#WHERE THE FUCK ARE ALL THE FANFICS OF HIS 90S CHARACTERIZATION

[sing-me-under]

I just spent like twenty minutes rambling about 80s-90s Booster Gold, and then I accidentally deleted the draft.

Anyway, to summarize, he’s such a fascinating and complex character who’s just constantly suffering. Please please please look into Booster Gold and his goddamn life support mech suit. He lost a whole arm and is constantly at the edge of the death. Even before, he’s just a ball of anxiousness and imposter syndrome buried in spades of Charisma.

Also, his characterization in Blue & Gold feels kind of flat, and I know it’s because it’s like sitcom and comedy and all that. I also know it’s a disservice to Ted Kord to kill him for the sake of Booster’s character development, but his death does renew my interest in Booster’s character. From the moment Booster embraces being the Greatest Hero You’ve Never Heard Of, he is my favorite.

[mias-back-from-the-dead]

so this was a line in a fanfic I recently read but it has me fuckign crawling up the walls and watching D&W in a new light

it's part of a larger oh/oh moment paragraph rant wade goes on but the line is:

"I would have happily gone on assuming that this Wolverine is canonically a fuck machine who only sleeps with women ever and that I could hit on him to my dick’s content and never have to worry about the possibility of real rejection"

and that last line COMPLETELY reframed half of wade's actions for me in the movie.

Cuz on the surface level there's the hee-hoo deadpool hits on every single hero joke of it all, which is probably all the writers were thinking about when those lines and directions went onto the script. They needed the throughline of wade being seriously still hung up on vanessa for plot reasons but didn't want to give up all the ridiculous flirt jokes.

From a hollywood writer's perspective, the solution is an easy 'Okay, he flirts with dudes ONLY, no prob, there's a Logan shaped comedic 'straight man' for him to do that at for 90+minutes'

But like. There's Implications to that as a Choice, when you characterize a dude that's so rejection avoidant and purpose-seeking that an avengers' dismissal kills all motivation for putting the suit on at all.

Pointing affections at literally any direction other than people who MIGHT take him seriously. Flirt on his favourite heroes, antiheroes, maybe even a TVA employee or two instead. It isn't that he's not ACTUALLY into Colossus's giant metal ass or Logan's oiled up tits, I'm sure they rev the engines like anything else, but I'm super willing to explore the idea that he's way more comfortable in throwing himself in directions where the rejections aren't 'real' to him. If the writers never thought about that implication, I'm going with concept that Wade doesn't even realize he's doing it at all unless he's in a fanfic universe with a decent oh/oh moment.

It makes me wonder what style of bluescreen he'd go through the second Logan yes-and's in a way that might be interpreted as flirting back. It makes me think of the countless number of dudes he's hit on in the comics despite most of his longer-term relationships being with women. Don't get me wrong, I KNOW the Doylist perspective is likely that most writers go down the straight relationships, gay jokes avenue but it's SO much more interesting to play it watsonian here. it's just a really good fanfic direction to lean down, this fucker is made up of exactly 50/50 emotional anguish about rejection and shitpost dick humour and I just wanna read more works where they feed into each other instead of being tackled separately

HHHHHHh I dUNNO IF I KEEP WRITING IM JUST GONNA GO IN CIRCLES JUST GO READ THE FIC ^

[jacksoldsideblog]

Ao3 narrator/tyler fics recommations 🙏

First place goes to Unwritten by @tylerstesticles . She has not written fight club fanfic that I know of but if she did it would be the best thing ever and I'm saying this because it's true. Literally I am not lying to you. And also because I hope she does one day because I am a little parasite who gluts on the art she gives me

Anyway the rest of this isn't ranked or anything, it's all good. It is also nowhere near an exhaustive list, there's a lot of good fight club fanfic and I can't just list 90% of the ao3 tag

Hate it here by UriPara - I'm kind of obsessed with fics where they're in the psych ward. I like that this one continues with him being in denial about it all. I like the part about him building things in his garage.

the sequel to the fist is the teeth by spocklee - I really like the dynamic here, the narrator not being able to handle Tyler being nice; must be a trap. a very evil trap. it has great voice

The First Taste by Bowelm0vement - the homoerotic cannibalism we deserve! many fantastic lines in here. I like the narrator's italicized screed and the bit right before he bites him. Such energy.

brain parasites by grace_the_demon - another post- fight club fic, this time focusing on living beyond it... interesting premise and I'm really enthralled by the idea presented at the end. I think it's very in character

Something to Sleep To by Jaden56 - psych ward, appropriately gross for them.

Placebo by spam_eml - explores that inbetween space where the narrator knows and doesn't want to

Valley of the Dogs by PaxVobis - very interesting because there's this sort of desperation to Tyler. and the narrator both knows he has the power here but also is still scared enough to fight with Tyler and stay up for 5 days straight

pretty much everything for (check the gifts page) and by PaintedVanilla. Some great long fics with interesting and solid characterization especially for those who like a real boy Tyler. frankly I assume most people have read those and the Recidivism series by snottys which is also very good

Clothes Make the Man by lemon_teacake - I like when they're sweet on each other but I also like when Tyler is absolutely dogshit to the narrator. For that reason, most things by lemon_teacake. I just really love a nasty dynamic lmao I love when these fucks are rancid

and also because I have no shame, my own fic lol

I could keep going but like I said, can't rec the entire tag haha

[ratcandy]

[in regards to the dialogue immersion post or whatever] ok but i'd love to listen to you ramble actually. i love when people pay attention to characterization in dialogue. like its the number one thing i pay attention to when im reading stuff. i wish people would take that in consideration more when writing fanfics especially because when its ignored it throws everything off. ye

Incredibly dangerous ask because honest to god when it comes to writing/reading this is the one thing I'm stupidly obnoxious about!!

Massive ramble below where I am being a little hater. No effort made to put this in any semblance of order I just starting going Off

Character voice is so so so important when making a believable character and yes especially in fanfic I feel this is largely ignored. I mean, I get it, people's interpretations on characters will vary, and in the cases of alternate universes you can make up whatever you want in how a character would or wouldn't act. BUT if you're trying to emulate canon in any way, getting a character's voice/mannerisms right is SO. SO crucial to that process.

What words do they use? How do they move when they talk? How does their tone shift? How do they react to certain situations? How would they react to other characters in those situations? Would they be the type to stammer or freeze up under stress? How do they insult others? DO they insult others? Is this guy gonna say "fuck" or is he gonna say "how unfortunate"?? Literally So SO SOOO Much that can be taken into consideration here and I don't know why more people DON'T. Like that's the FUN part!!! You're putting that beast into a situation, don't you want to know how that beast would act??

And in both fanfic and in original works keeping that characterization consistent is a whole other debacle. And beyond THAT, figuring out the right time to break that consistency for the purposes of showing character emotion or urgency.

Because yes, a character might speak eloquently and keep their cool 90% of the time, but in a high-pressure situation or when very vulnerable, that eloquence could totally falter. Or it might not! Maybe that character deals well under pressure or doesn't let their emotions get the better of them! But that's all stuff that needs to be understood before writing a character!!!!

Otherwise you can take a poised, calm character and suddenly have them explode with no rhyme or reason to that explosion and have it feel totally out of place. Especially if that change is never hinted at prior, brought back up, or happens again.

but back to fanfic Honestly this is a huge reason why I can be so picky with fanfiction that I read. I don't need it to adhere strictly to canon - if I want a word-by-word retelling of the plot I can just go back to the source material - but if the dialogue feels off I will get turned off so fast and back out in an Instant

Like if it's blatant character breaking (he would NOT fucking say that), that's one thing. But where I get obnoxious is in the case of. Well. He would say that, but not phrased that way. Not in that vocab

Ok bear with me here, but where I've been the worst about this has been Zote characterization. YES, SORRY, THE GUY, WHATEVER. But that may very well be because I spent 1 straight year studying his dialogue and trying my damnedest to replicate it to the point where now I can just Talk Like That when he chooses to repossess me. But my point is this asshole talks in such a particular, specific-ass way, and no one seems to understand that bUT ME!!!!!

For an example of my obnoxiousness I once saw a thing where they had Zote say something like "I'll kill you" and out loud I launched into an entire rant about how he would NOT say it like that. He just wouldn't. This Man Doesn't Say Kill. He is bombastic and dramatic and would never simplify a threat down to a measly 3 words and it would most CERTAINLY NOT. BE THE WORD KILL!!!! This man will CUT YOU DOWN. This man will HAVE YOU SLAIN. You will FALL TO LIFE-ENDER'S MIGHTY BLADE, and you will be GRATEFUL in the event he CHOOSES TO DEEM YOU WORTHY OF MERCY.

He would Not say I'll Kill You. No. Never. That is not his dialogue. That is not how he speaks. I, however, Will kill you/j

anyway what was I saying. Yes. Character voice is so important. Setting also matters of course, like that post was getting at (whenever I see modern slang inserted into a world that most certainly would not have it I crumple up into a little ball and die) but it's like. A setting's influence on a character's voice and mannerisms are inherently linked. Like. Obviously one of these will have to do with the other, that is inescapable

With my Zote example it would be very silly of me to have him in a modern setting talking the way he does unless he was doing it ironically. His manner of speaking is just a more dramatic, dialed-up version of the way bugs of Hallownest already speak. And that's just the Setting. If I were to transfer him to any form of modern au where characters talk like people talk now, I. Simply wouldn't actually because this is a big reason why I don't have fun with modern AUs SHDGKLJHSG, those kinda need you to alter how characters talk to make it believable and then I will just already be taken out of it from the get-go

Just like it'd feel really jarring to have Hallownest bugs talk in modern slang . it goes Both Ways

as for curse words which were touched on in that other post, I think that boils down to personal preference. In games like CoTL or even HK, obviously there's not a bunch of Fucks and Shits and Bitches because then the rating would need to be upped. And also it just really clashes with the world (personally) But in fanfic (or in original works of historical fiction), I feel like there's more fair leniency on that, because curse words such as Fuck have been around for a Very, Very Long Time. An argument could be made for the validity of using those words in that setting, if u want to.

But Me Personally. I do not like making characters from pre-established media where there is no fuck-word suddenly use the fuck-word. Or shit or bitch or anything like that. As a person who swears like a sailor every day. Like the extent you'll get out of me is Damn or Bastard. Because otherwise it Clashes. In Mine Brain.

Also like I said in the tags of my rb it is way more fun to come up with unique insults and expletives than to just fall back on Character A calling Character B a motherfucker . Personally. In My opinion. Though a well-placed and tonally appropriate Fuck You is very very awesome in some instances. Yea.

Ok that's it. I'm done. I wrote too much. I think I got out the majority of my thoughts. Though I am not going back over this and I wrote it all in one passionate sitting so if I worded anything poorly. Well. Kill me for it

[disappearinginq]

5, 7, 13, and 20 for fanfic asks?

5. Fic most proud of writing This is a toss up - because I am one of those people who likes their own stuff a lot. :-D But, one of the Big Three: Damnatio Memoriae from the Lucifer fandom, Running Up That Hill for Agenst of SHIELD, and Wrong Side of Heaven for Magnum 2018. Mostly for different reasons, but they all have the same vein of "I got mad at canon and I fixed it".

Lucifer was a roller coaster for me - I loved season 1, season 2 was okay, 3 made me want to throw something at the screen 90% of the time, season 4 WAS EPIC, and I gave up halfway through season 5 and never finished the series. Damnatio was written because I wanted much more involvement of the supernatural, not just a therapy/self discovery mixed in with crime of the week. Also, being raised adjacent to Catholicism, I was getting really irritated that they weren't even using the comic lore, and missing the basic fundamentals of the sources they were pulling from. This story had a lot of reader feedback, to the point of it being almost choose your own adventure. As it went on, I would ask readers to pick from two options that I had rolling around in my head, and it actually worked really well to keep the ball moving with my writing.

Running Up That Hill was again another one where I just got mad at canon, but because I don't like the narrative of "these people are exempt from moral standards while this person is Wrong No Matter What", and I probably would've let it slide except the issue I had was that the one that Wrong No Matter What had all of his life changing trauma as a child and then had it reinforced his entire adult life. Everyone else was an adult when Bad Things happened, and I don't like the hypocrisy of saying "get over it" to someone who legitimately doesn't have the toolset to do that.

Wrong Side I love because this actually was my first foray into something that had no supernatural elements to it whatsoever, and based firmly in reality, and a reality I knew pretty well. I wasn't a huge fan of how the TV show just glossed over the fact that these guys were POW's for a year and a half of a terrorist organization that tortures and kills people with such violence that they became a whole new subsect of terrorism. Like, no, these guys aren't just going to walk away without an issue. And the fact that they were sold out by someone who said to have loved them? AND THEY HAVE NO FALL OUT FROM THIS?! Get fucked, shitty narrative. Suicide in the veteran community is at a high not seen since post-WWII, and these fuckers have the audacity to suggest that you're just being a little bitch if you can't acclimate to civilian life.

7. Favorite ship to write Well, that's pretty easy - none. Romance is rarely done well, and I have never liked anyone enough to relate to the narrative of "Well, I'm throwing all of my friendships out the window because now I have a RomAnTic InTereSt" and it irritates me to no end. if anything, my favorite ship is between Captain Kirk and the Enterprise.

13. Latest fic written/last WIP? A fix it fic for Yellowstone that showcases the brothers Kayce and Jamie, and because I am on a western kick, research for a Magnificent Seven fic that will likely never see the light of day, but I still love the show and the characters, where Ezra (the gambler from Georgia) is a spy for the Union during the Civil War.

20. Hardest Character to write/get the characterization right for? The female characters written by men. And I realize that sounds really weird, but because I swear to god men don't understand being a woman, they're just shit at writing them, and they say/do the dumbest things because guys would do that shit, or, worse, the guys writing the character are using them as hyperboles for women they think did them wrong. And then because the writers don't understand them, I can't understand them, and they wind up being the people that in real life, I'd want to hit with my car. Beth Dutton is a great example of this - some of the things she says that I know are supposed to come off as "strong, powerful woman" make me physically recoil and hide my face with a pillow while watching because What the fuck nobody would ever say that and it's actually cringeworthy. Until women started getting involved in the writing process for Magnum and Lenkov was fired, I absolutely wanted to stab Higgins in 90% of her scenes. Post Lenkov - I actually found her really sweet sometimes, and actually relatable.

That being said, the other ones that I'm not good at because it is so far outside my sphere of comprehension are characters like Angie or Dani off of Will Trent and Prodigal Son. I love those characters, they are complex and unique and I love them, but I don't have relatable experience to them at all, and they are some of the hardest people I have tried to write (which is why I don't have fic in those fandoms even though I love them).

[areiphilos]

You’ve talked about the musical (correct and based opinion) but what about the tv show?

thank you!

if i had to rank the adaptations it would be:

the complete novel of the movie

the theatrical version of the movie

the musical/play

the tv show

the tv show is by far the worst version of the outsiders for several reasons chief among them being that it came out too late in the wrong decade. the movie had come out seven years before, had been a huge success — no matter how you feel about the theatrical version, please remember that it was a hit. it launched careers. the movie was made for $10m and made $33m — and made audience very happy. to have a tv show come out in 1990 was an act of desperation to get money out of an audience that had generally been fulfilled.

and it shows. the first episode or two, they at least have some care towards the time period and at least are trying to do something with the material. except, it's clearly bad from the getgo. the writing is strongest in that episode, yet it's still unbelievably lacking. there's a pretty good attempt to talk about the police brutality, the system that presses down on the disadvantage and even a call back to things that didn't make the movie like soda putting food coloring in mashed potatoes.

but there are really huge gaps in characterization here: darry is way too bigger and angry; soda clearly isn't nearly as empathetic as he was; it's extremely clear that scout was shoved in there to replace johnny in a heavy handed way; cherry is written terribly even with her minimally interesting traits scrubbed off and tim shepard essentially functions in that series as a replacement, knock off dallas. it's telegraphed from the moment that tim shepard shows up onscreen.

and the show just gets worse from there. the show is terribly written, the cast ranges from "actually a really great two bit" to "do any of you know what a human emotion is?" all the way, and by the time you reach episode three, it doesn't even bother pretending to be a period piece anymore. the little trappings that they have fall away; ponyboy's hair looks very 90s, there seems to be no passage of time that matters, the sets look cheaper.

it's like very, very bad fanfic in a very entirely different way than the musical is. the musical is a bad fanfic produced in early 2012 tumblr that somehow survived. the television show is just a really bad fanfic that was produced and made in a way that is generally thoughtless, careless, and cheaplesly trying to cash in on a much, much better piece of art. i think some people pick through the garbage to figure out what is good and what's not — there's achingly little. i think the only character that was remotely similar was two bit, as was his corresponding episode. beyond that, the show is just terrible; ponyboy is sexually assaulted by an older woman no less than twice and this is set up by darry and buck — soda literally has one episode where he didn't learn his lesson and knocked up another girl and then another episode where he attempts to pull off a hate crime — cherry forces ponyboy to do her fucking homework — randy is quoting mlk in scenes.

it's just horrible. i can see why se hinton refuses to approve another live action adaptation and i think she probably feels used that they put her name on it but did nothing with her thoughts or ideas.

it could've been... i'm not going to say good. it was still too late to make that. but it didn't have to be so bad that the only way you can see it now is on crusty youtube videos. so.

[melishade]

Yo! As a TF and AoT fan, I have been enjoying your fanfic. Hope you are doing well. In the meantime I can’t help but getting 2005 IDW’s, Earthspark’s, and Machinima‘s Combiner Wars’ vibes on your version of Megatron. Being a retired supervillain/sarcastic characterization is well written here on the ol Buckethead

I am 90% sure that I have talked about my writing for Post-War TFP Megatron in the past...Imma do it again anyway.

So Predacon's Rising...was a terrible way to end the TFP series. Season 3, despite it being half the amount of episodes as season 1 and 2 and having questionable writing choices due to the time crunch, wasn't a bad ending. It's just when you hear 'Predacon's Rising' you would think that Predaking is the next big bad trying to take over Cybertron. But you bring back Megatron, you bring back Unicron, you bring back dark energon, and then you do this!

Because if you read Transformers Exodus, Covenant of Primus, or whatever, Megatron knew what oppression was! He knew what violence was! But after a few hours, maybe a week at best under Unicron and you just decide to say fuck it and leave?! It's not helped by the fact that when Starscream tries to get Megatron back into his mojo, he just yells at him! Oh, and in the Covenant of Primus, Megatron makes an active threat to Starscream's life! You know, someone who's been on the receiving end of Megatron's bullshit half the time!

Where was I going with this

Okay, the point is that Megatron's statement in the movie is no indication that Megatron has become a better person. It's either A: he's a coward, or B: it's him unlearning everything that he's ever done. It feels like both can apply.

And just because of one bad day under Unicron, it's not going to lead to a complete turn around in his character and morality. He's lived in violence, and has done so over four million years. Not to mention the dude is extremely xenophobic (Yes, he still hates humans). And he's just so...selfish.

So applying that to Attack on Prime, I have to think about someone who does want to make amends, and ultimately wants to be better, but not knowing how to, and constantly reacting with violence and attitude because it's all he knows, and it's his safeguard. He's treated with fear, caution, and even anger as a result. Change doesn't happen overnight. It takes time and work, and the more time Megatron spends on the AOT world, the more time he acts as a human being, the more he comes to understand the good and the bad of humanity, what that means for himself, and how Megatron grows to ultimately become a better person.

[whentheynameyoujoy]

I might get shit for this, but I think a lot of the problem with the ASOIAF fandom and why I just very, very peripherally engage with it is because the conversations and discourse are being headed by largely chronically online 18-25 fangirls on twitter and tumblr (tho tumblr is a lot better imo) who seemingly got into the show/series in the past two to four years....and just have either incredibly surface level understandings of the work or haven't properly analyzed it and have instead headcanoned the fuck out of the series all while developing borderline unhealthy parasocial relationships with the characters. The kpop-stanification of every entertainment property is deeply exhausting. We can no longer have any reasoned, measured discussions with disagreements because everyone is so deeply sensitive about their ships and blorbos and everything becomes some stan war (a lot of this is from T*rg stans tbh and they've essentially ruined that house and the HOTD show for me as a result lmao).

I blame the fandom and Martin in equal measure at this point lol. There hasn't been a new book in 12 years, a lot of them are deeply bitter about the show ending so these stans have basically been living off of fanfic, headcanons, and metas. They don't like the series for what it is, they like it for the potential characterizations and storylines they have gaslit themselves into thinking Martin will 'totally 100 percent deliver' lol. I am 90 percent sure Martin has no intention of ever publishing another book in the series, so on top of these discussions being deeply stupid, its all moot anyway lol.

Sorry for getting to this so late, anyway

The majority of the fandom seems unwilling or unable to accept Martin at the level he's at and instead projects their own expectations and prior reading experiences onto him, which is especially strange when you realize that his work is less about adding to the standard fantasy genre and more about deconstructing precisely the fundamentals on which it rests.

Dany in particular is an excellent example of this. People know Martin's spiel about "Aragorn's tax policy" and how he used it to write Mereen but somehow still expect him not to extend that cheekiness into challenging the whole "the rightful, long-forgotten heir rises up from the shadows and solves everything through their wise despotry", even after reading Dany X where she herself explicitly gives up on the idea of amounting to much more than a conqueror.

And then on the other end of the spectrum you have people who hate Dany's guts and find her gleefully murdering children to be 100 % realistic because they believe Martin isn't indulging himself with the creepy shit he writes and instead paints some modern anti-colonial narrative to criticize our real world. He isn't; he's just sticking out his tongue at the writers who came before him and focuses on the feudal underpinnings of classic tropes.

Overall, as a reader I don't really mind Martin's outdatedness because him not paying attention to signalling how so much fucking aware he is about modern discourse results in a better, uniquer, more engaging text that does tend to hit the progressive mark much better and more often than the current crop of writers who seem terrified of their own audiences eating them alive and use the language of activist twitter threads instead of, y'know, stories.

[leporellian]

for the characters: leporello (of course) and figaro 👀 (bonus if you have different answers for mozart!figaro and rossini!figaro)

leporello:

favorite thing about them: frankly there is so much i could answer here that it would take from now til march to list them all. literally he’s the character ever

least favorite thing about them: not so much to do with him but ohhh my god why do so few current don g productions know how to characterize him. if i see another production where he’s the ~willing enabler who wishes he was the don~ i’m going to start a got damn riot

favorite line: again how do i pick a favorite but i do love that his first lines of recitative are Going TF After the don for, yknow, a horrible murderous rapist. (being loudly rhetorical enough that a director may hear) oh if ONLYYYY someone UNDERSTOODDD that hes meant to be MORE MORAL AND LIKABLE than the don and not a GLEEFUL SYCOPHANT...

brOTP: listen (grabs you) listen i wrote and codirected an entire fucking play about the leporello and elvira bond once. i will not shut up abt this

OTP: tbh nobody in the opera LOL but i did propose as a joke once that it would be funny if he got together with fiorello from the barber of seville bc, yknow, bass servants in 17th century spain with horrible bosses whose names end in -orello but then i realized it was a cute idea actually

nOTP: makes my blood boil that mfs ship him with the don like... the Amount this misses the point. like... does leporello love the don romantically? i think so. but he also loves the don like a friend, like a child, like a god and like someone he’s known all his life; the way that the rat infected with toxoplasmosis craves the cat and the way the moth craves the flame. it’s the feeling of knowing how horrible someone is, knowing you can do nothing to stop them, and yet clinging on because theyve told you there’s nobody else who would put up with you enough for you to believe it. to quote a line that’s stuck in my head for eons, if enough things happen to you, you can learn to love something for being familiar. but who cares people would rather have their fix it fanfic i guessss

headcanon: i like to think he loves to knit

unpopular opinion: he’s not a comic relief either. i am the world‘s dealer in unpopular leporello opinions so have that one also in addition

song i associate with them: moonlight on the river by mac demarco

favorite picture of them: this outfit? was a banger

figaro (it’s hard for me to think of mozart fig and rossini fig as separate entities but i’ll do my best):

favorite thing about them: i like how complex the man actually is. there’s so much there to work with psychologically like yes he’s the wily barber but he is also the wily barber who needs to see a therapist. besides that... he’s just a likable guy yaknow?

least favorite thing about them: again like w/ leporello its more a matter of how he’s portrayed. none of the psychological Meat is there in a lot of productions which makes him less interesting as a character. very sad

favorite line: “my face is lying but i assure you i’m not” absolute s tier line but also “i laugh at every event that happens so i’ll never think of crying” from the plays sounds edgy as hell but just. So captures his psyche. you see opera productions forget he is kind of miserable sometimes.

brOTP: i love how he and marcellina get along so well as soon as The Reveal happens; i imagine they’re incredibly similar in a lot of ways. also him and rosina ofc. you ever think abt how technically after the marriage of figaro they’re essentially stepsiblings? wtf is that about

OTP: susanna ofc who else. i also think the idea of the count secretly having an unreciprocated thing for him is fucking funny as hell regardless of which opera you imagine this happens during.

nOTP: i don’t even venture into what people think of marriage of figaro in a like, fanfiction sense bc literally 90% of the time it’s people being weird about a 13 year old. but i can’t imagine him and susanna with anyone besides each other

random headcanon: trans of gender bi of sexual adhd of brain etc. also i imagine he had to raise himself in the streets as a kid artful dodger-style, which partly explains why he’s like That.

unpopular opinion: why does everyone see this guy as being happy go lucky. the dude has severe trust issues and rejection sensitive dysphoria hidden under a guise of ”underachiever and proud” he has had no parents or family for most of his life he really doesn’t have any friends and when he is kind to someone (ie the count) they regularly turn on him he is afraid of being vulnerable to a paranoid degree and he only ever really trusts susanna. also in the plays he wanted to be a great playwright and help elevate the voices of the lower class but it went so poorly he was forced to take up being a barber and actually you can see this in the opera too bc the entirety of largo al factotum isn’t figaro trying to convince the audience how cool he is. he’s trying to convince himself that this is the life he wants. bro is straight up not having a good time!!

song i associate with them: family of me by ben folds (yes it’s from the over the hedge soundtrack ignore that it’s a jam)

favorite picture of them: will get back to you when i find one

[crusherthedoctor]

12 & 20.

12. What's your favourite quote from the MAIN Sonic series?

Everything the glorious Eggman says. Well, everything a glorious in-character Eggman says. *glares at Sonic X*

Outside of him, I'll admit I can appreciate Sonic's speech at the end of Black Knight, despite not caring for that game or even its story as a whole:

"Merlina, every world has its end. I know that's kinda sad, but... that's why we gotta live life to the fullest in the time we have."

And I have a similar appreciation for Tails' speech at the end of Battle, after Emerl F'd himself in the chat:

"Someday... If this world finally knows true peace... If this world no longer needs weapons or wars... If we can make this world a truly peaceful place when we're older... If we can make a world where there's only laughter... Do you think we'll be able to play with Emerl again?"

20. What are your ideas for a new Sonic game?

Well, I have this fanfic...

With a new 3D game...

- I'd like them to have another stab at Sonic's Adventure gameplay. Not literally SA3, just Sonic's gameplay. I know Sonic is about going fast, but I like to explore my surroundings, and doing so is one of my favourite things to do in SA1.

- Other characters can be playable and have their own differences and setups, as long as they don't deviate too hard ala fishing/mech shooting/Werehog/etc. So Tails' gameplay in SA1 on its own is fine (although his flying would probably require a bit of nerfing for obvious reasons), and I'd be okay with treasure hunting gameplay returning for Knuckles or Rouge as long as the radar isn't a piece of shit.

- I'd also prefer it if the other characters weren't required to unlock a Last Story, instead they each have their own individual 100% fulfillments like in S3&K and Mania. I feel that would be the best of both worlds, since we get our alternate characters, and those who just want to play as Sonic are allowed to do so without the game going "Fuck you, you're playing as Silver now."

- Story can be whatever it wants, and it can have as much of a sci-fi and/or mystical bend as much as it wants, as long as it's not too weird for this franchise and has a well executed tone and good characterizations for everyone involved. Eggman continuing to hold onto his Big Bad role as he's done in recent games would be the cherry on top.

- Also, make sure the story is actually new. Nods and callbacks are perfectly enjoyable, and even connecting its lore to a previous story is fine (as long as it's done organically rather than throwing everything in the kitchen sink), but don't just copy 90% of a previous plot and pretend it's new. Why am I mentioning this? No reason, Ian.

- I would keep the Modern designs, and the level of detail with the locations would be consistent with the Modern games, but the actual art direction and colours would be more reminiscent of games like CD, Mania and SA1. (I know SA1 is already a 3D game, but it had a particular dream-like atmosphere in some levels, like the At Dawn section of Speed Highway.)

- Soundtrack? Well there are certain artists who I wouldn't mind covering the whole thing (*coughTeeLopescough*), but I suppose a collaboration of the best artists in the series would be nice. After all, that kind of variety probably contributed to why SA1 still has one of my favourite soundtracks in a 3D game.

- If Big isn't playable, give him SA2-style cameos again. Seeing him pop up in unexpected places never stops being funny. In fact, how about we take it one step further by pulling a Sphinx in Mario Odyssey and deliberately make his placement gradually more unfitting over the course of the game.

- Sonic Man returns. Crowd goes wild.

[winterbirb]

but why do u feel the need to 'ship' real people at all idgi (and how does it help with understanding politics, genuinely asking)

I'm gonna assume this question is genuine and respond in kind. Basically this is gonna be a whole cringe essat because I can't be a Normal Person.

Why? Well, there are a lot of reasons, but most of them boil down to one thing: it's fun! It's fun.

People like it for different reasons (as with everything). Personally I enjoy the character dynamics and turning some of the most powerful people in the world into my fucked up little action figures to play pretend with. But some people are just... horny! That's just how it is.

Take a deep breath, I'm about to be kinda cringe, but personally my favorite thing to do is to take everything I know about world leaders and make a sort of Avengers-Fandom-2012 shtick, where all the characters have their own backstories and conflicts but they all have the same Hell Job so they become familiar over time.

Some people do it as a political... vent? Let's just say there's an explicit trump/putin/shrek fic out there. I haven't read it, I do not want to, I don't think I'd enjoy it, but some people use sex as a rhetorical device to express perceptions of the world.

How does it help understand politics better?

Like why it's fun, there are multiple reasons. And I do want to clarify that this doesn't necessarily make someone a better activist (although it can). Here are a few reasons:

1. It incentivizes learning about politicians' personal lives and motivations beyond headlines or talking points. This isn't some deep act of resistance, it just by nature makes people more informed... because they know more.

1a. It incentivizes seeing politicians as whole human beings. This makes politics easier to understand, full stop. Of course, one should be careful not to confuse ""fanon"" with actual observable patterns about how politicians act. Frankly, if you've done enough research to see through a bad characterization in a fanfic, you'll probably also be better at seeing through actual media bias. All skills are connected.

2. It often introduces people to less obscure politicians and untaught political circumstances. I'll use ruspol as an example. Everyone in the damn world knows who Vladimir Putin is. Less people know about Dmitry Medvedev and the tandemocracy. Less know about Dmitry Peskov. Even LESS know about Vladislav Surkov, and less know about Sergei Ivanov. Who knows about Anton Vaino? ....Well, I know some people in China know about all these obscure russian officials, because I've read their fanfic about them.

Anyone can write down anything they want, but if you want to write good fanfic, you should understand someone's backstory, yes? So you're interested in writing good fanfic about Vladimir Putin? Go read his backstory. Try to strip away the bias, if you can work past an unreliable narrator in fiction, you can do it now. Oh? You're confused about his job in the 90s? It'll probably help if you learn about what the 90s were like in Russia. Now you know something vitally important about international affairs and how Russia currently acts, something that not even high level news anchors seem bothered to learn about. And you didn't learn because anyone guilted you into it, but because you wanted to. You were curious.

Even if you're just writing a pwp, if you do any research to get little facts about the characters or political venue or institutions right, you're still learning about research skills and how to synthesize learned info into a narrative.

And personally, I've found that seeing things in a fandom context simply makes it SO much easier for me to learn things. It helps me separate the individual from the institution - so I've gotten much better at separating someone's personal motives from the inescapable trappings of the system they work for. Some people don't see this as useful. I do, because in my opinion? I don't care about whether someone is "going to heaven or hell". I care about isolating institutional problems so we can figure out institutional solutions.

...

Oh, also, researching politicians to hell and back makes it Very Obvious when somebody's just spitting out a bunch of buzzwords for clout. I consider myself a lot more independent of other people's political opinions now. But that has its downsides, re: *gestures vaguely at all of the discourse*

[unforth]

So I have no idea what The Untamed is, but I keep seeing it show up on my dash. So I kinda want to check it out. Can you tell me if there's actual queer representation in it? Or is it more of a destiel kind of situation right now? (Love your fanfic btw)

ALRIGHT ANON I hope you’re ready to listen to me go the fuck off cause I’m so gonna because I fucking love this show!

Right off the bat, to answer the “is it more of a destiel kind of situation” the answer is absolutely fucking not, nor will it ever be, because The Untamed is 50 episodes long and complete, so where it is now is where it will always be. And where it is now...okay, so The Untamed is based on a novel called Modao Zushi (variously translated but the most commonly accepted is “Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation”). MDZS exists in five different versions - the original novel (complete), an animation (in progress), a comic (in progress), a radio drama (...actually I have no idea if it’s done...) and The Untamed (the live action TV show). 

What it is...it’s originally a Chinese BL danmei (a novel, in this case published serially on a subscription website) by an author who writes under the pseudonym Mo Xiang Tong Xiu. It’s xianxia, which is a genre of Chinese fantasy inspired by Chinese mythology, religion, martial arts, and all kinds of other stuff...as a Westerner coming in with no experience, it’s been a LOT to learn the genre tropes and I’m still getting the hang of it, but you don’t need to know anything to appreciate the show - I didn’t, and nor did many of my friends, and we’ve all loved it. It has a wonderful ensemble cast (...okay, well, full disclosure, it has a wonderful male ensemble cast, the women in the novel leave something to be desired, they’re much better fleshed out in The Untamed but I could still wish for more in that regard...) with tons of side shipping potential...like, my favorite character isn’t even one of the two in the main ship, and I’d honestly be hard pressed to even name a top five because I love them all so much, and there’s a side ship I love almost as much as the main ship, and is also so close to canon as makes no difference, at least imo. The plot is pretty well fleshed out (or at least the points that are nonsensical are surprisingly easy to ignore...if you’ve seen Jupiter Ascending it had some of the same feel in that regard, like “parts of this writing are a trash fire but I’m enjoying the overall effect so much that I don’t even care any more”). The sets and the costumes are absolutely fucking gorgeous and if the CGI for some of the monsters made me want to weep it was so bad...well, I was a fan of Hercules the Legendary Journeys in the 90s so I’m prepared to forgive a lot to watch hot guys kick some ass, and speaking of the hot guys...

The main ship is composed of this guy, Wei Wuxian...

He is a quintessential disaster bi and I love him and would die for him. The novel is told primarily from his PoV and even The Untamed tends to focus more on his angle than others.

His other half is this guy, Lan Wangji...

(okay the glasses are NOT canon but how am I supposed to resist that line??). He is rule-following, law-abiding, and I totally didn’t get him at first and now I adore him.

This is full enemies to lovers in the best possible way.

From a Destiel PoV, I basically write Wei Wuxian the same way I write Dean, and I basically write Lan Wangji the same way I write Castiel, and people tell me pretty often that they love my characterizations so...the personality parallels, they are strong.

Their ship is most commonly called WangXian. Are they canon? In the novel, yes. They are canon. They are literally married. They have actual explicit sex that you can read in all its glorious detail (actually I shouldn’t talk it up that much I didn’t personally enjoy the canon sex all that much but that’s a totally different topic). They are the most canon of canon, no holds barred, mano-a-mano, god I wish they’d use lube, I can tell you who canonically tops and bottoms and what their main kinks are, and they are so in love and there are ridiculous declarations at the worst possible moments and there’s a wedding...it’s canon. 

Now, China has some pretty crazy censorship laws that include making it an arrestable, punishable offense to make the queer explicit in the TV show. Thus, there is no explicit moment where, in The Untamed, they say, “yes we are a couple and we are in love.” However, the following things are canon:

-they are soulmates (link to gif set by @ohsesuns - the source for these two gifs, I hope you can forgive me just embedding them but someone asked me for a guide and I think just linking might not get the point across/require too much expectation of people clicking through...)

-they have their own theme song...which is called the portmanteau of their ship name (link to gif set by @wangxiians, with two used for demonstration purposes...again, my apologies for embedding them like this, I’ll pull them if you’d prefer) And mind you, in this scene, Lan Wangji just sang their song out loud while a montage played of important moments in their relationship with each other it is the gayest most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.

-THIS IS LITERALLY HOW THEY LOOK AT EACH OTHER

-neither has a female love interest or any other romantic subplot or any kind of “fake out” and this is the way Lan Wangji looks every time Wei Wuxian is like, “you’re never gonna get a girlfriend with that attitude” (labeled as by someone named mabomanji on a website called tenor that I’ve never used before...)

-DID I MENTION THIS IS HOW THEY LOOK AT EACH OTHER

-oh and they have a son...sort of...close enough...okay it’s way more complicated than that but whatevs I don’t want to spoil all the fun...

-OH MY GOD I ALMOST FORGOT TO MENTION THE HANDFASTING? Lan Wangji constantly lets Wei Wuxian touch the “sacred headband that only family members and loved ones can touch” and at one point to protect Wei Wuxian he wraps it around each of their wrists (source for this screen cap is a set on twitter by krayziewes)

I’m sure at least three people will look at this and be like HOW DID YOU LEAVE OUT THIS OTHER THING and all three things they name will be DIFFERENT because the show is just that fucking gay.

So you ask me, is it like Destiel?

With Supernatural, with Destiel, the show writers, producers, everyone, strings us along, giving us just enough to think we’ve got a chance. The only risk they face in making it canon would be a drop in rating and alienation of some of the fanbase and yet they refuse to do it. I do not believe and have never believed that Destiel will be canon, and my reaction is constant disappointment, because seriously, what would it cost them to show it? Absolutely fucking nothing, especially now that it’s ending now, but they won’t. (okay, that’s just my opinion, I guess the last few episodes will show...but I at least have zero hope.)

With The Untamed...with Wangxian...literally everyone involved in The Untamed risked being disappeared by the Chinese government and actual imprisonment to make the show as gay as humanly possible without quiiiiiiiiiiite crossing the line into explicit queerness. Behind the scenes footage makes it clear that the entire cast and production crew have read the novel. The crew jokingly refers to Wei Wuxian as Lan Wangji’s wife (yeah, sorry, there’s some splashes of misogyny especially in the novel) and the looks on any of the actors’ faces when they’re interviewed and asked about (female) love interests are honestly fucking priceless...but no one can say it out loud, no one can make it explicit in the purest sense, because they risk their livelihoods, their families, their futures, their lives, if they say in reply to that interviewer, “um are you a fucking moron didn’t you realize there WAS a romance in the show and it was between two men?” But everyone with a half a brain knows. It’s not subtle. It’s not a secret. My straight cis male friend who is watching keeps screaming at me about how gay it is and he’s only on like episode 10.

Would I kill for a canon kiss or an actual traditional love declaration?

Yes, of course, I’d love that. 

But do I think WangXian isn’t canon in The Untamed just because it isn’t shown in those most simplistic terms?

Oh my god it is so canon WangXian are husbands and they are in love and they live for each other and it’s amazing and I adore theeeeeeeeeeeem. 

Wangxian. Are. Canon.

[checkdispleased]

re. ep. 21 on Lardo, what are your thoughts on the idea that Lardo's haircut/ art student vibe, is sort of trading on the visual cues/ imagery of queerness, to provide an illusion or semblance of queer rep, while not actually doing the work to write an actually queer character? You guys have touched on N using a sort of visual/generic shorthand in her characterization in other areas, but the mentioning the Ollie/Wicks thing got me thinking again about how few canonical queer characters are 1/2

2/2 are in the majority of the comic, for a comic supposedly all about queer rep. [it kinda reminds of that author of the wizard books and her word of god gay character after the fact, though i don't think N is doing it to nearly the same degree], but i can't help but see similarities in how cultural cues are used to a nod to representation that's not actually treated as canon by the text itself.

I just deleted a whole stupid Harry Potter essay and will instead say this: I was about to say we found out Dumbledore was gay 15 years before OMGCP even started, and then I remembered I’m an idiot who can’t do math. Still, not that I think JKR needs or deserves the very meager fairness I’m about to lend her right now, but, one difference between that series and this comic is, Harry Potter is not about queer experience, and it never claimed to be, and it wasn’t de rigueur for YA book series to feature any LGBT characters necessarily over the period when it was begin published. Check Please is supposedly about that exact topic! And it was created and presented in a space -- specifically the slash fandom subculture on Tumblr, in 2013, working on the vernacular of webcomics -- where the expectation of queer content was de rigueur. In addition to the fact that I got into the comic because I had heard Jack and Bitty got together, this is maybe why I diverge from @tomatowrites​‘ uncertainty that they would get together: this was being created from and presented in the space where that was exactly what would happen.

To be also fair to Ngozi, I guess the comic never really positioned itself as speaking to LGBT experiences other than Bitty’s. Still, he says he’s come to Samwell because of the breadth of its queer community? I think, through the lens of the comic alone, what he must have meant was that he wanted to be in a place where he could be openly gay to find a boyfriend, not that he wanted to like, have LGBT friends broadly speaking. One interesting thing about the Y4 Tweets, which I have only ever seen in the chirpbook, is that it is established that Bitty, uh, addresses one of the most pointed criticisms of Check Please:

“ducksducksducksducks,” I’m entirely sure based on other Tweets in here, is Lardo.

Hey, this is loooong.

This is SO confusing because it’s like, Lardo’s not a lesbian ... probably? She’s very into Shitty? They live together? Like sharing-a-bedroom live together? There is nothing in the physical comic, or anywhere else that I’m aware of, period, where it’s implied that she’s into women at all, beside the fact that she’s got short hair for a while? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think these were ever tweeted; I think they were written to go in the chirpbook. So it’s tough to know, in a Watsonian sense, what precisely Bitty is responding to, or if he’s responding at all. There’s no context for this. Like much of the comic, it’s just there, implying some things broadly while also addressing a major criticism of the text (that Bitty has no gay friends) without actually examining it within the text itself. Confusing!

I’m not sure what was originally intended in regard to Lardo. (Would love to hear Tomato weigh in on this, if she has time.) It could be as straightforward as, some people at art school look like this. It would be absurd to code a character as queer and then do nothing to establish them as queer in your queer webcomic, of course. Anyone who understands the potential gain of having people think Lardo is not cishet must also understand the potential cost of not just making it canon?

Part of the essay I started writing about Harry Potter up there was to say that, of course, fuck JKR, but also, I think people are making a very 2020-based criticism of the “Dumbledore is gay” reveal, which happened in 2007, concerning a book series that was written starting in the mid-1990s. Not that nobody was ever gay in mainstream media before Check Please, but I do think it’s possible that as popular as those books were, and as powerful as the author was, she may actually have felt she couldn’t put that in there? At the time, I felt like it was a cheap nod to an obviously huge slash fandom -- but now I actually kinda feel like, okay, maybe it was a cheap nod to her obviously huge slash fandom and also she genuinely didn’t think she could have it in there? The very conservative principle of universally legal gay marriage still felt, at the time, like a distant prospect. My goal in thinking this through isn’t to say it’s okay because it happened in ~the past~ when things were less socially just, but rather, to try to explore the thinking that must have gone on around these decisions.

Which leads me, finally, to the actual point of this post: conceiving of Lardo, and OMGCP, in 2013, Ngozi was coming from a slash fandom perspective that largely held these two beliefs:

It is unrealistic for a story to have more LGBT characters than the main pairing; 10 percent of people are gay so if a friend group has more than one or two gay people in it, that’s submitting to some kind of slash-brain internet logic that can’t hold; and

Just as it is homophobic to presume that gay people are or have to be any particular way, it is similarly problematic to presume someone is queer just because they look or act any particular way

The first one is really rooted in fanfics where an entire cast of characters who aren’t gay in canon are suddenly gay in fanfic; this is presumably not a problem for OMGCP because OMGCP is not actually a fanfic. But it is heavily influenced by fanfic; it functionally works as a fanfic ahout two characters named Jack and Bitty who just happen to have also originated within the fanfic. But the comic’s initial readership is going to be people whose interests cross with fandom, because Ngozi is a prominent fan artist so her audience is gonna be that! So you can kind of feel why maybe Bitty is the only gay in the cast until it turns out Jack magically (??) is also.

Which brings us to Lardo: she looks like someone you would think is into women? But I think she was potentially designed as an example of a character who seems gay but isn’t, because it is not okay to presume things about people based on how they look. This is pretty complicated because, well, yes, in general there’s a saying about not judging books by their covers because that level of superficiality perpetuates harmful biases. At the same time, people do judge just about everything by their appearances regardless of whether it’s superficial or not, and so most people know this and use their own appearances to construct their own identities, that is, try to tell people how they want to be read. It’s very 90s-2000s to assert that it’s wrong to make assumptions about whether someone is gay based on appearances, and you can understand why: normalizing gender non-conformity was and is an important project, but until recently the only way to do that was to do it from a position of insisting cishet people could be gender non-conforming. Of course, looking back, this feels like an insane supposition because of course there is a gay aesthetic, or gay aesthetics? Of course queer people have always looked and acted certain ways to try to subtly identify for the purpose of finding fellow travelers?

If I recall correctly, this came up in fanfics a lot, where you’d have one character who is the straightest man making jokes about how much he loved to suck dick, or whatever. And maybe, maybe, some of this lingers in Lardo. I’m thinking mostly of how Kenny was used in South Park fics, but also, come to think of it, Butters, who doesn’t so much crack jokes but he does seem pretty gay, if you take soft-spoken weak-willed effete boys to be gay, which, of course you do. We all do, sometimes. (There’s also an episode about him cross-dressing.)

But what’s even more striking is that there’s already a character who embodies this particular trope in Check, Please: Shitty. He’s theatrical (flamboyant?), he’s writing his senior thesis on the homoeroticism of hockey, and in a very brief (very badly written) ficlet from the back of Huddle Vol. 1, he checks out Jack’s body in the lockeroom and tells Jack he’s a “Greek god.” When Jack says, “That’s so gay,” Shitty responds with, “Welcome to fucking Samwell. Sometimes dudes will tell you you’re hot without even saying ‘no homo’ afterwards.” So we’ve got Jack, who is gay, telling Shitty it’s gay to admire another man’s body as he reddens and is visibly uncomfortable, while Shitty, who is straight, acts like it is somehow normal for all men to be attracted to other men without it being much of an issue for him personally or society broadly. This is not to say that you can’t find these attitudes reflected in the real world; Jack, who’s closeted, obviously has reasons to posture like this, or be uncomfortable with another man complimenting his appearance. But paired with Shitty’s comments the comic is engineering a reversal that claims it’s not inherently gay when a man is attracted to the body of another man -- except, it is? It’s a fiction that serves a kind of post-post-modern post-queer theory pop cultural attitude that I think, in 2020, we’ve moved on from. Underneath Shitty’s posturing is the sad truth that it’s a straight man, particularly a man like Shitty, whose comments on other men’s bodies would be tolerated; it’s unlikely that this is something Bitty (or Jack) would feel it was socially acceptable for him to say. Shitty’s working here as a type.

An I think it’s not a coincidence that he’s paired with Lardo within this story? She is similarly gender-transgressing; beyond having short hair she is characterized as a “bro” (an inherently male-coded performance) and crushes at beer pong and belches on her opponents. Not in the comic, obviously, but we’re told she does -- maybe kind of like Shitty only finds Jack hot off-page? (When he’s not lounging naked in Jack’s bed--again, something that Jack is uncomfortable with, but if a gay man did this, it would certainly be a problem.) I think these are all jokes that are very of their time for fannish texts in the period leading up to when this comic was started.

Again, nothing is impeding Ngozi from putting a female-identifying character who’s attracted to women into her markedly LGBT webcomic in 2014. I think it’s more than likely that if Lardo were meant to be queer, it’d be in there, somewhere. Or, rather, I think if it were an intended reading from start, it would have been in there. Or it would have been in a Tweet. In an extra. In an FAQ. On the Patreon blog. Mentioned in a Livestream. Somewhere? But where we get one incredibly disconnected hint that she might be, it’s in a Kickstarter-backed volume of post-canon content in a way that ties into the actual story or Lardo’s nonexistent interior life not at all. It’s not a story about her--but that’s the point? It’s not a story about her. If it were meant to be a story about a friend group, how would this particular detail not be enriching? When Lardo notices Bitty fretting over Jack’s game in the library, doesn’t the moment have more weight if she can empathize with even slightly more incision?

And like, you can say a lot of things about JKR, and the politics of gender and sexuality within her books was always bad, so this isn’t giving her, like, credit. But you can totally see how using cultural cues might have been all she felt she was able to do in the 1990s and early 2000s, yes, even as one of the most powerful authors working at the time. This doesn’t mean she shouldn’t have done more, or that her bad views are actually understandable, see. (I mean, they’re perfectly understandable, also abhorrent.) 

Ngozi is making a fucking gay webcomic for a gay readership on Tumblr in 2013-2020. She had no reason to use cultural cues to hint broadly unless she wanted credit for something she felt she couldn’t represent (which makes no sense, see previous sentence; entire essay) or Lardo was never intended to be anything other than a cis straight woman -- which is a fine thing to be, by the way, nothing against cis straight women? It’s just that like, this comic got a lot of flack from an internal crowd of complainers, myself included, about the things it didn’t do -- and one big thing it neglected to do was introduce meaningful relationships with other LGBT characters for Bitty. So I think that Chirpbook shit is just a late-in-the-day retcon for virtually nobody.

But this is a conspiracy theory so like, take it with a grain of salt.

[friendofhayley]

ship history meme

Embrace your past and get to know your friends’ fandom origins!

Rules: Post gifs of your fandoms / ships starting with your most current hyperfixation and work backwards. (Bonus points if you share any stories about how or when you got into that ship! But not necessary!!) Then tag anyone whose fandom history you’d like to learn about!

Tagged by the most gorgeous, smartest, sweetest, and kindest person in my life @sightetsound​ <3 Sorry y’all, I have a lot of hyperfixations and I’m on NyQuil!

1. Katsuki Bakugo and Eijiro Kirishima, My Hero Academia - I literally can’t watch Season 4 until it’s finished because my heart will Explode if I’m left on a cliffhanger involving these too!!! (Unbreakable T.T <3) I don’t usually like animes but I fell in love with his trash bastard and his soft rock boyfriend by the villain’s attack in S1. It all started when I got a TikTok because a Very Hot Bakugo cosplayer was on there. (Literally, their rendition of Bakugo is just, umph. They have appeared in my dream.). As she got more popular he started cosplaying more of Class 1-A of MHA, and I kept wondering?? What the fuck is this anime about?? Why is there an alien girl?? I soon gave in and watched the show to gain context to this thirst trap. I have so many feels for these boys, even though I don’t post on them much here, and T.T

2. Alec Lightwood and Magnus Bane, Shadowhunters - I literally almost wrote my thesis because of this ship. I got into Shadowhunters because I was depressed in a foreign, racist country where I couldn’t go outside alone because old white men would corner me on the street, and everyone was talking about how Mike from Glee was kissing a guy at a wedding? Instead of partying during my study abroad trip, I gobbled down Malec content. And like who wouldn’t?? Harry Shum Jr. was playing a bisexual warlock?? And he had lines and a main character role??? An interracial couple where the characters are both POC?? Sign me up! But then I quickly fell in love with awkward gayby Alec and immediately knew how it felt to be in his shoes. (Disclaimer: I still haven’t finished the show because I don’t want their story to end, but just seeing their wedding scene????? Tears!!!!!!!!!! Both wedding scenes! I-) I just love how soft they look at each as they realize how lucky they are to be able to fall in love against the odds. T.T They deserve the world and all the warlock and shadowhunter babies and T.T This is just going to devolve into me crying so-

3. Stiles Stilinski and Derek Hale, Teen Wolf - I got into Teen Wolf to escape the hellfire that had become the Glee fandom around S3-S4. (Tbh it might have been Dereklei’s constant Sterek content on my dash that led me to give in.) Stiles was bi (through subtext) and definitely turned on by an older werewolf. What more could a depressed Gleek ask for? And listen - now looking back, Sterek is definitely gay Twilight - if Bella was snarkier, had a mental illness, and also a personality. Sterek was the ship to get me back into writing fanfiction and where I could read paranormal characters working through PTSD, ADHD, and other mental illnesses while fighting monsters and having unrealistic sex! I also love those future fics where Beacon Hills isn’t a Hellmouth anymore, and everyone’s alive and just living as one big found family. Truly, Derek deserves the world and I love him so much, and Stiles definitely agrees.

4. Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles, One Direction - If it’s a surprise that I’m a dark larrie, please read my bio. HL made me believe that love is real and exists and can last for years. I got into One Direction in 2011 through a Lilo fanfic, but as soon as I watched the Video Diaries,,,we knew. Louis has saved my life in ways I can’t describe and the songs that they’ve written for each other through their tough times are so inspiring to listen and dance to. Seeing how they’ve been dragged apart by management, Sony Entertainment, and the whole music industry as a whole even though they exist in glass closets is very disheartening to see. But their resilience that they show through their art (Only the Brave, Sweet Creature, If I Could Fly, and like so many others) is always there. If you want to fall in this rabbit hole, look at freddieismyqueen on YT and come inside lol. Larry is real.

5. Kurt Hummel and Blaine Anderson, Glee - the ship that got me on Tumblr! I didn’t start watching Glee until the summer before S2 came out. My whole choir was into it and I didn’t want to be “mainstream”, but Kurt was the first openly gay teen character that I saw on TV. When I heard a character played by Darren Criss, a musical theater YT legend from AVPM, I had to watch it. I ended up binging the first season with those Netflix DVDs during summer break (yeah remember when Netflix wasn’t streaming? lol). I watched every episode of that god-forsaken show the night of (or night after illegally, hidden from my parents) for that ship, and then me and my best friend would rant about it for the whole week: rinse and repeat. The episode they got together made me scream and I definitely put those Glee Rewind songs in my iPhone. (Fun fact: I used to cry at night because I wished someone like Kurt could love me like that because I heavily related to Blaine and his whole situation). I naturally stopped watching Glee the moment they broke them up and I’m still mad at their hasty attempt to marry them out of nowhere with no well-written getting together / make-up arc other than Jigsaw?? and a barn wedding?? As if Hummel would. What a trash fire. But dang, Glee fanfics have some of the dirtiest, kinkiest, forbidden fics out there. If you were ever on Glee_Kink_Meme on LJ, you know.

6. Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter - the ship that started it all, the big kahuna, the ultimate enemies to lovers for 90s kids. Drarry got me into the fandom world in middle school, where I basically lived on FFN and LJ while pretending to do my homework. I used to get ready every day by watching the same playlist of “The best Harry Potter videos on Youtube!” (curated by Ariel333Lindt, who was the only queer person I knew but lived in Eastern Europe, where I could see two gay people kiss and fall in love in the safety of my room through badly photoshopped videos. Please check out that playlist). I just love how each fic is a microcosm where they have to construct how magical systems work, the backstories of pureblood families, creatures, or just wizarding culture for the end goal of having Drarry fuck and fall in love! I love redemption arcs that take 200k to achieve, I love dark!Harry takes, and every single different damn take on Narcissa, Pansy, and Millicent - because deep down that’s the writer trying to come to turns on whether or not Draco should be redeemed to get together with Harry. (I mean we all know they’re obsessed with each other, book 6 anyone?) I feel like Drarry fics have the best worldbuilding and characterizations of these characters, and I just love those moments when Draco and Harry take a moment to take a breath together and realize how far they’ve come. No one else can understand how it felt to be the pariah or the chosen one, they both interacted with Voldemort the most, and they have the most history together. They should have gotten together! But I mean the author’s dead, am I right?

So that was a lot! Those are all the ships that impacted me that I still participate with. They have shaped me for better or worse, and have made me learn more about who I am and what I want (or don’t want) in a relationship. This was the most fun essay I’ve ever written on NyQuil!

I’m tagging @homosociallyyours​ because I really want to know your fandom story! Also @stozierbrak​ because I love you and must hear you gush about your boys. I’m also tagging @iamaqualady​ because you’re literally the most intriguing person I know and I’m glad we’re friends even though we haven’t interacted that much? ish? 

[allofthefeelings]

Hi. I forgot that sad endings exist, and now, I'm scared stupid after your last BW movie post. She's dead already! I want something close to happy! (Oh god, I hope the fanfics come through 😭😭😭)

(Before I begin, I would also like you to know that, while this is over 4000 words long, I did cut a several-paragraphs-long digression comparing the BW movie to Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas. You’re welcome.)

I know I’m once again outing myself as an optimist here, and I’m sure I’ll also end up getting smug asks in four months when much of my speculation is wrong, but what the hell. If I was on this tumblr to be right I would have made a LOT of different decisions.

So.

I really, truly don’t think we’re going to get a sad ending.

But the question is, how does it achieve a not-sad ending? Or, to completely re-frame and re-structure: for a character like Natasha, what exactly is a happy ending?

Buckle in, because this gets long.

I think we can all agree that, by definition, we’re starting the movie from a point of melancholy at best, just because we know that in 2023 Natasha will be dead. She doesn’t get to ride into the sunset in any way, shape, or form. Every other solo movie- even the ones with tragic endings, like Thor Ragnarok’s destruction of Asgard and a large portion of its people- have given characters a path forward and the odds that even if this won’t give them a happy ending, it gives them a way towards one. It ends with hope. There isn’t room for that here, for obvious reasons. But what there is room for- and this is, ironically, achievable because of one of the major flaws of IW- is the idea that she did achieve growth, and then had six years to live the life she wanted.

Or, not the life she WANTED, which probably would not have been one part on the run/five parts half of society obliterated by Thanos. Let’s say she had the chance to live a terrible life self-actualized.

IW’s complete and utter lack of meaningful characterization for 90% of the cast means that we don’t really have a sense of where Natasha was in that movie. That gives a lot of room to play with, to put Natasha at the end of the BW movie in a place that she wants to be in. In other words, they can retroactively argue that the reason Natasha isn’t given room to grow in IW is that she had achieved her growth in between CW and IW.

Which, look. Doylistically this is beyond bullshit. Doylistically this is actually offensive, and if they’re looking to retroactively placate us about how Natasha’s arc went, it really doesn’t work. I’m not talking about what was intended, or what was achieved; I don’t think this is either of those. I’m talking about what we can choose to read into it.

And, frankly, as a Natasha fan, that’s pretty much all we do anyway. I can argue (and clearly have argued) her arc for ages, but that’s all the work I’ve done, and you (collective, Natasha fans) have done- not the work the text has done.

None of this is remotely answering the question. But I think it’s necessary groundwork to begin to answer the question.

Because what the BW movie can give us is that growth arc that takes place in the negative spaces of canon.

Well, first of all, the BW movie gives us the fact that things happen at all in the negative spaces of canon. I know I’ve discussed this already, but it’s worth mentioning again: the way audiences are supposed to read texts is that everything pertinent happens on screen. Even supplemental texts that are considered canonical (cut scenes, novelizations, official tie-in comics, movie scripts) are deemed inherently less valuable because they aren’t on the screen. This movie affirms that important events are happening off-screen, to everyone- or at least everyone who isn’t front and center.

This is, again, infuriating, and I feel like when I say this I’m inadveretently contributing to justification. That is not my intention. Natasha’s growth should have been on screen and should have been seen as important. I hate that it’s reduced to a single movie after ten years and the character’s death. I don’t think this justifies it. AT THE SAME TIME, I think this opens space for us to look at lots of characters who haven’t gotten the screen time they deserved.

(Like, they may never give Rhodey the movie he deserves, but at least no one can tell us that if he did something worth seeing it would have been on screen. This movie’s existence is a rebuttal of that. This is a digression but one I’m gonna keep making until everyone starts casually referring to awesome shit Rhodey did off-screen because WHY THE FUCK NOT, YOU CAN’T PROVE IT DIDN’T HAPPEN, “IT DIDN’T HAPPEN ON SCREEN” IS NO LONGER PROOF OF ANYTHING EXCEPT THEY HAVEN’T DONE THE SET-IN-THE-PAST MOVIE YET. Y E T.)

But we also get the possibility of growth, and to analyze what growth means for Natasha’s character.

So here is an issue: I can tell you, with a frankly absurd amount of confidence, what I read Natasha’s arc as. I can lay it out from film to film, I can point to key growth moments, I can read a lot into every scrap that made it into the final cut and I can tell you exactly why, and I feel like if you dig into my history you’re going to find a lot of me citing specific scenes to make my point so I’m not going to go too in-depth on an already-long post that is getting exponentially longer. I think that Natasha’s key arc is in figuring out who she is and what she needs, and how to be a person rather than a reflection of what is asked of her. I think that the mirror imagery in the trailer and in the SDCC/D23 BW footage lends credence to this being a key theme of the movie.

But I have absolutely no idea if I’m right, because the MCU has never considered Natasha to be important enough to be the focus, and as a result I read her arc mostly through the ways she mirrors other characters’ stories, usually to show their strengths by comparison. I do my best to make arguments that are textually supported, but at the same time, it’s like describing the sun entirely from the way that its light reflects off the moon.

So I can say that for the BW movie to be satisfying, it needs to offer completion to her arc, which is then capped in IW/Endgame but would have reached its climax in the BW movie. But since I cannot confidently tell you what her arc has been so far, I can’t figure out exactly how that arc could be satisfactorily completed. Which means, after SEEING the movie, I will have to retroactively figure out how they saw her arc, and then figure out if this was a satisfactory way to end it.

But an argument done in hindsight is colored by what I’ve already seen, and that’s a cheat. So let’s start over.

Here is what we know:

Natasha was taken from her family very young (Endgame: didn’t know her father’s name). As a child, she was abused and manipulated by the Red Room (Agent Carter; Age of Ultron). She was trained to be a Black Widow, did terrible shit for them for a while, defected, became a mercenary, did terrible shit for the highest bidder (Avengers). Clint was sent to kill her but made a different call and brought her in to SHIELD (Avengers). Natasha quickly rose in the ranks and became one half of a STRIKE team watched over by Fury’s right-hand man, Coulson (Avengers). Natasha also became very close with Nick Fury, the head of SHIELD (IM2, Cap2). At some point in there she was shot by the Winter Soldier (Cap2). She was one of the people behind putting together the Avengers Initiative, identifying Tony Stark as not qualified (IM2), and recruited into the team herself (Avengers). She did not leave the Avengers teams for the next 11 years; she was on the first iteration (lasting through Age of Ultron), the second (Age of Ultron through Civil War), and then the Secret Avengers (which we can now assume starts post-BW through Infinity War) and Avengers 3.0 (five-year gap team), as well as the Quantum Realm Team-Up Team right up til she got yeeted off Vormir.

We’ll set Secret Avengers and Team 3.0 aside for the moment, as they’re things that will exist post-BW movie canon.

Natasha’s narrative role has often been to be so amazing that when she’s bested, we know the other person is really good. The best way for me to pull this together into a coherent throughline is that Natasha tends to be bested by people with passion and emotional stakes. When Natasha is just doing her job, but Pepper cares about Tony or the Dora Milaje care about T’Challa, she is outmatched. In Cap2, when Natasha cares deeply about SHIELD and who she’s loyal to, she is able to outmatch everyone she faces, but since she’s a secondary character and her act isn’t as highly visible on screen, her heroism isn’t as spotlighted.

(That said, make no mistake, WE WILL BE COMING BACK TO HER HEROIC MOVE IN THIS MOVIE.)

Her role has also been, as I mentioned earlier, to be a mirror to the white male heroes. She mirrors Tony in IM2, Clint in Avengers, Steve in Cap2, and Bruce in Ultron. I can make a strong argument, that I feel is supported by each text, that each of these mirrors is about moderation, and both the white man of choice and Natasha finding that the ideal is somewhere between both points: the space between how and why Tony and Natasha handle secrecy; between how Clint and Natasha handle guilt; between how Steve and Natasha handle trust; between how Bruce and Natasha handle self-hatred. That the writers and directors often disagree with my read of this does not, in any way, dissuade me from believing it, but it does mean that this may not be the arc we’re looking at in the movie.

By the arcs that I’ve traced, though, they have a fair amount of leeway to give a satisfying conclusion no matter what the plot is. By having other characters mirroring Natasha, she is centered in a way she never had been, and simply being the protagonist of her own story is part of Natasha’s journey we haven’t seen. We know that this is going to in some way revisit the Red Room, and that means that we’ll get to see a story where Natasha is passionate about and personally connected to what she’s fighting. We also know that whatever the story is, it will not be Natasha mediating someone else’s approach to the world, but Natasha’s approach to the world with someone else (I’m guessing Yelena?) mediating her worldview, in a way that gives Natasha growth but does not undercut her as someone who had so much to learn from the REAL hero.

All plot to the side, simply because Natasha is the protagonist, there is an element of satisfaction inherent, both textually and metatextually, because Natasha’s role of being sidelined is both within the text and within the media landscape a struggle she’s finally able to overcome. There is also a metatextual satisfaction just in cleaning up the bits and pieces of canon that we’ve gotten that were left hanging. For example, in her heroic climax in Winter Soldier, Natasha- who was so focused on being able to transform into whatever was necessary- released a fuck-ton of national security information on the internet, including her own history, that made her both immutable and knowable. (Do you ever think about how this means that people living within the MCU know more about Natasha’s background than we, the audience, does? Because I do, c o n s t a n t l y.) Natasha went from working undercover and in the shadows to being an Avenger and releasing not just her own and not just SHIELD’s but also the Red Room’s dirty laundry in public, and that has never had narrative consequences; this is a great opportunity to use that, closing a loop that most people probably forgot even existed.

Speaking of closure.

I think this movie HAD to be designed with that specifically in mind. I don’t think they necessarily expected the backlash they got from Natasha’s death (I’m going to be honest here; I didn’t expect it from anyone but Natasha fans), but at least they had to know that people who had been promised Natasha would get her due in canon would be frustrated and want some sign that the complexity of the character that had been talked up for a decade was actually part of the story they put on film. Marvel wants to placate fans, yes, but they wouldn’t waste millions upon millions of dollars on a movie to get us to shut up; their job is to bring in money, and it’s not like they haven’t gotten ten years’ worth from us. They’re also savvy enough to know that for a character who’s no longer alive in canon, they need to do things that make their story relevant even without them having future appearances- and I think we’ll see that in Yelena and Taskmaster- but also to make this story have stakes.

Yeah, we never spend a Marvel movie saying “Oh geez, what if the hero dies?” (well, aside from Civil War, because comics oontext), but right now we’re going in knowing (or, bare minimum, thinking we know) exactly what happens to Natasha. Where she’ll end up just under two years from when the story starts is set in stone (NO PUN INTENDED). So we need another way to give the story stakes. Natasha’s life and her future aren’t up in the air. Her past is, I guess, but they’ve been clear this movie isn’t about her past. And where that leaves us is the emotional journey. I outlined above what I think that is, but it doesn’t have to be that to be satisfying- it just has to be some way to leave Natasha changed in a way that surprises us as audience.

And, sure, that could be loss- that could be betrayal from everyone in this movie, leaving her alone and with no one to turn to but the Avengers- but I don’t think that is. I think that’s looking at Natasha’s story like she’s still a secondary character, rather than the protagonist. The basic structure of a superhero movie (and specifically a Marvel movie) is that the protagonist suffers defeat but ultimately triumphs, internally if not externally, having learned something that takes them farther on their emotional journey. Since (as far as we )know this is the only movie Nat’s getting- she’s not getting a trilogy or a Dis+ show- this needs to take her farther than most single-protagonist movies have.

In terms of another kind of closure: If the movie doesn’t offer at least a hint of a way Nat could come back (and I’m still hoping for that no matter how unlikely it is, and if it doesn’t happen I’m hoping for it in the Dr Strange sequel, and after that I’m sure I’ll find another path), I think there’s an excellent chance the post-credits scene will be a funeral for her. Given that they have SebStan and Mackie and Emily Van Camp shooting together right now, it would be very easy to at the VERY least get us a scene of them mourning her. It’s not the same as Tony’s giant lakehouse memorial, but it’s about half the characters who were close to her when she was alive (the others being Clint, Maria, and Fury, and I’m pretty sure they could have put an hour of time on the FFH set to the latter two having five seconds of looking solemn). I think that, given the backlash to Endgame, they need something like this: we need to see, on screen, conclusive proof that Natasha’s life mattered, not just for the audience, but for the world she lived in.

My dream would be for the entire movie to use a frame story OF her funeral- people talking about her, different memories and different understandings, that combine in different ways to collectively show a whole. Fucking Rashomon that shit. But we all know they’re not going to do that.

I recognize I am still talking satisfying and not happy.

But what exactly is happy? What exactly is the happy ending Natasha might want?

She’s not a character who wants to retire or settle down somewhere. As much as we in the audience talk about wanting her to get a break, we’ve never seen that from her, and we also don’t see a world that could really offer that to her; especially post-Cap2, Natasha does not have the luxury of escaping her past even if she did want to.

We don’t know her goals. We don’t know what she wanted outside of making amends for her past. We’ve gotten that from almost every other character- say what you want about Steve’s Endgame ending (god knows I have), or about Bruce being a public figure that kids love, but at least there was groundwork laid for it.

i think the best argument we have for what makes Natasha happy is in Civil War, when it’s taken away. Natasha is willing to give up things that are important to her (her autonomy) in favor of not losing her team; being together is the priority for her. By the end of Civil War, she’s lost even that; she’s seen to have betrayed her entire team and has no one. By IW we know that she re-finds her group, that she and Steve and Sam and Wanda are a tightly-knit unit, but we have to piece it together ourselves, and we have no way to know that it’s by choice rather than necessity. (The BW trailer is really the first time we get evidence that Natasha has more resources than just the Avengers or SHIELD; even fic has tended to just posit she has empty safehouses, not living people she can go to.) The BW movie could give her that team, and retroactively make her appearance in IW a reward for her- having found the team she wanted- rather than just the natural place for her to end up.

But I can’t see how that would even work without at least some of Chris Evans, Anthony Mackie, and Elizabeth Olsen appearing in this movie and showing on screen that Natasha has her people. We haven’t seen evidence they aren’t, but at least I haven’t heard any rumors they are, the way we’ve heard rumors about RDJ.

And there’s something awful, to me, in Natasha constantly being supporting in other people’s movies, which exist to seem self-contained even if they’re not, but then in her movie her emotional fulfillment relying on things that happen elsewhere- the implication that her emotional arc can’t even support a single movie.

In terms of what we’ve seen achieved, Natasha seems happiest when she’s solving a problem, when she’s fighting and winning and being the hero she doesn’t quite believe she is. But that’s not something that can be an end to an arc, of a decade or even of two hours. No matter how great that is, it’s a momentary thing, and it’s fleeting. That’s happiness but not narratively satisfying

This remains not an answer to the original questions.

I think part of the issue is, it’s not necessarily that we need Natasha to be happy, for her to have a happy ending. It’s that we, the audience, wants to be happy- and frankly, I don’t think that’s unreasonable; we’re not going to blockbusters to have our hearts torn out (and I think that after Endgame especially, Natasha fans are not ready or willing to do that again). And so we’re looking less at how Natasha can be happy, but how we can be happy. Selfishly, I’d even add: how we can be happy without doing the work. How we can be happy without conspiracy-theorizing our way to a satisfying narrative, but rather, a narrative that’s already on the screen, that we can just roll around in and enjoy.

I realize how bizarre this is to say after 3000+ words, but: I want the opportunity to be a lazy viewer. I want the chance to take things in without having to take responsibility for making them into something I want to see. I don’t want to have to reverse-engineer her story; I want to dig into the minutiae that is maybe actually intended.

On some level, that’s going to be the happy ending for me. Just having a whole text to dive into is a gift. (I am probably monkey-pawing myself just by saying this, which is the same kind of bullshit I argued for Age of Ultron- but then, I still can rewatch Ultron and find a lot that I like.) And Natasha getting a narrative win- which, as protagonist, she kind of has to- will be a happy ending for me.

But I’m a Natasha fan. This is expected.

What I think is the real question under all of this- what I’ve been struggling to tease out from my own feelings, and maybe now I’m finally getting to it- is a different question entirely: how can Marvel craft a story that sticks with their formula of giving a protagonist a win and something like a happy ending, while telling a story about a character who has been sidelined for ten years until they killed her off? Setting aside those of us who are overly invested in Natasha’s arc, what is the path to telling a story that the majority of the audience- most of whom haven’t traced her history, many of whom are casual fans, some of whom probably didn’t even see Endgame- finds fulfilling and happy?

The hero has to win, obviously. The hero has to triumph. Natasha has to come away having saved the world (stopping a villain from destruction), her world (protecting those close to her), and her internal world (some kind of emotional progress/catharsis). There will be moments intended for the audience to cheer. That’s a formula that you can find in nearly every superhero movie, and with good reason; I can’t think of why it wouldn’t apply here.

So looping back around, the question about the sad ending really is just for those of us who are deeply engaged. It’s not “will Natasha triumph?” because yes, she will- of course she will. We are going to get a movie where the world will be saved by Natasha (which has happened before) and the text will acknowledge that (which it really has not). The real question at hand is “will Natasha’s triumph be enough to mitigate the substantial losses she’s had in the other movies, or will it be bittersweet, her success here just underscoring the way that her biggest narrative win was to kill herself for no recognition?”

Which, of course, on some level, will vary from audience member to audience member. But I think that, with the awareness of how Endgame worked, and the knowledge of exactly when this movie is coming out, they have to at least try to give her- and us- this.

It’s now 5:15 AM and this is over 4000 words long and if you’ve read all this you deserve a medal. I’m happy to clarify or expand on anything in a few hours when I get up; I know that I circled a few points rather than clearly making them, but I’m no longer even completely sure what is common knowledge and what is me projecting. Hopefully this can at least start a conversation?

ETA: And anon, I am sure no matter what happens, fanfic will have our backs.

[kiki5283]

Safehouse

Pairing:  Bucky Barnes x Reader

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 5789

Summary:  Post-Apocalypse Zombie AU. Reader and Bucky are part of the same group of survivors, but their relationship is contentious at best.  When they are sent on a supply run together, shit hits the fan and they are forced to seek shelter in a tiny safehouse in the woods.  Do they really dislike each other or is it another kind of tension that has them at each others’ throats?

Prompt: “Don’t underestimate me” / Locked in a Room Theme

A/N:  This is my submission for the HBC’s “Time to Fall” Challenge.  It’s also my first attempt at writing fanfic, so any feedback would be seriously appreciated.  Please be gentle, I’m a virgin.

It was mid-November, dark gray skies rolling endlessly over the tall trees and the brisk sting of the autumn wind presaging a harsh winter that threatened to break any day.  Y/N tilted her face up and inhaled, seeking the crisp scent of the season that she remembered from what felt like a lifetime ago, before the world went to shit.  For a second, she caught it - clean, cold, pure - until the omnipresent fetid scent of death and rot hit the back of her throat and she swallowed a gag.  Pushing ahead down the back road, she stepped on a pile of brown leaves with a satisfying crunch and was immediately met with an irritated huff on her right.

“Could you be any louder, Y/L/N?”

She flashed narrowed eyes toward the raspy voice and was met with an equally piercing glare from the pair of blue eyes currently scowling in her direction.  Grumpy bastard.

“Definitely, Barnes.  I can be quite loud if that’s what you’re into.”

Y/N shot Bucky a wicked smirk and winked salaciously.  He let out an irritated grunt and shook his head, but she could see his cheeks flush pink before he turned away.  For someone who acted like such a hardass all the time, Bucky was sure easy to embarrass and Y/N loved to get under his skin.  Maybe as payback for him being a standoffish prick or maybe because he looked adorable when he was flustered, but Y/N didn’t want to think too hard about the second option. When she had joined up with Bucky and his group four months ago, she had wanted to get to know him, hoped they could be friends. He had made it pretty clear from the outset that friendship was not in the cards.

Y/N had been holed up alone for several months in a small-town veterinary clinic when Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson had stumbled up to the front door looking for medical supplies.  Sam was near bleeding out from a stab wound to his thigh, courtesy of one of the murderous bandits that now stalked the countryside looking to kill anyone with food or supplies.  Y/N had pulled a rifle on them, ready to defend her makeshift safehouse, but something about the desperate earnestness in Steve’s face as he pleaded for help for his friend gave her pause.

It had been a long time since she had witnessed true camaraderie or even genuine care between people.  Life had become cheap and human interaction was characterized by selfishness and desperation - trust and goodwill were obsolete. That was what led Y/N to seek solitude in the first place.  But she sensed that the two men could be trusted, so she lowered her gun, took a chance, and let them inside.

In her other life, before 90% of the population turned into cannibalistic reanimated corpses, Y/N was a trauma nurse and her training had proved invaluable in the world in which she now found herself.  She cleaned and sutured Sam’s wound and, in exchange for saving his life, the men offered her a place to live at the fortified compound they called home.  Despite her innate cynicism,something inside Y/N trusted the two soldiers, so she packed up her stash of supplies and medications and set off to meet the group of survivors who would become like family to her.  

She’d hit it off right away with Tony, the engineering genius and his teenage proteges Peter, MJ, and sweet Ned.  Clint and Tasha, both former detectives, were slow to warm up, but once they were certain Y/N could be trusted, quickly became her closest friends within the group.  Steve and Sam treated Y/N like their long-lost sister from the moment she came to their rescue back at the clinic and they couldn’t wait to introduce her to Bucky, Steve’s childhood best friend and the third member of the group’s military contingent.  Bucky acted as a scout and would often leave for days at a time to track the hordes of dead that roamed the area or to gain intel on the movements of the local bandit gangs.  

Y/N had been at the compound for a week and was busy setting up a medical ward in a corner of the large common room when she was startled by a gruff inquiry.

“Who the fuck are you?”

She turned around, half irritated and half amused, then very nearly gasped at the sight of the tall, broad man leaning on the med cabinet.  Long dark hair, thick stubble covering a chiseled jawline, plump pink lips slightly parted, and luminous slate-blue irises surveying her skeptically.  His eyes widened for a fraction of a second as their gazes locked before the suspicious expression settled back over his features.  God damn, he is gorgeous.

“You must be Bucky. I’m Y/N Y/L/N.” She attempted to disarm him with a shy smile.

“Barnes, Y/N is our new medic.  She saved Wilson’s life, play nice with her,” Tony called from his workspace across the room.

Glancing back at Bucky, Y/N felt pinned by his penetrating stare as he looked her up and down. Suddenly, her heart was pounding in her throat and she felt heat creeping up her neck.

“What did you with the books that were here?” Y/N shifted uncomfortably.

“I put them on your bunk. Steve said you wouldn’t mind if I set up over here,” Bucky scoffed at that, looking down and away.

“Don’t touch my stuff, Y/L/N,”  He turned on his heel and stalked away.

“Charming, isn’t he? Don’t take it personally, Y/N, Iceman has a stick up his ass.  Maybe you can surgically remove it for us?” She let out a chuckle and smiled gratefully at Tony.  

That interaction had set the tone for Y/N and Bucky’s relationship - when he wasn’t avoiding her, he was being actively rude.  So, Y/N responded by busting his balls at every opportunity she could get, which was why they were less than thrilled to be partnered on the current supply run.

“No, no fucking way am I taking her with me on this, Steve.  It’s not happening,” Steve shook his head at his friend’s obstinacy.  He couldn’t understand Bucky’s issue with Y/N.   She was smart, resourceful, funny, and filled a crucial role with her medical training. She fit in seamlessly with the group and everyone else loved her.

“Buck, we are almost out of drugs and medical supplies.  Y/N is the only one who knows what we need.  This will be a quick run - you two will be back in a day or two,” Y/N gritted her teeth as she watched the two friends argue.  She was getting progressively angrier as they continued to talk about her like she wasn’t standing right there.

“She’s a liability, Steve.  She’ll get us both killed,” Bucky was nearly shouting.

At this point, Y/N was seething. She pulled her KA-BAR out of the holster strapped around her thigh and whipped it at Bucky.  It flew past his cheek, just nicking the top of his left ear and then lodged deeply in the wall behind him.

Steve and Bucky stared at her with eyes wide and mouths agape.  That shut him up.

“Don’t underestimate me, Barnes.  I’m leaving in 10, with or without you.”

SNAP!!

The loud noise from her left broke Y/N out of her disgruntled reverie and she froze as she felt an iron grip on her shoulder, holding her firmly in place. She didn’t dare breathe, but did venture a glance at Bucky who was staring intently into the copse of evergreens from where the noise had come.  

Then a low whine echoed from the trees. Y/N gripped her machete tighter and stepped free from the grip of Bucky’s metal prosthetic.

“Y/N,” he rasped and she shot him a warning look, holding her finger to her lips.  She crept forward, and she felt Bucky’s heat close behind her, although his movements were silent as always.  She used her blade to part the branches, revealing a young Siberian Husky with matted fur and a bloody paw hiding beneath the boughs of the fir.

“It’s okay. Don’t be scared,” she cooed, holding her hand out for the dog to scent.  The puppy’s tail flopped up and down and Y/N felt the warmth of a tongue tentatively reach out to touch her hand.

“That’s right.  We’re friends,” she could see a jagged shard of glass protruding from the animal’s front paw and she quickly shucked her pack off and reached inside to search through the meager supplies they had gathered from the burned out pharmacy that afternoon.  Y/N looked up to see Bucky staring at her with an inscrutable expression.

“I need your help.  I have to remove the glass.  Can you hold her and keep her calm?” Bucky nodded, dropped to his knees, and began stroking the dog and holding her firmly in his arms.  Y/N couldn’t stifle the smile that rose unbidden to her lips at the sight of the surly soldier murmuring soothing words in the injured animal’s ear.

She removed a pair of forceps, some antiseptic wash, and a roll of gauze from the pack.  She met Bucky’s eyes and they both gave a small nod.  He whispered reassuring words as Y/N gently lifted the Husky’s paw and used the forceps to ease the shard free.  The puppy let out a whimper, so Bucky held her tighter and pressed a gentle kiss to her head.  Y/N was shocked by the change in the soldier’s demeanor and felt her heart flutter a bit at his gentleness.  She quickly disinfected and dressed the wound.

It was getting dark and she was loathe to leave the injured dog alone in the woods.

She looked up and met Bucky’s eyes with a worried expression.

“There’s a cabin nearby.  We can take her there for the night,”  He picked up the puppy and began to walk north through the woods.  Y/N picked up her machete and followed as silently as she could.

When they arrived at the small hunting cabin, Bucky carefully placed the puppy in Y/N’s arms and walked the perimeter of the structure, making sure it was secure.  When he was satisfied, he dug inside his pack and produced a key to the padlock hanging from the door.  Clearly, this was one of the safehouses he used for his scouting missions.  Stepping inside, Y/N saw it was a single room with an old kitchen table, two chairs, a small bed, and, thankfully, a fireplace.  The temperature was dropping rapidly as the sun went down.  Bucky turned on a camping lantern sitting on the bedside table and pulled one of the blankets off the bed.  He folded it and set it next to the fireplace, looking up at Y/N.

“For the puppy.”  She nodded and knelt down, laying the dog on the fluffy quilt and stroking her head.

“Good girl. You’re safe here, princess.” Bucky cleared his throat and Y/N looked up to see him holding out a can of corned beef hash.

“She’s starving - give her this.  I need to go chop some wood.  I’ll be back soon.”  Y/N nodded and set about feeding the dog, who all but inhaled the meat as Y/N sat nearby watching with a bemused smile on her face.  She licked Y/N’s hand gratefully, yawned, lowered her head, and before long, began snoring softly.  Y/N leaned back against the hearth, wondering about Bucky’s uncharacteristically civil behavior and the soft side that the sweet puppy had brought out in him.

Bucky gripped a rusty hatchet in his right hand and clutched an empty potato sack in his left, padding toward the clearing to the east of the cabin where he had stored some logs during his last scouting trip.  The sun had now completely set and it felt close to freezing, if the throbbing ache in his left shoulder was anything to go by.  His thoughts drifted back to his companions waiting for him in the cabin and - against his will - his lips curled into a bashful grin.  

He had been so irritated when Steve had insisted that he and Y/N go on this supply run together.  Ever since she had arrived at the compound, he had resolutely tried to avoid her.  Being in her presence made him….anxious.  He hated the way his heart sped up and his stomach knotted when he looked at her. It almost made him feel like throwing up.  And she seemed to adore messing with him, to the delight of their friends, which infuriated him.  

But watching her treat the injured puppy so tenderly today had melted his frosty heart a bit.  It reminded him of what he didn’t like to think about - all the times he had seen her be sweet and caring in a way that made his chest ache uncomfortably.  He was afraid of what it meant.  There was no room in this hellscape for soft feelings or inevitably painful attachments.    

A biting wind whipped through the forest, sending a violent shiver down Bucky’s spine.  He picked up his pace - it was probably nearly as cold in the cabin as outside and he needed to get back to the girls with the firewood.   As he approached the meadow, he heard the familiar, disgusting gurgling sound that only meant one thing - the fucking dead were out.

“God damn zombies,” he swore under his breath.  

In the light of the moon he could see two of them, stumbling like drunks through the forest, hissing and spitting and snapping their rotting teeth.  He crept up behind the one closest to him, holding his breath to avoid the stench of their decaying bodies.  This one was smaller, female, had maybe been a teenager before she turned - he’d pick her off first then take out the bigger one.  Bucky‘s hatchet cleaved the zombie’s skull, splitting it like an overripe melon. A bit of brain matter splattered his face and he spit reflexively to keep from swallowing any of the rancid slime.

He pushed her body aside and charged toward the other figure that had turned and was now lumbering at him, arms raised and milky, dead eyes flashing grotesquely in the moonlight.  As Bucky’s arm swung back in preparation to attack, he felt the blade of the old weapon go flying behind him, leaving him armed only with the wooden handle.  He struck the dead man in the temple with the blunt instrument which promptly broke in half, but successfully stunned it for a split second.  He groaned in frustration, dropping the busted handle and punching the creature dead in the face with his metal fist.  There was a sick squelching crunch as he caved its face in.  He struck the pulpy, decayed mess again and again, bits of bone and tissue splattering his face and torso.  

Bucky’s chest was heaving and his heart was racing by the time he was able to stop himself.  He looked down at the utterly destroyed corpse at his feet. His stomach turned as the putrid smell hit him and he began to gag.  The only sound he could hear was his own blood thrumming in his ears as he struggled to regain his composure.  He didn’t notice the footsteps behind him, only snapping back to reality when he heard the sound of a gun cocking and felt the hard metal barrel press against the back of his head.

As the little Husky slept, Y/N was preparing a peace offering for Bucky.  She rifled through her pack, removing the best of the canned goods she had scavenged that day - a bottle of Dr. Pepper, a can of SPAM and some pumpkin pie filling that she hoped might coax out one of his rare smiles.  

The first time she had seen Bucky smile was at some stupid joke Sam had been telling the group at dinner one night.  His normally serious expression completely changed - his sparkly eyes crinkled, his nose scrunched up adorably, and his lips widened into a huge grin, revealing a row of perfect white teeth.  His face was so transformed by his smile that she couldn’t look away - it was like the sun coming out after a storm. She didn’t realize she was staring until he noticed and promptly resumed his usual grumpy cat expression.  She couldn’t help but feel a pang in her heart at that and had quickly excused herself from the table, feigning sleepiness.

Y/N sighed at the memory and hoped that things between them might be different moving forward.  She would try her best not to tease him about anything when he got back. She glanced out the window and checked her watch - she had expected him to be back by now. Next to the fireplace, the puppy suddenly raised her head and her ears perked up in alarm.  Y/N opened the front door and listened; faintly, she heard the sounds of a struggle.  Maybe it was just Bucky chopping wood, but something in her gut felt wrong.  Y/N grabbed her machete and headed out into the forest in the direction of the noises.

“Turn around slow. Hands on your head.  Don’t try anything or it’ll be your brains all over the ground next.” the voice drawled.

Bucky complied, calculating his next move.  Turning around, he came face to face with a large, heavy-jowled man.  He was paunchy, but looked strong and he had the advantage of a weapon, though Bucky knew if he caught him off guard, he could take him down.  He studied Bucky for a moment with beady eyes then leered, flashing a mouthful of crooked yellow teeth. Bandit scum.

“That your girl back at the cabin?” Bucky’s heart stopped for a minute. Y/N.

“She’s a cute little thing. I seen her back there making you dinner. So sweet. You shouldn’t leave a nice piece of ass alone in the woods like that where anyone could find her and have their way with her.” Bucky felt panic rising in his chest and he clenched his jaw to push it back down. He needed to keep calm if he was going to get out of this and get back to Y/N.

“If you laid a fucking hand on her, I swear…” Bucky growled

“Oh I haven’t, not yet. But I do intend to. I bet she screams real nice. Just had to get rid of you first.” he chuckled maliciously.

A hundred possible scenarios flashed through Bucky’s mind - desperate thoughts and realizations.  He didn’t care if he died fighting as long as he took the bandit down with him.  Anything to ensure that no harm came to Y/N.  He steeled himself and prepared to make his move.  I’m sorry, Y/N - I’m the one who might get us both killed.  I’m sorry for everything.

“Now get on your knees, pretty boy - don’t make this harder on yourself.” The bandit snarled, stepping forward and aiming at Bucky’s head.  

The soldier was about to spring forward, when his captor let out a grunt and Bucky watched as his predatory expression morphed into one of horrified surprise.  Bucky followed the bandit’s gaze down to the long blade sticking out of his barrel chest.  As the life drained from his eyes, the big man fell forward, revealing a pale and shocked looking Y/N.

For a moment, Bucky just stared at the woman in front of him in awe until he noticed she was shaking uncontrollably. Then he darted forward and gathered her into his arms, squeezing her tight to his chest.

“Doll...doll...are you alright? You - you saved me. Please honey, don’t cry. It’s okay, it’s okay Y/N. We’re safe now. We’re safe.  Let’s get you inside.”

He picked her up and cradled her in his arms, feeling her body shudder as she sobbed against him.  He all but ran toward the cabin, relief washing over him when he finally shut the door behind them.  The puppy yipped as he walked in the door, her tail wagging rapidly as she limped over to the bed where Bucky was setting Y/N down gently.  She tilted her head at the weeping woman then looked to Bucky as if in concern before curling up under the bed frame at his feet.

Bucky knew that Y/N had killed her share of the undead like all survivors, but based on her reaction, he could tell that this was the first time she had caused the death of someone living.  His heart broke for her - Y/N was a healer and thanks to his carelessness, she was forced to stab a man to defend Bucky.

He reached out and stroked her hair and wiped the tears from her cheeks, but they continued to flow as she stared down at the mattress. Her skin felt like ice, so Bucky pulled the blankets up around her.

“Lay down sweetheart, you’re freezing.  Let me warm you up.”  Without firewood, all he had to offer Y/N was body heat.  There was no way in Hell he was leaving her alone again.  With the two of them in the small bed and the extra blankets, they’d be safe from hypothermia for the night.  He removed his jacket and his sweater, both of which were covered in blood and gore, leaving him in just a soft white t-shirt.

Y/N moved over to the far side of the mattress to make room for Bucky and he laid down and opened his arms hesitantly, unsure how she might react to the invitation.  She sniffled once, looked up at him, and to his surprise, pressed herself tightly against his chest, tucking her head under his chin.  He wrapped his arms around her tightly, unable to deny the deep contentment he felt from holding her close.

He didn’t try to fight the fluttering in his belly or the pounding of his heart now.  He couldn’t even remember why he had tried to keep her at a distance in the first place.  She was kind and brave and beautiful.  He had been such an asshole to her and she had always responded with good-natured ribbing and sass.  He knew that she needed someone right now and he was the only one available, but he hoped things might be different after today. He needed to make her see that he was sorry for the way he had acted and that he cared for her very much.

She continued to cry as Bucky held her and rubbed her back, whispering comforting words and placing gentle kisses on the crown of her head.  Eventually she pulled her head back and met Bucky’s eyes.

“Bucky, I - I murdered him -”

“No! No,sweetheart. He was a bad man. He was going to hurt you - he was about to shoot me.  You didn’t want to do that, you had to. Listen to me, Y/N, you protected me. You saved us.  You were so brave. I know it was awful, but I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been there. Thank you darlin,” Y/N smiled tightly up at him, eyes still shining with tears.

She looked like she was about to say something else, but then she closed her eyes and nestled back into Bucky’s chest.

“Night, Buck,” He smiled at the nickname.

“Goodnight, Doll. Get some sleep, I’ve got you,” Bucky sat in the dark, listening to her soft breaths and the puppy’s tranquil snores until he finally drifted off sometime after midnight.

Y/N began to stir before the sun was up, enveloped in an unfamiliar sensation of warmth and security.  The horrors of the night before seemed far away as she nestled deeper into the pillow and the embrace of the strong arms wrapped around her from behind..

Oh. Bucky.

She remembered how tightly he had held her as she shivered and wept, offering calming words and pressing feather-light kisses into her hair.  His actions had been so far removed from the grouchy, sullen behavior she was used to, Y/N had to wonder if she had imagined it in some kind of trauma-induced dissociation.  Her gut twisted at the thought and she realized how desperately she wanted it all to be real.  

She pulled his arms more firmly around her around her, relishing the warm press of his body along her back.  She felt safe for the first time since the world ended.  Bucky hummed contentedly in his sleep, wrapping his leg around hers and pressing even closer.  Y/N’s breath caught in her throat when she felt something long and hard and...big nestle between her cheeks.  

OH. Bucky.

His hips canted forward and he began to grind softly against her.  Y/N remained stock-still as her brain stopped working and heat began to pool between her legs.  It felt...so...good.  Y/N hadn’t been with anyone in so long, well before the outbreak.  Now the simple sensation of him rubbing against her had her paralyzed and nearly panting. Shit.

She carefully extricated herself from Bucky’s tangled limbs, hoping to avoid an awkward situation.  He was asleep after all - he didn’t know what he was doing - and she was enjoying the feel of him way too much.  She needed to collect herself, so she crept towards the door, clicking her tongue softly to signal the puppy to follow her outside.

While the little dog relieved herself, Y/N went about collecting fallen branches and twigs for a fire.  There was still a chill in the air and she hoped to make Bucky a hot breakfast - they hadn’t eaten anything but a cold can of baked beans in the last 24 hours.  She sang softly to herself as she roamed further into the woods, her arms now nearly full of firewood.  As she bent down to grab one last handful of kindling, she was surprised to hear the Husky growl ahead of her.  The puppy was standing at the edge of the woods, looking out into the clearing. A chill ran up Y/N’s spine as she realized she had wandered directly toward the place where she had found the man holding Bucky at gunpoint last night.

She stepped forward, bracing herself for the sight of the bandit’s corpse, machete sticking grotesquely out of his torso.  What she saw was a million times worse.

Seeping through the trees on the other side of the clearing, was a sea of undead.  Staggering forward blindly, moans and gurgles getting louder with each passing second, the horde began to swarm the meadow.  Y/N was frozen in fear until she heard a whimper at her feet and that spurred her into action.  She dropped the firewood, scooped the still-injured pup into her arms, and bolted for the cabin.

Bucky woke with a smile stretched across his face, heart light despite the trauma of the night before.  He reached out to pull Y/N closer, then quickly realized he was alone in the bed.  Alone with a raging case of morning wood.  Shit. Way to go, she probably thinks you’re a fucking creep.

He sat up and looked around the empty cabin, panic setting in.  Then he realized the puppy was gone too - Y/N probably took her outside. She wouldn’t just leave.  He sat up and rubbed his eyes.  His gaze fell on the table - SPAM, Dr. Pepper, and - a nostalgic favorite - pumpkin pie filling.  In the current circumstances, this qualified as a 5-star meal.  She really was making me dinner.

He didn’t even try to suppress the shit eating grin elicited by that thought.  Bucky stood, intending to head outside to gather some wood so he could cook breakfast for them, when the door flew open with a loud bang.  Y/N rushed inside with their puppy in her arms, a look of pure panic on her face.  She immediately set the dog down and turned to bolt the door.  Bucky could see her chest heaving.

“Doll, what’s going on?” She turned and ran into his arms, clutching at him desperately.

“Bu-Bucky.  In the clearing. A horde coming this way,” she sputtered, eyes wide with dread.

“It’s okay, Y/N.  I fortified this cabin myself - we are in the safest place possible besides the compound.  Let me just reinforce the windows.  Sit down, sweetheart.  Let me take care of this,” He looked deep in her eyes.

“We’re safe, don’t worry darlin.”

Y/N all but collapsed on the bed, gathering the puppy to her chest and watching Bucky fit steel panels around the window panes.  She exhaled in relief, trusting his promise of safety.

“Babydoll, are you hungry? Let me feed you.”

Y/N looked up at Bucky, tears of gratitude threatening to spill, and nodded.

“Okay sweetheart, I gotchu.”

Bucky had pulled his chair around the table so he sat right next to Y/N, his hand on her knee. They had polished off the SPAM and he was now offering her pumpkin pie by the spoonful.  She looked up at him, blushing sweetly.

“Buck, you don’t need to feed-”

“I want to,” She felt his eyes all over her.  Looking down, she smiled to herself.  Okay, then.

“Alright Barnes, you wanna taste?” she smirked and his eyes widened when he realized what she was asking.

“Yes,” he breathed before capturing her lips between his.  She tasted like cinnamon and ginger and he immediately felt his blood rush between his thighs.

Y/N moaned softly and turned her head to kiss along his jawline and down his throat, biting and sucking until she heard him whimper her name.

“Y/N...I want you..so, so much.  Ca - can I take you to bed, sweetheart?...Please?”

She gazed up at his blue eyes full of sincerity and raw desire, shuddering with her own need.

“Yes,” And then he graced her with that sunshine smile and Y/N forgot about the horde, the bandits, the entire world outside the cabin.  There was no one but her and Bucky.

He pressed her into the mattress, unbuttoning her shirt and looking at her reverently.

“So beautiful..” he whispered, more to himself than to her.  Then he stripped off his t-shirt and it was Y/N’s turn to marvel at the beauty of the man before her - all rippling muscle and shining metal.  She couldn’t look away - he was perfect.

“Oh, Bucky...you are...so...gorgeous,” She bit her lip and traced her fingers down his chest, mesmerized.

He blushed deeply, closing his eyes.  Bucky wasn’t used to being seen in this way and he almost felt choked up at the reverence with which she was looking at him.  He kissed her deeply, tasting her again and thrilling as her tongue wrapped around his.  His nerves were sparking and he was sure Y/N could hear the way his heart was pounding.  And he wanted her to hear.  

He locked eyes with her and stroked his hands down to the waistband of her jeans.

“Can I taste you?” She stared right into his soul and nodded slowly.  His heart soared.

In seconds, her pants were on the floor and his hands were wrapped around her hips, pulling her close.  He inhaled deeply, savoring her scent, before burying his face between her thighs.  Y/N keened and shook - she was overwhelmed by him.  Fuck, he’s so good at this.

Within minutes, the sensations became almost more than she could bear.  Her legs were trembling and when he slid two fingers inside her, she came with a cry and he gratefully lapped it up, moaning praises into her skin.

“Bucky, I need you inside me, please,” she begged.

“I got you, love, I want to make you feel so good,”  He climbed up her body and ran his tongue along her neck, feeling her shake beneath him.  Bucky grasped Y/N’s hands in his and pinned them above her head as he glided inside her.  They both gasped as he stretched and filled her.  

“You okay, baby girl? You’re so tight,”  Y/n responded by rolling her hips and Bucky nearly blacked out at the sensation.

“Fuck me, Bucky.  Feels so good,”

He pressed his forehead to hers and started to move. Y/N whimpered in his ear as rocked against her over and over.  Before long, they were both moaning and pleading with each other. Y/n was overcome, physically and emotionally - nothing existed for her outside of Bucky and his passionate devotion.  He bit down on her neck and sucked and she came with a cry, pulsing around him.  Y/N pulled his hair, causing him to growl and then follow her over the edge, repeating her name over and over like a mantra.

For several minutes, they just laid together, breathing hard and savoring the heady sensation of their bodies intertwined.

“Doll?” She looked up into those magnetic blue eyes, feeling lost and found at the same time.

“Yeah, Buck?”

“I’m in love with you,”  She was speechless - her answer stuck in her throat and tears of happiness stung her eyes.

He held her tight and looked her beautiful face up and down, like he was memorizing it.

“Bucky, I-”

BANG! BANG! BANG!

“Buck? Y/N? You guys in there?” Steve called.

“Horde’s gone , lovebirds. Your ride’s here”

“Sam! Don’t embarrass them! We’ll be in the car, come on out when you’re ready”

“We’re the ones who should be embarrassed, Rogers.  I didn’t need to hear that.  Can’t say I’m surprised though..”

Bucky buried his face in Y/N’s shoulder as they both laughed

“Guess we don’t have to worry about breaking the news to the team then” she giggled.

“Guess not, Doll.  C’mon, let’s go home,”

They dressed quickly, grabbed their packs, and Bucky picked up their puppy who had been napping by the fireplace.

“Sorry for the show, pretty girl.” Y/n smirked, ruffling the Husky’s ears.

They locked up the safehouse and slid in the backseat of Sam’s SUV. The two soldiers turned around, eyebrows raised at the sight of Y/N and Bucky, sandwiched together, heads touching, looking adoringly at the dog sprawled across their laps.

“And who is this?” Sam asked.

“This is Princess, our sweet baby,” Y/N looked at Bucky, twinkling eyes full of affection.

“Yup,” he beamed, wrapping his arm around his girls and hardly believing his luck.