soap was counting their rations to try and see how long they could survive given a worst case scenario.

You fucking hated Russia. Fuck Russia and it's stupid weather and bad Intel and bad timing.

After an hour of silence it was clear that you couldn't hide your situation anymore though you desperately tried to ignore all the signs. You watched as Soap counted the rations, he paused momentarily and you heard him take a deep breath in. Freeze and then continue calculating.

You knew that he knew you were watching him. And you knew he could smell you. His Alpha nose being attuned to the scent of an Omega in heat. The primal side of him recognises the scent of a potential mate and pup bearer.

Ghost on the other hand had gone rigid. His head no longer moving to try and see anything from a new angle out the window. You couldn't see from here but you didn't been think his eyes were moving anymore either.

Eventually he turned around. Addressing you by your rank.

Fuck

He never did that unless you were around other people. Or in deep shit. Which was often

"Private...I think there might be somethin you need to tell us"

Soap paused again, this time he looked up. He was also very rigid.

"Do I really have to say it?" You ask stubbornly as you put your hands over your stomach to cover it.

"No. Ya don't"

You sighed heavily as another warmer wave of heat washed over you.

"How come ya never told us?" Soap asked

"Johnny do you really think I would let slip to anyone in the barracks that I was secretly an Omega? I would get kicked out of the military. Or worse raped"

"Aye, that's true" he began packing away the rations before standing up

"We have about 5 days worth of rations if we stretch it. Hopefully the storm won't last that long"

Ghost looked at Soap

"Are you changing the subject?" Ghost said flatly

Soap made a face somewhere between a coy smile and a grimace

Ghost rolled his eyes inside his mask.

"How long since your last heat. I wouldn't ask, you know that. But given the situation..."

He didn't finished his sentence. It had occurred to him now what deep shit you were in. Two Alpha's with an Omega who had a lifetimes worth of heat built up in his system all trapped in a confined space. This was bound to get nasty.

"Well, I've been on suppressants since I was categorised. The doctor faked my-"

Ghost cut you off "I didn't ask for your life story. I asked for a date"

Ghost was being harsher than he was with you usually. It put you off, but you could understand why. All of you could get in deep trouble for this. Not just between each other but with higher up in command too.

"Never. I've never had one"

Ghost ran a hand over his face and turned away. A muffled 'oh for fuck sake' coming from his direction.

Generally Omega's only had sex or mated during heat. And he knew for a fact you didn't make a habit of sleeping around. If at all. The Alpha inside him reared its head at that knowledge. You were an Omega, a virgin Omega. On your first heat within walking distance of him.

He swallowed hard.

"Well we need to figure out what to do because this-" he pointed to the tree of you "-isn't going to work"

"Why not?" Soap cut in "We aren't some dickheads wandering the street waiting for an Omega to slip up. He's our friend we aren't going to do that. We are literally trained for self control Simon"

Ghost sighed again, more frustrated than anything

"I know you'd like to believe that Johnny but when has that ever happened in history? That's not how this works"

Soap swallowed. He was always good natured when it came to those he cared about and he always liked to believe best. Just because he was one of the biggest gentlemen in the barracks doesn't mean he wasn't without the influence of his primal urges. Evolution deemed it that there wasn't any other way.

Ghost walked past you and grabbed Soap by the arm. Whisking him out of the room to talk to him privately.

In the mean time another wave of heat hit and you couldn't take it anymore. You had sat there listening to the two of them while you felt your pants get soaked and waves of heat rolled through your body. It was unbearable.

You stripped yourself of your gear and under armour. Hoping that was enough but another wave of heat hit and it still wasn't enough. You took off your shirt and your boots. Trying to give your body some room to cool down but nothing worked. You were like the core of a nuclear reactor.

You heard Soap and Ghost talking heatedly in the next room over and it was enough to make your inner Omega whine. The sound of two Alpha's so close but still out of reach.

You hated how clingy and whiney you felt. You'd never dealt with the full extent of a heat. Merely a suppressed one. Mood swings, high libido and a day of hot flushes. But nothing more. This was nothing like that. This was a full blown heat. Like the stuff you read about in the pamphlets your doctor had given you.

You took a deep sniff of the air like you were taking a drag of a blunt. Clinging to it as if I was hanging in the air like fog. The smell of two Alpha's who were very very horny. The scent of want and need permeating the air.

You unbuckled your belt. All inhibitions gone.

The faint scent of two alphas.Your Alpha's. Was enough to kick start your heat fully.

You strip off your pants to find that your boxers are completely soaked all the way through. Your slick dripping through to your jeans.

You scoop up some of the slick and smell it. The intrigue getting the better of you. That's when you hear a thunk from the next room. Part of you is terrified. But that part is oh so small compared to the feelings of arousal you have thinking about your two Alpha's.

Simon walks through the door first. Seeing your completely naked, legs open with your hand in your heat touching the slick that is seeping into the couch beneath you.

As sweat trickled over your body you watched a Simon pulled off his mask and seemed to stand frozen. Fighting himself in front of you.

"Tell me to go and I will. I'll shoot myself in the foot in the other room" he says it strained. The look in his eyes filled with fire.

Your Omega reaches out for Simon. To have him help you and relieve you of the pain in your stomach. To fill you up so good. You trust him, and you know he can't help it.

This isn't the way you would have gone about this but you didn't have a choice. To you he isn't taking advantage of you though you don't have the words to say that right now. You don't have the words to tell him how much you've wanted this.

So you call his name. The word slips from your mouth in a low whine.

And he's rushing to you. Stripping himself of his gear and off his clothing in the split second it takes him to get to you.

He's on you in moments pressing his lips to your mouth and pulling your body towards his half undressed one. With his free hand he is still trying to take off the rest of his clothes. You help him out by unbuckling his pants and he takes his hand off your body to strip them off.

He's back on you again and you can feel his own heat radiating off of him. Not his natural human heater heat. This is heat from Alpha arousal.

He grinds his hips into yours desperately and tugs at your legs pulling them apart. The two of you accidentally slip off the couch but you don't stop your frantic gripping and kissing of each other.

Simon pulls away from you to to bend you over in front of him. Your knees creaking on the floor boards as you use your hands to steady yourself not to go crashing face first into the ground. Simon crouched behind you to get a full view of your heat and groans as he takes in what he sees.

"Fuck you're a Prime"

What? You hadn't ever heard that terminology used in regards to Omega's

"What?" You gasp, need still lacing your voice as you try and push back again Simon's body.

Briefly he tries to explain "God. You're a Prime. It means you don't have two holes like most Omega's. Even most male omegas have two. But all your reproductive organs are connected to the one. God damn it.

He watched as your ass leaked with shiny slick and he didn't hesitate before he stuck his fingers inside of you. They slipped too easily past the ring of muscles with how much slick had already coated your insides.

You moan at the sudden intrusion but it is so welcome. Finally some fucking action

Simon pulls his fingers in and out, a dirty squelching sound coming from your hole. Simon pulls out his fingers now covered in slick and licks them clean before shoving them back in again. All four at once.

You cry out again at the larger intrusion but you can't help but press back further into Simon. God he could work with his hands. And from watching him clean his gun you could only imagine what he looked like knuckle deep inside of you.

He pulled his fingers out again roughly and sucked them off one by one. Lapping up the slick.

"God I can't wait to fuck you. Fill you up so good little Omega"

It was then that you realised a few things.

One, whatever version of Simon you knew as Lieutenant Ghost was gone. Replaced with this inhabited, almost feral Alpha with little self control

Two, you were such a whore for Simon's dirty talk.

You felt as he pressed his cock to your hole before you were overtaken with sharp pain. He grabbed a fist full of your hair and pulled you up. Your back resting against his chest as held you by the hips over his cock.

"How much" you asked breathlessly. Not being able to help how needy and horny you are for him

"Eight inches" he whispers before sliding the head of his cock inside of your ass.

You can't see it from here but you can only imagine what you look like. You moan at how much Simon is already stretching your hole and whimper at the sensation.

You beg, you beg for more and you whine and you call Simon's name.

He growls as he grips onto your hips tighter and pushes your tight hole over his cock. Sheathing it inside of your slicked heat.

You cry out again. His cock rubbing up against your insides. The tip kissing your prostate making you wriggle around for some friction.

Simon begins bucking his hips up into you. At the same time he pulls you up by the hips. His strong grip digging bruises into the flesh.

You whine at the friction and the lack of fulfilment as he pulls out only to moan again when he slides you back down and begins to pick up a comfortable rhythm. One that has your legs shaking as your toes curl by his thighs.

His thighs were huge sitting like this. Your whole body fits comfortably on his legs and the idea of his thighs pinning you down makes your squirm even more.

Through the squelching sound your combined moans you hear a muffled fuck come from the room Soap was still in. And soon in the same fashion Simon had burst through the door Johnny was following suit. Already abandoning his clothes. His belt buckle undone.

He couldn't help himself could he, the sound of your moans and Simon's dirty talk was enough to make his own cock harden and leak pre-come.

"Fuck it" he growled as he finally stripped himself entirely of his shirt and pants. He got down on his knees pressing his mouth to yours. Swallowing an on coming moan.

His tongue is instantly inside your mouth. The wet flesh invading your mouth, you welcome the feeling of his mouth on yours.

"God did kissing people always feel this good" he mumbled into your mouth.

"Just wait until you see what they are packing down stairs. This little Omega is a Prime" Simon says into your ear. Close enough so Johnny could hear it

"You have a little fantasy about Primes don't you Johnny" Simon teased

You felt Johnny's face warm up against your own and he pulls away momentarily. You see him blush.

"Si seriously?" but Simon simply chuckles.

You moan and take one of your hands off of Simons to hold onto Johnny as Simon rams into your prostate

But you aren't done. You aren't full enough yet. Desperately you look at Johnny

"Johnny fuck my face. I know you want to. Just- Jesus fuck~ Please" tears threaten to sting your eyes from the heighten emotions that were consuming you.

Johnny stops for a moment. An almost innocent look on his face before it dissolves and that same fire Simon had in his eyes, you could now see in Johnny's.

He stands up in front of you and strokes his cock a few times. You hold your mouth open, desperately, expectantly.

And Johnny puts his cock on your tongue before pushing it inside. You moan heavily and relax your jaw allowing him more room to push inside. He does and then pulls out again pushing back in and adding a few more inches.

You don't have ruler on your tongue but you guess Johnny has to be at least 6 inches.

He pushes in and out and begins to speed up to Simon's rapid pace.

The two of them ruin your holes and you moan around Johnny's cock. Sending shivers up his spine as you do so.

If you could you would be calling their names but you are too busy sucking off Johnny to do that.

God this is more than you ever wanted. Maybe not in this circumstance but in your dreams you had seen this moment. Hopped that maybe one day you would trust yourself enough to tell your best friends how you felt. And tell them about the biggest secret a person could possibly have.

And yeah it wasn't a romantic like you had daydreamed about. But this was probably the second best outcome. Being filled by your two Alpha friends.

The three of you felt your climaxes coming to a head and you moaned harder at the idea of being knotted by your alphas. Being knotted for the very first time.

Your ass clenched around Simon at the thought. Trying to hold him inside of you preemptively despite the slick.

Simon moaned in your ear and whispered "So needy. Ain't ya. Such a needy little male Omega"

Johnny threw his head back and you tried to look at him. You could feel in your mouth his knot starting to expand and you moved your hands to grip into his thighs as he continued to thrust.

As the knot built you could feel Simon attempt to pull out but you dug your nails into his thighs. He looked down at you and with the most minute movement you shook you head silently begging him not to pull out. That you could take it. You wanted to.

Knotting someone's mouth wasn't necessarily advisable but damn did you want it. So, you tugged Johnny forward as you felt Simon's rhythm become messy. He was close too.

Johnny popped first. Your begging eyes pulling his climax out of him as his knot swelled inside of your mouth as he tried to pull out and could past your jaw. He orgasmed, the cum hitting the back of your throat. You sucked, swallowing every drop wanting his cum inside of you so desperately.

Simon came next. His knot catching at your tight of muscles and you moaned feeling the size of it plug your ass as he filled you up with cum. Both of their knots release inside of you. Their size filling you up from both ends.

You came as well you dick spurting white cum over your stomach and legs in between you and Johnny

You moan as your eyes roll back in your head feeling Simon's cum coat the inside of your stomach. Or technically your womb.

After what felt like an eternity the two of them stopped cumming as their knots deflated. And gently the pulled out of you.

Your ass leaked with cum and slick and your mouth was bruised. Lips swelling slightly from how hard Johnny had been thrusting.

Since this was your first heat you assumed it would only last for 2 or 3 days. But that was still a long time especially if you were going to be snowed in.

Johnny walked away only to come back a few seconds later with that spare toilet paper you had found earlier and gently cleaned off your face and the rest of your body. Simon held you tightly not wanting to let go of you. The possessiveness still over taking him.

He butted his head into your back and you asked him what was wrong

"I wanna scent ya real bad"

Johnny hummed in agreement as he continued to clear you off to the best of his ability. Once he done a thorough job he chucked the ruined toilet paper in the tipped over bin.

Thinking it might be time to let your true intentions come out you place a hand on the one Simon was using to hold you against him and you extended one to Johnny.

"I'm sorry it happened like this. But I think my Omega finally gave out when my heat hit and the two of you were more of a catalyst than you realised. I've liked you guys for ages. I just assumed you two were an item, so I never said anythingz. I- I want you two to be my mates. If you'll have me "

Johnny took your hand and held it up to his face. A light vibration coming from him as he purred at the genuine affection.

"Are you fuckin' purin' Johnny"

"Piss off" he chuckled back

Johnny took your confession of love as the ascent to rub the scent gland on your wrist to the one on his neck. Gently kissing the tops of your fingers in the process.

Simon did the same. Taking your hand and holding it in his. Rubbing your scent glands together.

All in all. Maybe this wasn't so bad after all

Tbh I'm considering making this a part two. What do you guys think? I might make it a standalone fic on my AO3 as well

[mazerunnersecretsanta]

IT’S TIME FOR TMR SECRET SANTA 2024!!

Welcome, one and all, to TMR Secret Santa 2024!

Last year, our sixth!!! tmrss, was festive and fantastic, and we're looking forward to another year of yet more creative, new tmr content!🥳

You may be familiar with Secret Santas and how they work but, just in case, here is what will be happening:

Sign up for the Secret Santa by filling out our sign-up form. The information you give us in your sign-up form will be the deciding factor in the gift you’re going to create and the gift you’re going to receive, so please make sure you read and fill it in carefully! Please note this event is 16+. (You can specify three wishes, favourite characters and ships etc. - or any that you don’t want to be featured in your gift, or that you don’t want to include in the gift you make.)

You will then be matched with a giftee, for whom you will create your gift, according to their own Secret Santa wishes :))

Once you have finished making your gift, you will submit it to us via email or, if necessary, via a file sharing platform. More detailed information about submissions will be provided later :) It is very important that you submit your gifts by the 8th December. Christmas is a busy time for us all, and the tmrss elves need enough time to set everything up for the Grand Gift Reveal 🎁🥳

We will post all the gifts on this blog during the week running between Christmas Day (25th Dec) and New Year’s Eve (31st Dec), for your recipient (and for the fandom) to enjoy. Have fun perusing all the beautiful new content and, if you like, making your guesses, but please maintain secrecy, that’s part of the fun!🕵️

The big Secret Santa reveal will take place on 13th Jan, when we will post a list of all the Santas involved and tell you who created which gift.

After that, you’re free to post the gift you created anywhere else (your own tumblr etc.).

—————————————————————————

Now, we all love a good deadline, so here is the timeline for the Secret Santa:

5th September - Signups are now open!

19th September - Signups close

5th October - Secret Santa assignments sent out

8th December - Gifts due in

25th December - Gifts start being posted on our blog

13th January - the Big Secret Santa Reveal!

——————————————————————————

We’re so excited for our seventh(!) tmrss! We’d love to see our fandom come together for another year to spread joy during the festive period 🎄 🎁

So please sign up, share, reblog, tell your friends – however you can, and spread the word! Let’s show tmr some love!

If you want to be a part of the exchange, but are unsure whether you’ll be able to commit, then there are options to become either a Pinch Hitter (someone who makes a gift, possibly at short notice, if a santa drops out or is otherwise unable to complete their gift) or a Beta Reader - details about this can be found here.

If you would like to put your name forward as a Beta Reader this year - something that we always greatly appreciate - please indicate this on your sign-up form, or email us at mazerunnersecretsanta@ outlook.com

You can find more details, as well as the rules and guidelines, in the top bar on our main blog page, and make sure to follow us so you can keep up to date with all the latest news and announcements.

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions! 🧝‍♀️🎄

Enjoyyyyy!!!!

Dreams and Bridge 🎅🎁

[pwhl-mybeloved]

~giveaway time~

HELLO MY FRIENDS ILY

I made this blog in Jan 2024 at the beginning of the PWHL season because I wanted to chat and post about hockey and Tumblr has been my fandom spot historically. I haven’t had a Tumblr in years but I made a new account, joined the tag, and here we are!

I’ve been so thrilled to connect with people over women’s hockey, I’ve learnt a lot about the history of the sport (previous to the PWHL I only really tuned into the Winter Olympics, and would watch exclusively the women’s hockey and then hibernate for another 4 years), I’ve learnt about the rules, the conventions, and the players.

I love the community on here, the game live-blogging is so fun to follow along with!

All that to say, I wanted to do a giveaway to celebrate how much fun I’ve had here this season!

I work within the card collecting hobby, so that’s the theme of the giveaway. If you’re a card collector or are looking to get into the hobby, I’m hoping the prize will be fun for you!

SO WHAT’S THE PRIZE MARY STOP TEASING

One of my coveted Miss Piggy hockey cards from the Muppets on Ice set (published ~1995)

Three PWHL cards from the Tim Hortons Duos packs (two base and 1 insert). These will be random/based on what I have. If you have a fave player and I’ve got that card, we can make it happen!

Two unopened Tim Hortons Duos packs, which could contain either NHL or PWHL players or both.

Two One-Touch Magnetic Cases and a stack of top loaders, as well as a pack of penny sleeves, & some semi-rigid card savers. These are all for storage and preservation of your cards.

I’m gonna do some PWHL bracelets so you’ll get one or two of those!

Rules/How to Participate

1 Like = 1 Entry, 1 Reblog = 1 Entry. To keep it simple, extra reblogging does not equal extra entries.

You can get a bonus 3rd entry if, when you reblog, you add in the tags your favourite team, your favourite players, and your favourite moment from the 2024 season so far.

This giveaway is limited to Canada/USA because international shipping is expensive and I’m not rolling in dollars

I will be drawing the winner of the giveaway on June 1st 2024.

You don’t technically gotta follow me to enter, but it’d be cool if ya did 😉

Things to consider!

If you win, you will need to be comfortable sharing an address for me to ship your prize to.

Please be 18+, for the simple fact that I do not want to be asking a minor for their shipping address.

Please shoot me an ask if you have any questions, and thanks again for all the fun so far on here 🥰