#genuinely it is so bizarre to know and be aware of like

[dawn-speckled]

this is definitely one of my new favourite plays of all time- interestingly enough, while i've seen many people bring up plot holes and fourth wall breaks (of which there are many, it's justified), i think this is the first play that really felt non-sfth to me.

i am normally at least 70% aware that i'm watching sam, luke, aj and tom improvise a play, but this time it felt genuinely removed from them. i saw them as their characters. this was the first time it felt like i was watching a movie.

sam and aj especially gave such a great performance, and the story was so different from their normal patterns - this felt like a short story i'd read, a movie i'd watch. i don't think i've ever had this exact feeling while watching another one of their plays, even though many of them i'd also love a movie adaptation of.

it's so interesting to me because the whole play was so bizarre and full of fourth wall breaks, and still it felt further removed from them than normal for me- i honestly loved the exploration of sam and aj's characters and friendship, i know tom's insane old characters are normally great but this time it was almost unnecessary for me, i enjoyed the brutally human scenes more than the funny ones to be honest.

(also i am SHOCKED that sam and aj's characters didn't get any sort of closure with each other in the end (very torn between wow what a great and important portrayal of straight male friendship and uhh sam's character definitely had an unrequited crush on aj's) or they at least called off the wedding, i was convinced him and luke weren't gonna get married after all.)

[lighthouseshepard]

just opened and read all the lovely messages people have left on that little tree and i am crying and lauging equally. thank you everyone ❤️ i love you

[agnesandhilda]

my father is an olympic gold medalist in the sport of emotionally tormenting women

[smile-files]

today i'm going home so i can get my flu shot and vote with my family... hopefully both go well

[starlit1daydream]

On the subject of Equius Zahhak: hypersexuality and patriarchy.

It's been a hot minute since I promised to write something like this, and I've been meaning to test a new writing style for these big posts anyways - so I'm going to try my hand at explaining my personal interpretation of Equius Zahhak.

Equius is one of my favourite side characters in Homestuck, and though the individual components of his characterisation are intentionally facetious and humourous, all of these components then come together to form a fantastic and deeply layered commentary, however unintentional.

Let's begin with the basics: our introduction to Equius proper.

The narrative makes it clear from the start how you're meant to feel about this guy for starters - he's a creep and a weirdo. Nepeta says as much in their very first interaction on-screen:

This is backed up by the narrator themselves exhibiting a discomfort with him, painting him as a cryptic and eerily observant loner:

Once again, he's making people uncomfortable. Discomfort is going to be a very common theme going forward, particularly once we tap into Equius' personal interests and the justification behind them.

The next sign is when we first see him properly on-screen, and the narrator is immediately mortified by the state of his room and advises us to move on with the story.

So, immediately, any cognizant reader knows what's up. This guy is a joke character. A punchline, a fool, a weird asshole with no redeeming qualities. This is, of course, the intended reaction.

...Which then brings us to the subversions involved with Equius' character. Every single off-putting and strange thing about him is subsequently repainted in a more flattering light by the conclusion of his screen-time.

What begins as an overcontrolling, possessive demeanour towards Nepeta becomes a genuine, albeit perhaps overbearing desire to protect his moirail from harm. The context of him being Vriska's neighbour helps us infer that he's very, very aware of the dangers of FLARPing.

What starts as a bizarre and testosterone-poisoned obsession with strength becomes more of a fleshed-out character flaw. It's an inherent fault that Equius cannot control that brings him more distress than anything else. We'll delve into that later.

This is not, of course, to say that Equius is without genuine fault. You are still meant to find problems with his behaviour, of course you are; the Aradiabot fiasco is an intentional violation of personal agency based around an unhealthy obsession. He allows himself and his moirail to die because of his refusal to disobey the vapid and classist hemospectrum.

Okay, so why is he like this?

I'm glad you've asked. This is where this delves more into conjecture, based around a few different things.

The state of the internet and online culture at the time of Equius' inception; and the ramifications therein.

What we know to be true about the aspect of Void, and how Equius interacts with it.

The added retroactive context of Hussie's handling of queer topics (as a non-binary person themselves!), particularly on the subject of gender identity.

Let's start with point one.

Equius and hypersexuality.

At the time of Homestuck's inception, it was a veritable fact that the internet was overrun with overt sexuality, oft for the sake of shock value as opposed to arousal. Screamers and shock sites like 2girls1cup, goatse, Mr. Hands... (that last one is particularly relevant).

I cite Mr. Hands in particular because therein we get to the use of bestiality as a gross-out punchline. This is what Hussie's invoking with Equius; you're looking at this guy and seeing a gross freak who hangs horse porn on his walls. It's appealing to the fact that:

Homosexuality was considered a funny punchline.

The furry fandom was considered a funny puchline.

Bestiality was considered a funny punchline.

And so, this thirteen year old child hanging gay horse porn on his walls is meant to be played for laughs.

But with the retroactive lens we're looking at this through now? It's not only deeply disturbing for reasons I don't think I need to explain, but it's also a portrait of unhealthy teenage sexuality and the ramifications of exposure to explicit content at a young age.

Because it's a veritable fact that Equius does not understand boundaries and has a deeply flawed relationship with his sexuality. It's the kind of hypersexuality induced by childhood exposure to sexual material, and I would go as far as to call it a kind of CSE.

Need more proof of this? Dave Strider. Bro's weird sex puppets and usage of pornography as a punchline undeniably fucked Dave up, and explains the way he so regularly uses sex, particularly gay sex as a source of humour. Dave is the same problem that Equius rises, played seriously at a point in the story wherein these things are no longer treated so facetiously.

Furthermore, it becomes clear that Equius does not actually understand what he is consuming and emulating. Pornography isn't pornography to him, it's fine art. He's uncomfortable and unhappy with his sexuality because he lacks a label for it and doesn't know what it is he's feeling. This is tied to his Aspect of Void; but more on that in just a second.

This is uncomfortable. It is meant to be uncomfortable.

Equius' toying with casteplay and power dynamics is a clear representation of this frayed relationship - and it also segues into our point about his lack of self-worth.

Equius, the Heir of Void.

The Void Aspect. The Aspect of irrelevance, secrecy, ignorance, simplicity and absence, amongst other things.

The Heir Class. The Class that indicates an overabundance of the player's Aspect that overwhelms them and embodies them.

Equius is he who inherits, becomes and is consumed by emptiness. Because Equius Zahhak does not have a sense of selfhood or self-worth. The inference brought about by his title as the Heir of Void is that Equius is overwhelmed by nothingness.

Combine this with his Dersite status and the consensus on Lunar Sway (Prospit indicating externalisation, Derse indicating internalisation) and you get a very clear image of how Equius' title translates.

An overwhelming, consuming sense of internalised absence and nothingness. This is where Equius' hemospectrum adherence comes in! It's a cover up to compensate for his purposelessness and lack of meaningful identity. He sees himself as being deficient in anything real or of substance, and so adheres to the system placed before him because it is the only thing he feels he understands.

Once again, this is uncomfortable and a real phenomenon amongst teen boys. We see it with Eridan, too; young and confused teenagers with no sense of purpose falling into harmful and bigoted pipelines because they have no sense of direction otherwise.

(In a roundabout sense this explains Tavros' role as well; The Page indicates a deficit in their Aspect throughout the session and so the trolls lacking Breath in the form of directionlessness fits fairly well).

It's almost like watching a young boy fall into the alt-right, or start feed into Andrew Tate-style snake oil bullshit. It's the exact same kind of exploitation on a much larger scale; because it's the whole of Alternian society orchestrated by Doc Scratch.

You know... the Doc Scratch meant to represent online groomers?

So, we've been over about all I can cover about Equius' sexual trauma, lack of boundaries and emptiness/lack of self. So, how does this translate? Particularly thinking on the last point, I'd like to give my two cents about a very interesting headcanon for Equius that's been circulating a lot lately.

Equius, and gender identity.

A transfeminine reading greatly enhances the content of Equius' character, and provides a narratively satisfying character arc and means of development for them.

(From hereon out, I will be referring to Equius by the pronouns she/her).

I've seen Nekropsii sum this up beautifully, and I'll paraphrase this interpretation to the best of my ability; Equius' manifestation of masculinity is akin to a poison to her.

It makes her into a grotesque, testosterone-poisoned freak that physically cannot interact with anything around her without hurting it. It is the metaphorical confusion and fury of dysphoria made literal. It is the emptiness and lack of self that I myself can corrobate as a trans woman myself.

Masculinity is a curse for Equius. Much like quite a few other Homestuck characters (Dave & Jake come to mind), Equius really fucking hates being a guy.

So, this ties into my final point.

How I personally would have developed Equius had she been given the screentime to keep being relevant to the story.

The transfeminine character arc seems obvious. I believe that, if a person would be willing and able to tackle the more obscene and deliberately uncomfortable components of Equius' character, you could make an incredibly raw and interesting portrayal of transition and identity.

What's more; this is corroborated by Equius' closest relationship. Nepeta Leijon, the Rogue of Heart. The girl whose role indicates the ability to share identity and selfhood. Nepeta could very, very easily function as a catalyst for Equius gaining her own identity and being helped through the transition process. It makes an already STRONG and stable moirallegiance all the more interesting and heartwarming to witness.

This is not to say that Equius should not have agency herself, of course; an important part of this development would be the formulation of an independent self without debilitating outside influence. It would be allowing herself not to be consumed needlessly by Void.

Equius, and further relationship dynamics.

Equius' relationship with Gamzee (which I have always read as a one-sided kismesis) is also very important to me. This is not healthy. Equius is using Gamzee as a vessel for her fantasies and lack of boundaries, and through her black feelings she vents out her frustration with her sexuality and intrinsic need to obey and serve someone of a higher caste.

I don't think I need to tell any of you how well that works out once Gamzee goes sober. (I'd rather not dwell on the topic of the Makaras too long; that's something for a wholly separate post - and one that I'm sure would end up being rather scathing towards Hussie).

Finally, Equius' relationship with Aradia. This is also one I feel is unhealthy and once again one-sided. It is the same principle as Gamzee; merely in the red quadrant as opposed to the pitch one. Equius is using somebody as a vessel to vent out her feelings of purposelessness and frustration, and deliberately ignoring the lack of reciprocation.

Both of these connections are similar; and both of them end with Equius getting her shit kicked in.

How one would retool and treat these relationships post-character development is up to them, but I personally think it would be healthier for Equius to step away from both of them. I don't think Aradia would want or need Equius' continued presence in her life, and Gamzee is notoriously terrible at relationships. (We know damn well how a reciprocated blackrom with him turns out, just ask Terezi).

Equius, in conclusion.

That's all I really have to say on this matter; a long-winded and ultimately self-serving wall of text that I'm sure will come off as masturbatory and stupid when I read over it again. That being said, I wanted to lay all of this down in one place.

tl;dr - Equius Zahhak is a complex and interesting character with commentaries on teenage hypersexuality and unhealthy masculinity, and reading her as a trans woman provides an incredibly interesting character arc for her in the long term.

[gazemaizeisdead]

there’s a scene in fat albert 2004 where live action kenan thompson fat albert, who has accidentally escaped the fictional television world of his cartoon series and become real à la barbie, meets his creator, bill cosby.

it’s a unique film. i’ve seen it about thirty times. the opening credits are in comic sans.

it’s the worst film in the tiny but horrible microgenre of films in which an established, questionably marketable character with diminished cultural relevance is mysteriously transported to our reality. rocky and bullwinkle, harold and the purple crayon, garfield, enchanted (it’s disney, which at the time was only beginning to toy with the cloyingly affectionate self-awareness that has since swallowed it whole, so an expy blend of all stock princesses is used in the place of any particular ip). if you loosen up the parameters of that definition a smidge you can easily come up with another fifty or so awful, bizarre live-action adaptations of various properties with similar narrative structures and plot beats, but i’m curious about this very specific type of hyper-meta fish out of water isekai movie, stories that are less interested in the characters they are ostensibly about and more about the modern world’s current reactions to those characters, and choose to discuss that in the most convoluted, literal way possible.

this type of story is simultaneously extremely high-concept postmodernist analysis and the laziest paint by the numbers shit it’s possible to create. live-action adaptations even at their best betray an inherent disrespect for animation, implying it to be a secondary medium that exists as a temporary placeholder or poor man’s substitute for reality, that characters are only worth caring about if they look as real as we do or exist in a world like ours. there’s no genuine artistic reason to make a woody woodpecker movie, an avatar movie, a death note movie, a live-action pinocchio, they’re all cynical soulless cashgrabs but they at least do attempt to adapt and actually BE what they purport to be. dan aykroyd yogi bear and light turner and matthew lillard william afton for the five minutes they wanted to pay him to be in the fnaf movie are simply poor facsimiles of themselves and they suck because of that bad mimicry, we see and hear the contrast and know immediately it’s not the same. the project of live-actionization is misguided because even before awful executive-driven creative decisions (which all these movies have in spades) very often whatever is being adapted simply can’t be translated properly to its new medium. you could give a film a 500m budget and airbending will still not look as good as it does in 2d, where one can easily and stylistically show the movement of invisible wind and have a character float and defy gravity in a way that is instantly believable in a way that a real human being moved by CGI is not. neil patrick harris and hank azaria as hard as they try, as talented as they are cannot legitimately sell me on the idea that they’re actually being hardcore smurfed in the way that an animated gargamel can. these movies reach for a perceived authenticity and fail to reach it, not understanding that the mediums they are stealing from almost always allow for a greater seeming realness than live-action can, especially when portraying the fantastical.

the isekai movies go one step beyond this disrespect because they refuse to even play the part. yes we’ll make a rocky and bullwinkle movie but we cannot simply DO rocky and bullwinkle, we can’t do a scooby doo and just make a bigger irl version of the formula, we must have this elaborate meta routine so we can continually point to the audience and share a laugh together about how dogshit and unimportant rocky and bullwinkle are. the people who make these movies are so embarrassed by the concept of taking these ideas seriously that they must even in-universe create further removal from the realness of this to insulate us from the possibility of caring. rocky and bullwinkle must be a fake tv show even in the movie, even in pretend land they must be from a deeper pretend land. it’s fine if you want to do commentary on the property (preferable, in fact, that makes it more interesting!) but this commentary is almost never allowed to extend beyond the singular joke of every gamer webcomic ever made: wouldn’t it be fucked up if fictional thing were REAL?

wouldn’t it be fucked up if rocky and bullwinkle were in a REAL car? you bet it fucking would be. (robert de niro produced this movie and plays the main villain)

obviously we’re in a post-barbenheimer world and the only movie of this kind worth comparing fat albert to is barbie, which is notable for being the only good execution of this premise (i would call enchanted competent; it’s funny but a mess). the barbie comparison is especially interesting because fat albert is a cracked mirror to barbie.

like barbie, fat albert and the cosby kids exist in a cartoon world where characters are simultaneously performers and platonic forms of themselves, and where they operate with an unspecified degree of awareness of their own fakeness; a background character in fat albert’s philadelphia mentions having done guest spots on the jetsons. like barbie, al is snapped out of his usual routine by the personal crisis of one of his fans, when her single live-action tear falls on the remote as she watches his show and magically falls into his fictionalized philadelphia. the magic tear allows him to hear her crying and a portal is rended between the two worlds; he enters reality, naively tries to solve her social and emotional problems with platitudes, and is forced to grapple with the tenuous nature of his existence and mortality and the complexity of the real world. 

i’m just ken is replaced with fat albert performing an extended rap cover of his own theme song. fat albert spends as much of this movie trying to help the main character make friends as he does trying to fuck her adoptive older sister (“my big al”, she calls him).

without getting into “barbie politics” barbie works because it wants to be a movie about barbie, the thing it’s named after. it takes “barbie lore” seriously. at least half of barbie actually takes place in barbieland, a world that the movie cares about making authentically fake and different and weird. the mechanics and nature of barbie’s existence and barbieland are the most important part of the movie. all of these bad adaptations have the obligatory familial infighting/accidentally thwarting a jewel heist/stopping the evil CEO from demolishing the neighborhood to build a megamall/helping larry bird get his basketball talent back from the aliens plot and so does barbie but it’s an excuse to talk about more interesting abstractions. there is a subplot dedicated to barbie helping to reignite a mother and daughter’s bond but this isn’t the core of the movie, it really is about barbie, literally and metaphysically. fat albert too isn't "about" helping a girl make friends and find herself, it's about fat albert, but it resents that about itself.

fat albert 2004 has about six minutes of actual animation, it rushes to get kenan thompson on screen as quickly as possible and stays there as long as it can (presumably a factor of cost more than anything else, as with all of these films). in barbie the ideas and philosophies of barbieland and real life both naturally affect each other, are reflections of each other, which is an obvious worldbuilding choice that makes intuitive sense; the media we consume is a reflection of the real world and vice versa. there is nothing inherently wrong or bad about the link between the two worlds, says barbie, though it is often the conduit for harmful ideas.

fat albert’s philadelphia and our philadelphia do not share this connection, albert’s intrusion in the real world is a perversion of the natural order and, we later learn, a physical impossibility in the long term. halfway through the movie, the cosby kids begin to be influenced by the real world: mushmouth gains the ability to speak coherently (“don’t call me mushmouth anymore! just call me… mouth!”) and dumb donald removes his ski cap, learns to read, and goes to the library and speeds through 22 volumes of african-american history. this is portrayed as profane; as dumb donald says before jumping back into the TV halfway through the movie: “"i've become smart enough to understand that... we've entered into a world where we do not belong. if you try to become something that you're not, you lose the essence of who you really are."

albert, still on his love quest, at first refuses to rejoin them; he goes off on a date with protagonist’s older sister, which goes well until a child recognizes him and shames him for not being in the tv where he belongs. “we need you! what would mr. cosby think if you don’t go back?” al’s stunned by this; he has no response, but it inspires him to seek answers. in the next scene he decides to find out. he walks up to bill cosby’s house and knocks on the door.

in barbie the discussion barbie has with her creator, ruth handler, is the emotional climax of the film. when barbie tells her she wants to stay in southern california, ruth warns her of the dangers of being human, but does not ultimately stop barbie from doing so; she points out that she is incapable of doing so even if she wanted to.

fat albert mirrors this discussion; albert is told of his conceptual origins. as barbie is based on ruth’s daughter, he is based on a deceased childhood friend of cosby’s, the grandfather of the girl he is trying to help (which is why the movie is careful to repeatedly stress the point that the older sister he’s fallen in love with is only his granddaughter by adoption). there isn’t a parallel moment to the one in barbie where handler winks to the audience about her criminal conviction but that’s probably in the film’s best interest.

albert pleads with cosby in the same way as barbie. more than anything, he wants to stay in the real world. cosby, like handler, encourages him to recognize his own power as an icon, but informs him that his fate is inescapable. if he stays in the real world, his colors will begin to fade and he will soon “turn into celluloid dust” and die. how cosby knows this is not explained; presumably little bill also visited him in the past and suffered a similar fate.

even when done cynically (as it always is) to adapt or remake anything to reject the source material in some way. it’s a paradoxical relationship, because to do it you have to both like (or at least be interested) in what you are recreating but find some aspect of it unnecessary or outdated or lacking or worthy of change. the animation to live-action adaptation often must navigate the additional paradox of wanting to make the unreal real, and the end result, formed by people who don’t care and are only in it for a paycheck, is usually bad art.

in the end fat albert acknowledges his own unreality and crawls back in the tv. the final scene is a saving private ryan style ending where all of the real life elderly inspirations for the cosby kids leave flowers on the real fat albert’s grave. here it hits you: the only moral of the live action fat albert movie is that a live action fat albert movie is a really shitty idea that would kill fat albert.

i agree.

[daylighted]

I need more baby!reader Dean , I adore everything you write 😭

i think... it's about time... i give u guys what u want ( dean flirting with baby )

sam had his hands full with lore clinging to him, just as dean had intended for things to go. see, that was the only reason he'd entertained your bizarre wish of turning his dad's journal into a girl at all. not that he'd admit it to himself or anything, but it was true. sam occupied meant that there were no witnesses to the fact that, very quickly, his entire resolve was crumbling away due to all of the chipping you'd done at it.

you! this girl that was yes, once his car, but now was this full-fledged human being. you, who liked to be pressed entirely to the window as he drove, taking in every sight with your nose against the glass. you, who held a hand over your heart every time you got anxious, and then proceeded to tear him apart in one sentence because of that anxiety. and you, who cried your eyes out after you said something you thought was too mean.

dean was screwed — but he was thinking of it less like a bad thing now and more like something that could, possibly, potentially, be good for him? this was just as new to him as it was to you, considering he'd never had someone be so utterly devoted to him like you were.

you were brushing your teeth at the sink, humming a song to yourself in the process. he loved showing you music. each song became your new favorite. dean didn't know, really, if you liked them because he showed them to you, or you genuinely liked them, and honestly? didn't care. he was never going to deny the fact that, no matter what it was, you were too damn cute, humming along to whatever metallica song came on next in his (absolutely not specially curated) cd collection.

"c'mon, baby, i don't have all day," he grumbles, tapping the tv remote against his thigh to the beat of the song you hummed to. "you said you wanted to watch..."

he trails off, because he knows you really well by now, and knows you'll fill in the blank. which you do, excitedly spitting out the foamy toothpaste in your mouth and all but leaping onto the bed next to him. "the witcher!" you were a little unbearable after learning that you came to existence because of a witch. dean in all of his whipped glory, thought it was as endearing as ever. "put it on! now!"

"i'm tryin'," he laughs, holding the remote over your head as he scrolls through the options on netflix. "hard to focus when you're bouncin' around over there." goddamn, was it. "sit still, will ya?"

all it takes is one ask for you to, expectedly. unexpectedly, you've decided to settle right on his lap. dean was well aware of how snuggly you got at nighttime, but this was a new level to it. he is suddenly extremely focused on the tv screen, and definitely not on your bare legs wrapped around his, or your head nuzzled into his chest. or anything in between. please, god, don't let him focus on anything in between.

"did you know i love you?" his heart skips a beat every time you say it, even though dean is well aware of how you mean it. not like the way he wishes you would, but somehow somewhere in between what he wants and something platonic. the only type of love that you knew was this, and he didn't want to do anything to selfishly divulge you away from your feelings, however convoluted and confusing they were.

dean nods, his free hand coming up to trail his fingers through your hair. "i know." and dean did. you made sure to tell him once a day, which was another new thing for him. "love you too, angel."

he feels the scowl before you even voice your complaints. you were baby. he should call you baby. but something about the phrase, love you too, baby felt entirely too real and serious, and you could handle it, but he couldn't. not like this.

"there you go," you say, and instantly, dean's mouth tilts up in a smile, "trying to name me again."

your head lifts to meet his eyes, and he watches as the scrunchy irritation to your face melts into a warm smile. you always smiled when he did. you were a girl full of so much love, it just spilled out of every place it could. "it's called a nickname," he says, not for the first time, either. very common occurrence because dean cannot for the life of him stop calling you pretty names, "you can call me nicknames too, you know."

"no." you scoot up in his lap, and he has the willpower and strength of a fucking god, because he does not, in fact, whimper like he could have. could have! but didn't. you really should not fucking do that, but you don't know any better. he has to remind himself that you don't know that you sitting in his lap and gliding against him is enough to set his soul on fire.

dean raises an eyebrow up at you as you resettle on his stomach, your knees under his armpits. he sets the remote aside, his hands going to your waist to steady you. to steady you, he tells himself, even though you've never looked more secure in your life. "no? don't even want to try one?"

"you're dean, and i'm baby. that's just how it is and has been." you lean down quickly, and dean actually gasps, stuttering on his breath in his throat, thinking you're going to kiss him. he deflates when instead, you press your forehead to his, nose-to-nose. you don't know better. it's a constant mantra in his head. "you can't go changing it up now."

"you could call me baby."

your minty breath fans across his face, your eyes trailing over every inch of his face. you always look at dean so reverently. no one has ever looked at him the way you do, like there's nothing broken and nothing to fix, just beauty in every crevice.

"i don't want to." the honesty makes him grin, shaking his head in his amusement.

your hands come up to hold his face in between them, your palms flat on his cheeks, the scratch of his late-night stubble tickling against delicate skin of your hands. he knows it tickles, just by how you start to giggle. god help him. "i could call you angel. or sweetheart. or darlin'. i could call you babygirl."

something shifts in your eyes. it's subtle, barely noticeable, but you've got your face against his and he can see everything from here. he traces his fingertips along your ribcage through your shirt — his shirt, actually, but it'd taken up permanent residence on you. "no."

"no?" he echoes again, his head tilting to the side. your grip on his face tilts it right back, and dean can't help but laugh heartily. "don't tell me my pretty baby hates bein' called babygirl."

"stop it." you're blushing. your skin is warm beneath his hands, and all he wants is to reach under your shirt and feel it properly. a reminder to himself that you were real, and not some hyper-realistic delusion he'd been having for weeks.

it's all too easy to tip his chin up, so close to kissing you that his mouth opens and he feels the brush of your lips against his like electricity. "why? you're baby, and you're a girl. what's wrong with that?"

dean hadn't ever riled you up before. sure, he'd pissed you off, he'd endured plenty of verbal lashings from your sharp tongue, but this was new. this was the first indication that you loved him like he wanted you to love him.

"not funny."

"very funny, baby," and then suddenly, it's just as unfunny as you said, because your eyes fall to his mouth, and now he's a bit frozen in place. he bunches up the sides of your shirt beneath his fingers so it's raised enough for him to slip his fingers beneath, the warmth of your skin against his sending shivers down his spine.

you're going to kiss him, he thinks. you won't know what it means, and you definitely aren't going to know what you're doing, but he's already prepared for that. he'll guide you. he'll show you everything, actually, as long as you let him.

it's barely a proper touch of your mouth to his, but it's electric. he leans up to chase more of it, to seal the words into your mouth—

the hotel room door clicks as the lock releases, and dean stutters back with a jolt, his head knocking against the headboard. you turn your head to the door, not even bothering to move even though you really, really should, dean's a fucking wreck and you almost kissed him and—

"oh, come on, dean." sam's irritation is visible when he meets his brother's eyes, shrugging off the coat he was wearing.

dean lifts his shoulders in an exasperated shrug. "we are witching the witcher, sammy."

lore points at the tv screen. "you are not watching anything. you are queued up to watch cocomelon."

dean stretches his neck to look over your shoulder, and his expression flattens. he was fine with lore, he didn't have any qualms against her existence, but he was beginning to regret letting you swindle into creating her.

dean doesn't know if he's thankful or not when you climb off of his lap and go over to lore, already babbling about... god, what did you two even talk about? every time he tried to focus on the two of you together, he instead just zeroed in on you, and everything else went blank.

everything was still blank now. he watches your eyes light up with the weight of your joy, and he can't help but wonder if it meant anything at all, or if it was just a moment that you two had, and nothing more.

once again, all dean could do was hope it was something more.

notes. how many times will dahlia change her format for baby!reader: the people may never know. this came out sm longer than expected PLSSSS I JUST LOVE BABY & DEAN OKAY !!!

tags. @titsout4jackles @deansbeer @honeyryewhiskey @ultravi0lence14 @figthoughts @stereotypicalbarbie @whyyouegg @eepwtf @rositaslabyrinth @rubyvhs @jensenacklesballsack @abox-of-rocks @sunsbaby @bluemerakis @jollyhunter @misatxox @angelblqde @bombarda-babe @unfortunate-brat @funkycoloured @chevroletdean @chiierful @cowboysandcigarettes @voidsuites @bitchykittenconnoisseur @beausling @soldiersgirl @dulcescorderitas @hyacinnths @blushpinkdoll @mccartneyqp @svbnra @h8aaz @mahi-wayy @bejeweledinterludes @h8aaz @jjmbbg @valjy

[thewertsearch]

TG: do you want me to set u up w the files now GT: Ooh, these illicit hacked warez which i heartell were recently jimmied piping hot off the interclouds? TG: ahahah i love that you were barely even joking with that statement bup yeah basically GT: The silicon pickpocket strikes again!!! Whom is the wiser? Nobody.

pffffft

You know what this is? This is real, genuine charisn'tma, right out of a Discworld novel. Jake is just so bizarre, with his stilted vocabulary and 'accent' that would be anachronistic in literally any time period that you can't help but enjoy his dialogue. He's likeable, in the weirdest way possible - which sort of parallels John, a guy who's likeable in a very straightforward way.

TG: im not letting either of you run this file on your shitty brainwashy propaganda helmets or anything else u got to wear to run

I'd understand if you were saying that to Jane - but this helmet was inherited from Jade, who should be entirely trustworthy... right?

Does Roxy know something about Grandma Jade that we don't? Something suspicious, perhaps?

GT: Then you have decided to play in spite of your reservations? […] TG: i have every reason to want to play it TG: im actually dying to play it ok

If Roxy's situation is anything like Rose's, then she's living in a remote mansion in upstate New York, with a mother she feels completely alienated from, and no IRL friends to speak of.

Of course she wants to play Sburb. She's desperately lonely.

TG: you believe me right TG: about the bad shit that could hapen GT: Of course i do. GT: What sort of friend would i be if not?

Belief without understanding, like I said before.

Maybe that's the deal with Hope, actually - it's all faith, and no logic. Eridan, who desperately sought out romantic partners with no understanding of why he failed, certainly seems to fit that mold. Hope, then, would be the Aspect of trust, belief, and, in Eridan's case, absolute delusion.

TG: ok well TG: dont say that to jabe TG: *n

Seems that Roxy's also aware that there's something up with Jane. Well, if anyone can undo the damage the Tiaratop has done, it's probably the girl who can look at its source code.

TG: jane never believed my crap TG: never any of my warnings about the baroness TG: didnt believe any of the stuff about my mom TG: and so on and so on and soon TG: til after awhile i just stopped even trying to convince her hard or bring up any crazy shit TG: because u know doing a lot of songs and dances to convince somebody who thinks youre jush shitting them all the time kind of wears on a friendship TG: and who even needs that

...although, Roxy's not describing Jane's repression as if it's artificial. In other words, she thinks Jane's unwillingness to face uncomfortable truths is a real facet of her personality - and perhaps she's not entirely wrong.

Now, let's not get it twisted, here - I do still think that Jane's being brainwashed to ignore any evidence that her corporation is evil, or that her grandmother is the Condesce. But she's also ignoring other uncomfortable truths - ones that are far less supernatural.

B2 Rose - although I hate to admit this - is showing all the signs of being a neglectful and irresponsible Guardian. If Roxy has tried to open up to Jane about this, and she's summarily brushed it off, I really don't think we can chalk it all up to brainwashing. Would the Condesce really brainwash Jane into ignoring all negative information, in any context, ever? How does that benefit her?

No, this feels a lot more like Jane just doesn't want to think about... bad stuff. There's certainly precedent for that, in her family, as John's always shrugging off bad shit - and as we're seeing here, that's not always a good thing. If you're shrugging off your friends' problems in lieu of supporting them, that's not on your evil tiara. It's on you.

[taintandviolent]

Little Mouth ; Roman Godfrey x Reader

summary: Reader has been working for Roman Godfrey for a month now as his personal assistant / secretary. Their interactions have been... mostly professional. That is, until Roman figures out that she has a blood kink. [PART TWO HERE!].

word count & w a r n i n g s: 3.1K | blood kink, blood consumption, (technically) blood as lube, unprotected sex, rough sex, finger sucking, biting (he is an upir afterall), mind control.

a/n: requested by @babygorewhore! feast, baby! my first RG fic, be gentle. I tried really hard to get his characterization right, so dahsdfekjdsafs. i hope everyone likes it! divider by @/strangergraphics!!

full fic under cut! ↓ / ao3 link here! / I don’t have a taglist, but please turn on post notifications if you’d like to be notified of future fics!

“You wanted to see me, sir?” The glass door shut behind you soundlessly. Almost everyone had gone from the Institute, you were always one of the last ones to leave, per Mr. Godfrey’s instructions. 

“Sit down,” he demanded. He was in a mood today - you could tell. Plus, you’d heard him yelling at someone earlier, his temper flaring over some menial task. Your ass hit the leather seat before he could continue. You’d only been working for him for a month, but in that short time, you’d seen Roman’s very volatile nature. Whenever he didn’t get his way… simply put, he got it. You never wanted to be at the receiving end of his rage, far more keen on remaining on his good side, the side that made you his favourite employee. Or so you liked to think. 

Pushing himself off the chair, he straightened his long legs, standing up and quickly rounding the corner of his desk, closing in the distance between the two of you. Although you were fully aware of how tall he was, when he stood next to you, his size never ceased to startle you. Additionally, with you sitting and him standing, the size difference was even more evident. This wasn’t the first time he’d been this close – Roman had a habit of always just being there when you least expected it – but it was the first time that you felt him press his hipbone against you, and the first time he reached forward to brush your silken locks off your shoulder. 

You shivered against his touch, doing everything in your power not to drop your face into his large palm and whine against his skin, begging him to touch you again. You hated that you were so weak for him, but he had an unimaginable effect on you and had from the first day you met him. Which, you remembered, so clearly… 

It had been raining, pouring actually, and by the time you got to Roman Godfrey’s office, you were drenched. A ‘wet rat of a secretary’ was a great first look. He’d smirked at your appearance, and made a flippant comment about arriving to work looking presentable, though judging by the way his eyes lingered on your clothing as it stuck to your body in all the right places, he wasn’t too put off. Despite you having three interviews for the position, as soon as you’d made it to his office, he’d interrogated you about your dedication to the position, asking bizarre questions about loyalty, claiming that you were, after all, his personal assistant.

Every time you tried to look away from him, he pulled you back wordlessly and those piercing green eyes held you tightly, like a rabbit in a wolf’s jaws. 

“You like it, don’t you?” 

Feigning innocence – something you know he picked up on – you raised your big, soft eyes to his, suckling your bottom lip delicately before speaking. Though, this time, you genuinely didn’t know what he was talking about. “Like what, Mr. Godfrey?” 

“Stand up, Y/N.” 

You stood, hands obediently clasped in front of your skirt. He liked ordering you around and did it often. Every time he did, your core clenched, arousal gripping your insides tightly. At risk of being unprofessional, you deeply loved the way he sounded when he said your name, demanding that you do this or that. 

Without looking behind him, Roman reached for the letter opener on his desk, wrapping his long, lithe fingers around the handle. Holding it in front of your face, he jammed the meat of his thumb onto the sharp tip. Hot blood welled out from the small puncture and dribbled down the length of his thumb. Uncontrollably, your pupils dilated, watching as the blood streamed. How had he figured that out? You tried to remember all the times you’d spoken, and a devious blood kink was never a topic of conversation. Suddenly, it hit you. Last week.

You had an armful of files, ready to plant them on Roman’s desk. You shouldered open the door, and he stood there, in front of his desk, dragging his hand underneath his nose; a deep streak of crimson was left in its place. You felt your heart rate quicken, watching as the blood smeared onto his hand. You couldn’t help but stare, you have always been so fascinated with blood. The thought of it turned you on, though you’d never admit that out loud.

Roman brought you back to reality by dragging his thumb across your bottom lip, smearing the warm crimson across your already pink lips. Your bodies were flush against each other, and the steel grip he had on you ached. Roman’s nostrils flared; even his own, the smell of it drove him crazy. 

Another second passed, and he was devouring you. You gasped into the kiss; there was nothing subtle or slow about the way he was kissing you – literally, chewing and sucking and scrubbing his tongue over your lips, removing every trace of his own blood from your mouth. You were out of breath almost immediately, and forced out a hard breath, pressing your tongue against his, feeling the wet muscle react and tangle with yours. 

Suddenly, Roman’s teeth bit down on the plushness of your bottom lip and iron flooded your mouth. The taste of your blood mixed with whatever was left on his tongue was metallic and heady, and you moaned into his mouth, unable to withhold it any longer. You were almost disgusted with yourself, craving the taste of blood like some starved, unhinged, horror-movie vampire, but the way that he kissed and tasted you had your cunt throbbing beneath your red satin underwear. 

His hand gripping the nape of your neck hard, Roman pulled you away from his mouth, looking pointedly at you. Those big green eyes… you whimpered, craning back towards him. He responded by stretching his neck away, almost as if he was annoyed with your desperation. 

“You fucking like it, don’t you?” 

You nodded, hot and breathless.

“Say it. I want to hear those words leave that little mouth.”

“I…” you wavered, unsure.

“You’re going to be honest with me.” Roman’s eyes bored into yours, enveloping you. A hazy warmth blanketed you, to where all you could feel was confidence bubbling up in your chest; it surged through you like a wave, drowning out all other thoughts. Even if you’d wanted to think of something else, you somehow… couldn’t. “I fucking like it. I want more of it.” 

“You want me to fuck you, don’t you?” 

“Yes. I have since I started working for you.” Your voice was laced with lust and desperation, despite being surprised that you had just admitted all that to him. Surely, that could get you fired. You were usually so meek, so timid, always polite. If Roman ever stared a little too long, you’d blush and look back to whatever busy work was on your desk. You weren’t the type to just openly say your innermost thoughts… until now, apparently. 

After searching your eyes for a moment, Roman’s lips were back on yours, his demanding tongue forcing its way into your mouth again, and you whimpered, throwing both your arms around his neck to hoist yourself closer to him. You finally had him and you weren’t letting go. It didn’t matter to you that he was your boss, you’d been waiting weeks for this kind of attention. You’d dreamt about it; thinking about the warm, inviting way he’d taste. Though, your dreams hardly compared to the way that he actually tasted. You tried to come up with some poetic description, but all you could think of was… blood. And sex.

Mimicking your interest, his arms wrapped around you, strong hands feverishly moving from your hips, to your breasts, to your ass. One hand drifted to your legs, fingers trailing up and around one of your thighs until they reached your warm mound. Effortlessly, the pad of his middle finger found your slit, stroking it lightly over the slickened fabric.

“Fuck, please!” Your lips disconnected from him to moan loudly, as your hips bucked into his hand. Roman responded, enveloping your cunt in his palm. He gripped her, massaging the ball of his hand against her, while the tips of his fingers pushed against your opening, still restricted by the fabric. At the threat of penetration, a mewling whine erupted from your throat.

Roughly, Roman ripped your blouse apart. The buttons flew somewhere, never to be found again, and you gasped, feeling exposed. But oh… it would only get worse. He backed away from you, watching silently. His gaze was cold and unreadable, but the corners of his mouth were upturned in the faintest smile. “Take it off. Take it all off. Now.” 

Desperate to have him back in your arms, you got to work, shrugging the silk blouse from your shoulders, and unclasping your bra from behind. Just as he’d thought; you wore a bra with no padding, only satin fabric. The Institute was kept fairly cold for obvious reasons, and your nipples were always poking through your thin blouses. You let your breasts fall free while Roman watched, hungrily devouring you with his eyes, his pink lips pursed, and pushing forward slightly. His fingers reached to your chest, ghosting over your cleavage. You undid the zipper of your skirt, letting it fall to the floor. Now, in nothing but your red underwear and your heels, you were almost entirely exposed. The chill of the room met your skin, leaving goose flesh over every exposed inch. 

He was suddenly gone from your line of sight, leaving nothing but your pathetic whimper in its place. Behind you, you heard him return to his desk, swiftly opening up a drawer and retrieving something. You didn’t dare turn around; he hadn’t told you to. You heard a drawer slide shut quietly. Then, he was in front of you again, a blood bag pinched tauntingly between his thumb and forefinger.

With a hint of smirk, Roman set the bag next to you on the desk, and pulled his shirt from his trousers before unbuttoning each button, and throwing the shirt off his shoulders. Your eyes widened, taking in their fill of his body. He was slender, but muscular, and his torso seemed to go on forever. He retrieved the bag, allowing it sway in front of your face. The bodily liquid inside was thick and tempting. 

“I brought it from the storage room,” he explained, unclipping the bottom of it. Red flowed through the tiny tube, and without hesitating, Roman brought it to his lips, letting it dribble over his mouth and chin. Your jaw dropped; you were in awe of the visual in front of you – your cunt clenched, your slick had fully soaked your underwear at this point, and the ache that was buried deep inside your walls was screaming to be found.

Inside, Roman felt the fiery lust blossoming. His cock was hard and his hunger had been piqued, a lethal combination. You’d been coyly toting yourself around the Institute for the past month, with your perky tits and bouncy little ass – he’d had enough. Roman brought the bag above your chest, and squeezed the plastic between his fist, letting the stream coat your tits in the sanguine nectar. It flowed over your nipples and down the curve of your stomach in thin, red tendrils before disappearing into the fabric of your underwear.  

Now covered in blood, Roman’s lithe fingers cupped your tits, smearing the blood over your hard nipples. He leaned down, and swept his tongue up from the meaty curve of one of your breasts up to your collarbone, his tongue leaving a clean trail behind him, repeating the action over and over again, suckling at the hollows of your collarbones. He was consuming so much blood… your thoughts drifted for a moment before Roman realized, and took your face in his blood-stained hand, pinching your cheeks between his thumb and forefinger. 

“You’re going to focus on me, stop fucking going somewhere else.” 

“I’m…” 

“You’re a good little secretary who is going to do whatever I tell her.” 

You nodded eagerly, your pupils dilated and locked on him. There was that haze again, the warm, comforting haze that wrapped its invisible arms around you, guiding you to only feel what Roman instructed you to feel. 

“Back up, against the desk.” You took a few steps blindly backwards until the meat of your ass hit the edge of his desk. 

Bloodied, Roman leaned forward to kiss you again, urging you further against the edge of the desk while he busied his hands with undoing his suit pants. Once undone, he pulled his aching cock free and roughly yanked your panties over the curve of your hips, exposing your cunt.

“Fuck, you’re so wet...” he murmured, his bloody finger slipping between your folds to come in contact with your wet, puffy clit. He traced small circles on it, immediately bringing your sensitivity up to dangerous levels. Your legs quivered, feet making tiny little steps to try to writhe away from him. “You really do have a thing for this, don’t you? Such a whore.” 

Your cheeks flushed at his words, though you couldn’t deny them. You nodded again, looking down at his hand buried between your legs, unable to formulate words with how he was pleasuring you. His jaw clenched, the muscles feathering on the side of his face. The smell of the blood and your cunt was intoxicating, and hit his nostrils hard. He needed you and he needed you now. 

“Look at me.” He instructed, purposefully distracting you as he lined his dick up with your waiting slit. 

Giving you no time to prepare, Roman slammed his cock into you, bottoming out. Your expression was one of pain and pleasure, dangerously mixed. He paused briefly to revel in the sensation of your sopping cunt clenching around his shaft, but quickly backed his hips up, all the way until only his tip remained inside, then dropped his chin to his chest to watch the erotic display as he plunged back in. You wrapped your legs around his waist, opening your cunt up further for him.

“Moan. Loud.” His voice was deeper, huskier than before and his darkened eyes were glued to you.

You did. Louder than you ever had, probably. With each thrust, your fingernails raked along his bare back, leaving slender red lines in the skin. He pushed his cock into you over and over again, his length punishing you in ways that you’d never imagined. The throbbing tip hit your cervix repeatedly and your eyes rolled back in your head, your back arching up. His hands slipped underneath you, long fingers tracing your bare spine delicately, almost. The juxtaposition of how cruelly he was fucking you and his gentle touches had your head spinning. You sucked in a breath and moaned it out, leaning your head back against his desk. You’d never been fucked like this, and suspected that unless it was with Roman, you never would be again. 

Still keeping his rhythm, Roman reached for the almost empty blood bag again, and held it above both of your bodies. As the stream ran down his bare chest and dribbled onto your stomach and your cunt, you lifted your head, looking at him dazedly and half-lidded. You were covered in blood, and so was he. It was a mess, but the mess drove your arousal forward, the scent of sweat, sex and iron filling the frigid room. 

He was fucking you silly, and all you could do was lay back and take it. Without saying a word, but keeping his cold, green gaze on you, he brought the tube to his mouth and squeezed, sucking the rest of it out. You looked at him like it was the most normal thing in the world, even though it wasn’t. You moaned again, feeling the coil in your core winding tighter and tighter. Your orgasm was threatening, and every thrust brought you closer to that white, hot edge. Your body was crying out to let go, and come all over his long, punishing cock. 

You gasped. “Mr. Godfrey… fuck… fuck I’m going to….” 

With a slick pop, Roman withdrew his cock and slapped it against your swollen, tender clit a few times before sinking back into you, your hips shuddering. He reached to the side, scooping up some of the blood that had leaked from the bag onto the table. Abruptly, he brought his coated fingers to your mouth, forcibly pushing them past the obstruction of your lips, the blood smearing into the corners of your mouth. “Suck them.” 

You took his middle and ring finger into your mouth willingly, though he still pushed them against your tongue harshly, the tips hitting the back of your throat. Immediately, the metallic taste was so potent, it almost made you gag, but you withheld, your throat clenching around his fingertips. He thrust into you hard, the friction of his body rubbing against your clit drove you over the edge. You screamed, your legs quivering around him as your cunt pulsated, squeezing him tightly inside of you.

“Good girl...” 

At that visual, his cock twitched inside you, and his once rhythmic pace was erratic. As he emptied into you, painting your walls with his cum, he gripped you so hard that you cried out, jerking forward against his chest. For a moment, your eyes were tainted with fear, begging him to let go, but he didn’t. He gripped harder, bucking his hips up into you until his orgasm calmed. 

Aftwards, Roman returned to his cold, professional and somewhat snotty disposition. He pulled his softening cock from you, tucking it back into his briefs. He took your face in his hand again, pinching hard.

“You’re never going to say a word about this to anyone.” 

You nodded, adjusting as the silk of your blouse stuck to the drying blood. You weren’t sure what had just happened, but all you knew was that your back ached from the fucking, your legs were still shaking and you’d have to spend at least an extra hour in the shower, scrubbing all the blood from your body. Once he released you from his gaze, you bent down, retrieving your skirt from the floor. Surprisingly, you hadn’t gotten much blood anywhere. 

“Mr. Godfrey?” 

“Hm.” 

“Are you going to fire me?” 

“No.” 

There was a promise behind his curtness. There was also an unsaid threat, that if you didn’t want to do that again, he might. 

[kingofthecotas]

lion's den | ao3

marc at the 100km race in 2026 | 3.4k

i have. compressed the timeline. for narrative reasons 

----

Luca catches him just before they pile out of the house, towards the changing room and the bike shed. It’s not difficult for him: Marc has been hovering, peripheral, all morning. Pecco tried his best to pull him into a conversation, but Bezzecchi turned cold and Valentino appeared from the kitchen and that was that.

Marc fixes the unsure set of his face the second he realises he’s being observed instead of politely ignored. The smile is enough to convince most people—it usually is. 

“You know…” Luca visibly picks through his words before he says them. “You don’t have to forgive him.”

Marc tries not to allow the smile to falter. 

“If you are doing this for Pecco—that is kind of you. But you do not have to forgive him.”

“I think…” And Marc tilts his head, calculating what he can afford to reveal. Luca—he likes Luca, has always found him reasonable. “Too late for that, maybe.” 

Luca’s eyes flicker for a heartbeat, too quick for him to catch even if the rest of his expression is perfectly controlled. Surprise. Marc had surprised him. 

Marc clearly isn’t as fucking obvious as he thinks he is. 

“Well, just …” Luca shrugs, looks him up and down. “It’s good you are here.”

“Good for Ducati?” Marc says, twisting Pecco’s words just enough that they sound mocking. 

“Good for Ducati. Good for the cameras, of course.” Maybe Luca—he doesn’t have blinders on, perhaps, the way Bezzecchi does. Knows Valentino, knows what he does, and loves him anyway. “Come on.”

The moment they step outside, there’s a phone in Marc’s face, wielded by someone in a VR46 hat. Good for the cameras. Good for Valentino.

He huffs out a breath that coils in the air, hangs like smoke, before following Luca to the changing rooms with something sickening in his chest, in his stomach. 

——

Pecco had suggested it first, after a particularly friendly debrief; he’d charged off into the Italian afternoon by three seconds, and Marc chased but decided the championship was close enough that twenty points was better than gravel. Things had stopped being fraught after Qatar—bizarrely, since Pecco had heard Marc behind him and locked the brakes, leaving Marc with nowhere to go but over his teammate’s sliding rear tyre. Gravel trap, Pecco helping him to his feet—and genuine shock when Marc accepted his apology without question. He’d watched Marc for an hour like he expected him to snap, before seemingly deciding he was safe. 

So things had been fine. And Pecco had been fine. So when Pecco won in Misano, clawed some points back, and suggested Tavullia—Marc had laughed. Good joke.

“No, I think it would be good,” Pecco said, his smile half-confused and half-polite—but not joking. “Good for the team.”

“Do you?” Because—Jesus, Pecco had been there. He’d been young, yes, but he was there.

“Just—you don’t have to.”

“Sorry,” Marc said. “Not a good idea, I think.”

“Okay,” Pecco said, unconcerned, and that had been that. 

——

Valentino snares him the moment he steps into the outbuilding, blinking at the same wooden walls he’d doomed himself in over a decade ago.

“Marc! Come here, come here, you need to sign.” And he’s being shepherded towards the table, towards the poster and the pens. Leaving his mark, he supposes.

Cameras. Marc smiles. “So I go right in the middle, no?”

Everyone laughs, indulgent, and Valentino even smiles in return before pointing out a spot for him. Marc does as he’s told; he’s walked himself into the lion’s den, so he may as well play before he’s torn to bloody ribbons.

“And the shirts, behind you.” Valentino is close, too close, a hot vein of lightning in the very centre of Marc’s awareness as they move together, entirely at his whim. 

Marc swallows, wonders if he shouldn’t have come. 

Valentino pulls the hem of the shirt, stretches it out taut, even though one of the hovering assistants had held her hand out to do the same thing—Valentino holds it carefully until Marc has finished, then does the same for the next one.

Then, “Allora,” and Marc is forgotten as Valentino turns to entertain, to hold court. 

——

In the end, it was Valentino who had extended the second invitation, the one that Marc felt like he couldn’t refuse. It was magnanimous, the way Valentino reached for him when he won his ninth title, perfectly positioned for the cameras to capture. Summoned, to kneel and kiss the ring: Marc could play the PR game too, and he acquiesced.

And maybe—

He’d been hot and tired from the race; high on victory; dizzy from champagne and the way his palm had burned, even through gloves, when Valentino had locked their hands together so Marc couldn’t pull away. 

But he’d known exactly what he was doing—what both of them were doing—when he said yes. 

——

Pecco watches them both, not nervous but something like it, over the top of Bezzecchi’s head. 

It’s cold, January-cold, a soft mist sitting over the track. Valentino has his hair tucked into a bright yellow hat, talking in a voice that’s clearly meant to be picked up by the ever-present phones. Marc listens, pretends to listen, smiles when he senses he should. 

“Ah,” Enea says at his shoulder, “we will be fine.” Enea—relaxed, easy. Everything is easy for him, even standing in this crowd of strangers. Marc’s selfishly glad he’s here, and quietly grateful to Pecco for orchestrating them being together. 

At the very least, Marc has something like a shield. 

“Better when you get out and practice, yes?” Valentino says. “Get the, ah, get the feel.” He’s being so attentive it’s making Marc itch, caught under the laser-beam of his focus with no escape. 

Marc swallows. Makes himself nod again. The eyes observing him narrow—and Valentino finally finally turns away. 

When Marc looks back at Pecco, he’s still staring. So is Luca. Not concern. Anticipation, maybe. 

“This was a bad idea,” he mutters to Enea, because Enea won’t care—and he doesn’t, letting out a loud laugh.

“Ah, I don’t know. Good for me. I might win this.” 

“We might win this,” Marc retorts, reflex, and Enea laughs again.

Fuck Pecco. It’s helping.

——

Valentino—fuck him—is right. As soon as the flag drops and they roll out for their practice laps, something settles, even on this plain black bike with his number stenciled in red on the front. Unfamiliar beneath his thighs, and yet he settles into it straight away. It takes a couple of laps, that’s all, before he can throw it into a corner and grin when it bites, when the rear tyre slides how he wants it to. Valentino pulls in before he does, perches on his bike to watch Luca with folded arms, but turns his head when Marc trundles down the side chute to the bike shed.

“Feels good?” Enea says, hair a frizzy halo.

“Yeah, good.”

“You hear that, Pecco? He’s going to win!”

“He usually does,” Pecco shoots back, and grins ruefully. It almost sounds like he doesn’t mind.

——

The day moves quickly: cameraphones; qualifying; a Sky crew that Marc tries his best to steer clear of. He knows he’ll be in the background, though, so he sticks close to Enea and Pecco, ignoring Bezzecchi’s glare. Valentino would be annoyed if someone caught Marc on his own, excluded.

And then—

And they’re lining up on the track, Marc steadying the bike in his hands, not looking at Valentino two spots over who’ll be swapping in the same time he does. The flag drops. Enea sprints.  

Away they go.

——

The bike feels good. Someone kind—Pecco, probably—had made some basic changes to the setup. It feels good, and it’s easy. 

Enea passed the reins over to him from second position, and Bezzecchi slid on his way out of the switch line, so Marc gritted his teeth and just—went. No one in front. A few bikes close behind, so he could throw himself at the apex of every corner, could hit the inside, could let the rear tyre kick out a warning. 

It’s heavy, all of a sudden, a thundercloud rolling in and pressing down—and plenty of people here have blue leathers with bright yellow, but Marc knows. Valentino is behind him. He pushes through the next turn a little harder. 

Corner after corner after corner, Valentino’s bike a growling hum in his ear. Hornet buzzing inside his skull. Marc almost misses the bell to start the final lap; Enea is yelling something as he streaks past that doesn’t carry.

One lap to go. One lap. He’s going to win.

And Valentino is going to look at him like he’s holding a lemon under his tongue, and even the cameras won’t be enough to stop his eyes going cold again, and—

Marc puts his foot down, as if to catch a slide. The crowd noise pitches up. Valentino pushes through on his inside.

The flag waves.

——

Valentino won’t stop glaring at him.

You won, Marc wants to howl, you won, what else do you want? He doesn’t say anything though, accepts his necklace of sausages, and tries to think of the earliest possible opportunity to leave. 

And Luca—Luca keeps glancing in his direction, eyebrows drawn together like he’s concerned, like he can sense his brother’s slow-burning anger beside him on the top step. Spark creeping down a fuse: it’s going to come to a head too soon for Marc to escape.

They let the fireworks off while Enea is pouring champagne down the back of his suit, and Marc yells, twists away, stupid fucking sausages thumping against his chest. When he opens his eyes, shivering, Valentino is still staring.

The fireworks crack. Marc blinks.

——

“This is nice,” Bezzecchi offers across the table. A harmless comment that’s like throwing a stone onto a thinly-frozen pond; the fragile peace shatters.

Everyone else is talking, laughing, eating, and it’s so loud, excruciating, against the tense bubble at the head of the table: Marc, pinned on a bench between Luca and Franky; Valentino, mouth pinched in that awful familiar way. 

“Normally it is just a barbecue,” Pecco tells Marc, gallantly ignoring the heavy silence around them. “Vale is treating us well this year.”

“To celebrate a good race,” Valentino says, voice hard. “The spirit of—competition.”

Marc stares down at his plate. 

“Was it—not a good race?” Luca says mildly. Marc wonders if kicking him is the way to go.

“I expect everyone to give their all on my track.”

“And you think I didn’t,” Marc says, too loud. Enea, further down the table, turns to look. 

Valentino huffs through his nose. “Maybe I expected too much of you.” 

“Okay.” Marc stabs his fork into a piece of salmon. “What did you expect, given that we have spoken, hm, once in the past five years?”

Pecco’s eyes widen, food abandoned as he glances between them. 

And Valentino’s lips twitch, as if to say there you are. That’s what he’d been expecting, because no one can get under Marc’s skin, splinters in nails, the way he can. “I did not expect you to fuck up on the last lap.”

“It’s happened before.” 

“It was a mistake, Vale,” Luca says quietly. 

But Pecco—Pecco stares at Marc. Pecco knows Marc. 

“A stupid mistake.”

Marc sets his jaw, something fluttering in his chest. Lion’s den. “I make mistakes all the time. I am dangerous, no?” 

Valentino ignores that. “Too stupid for you.”

Marc holds his gaze, doesn’t let it slide to the wine glass balanced elegantly in his left hand, until Valentino blinks, takes a sip, rings glinting on long fingers. Pecco exhales, as if released from a spell, and picks up his fork again; it scrapes against the plate, high and piercing, and that’s enough to break whatever hold had Marc bound to his seat. 

“Thank you,” he says, directly to Pecco. “This was nice. I think I will not be invited back.”

Pecco looks at him, then at Luca. “Marc—”

“See you at the team launch.” It’s a miracle Marc extricates himself from the bench without stumbling, feet numb from the cold. He should message Enea, apologise for leaving. Thank him for making it bearable. 

A chair scrapes behind him as he pushes through the door, out into the frigid air. Footsteps in the dirt. 

“Marc.” Valentino has been saying his name all day, and none of them have grated like this one does, this one with no one else around to hear it. “Marc!”

“I am leaving.” Marc keeps his gaze fixed on the house—he will have to ask Pecco to bring anything he forgets, will have to plead with him before the Ducati launch in ten days’ time. If he can just find the keys to his hire car—

“Why?” And even that’s sharp, like Marc failed a test. 

He groans into the night sky, breath misting, before whipping around to glare. “Why? God, I cannot fucking win, Valentino. Maybe I am leaving too early, hm? Did you want to make a speech about what a disappointment I was?”

“No.” But that expression—lips pursed like there’s something sour behind his teeth. 

“Oh, of course, I am sorry.” The laugh that escapes Marc’s throat is sharp, a barking sound. “Did you not get enough on video? To show how—what a sportsman you are. All is forgiven. How kind of you.”

“Jesus, Marc—”

“Whatever I do—” And it sticks on his tongue, stings with the threat of tears. How humiliating. “Whatever I do, you will—you will find something. I am not staying here.”

Valentino stays where he is, halfway between Marc and the outbuilding. “There are no flights until tomorrow.”

“I don’t care.”

“You threw the race.” It’s not—it’s different, this time, not probing, not sneering. 

“I made a mistake. I finished second.” 

“Why?”

“I don’t know why—”

“Yes.” A few steps, and Valentino is close enough that Marc can see the house lights glint in his eyes. “You do. It was not a mistake. You are just clever enough to make it look like one.” 

Nausea almost sends him to his knees in the cold dirt, but Marc is well-practiced at ignoring his body’s cries. He folds his arms. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“If you were going to humiliate me by giving me the race,” Valentino says, closer again, “you should have made it more obvious.”

Marc closes his eyes, bites back the frustrated yell. “You are angry that you won?”

“I want to know why you think I need your help to beat you.”

“Fucking hell,” Marc breathes. “And what if I had won? Am I a dirty rider? What would fucking—what do you want? Because last time—” And he clamps his mouth shut, cursing his own slip.

No one can do that to him but Valentino. 

Valentino, who pounces. “What about last time?”

“You were—angry. Last time I was here. And you would have been pissed off if I had said no, or if I had qualified last and fallen off. You would have—nothing is fucking good enough. So I will leave, and then at least I am just the sore loser you always thought, yes?” He should turn now, walk towards the house. He should. 

“You threw the race,” Valentino says again, and now it’s as if he’s tasting the words, finding something new in them. 

“And I should not have bothered. Because everything I do—” Marc swallows down the sting in his throat; after all this time, he still fucking cares. “You decided who I am a long time ago. I don’t know why I thought I could do anything about that.” 

It’s silent, just puffs of breath between them, and Marc turns around. He can’t be pulled back in again: he won’t. 

“Marc.”

Just—twenty steps, and he’ll be inside. Closer to safety.

“Marc.” Like a scolding teacher, an indulgent king. 

“Don’t.”

Too late; a hand grasps his upper arm, stops him in his tracks—and then drops away like it had been scalded. “Fuck, sorry—I didn’t think—”

“My arm is fine,” Marc grinds out. “I’m going home.”

“Why did you come?”

“What?”

“You did not tell me—why did you say yes?” 

Marc scoffs. “Wouldn’t want you to look bad now you are finally feeling forgiving.” 

“Oh, so you are doing me this favour instead?” The words are hot, too close to Marc’s ear. 

“Isn’t that what you wanted?” 

“No.”

In, out. Breathe. 

“You haven’t asked why I wanted you here.” 

“Pecco wanted—”

“I don’t do anything I don’t want to, Marc.” He can—he knows how Valentino is standing, can feel it like a twist deep in his torso: knows how he’s leaning down, hands hovering inches from Marc’s jacket. “Ask me why.”

“I don’t care why.”

A laugh, ghosting against the back of his neck. Marc shivers. “So why did you come?”

“Good for Ducati.” 

“Of course.” Lips, pressed against the base of his skull, the first tense knot of his spine. 

Marc is so fucking tired. It would be so easy to pull away now, keep walking, never look back: even easier to close his eyes and sink back into him. He’s tired, so he says, “It should be easier for me to hate you.” 

And Valentino must be tired, or drunk, because his hands find Marc’s waist and he whispers, “I don’t want it to be easier.” 

“You never wanted anything to be easy,” Marc tells him, a little too aching. 

Silence, silence that pulls in everything around them: the breeze in the trees behind the track; the faint sound of laughter; the distant rumble of a car’s engine. Valentino’s hands are brand-hot through his clothes, different and so familiar. 

Silence, before Valentino moves, slips his way around so he’s in front of Marc, between him and the house now. His fingers slip under Marc’s hoodie, find the skin just above his hipbone, other hand on the back of his head. “I don’t. Which is why next time you will not give up the win.”

“Next time,” Marc echoes, absent, caught on the trail of fingernails across the back of his neck, through his hair. 

“You need to keep Ducati happy, no?”

“Of course.” They’re too close now, Marc knows it, knows he’s staring into the jaws of death. He wishes he cared more, wishes he weren’t leaning into Valentino’s hold. Wishes it weren’t coiling tight in his stomach. 

Ribbons of flesh: that’s all he’ll be when Valentino’s done with him this time. No need to carve new lines when the old scars still smart. 

“You are very fucking frustrating,” Valentino mutters, and it hits Marc in the corner of his mouth. Too close. Focused in. There’ll be no escape. 

“Always,” but he’s closing his eyes. Valentino was too close to do anything but lean forward, and he does, and Marc meets him with his mouth already open. 

——

The bed shifting wakes him up, makes him roll over and squint, before throwing his left arm over his eyes. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

Valentino pauses, trousers halfway up his thighs, a loose hoodie already pulled on. “Well, I did not think it was that bad.”

Marc lets his arm fall away; Valentino is pouting, entirely unoffended. In a good mood, for now. “It was not bad.”

“Good.” And now there’s a vulpine grin being levelled at him. “You have not changed.”

Marc has, so he glowers and bites. “And you are old.”

Valentino just snorts. “I could set the fire alarm off. The meeting point is by the track. You could get to your car without anybody seeing you.”

Oh. Marc swallows, suddenly cold. “Is that—do you want me to?”

“Do you want to?”

“Not particularly.”

“When I go downstairs,” Valentino says, instead of answering that, “and make two coffees, there will be questions.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Don’t you?”

And Marc thinks of Pecco inviting him, Luca watching him, Franky pointedly offering him a seat at dinner near Valentino. He smirks. “No.”

“Ah. I see.” Valentino taps a long finger on his chin. “Luca was telling me it would be good for my image, Pecco was saying it was for the team—we have been—yes.”

“Yes,” Marc agrees, then, “Do you—mind?”

Valentino drags his gaze down the length of Marc’s body, then up again. “Hm. No.”

“Good.”

“You never asked, you know.”

“Asked what?” But Marc knows. Why?

“Coffee,” Valentino says, as if he’s just remembered, and leans down like he might drop a kiss on Marc’s head before he catches himself. “Into the lion’s den I go.” 

Marc waits until the bedroom door closes behind him to bury his face in his hands. He sighs.

Despite himself, he smiles. 

[olderthannetfic]

/olderthannetfic/769334704445997057/another-fandometrics-year-in-review-another-bevy

I am - genuinely - very sympathetic to the frustrations of solely f/f shippers and I DO think some people are a little too quick to shrug off the lack of f/f in fandom spaces with “lack of representation in media what can you do” when fandom is all about assigning personalities and backstories to one-line characters. HOWEVER. As someone who likes all kinds of ships, the experiences I have had across many MANY fandoms with solely f/f shippers treating people who also liked the main m/m ship as traitors and bad feminists, not to mention the number of people who have told me, a trans man, that I HAVE to write more f/f and less m/m For The Sisterhood, has made me LESS likely to engage in f/f, not more. Some of y’all are your own worst enemy when it comes to this stuff I swear. (Hashtag not all femslashers, hashtag some of my best friends are femslashers, etc)

--

Demands that people defend and explain perfectly commonplace things always end up generating dumber and dumber explanations.

I agree that that explanation by itself is kind of weak, but "Why are you asking only about AO3?" (as people often are) plus representation problems plus the other commonly cited reasons add up to a perfectly sufficient explanation. People just don't like what they're hearing.

--

The kind of f/f fandom people are often looking for—a by cis wlw, for cis wlw one—is not that different in size from the by cis mlm, for cis mlm one. They are both small.

Yes, I know they pretend that's not what they mean. They are lying. Possibly to themselves. Just look at the bawwwwing over the idea that cis men liking f/f could add to the amount of f/f art or the audience for the same.

Many AO3 slashers are better compared to transbian catgirls making lesbian furry porn or cis dudes horny for Buffy/Faith or something. There are plenty of people who care about f/f. They're just not necessarily the ~right~ people in the right spaces making the right art to count in some wanker's statistics.

Part of the reason our explanations and discussions always sound so bonkers is that we constantly compare apples to oranges.

--

And while we're at it, let's talk about that hoary old ~one-line character~ thing.

The reality is that we like to talk about how we elevate random walk-on characters, but the vast majority of shippy AO3 fanfic is about fairly major characters. Clint/Coulson was bizarrely popular in 2012. It has been twelve years. It is time to get over it.

On top of most things focusing on leads, the focus is often on characters who are given a lot of interiority. The audience is invited to be in their head and care about their feelings. People aren't usually good at analyzing film, so they use more familiar metrics involving text: how many lines do they have in the script? How many minutes does that translate to on screen? They don't know how to quantify a character being treated as an object to be looked at beyond "Booty shorts bad". But it's not general sex appeal or amount of skin on display that matters here.

As audiences, we respond to film grammar and "Just happen to like" or not like some character as a result of it, but we aren't aware of the mechanics, so we can't explain why beyond vague spluttering and "How dare you! Everyone should think this because it's the natural response!"

In general, media with multiple central women who have intense relationships with each other and who are conventionally attractive generate plenty of interest in f/f. Media with one hot girl who has the camera trained on her ass all the time while the men do everything interesting usually don't.

It's a no brainer and the harebrained explanations come from trying to look deeper to find the secret conspiracy where there is none.

--

The biggest mistake of most of this dumb discourse is "But I see all these queer women here. Why isn't there more f/f?"

This presupposes some default "normal" level of f/f without any actual justification for why that would be expected. You see the same nonsense from people going "Why is there so much m/m?"

What's the default? 10% because of the fake statistic that 10% of people are gay? 75% because action movies are sausagefests and all the important relationships are between men? What's the "normal" level of femslash? 25% because f/f, f/m, m/m, and gen are all equally valid? 80% because lots of fanfic writers are women?

Chasing one precise number is a fool's errand, but building a whole theory on the idea that there's an implicit number without even digging into that assumption is more foolish still.

When you look at the fanfic (or art!) spaces that are full of dudes, they often look like a bit of a mirror of AO3. Lots of het still. Lots of f/f. Lots of lady blorbos people are obsessed with. Limited m/m. Depending on the space, there might be a lot more gen. It's not perfectly 1:1, but then AO3 isn't precisely like other chick-heavy fanfic spaces anyway.

--

In my experience, the thing that makes a blorbo take off is that they're fairly major in canon, often driving the narrative even if they aren't the main protagonist, and they show up early.

In the cases where they weren't there at the very beginning, them showing up was the catalyst for fans who like this type of character to get into the canon at all. It's not just Castiel: you see it with Methos from Highlander and plenty of others. It's usually in a context where that fandom didn't have that much established for this type of fan. There wasn't a second dude to pair the lead with or the ship turned some people off or something. Highlander, for example, had fucktons of het shippers, both of canon het and of various OFCs and canon dudes. It was the slashers who stampeded over there when friends told them there was new ship potential for m/m. SPN... Sam/Dean was very popular on LJ, but I think it's obvious why a viable non-brother ship was of interest to people. I watched tons of people get pimped into Teen Wolf for Sterek. Of course they ended up liking it and not really caring about other ships: they were pre-selected to like that specific vibe. (And they are all wrong because Scott is the best and Derek has weird teeth.) The same thing happens with f/f. People get into media all the time because they're promised such-and-such a ship dynamic.

Wynonna Earp had plenty of people who were there for the women because the women are who matter for the most part. People were super into the canon f/f because it's hot and because it didn't seem like they were just going to get hit by a bus and shooed out of the narrative.

How many things that everybody and their sister saw have that many main women who matter? Some, definitely, but they're outnumbered by the sausagefests and by the things with very central het. Not everything with a huge audience gets a big fanfic fandom, but most things with big fanfic fandoms do have a big audience. You need critical mass to make a fandom happen.

Something like MCU has a variety of tasty shipping options, but the characters it spent all its time on first were the small selection of guys fandom cares the most about. When other characters were established very early, they also had an early spurt of fandom. I can't be the only one who remembers Pepperony fandom on LJ. It wasn't just people tagging canon ships in the background: Pepper/Tony shippers were a whole thing.

Yes, there are exceptions, but we make a big deal of them while ignoring the overall pattern.

Again, it is time to get over Clint/Coulson, Arthur/Eames, and people hallucinating that Hux had a personality in that first movie.

These are rare exceptions, and they're all snark-based at that. Darcy Lewis was also obnoxiously popular based solely on a few lines of snark, but that didn't count because she wasn't the correct and virtuous choice of favorite female character.

(Seriously, you should have seen the whining about all the people horny for Darcy who didn't give a fuck about boring Jane. Sorry, but your blorbo is a snooze and mine has amazing tits in addition to being funny.)

--

Let's go look at what's big on AO3 since it's easy and that's what other lazy statistics compilers do and then base their whining on:

Looking at the M/M tag, here's the sidebar:

Castiel/Dean Winchester (111856)

Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter (70823)

Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski (70134)

Sherlock Holmes/John Watson (67796)

James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers (61397)

Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens) (56548)

Minor or Background Relationship(s) (55109)

Sirius Black/Remus Lupin (49179)

Bakugou Katsuki/Midoriya Izuku (46679)

Steve Rogers/Tony Stark (44754)

I'm seeing canons with huge audiences. Teen Wolf and SPN are way more popular in fanfic fandom, relatively speaking, but they're certainly not obscure media.

I'm seeing a lot of leads. Sirius/Remus does stand out a little: they aren't walk-ons, but fanon did elevate them. Same with Draco, but main protagonist/most obvious nemesis is hardly a surprising ship type.

Let's play with exclude filters and see what's next (numbers won't be exact since this is via excluding the previous batches):

Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson (43234)

Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji/Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian (40115)

Jeon Jungkook/Kim Taehyung | V (38398)

Keith/Lance (Voltron) (32757)

Dazai Osamu/Nakahara Chuuya (Bungou Stray Dogs) (32744)

Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester (31834)

Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV) (31527)

Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin) (31011)

Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter (30819)

Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood (30133)

Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson (27403)

Original Male Character/Original Male Character (26854)

Bakugou Katsuki/Kirishima Eijirou (26854)

Jeon Jungkook/Park Jimin (26454)

Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov (26453)

Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF) (21154)

Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion (20946)

James T. Kirk/Spock (20716)

Min Yoongi | Suga/Park Jimin (20561)

Blackbeard | Edward Teach/Stede Bonnet (20113)

Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru (20039)

Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio (18806)

Blaine Anderson/Kurt Hummel (18013)

Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier (17577)

Dan Howell/Phil Lester (17518)

Levi Ackerman/Eren Yeager (17404)

Han Jisung | Han/Lee Minho | Lee Know (17390)

Akaashi Keiji/Bokuto Koutarou (17141)

Tartaglia | Childe/Zhongli (Genshin Impact) (17041)

Harry Potter/Severus Snape (16773)

Oh look: more leads.

Sure, there are some little oddities, like the fact that taekook is obviously the worst BTS ship and it is a personal attack on me that it is that popular. But come the fuck on: this is a parade of some of the most famous musicians and most popular anime, shows that had huge audiences and particularly huge audiences of the type that like fanfic.

Let's have a look at f/m:

Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug (33773)

Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy (33031)

Original Female Character(s)/Original Male Character(s) (29586)

Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren (24192)

Minor or Background Relationship(s) (21606)

James Potter/Lily Evans Potter (21088)

Kylo Ren/Rey (16028)

James "Bucky" Barnes/Reader (15922)

Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley (15635)

Sirius Black/Remus Lupin (15335)

Pepper Potts/Tony Stark (14552)

Fox Mulder/Dana Scully (14214)

Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin (13616)

Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson (11471)

Oliver Queen/Felicity Smoak (11383)

Captain Hook | Killian Jones/Emma Swan (11272)

Castiel/Dean Winchester (11187)

Other Relationship Tags to Be Added (10529)

Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov (9750)

Original Character(s)/Original Character(s) (9736)

Okay, it is AO3 after all, so some m/m ships have snuck in there, but the general trend is still leads, leads, leads, now with some readerfic. (For James/Lily, you can blame the insanity that is Marauders fandom on TikTok, or so I hear.)

And f/f:

Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor (21520)

Original Female Character(s)/Original Female Character(s) (17873)

Evil Queen | Regina Mills/Emma Swan (16168)

Minor or Background Relationship(s) (13681)

Clarke Griffin/Lexa (12876)

Adora/Catra (She-Ra) (11532)

Amity Blight/Luz Noceda (10880)

Sirius Black/Remus Lupin (10532)

Caitlyn/Vi (League of Legends) (8925)

Blake Belladonna/Yang Xiao Long (7766)

Robin Buckley/Nancy Wheeler (7369)

Korra/Asami Sato (7146)

Wednesday Addams/Enid Sinclair (6720)

Other Relationship Tags to Be Added (6684)

Waverly Earp/Nicole Haught (5764)

Original Character(s)/Original Character(s) (5529)

Chloe Beale/Beca Mitchell (5347)

Laura Hollis/Carmilla Karnstein (4895)

Jirou Kyouka/Yaoyorozu Momo (4662)

Charlie Magne | Morningstar/Vaggie (4402)

Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan (4284)

Alex Danvers/Maggie Sawyer (4223)

Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam (3936)

Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova (3876)

Maya Bishop/Carina DeLuca (3700)

Sister Beatrice/Ava Silva (3689)

Castiel/Dean Winchester (3664)

Maxine "Max" Caulfield/Chloe Price (3471)

Miranda Priestly/Andrea Sachs (3394)

Ruby Rose/Weiss Schnee (3324)

Carmilla might be a little obscure compared to some media, and some other ships have snuck in here, but again, we're seeing some fairly prominent canons and the leads or at least main cast who have intense relationships in those canons. If most fantasy tv shows were Once Upon a Time, all of AO3 might be awash in nothing but swanqueen and captainswan.

The big thing that one sees is simply that f/f fandom often revolves around different media, while m/m and f/m are more likely to be into the same stuff that's full, full, full of main dudes getting to do things with one woman who matters.

We do not, in general, elevate anybody.

Not unless some very talented writer leads the way first with a juicy longfic that establishes all the fanon.

We repeat the myth that we do because it suits a certain narrative about how creative and transformative fandom is—and another equally popular narrative about how the lack of ship A/B is a ~conspiracy~ to rob one of one's rightful overflowing feed trough of fic.

It's bullshit.

We write about leads.

[iinryer]

🫡.

here are my thoughts:

1: ive been thinking abt it and ive kind of come to the conclusion that this was. a little bit of an insane tone shift. not bad or good! just neutral and kind of insane! because i really genuinely dont think anyone watches 911 for Real Stakes. i know i watch it for the characters and the crazy action and stupid situations. so it feels kind of like whiplash to introduce mcd in season EIGHT. on a generic story front its fine, people die! dying is a plot point that is reasonable! it just feels fucking WILD for 911. in over a HUNDRED episodes the only other people that were around for more than like three episodes who died were shannon and doug and even then, they were not fully fleshed out characters dfkjhfdjkg so this is just a MAJOR change that feels soooooo crazy to me. again. not good or bad. just a really strange choice to be making NOW of all times (first full length season on a new network after getting renewed for another full length season and deciding to change the formula while the show is at its most popular. very bizarre to me)

B: on a personal level. idk if i am emotionally stable enough in my real life to process the amount of fictional grief we r going to be steeped in the next few weeks. im being super self aware in recognizing that 911 is usually my escapism and is probably unfortunately no longer going feel like escapism for a bit due to. gestures vaguely. the world at large and also my stupid little problems and issues :(( i would already be having trouble chilling no matter how he died bc i am a little sensitive about grief rn, but it being SPECIFICALLY due to an infectious disease does NOT do good things for me personally as an immunocompromised person in the middle of an ongoing global pandemic. i am not doing great w it as a scenario! and i recognize that! usually I think of 911 as an outlet for me to feel emotional about things in a “safe” way bc we know that everything always turns out okay (angsty fic etc), but now all of the sadposting is just making me kind of miserable with no safety net and bringing up stuff from my life i was NOT expecting to have to contend with while watching my stupid little firefighter procedural cjfhdjdhfjfj

iii: that being said, in an attempt to not be willingly putting myself alongside complete abject misery in a pressure cooker, i am probably out for a while!! maybe a few days and maybe until s9, i dont know! I’ll check my notifs and inbox every once in a while and I’ll answer asks if I get them! but i dont want to be making myself miserable on purpose just to be caught up on everything, so im probably not going to be scrolling my dashboard for a bit. this feels stupid to “announce” but it also felt good to write out so I figured I’d toss it under a readmore and post it in case anyone found it relatable or wanted some validation in also needing to not feel everyone’s misery.

anyway. for those interested, here’s a post about what im up to in my real life if you’re curious

take care of yourselves! byeeeee 🫶

[soapyghostie]

I love all these slasher posts✨ especially the Sawyer brothers ones ❤ can you do one where when sleeping on their bed their S/O literally falls off in the middle of their sleep and what their reactions will be?😭 idk why i feel like that would be hilarious <3

Here’s the request I promised y’all earlier. Another one that’s been in my inbox for months. Enjoy!

Bubba Sawyer

Bubba is a heavy sleeper: working all those long hard hours in that Texas heat results in extreme exhaustion for him by the end of the day. Once Bubba is asleep, he initially doesn’t even notice when you, unknowingly due to you also being asleep, roll off the bed onto the floor. 

When he eventually wakes up and feels that your side of the bed is empty, Bubba panics through squeals of distress, thinking something terrible has happened to you. He’ll scramble out of bed to end up finding you fast asleep on the floor. This makes Bubba feel so much better, knowing you're okay. However, sleeping on the floor just won’t due and he must get you back on the comfy bed so you can get more comfortable rest. 

Bubba bends down to pick your sleeping form off of the floor and back onto the bed. Then he rearranges the bed around you, ensuring there’s plenty of space between the both of you (just in case he accidentally pumps you off), fashioning a makeshift barrier of pillows to prevent you from rolling off. Bubba will also wrap your sleeping form in one of his homemade blankets he crafted in his freetime when doing one of his “hobbies.”

When he’s satisfied with tucking you back in, Bubba will crawl back into bed and drape an arm around your figure to secure you from rolling off the bed again. From that night forward, Bubba will train himself to become a light sleeper, allowing him to become subconsciously aware of your movements to prevent you from falling off the bed again. 

Nubbins Sawyer

Nubbins would initially sleep through your unfortunate sequence of events of you falling off the bed until he hears a loud thump. He’ll wake up to the sound, sitting up abruptly, blinking in confusion before realizing you're nowhere on the bed anymore and breaking into a mischievous grin. 

Nubbins will pull out his camera and start taking pictures of your limp sleeping form twisted in the weirdest and uncomfortable sleeping possible you’d ever see. Once he had his fun, he’ll shake you awake as hard as he can, ending with you probably getting angry at him and chewing him out for waking you up. When you realize you are laying on the floor, Nubbins will most likely start teasing you with playful remarks, joking about your “gravity-defying escape” from the bed. 

However, underneath the playful banter, Nubbins is genuinely worried about you, checking to make sure you didn’t hurt yourself on the way down to the floor. He’ll even offer to help you get back onto the bed. Nubbins will also use this opportunity to recount some bizarre bedtime stories of his brothers to lighten up the mood, helping you forget the initial embarrassment of your fall. His laughter will echo through the room as he regales you with tales of sleepwalking or bed-flipping mishaps from his experiences. 

Once you're all tucked in, Nubbins will settle back into bed, cuddling up to you with a twinkle in his eye and that goofy grin he always has, ready to take more peculiar adventures with you tomorrow. 

ChopTop Sawyer

ChopTop jolts awake to the sound of your body hitting the floor almost immediately, his wild hair standing on head as he assesses the situation. When he realizes you fell off the bed, rather than showing immediate concern, ChopTop will burst into a fit of laughter, finding the situation highly amusing and entertaining. 

You’ll wake up to him right next to you poking you. Once ChopTop notices that you're awake, he’ll start teasing the hell out of you, making crude dark and twisted jokes. He’s trying to push you over the edge to try and get a reaction out of you. It’s like him encouraging you to punch him at this point: I wouldn’t blame you if you did though. 

Deep down, he would be worried about you. ChopTop checks you for any bruises or injuries while making more jokes showing both concern and amusement. He’s really trying to hide that softer side of himself that he has for you. He needs to be manly and not all soft and mushy like a little girl. God Damnit (Y/N)! 

Once he knows you're alright and don’t have any sort of injury, ChopTop will go back to his normal self and brush off any sort of concern he had for you. He’ll even suggest turning the accident into a funny story, weaving a narrative about the legendary “bed diver” in his signature storytelling style. His laughter lingers in the air as he gently helps you back up into the bed. Is that a hint of nervousness that I hear in that laugh ChopTop? As you both settle back down, he will continue to try and entertain you with bizarre anecdotes and offbeat humor as he wraps a protective arm around you as you fall soundly to sleep. wink

[aprillikesthings]

So this is somewhat of a continuation of my "you could headcanon Catra as demisexual based on canon" post, but I wanted to write a new post for this.

So there’s a fascinating conversation to be had about why, in fics where Catra and Adora aren't together (yet), so many of us have written Adora as…not a prude per se, but far less likely to hook up with other people—and have written Catra doing that, instead. (I mean, I have an unpublished WIP that includes that; I'm not throwing stones at glass houses here.)

And I do think some of it is that Adora is awkward in that way that’s so often some combo of a sheltered upbringing/ADHD/autism; whereas Catra is in fact more openly flirtatious.

(Disclaimer: In this post I'm using "slutty" in a neutral-to-positive sense.)

But the irony is that One, plenty of people who share those qualities with Adora are in fact hella slutty*; and Two, Catra clearly doesn’t intend to follow through on all that flirting.

ANYWAY time for my actual thesis of this post:

The real reasons, IMHO, that it's easier to see Adora as less slutty than Catra:

Adora is so visibly uncomfortable in her skin, and Catra is not

Adora doesn't even realize when she's attracted to other people

Catra however is aware of when people find her attractive (and changes how she interacts with them based on that)

The tweets aren't connected; they weren't part of the same thread. But ND's made no secret of the fact that he gave Adora a bunch of his own traits**, and it was after s5 that he started coming out as trans--which isn't to say Adora is intended to be read as dysphoric. But the way Adora never thinks of herself or what she wants carried over into not thinking about her physical body as anything other than a tool, and not feeling comfortable in her body, and not feeling like she owned it. (Which....is probably related to ND's religious trauma, considering how many conservative/fundie Christians straight-up tell women and girls their body doesn't belong to them. In those words. Literally.)

And I think that's part of why Adora reads as so awkward. The idea of someone wanting her and finding her attractive is just bizarre to her to the point that she doesn't even see it.

She does clearly find other people attractive! But I don't think she realizes she's doing it--she reminds me a bit of when I was 15 and stared at women in bikinis on the beach and tripped over my own feet because I was looking at them and not where I was going lol, and had literally zero idea I was doing it until my best friend told me about it later.

Adora didn't even know she wanted to kiss Catra until just before it happened--if Glimmer had pulled Adora aside in the Crimson Waste and said "lol you want Huntara so bad," Adora would've been genuinely confused!

And that's all before you get into the whole She-Ra thing, and you could write a long-ass essay about Adora's sense of identity and the degree to which she sees She-Ra as herself or not. But the fact is that She-Ra has a different body than Adora! Taller, stronger, a lot more hair lol. And the people around her clearly value She-Ra differently than they do Adora. So that's a whole. Thing.

Meanwhile: Catra just feels comfier in her body. She does try to tamp down her cat-like qualities to some degree, especially in s4, but a lot of it was just that her ears and tail tended to give away her emotions, and she was trying to hide them. She stops suppressing that at some point after Save the Cat. (And then the Universe gave her a mood ring alien cat, lol.) Catra's got her own pile of Issues, but her body is just not one of them.

There’s a scene at the end of The Coronation (s4ep1) where Catra is in her s4 outfit for the first time, and she basically does the “I’m in charge now” thing at Hordak, and I’m sorry but it’s...not NOT sexually charged, even leaving aside that her new outfit has thigh slits and a boob window. She’s sitting in his throne and purring (loudly!) and then purrs out a "Hey, Hordak."

She basically forces him to his knees, taunts him, and then we see from his POV as she sits back in that throne and crosses her legs. If she’d done that in a scene with literally any non-male character it would be seen as ship-bait!

Is she intentionally flirting with Hordak? Lol no.

But you'll notice: She doesn't do it with Scorpia, when she's mean to Scorpia. With Scorpia she's just...biting and cruel. So she clearly has some idea what she's doing when she taunts people, enough that she knows Scorpia would take it differently. She knows Scorpia finds her attractive and is trying to push Scorpia away.

Catra also doesn't do it with Double Trouble! Double Trouble flirts with Catra, but Catra gives none of it back, and as noted in my previous post, is even visibly uncomfortable with it at times.

Which isn't to say Adora never does the "flirtatious taunting" thing:

But like, where. Where do you think she learned it from.

(this post is once again relevant)

EDIT: another example of Adora learning it from Catra, taken from a "She-Ra Crack" video:

(*Me. In my 20’s. Just remember kids, lots of neurodivergent nerds are hella slutty.) (**iirc that's how he got diagnosed with ADHD. Everyone just like "hey is Adora intentional ADHD rep" and he was like "no, I wrote her like me?? ...oh. shit.")

(Lastly: anyone reblogging this to shame people for writing/hc'ing/shipping whatever they want will get blocked. I'm not even sure I hc Catra as demi and I wrote a whole post about it lol.)

[autisticlancemcclain]

this is how it started

———

This is how it continues: Keith holds his hand all the way to breakfast.

In itself not incriminating. Lance holds Hunk’s hand all the time. He’s always got an arm around Pidge’s shoulder. Shiro is amused by Lance’s incessant attempts to have them skip about with their arms linked. Sometimes he offers his arm to Allura with the poshest expression he can muster, just to make her laugh. Not all of his attempts are entertained by his friends, of course, but there’s nothing novel about Lance attaching himself to people as they move about.

Keith reaching out, as they walk out of the bedroom they just shared, and linking their hands together easy as pie is, however, novel.

Everything is so bizarre. It’s worsened, really, after a night of decent sleep (in a real genuine mattress!), because it’s just not what Keith and Lance…do. They race each other to doorways, yanking on hoods or sticking out legs to trip and get ahead. They escalate from light shoving to full on wrestling in the middle of conversations. Keith is not exempt from Lance’s constant need to touch, sure, but it’s never — like this. Light, easy, comfortable, familiar.

(It was, briefly, at the end. When on their way to meetings and briefings and missions even Keith’s hand would rest on the small of Lance’s back. Absentmindedly. Unnoticeable. But a he left a week after it started, and as far as he’s concerned anything started in that era has long since been left behind them.)

They’re late — the rest of the team has already gathered. Pidge and Allura are half asleep on either of Shiro’s shoulders, and Coran and Hunk are arguing intensely but playfully about a pile of unrecognisable goo that Lance has learned to recognise as the space version of oatmeal. Hunk pokes it in disgust. Coran feigns outrage.

All five faces turn to them as they approach, and Lance can’t place a single one of their expressions. He is made suddenly aware that he has loosened his grip on Keith’s hand when he feels him squeeze three times, quickly in succession.

“…Huh,” Shiro says after a moment, eyes trained on their clasped fingers. His face is carefully blank. No one else offers any commentary.

“How’d y’all sleep,” Keith asks, pulling out a chair. Lance realizes after a beat that it’s meant for him, and he flushes up to his ears. He tugs his hood over his head and nearly upends the table in his haste to melt into the offered chair. Keith, in contrast, sits down next to him and rests an arm over the back of Lance’s chair so smoothly it has to be practiced.

Pidge makes a choking noise, cheeks puffed up like she barely managed to keep her mouth shut. Hunk has both hands clapped over his mouth.

“Shut the fuck up,” Lance hisses, face redder than his lion.

Keith’s fingers brush his shoulder. He sinks further into his chair and tugs his hood down lower.

“I slept exceptionally,” Allura says loudly. The look she cuts Lance’s way is straight-up evil, and Lance knows what’s coming, and for several agonizing seconds he considers grabbing the spoon from the goo bowl and stabbing it straight through his eye. “The beds were very comfortable, didn’t you find, Keith?”

You are so dead to me, Lance thinks at her. He even thinks i’m in Altean so the fury can reach her properly.

“Yeah.” Keith leans over to press a kiss to his cheek. Lance’s face gets exponentially redder, and the peanut gallery starts screeching quietly, but despite himself he — leans. Into it. And Keith notices, because his mouth curves into a smile, and he presses another kiss to the curve of Lance’s jaw before pulling away. “Slept right for the first time in two years.”

“Oh, I’ve been meaning to ask you about that,” Shiro says, reminding Lance once again that he is, in fact, Lance’s hero, actually, last few months notwithstanding. He shoots Lance a fond, teasing smile, then turns back to Keith. “My question is: what the fuck?”

“Seconded,” Pidge agrees through a mouthful of goo.

Hunk grimaces at her. She shoves three more bites of goo into her mouth then opens her mouth and sticks out her tongue at the yellow paladin, just to be disgusting. With a scandalized “gross, Pidge!” Hunk shoves chair away and marches to the other side of the table, leaving Pidge sniggering.

Keith watches the whole thing with a smile on his face soaked in so much sadness Lance’s chest physically aches with it. He darts out a hand and wraps it around Keith’s, squeezing it in a mirror of the way he did before. Keith smiles gratefully at him, pulling up his hand and kissing the back of it. Somewhere, Lance hears someone mutter: “Christ alive.”

“There was a — shipwreck, of sorts,” Keith explains eventually. His voice is soft. “Krolia and I flew too close to something. Our intel was outdated. When we finally made it out of the wreckage we were stranded on the back of a space whale, and time was…stretchy.”

“That explains so very little,” Shiro says, shaking his head. He stabs his spoon in some goo. “Space has done little but piss me off in the last couple years, if I’m being honest. Keith, I swear to God I’m going to ground you.”

Keith grins. “Fat chance, old man. I outrank you now.”

“That’s what you think.”

Lance watches them both critically as they argue. Well, ‘argue’. They’re both grinning too hard for any real animosity. And exhaustion still lines Shiro’s features, and he still leans onto Allura for support, but there’s a brightness in his eyes that’s been missing for months. And Keith is —

Keith is here, leaping to his feet, spoon of goo bared dramatically, and he is tired too but he is warm and soft, somehow, and the weight that Lance has always watched on his shoulders seems to have lifted. There is an easiness to him now that there wasn’t before. And Lance notices and cannot stop noticing, because he is beautiful, and because for some reason he has decided to plant himself next to Lance, closer than before, and bleed his warmth. And Lance is supposed to be the lighthearted one and the joking one and the easy one. That is his role. That is what he knows how to play.

But he’s been struggling. And the role has not come easy. And last night he had cried until he slept in Keith’s arms and Keith had held him and checked the room and kissed his hair and has yet to let go of him.

Lance looks at Keith and thinks to himself: maybe just this one thing.

Keith reaches half over the table and musses his brother’s hair, pushing him back into Allura’s careful hold and sitting heavily back in his own seat. He frowns, staring at the space that has grown between his chair and Lance’s during his roughhousing. Slowly, he reaches over and grabs the bottom rung of Lance’s chair, dragging him over until the space between them has disappeared, then he nods once to himself, satisfied, and throws an arm around Lance’s shoulders, pulling him even closer.

And Lance thinks to himself: oh, God.

For a moment Lance is tense. He feels the stares of the rest of the team, teasing and interrogating all at once. He can already anticipate their questions, probably on par with his own.

Keith rests his cheek on top of Lance’s head.

“You good?”

Suddenly, none of that seems to matter. He thinks to himself: I need to sit him down and ask what the hell is going on.

Keith’s thumb starts to gently brush back and forth on the cusp of his shoulder.

He says: “I am now.”

This is how he lets it continue.

———

this is how it ends

[toa-arania]

Gender is such a fascinating thing in Bionicle because objectively why is it there? Why do the biomechanical maintenance nanobots of a giant robot have gender? Or, more accurately, why do they have a gender binary? The gender binary as we understand it is (unfortunately) heavily linked to biological sex, something that MU bionicles don't have. The logical answer is that the Great Beings gave them gender to be reflective of their own society, where there are biological beings that reproduce biologically and have a gender binary that presumably sprouted from that, at least initially. However, despite giving them gender, they didn't give them any kind of sexual dimorphism, and for this we want to look at some of the non-matoran species and how they interact with gender.

The Vortixx are a society heavily stratified by gender - being 'male' or 'female' is more like a class system, with females as the upper class and males as the lower, working class. It's very reminiscent of the Orions from Star Trek. Additionally, we know that the species is not sexually dimorphic. Yes, the species that produced Dommy Mommy Roodaka, with her heels, ass, tits, and ponytail, is not sexually dimorphic. We see in one of the comics that a Vortixx confirmed to be male also just looks like that, and honestly we love that for him. He even has the rhotuka ripcord that kinda looks like a riding crop. We know that the Vortixx were created by Mata Nui rather than the Great Beings directly, so is it perhaps possible that because their perception of gender made no sense to apply to the MU inhabitants, Mata Nui compensated by having gender present itself in other ways?

Consider also the Skakdi, where the only thing we know (at least as far as I'm aware) about their relationship with gender is that there are female Skakdi, and that they are more violent and destructive than the males. We have never seen one, and we know so little to the point where I actually thought for a while that the Skakdi were a single-gender species. Like the non-GSR characters in Bionicle, they were given their elemental associations separately from their genders, and we've seen nothing to suggest that gender has any bearing on their society aside from disposition.

Then we come to the Matoran. For Matoran, gender is quite frankly fucking bizarre. The Av-Matoran were the first type to be made, and they are also the only type that can be more than one gender. The doylist explanation for that is so that they can blend into other Matoran types better, but that doesn't make any sense because those other types didn't exist yet. We do have a quote from Greg about gender in the Matoran, where it's stated to be a psychological difference rather than a physiological one, where the 'feminine' elements are calmer peacemakers, which is an absolutely fascinating quote because it's completely untrue. It might be true about the Ga-Matoran (with notable exceptions like Hahli), but it sure ain't true of the Vo-Matoran and Ce-Matoran, where our two primary examples are Chiara (electrocutes a lizard to make the point that females aren't gentle) and Varian (tortures Norik with nightmares for fun). There's also Orde but I genuinely have no idea what to do about him. He claims that he got all Ce-Matoran made into women to make them chiller and it clearly didn't fucking work so other than I guess the pitch of their voice there just isn't any observable difference.

What is demonstrably true is how general disposition does seem to vary between individual elements, and since Greg has confirmed that gender in Bionicle is a psychological variation that affects outlook and disposition, I honestly do not think it's a stretch to say that, at least for the Matoran, each of the fifteen elements is a separate gender. Honestly this even makes the elemental prefixes neopronouns, from a certain perspective. The Shadow Matoran are also fascinating to look at from this angle because they don't ordinarily exist; they're made from other kinds of matoran - the fifteen 'standard' genders if you will. They don't call themselves Kra-Matoran because they aren't a defined group, and they never think of themselves as one. They go back to what they were beforehand perfectly fine and at least act better off for it - with one exception. Gavla (the only female Av-Matoran we actually meet, who feels ostracised from her community) wanted to stay a Shadow Matoran, a kind of Matoran outside the standard concept of what elements they could be because she felt wrong as an Av-Matoran, and as a Shadow Matoran she felt more like herself. All this is to say:

Gavla Bionicle is Transgender and Non-Binary, have a nice day.